Hung out at the NIAC convention yesterday for a Frankenstein-y piece I did for this morning’s Windy about Obama and Iran. Thought I’d bring out this quote from Trita Parsi on what’s motivating his attackers:

Parsi described his opposition to sanctions and opposition to Ahmadinejad as two halves of the same coin. His organization “strongly stands for human rights, but also opposes war and sanctions for that reason, and favors diplomacy,” he said. He denied taking money from the Iranian regime, saying, “Our records are open and our tax returns are on our Website, and the only people who have made [such allegations] are people with a diametrically opposite political view.”

Parsi continued, “You can debate us on the merits of your policy prescriptions, or you can attack, smear and character assassinate us. Unfortunately, due to the weakness of their position, they’ve chosen the latter. That’s what’s motivating these attacks.”

I’ve noticed that no one’s produced any evidence to support the slander that Parsi is the Ahmedinejad regime’s “man in Washington.” Man, I’m so fucking old I remember when a puzzled Jeffrey Goldberg wondered, “It’s one of the mysteries of the blogosphere, why more people don’t simply pick up the phone once in a while.” Everyone knows that real journalists just slander Iranian-American opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without either evidence or consequence.