Kash's Newsroom

Quitters never win

2008-05-10T10:44:00.005-04:00

While the media is chopping its licks over a likely Hillary Clinton defeat after the NC and IN elections results with headlines such as "Hillary the cat runs out of lives" or "She is toast. Stick a fork in her," and columnists like Eugene Robinson (Desperate Clinton is Danger to the Party) and Bob Herbert (Seeds of Destruction) are unleashing a torrent of vitriol at Bill and Hillary to depict them as nothing more than a desperate, race-baiting couple, it is really refreshing to see there are still people out there who truly understand what it means to a lot of voters, specially women, to see Hillary keep on fighting and certainly not quit before the game is finally over. Today in the Washington Post Ellen R. Malcolm writes:

It's not surprising that low-income working women are the cornerstone of Hillary's success. Many of these women live on the edge of disaster. A pink slip, a family member's illness, a parent who can no longer live alone, a carthat won't start or a mortgage rate that goes up -- all are threats that could devastate the family. And yet these women do what women have done for ages. They put on a confident face, feed their children breakfast and get them off to school. They don't quit. They suck it up and fight back against whatever life throws their way. They see in Hillary Clinton a candidate who understands the pressures they face. As they watch her tough it out against all odds, refusing to quit and continuing to compete against whatever the media and her opponents throw her way, they see a woman as tough and resilient as they are. They clearly want her to win. Her victory, I believe, is their victory.
So here we are in the fourth quarter of the nominating process and the game is too close to call. Once again, the opponents and the media are calling for Hillary to quit. The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right.
Hillary Clinton certainly has the right to compete till the end. But I believe Hillary also has a responsibility to play the game to its conclusion. For the women of my generation who learned to find and channel their competitiveness, for the working women who never falter in the face of pressure, for the younger women who still believe women can do anything, Hillary is a champion. She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win. We'll cheer her on until the game is over. And we hope that when the final whistle blows, we will have elected the first female president and the best president our country has ever had.
Amen to that.

I'm still standing better than I ever did...

2008-04-27T15:07:00.007-04:00

There she is, Hillary Clinton, looking like a true survivor to borrow words from Sir Elton John.

I must confess. I feel exactly the same way Joe Scarborough does when it comes to Hillary Clinton. I admire her for her strength of character and am absolutely blown away by her tenacity and resilience--not to mention how much I love her laugh. Of course my ultimate choice in this US election has been John McCain from the beginning. But that's what my head says. As far as my heart is concerned, well, I find myself rooting for this "phenomenal woman."

Just like Eleanor Clift, I'm beginning to feel Hillary could pull this off (thank you Pennsylvania!). She must win Indiana, keep her loss in North Carolina within single digits, and then she'll be able to run the table in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. That way, she'll lead in the popular votes (with or without Florida) by June 3rd and will be able to present a very strong case to superdelegates as to why she deserves to be the nominee.

Sounds far-fetched? I don't think so. The odds are long I know, specially considering the fact that except Fox News, the media are totally in the tank for Obama. But If anyone can turn this thing around, it is Hillary Clinton. Again to borrow words from Sir Elton:

And did you think this fool could never win,

Well look at me, I'm coming back again,

I got a taste of love in a simple way,

And if you need to know while I'm still standing you just fade away...

John McCain, the winner of Clinton-Obama battle?

2008-03-28T00:16:00.012-04:00

I still think it's almost over for Hillary since the superdelegates won't dare to deny Obama the nomination, however strong Hillary Clinton's argument on electability is.

Of course I, too, happen to believe that in light of the Wright controversy, Barack Obama will not be able to beat John McCain in the states that really matter in the Genral Election, such as Ohio and that Hillary will be tougher for McCain to beat. And with the Democratic Party's fiasco in Florida and Michigan, two other very important swing states, chances look even grimmer for Mr. Obama. But who knows? Eight months is a life time in politics.

But after all, John McCain is the candidate I support (and trust to pick up that phone at 3 a.m. by the way) and I hope that he'll be able to make the best of this long, bitter fight between the two Democratic contenders.

Go Senator McCain!

It's over for Hillary

2008-02-19T22:53:00.009-05:00

As I had predicted (on my Persian blog) Barack Obama won all February contests. For all the media speculation about the so called "formidable" Clinton machine, this has been a broken-down machine that keeps stalling. Hillary Clinton's muddled, undisciplined campaign--which inspite of some (late) shake-up at the top still suffered from lack of organization and for instance, up until Friday couldn't even figure out how much time it had to dedicate to Wisconsin--not only cost her humiliating defeats against Obama, but even undermined her central argument that she is the candidate with enough experience to run an efficient operation in the capacity of the President of the United States.

The Wisconsin cross tabulations show it's probably too late for Clinton to pull this thing off. My prediction is that on March 4 she will lose both Ohio and Texas and that would be a sour end to an inefficient, arrogant campaign that turned an inevitable candidacy into one of the biggest failures in the history of US Presidential primaries.

And the buck stops with no one other than Hillary herself.

Also-From The Guardian:

The day when the first nails went into the Clinton campaign's coffin was exactly two weeks ago - on February 6. We didn't know it at the time, but February 6 was the day when there began a big blank gap on the Clinton campaign calendar. Because her team of battle-tested veterans failed to plan for much of anything after Super Tuesday... So strongly did the Clinton campaign assume that Super Tuesday, with its 1,000-plus pledged delegates up for election in more than 20 states, would be the effective end of the nomination campaign, that it failed to have a Plan B. Organising for the string of caucuses that followed Super Tuesday Opening field offices in the smaller states? Drumming up the extra fundraising needed to pay for it? None of it, or not enough of it, got done. And as a result, when Super Tuesday failed to deliver the knock-out blow that Hillary Clinton expected, her campaign was exposed to a series of rapid jabs in places like Maine, Virginia and now Wisconsin - states the Clinton campaign should have competed in strongly, not lost by double digits...

Demagogary VS. substance

2008-02-09T10:26:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton used to call it "rhetoric vs. reality." I call it demagogary vs. substance.

For the reasons that really baffle me at this point, Barack Obama, your avarage politician, is being sold to public by his mesmerized fans and media as "the one." The messiah whose time has come, "we are the ones we have been waiting for," he said in his Feb. 5 speech.

Not only that, here's what he said in a stump speech in the gym of North Charleston High School in South Carolina on January 24:

“At some point in the evening, a light is going to shine down and you will have an epiphany and you’ll say, ‘I have to vote for Barack.’”

or according to CNN:

"My job is to help him do his job. So I am going to try to be so persuasive in the 20 minutes or so that I speak that by the time this is over, a light will shine down from somewhere. It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack. I have to do it."

I have never liked Barack Obama and his third-world style, demagogic speeches which are bereft of any substance at all. But this aspect of his campaign is REALLY beginning to trouble me. Does Obama think he is Jesus? what does all this mass messianism really mean?

Obama is an inspirational politician. Granted. But to quote Joe Klein of Time:

"That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

But this is the magic formula for Obama and it's really disturbing-- for people like me who admire Hillary Clinton for her brilliant grasp of the issues that matter the most to the voters--to see it is kind of working for him.

Not that I'm kidding myself, but I truly hope that Hillary will brave the next couple of brutal weeks of February and pull this thing off in Texas, Ohio and eventually in Pennsylvania.

America needs a competent leader who is ready on day one not a preacher. Please keep this in mind before you vote.

What does "change" really mean?

2008-01-06T12:02:00.000-05:00

I have been following the primaries closely and enjoyed US democracy in full action. As for who I support, of course Senator John McCain is my man. On the democratic side though, inspite of all the fuss about Barack Obama, I still can't figure out what he (not to mention the irksome populist John Edwards) really means by the word "change." Instead of bickering over who is the real agent of change with the contender who seems to have the patent for it now, I believe last night in the debate, Hillary Clinton (I'm not gonna hide this. I prefer Ms. Clinton to all other Democrat hopefuls) should have tried to force Obama's hand by making him define the word "change" in the context of current US policies in the world and political conditions in Washington rather than a vacuum.

In regard to what "change" really means to Americans, Michael Kinsley makes some great points today in Ny Times:
The appeal of “change” as a cri de coeur is that it sounds dynamic without committing you to anything in particular. Any slogan shared by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is going to be pretty meaningless. Not only can voters give it any meaning they wish, it can have different meanings for different voters. Best of all, being the candidate of change in some vague and meaningless way gives you cover to come out for stasis in most of the particulars. Americans say they want change, and think they want it, but there is room for doubt. The candidates of real, serious change, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are going to be dropping like petals. And no wonder: they are scary. Change is scary.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Mr. Obama and believe he has run a magnificent campaign so far. But it is exactly for what has become the driving force behind his campaign that I can't warm up to him. To see what my point is, take a look at this brilliant piece by Tish Durkin, titled "What I hate about Obama:"

You know what I hate about Barack Obama? He's so bright and fresh and new. So young, so idealistic, so untainted by the dirty dealings of Washington. He may or may not get bogged down in all that policy crap, but he sure will inspire us... It's not just that he's handsome and smart and articulate and charismatic. It's that he's new. And just by being new, he can, without promising anything, promise to realize that sweet, recurrent American dream: the dream that after all these years of disillusionment, some untold chevalier is going to ride up to the Capitol on his white horse and, with a brandish of his boldness, kick Congress in its cronyism, and finally, you know, 'bring the country together' and 'get things done'... Like all rescue fantasies, this one has tremendous power - and tremendous problems when it has the sore luck to hit the light of day.

Read More.

Why I have been away

2007-12-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

I don't know how many of you old readers of this blog still drop by here for updates. But if you still do I have some explaining to do, and of course some big apologies to offer.

As you might know, I launched my Persian blog in June and since then, I've been busy promoting it on the one hand, and improving my Persian structures and writing style on the other, since believe it or not, I now write and speak more comfortably in English than Persian and that's really bad for someone who wants to be fully bilingual in this business.

It's been a while, I know, and a lot has happened in regard to Iran this year, beginning with the first round of sanctions on Iran and ending with the unfortunate NIE report. The NIE was indeed an "own goal" as Zalmay Khalilzad, the us ambassador to the UN, put it bluntly. For now, it seems to have taken a little pressure off mullahs' back and added it to the Bush administration's. This is certainly not good news for a President who's entering the last year of his Presidency.

That's also bad news for all those who are advocating President Bush's policy of increasing pressure on the Islamic regime of Iran, including myself. I have never been for military strike on Iran, but was certainly hoping that the President, knowing he doesn't have much time left, would muster all his energy to continue to weaken the Iranian regime and provide further hope to those Iranians who have been struggling all these years to bring freedom and democracy to Iran. With this new NIE on Iran, I'm wondering if President Bush will be able to do anything more effective on Iran anymore, even if a third round of sanctions--a watered-down version most probably-- is approved in the Security Council anyway.

Contrary to what I believe, pundits like Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman have long argued that the United States could produce a fierce debate within the regime by offering to normalize its relation with it and that Iran's expected refusal would convince Iranians that their government is responsible for Iran's foreign policy failure. The next President of the United States--specially if a Democrat--will most certainly pursue that path and upend president Bush's policy on Iran by extending a hand toward mullahs; the hand that the Iranian regime, given its ideological nature, will without a doubt bite--at least until the current supreme leader and his military clique are at the helm and have the final say on all matters. Will the US President have a plan B then? Or as Henry Kissinger puts it, will the US policy then "generate an analysis of the strategy to be pursued should Iran, in the end, choose ideology over reconciliation?"

Well, it all remains to be seen. For me, what matters is seeing a free, secular and democratic Iran at the end of the day. This dream seems pretty far-fetched at this point, but I do hope it'll happen someday.

As for myself, I certainly hope to be able to come back and write here much more often than before. I've been reading up on politics and history religiously in the past year and hope to add more insight to my commentaries, as I continue to learn more about the world's affairs.

Merry Christmas and have a great new year. Talk to you soon.

In the name of democracy: When the Islamic Republic shot itself in the foot

2007-07-22T18:11:00.000-04:00

The following report is actually a translated version of what I wrote on my Persian blog regarding the confessions show that was aired on Iran's state-run TV last week. A fellow-Iranian blogger Arash Kamangir was kind enough to translate it into English and put it on his weblog originally:

This is the English translation of a Persian post by Khashayar Kheirkhah about the Esfandiari-Tajbakhsh-Jahanbegloo confession-show. I just remind you that some of his sentences had to be sliced into shorter ones for the sake of an intelligible translation.

In the name of democracy: When the Islamic Republic shot itself in foot

Ten opposition televisions, accompanied by Voice of America, Radio Israel, BBC, etc were unable to carry out what the Islamic Republic television did to itself last night. What was shown clearly advocated for the American administration’s emphasis on spreading democracy and social institutions. The program, at the same time, demonstrated the Islamic Republic’s horror from the youth and the students and their efforts towards goals such as democracy. Nothing could have done all this better than the program the Islamic Republic aired, because of these reasons.

1- The Islamic Republic has been trying for twenty eight years to convince the people that “America cannot do anything”. What channel one showed last night, not only proved this sentence false, but also used several documents to prove that, if the American administration wants, they can overthrow a regime in two hours, as it happened in Kyrgyzstan.

2- Many Iranian do believe in conspiracy theory and have no doubt whatsoever that nothing happens in Iran unless the states and UK want so. The Islamic Republic has tried for twenty eight years to convince the nation that the Islamic Revolution was not an international conspiracy led by Jimmy Carter, as many Iranian think. They have tried to assign the revolution with Godly sources. The last night show utterly emphasized on the American role in toppling regimes and this strengthened the public belief in the importance of American policies. That also contradicted Ahmadinejad repeated claims for American deficiency.

3- What amazes me is that although the Islamic Republic calls itself a master in propaganda, they utterly emphasized the importance of youth and students in changing regimes. Even if they were trying to justify oppression, by showing Kyrgyz youth’s secret gatherings, they carried the message that “the youth can topple a regime”.

4- I think this was the first time the national television let the nation listen to George Bush and John Mc Cain talk about America’s support of freedom and democracy. The show referred to Bush’s speech, where he promises that one day the message of freedom will reach all the nations. More importantly, they quoted a Kyrgyz political activist that “the American president calls on those who live under oppressive regimes that the US will not forget them and will not forgive their oppressors”. The Islamic Republic spends millions of dollars every year to stop these messages from reaching the nation.

5- Mrs. Esfandiari and Mrs Tajbakhs and Jahanbegloo were given such complex notes to read that I think many of the spectators did not make sense of it and the question for many was “what offense have these people committed?” I will refer to the mention that Mr Tajbakhsh did not know Persian till 1997 and the emphasis on the word “agent”.

In conclusion, the first part of this useless television show was a horrible defeat for the Islamic Republic propaganda, or as they say in English, they shot themselves in the foot. Not only it did not carry the intended message, but also it proved the ultimate weakness of the regime of Iran when it comes to the freedom-seeking movements and its horror from anti-dictatorship concepts such as democracy.

Angry Iranians burn petrol stations, chant slogans against Ahmadinejad

2007-06-27T00:33:00.001-04:00

BBC-At least one petrol station has been set on fire in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the government announced fuel rationing for private motorists. Iranians were given only two hours' notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month.

Despite its huge energy reserves Iran lacks refining capacity, forcing it to import about 40% of its petrol. Tehran is trying to rein in fuel consumption over fears of possible UN sanctions over its nuclear programme. Iran fears the West could sanction its petrol imports and cripple its economy.

Video on YouTube: Angry Iranians chant slogans against Ahmadinejad

Second Video: Iranians set fire to a petrol station east of Tehran (Quick Time)

Another video on YouTube: Protests in Tehran

And all this is happening in Iran without the fuel sanctions in place yet...

My new Persian blog

2007-06-20T00:21:00.000-04:00

If you are Iranian check out my new Persian blog here.

Hope you'll like it.

Pro-democracy Iranians gather in Paris to overthrow the Islamic regime

2007-06-16T18:00:00.000-04:00

National Review Online-This week Paris will host the largest gathering of Iran’s pro-democracy forces ever assembled to overthrow the Islamic Regime through a nonviolent civil disobedience movement. The Iran Solidarity Assembly (Hambastegi Melli in Persian) of Paris has been an enormous undertaking that has been three years in the making. Over 200 political luminaries will attend the invitation-only event.

The Iran Solidarity Assembly includes representatives of virtually all of Iran’s various political, ethnic, social, and economic groups who have assembled together for the first time ever to ask the free world to stand in solidarity with them as they begin to coordinate the efforts of pro-democracy forces inside Iran to over throw the Islamic regime.

More...

