Following up on our coverage of the campaign to destroy the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), Josh Rogin at the Cable has more information on the background to the attacks. The most interesting revelation concerns Hassan Daioleslam, the Iranian-American journalist — accused by critics of ties to the Mujaheden-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist group — who is being sued by NIAC for defamation and who appears to have been the source for the recent Washington Times hit piece on NIAC. Newly released documents make clear that Daioleslam (portrayed by his hawkish supporters as merely a concerned human rights and democracy advocate) has been only the public face of a group of Washington neoconservatives aiming to bring down NIAC as a way to undercut the Obama administration.
Rogin relays emails between Daioleslam and Kenneth Timmerman , in which the two plot strategy and discuss plans to leak documents to Times reporter Eli Lake. Timmerman, for those not familiar with him, is a notorious neoconservative hardliner and longtime advocate of regime change in Tehran. He founded the ultra-hawkish Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI) in 1995 with Joshua Muravchik and the late Peter Rodman, but became marginalized in mainstream circles after making a series of outlandish accusations. Notably, he accused Iran of having a role both in the September 11 attacks and the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings; he also alleged the existence of an “insurgency within the U.S. government” — a conspiracy centered on the CIA and State Department — that “sabotaged the [Bush] administration’s Iraq war plans” and was responsible for the failures of the U.S. war effort.
In one April 2008 email, Daioleslam wrote to Timmerman that he considered NIAC president Trita Parsi to be “the weakest part of the Iranian web” and that “destroying him will be the start of attacking the whole web.” Daioleslam continued (my emphasis): “This is an integral part of any attack on Clinton and Obama .” (The email was sent during the Democratic primaries, when it was not yet clear who would be the Democratic nominee.)
The email makes clear that the attacks on NIAC are simply a means to an end — the real goal being the sabotage of the Obama administration’s Iran policy. While it makes sense that the NIAC attacks have been picked up by the Weekly Standard set, one has to wonder whether the liberals who have aided and abetted them feel comfortable with participating in a campaign whose ultimate goal is to cripple a Democratic administration.
[Cross-posted at LobeLog .]
More on these topics:
Hassan Daioleslam, Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg, Kenneth Timmerman, Neoconservatives, NIAC, Trita Parsi
rostam says:
Well let us assume that all fingers pointing at Trita Parsi, as a spy for Islamic republic, are evil ones and wrong.
As an Iranian I know the Islamic regime. They are very subversive. They plan for their moves in phases. And they are merciless when they have the overhand and they have a lot of money.
They differentiated themselves from other fractions of the opposition to the Shah by the trust they had in lobby.
The history of this goes back into the time of constitution revolution in Iran 1905 when Islamic opposition to that sought support at the Tsars court thanks to a tiny lobby they had. But they failed.
Back in the cold war days USSR backed the communist party of Iran. The Islamic movement sought back up in Egypt 1963 pointless and failed.
It was only in 1971 when they started lobby acting on US soil for real. This time a great success. Google on the name of MR Ibrahim Yazdi as the father of Islamic lobby in US.
That was the beginning of an era of clash of ambitions in my country way over the head of laymen. USSR made some influences and partly provoked the hostage taking of US personal in Tehran1980. Since then the Islamic Republic invested astronomic amount of money in regrouping and reconstruction of its lobby on US soil. In fact not just one but a meshwork of structures with vast levels and missions.
The lobby they had between 1971-1980 was made of students with clear Islamic agenda. But they turned their backs to the regime when they grasped the reality of the monster they helped to release from the Pandora box.
The reinvestment surged 1996. With clear inspiration from the Israeli lobbies and encouraged by the experience of Kuwait in making US react fiercely against Saddam in gulf war. So there is a strong meshwork of lobbies working for them. You defend Trita Parsi. Cool. But do not deny the existence of such. The real falsifiers would be those who deny the whole concept