I’m very confused this morning — I wake up to find out that J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-Palestine, anti-sanctions organization, is now supporting the sanctions legislation making its way through the House. The White House recently asked that that sanctions bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, be on Obama’s desk by the end of they year, but the health care debate in the Senate is likely to prevent any movement until after the New Year. But the winds have shifted and the Obama White House seems to have decided that appeasement alone isn’t working. Ben Smith’s “correspondent” notes that “the daylight on Iran seems to be dimming a bit even between AIPAC and the Jewish left.” That’s true, and this is only the latest attempt by J Street to tack right and mitigate criticism of the group — J Street has also renounced the use of U.S. aid to Israel as leverage in negotiations and denounced Walt and Mearsheimer as anti-Semites. It will be interesting to watch the reaction of J Street’s most zealous supporters to see who falls into line and who accuses the group of betraying its principles, but surely the mainstream of Jewish opinion will welcome this move.

In other news of the weird, Trita Parsi has a piece on the Huffington Post blasting the Obama administration for its “silence on human rights abuses in Iran.” Parsi’s misnamed National Iranian American Council (Parsi is not an American) has been a close ally of J Street in the fight against sanctions on Iran, and on the same day that J Street folds on sanctions, Parsi makes a U-turn on human rights:

Frustration is growing among the Iranian people over the Obama administration’s silence on human rights abuses in Iran. Condemnations of Tehran’s abhorrent treatment of its people have been few and far between. But before nuclear diplomacy moves towards a premature ending, the Obama administration must act quickly to reinvigorate its human rights agenda. Failure to do so may cause any future focus on Iran’s human rights violations to be viewed solely as a means to punish Tehran, rather than a strategic imperative worthy of pursuit in its own right.

Parsi may be covering his own rear after Senator Kyl pressed AG Holder for an investigation into NIAC’s ties to the regime in Tehran — and I hear that Kyl isn’t the only member of Congress who is pressing that case with the Justice Department. Still, when Parsi says “the Ahmadinejad government may have been left with the impression that it can get away with almost any human rights abuses” — that’s going to cause some real heartache on the left, where the ‘be silent and bear witness strategy’ that Obama’s been pursuing up until now has been dependent on the support of voices like Parsi’s. As Obama did nothing in the face of Iranian crackdowns on democracy activists, the White House got cover from a few Iranian expats like Parsi who insisted that any American intervention would comprise the opposition in Iran. That cover just disappeared.

I feel like I woke up today to find out that neoconservatism had triumphed after all — J Street calling for sanctions, Iranian regime apologists calling on Obama to do more on human rights, what more could a neocon ask for? But a smart, progressive observer points out that while the left seems to be surrendering in the battle over sanctions, the next battle may be over when to lift those sanctions, with the Parsi-J Street axis calling for an end to sanctions at the first hint of Iranian willingness to negotiate in earnest, while AIPAC will want the sanctions in place until some serious concessions are made on the enrichment of uranium.