Iran curtails freedom In throwback to 1979

2007-06-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

Robin Wright, The Washington Post-Iran is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown that both Iranians and U.S. analysts compare to a cultural revolution in its attempt to steer the oil-rich theocracy back to the rigid strictures of the 1979 revolution. The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups.

The move has quashed or forced underground many independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life, the sources said.

..."The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "You're going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime's paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks."

More...

A hero's welcome

2007-06-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

The only reason I can think of for such extraordinarily surreal outpourings of admiration for a US President who whole-heartedly believes in the advance of freedom and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism, yet is loathed in almost every corner of what we know as "modern", "free" world is the fact that--to quote Mr Bush himself: "Albanians know the horror of tyranny." That's why Albanians are so tremendously thankful to the current leader of the free world --the dissident President as he proudly calls himself-- for what his predecessors, from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton, have done to help lead Albania to freedom and idependence . This is what those self-righteous anti-American protesters on the streets of Berlin and Rome--unlike the ordinary people on the streets of Prague and Warsa-- will never get. Who knows? Maybe one day, when freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan finally take hold, the people of these two nations will show their appreciation toward the US much the same way.

NY Times-President Bush is treated like a rock star in Albania:

...Even the war in Iraq is popular here. “U.S.A. have the right and responsibility for all the world to protect the freedom,” said Ilir Lamçe, 37, a financial analyst who was among those waiting for Mr. Bush, using English to express the views of many. “This is the right war.” Sami Berisha, who drove seven hours from Kosovo to see Mr. Bush, said he could not understand anyone who would take part in a protest against the president. “I think these are crazy people,” said Mr. Berisha, who is not related to the prime minister, “because democracy begins in America.”

Statement by Reza Pahlavi of Iran - Democracy & Security Conference

2007-06-08T00:41:00.000-04:00

Democracy & Security Conference
Prague, Czech Republic
Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have come to Prague to ask for your solidarity with the people of Iran against a common enemy: Islamist preachers of intolerance who turn young men and women into walking bombs, shouting death to America, death to Israel, death to whosoever resists their murderous ideology.To the realpolitik cynics who say Islamist theocracy is a reality we have to live with, I respond: funny – they never said they can live with YOU! To those who say the theocrats can reform if we are nice to them, I say you do not know the difference between Islamist revolution and secular ones. Those who believe they speak with the absolute authority of Allah demand absolute submission.

As the Islamist regime of Iran develops nuclear weapons, to neutralize Western conventional superiority, to have a free hand to use low-intensity violence in support of exporting Islamist revolution, remember this: good strategy is not fighting the enemy’s strengths, at the nuclear negotiations table where they hold the cards, or on the streets of neighboring countries where they find sympathy. Good strategy aims at their weakness: Inside Iran, where the people know the theocrats' wretched reality, rather than neighbors who only hear their divine promise.

Islamist theocrats' incompetence in delivering a minimal level of welfare and freedom is driving Iran's women, youth, teachers, workers, ethnic groups and many others to resist Hizbullahi stormtroopers in Iranian cities everyday. All those courageous Iranians want is to join the Free World. The Free World must respond.

Four years of diplomatic jostling, of economic carrots and sticks, have proven the insensitivity of theocrats to external pressures. What has not been tried is tying external pressures to human rights in Iran, to boosting the morale of Iranians in their everyday resistance, to encouraging internal pressures that Islamists can feel.

From Iran's different faiths, ethnic groups and social sectors, from the left to the right of the political spectrum, from my brave countrymen and women struggling for human dignity and freedom, this is the message I carry to you: As you face our oppressors, do not turn your back to us. We are your best friends in the struggle against a common enemy, the enemy of peace on earth.

Editor's note

2007-06-03T22:54:00.001-04:00

As you have most probably noticed, I haven't been able to sit down and blog on the most important political events of the day, specially those concerning Iran. For the time being, I'll only be able to post select articles or news in my Newsroom. But journalism and politics are two of the most insane passions of mine and I definitely look forward to putting in my two cents' worth again some time in the near future. Until then, stay tuned and enjoy the Newsroom.

Timing of Iran talks insulting to troops

2007-05-30T07:30:00.000-04:00

A great, hard-hitting piece by MSNBC's military analyst over the recent US talks with Iran:

Why are we meeting with the people responsible for killing Americans?

Lt. Col. Rick Francona, MSNBC News-On May 28 –- Memorial Day –- U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker sat down with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad for the first official talks between the two countries in over two and a half decades.

Mr. President, what were you thinking? While you are visiting Arlington National Cemetery honoring America’s fallen warriors, your ambassador is sitting down with the representative of a pariah regime that has American blood on its hands – including the blood of those same warriors we remember on that holiday.

An American diplomat meeting with the likes of Hassan Kazemi Qomi on any day is problematic, but to do so on Memorial Day is an insult to anyone who has ever worn a uniform. Kazemi is a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, the Iranian special forces group that is involved in the training and arming of Iraqi Shia militias, particularly the jaysh al-mahdi (Mahdi Army) of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Iranian-supplied weapons include the explosively-formed penetrator used in roadside bombs that have killed over 100 U.S. soldiers. Of course, the Iranian ambassador denied any support to the Shia militias – what did you expect him to say?

Why are we meeting with the people responsible for killing our troops? I know why the Iranians want to meet with us. Anytime a pariah nation like Iran can convince the United States – the only remaining superpower – to meet as equals, it bestows legitimacy on that regime and provides a platform for hurling insults veiled as diplomacy...

...Let’s remember who we are talking about – the Iranians. These are the people that created Hezbollah in Lebanon, seized the American embassy in Tehran, took American diplomats hostage, murdered Marine Lt Col Rich Higgins and CIA officer Bill Buckley, continue to support a variety of terrorist organizations – Hamas and Islamic Jihad included –- and are pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Not exactly the best recommendation for potential negotiators.

However, Mr. President, if you absolutely insist on talking to –- and I mean talking “to” not “with” –- the Iranians, start acting like the leader of a superpower instead of treating these thugs as equals. I do agree with your position that any talks should be limited to the security situation in Iraq.

Here are suggested talking points: Stop providing weapons and training to Iraqi militias. You can deny it, but here’s a news flash -- we don’t believe you! You have American blood on your hands and we will no longer tolerate it. Your diplomatically-protected facilities in Iraq are nothing more than operating locations for the Qods Force. That has to stop -– either you stop it or we will.

Say it, mean it, then do it.

Haleh Esfandiari: Prisoner of her own desires

2007-05-24T17:02:00.000-04:00

REUEL MARC GERECHT, NY Times:... Many Iranians feel ashamed about the Islamic revolution’s violent excesses, which were particularly bad 25 years ago when I was a student of Mrs. Esfandiari and her husband, Shaul Bakhash. However, the two never failed to point out the basic decency and beauty of their homeland and of the men and women who made the Iranian revolution. Now the revolution’s ugliness has again pre-empted the country’s goodness by brutalizing a woman who has done as much as any Persian poet to show Islamic Iran’s complex, rich humanity.

Police brutality against women in Iran continues

2007-05-21T22:00:00.001-04:00

These new shocking pictures from Tehran, Iran show how an Iranian women has been beaten up by the Iranian police for refusing to abide by mullahs' strict dress code. If you are reading this post, please help spread the word and let the world know what miserable lives many Iranian women are forced to lead under the Iranian Taliban.

Farewell...

2007-05-16T23:10:00.000-04:00

First of all to one of my favorite politicians of all time, who is in Washington now for his last visit to the White House as the UK Prime Minister, Prime Minister Tony Blair. With Mr Blair leaving, America will sure lose its most reliable international partner and the free world will lose one of its most intelligent, visionary leaders. Good luck and all the best sir.

And of course to the real American Idol and my favorite AI contestant of all time, the absolute singer who didn't hit the wrong note even once in her entire AI run, Melinda Doolittle. Melinda, it really sucks like hell to see you leave AI but I already have a couple of your performances on my ipod and can't wait for your debut CD. Congratulations and all the best.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam on The O’Reilly Factor

2007-05-14T22:37:00.000-04:00

Iranian-Canadian Singer, International Human Rights Activist, model, and a former Miss World Canada, Nazanin Afshin Jam discusses child executions and Sharia laws in Iran with Bill O'Reilly.

See the video.

A new era in French politics

2007-05-07T22:49:00.000-04:00

From Nicolas sarkozi's victory speech:

"I want to issue a call to everyone in the world who believes in the values of tolerance, freedom, democracy, humanism, to all those who are persecuted by tyranny, by dictatorships. I want to tell all of the children throughout the world, all of the ill-treated women throughout the world - I want to tell them that it will be France's pride and its duty to be at their side.

France will be at the side of the Libyan nurses [Bulgarian nurses imprisoned in Libya], imprisoned for eight years. France will not abandon Ingrid Betancourt [held by Farc rebels in Colombia]. France will not abandon the women condemned to wear the burqa. France will not abandon the women who do not have freedom. France will be on the side of the oppressed of the world. This is France's message, it is France's identity, it is France's history. "

Amen to that President-elect Sarkozi. Congratulations and good luck sir.

Related:

NY Times:...Mr. Sarkozy is unabashedly pro-American, a man who openly proclaims his love of Ernest Hemingway, Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone and his admiration for America’s strong work ethic and its belief in upward mobility.

The last film that made Mr. Sarkozy cry was Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” He once said he wanted Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” as his victory song. He calls himself “proud” to wear the label “Sarkozy the American.”

One million Turks say no to 'Islamic' government

2007-04-29T09:03:00.000-04:00

My hat off to the Turkish people for strongly adhering to the secularist legacy of Kemal Ataturk. Bravo!:

Reuters-As many as one million people rallied in a sea of red Turkish flags in Istanbul on Sunday, accusing the government of planning an Islamist state and demanding it withdraw its presidential candidate.

The protesters flooded the streets of Turkey's largest city, praising the army and denouncing Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, whose AK Party enjoys a huge parliamentary majority, as a threat to a secular order separating state and religion.

Secularists, including army generals and judges, say Erdogan and Gul will show their true colors once they have the presidency, the last major state institution outside their control, and boost the role of religion in Turkish life.

..."Turkey is secular and will remain secular", and "shoulder to shoulder against sharia (Islamic law)," they chanted carrying portraits of the nation's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

"We are here to stop the creation of an Islamic state," said businessman Irfan Kadim, 35. "We fear for the secular republic."

Many secularists are worried by Gul's Islamist past and the fact his wife wears the Muslim headscarf, banned in universities and public offices. They fear she will wear it as a first lady.

Background story:

AP-...Starting in 1923 in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk, a soldier, set about a series of secular reforms that imposed Western laws, replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, banned Islamic dress and granted women the right to vote.

The ruling party, however, has supported religious schools and tried to lift the ban on Islamic head scarves in public offices and schools. Secularists are also uncomfortable with the idea of Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, being in the presidential palace because she wears the traditional Muslim head scarf.

"We don't want a covered woman in Ataturk's presidential palace," said Ayse Bari, a 67-year-old homemaker. "We want civilized, modern people there."

Quote of the week

2007-04-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

"I want the whole world to know that they oppress us and all we can do is put up with it."

Tofiq, a 15-year-old Iranian on the Iranian regime's dress crackdown in Iran.

Watch: An Iranian woman reacts to being detained and brutally forced into the police car (BBC News).

Watch the full video on YouTube.

Dress crackdown in Iran

2007-04-24T06:51:00.000-04:00

Of all the atrocious crimes and injustice that the Iranian regime perpetrates toward the Iranian people, this one disgusts me the most since it blatantly violates one of our most basic human rights although many of our rights and freedoms, as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, simply do not exist under mullahs at all. Such behaviour, however, does prove once and again that this anachronistic, excuse of a regime in Iran belongs to the Middle Ages:

AP-TEHRAN, Iran With the arrival of spring, Iranian police have launched a crackdown against women accused of not covering up enough, arresting nearly 300 women, some for wearing too tight an overcoat or letting too much hair peek out from under their veil, authorities said Monday.

...Any of those styles could bring warnings or detention from the anti-vice police in the current sweep, which began Saturday. So far, 278 women have been detained, 231 of whom were released after they signed papers promising they wouldn't appear "inadequately dressed in public," police spokesman Col. Mahi Ahmadi told The Associated Press Monday.

Another 3,548 women have been given "warnings and Islamic guidance," without being detained, Ahmadi said. Twelve men have also been detained for "not observing the proper Islamic dress code" by wearing tight pants or short-sleeve shirts, he said.

Another dream about to come true

2007-04-23T22:40:00.000-04:00

Forget about politics. Tim and Faith are going to be in Toronto on June 25 and 26 and I'm gonna be in Air Canada Center on 26 to see them perform up close! Can life get any better than that? Yep. Some cowboys like me just go out like that...

Quote of the week

2007-04-20T20:00:00.000-04:00

AP-American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

Related: Jihadist Video Shows 'Barely 12-Year Old Boy' Beheading Man

Pentagon official says Iranians aid Iraqi Sunni car bombers

2007-04-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

Al Pessin, Voice of America- A senior U.S. military officer says a renewed effort to break suicide bomb networks in Iraq has led, at least in part, to Iranian intelligence services. The statement came at the Pentagon Thursday, as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting Baghdad on the day on a day of continued bombings, after a particularly deadly series of bombings Wednesday. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.

At a Pentagon briefing, Major General Michael Barbero said Iran shares the goals of the Sunni insurgents, to destabilize Iraq and tie down U.S. forces. He said that appears to be the reason Iran is now helping the Sunni groups, as well as Shi'ite extremists.

"We are seeing some aid from the Iranian intelligence services to the Sunni insurgents," he said. "Detainees in American custody have indicated that Iranian intelligence operatives have given support to Sunni insurgents. And then we've discovered some munitions in Baghdad neighborhoods which are largely Sunni that were manufactured in Iran."

More...

Gun control? Don’t hold your breath

2007-04-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Howard Fineman, Newsweek: I don’t know what I was thinking. It seemed to me that the gruesome tragedy at Virginia Tech might prompt a new wave of legislation—not just talk but legislation—to limit the sale of handguns in America. But a few calls and e-mails to people who know the politics of the issue led to a different conclusion: forget about it.

...I canvassed top leaders and aides of the Democratic establishment on the Hill and got a uniform response: are you kidding? Here’s how one of them put it, bluntly: "The NRA still has a lock on Congress." A political consultant who works with the NRA seemed almost unable even to understand the question, so comfortable in his fortress did he seem.

And Virginia? No paradigm shifts in the offing, according to Larry Sabato, the well-known political scientist at the University of Virginia. It’s not just the Republicans who would oppose any new restrictions (and there aren’t many in Virginia); many Democrats would join them. "The prospects of new legislation are zero, absolutely zero," he said.

In fact, there’s support in Virginia for the idea of MORE guns as a solution to the campus safety problem. Educators in the state years ago decided to ban guns on college campuses; there was a move in the legislature to reverse that by statewide law. Expect to see another such effort.

The right to bear arms means more than its literal words imply: it means a way of life and thinking, involving independence, protection of land, and suspicion of federal—or all government—authority. Virginia is as close to the ground zero of that thinking as there is.

As a result, Sabato said, access to guns is easy—as the shooter in Blacksburg demonstrated. "Hell, I’ve got a clean record, only a few traffic tickets, so I could go out to Clark Brothers"—a famous gun emporium that always does a brisk business.

It’s a way of life in Virginia, and much of America. And it isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Virginia Tech Massacre

2007-04-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

My dear American friends and readers,

I was deeply pained to learn about the horrible, senseless tragedy that befell America, the land I have great love and respect for, earlier today.

May the victims' souls rest in eternal peace and may their families and friends find strength, resolve and comfort at this difficult time.

God bless America.

Mullahs' promise land

2007-04-15T00:53:00.000-04:00

These photos have just been published by the Iranian regime's own news agancy, IRNA. These are the actual conditions under which some Iranian kids are studying in some of the poorest provinces of Iran.

These kids are living in a country that is awash in oil money. However, they have no right to that money. Under mullahs, rogues, outlaws and terrorists such as Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, Khaled Mashaal in Syria, Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Territories, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan and Moqtada Sadr in Iraq always come first.

The question in these kids' eyes speaks louder than a thousand political statements regarding what Iran has been going through in the past 29 years under a regime that was supposed to lead Iranians to an "Islamic promise land."

Will all this misery and pain ever end?

Quote of the week

2007-04-12T16:58:00.000-04:00

The Sun Online: Faye [Turney] has decided to keep the doll given to her by Ahmadinejad — after military experts checked it out for explosives. She said: “One day I’ll sit Molly down and explain everything to her.

