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.

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“Nearly nine in 10 Americans say they think Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, according to a new national poll.”

“More than six in 10 men favor military action against Iran. Women normally tend to oppose military action in most situations, but they are split down the middle on Iran…”

Setting it up for Bolton:

 ”…unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”

Actually, Barack Obama might have benefited had the Nobel gone to someone else. The prize functions, as one contributor to my NewMajority.comwebsite quipped, as a form of “preventive diplomacy”: a pre-emptive intervention against possible future military actions by the Obama administration.

Can a peace prize winner authorize air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities?

With no sense of irony, Frum (Bush’s “axis of evil” speechwriter), complains about the hostile Norwegians and labels the Nobel Prize as a form of unwelcome foreign intervention:

We call it “lawfare” when hostile external or internal forces use a nation’s own legal system against it. Maybe the repeated attempt by the European left to use the prestige of the Nobel award to constrain U. S. power deserves a special title of its own: “prizefare.”

“How can we criticize a ban on holocaust investigations calling it an undemocratic act, and then adamantly deny a simple demand for a probe into a recent election in Iran?”

Read it all here.

William Scott Ritter, Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is noted for his role as a chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, and later for his criticism of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Ritter publicly argued that Iraq possessed no significant weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The cinema of Mohsen Makhmalbaf reflects the turbulent times and dramatic transformations that the man and his nation have undergone in the last thirty years. Unlike most world-class filmmakers, Makhmalbaf has never settled into a signature style; his work is constantly changing, marked by a strong desire to explore and critique the political conflicts and social issues that define the Islamic Republic of Iran. Makhmalbaf has never merely been a commentator, making judgments from the sidelines, but rather an active participant, first in the 1979 revolution, later in the newly formed Islamic government, and finally as an exiled spokesman for reform. (more…)