Dr Abbas Milani and his neoconservative friends at the reactionary Hoover Institute must be very demoralized that their velvet revolution did not happen in Iran and they must now settle with four more years of their nemesis, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Milani was all over the American television networks during the postelection crisis basking in the glory of being a leading advocate of reform in Iran and, yet, he did not bother to publish one single article to prove the allegations about stolen elections. His monarchist supporters in California will probably rush to defend him and label any one who criticises Milani and company, but objective readers should know the following about Milani:
1. He works closely with people at Hoover who pride themselves as intelltectual progenitors of 2003 invasion of Iraq that has been called by UN leaders as “illegal”;
2. In Washington Quarterly not long ago, Milani and one of those neocons wrote an article that said normalization of US-Iran is a good idea because then the US embassy can start cultivating ties with the dissidents and collect information;
3. Mr. Milani, mind you, has never published one peer review article in his entire life and instead of scholarly publications somehow managed to publish some self-bombastic articles about his family and his growing up in Iran, but he lied about his past political involvement with a Maoist group before the revolution and how he went on Shah’s TV and confessed and, worse, revealed the information about his friends that led to their arrest and execution. Same monarchists are now considering him one of their own because of his service well rendered for the cause of counterrevolution.
4. Someone ask this “Iran expert” when was the last time you set foot in Iran? Not since 1979 it turns out and, what is more, the guy had spent several long years in Hawaii, etc away from his beloved Iran before returning to Iran for a very short period of time before the revolution, in other words this guy has spent the majority of his life outside Iran and now, like a rich embourgeoisified fat cat sitting on top of the millions of dollars that his high tech friends have doled out to Hoover, he lazily issues condemnation of Iran after condemnation, still hoping that his velvet revolution through remote control from abroad will materialize.
5. Another question that Milani’s innocent Iranian students at Stanford must ask him is: What is your connection with the Central Intelligence Agency
? Why have you repeatedly given presentations to you know who? Is this the purpose of a free thinking Iranian academic to sell his soul to the CIA and the higher bidders? Rest easy Mr. Milani, you may think history is on your side but stop deluding yourself you are just a shallow, self-serving pseudo-academic who exploits Iran for a happy life in America.
