Richard Perle is at it again. He is lending political assistance to exiled regime change advocates from Syria and Iran; sort of next Ahmed Chalabi.
The regime change advocates are: Farid Ghadry, an exiled Syrian dissident who heads up the Syrian Reform Party; and 32 year old Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident who heads the Iran Enterprise Institute.
According to Alan Weisman, who wrote an op-ed in LA Times, Ghadry had already been granted audiences with David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney's top Middle East advisor and Perle protege, and with Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth, who headed the State Department's Iran-Syria desk from 2005 until last June.
Weisman also writes
Unfortunately for Perle, Ghadry is seen in many quarters as a front man for Israel. Not only is he a dues-paying member of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful Israeli lobby in Washington, but a recent column on his website, titled "Why I Admire Israel," seems to play right into the hands of those who believe the Bush administration’s obsession with regime change in the Middle East is really all about protecting Israel.
Regarding Fakhravar, Weisman writes that
"Perle had an exile leader he wanted America to know about: Amir Abbas Fakhravar, ‘an Iranian dissident student leader who escaped first from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, then, after months in hiding, from Iran.’"
However, Laura Rozen reported in Mother Jones that Fakhravar is
an opportunist being pushed to the fore by Iran hawks, a reputed jailhouse snitch who was locked up for nonpolitical offenses but reinvented himself as a student activist and political prisoner once behind bars.
Weisman writes, "In his quest for idealistic dissidents to do in the Middle East what the Walesas and Havels achieved in Eastern Europe, Perle and his acolytes have tapped the discredited Ahmad Chalabi for Iraq, the suspect Amir Abbas Fakhravar for Iran and the allegiance-challenged Fahrid Ghadry for Syria. They’re just not making heroes like they used to."