A freak show called "Islamic Republic of Iran"

2007-04-04T21:32:00.000-04:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to one of the kidnapped UK servicemen: "How are you? Did you enjoy your mandatory holiday?"

The Serviceman: We are grateful for your forgiveness.

Ahmadinejad: You're welcome.

To kidnap 15 innocent service personnel of a foreign country in foreign waters at gun point, parade them in front of the TV cameras and wring forced confessions and repeated apologies from them to humiliate them and their nation and then all of a sudden, dress them in lousy suits, have the effrontery to call their detension " a mandatory holiday" and their release"a gift" are just a few examples of insanities that happen almost on a daily basis in a sickening freak show called Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is a show you couldn't care less about but then again, with characters such as Ahmadinejad, how can the world afford not to?

So has the world learned anything from the latest episode of this show? Is there any hope-- as National Review Online wants to believe-- that " this shameful denouement and the sheer brazenness of the kidnappings will shatter some of the widespread naïveté about the nature of the Iranian regime?"

In a fantasy world maybe, but definitely not in the real world where the free media can be the mouthpiece of numskulls who seem to have enjoyed this last episode so much so that not only see Ahmadinejad's decision to release the British detainees as "a sign of strength" and advise the US to learn from what they call "an example of mutual respect,"(this is not a joke) but go so far as to say that Ahmadinejad's call for regime change in Israel has been mistranslated and distorted into the notorious phrase, "Israel should be wiped off the map" by non other than the western media.

Meanwhile, the freak show continues and I can't help but think to myself, what a wonderful world.

British hostage crisis: Bullying, manipulative Iran? No change there, then

2007-04-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

No comment really...

The Times-Oscar Wilde insisted that “life imitates art far more than art imitates art”. What would he have made of the present hostage crisis? Twenty-four hours before Iran seized 15 Britons its mission to the UN issued a statement expressing outrage at 300, a movie based on the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. In this epic struggle between a small band of Spartans and a massive army of Persians, the ancestors of modern Iran have been painted, the protest ran, as the “embodiment of evil, moral corruption”. They have a point. According to Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, Persia was “not a one-dimensional barbaric despotism” but, then again, it was “by no means well disposed to Greek-style democracy” either.

Not much seems to have changed in 2,500 years. The behaviour of Tehran over the past ten days has been akin to that of a one-dimensional barbaric despotism, while its contempt for the values of the democratic world is no less acute than it appears to have been in ancient history.

...There is endless discussion about how to separate the “moderates” from the “radicals” in Tehran. It is a largely futile exercise. The blunt reality is that Iran has been a menace from the moment that Jimmy Carter, with monumental weakness, decided to force the Shah into exile and so permit Ayatollah Khomeni to return from Paris to assume control. Iran has sought to destabilise the Middle East peace process, undercut Lebanon’s sovereignty and undermine other regimes in the region for almost 30 years. It has done so while men lauded as “moderates” were state president. The Iranian regime has been the embodiment of theological Trotskyism: permanent revolution is the core of its collective ideology. So why are we surprised that it has taken this chance to treat British citizens so badly?

...The lasting lessons of this saga should be obvious. They are that Iran in the hands of the mullahs is not, as has been claimed in the past week, “erratic”, “incoherent” or “unpredictable”, but consistent in its outlook and objectives. They are that there will be no stability in the most potentially explosive part of the planet while this regime is permitted to operate as it has been doing. They are that the only plausible middle course between the unattractive choice of backing a military endeavour against Iran or accepting that Iran will have the Bomb is an economic blockade on a scale far larger than France or Germany, never mind Russia and China, have been ready to contemplate. That resolve, though, is essential. For if this is what Iran is already like, what on earth will happen if it ever commands nuclear weapons?

British hostages: Another black page in Iran's history

2007-03-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

On November 4, 1979, hardline Iranian students, backed by Ayatollah Khomeini and other radical elements of the new Iranian regime, overran the US embassy in Iran, took sixty six American diplomats and marines hostage and subjected them to physical and psychological abuse for 444 days (13 hostages were releases two weeks into the crisis.) As Kenneth Pollock states in his wonderful book "Persian Puzzle," the crisis did take its toll on both Iran and America: "The hostage crisis has left a terrible scar on the American Psyche...Few americans have ever forgiven the Iranians for it. It is America's great underlying grievance against Iran....we never discuss it openly, but the residual anger that so many Americans feel toward Iran for those 444 days has colored every decision we have made about Iran ever since."

In retrospect, Iran's take-over of the US embassy in 1979, which blatantly violated all international diplomatic protocols, turned the country into an international outcast. Although Khomeini and his radical followers greatly benefited from it, the Iranian people never fully recovered from the tragic effects of this appalling act.

It is in light of this abhorrent background that, as a peace and freedom-loving Iranian, I find Tehran's taking 15 British navy personnel hostage a nightmare revisited. What bothers me the most is the sense of powerlessness that we in the free world feel toward mullahs and their shameless behavior. As National review Online perfectly puts it, it seems like "no act of warfare against the civilized world, no defiance of the United Nations, no violation of international norms, no brazen lie is ever enough to mark Iran as unworthy of outreach, dialogue and the art of sweet persuasion."

Tehran's abominable behavior and its brazen disregard for the international laws should once and for all be met with a firm and direct international reponse. Further isolation and solid sanctions can bring mullahs to their knees only if the international community puts its money where its mouth is.

Blair rebuffed as crisis with Tehran deepens

2007-03-25T23:00:00.000-04:00

The Iranian regime these days behaves like a cornered cat that, out of despair, has turned to clawing and caterwauling. Tehran's attempt at taking 15 British servicemen hostage sends a clear a message that 28 years after the seizure of US embassy in Tehran, mullahs still see the world through the prism of intimidation, unruly behavior and of course, terrorism:

Times of London--Britain’s crisis with Iran deepened last night after the Iranian Foreign Minister accused a group of captured British servicemen of committing an act of “aggression”, only hours after Tony Blair appealed for their release.

“The charge against them is their illegal entrance into Iranian territorial waters,” Manouchehr Mottaki, the Foreign Minister, told a press conference in New York. Mr Mottaki said that Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had requested a telephone conversation with him that was due to take place late last night. But he said that Iran had already provided British officials with details, including GPS coordinates, of the servicemen’s arrest.

The British Ambassador to Tehran was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to explain why 15 service personnel in two inflatable boats had strayed into Iranian territorial waters. “The Iranian authorities intercepted these sailors and Marines in Iranian waters and detained them in Iranian waters. This has happened in the past as well. In terms of legal issues, it’s under investigation,” Mr Mottaki said. His comments were seen as a direct rebuff to the Prime Minister, who only hours earlier had called the seizure of the British servicemen “unjustified and wrong” and demanded their release.

More...

Beautiful news reporter

2007-03-24T18:46:00.000-04:00

If you've ever wondered why I wanted to be in broadcast news, here's the reason: Melissa Theuriau!

Now seriously, here's what Wikipedia says about this stunning French newscaster:

"As a result of a compilation of her news broadcasts entitled Beautiful News Reporter that was posted on the website "YouTube" in July 2006 , Theuriau became an Internet icon, drawing large numbers of devotees in the United States. According to one commentator, quoted by The Times, "I never knew the words 'George Bush' and 'Iraq' could sound so sexy"

Well, take a look and judge for yourself.

Happy Norouz نوروزتان پیروز

2007-03-20T17:32:00.000-04:00

ما خسته از رنگ و ریا ، با درد هر داغ آشنا ، این آسمان را پر فروغ ، روی زمین را بی دروغ
خالی ز کین می خواستیم ، نیک و نوین می خواستیم ، زیباترین می خواستیم
کی اینچنین می خواستیم ؟

***
روزی که قلب این جهان ، با عشق و آزادی زند ، دنیا به روی مردمان ، لبخندی از شادی زند
ای عاشقان ، ای عاشقان ، از یاد ما یاد آورید. دلدادگان ، دلدادگان ، با یاد ما داد آورید
از یاد ما یاد آورید
***

شادا که با یگانگی ، از بند غم رها شویم ، به رغم هر بیگانگی ، من و تو با هم ما شویم
شادا به روزی اینچنین ، چون ما چنین می خواستیم ، آری همین می خواستیم
آری همین می خواستیم

Happy New Persian Year to all my compatriots around the world. May the new year bring "freedom", happiness and peace to Iran and our world.

Iranian women struggle for equality

2007-03-08T06:57:00.000-05:00

BBC News-In the days before International Women's Day, 33 women were arrested in Tehran for peacefully protesting outside a court building. Thirty of them were subsequently released, but warned not to mark the day with protests. Those detained include many of the big names of Iran's women's movement, who are calling for an end to discriminatory laws against women. It is not hard to find women who have been caused great suffering by the law as it stands.

AKI-Women Activists Freed as Teachers' Protests Intensify: Tehran -- All but three of the 33 Iranian women's rights activists jailed on Sunday were freed Wednesday night, on the eve of International Women's Day, in exchange for a pledge not to demonstrate on 8 March. Nevertheless, many of them and other women's rights activists said they would protest in front of parliament in Tehran on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile also on Thursday, teachers staged their thid strike in a week in front of parliament, demanding salary raises and that thousands of colleagues they say were fired for political reasons be reinstated to their jobs.

Los Angeles Times-Tension Rises in Iran Over Women's Rights: TEHRAN -- Uncommonly high tensions between law enforcement officials and human rights activists ahead of today's annual commemoration of International Women's Day have led to dozens of arrests here in the capital. The commemoration of Women's Day has been a perennial rallying point for those opposed to government policies viewed by human rights activists as sexist or discriminatory. This year, the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad detained 33 women activists Sunday at a small protest outside the Revolutionary Court, where five women are on trial for taking part in a July 2006 demonstration against laws seen as discriminatory.

The Christian Science Monitor-Iran Cracks Down on Women's Rights Activists: Women’s groups here have abandoned plans to demonstrate for equal rights on International Women’s Day today, after more than 30 of their colleagues were jailed for protesting on Sunday. But even after that decision, rumors spread by e-mail and cell phone text messages Wednesday night that an ad hoc protest might take place anyway, in front of parliament. Fifteen of the women were released by late Wednesday, and the remainder told family members they were on a hunger strike inside Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Melinda Doolittle, I salute you!

2007-03-07T21:29:00.000-05:00

Melinda Doolittle is THE ABSOLUTE singer American Idol has ever had. Her pure rich tone, amazing range and depth and great humbleness are just mind-boggling and unlike most other contestants, she doesn't sing even one single note off-key. Her performance tonight (I Am a Woman) attested once more to the fact that she is just a fantastic singer.

But it was her rendition of "My Funny Valentine" that just blew me away. A performance so stunning that, as someone so rightly commented, truly makes us feel we are in the presence of greatness.

I have watched this grammy-worthy performance over and over again and still can't get my fill of it. I wish I had her record right now! I just feel so bad I can't vote for her from Canada.

Melinda Dolittle, I salute you. You ARE an American Idol.

Iran: Arrests of women activists

2007-03-05T22:24:00.000-05:00

March 05, 2007

Amnesty International Press Release

Amnesty International today called for the immediate and unconditional release of over 30 women activists who were arrested on Sunday, 4 March while staging a peaceful demonstration in Tehran. The organization believes the arrests may be intended to deter activists from organizing events to mark International Women's Day on 8 March.

The women were arrested outside Tehran's Revolutionary Court, where they had gathered to protest at the trial of five women charged in connection with a demonstration held on 12 June 2006 to demand that women be given equal rights with men under the law in Iran. The June demonstration was violently dispersed by security forces, who arrested at least 70 people.

Those arrested on Sunday, who included at least four of the five on trial, were taken to the Vozara Department for Social Corruption, a detention centre usually used for people accused of minor crimes, such as violations of the dress code. Family members of those detained are said to have gone to the Vozara Building in an attempt to gain access and secure the release of their relatives, without success. According to reports, all the women were later transferred to Section 209 of Evin Prison, which is run by the Ministry of Intelligence and is outside the control of Iran's prison service.

More...

Israel, Iran have most negative image worldwide

2007-03-05T22:02:00.000-05:00

BBC-A majority of people believe that Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

It shows that the two countries are closely followed by the United States and North Korea. The poll asked 28,000 in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the European Union in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence. Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively in the survey.

In January, the BBC World Service revealed polling results that suggested most people think the US has a mainly negative influence in the world - and that the numbers had increased significantly in the last couple of years.

This latest survey, mostly of the same people, confirms those findings.
But it also suggests that two countries are viewed even more negatively - first Israel, and then Iran.

More...

The silence that kills

2007-03-02T07:32:00.000-05:00

Another terrific piece by Ny Time's Op-Ed columnist Tom Friedman:

On Feb. 20, The A.P. reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near “a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in the city of Khost.” A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for exams, killing 40 people.

Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards. Europeans are mute, lost in their delusion that this is all George Bush’s and Tony Blair’s fault.

But worst of all, Muslims, the very people whose future is being killed, are also mute. No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a “moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

...Occasionally an honest voice rises, giving you a glimmer of hope that others will stand up. The MEMRI translation Web site (memri.org) just posted a poem called “When,” from a Saudi author, Wajeha al-Huwaider, that was posted on Arab reform sites like www.aafaq.org.

When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner — you know that you are in an Arab country.

When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.

When religion has control over science — you can be sure that you are in an Arab country.

When clerics are referred to as “scholars” — don’t be astonished, you are in an Arab country.

When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and nobody is permitted to criticize — do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country.

When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery — do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country.

When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high positions — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. ...

When you discover that a woman is worth half of what a man is worth, or less — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. ...

When land is more important than human beings — you are in an Arab country. ...

When fear constantly lives in the eyes of the people — you can be certain you are in an Arab country.”

Maestro, it was 26 years overdue...

2007-02-26T00:24:00.000-05:00

It shamefully took 26 years, six directing nominations and two screenplay nominations, for the legendary auteur of such masterpieces as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas...to have his moment.

Congratulations Marty and thanks for sharing with us the blessing of your genius.

Diplomacy, not war, with Iran

2007-02-25T09:12:00.000-05:00

Bill Richardson, Washington Post-Diplomacy is more than just talking to people. It requires speaking credibly from a position of strength. As the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as energy secretary, as a member of Congress and as a diplomatic envoy, I have always believed in and worked to achieve tough, credible and direct negotiations with adversaries. To be tough, you need strong alliances and a strong military. And to be credible, you need a record of meaning what you say. By alienating our allies, overextending our military, making idle threats and antagonizing just about everyone, the Bush administration has undermined our diplomatic leverage.

Seymour Hersh-The Redirection: The Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours. In the past month, I was told by an Air Force adviser on targeting and the Pentagon consultant on terrorism, the Iran planning group has been handed a new assignment: to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Previously, the focus had been on the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and possible regime change.

The Sunday Times-US Generals 'Will Quit' if Bush Orders Iran Attack: Some of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack. “There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

BBC: US 'Iran attack plans' revealed

2007-02-19T20:28:00.000-05:00

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.

The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.

But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran. That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran. Long range B2 stealth bombers would drop so-called "bunker-busting" bombs in an effort to penetrate the Natanz site, which is buried some 25m (27 yards) underground.

More...

On turning 33...

2007-02-18T09:50:00.000-05:00

I think I'll take a moment, celebrate my age
The ending of an era and the turning of a page
Now its time to focus in on where I go from here
Lord have mercy on my next thirty years

Hey my next thirty years I'm gonna have some fun
Try to forget about all the crazy things I've done
Maybe now I've conquered all my adolescent fears
And I'll do it better in my next thirty years

My next thirty years I'm gonna settle all the scores
Cry a little less, laugh a little more
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear
Figure out just what I'm doing here
In my next thirty years

Oh my next thirty years,
I'm gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers (I'm not sure if I can keep my word on this one!)
Maybe I'll remember my next thirty years

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life
Raise a little family and hang out with my wife
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear
Make up for lost time here, in my next thirty years
In my next thirty years

Written by Phil Vassar, performed by the one and only " Tim McGraw."

Another opportunity, another botched interview with Ahmadinejad

2007-02-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Diane Sawyer of ABC News has joined the ranks of other US celebrity journalists who, despite claiming to have nailed Ahmadinejad on a wide range of issues, failed to truly take the Iranian President to task. Sawyer's interview with the Ahmadinejad, in particular, doesn't seem to have won any points with its American audience at all since it was frustratingly obvious that she hadn't done her homework on it, to the extent that even Ahmadinejad saw it fit to teach her a journalism lesson when she botched a very important question and that clearly speaks for itself:

Sawyer: Does Iran deserve the right to send Iranians in ... Americans have said they had false identities that they were trying to shave their heads, trying to flush evidence ...

