Iran: More on the Political Attack on the National Iranian American Council

As we expected, the whipped-up controversy over the activities of the National Iranian American Committee --- fuelled by the attack journalism in The Washington Times --- has descended into further invective and allegations.

The Lake piece gave cover to the earlier exaggerations and distortions not only of The Weekly Standard, which is trying to blow apart any engagement with Iran, but also Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic:

A couple of weeks ago I retracted my assertion that Trita Parsi, the head of the National Iranian American Council, did "leg-work" for the Iranian regime. I was trying to suggest, in a not-so artful way, that Parsi is trying to build his organization into an Iranian version of AIPAC, but "leg-work" seemed, in retrospect, like too harsh a description for his activities.

But now I may have to retract my retraction....

Meanwhile, the counter-allegation is spreading that Hassan Daioleslam, who is the source of the allegations and who is being sued by Parsi for defamation, is a long-term member of Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO). The group has sought the overthrow of the Iranian regime since 1979, often through violence, bombings, and assassinations.

Josh Rogin of the Cable blog of Foreign Policy is writing that Daioleslam is well-connected with Washington neoconservatives who are challenging NIAC to undercut the Obama administration's engagement strategy.

Rogin is posting emails between Daioleslam and Kenneth Timmerman, in which the two plot strategy and discuss the plans to leak documents to Eli Lake, who wrote the Washington Times story. Timmerman is a longtime advocate of regime change in Tehran, through platforms such as the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, which he co-founded in 1995 with Joshua Muravchik and the late Peter Rodman. He has accused Iran of a role both in the September 11 attacks and the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Comments

[khosro j]

This has nothing to do with the MKO.. ALl Iranian activists inside and out know this guy Parsi... he is already a burnt Card only being twisted.!!
Soplease do not try to cover up for his deeds!!
By doing so , you only deface your own profile...

[Ali]

khosro j, speak for yourself! Almost everyone I know both inside and outside supports this group and their policies.

Nice try painting yourself as the majority! (Something the MEK cult is really good at)

[Anthony]

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=309&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Lobelogcom+%28Jim+Lobe%27s+Blog%29

Why Everyone Hates George Soros

By Daniel Luban

One of the more amusing aspects of the ongoing NIAC story has been the right-wing fixation on investor and philanthropist George Soros’s links to the group. The fact that Soros’s Open Society Institute helps fund the NIAC-affiliated Campaign for a New Policy on Iran — as well as his funding of J Street, another neocon bete noire — has led the usual suspects to portray Soros as the hidden power behind an anti-Israel, pro-Iran conspiracy in Washington. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb writes that the “the tie that binds [NIAC and J Street] seems to be George Soros,” and accuses them of being “closely allied with a Holocaust-denying regime that daily threatens the existence of the State of Israel,” while the American Thinker’s Ed Lasky goes farther, headlining his piece “Soros tentacles wind through pro-Iranian groups”. (I have often found it startling how easily staunchly Zionist and philo-Semitic writers slip into the language of traditional anti-Semitism when talking about Soros — the latest incarnation of the shadowy Jewish financier whose “tentacles” extend throughout the corridors of power.)

Why is this funny? Because there is one other group that similarly views Soros as a shadowy, dangerous and destabilizing servant of the enemy, and it is the Iranian regime itself. For proof, see this rather hilarious Iranian government propaganda video from the summer, which depicts Soros in the White House plotting regime change in Tehran with none other than John McCain (!) and nonviolent resistance theorist Gene Sharp (!). (In the video, the nefarious Soros-backed conspiracy against the Islamic Republic is foiled by a loyal citizen who turns her brother in to the security services.)

So for the neocons, Soros is an Iranian stooge; for the Ahmadinejad regime, he is an American stooge. The man just can’t win.

Amusement aside, the coincidence is a revealing one. It is a reminder that both American and Iranian hardliners have a desire for increased confrontation between Washington and Tehran, and an interest in destroying moderates who seek to defuse tensions between the countries. We see this in the Iranian right’s attacks on Moussavi and Karroubi for being anti-Islamic Republic, and the American right’s attacks on them for not being anti-Islamic Republic enough; in the Iranian right’s terror of Soros-style peaceful civil society initiatives as velvet revolutions in the making, and the American right’s contempt for them as weak-kneed appeasement. And it is this logic that is driving the campaign against Trita Parsi and NIAC, critics of the Iranian regime who refuse to serve as enablers for a U.S.-Iran war. As Robert Farley puts it, “every country has its neocons,” and they frequently have the same enemies.

[Cross-posted at The Faster Times.]

[Megan]

Khosro J,

Thank you, finally a voice of reason. The last few days NIAC members were out in drove on this blog steamrolling those who were not in their camps. They provided link after link about this Parsi fellow and what a Saint he was. I was beginning to think they may even canonize him as Imam Parsi soon.