Several years ago, Seid Hassan Daioleslam wrote articles saying that Parsi and NIAC had acted as agents of the Islamic Republic, supporting the regime’s causes and goals in the United States.
In 2008, Parsi and NIAC sued Daioleslam, who lives in Arizona, for defamation.
Last Thursday, Judge John Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, threw out Parsi’s and NIAC’s suit.
Bates made clear that he was not making a judgment on whether Daioleslam’s charges were accurate. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as a finding that defendant’s articles are true,” Bates wrote.
Bates said he rejected the defamation suit because Parsi and NIAC had failed to provide evidence that Daioleslam had acted with malice and with reckless disregard for the accuracy of his charges, standards required by US law.
Bates wrote: “Because plaintiffs [Parsi and NIAC] have mustered no evidence that defendant [Daioleslam] actually harbored any doubts about the correctness of his writings, or willfully blinded himself to the truth, their defamation suit must fail.”
Under US law it is extremely difficult for any “public figure” to sue for libel. It may be harder in the United States than in any other country to do so, and such suits are rarely even filed by “public figures” because of the likelihood they will be rejected just as this one was.
Essentially, US law considers that if someone makes himself a public figure, he is opening himself up to criticism and must expect it and live with it. The only serious basis for a libel suit for public figures is to prove that the critic has knowingly and consciously made false statements for the sole purpose of maligning the one criticized.
Parsi writes frequent articles in the media and makes himself available for press interviews, thus making himself a public figure.
Parsi and NIAC have charged that Daioleslam is a member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a charge Daioleslam denies.
Most of the 22-page decision handed down by Judge Bates analyzed the documents submitted by Parsi and NIAC to establish that Daioleslam exhibited malice. Paragraph after paragraph, Bates said that Parsi and NIAC failed to show any such thing.
For example, Bates goes through a particular article by Daioleslam where Parsi and NIAC cited endnotes as proof of bias. Bates wrote:
“First, plaintiffs note that endnotes 13 and 16 … contain no link to the cited source. It appears, however, that endnotes 13 and 16 are not online sources, so defendant could not be expected to provide a link to them.
“Second, plaintiffs point out that endnotes 14, 15, 16 and 17 are in Farsi and no English translation is provided. But if the original source material is in Farsi and there is no English translation available, defendant can hardly be faulted for citing the original sources. Indeed, he would be expected to do so. Despite the fact that Parsi presumably speaks Farsi, plaintiffs have pointed to no substantive problems with the underlying Farsi sources.
“Third, plaintiffs argue that defendant cites his own articles as sources in endnotes 19 and 22. But there is nothing untoward about this. In both cases, defendant is simply summarizing a few facts from his earlier work and then referring readers to that earlier work for more detailed analysis. Additionally, both of the underlying articles are extensively cited.
“Fourth, plaintiffs state endnote 23 ‘is simply an event website.’ That is not true: endnote 23 cites both an event website and the text of the speech given at the event, which is the source material for defendant’s article.
“Finally, plaintiffs point out that ‘the source that supports endnote 23 is missing.’ The URL given in the endnote does now redirect to an unrelated website, but a search of the Internet Archive shows that the cited website did exist at the time defendant originally published his article and did support his statement.”
After reviewing other articles, Bates said that Daioleslam “was often sloppy in his reporting, either omitting ellipses, slightly misquoting the underlying source, or failing to put a citation in the appropriate place. But none of the errors misrepresent the substance of the source material or mislead the reader. As many courts considering public figure defamation cases have concluded, sloppiness is not evidence of actual malice.”
One of Daioleslam’s frequent arguments against Parsi was that he did not condemn human rights violations by Iran. In the suit, Parsi said that he condemned Iranian violations in the very article that Daioleslam had cited as evidence of the opposite, and argued that this showed willful blindness to the truth by Daioleslam.
Judge Bates said: “The Court disagrees. While Parsi does criticize Iran’s human rights record in the underlying article, his criticisms are tepid. A representative example is the following statement: ‘Even in long isolated Iran, a country known for its less than flattering Human Rights record, there is a trend toward the improvement of the human rights situation, although it remains far from being satisfactory.’ In this article Parsi does not come close to specifically condemning—or even mentioning—the ‘torture, mass executions, rapes of women in prison, and stoning’ that defendant accuses him of ignoring.”
Bates said that Parsi and NIAC “bolster their motive argument by pointing to one of defendant’s emails, which reads: ‘I strongly believe that Trita Parsi is the weakest part of the Iranian web…. I believe that destroying him will be the start of attacking the whole web.’ Plaintiffs argue that this email shows that defendant just wants to ‘destroy’ Parsi, regardless of whether he really is advocating for or on behalf of the Iranian regime.
“What plaintiffs have overlooked is the possibility that defendant wants to discredit Parsi and ‘attack the whole web’ because he genuinely believes that Parsi and his associates are advocating for or on behalf of a regime he strongly opposes. That possibility is, in the Court’s view, much more plausible than the idea that defendant’s personal dislike of Parsi has motivated him to concoct dozens of elaborate articles discussing Parsi and the Iranian regime.”
In a statement issued after the judge decided the case, NIAC said the result “granted NIAC victory on the central demand, while falling short on other objectives.”
NIAC said its key reason for bringing the case was to force Daioleslam “to prove his case or concede.” On that issue, NIAC said it prevailed because Daiol-eslam abandoned argument on the facts of his allegations and instead merely argued that “NIAC could not prove that he knew what he was saying was false.”
But lawyers said Daioleslam wasn’t required to respond to the suit by proving what he said was true, while the court required NIAC and Parsi to prove that what Daioleslam was doing was malicious.
NIAC indicated it would not appeal the decision to a higher court. It said, “We are content that in the court of law he could not and did not defend his false accusations.
Judge Bates also ruled that Parsi and NIAC should pay more than half of the costs incurred in hearing the suit. On that part of the decision, NIAC said, “We disagree with the court’s ruling and retain the option to challenge and appeal the decision.”
