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Whom Do You (Objectively) Serve?

Reihan advances an unfortunate argument: [W]hile Parsi is undoubtedly a believer in democratic liberalism who wants to see Iran radically reform its institutions, he objectively serves Iranian interests insofar as he discourages Western efforts to exert pressure on the regime [bold mine-DL]. The charge being made against Parsi is that he serves Iranian government interests, […]

Reihan advances an unfortunate argument:

[W]hile Parsi is undoubtedly a believer in democratic liberalism who wants to see Iran radically reform its institutions, he objectively serves Iranian interests insofar as he discourages Western efforts to exert pressure on the regime [bold mine-DL].

The charge being made against Parsi is that he serves Iranian government interests, and the point in making this charge is almost certainly to claim that Parsi is in some way a bad, unwise or dangerous actor in public policy debates. People involved in these debates regard the Iranian government as corrupt, oppressive and brutal, as they should, which loads a claim that someone “objectively serves” its interests or lobbies on behalf of those interests with a sinister significance that claims of lobbying for an allied state do not possess. At best, this is a claim that the person is a “useful idiot” of the regime, and at worst it is classifying the taking of a set of policy positions as collusion with a despicable government. As Reihan says, this isn’t that complicated.

One thing that is bothersome about this is that it tries to erase the important distinction between Iranians and the Iranian regime. Parsi opposes “exerting pressure on the regime” because the proposed mechanisms for doing so would harm the Iranian people and do little or nothing to coerce the regime anyway. I repeat myself, but additional sanctions would cripple domestic opposition and consolidate and expand the regime’s control over the economy. In Goldberg’s earlier formulation, opposing this course of action somehow means that Parsi is working in the interests of the regime! Obviously, that’s ridiculous.

Parsi opposes exerting this pressure because he assumes that such pressure will fail to achieve Washington’s objectives and could make them harder to reach, which means that he takes his position in no small part based on what he thinks serves American interests in its relations with Iran. The result of tarring–and it is tarring–Parsi with the label of lobbyist for Tehran and calling his organization Iran’s AIPAC would be to make it that much more politically difficult for anyone, and especially for Iranian-Americans, to “oppose a forward-leaning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf” with respect to Iran, and of course that’s the point of doing it. Jeffrey Goldberg may think that in doing so he is defending a sanctions policy option that he believes is the only available means of avoiding a war with Iran, but the method he is employing to do that really is reprehensible.

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