When Senator Kerry visits New York City, one of the people he often sees is Hassan Nemazee. The Kerry campaign says that Mr. Nemazee has raised more than $100,000 for Mr. Kerry’s presidential campaign, and it lists him as a vice chairman of the campaign. The New York Times reported that on February 23 Mr. Nemazee hosted a dinner for Mr. Kerry on Park Avenue in the 70s. The New York Post reports that Mr. Nemazee sat at Mr. Kerry’s table at a Democratic fund-raiser in Washington in March and that Mr. Nemazee helped organize the April 14 New York fundraiser at which the Democratic candidate raised $6.5 million.

So it struck us as of more than passing interest to learn that Mr. Nemazee last month filed a little-noticed lawsuit in Harris County, Texas, seeking $10 million in punitive damages against a small student group aimed at promoting democracy in Iran and against an individual, Aryo Pirouznia, who is involved with the group. The complaint in the suit alleges that in 2003, the pro-democracy student group caused Mr. Nemazee “public humiliation, embarrassment, extreme mental anguish” by distributing a “false and defamatory” e-mail that “damaged Nemazee by injuring his reputation in the public, the Iranian-American community, and the political community.”

The lawsuit emphasizes that a political action committee with which Mr. Nemazee is involved, the Iranian American Political Action Committee, “has no involvement or connection with the government of Iran and concerns itself only with the domestic political needs of Iranian-Americans.” The “false and defamatory” e-mail had suggested otherwise, according to Mr. Nemazee’s complaint in the Harris County suit.

Well, no one is begrudging Mr. Nemazee the right to clear his name in court. But if Mr. Kerry is willing to have Mr. Nemazee as the vice chairman of his campaign, to dine with him, and to attend fund-raisers that he organizes — all after the alleged injury to Mr. Nemazee’s reputation — it makes us wonder what role Mr. Nemazee would have had in the campaign if his reputation hadn’t been so injured. Our sources in the Iranian-American community say that the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran is seeking a lawyer to defend it from Mr. Nemazee and the Houston lawyer, Charles Parker, that he has retained to press his case.

No one is suggesting that Mr. Nemazee, a 1972 graduate of Harvard who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, is not a patriotic American. He was nominated by President Clinton to be ambassador to Argentina, though he failed to win confirmation. A Forbes magazine article at the time portrayed his business dealings unfavorably. If the Student Movement Coordination Committee fights the suit Mr. Nemazee has filed, the discovery in the case will be worth keeping an eye on. Whatever happens in the suit, it can be said that a presidential candidate who vows aggressive action against the regime in Tehran and who promises tangible support for the forces of democracy there will have an advantage with the voters.