{"id":6767,"date":"2010-02-20T10:54:18","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T18:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6767"},"modified":"2010-02-20T10:54:18","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T18:54:18","slug":"neocons-go-after-iran-lobby-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/20\/neocons-go-after-iran-lobby-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Neocons Go After ‘Iran Lobby,’ Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week saw the publication of a two-part hit piece in Tablet magazine purporting to expose the machinations of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran lobby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Washington. The author, Lee Smith, is apparently not the great baseball closer<\/a>, but rather a former reporter for Bill Kristol<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Weekly Standard<\/em><\/a> and a current fellow <\/a>at the neoconservative Hudson Institute<\/a> (also the home of such luminaries as Scooter Libby<\/a>, Doug Feith<\/a>, and Norman Podhoretz<\/a>). The first piece (titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Man in Washington<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) targets Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, while the second (bearing the equally classy title \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Immigrant<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) goes after Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). While pitched as an analytical treatment of its targets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 careers, Smith soon slips into overwrought emotional mode, accusing the Leveretts of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trad[ing] their government experience and intellectual credibility for access to the worst elements of a regime that continues to murder its own people in the streets\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while arguing that Parsi was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153corrupted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by immigrant ambition and a taste for political power.<\/p>\n

Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pieces wear their ideology on their sleeve to such a degree that it hardly seems necessary to respond (although the Leveretts <\/a>have, and Matt Duss<\/a> has also picked the pieces apart). Regarding the Leveretts, I do not personally agree with all of their writings, and many Iran analysts whom I respect have criticized them for underestimating the Green Movement\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prospects of success. Still, their pessimism does provide a needed counterweight to much of the high-flown commentary we see these days claiming that the Islamic Republic will fall tomorrow if only the U.S. strikes the proper heroic pose, and they certainly deserve better than the transparent smear job that Smith produces, which all but accuses them of being Iranian agents of influence. It is quite obvious that the real reason the Leveretts are being targeted by Smith and his cohort is not they are pessimistic about the Green Movement, but rather that they are staunchly opposed to U.S. military action against Iran (which, ironically, is the main issue on which they agree with the Green Movement).<\/p>\n

As for the attack on Parsi, it merely marks the continuation of a neoconservative campaign aimed at silencing any insufficiently hawkish Iranian voices. (I previously wrote about the campaign and its architects here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, among other places.) Like his allies, Smith drops insinuations of dual loyalty<\/a> in a way that would clearly be deemed anti-Semitic if applied to a Jewish political figure. He also implies that Parsi is thin-skinned or conspiratorial for identifying his antagonists as neoconservatives \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but nearly all of the critics Smith cites are, in fact, neocons, from Eli Lake to Michael Rubin<\/a> to Reuel Marc Gerecht<\/a>. (See Jim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post from last week for more on Rubin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Gerecht\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent antics.) Smith mentions Parsi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s award-winning book on the U.S.-Iran relationship, but bases his critique of the book entirely on reviews in Commentary <\/em>and Daniel Pipes<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Middle East Quarterly<\/em> (the latter of which was written by \u00e2\u20ac\u201d no surprise \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Michael Rubin). Smith does quote a couple Iranians, one of whom, Hassan Daioleslam, is currently involved in a defamation lawsuit with Parsi and has already been dealt with<\/a> extensively here. Multiple knowledgeable sources have identified Daioleslam as an associate of the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) terrorist group, but he has become the Iranian face of an anti-NIAC campaign driven primarily by Washington neoconservatives. Another Iranian cited in the article, Pooya Dayanim, is an ardent regime change advocate and contributor <\/a>to National Review Online<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Among the ironies of Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article: he more or less accuses Parsi and the Leveretts of being Iranian agents, while relying heavily on Michael Rubin, a longtime shill<\/a> for actual Iranian intelligence asset Ahmed Chalabi. He argues (against all evidence) that Parsi only shifted to a pro-human-rights stance in the wake of this summer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Iranian election crisis, while taking anti-Parsi talking points from a magazine published by Daniel Pipes, who notoriously endorsed<\/a> Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prior to the June elections. (Unsurprisingly, Pipes has written a glowing review of Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new book, the basic message of which \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as Matt Duss correctly notes <\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u201d is the familiar claim that Arabs only understand force.) He accuses Parsi and the Leveretts of indifference to the lives and wishes of the Iranian people, while sharing an institutional home with the likes of Norman \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bomb Iran<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Podhoretz. And so on.<\/p>\n

While Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pieces are predictable pieces of neocon agitprop, the venue in which they were published is more interesting. Tablet <\/em>is one of the new breed of Jewish cultural journals and websites that have sprung up in recent years, aiming to offer what it calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a new read on Jewish life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d more in tune with the sensibilities of the younger generation. Like its peers Jewcy <\/em>and Heeb<\/em>, Tablet <\/em>is relentlessly progressive in its sensibility and politics \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at least as far as domestic politics are concerned.<\/p>\n

But foreign policy is another matter; insofar as the magazine offers political coverage of Israel and the Middle East, it is relentlessly conventional and nearly always hawkish. (Nearly all of their foreign policy articles are written by hawks of either the liberal or neocon variety \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Adam Kirsch, Seth Lipsky, and Michael Weiss, etc.) Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pieces, which could have been ripped from the Weekly Standard<\/em> or Commentary<\/em>, are, sadly, par for the course.<\/p>\n

I suspect a lot of this has to do with money. Several people who have personal experience with Tablet <\/em>and its predecessor, Nextbook, have told me that the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funders are both significantly older and more right-wing than the rest of the operation \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a common pattern in such organizations. Hence the tendency to delegate all discussion of Israel to the hawks, in order to keep the funders satisfied. But while this sort of compromise might be necessitated by internal politics, it has clearly had a destructive intellectual effect on the magazine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s content. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to provide \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a new read on Jewish life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when all discussion of Israel and foreign policy as a whole is confined within the narrow limits deemed acceptable by the right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week saw the publication of a two-part hit piece in Tablet magazine purporting to expose the machinations of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran lobby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Washington. The author, Lee Smith, is apparently not the great baseball closer, but rather a former reporter for Bill Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Weekly Standard and a current fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute (also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6767"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6769,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions\/6769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6767"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}