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The peripheral presence of one person in both these documents points to a central concern in the Iranian civil rights movement that commenced in the aftermath of June 2009 presidential election. When Abbas Milani, an Iranian analyst employed at the Hoover Institution in California, appeared in front of the congressional hearing, chaired by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, the attendees must have had no clue that his name and reputation would soon appear in the official indictment half way around the globe in the Islamic Republic of Iran; and when 10 days later exactly that happened and the very same Abbas Milani was mentioned by name in the official indictment of the public prosecutor in Tehran, even the conspiratorial hallucinations of the prosecution could not have fathomed that the selfsame Abbas Milani had just about 10 days earlier appeared in the US Congress, elbow to elbow with the most notorious neocon artists that land has produced, effectively plotting the various scenarios of toppling the Islamic Republic.

Soon after his name appeared in the indictment, Milani rushed to put his own spin on it in The New Republic (the journal that brought you Azar Nafisi), making fun of the poor English of the officials of the Islamic Republic, and light of his role in the opposition, suggesting how falsely he is accused. In this piece, Milani said nothing about his appearance at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, just about 10 days befo... >>>