"... to delegitimize any Iranian-American voices that are insufficiently hawkish for the neocons’ liking ..."

In Faster Times, via War in Context

"The campaign against the National Iranian-American Council and its president, Trita Parsi, intensified today with the publication of a long hit piece in the Washington Times by neoconservative journalist Eli Lake. The piece’s unusual length may be an attempt to disguise the thinness of the allegations it contains. Most of the claims are based on hearsay and speculation, and only two-thirds of the way through the meandering 3000-word article does Lake actually discuss whether any of the evidence actually shows that NIAC has lobbied for the Iranian government. At which point we get this brief sentence:

Two lawyers who read some of the same documents [on which the allegations are founded] said they did not provide enough evidence to conclude that Mr. Parsi was acting as a foreign agent.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this fact is relevant enough to be included in the first few paragraphs. Similarly, despite the thousands of pages of documents that were leaked to him, Lake is unable to show any evidence of a financial relationship between NIAC and the Iranian government.......

The campaign against NIAC should be seen for what it is — an attempt to delegitimize any Iranian-American voices that are insufficiently hawkish for the neocons’ liking. Hawks in Washington and Jerusalem are faced with the inconvenient fact that few Iranians, even those harshly critical of the regime, desire to see their country get bombed or invaded, or for Iran’s most vulnerable citizens to die under the weight of sanctions that do nothing to help the cause of the Green Movement. Hence the attempt to portray any Iranian who opposes sanctions or war as a stooge of the regime — and the hawks’ recent turn against the Iranian opposition itself, for refusing to play Chalabi and tell them what they want to hear. As the battle over Iran continues in Washington, it is likely that the attacks on NIAC and other dovish voices in the Iranian-American community are only going to get worse rather than better."