Andrew Sullivan is digging in to defend Trita Parsi -- and to attack Parsi's critics:

But it does reveal a classic neoconservative move. They are essentially trying to accuse Iranian-Americans who disagree with them of dual loyalty. Even as they rightly scream blue murder if that is ever applied to them. You realize after a while that they have no principles but the maintenance of their own power and the destruction of their perceived enemies. War for ever indeed - within American and outside it. At any cost. Whatever it takes.

It is not a classic neoconservative move to accuse people of dual loyalty -- it's a classic Sullivan move. Neoconservatives tend to be pretty careful not to accuse people of dual loyalties. And, of course, nobody is accusing Parsi of dual loyalties -- we're asking if he has any allegiance to America at all. Parsi is not, contra Sullivan, an "Iranian-American." Parsi is not an American citizen, and yet he claims to speak on behalf of Iranian-Americans. Parsi did not even have a green card when he started NIAC, and the organization he set up before NIAC sought only to "safeguard Iran's and Iranian interests." Dual loyalty would be a huge improvement I think. Meanwhile, Sullivan sees in all this a neoconservative plot to undermine Iran's opposition. "Smearing the non-neocon Green opposition as essentially pro-Khamenei solidifies the neoconservative war project," Sullivan writes.

If Parsi is part of the opposition, why was he working to silence regime dissidents? After the jump is an email exchange between Parsi and Siamak Namazi, who helped Parsi establish the group that sought to "safeguard Iran's and Iranian interests," and Hadi Semati, an Iranian who served as an adviser to Khatami, in which they plot to keep Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former Iranian parliamentarian who resigned in protest over her government's crackdown on reformers, from participating in a panel discussion on the democracy movement in Iran. The panel was sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Iranian Students for Democracy and Human Rights.

Parsi first asks his two confederates, only one of whom is an actual Iranian-American, "Will either of you discuss with Haghighatjoo how she should deliver her message on the Hill?" The problem, it seems, was that Haghighatjoo supported the idea that Americans should do more than "bear witness," as Obama likes to say, to the repression of the Iranian people. Namazi responds that "I spoke to her in Boston and tried to emphasize that she should not go around saying 'we need foreign help to promote democracy in Iran' w/o being very clear." Semati then chimes in to explain that while Haghighatjoo is a "very brave and genuine democrat...[she] does not know the field at all." Semati, an Iranian national, wants democracy to "develope [sic] authentically from within" Iran. And Semati adds that he is "very skeptical of the true intent of the US."

And then Parsi returns to the conversation and offers to intervene himself if necessary. "I am fond of convincing Iranians of the hostile intentions many players in DC based on my own observations from within Congress," Parsi writes. So what does that mean? Parsi is an Iranian national working to convince Iranian dissidents of the "hostile intentions" of those who would give voice to regime dissidents -- something isn't right here. It was Parsi who wanted to kill the National Endowment for Democracy State Department funding for Iranian civil society groups, not the neocons. It was Parsi who wanted to keep this particular dissident from speaking out, not the neocons. At the height of the protests in Iran, Sullivan used his blog to amplify the voices of those who were standing up to the regime, so I wonder how Sullivan feels about Trita Parsi using his organization to try and prevent those same voices from being heard in Washington.

The email exchange is after the jump -- read it from the bottom up.

From: Trita Parsi [mailto:tparsi@jhu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 10:26 PM
To: 'Hadi Semati'; snamazi@atiehbahar.com
Subject: RE: Iranian dissidents visiting Washington DC

Dear Hadi - you have my full sympathy! If there is anything I can do to help, do let me know. I know that you all have probably noticed that I am fond of convincing Iranians of the hostile intentions many players in DC based on my own observations from within Congress...