Rosner's Domain: The Iranian lobby in Washington (or just another Neocon smear campaign)?

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Shame on me for linking to this story two days later than I should have. Eli Lake found some very interesting evidence connecting Trita Parsi to activities that ought to be seen like, well, lobbying for the Iranian regime (who's Parsi? why is it important? read more here and here).

Here's a paragraph from Lake's exclusive story:

Mr. Parsi has been called to the White House, lectured at the CIA and visited Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He boasted in internal e-mails that he learned of Mr. Obama's speech to Iranians on the occasion of the Persian New Year in March several hours before it was posted on the Internet.

Much of NIAC's less public work has come to light through e-mails, documents, board of directors meeting minutes and strategy memos that were made public as part of the discovery process during a current defamation lawsuit against a critic of the group

Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents, which were made available to The Times by the defendant in the suit, say e-mails between Mr. Parsi and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Javad Zarif - and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure Act - offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws.

And here's some of the latest reaction. Ron Kampeas  is somewhat skeptical:

--Finally, the suggestion that NIAC and Parsi have somehow run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires the kind of expansive interpretation of FARA that exists only in the fevered imaginations of isolationists at IRMEP -- the premiere purveyor of the calumny that AIPAC is a fifth column.

Goldfarb (as should be expected) is not at all skeptical:

Of course, I'm sure Parsi's defenders will not be troubled in the least by the fact that he is so close to an Iranian official, Zarif, who is brazenly violating U.S. law in a scheme to funnel money to the Iranian nuclear program. Nothing unusual or shady about that -- who doesn't have friends overseeing illegal real estate empires that are used to fund the nuclear programs of hostile, authoritarian regimes?

Enjoy the battle? Stay tuned - I hear that this is far from over, and that more revelations are to come, and pretty soon (in a week or two - when it's practically over - maybe even the NYT will feel the need to write something about it).