(She could have told Ahmadinejad about the identification card found on an Iranian revolutionary guard agent arrested last month in Erbil. The card was presented yesterday along with other evidence of Iran's involvement in Iraq by the US military.)

Ahmadinejad: I don't think that in the legal system in the U.S. you have this postulation that if you arrest someone you have automatically accused someone, only people who have committed something wrong can be taken to court. I think it was childish for the U.S. government to do something like that to arrest defenseless people, not allowing them to talk to anyone and to publish information in a biased way. I think that this is not a solution to the problem in Iraq; the solution is somewhere else...

Our diplomats are now in Iraq... (Sawyer could have quoted Iranian ambassador in Iraq who admitted those arrested in Erbil were not diplomats. She could have also quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari who also said those arrested there were not diplomats.)

Sawyer: Are you here to solve the problem of the American government in Iraq?

Ahmadinejad: These are some points that must be discussed at the diplomatic level. You are just a journalist. And of course we think that the Iraqi government has asked the U.S. administration to hand in security to the Iraqi government. And we think that it will help us in solving the problem.

(Sawyer could have followed up on that question by quoting the Iraqi President from his interview with CNN in which he said he was sure Iranians were behind attacks on Americans and asked both sides to settle their scores outside Iraq.)

But here is when Sawyer really drops the ball:

Sawyer: You said you have 52,000 suicide bombers. Where would you deploy them?

Ahmadinejad: Did I say that?

Sawyer: One of the Iraqi officials said that ...

Ahmadinejad: Who was that?

Sawyer: Mr. Sharafi.

Ahmadinejad: Well I don't know him, he has quoted me you mean? But what I said is quite clear who has he quoted ...

Sawyer: He is speaking from his own information, we supposed, we assumed ...

Sawyer: Ahmadinejad was right to challenge me, it was not a statement by an official, but a so-called unofficial organization dedicated to suicide bombing. So we asked, is it not true?

Ahmadinejad: ... [Laughs] Well I think that you should check your source because people say different things. One of the interior ministry officials from Iran said that all of these terrors are done by American forces, and that was an official. He had an official position in Iraq.

(This mix-up, in particular, deals a huge blow to Sawyer's credibility. First of all, the suicide bombers claim was made by Mohammad-Ali Samadi, spokesman for the government-backed "Headquarters to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement" who claimed that 52,000 volunteers for martyrdom-seeking operations have been registered by his organisation, which also calls itself “Estesh’hadioun”, or martyrdom-seekers. This was an IRANIAN spokesperson which had the backing of the Iranian regime not an IRAQI official as Sawyer said. Second, Jalal Sharafi was the second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad who was snatched by unidentified gunmen and has nothing to do with this question. Sawyer sounded like she had no idea what she was talking about, prompting Ahamdinejad to not only mock her--embarrasing her enough to try to add a little explanation later to the interview--but dodge the issue completely.)

All I can say is that it is really frustrating to watch these interviews done by some of the most reputable journalists in America. In all honesty, I really like ABC News and Diane Sawyer. I believe with the US military presentation yesterday, Sawyer should have gone for the kill and cornered Ahmadinejad with some solid questions backed up by the fresh evidence at hand.

That, unfortuantely, never happened.

Wasn't there anyone from ABC News with Diane Sawyer to tell her who Sharafi was?

Wasn't there anyone in the ABC News team to do a 40-second google search about the suicide bombers question so that Sawyer wouldn't botch that very important question?

Are these poor interviews indicative of all US journalism has got to offer when it comes to the world coverage and dealing with rogues such as Ahmadinejad?

Western media and mullahs

2007-02-11T19:58:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Shahbanou (Empress) Farah Pahlavi, former queen of Iran, sat down with VOA Persian service yesterday on the eve of the 28th anniversary of the revolution that led to the downfall of her husband, the late Shah of Iran, and brought an Islamic fundamentalist regime to power.

At one point during the interview, Shahbanou criticized the Western media for being unfairly harsh on her husband while uncharacteristically kind to the mullahs, saying "our government was like a clean sheet on which the tiniest black spot was magnified beyond all proportion whereas mullahs' has been like a black sheet on which even the tiniest white spot is considered as positive."

Although most Western media have been harshly critical of the mullahs' regime in Iran, the empress does have a point. Look at the following excerpts from Newsweek's cover story on Iran published today and also my explanations in parentheses to find out why:

Newsweek-Rumors of War

by Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari

February 12, 2007

-Jalal Sharafi was carrying a videogame, a gift for his daughter, when he found himself surrounded. On that chilly Sunday morning, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad had driven himself to the commercial district of Arasat Hindi to checkout the site for a new Iranian bank...

(Humanizing an Iranian Ministry of Information agent who has trained and worked in Lebanon before being sent to Iraq and could even have a hand in attacks against US troops in Iraq.)

NW-The Iranians have reason to feel paranoid. In recent weeks senior American officers have condemned Tehran for providing training and deadly explosives to insurgents...

(First of all, what reason do Iranian military and information agents have to be in Iraq in the first place?)

NW-The secret history of the Bush administration's dealings with Iran is one of arrogance, mistrust and failure...

(Meaning nothing has ever been wrong on the side of Tehran's regime. It's all Bush's fault.)

NW-Mohammad Hossein Adeli was one of only two deputies on duty at the Foreign Ministry when the attacks took place, late on a sweltering summer afternoon. He immediately began contacting top officials, insisting that Iran respond quickly. "We wanted to truly condemn the attacks but we also wished to offer an olive branch to the United States, showing we were interested in peace," says Adeli. To his relief, Iran's top official, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, quickly agreed. "The Supreme Leader was deeply suspicious of the American government," says a Khameini aide whose position does not allow him to be named. "But [he] was repulsed by these terrorist acts and was truly sad about the loss of the civilian lives in America." For two weeks worshipers at Friday prayers even stopped chanting "Death to America."

(This is absolutely wrong and a pathetic effort by the Iranian officials as always to exploit the naive foreign media. The Iranian leadership was scared to death after 9/11. That's why they didn't chant death to America and wasted no time to condemn the attacks. But when the young Iranians tried to stage a candle light vigil for the victims of the 9/11 attack, the Iranian police used force to disperse them. Khamenei represents an ideology that labels Westerners as "infidels" and considers the Western culture as the greatest menace to fundamentalist Islam. Khamenei doesn't have the slightest human feelings left in him to feel sad for the loss of life, not just on American soil, but even in his own country. Just look at all the anger and hate in his face when he makes speeches.)

NW-The Iranian team's leader, Javad Zarif, was a good-humored University of Denver alumnus with a deep, measured voice, who would later become U.N. ambassador. Jim Dobbins, Bush's first envoy to the Afghans, recalls sharing coffee with Zarif in one of the sitting rooms, poring over a draft of the agreement laying out the new Afghan government. "Zarif asked me, 'Have you looked at it?' I said, 'Yes, I read it over once'," Dobbins recalls. "Then he said, with a certain twinkle in his eye: 'I don't think there's anything in it that mentions democracy. Don't you think there could be some commitment to democratization?' This was before the Bush administration had discovered democracy as a panacea for the Middle East. I said that's a good idea."...

(So the idea of the democratization of the Middle East belongs to Mr Zarif not Mr Bush! How interesting! Islamic Republic officials interested in a commitment to democratization! That's news to me as an Iranian!)

Ladies and Gentelmen of the Western media, this kind of reporting is an insult to our intelligence. It will score no points for you with the Iranian regime. The mullah regime will use these very same reports in its own media to legitimize itself in the eyes of its public. This is not true journalism. This is appeasing an illegitimate, inhumane regime and by so doing, you are only doing them a favor not the Iranian people.

How is that you grill your own officials but then cozy up to mullahs? Isn't it disgusting that after all the Islamic regime has done to you in the past 28 years, one of your politicians bend over back wards in Davos to score a photo-op with the former Iranian president who in 2000, out of the fear of being reprimanded by Khamenei, hid in the washroom in order to avoid shaking hands with President Clinton in the UN?

Just like you I'm against the US invading Iran but you, as journalists in the free world, and I, as an Iranian dissident, don't have to deviate from our moral principles and cozy up to mullahs to make a case against the war.

Come to your senses, Emir of Kuwait begs Iran

2007-02-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

The Times-The Emir of Kuwait has implored Iran’s leadership to “come to its senses” and avoid plunging the region into a new conflict over its controversial nuclear programme. Ahead of his first official visit to Britain as Kuwait’s head of state today, Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah raised fears that the Gulf could be dragged into a new confrontation unless Iran satisfied the world that it was not seeking to build an atomic bomb.

“The President of Iran visited me here. We had a very frank talk. We told him that if nuclear energy will be used for peaceful purposes we will be first to welcome it,” Sheikh Sabah told The Times at Bayan Palace in Kuwait City. “But if it is the intention of his leadership to use this energy for military purposes, then we will be very unhappy. I hope they use their heads, that they will be reasonable, that wisdom will prevail. They must avoid this very dangerous stage which at present they are in and avoid the dangerous situation that might befall them,” the 77-year-old ruler said.

Related:

Arab Times: US military strike on Iran seen by April ’07; Sea-launched attack to hit oil, N-sites

KUWAIT CITY: Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add... reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

US still 'not sure' over new Iran strategy

2007-02-04T15:54:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Inspite of all the brouhahah that President Bush's new aggressive tone on Iran has created, it's quite obvious that neither he nor any other official in his administration has a clear idea how to confront Iran.

The Sunday Telegraph reports today that a rift has been growing among America's military chiefs and the country's diplomats over "confronting Iranian agents in Iraq over their role in lethal attacks on US forces."

"Angered by the mounting toll of troops killed by ever-more sophisticated devices, US commanders insisted last month that the White House give them authority to target and kill Iranian operatives in Iraq as part of the new 21,500-troop "surge" strategy ordered by Mr Bush...But the State Department, headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the CIA had argued against openly targeting Iranian agents, most of whom claim to be diplomats based at Teheran's network of consulates, liaison offices and cultural offices in Iraq. They contended that this approach could escalate into direct armed conflict with Iran...The military and the State Department and CIA are coming at this from very different approaches. State and the CIA believe we should respect the supposed diplomatic immunity of these Iranians. But the military has had enough and they say 'to hell with their fake diplomatic immunity'."

This past week, The Bush administration decided, twice, not to release evidence on Iran's activities in Iraq, contradicted a previous statement made by the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad who, in a briefing with reporters last week, had said that the United States will provide details on its case against Iran soon. Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said on Friday, "The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated, and we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts," meaning the US can't prove Iran's role in Iraq--not at least for now. Defense Secretary Robert Gates also admitted Friday that U.S. officials can't say for sure whether the Iranian government is involved in assisting the attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq. "I don't know that we know the answer to that question," Gates said. As for Iran's role in the abduction and killings of five U.S. servicemen in Karbala last month, Gates refused to say whether the US had any evidence linking Iran to the incident, "I would just tell you flatly that the investigation is still going on, and the information that I've seen is ambiguous. It's not clear yet."

Iran's role in Iraq is the world's worst-kept secret. The Iranian agants arrested in Erbil by US forces are still in custody and allegedly speaking like a canary. U.S. military leaders in Iraq have time and again said they have evidence that Iran is behind the supply network of explosives. In an interview last week with the USA Today, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said that the US forces have weapons--such as RPG-29 and Katyusha rockets-- that through serial numbers trace back to Iran."

So why do Hadly and Gates play possum here? because conceding Iran's role in Iraq in general and in specificdeadly attacks against US targets in particular--like the recent Karbala incident which is considered as a possible eye-for-an-eye act of revenge by Iran (five US soldiers in return for five Iranian agants in US custody)--would mean that the US will have to confront Iran militarily in Iraq and that, the US diplomats contend, can lead to full-blown confrontation of unknown consequences with Iran. On the other hand if the US doesn't react, Tehran could get even more emboldened, feeling it has been able to call the US bluff.

So how will the Bush administration be able to put an end to this dilemma? The answer could lie with the Iranian regime.

Memri reports that according to the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, in his just-published memoir, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy tellsabout a meeting between three European foreign ministers and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Iran'snuclear program, in New York on September 15, 2005. Douste-Blazy wrote that, after a prolonged fruitless discussion, Ahmadinejad suddenly changed the course of the discussion by telling the ministers: "Do you know why we should wish for chaos at any price? Because after the chaos, we can see the greatness of Allah."

Also earlier today, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani--falsely reputed as "moderate" former president-- said, "the Iranian nation will emerge successful from this psychological warfare too and will defend their rights," later adding "To us, martyrdom is the shortest way to come closer to Almighty God."

CNN: Iran involvement suspected in Karbala compound attack

2007-01-31T07:47:00.000-05:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN)-- The Pentagon is investigating whether a recent attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said.

"People are looking at it seriously," one of the officials said.

That official added the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation into the January 20 attack that killed five soldiers.

The second official said: "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."

Five U.S. soldiers were abducted and killed in the sophisticated attack by men wearing U.S.-style uniforms, according to U.S. military reports. (Watch how attackers got into the compound )

Both officials stressed the Iranian-involvement theory is a preliminary view, and there is no final conclusion. They agreed this possibility is being looked at because of the sophistication of the attack and the level of coordination.

Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the capture by U.S. forces of five of its members in Irbil, Iraq, on January 11, according to a Time.com article published Tuesday.

Related:

Time-Some Iraqis speculate that the IRGC has already started a campaign of revenge with the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20, nine days after the arrest of the IRGC members in Erbil. As the logic of the rumor goes, five American soldiers were killed for five Iranians taken; Karbala was an IRGC message to release its colleagues — or else. The speculation that Karbala was an IRGC operation may have as much to do with Iraqis' respect for IRGC capacity for revenge as it does with the truth.

NY Times-Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers

ABC News: Bush Says Invading Iran 'Not the Plan'

ABC News: Bush Administration Decides Not to Release Evidence Against Iran

USA Today: General says U.S. has proof Iran arming Iraqi militias

L.A. Times: More flights likely along the Iranian border

Will Obama's background become a presidential campaign issue?

2007-01-29T22:48:00.000-05:00

Examiner.com-WASHINGTON - Although Sen. Barack Obama is a Christian, his childhood and family connections to Islam are beginning to complicate his presidential ambitions.

“In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school,” he wrote in his first memoir, “Dreams from my Father.” “The teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies.”

Obama — whose father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims — explained his own first name, Barack, in “Dreams”: “It means ‘Blessed.’ In Arabic. My grandfather was a Muslim.”

But with pundits already making faith a major issue in this presidential campaign — as evidenced by questions about Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormonism — Obama’s religious background is likely to come under further scrutiny.

“He comes from a father who was a Muslim,” said civil rights author Juan Williams of National Public Radio. “I mean, I think that given we’re at war with Muslim extremists, that presents a problem.”

Obama’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, for whom the senator was given his middle name, Hussein, was fiercely devoted to Islam, according to an account in “Dreams.” The grandfather, who died in 1979, was described by his widow when Obama visited Kenya in the late 1980s.

More...

Also in the news:

Reuters: Israel's first Muslim minister sworn into office

Reuters: Jermaine Jackson wants Michael to convert to Islam

Delusions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2007-01-28T16:17:00.000-05:00

I meant to post a commentary this weekend, explaining how in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fantasy world--a world in which he recieves messages from the Divine, Holocaust is a myth and the end is near for the US and Israel-- a US military strike against Iran is not only a bluff but the American troops are in retreat!

But Amir Taheri beat me to it. If you are wondering what's going on in Ahmadinejad's mind, or what he dreams about when asleep, take a look at Taheri's latest article in Asharq Alawsat:

Hours after receiving the Qatari visitor, Ahmadinejad attacked those who say he is leading the country to war. "What war?" he asked. " Some people say we are heading for war? Gentlemen, what war? The warmongers (i.e. the United States) are in retreat. They say we shall pay a heavy price for resistance. What price? What price have we paid?"

Ahmadinejad has also decided to test the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq by ordering Tehran's clients there to turn the heat on the US and allied forces. Last week's attacks in Karbala and Basra, Iraqi Shi'ite cities that had been quiet, were part of that scheme. Another part of his plan provides for a coup by the Lebanese Hezballah with the help of a segment of the Maronite community led by Michel Aoun...Ahmadinejad also believes that American public opinion would not allow President George W Bush to take military action against the Khomeinist regime. Tehran's official media make a point of publicising the views of Bush's opponents to the maximum.

