"Leg Work For The Iranian Regime"

My colleague and friend Jeffrey Goldberg recently tossed out the following sentence:

The panel featured Hillary Mann Leverett, who, with her husband, Flynt Leverett, is an apologist for the Iranian regime. Goldblog Iran-Panel-Reporter-At-Large Tali Yahalom told me that the consensus on the panel, which also included Trita Parsi, who also does a lot of leg-work for the Iranian regime, was that Iran doesn't think about Israel, doesn't care about Israel, and certainly doesn't want to obliterate Israel.

The context is pretty clear that Goldblog is claiming that Trita Parsi is somehow an apologist for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad or at the very best someone who feels it is his duty to carry water for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. This is, to put it bluntly, utterly untrue and deeply offensive. That Parsi opposes sanctions because he believes they would be counter-productive does not make him a tool of the mullahs. It places him smack-dab in the middle of the Iranian opposition. But the Green Revolution remains embarrassingI suspect that if Mousavi had been allowed to become prime minister, he would have taken an even tougher stand in defense of Iran's nuclear program. 

But for some, the Iran question is merely a subset of the Israel question. Until the United States can see these two areas as separate, American foreign policy will suffer.