Smearing the NIAC

Smearing the NIAC

There's a new front developing in the Middle East propaganda battle, with right-wing political and media voices in Washington now turning their firepower against the National Iranian American Council.

In a long article  it declares to be "exclusive", the reliably partisan neo-conservative organ The Washington Times has decided to attack the NIAC, and "its charismatic leader, Trita Parsi", accusing him and the organisation of "skirting" lobby rules.

Now I am not intimately familiar with the lobby system in Washington, but I do know that the laws governing these issues are well defined if the NIAC has indeed broken them the friends of the Washington Times will very quickly put a stop to it.

But it's tempting to suspect that lobbying isn't the real issue here, and that the that paper is rather more concerned with what it describes as the NIAC's "emergence as a major player in Washington and leading voice for engaging Iran and ultimately lifting U.S. sanctions". Indeed, it's easy to conclude from the tone of the piece and of the developing conversation surrounding it, that the real mission here is to paint Parsi as a tool of the Islamic Republic and therefore an enemy of America.

After all, the Washington Times - and the voices that have lined up to support it on this issue - don't have a problem with lobbyists per se. (Or indeed with charismatic leaders. The Washington TImes was founded by Sun Myung Moon and is funded by the Moonies.)

No, this constituency is among the staunch supporters of the lobby system, particularly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the biggest lobby groups of them all. Any criticism of that group is decried as de facto anti-semitism, and its right to buy influence on Capitol Hill is sacrosanct.

To express anything less than hysterical condemnation of all things Iranian, however, calls forth a different response.

I have personally interviewed Trita Parsi on a few occasions and have always found him to be credible and well informed, and his succint response  to these accusations strikes me as measured and rational. If he is a tool of the Islamic Republic, it seems to me he's not representing those paymasters very well.

One thing I can state with a greater measure of certainty is that the Washington Times is off base when it tries to smear the company Atieh Bahar with the implication that it, too, is a front for the Iran government.

According to documents, Mr. Parsi appeared at times to be coordinating his advocacy work with Mr. Namazi, who was until 2007 a managing director of a company called Atieh Bahar. Atieh Bahar is the international consulting arm of the Atieh Group, a Tehran-based holding corporation for concerns that have contracts both with Iranian government ministries and Iran's banks, as well as international firms looking to do business in Iran. Had Congress lifted sanctions, Atieh Bahar stood to benefit.

The clearest indication that the Atieh Group is a legitimate business consultancy is surely the fact that its CEO, Bijan Khajehpour, spent three months in Tehran's Evin prison after the presidential election, simply for having suggested that Ahmadinejad might lose the election.

I suspect that this may just be the beginning of a campaign against the NIAC. With President Obama continuing to insist on negotiating with Iran rather than bombing it, I'm not at all suprised that some people are looking to open new avenues of attack.