Ahmadinejad also counts on France and Russia to split the Security Council and isolate the United States. President Jacques Chirac's decision to open a direct channel to Ahmadinejad by sending a special emissary is seen as a sign that France would oppose US plans for further sanctions against Iran. The Islamic Republic is also redoubling its efforts to persuade Russia's President Vladimir Putin to invite Ahmadinejad to Moscow before the next session of the Security Council in March. Nevertheless, the president has issued a list of threats through Hussein Shariatmadari, Editor of the daily Kayhan, and a key spokesman for the radical Khomeinist faction. "The Americans must be made to understand the horrible consequences of any foolish act on their part," Shariatmadari wrote in an editorial last week. He then listed a series of warnings:

*** The Islamic Republic would attack American and allied troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

*** The Islamic Republic will stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, depriving the global market of 24 million barrels each day

*** A storm of missiles will be unleashed against Israel, turning that country into "an earthly hell before they go to the real hell."

*** Arab countries allied to the US will see their very existence endangered.

*** The peoples of Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and "parts of Arabia" will be invited to state uprisings against their governments to take revenge from their rulers.

Taheri then asks: What does all this remind you of? The obvious answer is " Saddam Hussein and his delusions in 2003. The late Ba'athist leader was also confident that Arab divisions, Western rivalries, and the peculiarities of the democratic system in the United States would , in the end, shield his regime against any attack.

Taheri is absolutely true. Some of the unclassified reports from US military interviews with Saddam 's captured aides regarding Saddam's delusions were published in a 2006 article in Foreign Affairs titled "Saddam's Delusions: A view From The Inside:"

Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al-Sattar, the Iraqi army and armed forces chief of staff, claimed that Saddam believed that even if his international supporters failed him and the United States did launch a ground invasion, Washington would rapidly bow to international pressure to halt the war. According to his personal interpreter, Saddam also thought his "superior" forces would put up "a heroic resistance and . . . inflict such enormous losses on the Americans that they would stop their advance." Saddam remained convinced that, in his own words, "Iraq will not, in any way, be like Afghanistan. We will not let the war become a picnic for the American or the British soldiers. No way!"

When the coalition assault did come, Saddam stubbornly clung to the belief that the Americans would be satisfied with an outcome short of regime change. According to Sattar, "No Iraqi leaders had believed coalition forces would ever reach Baghdad." Saddam's conviction that his regime would survive the war was the primary reason he did not have his forces torch Iraq's oil fields or open the dams to flood the south, moves many analysts predicted would be among Iraq's first in the event of an invasion. In the words of Aziz, "[Saddam] thought that this war would not lead to this ending." Saddam realized that if his strategic calculus was correct, he would need the oil to prop up the regime. Even with U.S. tanks crossing the Iraqi border, an internal revolt remained Saddam's biggest fear. In order to quell any postwar revolt, he would need the bridges to remain intact and the land in the south to remain unflooded. On this basis, Saddam planned his moves...

Where will Ahmadinejad's delusions lead Iran to?

Where is the Bush administration headed on Iran?

2007-01-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

Financial Times-Last week, Mr Bush ordered a second US aircraft carrier to the Gulf and the deployment of more Patriot missiles in US military bases there. Richard Haass, former head of policy planning at the State Department in the first Bush administration, said the US president was leaving both the diplomatic and military option open. “You could interpret Bush’s recent actions towards Iran in two ways – either he is increasing pressure on the regime in order to soften it up for talks over its uranium enrichment plans, or this is classic gunboat diplomacy in which the US is preparing for some kind of punitive action,” said Mr Haass. “My guess is that Mr Bush’s actions leave room for either scenario and the Bush administration remains divided over which to pursue.”

The Swoop-Hostility against Iran continues to build in Washington. The deliberately public build-up of naval assets in the region is gathering pace. More quietly, several General-rank Air Force officers with specific experience in planning strategic bombing campaigns have arrived at the Al Udeid air combat command in Qatar...Treasury officials report that US financial sanctions on Iran – with new restrictions expected against government-connected banks – are imposing real costs on Iran’s economy. In addition, recent behind-the-scenes Saudi and CIA backing for Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Sinoira together with the Saudi refusal to restrict its oil production has, in the US view, “raised the cost of doing business” to Iran.

NY Times-On Iran, Bush Faces Haunting Echoes of Iraq: The administration does not have definitive evidence that Iran is moving toward producing a nuclear bomb, but next week it will unveil what officials say is evidence of Iran’s meddling in Iraq.
In interviews over the past several weeks, officials from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House insist that Mr. Bush’s goal in Iran is not to depose a government, Iraq-style, but rather to throw a series of brushback pitches...For Mr. Bush, this is not only about options but about legacy. Already bloodied in Iraq, he will come under increasing pressure to show that he has not left the United States weakened in the Middle East. He does not want to be remembered for leaving Iran more powerful than he found it when he came to office.

Robert Kaplan, The Atlantic-what about the report's advice to open a dialogue with Iran and Syria? Hasn't the President repudiated that fundamental principle, and, therefore, the thrust of the report? No. Keep in mind that neoconservatives themselves have not repudiated such talks in the abstract: rather, they have stated that if the United States were to markedly improve its strategic position in the Middle East, and thus be able to talk to Syria and Iran from a position of strength, dialogue with Iraq's neighbors might at some juncture be justified. That is exactly what the Administration seems to be doing: the troop plus-up in Greater Baghdad, coupled with a more powerful naval and air presence in the Persian Gulf, is designed to prepare a more favorable context for eventual negotiations. Secretary of Defense Gates has indicated as much.

How to build confidence in practice, 'Islamic Republic-style'

2007-01-27T14:10:00.000-05:00

Davos, switzerland-The Middle East is experiencing a crisis of confidence, agreed Ahmed Mahmoud Nazif, Prime Minister of Egypt, and John F. Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts (Democrat), USA, in a plenary session on the future of the region. Solving this requires "great collaboration of all countries… we should build confidence in practice," said Mohammad Khatami, [former] president of the Islamic

Republic of Iran.

One step would be to heal ties between Washington and Tehran. "The relationship between Iran and the United States can be great for the region and the whole world ... Unfortunately we have a very big, huge wall of inconfidence," Khatami noted. "Still, the door to the negotiation is open," he added. Kerry called on President Bush to engage with Iran and Syria...

Kash-Meanwhile, Mr Khatami didn't say if defying the UN Security Council by installing 3,000 centrifuges, as Iran announced today, would be such a great idea to restore the confidence he preached about today. Of course the door to talks is open but, as The Onion wittily says, for Ahmadinejad and his masters to tell America and the free world how awsome it feels for them to soon have a functioning nuclear weapons program.

Good luck Mr Kerry and by the way, thanks for dropping out of the 2008 Presidential race!

P.S. In the second photo, is kerry signing an autograph for Khatami or giving him his email address, cell phone number or what?

Why Iran wants UN's chief inspector removed

2007-01-27T10:21:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Iran has demanded the complete removal of Chris Charlier, the UN official in charge of inspecting the country's nuclear program who had already been banned from entering Iran, accusing him of what an Iranian diplomat claimed as"passing confidential Iranian nuclear information which was supposed to be kept between Iran and the IAEA, to inappropriate countries and their media."

But who is Chris Charlier and why Iran is demanding his completet removal from its nuclear case?

Chris Charlier, a Belgian nuclear scientist who has travelled the world inspecting nuclear installations for the International Atomic Energy Agency, was the former head of a team of 15 Atomic Energy inspectors of the IAEA who have been inspecting the Islamic Republic's nuclear program since 2003. In may 2005, he spoke publicly for the first time about his inspections in Iran on a program called "Iran's nuclear secrets" aired on BBC 2 and NewsHour on PBS:

CHRIS CHARLIER: Whatever we say, whatever we do, they are always behind us with a video camera, with a microphone trying to record things that we saying. And it's a little disturbing because some people don't like it. You know, usually when we work, we don't like to have always somebody behind us, behind our shoulders and looking what we're doing or recording what we're saying. But, you know, it's part of the game.

When we asked them to get access there, they started, you know, "Well, there's nothing there," you know. "We just dismantled building, and there was nothing related to agency activities." And finally, after months of discussion, we went there.

They tried, really, I believe, to conceal their program and the activities. And, yeah, well, maybe there is things -- still others things that they are doing and we couldn't find, and that's why we are getting suspicious.

Charlier therefore believed that Iran's nuclear program could go well beyond peaceful purposes: "The way they've been postponing, and trying to gain time, is suspicious. I don't think the IAEA has any facts to support the idea that they have a nuclear weapons programme, but the way that Iran has behaved in all those smaller issues has made the agency suspicious."

As a result, in early 2006, Iran asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove Charlier, who had not been back to Iran since April 2006 because of Tehran's displeasure with his work and his comments, from inspection team probing Tehran's nuclear program. The IAEA bowed to mullahs' demand and replaced him although he remained the head of the team. In an interview with Der Spiegel published in July 2006, IAEA Chief Mohammad ElBaradei had this to say about Charlier's removal:

SPIEGEL: Tehran recently complained about your chief inspector for Iran, Chris Charlier, a Belgian. Is there anything to reports in the press that you removed him from his position in response to Iranian pressure?

ElBaradei: That isn't quite the way it was. Our statutes give any state being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) the right to reject an inspector who is not to their liking. It's the same thing in diplomacy, where a state can reject a proposed ambassador as a persona non grata.

SPIEGEL: So he was suspended at the request of the mullah regime?

ElBaradei: No, he continues to work in a key position relating to the Iran issue. But he will not be traveling to Tehran until further notice. We have 200 inspectors who can conduct inspections in Iran. Individual employees aren't the issue. The issue is getting the job done. I will denounce the policy the minute we are no longer able to do so in Iran.

In the very same month, Charlier spoke with another German paper"Die Welt" in which he accused the Iranians of tricks and deceptions on their nuclear activities and concluded "Tehran is obviously making a bomb."

Iranian regime feels the heat

2007-01-25T22:23:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

One month after The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to impose sanctions against Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment, Iranian leaders seem to be coming to grasp with the grave consequences of defying the international community.

This past Monday, EU foreign ministers vowed on to implement "in full and without delay" the sanctions banning transfers of sensitive nuclear material to Iran and freeze assets of those associated with the nuclear program. The US government's decision to extend unilateral financial sanctions are also reported to have a bigger economic impact than expected. Earlier this month, the United States imposed sanctions on Bank Sepah, a state-owned Iranian bank, which accused of financing acquisitions for Iran's missile programme. This followed the US action in September against another major Iranian bank "Bank Saderat," which was also accused of facilitating the operations of the militant Hizbollah movement. What's more, The UN resolution has now made it difficult for Iran to conduct customary transactions, even with non-US banks. Some European banks, including UBS Bank and Credit Suisse of Switzerland, HSBC and ABN Amro, have already suspended most new dealings with Iran and the Commerzbank of Germany, the leading provider of international bonds for Iran, said it will stop handling dollar transactions for Tehran.

The US has also put the squeeze on Iran's main industry: Oil. The new U.S. campaign to dry up financing for oil and natural gas development seems to be the biggest crisis the Iranian regime has faced in the past 28 years. According to a report in Los Angeles Times in early January, the efforts by the United States and its allies over the last few months to persuade international banks and oil companies to pull out of Iran threaten dozens of projects, including development of Iran's two massive new oil fields have been very effective. Oil Ministry officials in Iran have admitted banks are no longer granting letters of credit for delivery of some supplies.

L.A. Times reports that "as nations such as Japan begin to back out of Iran oil development under U.S. pressure, the government in Tehran is being forced to dig into its own reserve funds to get crucial new projects off the ground." The report says if Iran were to suddenly stop exporting its 2.6 million barrels of oil a day, such as in the event of a military strike, world oil prices probably would skyrocket. But analysts believe a gradual decline might be offset by other OPEC members, particularly as Iraq increases its oil production and Saudi Arabia carries out plans for significant increases in its production capacity.

Times of London reports today, "since last July, a barrel of oil has fallen from $78 to just over $50, reducing the Iran Government’s revenues by one third. If the oil price fell into the $35 to $40 range, Iran would shift into deficit, and with access to foreign borrowing cut off by UN sanctions, the Government’s capacity to continue financing foreign proxies would quickly run out. Iran has reacted to this threat by calling on Opec to stabilise prices but, in practice, only one country has the clout to do this: Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, in a highly significant statement, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi Oil Minister, publicly opposed Iranian calls for production cuts to halt the decline in prices. Mr Naimi's pronouncement was cast as a technical matter unconnected with politics, but it seemed to confirm private warnings by King Abdullah that his country would try everything to thwart Iran’s hegemony in Iraq and throughout the region, whether by military intervention or more subtle economic means."

Robert Windrem from NBC News writes in his latest report that Saudis are letting the price of oil and thus, “waging an oil-price war” on Iran. The Saudi oil minister has steadfastly refused calls for a special meeting of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and announced that the nation is going to increase its production, which will send the price down even further. Oil Minister Ibrahim al-Naimi, during a recent trip to India, had said that oil prices are headed in the “right direction.”

Such grim prospects for Iran's economy under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, combined with the US military build-up in Iraq and the Persian Gulf to stop the Iranian regime from challenging US interests in the Middle East, have, for the very first time in the Islamic republic's history, prompted the highest-ranking Iranian officials, including the spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, to both publicly and privately admit the looming threat against Iran is indeed "grave."

But with the UN Security Council deadline for halting Uranium enrichment approaching, will such a realization result in major concessions by the Iranian regime as it also prepares itself to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution?

Sources: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, MSNBC.

Iran overplaying its hand

2007-01-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

Theswoop.net- Iran: Overplaying Its Hand: The Administration no longer focuses exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program but regards Iran as a strategic challenge to US interests throughout the Middle East and beyond...Outside Bush’s immediate circle, opposition to military action against Iran is almost unanimous among officials and analysts. On Capitol Hill opposition is also widespread. However, events could move rapidly as a result of an on-the-ground US-Iranian confrontation in Iraq. A National Security Council official commented: “The military sees Iran as the Cambodia (the North Vietnamese supply route into South Vietnam) of Iraq. Unless they can close this down, we cannot win.” The result is that conflict with Iran may come not through the “front door” of nuclear weapons disagreements but through the “back door” of Iraq.

Theswoop.net-Saudi Arabia: Lower Oil Prices and Iran: confidential exchanges have taken place between US and Saudi officials about bolstering Sunni elements in the Middle East, especially against Iran. In addition to joining the US in supporting the Sinoira government in Lebanon, the Saudis are also helping on the oil front. Intelligence analysts in Washington believe that Iran is vulnerable to a lower oil price. The resulting economic stress may threaten domestic stability. “Ahmadinejad promised improved living standards,” one analyst told us. “He has completely failed to deliver on this.” We hear that, with US encouragement, the Saudis have resisted calls inside OPEC for collective action to stabilize prices.

Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Arab Times: Tehran continues to stand against the international community, ignore warnings to abandon its nuclear program and insist on teasing superpowers. In 2003 as a part of its preemptive strike policy the US attacked Iraq, which was thought to have nuclear warheads. We wonder what Iran is trying to do by angering and challenging the United States. In our opinion a US strike on Iran is imminent to correct Tehran’s misguided policies, and prevent that country from becoming a black sheep in the Middle East.

The Sunday Times-Khamenei pondeing nuclear deal: IRAN’S supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country’s nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran. Khamenei is said to believe that Washington’s aim is not only to halt Iran’s nuclear programme but to overthrow the regime. Under proposals now being debated, an international group made up of the permanent five members of the UN security council, plus Germany or a nuclear power such as India, would oversee and monitor Iran’s nuclear programme.

U.S. Plans envision "broad attack" on Iran

2007-01-20T11:08:00.000-05:00

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani has called the news of an impending US attack on Iran "psychological warfare", while maintaining Iran is completely ready for such a confrontation. This reminds me of the nonsense the delusional regime of Saddam Hussein used to utter even days before the US invasion. Larijani seems to have already exchanged his role as Iran's chief nuclear negotiater to that of the former Iraqi information minister, the butt of the Western media's jokes, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf:

Reuters- WASHINGTON -- U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday. "I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilise the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank. "We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said. "I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country.

Middle East expert Kenneth Katzman argued "Iran's ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible" if one understands the Islamic republic's many vulnerabilities. Tehran's leaders have convinced many experts Iran is a great nation verging on "superpower" status, but the country is "very weak (and) meets almost no known criteria to be considered a great nation," said Katzman of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

The economy is mismanaged and "quite primitive," exporting almost nothing except oil, he said. Also, Iran's oil production capacity is fast declining and in terms of conventional military power, "Iran is a virtual non-entity," Katzman added.

