Trita Parsi's Accusations Over Kansas Shooting Are the Least of NIACT's Problems

tabletmag.com

image (not from article) from

The National Iranian American Council president co-wrote an article arguing that a small group of people—all of them Jewish—pushed war with Iran and therefore bear some responsibility in a Missouri killing

By Jonathan Zalman

Excerpt:

Last week, Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), co-wrote an article for The Huffington Post called “Trump Didn’t Start The Anti-Iranian Fire.” In it, Parsi and NIAC fellow Tyler Cullis write about a deadly February shooting at a Kansas Applebee’s, after which the suspect, a middle-aged man named Adam Purinton, told a bartender that he’d shot “two Iraninans.” For the authors, the shooting proves that the “anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric that rode Donald J. Trump to the White House has now spilled over into fear for the physical safety and security of Iranian Americans.”  ... 

On February 20, a diverse group of over 100 Iranian-Americans and Iranian exiles, including former officials of both the Shah and Islamic Republic regimes, submitted a letter to Senator Bob Corker and Congressman Ed Royce, the head of the Senate and House’s Foreign Affairs committees, calling for “a congressional hearing on the efforts of Tehran’s theocratic regime to influence U.S. policy and public diplomacy toward Iran.” The letter, which was first publicized through the a story by Kredo in the Washington Free Beacon, does not mention NIAC by name. But it requested that Congress “launch an investigation into any and all lobbying activities of Iranian-American groups, which ostensibly promote the interests of our community but whose real goal is to undermine long-term U.S. national-security interests in Iran and its neighborhood.” 

The allegation that NIAC has a pro-regime ulterior motive has been a sensitive one for the group, whose stated aim is” strengthe[n] the voice of Iranian Americans and promot[e] greater understanding between the American and Iranian people” for America’s benefit—and not to advance the interests of Iran’s theocratic government.