In November 2007, Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at a hawkish think-tank called Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), filed a $2 million libel and defamation lawsuit against Derakhshan, over one of his blog posts in his Persian blog, in which he criticizes Khalaji for his service to the "enemies of his people and humanity", referring to the American hawkish policy makers on its board who were close to the George W. Bush administration and were closely involved in his interventionist middle east policy, including the occupation of Iraq, such as Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and James Woolsey. The case was dropped after Derakhshan's imprisonment in Iran.