The administration, therefore, should not go out of its way to accommodate Iran because the country is in no position to hurt the United States, and at some point "it might be useful to call that bluff," he said. But Katzman cautioned against early confrontation with Iran and said if there is a "grand bargain" that meets both countries' interests, that should be pursued.

A hanging and a funeral

2007-01-18T10:41:00.000-05:00

On January 3rd, Thomas Friedman reflected on Saddam Hussein's hanging in his column in NY Times. In light of what many analysts and even world leaders--including President Bush- called "botched" executions of Saddam, his half brother Barzan Ibrahim and former Revolutionary Court chief Awad al-Bandar, Friedman's column is definitely worth taking another read. The mishandled executions have now raised questions, even among those who support president Bush's new strategy on Iraq, as to whether Mr bush's new plan stands any chance of success under an Iraqi government that seems to be driven more by tribal instincts than the rule of law:

...No wonder the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson, reported from Baghdad: “Altogether, the execution as we now see it is shown to be an ugly, degrading business, which is more reminiscent of a public hanging in the 18th century than a considered act of 21st-century official justice. Under Saddam Hussein, prisoners were regularly taunted and mistreated in their last hours. The most disturbing thing about the new video of Saddam’s execution for crimes precisely like this is that it is all much too reminiscent of what used to happen here.”

...The raw tribal theatrics of Saddam’s hanging highlight just how few of these values Iraq has imported. We are to blame for not creating the security needed for those values to take hold. But not enough of our Iraqi allies have risen to the occasion, either. It was our closest Iraqi partners who oversaw Saddam’s tribal hanging. We have to look that in the eye.

Saddam deserved to die 100 deaths. But imagine if Iraq’s Shiite leaders had surprised everyone, declared that there had been enough killing in Iraq and commuted Saddam’s sentence to life in prison — sparing his life in hopes of uniting the country rather than executing him and dividing it further. I don’t know if it would have helped, but I do know Iraqis have rarely surprised us with gestures of reconciliation — only with new ways to kill each other...

Former CIA director: We should opt for a non-violent regime change in Iran

2007-01-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

Woolsey questions the efficacy of Radio Farda and VOA Persian

R. James Woolsey, Hearing, House Committee for Foreign Affairs: Given the nature of the Iranian regime, what should we do? I agree that this is a difficult matter and that there are no easy answers. But since I am convinced that the Iranian regime is fundamentally incorrigible, and since I am not yet ready to propose an all-out use of military force to change the regime and halt its nuclear program, in my judgment we should opt for trying to bring about, non-violently, a regime change. I admit that the hour is late since we have wasted much time trying to engage and negotiate with the regime, and I understand that in the context of an effort to change the regime without using force the effort could get out of hand. Yet I am convinced that the least bad option if for us to state clearly that we support a change of regime in Iran because of the irremediable theocratic totalitarian nature of the current regime as it has been demonstrated over nearly three decades, together with its interference with the peace and security of its neighbors – currently especially Iraq and Lebanon – and its nuclear weapons program.

In other news:

The Economist-Targeting Iran? (via irvaj): George Bush could hardly be clearer in his disagreement with those, such as the members of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, who have argued for an early exit from Iraq coupled with the wooing of its big neighbour, Iran. Last week he announced that another 21,500 American troops will be sent to Baghdad in an effort to impose a military solution there. Then came the sabre-rattling towards Iran. He confirmed the deployment of an extra carrier strike group and Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Middle East—a clear signal that he is giving himself the option of a military strike to halt Iran's suspected development of nuclear weapons.

Russia Confirms Sale of Tor-M1 Air Defense Missiles to Iran-Pravda: Russia's defense minister said Tuesday that Moscow has sent air defense missiles to Iran, the first high-level confirmation that their delivery took place despite U.S. complaints. Sergei Ivanov did not specify how many missile systems had been delivered, but a ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject said not all the systems contracted for had been delivered. "We have delivered short-range Tor-M1 missiles to Iran in accordance with the contract," Ivanov told reporters.

Allies 'Go After' Iran as Beefed-up Naval Force Sails for the Persian Gulf-The Times: Britain is joining an American military campaign to blunt Iranian influence in Iraq and the Gulf. In a move likely to heighten tension in an already volatile part of the world, US forces have been ordered to detain Iranian agents in Iraq and to strengthen substantially America’s military presence in the Gulf. Two Royal Navy minehunters have arrived in the Gulf to reinforce a naval frigate on patrol in the area. “We are going after their [Iran’s] networks in Iraq,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US Ambassador to Baghdad, said. The aim was to change the behaviour of the Islamic regime in Tehran, he added. Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, accused Tehran of “very negative behaviour”. Twice in the past few weeks US forces have detained Iranian officials in Iraq, first in Baghdad and last week in the northern city of Arbil.

Editor's note

2007-01-11T23:02:00.000-05:00

A big apology to the readers of my newsroom for not being able to write in the new year. I've been primarily busy reading up on issues ranging from Mid East politics and history to the impact of cultures on politics and economic developments. I'll be back writing and reporting shortly. Stay tuned!

A Happy New Year Toast

2006-12-31T15:31:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

There is definitely no better way for me to express my new year's wishes to all of you than sharing an excerpt from the lyrics to one of the most favorite songs of mine "My Wish" by the country music band, Rascal Flatts. Thanks very much for reading the newsroom in 2006 and all the best to you and your loved ones in the year ahead:

I hope the days come easy and the moments pass slow,
And each road leads you where you want to go,

And if you're faced with a choice, and you have to choose,
I hope you choose the one that means the most to you,

And if one door opens to another door closed, I hope you keep on walkin' till you find the window,

If it's cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile,

But more than anything, more than anything,

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,

Yeah, this, is my wish.

A Very Happy And Prosperous New Year!

Iran's oil revenue could run out in less than a decade

2006-12-26T16:50:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis published Monday in a journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran's economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10% to 12% annually. In less than five years exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted.He said oil production is declining and both gas and oil are being sold domestically at highly subsidized rates. At the same time, Iran is neglecting to reinvest in its oil production.
Iran produces about 3.7 million barrels a day, about 300,000 barrels below the quota set for Iran by the oil cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The shortfall represents a loss of about $5.5 billion a year, Stern said. In 2004, Iran's oil profits were 65% of the government's revenues."If we look at that shortfall, and failure to rectify leaks in their refineries, that adds up to a loss of about $10 billion to $11 billion a year," he said. "That is a picture of an industry in collapse."

...If the United States can "hold its breath" for a few years it may find Iran a much more conciliatory country, he said. And that, Stern said, is good reason to belay any instinct to take on Iran militarily.

"What they are doing to themselves is much worse than anything we could do," he said.

"The one thing that would unite the country right now is to bomb them," Stern said. "Here is one problem that might solve itself."

More...

Tell me why...

2006-12-26T10:26:00.000-05:00

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks of the victims of Hurricane Katrina whereas in Iran, three years after the catastrophic earthquake in Bam, many survivors are still living in tents, thanks to his regime, funneling millions of petro-dollars to Hezbollah, Hamas and Shiite militias in Iraq...

Can you see that shaft of sunlight

Can you see it in my eyes

I can feel the fire thats burning

Anger and hope so deep

So deep within my heart but before my eyes

For some its too late

Cos it seems theres no-one listening

People sleeping in the streets

No roof above, no food to eat, tell me why, oh tell me why

See the questions in their eyes

Listen to their childrens cries,

Tell me why, please tell me why...

From the song "Tell Me Why" by Genesis, 1991.

Satirical jokes raise a stink in Tehran

2006-12-25T23:48:00.000-05:00

December 24, 2006

Sunday Telegraph

Colin Freeman

"Osama bin Laden is sent to Hell and sees President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran dancing with Jennifer Lopez. " 'Is this your punishment?' asks Osama. 'No,' the Iranian leader replies, 'it's Jennifer Lopez's punishment.' "

It might not be the most sophisticated example of political satire, but for millions of Iranians, such jokes are proving to be the perfect way to let off steam about their hardline leader. With opponents unable to criticise him too fiercely in the state-censored media, gags about his policies, piety – and, cruelly, his personal grooming – have proliferated instead via text messages and emails.

...Fond of denouncing all things American, and rarely dressing in anything more statesmanlike than a beige anorak, he is portrayed as an ignorant, bigoted bumpkin in jokes swapped among Teheran's educated middle-class.

Some jibes are cutting, such as the tale of how the president finds lice when combing his hair one day. "OK, male lice to the left and females to the right," he says – a reference to his reported attempt to introduce segregated corridors in the city hall during his previous job as mayor of Teheran.

More...

It's the eye of the tiger, the cream of the fight...

2006-12-19T22:45:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Just a few months ago, Andre Agassi's exit from the world of tennis took me back to my younger years in Iran, when even watching one of his grandslam finals was a dream for me. Now you might find this stupid, or funny or whatever you might wanna call it but in a couple of hours, another sports hero of my childhood years, one who also brings back a lot of bittersweet memories, will make his graceful exit: Rocky Balboa.

Of course, I know the difference between Hollywood and real life now but back in the early eighties, Rocky was the sovereign in the world of movies for us school kids in Iran. At the time, there was no cinema in Iran showing Hollywood blockbusters (there still isn't), no satellite TV, Internet, DVD, VCD or even VHS cassettes. All we could find were Betamax video players and even those where not found easily in most households. They were expensive but more importantly, they were banned by the Islamic regime and those who did carry them, ran the risk of being arrested and even lashed.

That's why most people secretly rented Betamax video players from the black market on weekends and what was the very first foreign movie they wanted to rent along? a Rocky movie!

And now Rocky is back, in a world that bears almost no resemblance to the one in which I grew up. I know in 2 weeks, Iranian school kids will watch the "Rocky Balboa" on their VCD or DVD players, enjoying the blessings of the new YouTube world but for me, Rocky is a bittersweet reminder of both the dark days we lived through as kids, under the Islamic Regime in Iran in the eighties, and the only glimmer of the outside world that brightened those dark days a tad-- on an exciting Thursday night or a gloomy Friday afternoon.

Rocky is back and I'll be in theater this time, savoring his passion for glory and will to survive the eye of the tiger for the very last time...

Iranian students hide in fear for lives after venting fury at Ahmadinejad

2006-12-18T17:33:00.000-05:00

December 18, 2006

The Guardian

Robert Tait in Tehran

Iranian student activists who staged an angry protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week have gone into hiding in fear for their lives after his supporters threatened them with revenge. One student fled after being photographed holding a banner reading, "Fascist president, the polytechnic is not for you", during Mr Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran's Amir Kabir university. At least three others have gone underground after being seen burning his picture.

Vigilantes from the militant Ansar-e Hezbollah group have been searching for them.

In a startling contrast to the acclaim Mr Ahmadinejad has received in numerous recent appearances around Iran, he faced chants of "Death to the dictator" as he addressed a gathering in the university's sports hall last week. Several hundred students forced their way in to voice anger over a clampdown on universities since he became president last year. While his aides played down the incident, the Guardian has learned details of the violent and chaotic events.

Last Monday's university demonstration triggered violent clashes between student activists and crowds of Basij militia, who were there to support the president. A shoe was thrown at Mr Ahmadinejad while a student had his nose broken by an aide to a cabinet minister. Protesters later surrounded the president's car, prompting a security guard to fire a stun grenade to warn them off. Four cars in the presidential convoy collided in their haste to leave.

"He threatened us directly, saying that what we were doing was against the wishes of the nation," said Babak Zamanian, a spokesman for Amir Kabir university's Islamic students' committee. "After that, the students protested even more sharply, calling him a lying religious dictator and shouting, 'Forget America and start thinking about us!' "We were chanting, 'Get lost Ahmadinejad!' and 'Ahmadinejad - element of discrimination and corruption.' You could see from his face that he was really shocked. He wasn't flashing his usual smile, and at one stage I thought he was going to cry. He told his supporters to respond with a religious chant hailing Ahmadinejad, but he was so shaken he was actually chanting it himself." Another student said: "He was trying to keep control of himself, but you could see he was angry and upset."

More...

The Holocaust conference is a disgrace to us Iranians and an insult to the world community

2006-12-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

In the past few days, I have been practically battling with a flood of questions and condemnations I've received from my fellow-Canadians, regarding the disgraceful Holocaust conference in Iran. Of course, I fully understand their feelings as I personally share with them the anger and revulsion that this shameful campaign of distortion and denial by the Iranian regime of one of the most horrendous crimes against humanity has invoked in them.

This shameful circus is not--as Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's Foreign Minister, ridiculously argues-- "an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust", (otherwise, they wouldn't have denied a visa to a Palestinian intellectual who believes that denials of the “monstrous horror” harms the Palestinian cause) but part of a pathetic plan by a degenerate regime which stops at nothing--not even inviting the likes of KKK leader, David Duke -- to spread its evil ideology across the Middle East.

In case you didn't know, Ahmadinejad and his masters couldn't care less about the issue of Holocaust or the Palestinian cause.It is tapping into the anti-Israeli sentiments of the Arab masses of the Middle East and flying in the face of the international community they are after and in so doing, they have dragged Iran down to the lowest moral standards in its entire history.

The holocaust conference in Iran has indeed added another black page to an already humiliating history of my country under the Islamic Regime. As a freedom-loving Iranian-Canadian, I condemn this conference in the strongest terms and offer my deepest sympathies to the survivors of this horrible war crime. I hope that someday, a free and democratic Iran-- in a Middle East, free of any extreme ideological forces or beliefs-- will play the most prominent role in a peace process which will eventually lead to secure and peaceful states of Israel and Palestine.

Also read: Tony Karon, TIME-Why Holocaust Denial Hurts the Palestinian Cause

Other victims of Holocaust denial

2006-12-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

Mahmoud Al-Safadi is a former Palestinian militant who was recently freed from an Israeli jail after 18 years for throwing Molotov cocktails during a 1988 uprising. In an Open letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he questions the Iranian President's stance on Holocaust and calls it a "great disservice to popular struggles the world over." Another Palestinian, Khaled Mahamid, a lawyer who has opened the first Arab Holocaust museum in his office in Nazareth, believing it is essential for the Arab world to acknowledge and understand the Holocaust if it is ever to make peace with Israel, was denied visa by Iranian embassy in Jordan to attend the conference because as he himself professed, he intended to face the Holocaust deniers and prove to them that they should recognize the Holocaust.

So much for Iranian freedom of speech.

Here are some excerpts from Al-Safadi's letter, published on December 6:

...I am furious about your insistence on claiming that the Holocaust never took place and about your doubts about the number of Jews who were murdered in the extermination and concentration camps, organized massacres, and gas chambers, consequently denying the universal historical significance of the Nazi period.

Allow me to say, Mr. President, with all due respect to you, that you made these statements without really knowing the Nazi industry of death. To have read the works of some deniers seems to be enough for you -- a little like a man who shouts above a well and hears only the echo of his own voice. I believe that a man in your position should not make such an enormous error, because it could be turned against him and, worse still, his people.

...Whatever the number of victims -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- the crime is monumental. Any attempt to deny it deprives the denier of his own humanity and sends him immediately to the side of torturers. Whoever denies the fact that this human disaster really took place should not be astonished that others deny the sufferings and persecutions inflicted on his own people by tyrannical leaders or foreign occupiers.

...Perhaps you think that the act of denying the Holocaust places you at the vanguard of the Muslim world and that this refusal constitutes a useful tool in the combat against American imperialism and Western hegemony. By doing so, you actually do great disservice to popular struggles the world over...At worst, you discourage and weaken the political, social, and intellectual forces who, in Europe and in the United States, reject the policy of confrontation and war carried out by George Bush, but are forced to conclude that you, too, jeopardize the world by your declarations denying the genocide and by your nuclear program.

More...

“Dictator, get lost” students tell Ahmadinejad

2006-12-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

Iran Press Service-Tehran, 11 Dec. (IPS) Hundreds of pro-reforms students burned pictures of hard line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezhad, booed him with chants of “Ahmadi Nezhad, symbol of discrimination and dictatorship” and threw firecrackers in an effort to disrupt his speech at a university on Monday, according to eyewitnesses and reports from several Iranian independent news agencies.

Despite severe security measures, the protesting students apparently avoided security guards who tried to prevent them from attending the speech at Amir Kabir University, according to the student news Web site, “AdwarNews”.

“As Ahmadi Nezhad approached the podium to speech, the members of the Islamic Students Association began booing and chanting, while some even burned pictures of the Iranian president”, Adwar confirmed.

