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The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss takes down Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz’ op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which the two writers argue that the United States should lead an international campaign to impose gasoline sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Duss’ post can be read here.
– Ben Katcher
Lee Smith comes up with pretty slim pickins. What Washington policy wonk is not having his bills paid by businesses, many of them foreign? Maybe Wigwag could pass along some investigations into politicians’ conflicts of interest with Israelis spying on the DOD. But you’ll never heard a peep out of her about Israeli spying! No, her job is simply to pass along gossip about Israel’s enemies and try to discredit them.
And what about Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich after his wife give gave massive amounts to Israeli charities, the Democratic Party, and the Clinton library? Nary a peep came out of Wigwag during Hillary’s 2008 presidential run.
If Wigwag was really concerned about businesses buying advocates in Washington, she would require every lobbyist, think tank and consulting firm to reveal its sources of funding. Now that would be rich!!! We would finally find out who is funding the anti-Iran campaign, AIPAC, and other foreign policy campaigns that serve private interests, not the national interest.
Lee Smith has another devastating take down of the Leveretts in the current issue of the on-line magazine, Tablet.
Here’s the link for those who are interested,
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/26398/grand-bargainers/
Here’s the money line:
“We don’t know of a single ‘Western scholar’ or ‘policy wonk’ … who thinks that access to the Iranian regime is going to make them powerful, rich, or both,” Flynt Leverett and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, recently wrote on their website, raceforiran.com… I obtained several emails sent by the Leveretts and pertaining to their business, one of which is a November 2007 message inviting Trita Parsi to one of their “background dinners.” These dinners, which the Leveretts present as a kind of salon, help to generate business for an energy and consulting firm called Stratega, whose CEO happens to be Hillary Mann Leverett. The guests that night included representatives from Norway’s Statoil company, including Ali Ghezelbash, an owner of Atieh Bahar, which is an Iranian consulting firm that in the past facilitated business with Iranian industries, especially in the energy sector, controlled at one time by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In 2006, Statoil was fined $21 million for a 2002 bribe securing “development of a critical Iranian petroleum project.”
Does anyone remember the scandal over Peter Galbraith’s constant remarks about Iraqi Kurdistan without mentioning his financial interests in Kurdish oil exports? If Smith is to be believed, it looks like the Leveretts did something very similar.
I don’t recall them revealing on this blog that they had financial interests that could be affected by their relationship with the regime in Iran. While Mann-Leveretts’ bio does mention her role as CEO of Stratega there has been no disclosure of how this “political risk” company might be enriched by the positions that the Leveretts advocate on Iran. If this is true, the Leveretts have compromised their integrity and played their readers for fools. Let’s hope it isn’t true.
Smith also responds to the Leveretts’ charge that they were offended when he suggested that their prospective trip to Iran “was facilitated via Muhammad Marandi on behalf of the IRGC, or the Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
Smith said,
“The Leveretts’ sensitivity to suggestions they are in touch with Revolutionary Guards representatives is especially curious given that that Flynt Leverett has in the past boasted of his contacts with the Guards. As a Leverett email details, Flynt Leverett met with Mohsen Rezai, former head of the Revolutionary Guards, in Athens in 2003. In 2006, an international arrest warrant was issued for Rezai by Argentina, for his involvement in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center there. Twenty-nine people died in the embassy bombing; 85 were killed at the community center, where another 300 were injured. He was also believed to have been involved in the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut…”
Flynt and Hillary have some explaining to do. If they don’t, Smith’s charges will eviscerate their credibility.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, neocon loser and former founder of the defunct ‘Project for the New American Century?’ And Mark Dubowitz? Another weakling Islamophobe who quakes in terror at the thought of Islampophobia being made into an international crime against humanity? That Mark Dubowitz? Except for the small coterie and their mouth organs like the Wall Street ‘Urinal,’ who the hell of note is really wasting their time listening to these clowns. Duss remarks that these birds are being “dishonest” regarding gas sanctions and their rationale for, which truth be told practically everyone with half a brain knows to be the case too.
Its not 2002 folks.