"I think you're right, the term "leg-work" definitely could imply something I wasn't meaning to imply. If that's the way fair-minded people are reading it, then it's my mistake," - Jeffrey Goldberg, disavowing his insinuation that Trita Parsi, the heroic and decent head of the National Iranian-American Council is somehow a defender of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad coup regime.
For some reason, this statement has not yet appeared on Goldblog itself, the natural place for such an important correction. On Goldblog, Jeffrey writes:
I think it's fair to say that Parsi's organization, the National Iranian American Council, functions as a kind of AIPAC for Iran.
This is not a retraction for saying that Parsi "does a lot of leg-work for the Iranian regime." It is an avoidance of the critical issue (something Goldblog did not do when asked by Mother Jones).
There is an enormous amount of difference between representing a country and representing its regime and in the current case of Iran, that distinction is everything.
Parsi is, of course, one of the Iranian coup's most tenacious and dedicated opponents. The implication that he is somehow a tool of the regime is unfair, untrue and malicious. It is not, however, an accusation that he is actually funded and supported by Ahmadinejad and Khameini. That insane accusation is left to the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb to seize and propagate.
If Goldfarb were a journalist or the Weekly Standard were an honest magazine, a correction and apology would be forthcoming. But we know that smearing anyone even slightly inimical to Israel's perceived interests is what the Weekly Standard exists, in part, to do.