“As students chanted “Liar, Get Out”, Ahmadi Nezhad got so angry that he accused the students of being agents of the United States and being on the American’s payroll. He then threatened to punish them harshly”, one student told Iran Press Service, adding that officials from the University had filled the auditorium with basij volunteers and women clad in black chadors, posing as students.

More...

Quote of the day

2006-12-11T20:57:00.000-05:00

"It is simply tragic that millennia of proud Persian history have culminated in a government that today cannot be counted among the world's most civilized nations."

2008 presidential hopeful, Republican Sen. John McCain.

Ahmadinejad booed during speech at university

2006-12-11T07:34:00.000-05:00

Students shout "death to dictator", burn Ahmadinejad's pictures

December 11, 2006 Reuters MSNBC:

TEHRAN -- Dozens of Iranian students burned pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and threw firecrackers in an effort to disrupt his speech at a university on Monday, a presidential office spokesman said. It was the first time the president, elected in a landslide in June 2005, had faced such open hostility at a public event. But the spokesman said Ahmadinejad was not deterred and completed his address at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University.

“While he was speaking today they tried to interrupt but they couldn’t and they even burned his pictures while he was speaking and they threw firecrackers but Ahmadinejad continued his speech,” the spokesman said. He said 50 to 60 students were involved and confirmed local news agency reports they had chanted “Death to the dictator” and that scuffles had broken out between pro- and anti-Ahmadinejad students at the event.

Strong reactions from both sides The ISNA students’ news agency said Ahmadinejad had responded to the burning of his pictures by saying: “Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burned in the path of true freedom, independence and justice.” The semi-official Fars news agency said supporters of the president had prevented the protesters from approaching the podium where the president was speaking and chanted: “Ahmadi, Ahmadi, we support you.” Ahmadinejad told the students: “The minority group which says there is no freedom of speech are not allowing the majority to hear my remarks,” Fars said.

War in Iraq: America should set a date and buy some leverage

2006-12-09T12:43:00.000-05:00

The "always insightful" Tom Friedman makes an excellent point in his latest column in NY Times:

The only hope of moving the factions inside Iraq, not to mention Syria and Iran, toward reconciliation is if we have leverage over them, which we now lack. The currency of Middle East politics is pain. And right now, all the pain is being inflicted on us and on Iraqi civilians. Only if we tell all the players that we are leaving might we create a different balance of pain and therefore some hope for a diplomatic deal. Trying to do diplomacy without the threat of pain is like trying to play baseball without a bat.

As for the neighbors, well, right now Iran, Syria and some other Arab states look at Iraq and clearly believe that the controlled chaos there is their friend. For Arab autocrats, chaos is their friend because a burning Iraq on Al Jazeera sends a message to their own people: "This is what happens to those who try democracy." And for Iran and Syria, anything that frustrates the U.S. in Iraq and keeps America bleeding weakens its ability to confront Tehran.

The minute we leave, chaos in Iraq is not their friend anymore. First of all, if there is a full-fledged civil war, Syria, a largely Sunni country, will have to support the Iraqi Sunnis. Shiite Iran will have to support the Iraqi Shiites. That would mean Iran and Syria, now allies, will be on opposite sides of the Iraqi civil war. That will leave them with the choice of either indirectly fighting each other or working to settle the war.

Moreover, right now we are "Mr. Big" in Iraq, soaking up all the popular anger. But the minute we're gone, Iran becomes "Mr. Big" and the age-old tensions between Iraqi Arab Shiites and Iranian Persian Shiites will surface. Iran and Moktada al-Sadr will be at each other's throats.

Also, as long as our troops are in Iraq, we are pinned down and an easy target for Iran to hit, should we ever want to strike its nuclear facilities. Once we are out, we will have much more room to maneuver. I'm not saying we should attack Iran, but I am saying Iran will be much more worried that we will.

More...

Weekend Funnies

2006-12-09T12:16:00.000-05:00

From the most hillarious news source in America, "The Onion":

Iraq War Recommendations
December 6, 2006

The Baker Study Group released their report on new Iraq strategies. Here are the some of the other options for Iraq currently on the table:

Implement phased withdrawal of all media access

Rapidly train Iraqi security forces in use of butterfly knives

Try to meet insurgents halfway by burning own effigies of Bush

Promote Smithfield Ham–sponsored "Hey, America, What's Your Exit Strategy?" contest

Spend a weekend researching the customs and history of the Iraqi people

Stop half-assing USO shows

Teach Iraqis about ultimate futility of sectarian violence by pointing out that, Shiite or Sunni, they all look alike anyway

Move operations over to another country that will embrace democracy more readily

From the Onion's news archive:

Sean Penn Demands To Know What Asshole Took SeanPenn@ gmail.com:
January 17, 2006-LOS ANGELES—In an impassioned 1,900-word open letter published in Monday's Washington Post, actor-director Sean Penn urged the unknown person who registered the e-mail address SeanPenn@gmail.com to "come forward immediately, rather than wallowing in the shame and ignominy of fraud."...Penn recounted in the letter how he had waited for an invitation to Google's e-mail service for a year and a half before receiving one earlier this month. According to Penn, when he tried to establish an account, he received a message indicating that his desired user name, SeanPenn, had already been registered. "Sir or madam, if only you could have seen the anger and revulsion that washed over my face as I found that SeanPenn@gmail.com, Penn@gmail.com, SPenn@gmail.com, Penn.Sean@gmail.com, and SeanPennRules@gmail.com had all been taken," Penn's letter read.

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Ahmadinejad’s Hypocrisy

2006-12-06T19:52:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

As an Iranian, the first thought that crosses my mind when I read Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter to the American people is "what a hypocrit". In his five-page letter, the Iranian President, whose government’s blatant violations of human rights, from brutally oppressing freedom of speech to denying equal rights to woman and religious minorities to name a few, is no secret to anyone, preaches Americans about human values, dignity, respect and integrity as if they didn’t know his regime’s history and couldn’t see his intent.

In the letter, Mr. Ahmadinejad argues that “millions of Palestinians have been driven out of their homes in the past 60 years. Many of them have died in the Diaspora and that many of their children are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.” Unfortunately, The same argument can be made about millions of the inhabitants of Iran who have been driven out of Iran in the past 28 years by the Islamic Regime, either aging while still in the hope of returning to their homeland or dying in Diaspora. These are the same Iranians Mr.Ahmadinejad refers to in his letter as his “compatriots”, otherwise labeled as “treacherous anti-revolutionaries” by his regime, who have been humiliated, intimidated and eventually forced to exile for the fear of their lives.

Mr. Ahmadinejad then questions the Bush administration handling of Iraq hurricane Katrina: “ a substantial number of American soldiers have been killed or wounded… I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure…would it not be more beneficial… to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness. "

Of course, the American public also knows that many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq , by the weapons and roadside bombs that US commanders in Iraq believe to be manufactured and shipped to Iraq by the Iranian regime. ABC News reported just a few days ago on coalition forces, seizing Iranian-made weapons, going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militia. The American people will also consider it extremely unlikely that the Iranian people, suffering from a wide array of backbreaking economic problems, have ever consented their government funneling billions of dollars of Iran 's annual expenditure from Iran 's treasury to Iraqi shia militias or the likes of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Shedding crocodile tears for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Ahmadinejad forgets to tell the American people how in his own country, the survivors of catastrophic 2003 Bam earthquake are still living in tents, under the most appalling conditions. Would it not be more beneficial to spend Iran ’s astronomical expenditures in Iraq , Lebanon and the Palestinian territories for the welfare and prosperity of the Iranian people?

Continuing with his long list of Bush administration’s crimes and misdemeanors, Mr. Ahmadinejad speaks of Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons and refers to the result of the midterm elections in the US as “a message the administration should heed.” Of course, with his holier-than-thou attitude, he doesn’t see it necessary to explain why he doesn’t open “his” prisons to the world media to prove the freedom, human dignity and integrity he speaks of and how the Iranian people can show “their” discontent with their government in a country in which “free elections” are more myth than reality.

Finally he goes back to the Palestinian issue, claiming that “the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum."

I believe upon hearing this, a lot of Americans would be tempted enough to ask the Iranian president, " Sir, why don’t you practice what you preach for once? As the Iranian President, why don’t you demand that, the right of the Iranians to live in their own homeland be recognized so that millions of Iranians can return to their homeland and the future of all of Iran and its form of government be determined in a referendum? As for the Palestinians, on what grounds do you take it upon yourself to speak on their behalf when they have leaders who can speak for them?"

If nothing else, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s letter--the latest in a series of his hypocritical, populist publicity stunts—may gain him fans among the oppressed, impoverished masses of the Middle East, but won’t certainly be able to fool a nation who judges politicians by their deeds rather than words and--in the words of Abraham Lincoln-- is conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Dear President Ahmadinejad...

2006-11-30T12:39:00.000-05:00

FOXNews.com:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a lengthy letter to the American people Wednesday, addressing "Noble Americans" and urging unity with Iran in spite of what the U.S. government says and does.The letter was released in New York on Wednesday and seems to be an attempt by the controversial Iranian president to circumvent the Bush administration to directly reach Americans. After you read President Ahmadinejad's letter, here's your chance to send a reply, YOUR open letter to him, the president of Iran:

President Ahmadinejad,
I have read your letter to us, the American people. My interpretation is that President Bush could have written this same letter to the Iranian people. With very few exceptions, everything you complained about in the United States and its administration(s) are true to a much more extensive degree in Iran. But, if President Bush wrote such a letter to the Iranian people, would they even know it existed, let alone be allowed to read it?
— John (Angier, NC)

Dear Mahmoud,
This is great stuff! I really mean it! Have considered trying out as a contestant on "Last Comic Standing?" As long as you brutally repress freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of conscience in your country, please allow me to laugh at your criticisms our political process.
Keep it up!
— Noel

President Ahmadinejad,
I may not be on the same side as our president on some things, like his being too weak on the Mexican border issue. But my biggest compliant is that he hasn't gotten rid of you!
— Kathy (Atlanta, TX)

Dear President Ahmadinejad,
If you truly believe we true-blooded American people can be influenced by the likes of you and your letter, it is just a fabrication of your sick mind.
— Bob (Nevada)

Dear President Ahmadinejad and the people of Iran,
It is sad that some of you are brainwashed and filled with such hatred. It is sad you will never know a life of freedom. It is sad and criminal that children are abused from birth and forced to listen to an evil being who claims to be your president. It is sad that some of you believe his lies. May your president rot for crimes against humanity and for depriving innocent people of God-given freedom.
— Carol (Avon, IN)

Well said Carol. Thank you-Kash

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Democracy carries no sense to Iran and Syria

2006-11-23T11:49:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I warned here that Iran and Syria, due to their scorpion-like nature, cannot be counted on as partners in bringing peace and stability to Iraq and the Middle East:

Con Coughlin, UK Telegraph-The precise identity of those responsible for this week's assassination of Pierre Gemayel and his bodyguard may never be known, but few Lebanese entertain serious doubts that Hizbollah and its close ally Syria were not involved in the killing.

Ever since Syria was forced to undertake a humiliating withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon last year, following its involvement in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Damascus has been desperate to reassert its authority over a country it sees as a client state. Prior to the withdrawal, Syria had dominated Lebanon's political landscape – irrespective of the wishes of the Lebanese people – with varying degrees of success for two decades.

This sudden loss of influence, coupled with the championing of the newly liberated Lebanon by the Bush administration, has made the Syrians more determined than ever to restore the status quo ante. The fall-out from the Hariri affair – which could still result in the prosecution of senior members of Syrian President Bashir Assad's inner circle – has meant the Syrians have had to keep a low profile in their quest to re-establish their domination over Lebanon. So they have turned to Hizbollah, and the militia's backers in Teheran, to do the job for them, and so far the tactic has proved to be remarkably successful.

The war Hizbollah provoked – on Teheran's orders – against Israel last summer succeeded in consolidating the Shi'ite Muslim militia's standing in Lebanon as the one faction that had the will, and the resources, to take on the Israelis in defence of Lebanese sovereignty. In fact Hizbollah's standing is such that Michel Aoun, the country's former Christian president and a highly respected former army general, has opted to make an alliance with the Shia.

...All of which makes a mockery of Tony Blair's suggestion – articulated only last week during his Mansion House speech – that the West should engage in a constructive dialogue with both Syria and Iran in an attempt to resolve all the ills of the Middle East. What he singularly fails to understand is that, far from being interested in pursuing a dialogue with the West, the Syrian and Iranian regimes are engaged in an elemental battle with the West to define the future shape of the Middle East.

...This is a prospect that is viewed with alarm among the ruling classes in Iran and Syria, who depend upon the tried and tested methods of state-sanctioned brutality and repression to keep themselves in power. Far from wanting to work with the West to make the region a better place, they want to keep it as it is. Rather than seeing governments established in Baghdad and Beirut that are accountable to the people, they are prepared to resort to any means at their disposal – from road-side bombs to assassination squads – to sustain themselves in power.

Far from wanting to assist the West with its efforts to bring a breath of modernity to the politics of the Middle East, the unreconstructed autocrats of Damascus and Teheran are viscerally opposed to any attempt to make life better for the people they rule. The sooner Mr Blair grasps this simple fact, the better.

Related: Michael Young,Times of London: So how does 'engaging with Syria' look now?

What do we do with Iran?

2006-11-18T17:52:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Of all the analyses I have heard, seen or read recently, "What do we do with Iran" by Former US secretary of State Henry Kissinger--the architect of the US foreign policy during the cold war-- strikes me as one of the most rational ones as he fully examines the pros and cons of what he calls the increasing fashionable term, "negotiations with Tehran":

The argument has become widespread that Iran (and Syria) should be drawn into a negotiating process, hopefully to bring about a change of their attitudes as happened, for example, in the opening to China a generation ago. This, it is said, will facilitate a retreat by the US to more strategically sustainable positions. A diplomacy that excludes adversaries is clearly a contradiction in terms. But the argument on behalf of negotiating too often focuses on the opening of talks rather than their substance. The fact of talks is assumed to represent a psychological breakthrough. The relief supplied by a change of atmosphere is bound to be temporary, however. Diplomacy — especially with an adversary — can succeed only if it brings about a balance of interests. Failing that, it runs the risks of turning into an alibi for procrastination or a palliative to ease the process of defeat without, however, eliminating the consequences of defeat.
Now let’s see if talks with Iran can bring about the balance of interests Kissinger rightly refers to. The US interests in the Middle East can be categorized into three major categories: Prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, fighting Islamic terrorism, and defending Israel's security.

On the other side of the spectrum lie Iran's interests which include: developing nuclear weapons, spreading Islamic fundamentalism and threatening Israel by training and funding terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Could there ever be a balance of interests between these two countries considering their current political pursuits? Of course not. But why does Iran pursue goals that put it at odds with the free world led by the United States?

Before getting excited about the prospects of talks with Iran and making comparisons with the US approach toward China more than three decades ago, we should understand the nature of Iran's ruling establishment and the way it views the world as Mr Kissinger mentions.

There exist two schools of thoughts in Iran, one led by figures like Hashemi Rafsanjani and former president Mohammad Khatami--which argue that Iran needs either nuclear weapons or "security guarantees" from the United States to ensure its survival. Such "guarantees" can even lead to Iran resuming diplomatic relations with the US in the not too distant future and will make Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons unnecessary. This school of thought has now being completely marginalized by Iran's supreme leader and his revolutionary guard puppets-- including the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-- who now form the most powerful political elite in Iran.

In the view of this latter group, Iran should not only develop nuclear weapons as a deterrence against any prospective US regime change or military plans, but should also export the Islamic revolution, a cause crystallized by former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini and sanctified by his die-hard followers ever since. This school of thought, who is now in charge of all major decision-making bodies in Iran, takes it upon itself to spread the causes of its revolution by help growing Shiite Islamic fundamentalism to set the stage ready for the appearance of its twelfth Imam and assist terror organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas to first derail the peace process and eventually eradicate Israel.

It is this school of thought that the US would have to sit down and talk with and it is this school of though which would turn the negotiations into a long-drawn-out process to buy time for its nuclear ambitions as it did with the Europeans. On the other hand, US disastrous post-war moves in Iraq and Israel's incompetent handling of Hezbollah this past summer followed by its wrong strategy in dealing with Hamas in Gaza--which has led to the killings of innocent Palestinians in recent days--have allowed the terrorist threats by Iran and its terror proxies to fully metastasize in the region. Now why would the Iranian leaders ever want to help pacify Iraq for the US? To help push Iran's nuclear crisis to the top of US agenda, thus creating a serious headache for themselves?

As Mr Kissinger rightly argues "so long as Iran views itself as a crusade rather than a nation, a common interest will not emerge from negotiations. To evoke a more balanced view should be an important goal for US diplomacy. Iran may come to understand sooner or later that it is still a poor country not in a position to challenge the entire world order. But such an evolution presupposes the development of a precise and concrete strategic and negotiating programme by the US and its associates."

I would personally not be against talks with Iran if such a strategy could help stop this bloodshed in Iraq and even benefit my compatriots who are suffering under mullahs in the long run. But talks with current Iranian leaders in their present mood will not achieve those goals.

The united States instead should focus on a comprehensive strategy which will pursue diplomatic goals on different fronts in the Middle East simultaneously. Mr Kissinger again puts it best:

In such a policy, Iran must find a respected, but not dominant, place. A restarted Palestinian peace process should play a significant role in that design, which presupposes close cooperation among the US,Europe and the moderate Arab states. We must not flinch from this underlying reality. Iran needs to be encouraged to act as a nation, not a cause. It has no incentive to appear as a deus ex machina to enable America to escape its embarrassments, unless the US retains an ability to fill the vacuum or at least be a factor in filling it...A purposeful and creative diplomacy towards Iran is important for building a more promising region — but only if Iran does not, in the process, come to believe that it is able to shape the future on its own or if the potential building blocks of a new order disintegrate while America sorts out its purposes.
Update 1: NY Times-Envisioning U.S. Talks With Iran and Syria: “The main concern for Iran is that it does not want to change the current power structure in the country,” said Ahmad Zeidabadi, a political analyst in Tehran. “It will resist any change.” “The U.S. and Iran are pursuing different policies in the region,” Mr. Zeidabadi said. “They might have some common interests. But what is obvious is that Iran considers its survival in spreading a kind of radical ideological Islam in the region which the U.S. says is its enemy.”

Update 2- Kissinger on BBC Television:"I believe America has to be in some dialogue with Iran," Kissinger said."It seems to me the fundamental problem is this: does Iran conduct itself as a crusade or as a nation?"If Iran is a nation it should be possible to define a relationship in which Iran, together with all interested parties, contributes to stability in the region and plays a respected role."If Iran is a crusade that is trying to overthrow the international system as we know it, which is the way the Iranian president talks, then it will be extremely difficult to come to a negotiated solution and then down the road some sort of confrontation will occur."

Update 3: Washington Post- Embittered insiders turn against Bush-Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress.

Update 4: Newsweek- Talking with the enemy: Iran is now raising that price—dramatically. Tehran knows that George W. Bush faces new political pressure from an incoming Democratic Congress to withdraw from Iraq sooner rather than later. Tehran also hears, through the media, that the forthcoming report by the Iraq Study Group (co-chaired by Baker and Lee Hamilton) is expected to recommend fuller engagement with Iran and Syria

Update 5: The Economist (Via Irvaj)- Reaching Out to Iran and Syria: Before those sorts of talks, however, America needs a clear idea about what it is actually willing to trade. Let Iran go nuclear in return for some help on the margin in Iraq? Hand Lebanon back to Mr Assad in order to split Syria from Iran? Surely not. It is good to talk, but expecting too much from Iran and Syria would be a mistake. The place to resolve America's problems in Iraq is still, unfortunately, Iraq itself.

Talks with Iran and Syria will get US nowhere

2006-11-16T23:43:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

Mounting public and international pressure to find a way out of Iraq has made many US political experts see holding direct talks with Iran and Syria as the "magic bullet" to fix the situation in Iraq. That is nothing but deceiving the American public.

Talks with Iran and Syria under the current circumstances will yield no result for the US for some very simple reasons:

1) Iran and Syria both know that by helping stabilize Iraq, they would put the US back in the position of strength, thus hurting their own chances of survival.

2) Coming from a position of strength, both Iran and Syria are going to make outrageous demands for any probable cooperation with the US. Syrian leadership, implicated in the bombing that killed Lebanese Prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 and facing UN prosecution, will sure demand that the US intervene to stop the UN plan for an international tribunal for the suspected killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. As for the Iranian leaders, they will repeat their demands for security guarantees which will--in their simplistic view--ensure their survival.

3) Talks with Iran about Iraq can not be held and expected to be fruitful while Iran is forging full steam ahead with its suspicious nuclear program, human rights violations, torture and killings of its dissidents and funding Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists. But these are the areas Iranian leadership wants the United States to stay out of if it expects any cooperation from Iran. Even a school by knows that these are the things no US administration--Republican or Democrat-- is going to acquiesce to.

Talks with Iran and Syria at this juncture will be a strategic defeat for the US and its allies in their war against terror since no amount of dialogue can lead to these two regimes changing their scorpion-like nature. What’s more, such talks would reward these two regimes with the ultimate prize for their killing campaign in Iraq in the past three years and set a disastrous precedent for other rogue states in the world to follow.

Iran and Syria have now been emboldened by the US missteps in Iraq. If the United States really wants to achieve anything out of talks with them, it should first find a way to improve the situation in Iraq so that it will rob both Iranian and Syrian leaderships of their present trump cards, otherwise any talks will not only be doomed even before they start, but will be a win for these two rogue regimes and their ideology of terror and that's the last thing the free world needs.

America, the land that I love

2006-11-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

Kash Kheirkhah

A lifelong dream of mine finally came true last week when--for the first time--I set foot on the American soil and visited Washington D.C.

Many folks here in Canada--given my profound excitement in the days leading up to my trip to America--had warned me to lower my expectations, saying the US had changed after 9/11 and that I could very well be put off by what I was about to see.

But that was never to be.

America was everything I had in mind and then some. From the phenomenal hospitality of my unique, unimaginably gracious American host and friend (along with another wonderful friend of mine who are both two of the dearest people I have in my life), to the friendly, welcoming attitude of ordinary Americans in Maryland, Virginia and D.C., who despite knowing I was an Iranian, never even frowned upon my presence in the U.S., I got to experience first hand why America stands out in the world as the land immigrants from across the globe find peace and prosperity in.

I managed to spend some wonderful moments in the US, from visiting George Washington's mansion in Mount Vernon to the Ford's Theater in downtown D.C., to the old town of Alexandria in Virgina. But there is one particular place I was really proud to have been able to visit: A polling station in Accokeek, Maryland on the elections day last Tuesday, where I got to see first hand "democracy at work." Having never voted in my life, I was delighted to have a chance to see how Americans--at least the ones I saw that day-- strongly believed in making their voices heard through their votes. Not only that, but I also got a sticker which said "I voted" and I still have it on my jacket!!!

I loved what I saw in America and this very first impression I got from the land of the brave, home of the free and its warm, welcoming people is the one I'll never forget. I hope to see more of this unique country in the years ahead and who knows, maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to live in the land that I love.

God bless you America and I look forward to seeing you again. Thank you for a wonderful week.

Iran's desperate kidney traders

2006-10-31T07:03:00.000-05:00

This disaster is happening in the country whose President keeps saying "nuclear energy is turning us into a superpower"... Where is Iran going to under mullahs?

BBC-On streets and in town squares in Iran, young men and women can be seen holding signs offering their kidneys for sale.

One of them reads: "Immediate offer! Kidney for sale, young man, 22, healthy, blood type O positive. Tel 09122... "

Every year, 1,400 Iranians sell one of their kidneys to a stranger.

At the Tehran branch of the Association of Kidney Patients, one of many agencies set up to facilitate the trade, the reception is full of people.

In the narrow, drab corridors, people are waiting in line, either to fill in forms, answer questions, undergo tests or be X-rayed, and finally to be operated on.

Activity is intense, bordering on the chaotic. Registers are filled in, photographs of patients are pasted onto small cards, and the telephone rings endlessly.

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Text of original draft sanctions resolution on Iran

2006-10-26T21:56:00.000-04:00

Here you can find the original draft resolution prepared by Britain, France and Germany, calling for economic and diplomatic sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment activities. The draft was circulated to China and Russia on Tuesday and obtained by Kyodo News (via Yahoo Asia) on Thursday. Russia has already rejected this proposal for sanctions on Iran as too tough!

Rafsanjani wanted in Argentina

2006-10-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

Argentine prosecutors asked a federal judge on Wednesday to order the arrest of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed scores of people.

The decision to attack the center "was undertaken in 1993 by the highest authorities of the then-government of Iran," prosecutor Alberto Nisman said at a news conference.He said the actual attack was entrusted to the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.

The worst terrorist attack ever on Argentine soil, the bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and injured more than 200 when an explosive-laden vehicle detonated near the building.

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Flashback: What happened in Argentina?

Wikipidia:The AMIA bombing was an attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, or AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. It was Argentina's deadliest bombing and the largest single incident of terrorism against Jews since World War II. Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America.

Latest Iran headlines

2006-10-25T07:23:00.000-04:00

Gulf News-Iran, Syria and Al Qaida 'Trying to Tear Iraq Apart' America's civilian and military leaders in Iraq linked Iran and Syria with Al Qaida yesterday as forces trying to tear the country apart and prevent the United States from establishing a stable democracy. The comments from ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and General George Casey were among the strongest US officials have levelled against Iraq's two neighbours over alleged support for armed groups behind much of the bloodshed.

The Financial Times-Sanctions Will Help Regime Change in Iran, Says Bolton Imposing economic and political sanctions against Iran and North Korea will help democratic forces in those countries as Washington pursues its "ultimate objective" of regime change, John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said yesterday. Mr Bolton's comments, to Fox News, reflect the views of hardliners in the Bush administration who doubt that the threat of nuclear proliferation can be dealt with through negotiations. Although the US denies it is pursuing a "regime change" policy towards what it calls the "axis of evil", Mr Bolton's linking of sanctions with "democratic forces" are likely to complicate delicate coalition-building efforts by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state.

AP-Rice Says 'Axis of Evil' Proven Right WASHINGTON -- Recent events in Iran and North Korea support President Bush's 2002 claim that those nations were part of an "axis of evil," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday. After discussions of the North Korean nuclear test and the anti-Semitic remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, radio host Sean Hannity asked Rice about the axis remark. "You think of some of the world reaction to the president's use of the word 'axis of evil,' and then you see how events have been unfolding," Hannity remarked. "It was a pretty good analysis, wasn't it?" Rice replied. "It really was."

AP-U.S., Allies Urging Ban on Sales of Nuclear Material to Iran VIENNA, Austria -- The U.S. and its allies want the U.N. Security Council to ban the sale of missile and atomic technology to Iran and end most U.N. help for its nuclear programs—moves diplomats said Tuesday are narrowly focused in hopes of winning Russian and Chinese backing for sanctions. The diplomats, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the draft resolution was not yet public, said the proposal also would commit U.N. member nations to denying entry to Iranian officials involved in developing missiles or nuclear systems. A Security Council resolution passed last week imposed similar sanctions on the sale or transfer of technology that could contribute to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs after that nation's test explosion of a nuclear bomb.

The Washington Times-Iran, Syria Rebuild Hezbollah Iran and Syria are rapidly rearming Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon as an international peacekeeping force has failed to carry out a U.N. mandate to disarm the Shi'ite militia group, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday. Mr. Mofaz, a former defense minister and chief of general staff in the Israeli Defense Force, also warned that time was growing short for the international community to implement effective sanctions to halt Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. "We know the policy of the Iranian regime is to buy time by talking" while it pursues a nuclear bomb, Mr. Mofaz said in an interview in his suite at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington. "So far they have been very successful."

Iran's Intelligence Ministry behind ban on access to higher education

2006-10-23T21:50:00.000-04:00

(New York, October 19, 2006) – Human Rights Watch called on Iran to immediately revoke bans on students from attending university because they hold political beliefs not to the government’s liking, and to allow registered students to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association.

In a briefing paper released today, entitled “Denying the Right to Education,” Human Rights Watch documents how the government barred at least 12 students from university registration this past year, despite the fact that graduate programs had accepted them on the basis of successful competitive entrance examinations. The briefing paper also documents the cases of another 54 students who were allowed to register only after agreeing to sign statements that they will refrain from peaceful political activities.

According to documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of Information, which performs intelligence functions, is orchestrating the campaign to deny student activists their right to education. The documents make clear that the decisions are solely based on the students’ political background, not on any educational standards. With the exception of one, all of the banned students are outspoken activists or work with the Islamic Students Association on their campuses.

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Iran: Making uranium while the sun shines

2006-10-15T10:31:00.000-04:00

Economist, October 5-Iran's ruling clerics are tactically canny. With their prestige enhanced by Hizbullah's perceived defeat of Israel, it might be thought that now would be a good time for them to press Mr Bush, whose designs in the Middle East and Afghanistan are acutely vulnerable to Iranian interference, for a deal on terms amenable to the Islamic Republic. But the Iranians, says another experienced European diplomat, “do not know how to use their good fortune.”

Puffed up after its successes in Iraq and Lebanon, Iran's leaders may not see that, the more they stall, and the more America's allies prevaricate over sanctions, the closer America and perhaps Israel come to taking matters into their own hands and launching military strikes. Reaching out to America would take a vision, courage and authority that the post-Khomeini generation does not command. Far easier, while the sun shines, to enrich uranium.

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Tehran arms Hamas for a double-barreled war option and Gaza as second Lebanon

2006-10-14T09:03:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2006
DEBKAfile
DEBKAfile Special Military Report

The military pacts Palestinian Hamas interior minister Said Siyam signed with his Iranian counterpart Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi in Tehran on Oct. 12 are designed to transform Hamas’ military wing, the Ezz e-Din al Qassam, into a crack operational arm of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and Gaza into a second Lebanon.

Syam was in Tehran for two days at the head of a 7-man delegation. DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report Tehran has committed to training Hamas’ rapid deployment force of 6,500 men in Hizballah combat tactics, with the accent on missiles, especially the anti-tank variety which were used with devastating effect against Israeli tanks in the Lebanon War.

The force will be sent over in batches for six-week courses at Revolutionary Guards installations in southern Iran. Iran will foot the $60 million bill for the training as well as for the top-notch weaponry.

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O Canada, my new home and native land...

2006-10-12T20:41:00.000-04:00

Kash Kheirkhah

There are moments in our journey through this amazing ride called life in which dreams finally come true, only if we believe ourselves worthy of them and have the courage to follow them since pursuing a dream sometimes--as it happened in my own life--equates abandoning some of the people you hold dearest in your life.

Three and a half years ago, I left my family and homeland to embark on a life-changing journey that began with a dream. The dream of a brighter future by establishing my life in the modern, free world and eventually becoming a member of this new, exciting world...

And it was this dream that kept me going through some of the most difficult days of my life...

Tomorrow, as Canada embraces me as one of its new citizens, a big part of this dream finally comes true and I just couldn't be any happier.

As I have said before, immigration, before anything else, is the story of survival; the story of constant physical and emotional struggles; the story of the difficult moments impossible to share with anyone, because no one understands what you are going through except yourself.

Yet it is also the story of a vision of the promising years to come, the wonderful new places to go, the great new people to see, the precious old friends to rediscover and great new friends to make, the exciting new plans to follow and the life-long dreams to achieve. It's the story of the chances to take and the successes to savor.

Canada is now my new homeland but that doesn't mean Iran isn't anymore. It is true that I am blacklisted--like hundreds of thousands of other freedom-loving Iranians-- by the Iranian regime and thus, can't go back, but there is not a SINGLE moment I don't think about IRAN and the people--including my own family-- who are suffering under the hands of a backward, oppressive regime. I can't wait to see the day that my country is finally free and as a journalist, I'll do my level best to open people's eyes, on this side of the world, to the atrocities that are happening in Iran and also help my own compatriots receive the news and information they really need to know, in order to get out of the plight they are currently in.

Iran, my home and native land, I love you and look forward to the day I'll see you again as a free, democratic and prosperous country.

Canada, my new home and native land,

Here I am. This is me and I coming to your world so wild and free.

It's a new world. It's a new start. It's a new day in a new land and it's waiting for me.

Here I am...Thank you from the bottom of my heart and I love you.

Islamic Republic MP: 18.5 percent of Iran's 70 million population under the poverty line

2006-10-12T20:25:00.000-04:00

This while in a speech earlier today, Islamic Republic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed, "There's only one thing the Iranian people are demanding these days and that's nuclear energy"...

AFP-TEHRAN -- About 200,000 Iranian workers have not received their salaries for months, the head of the official labour union has been quoted as saying in the press.

"Close to 200,000 workers in 500 factories have not received any salary for months," said Alireza Mahjoub, the secretary general of Iran's House of Labour. "Some of these workers have been waiting for their wages for about 50 months," said Mahjoub, who is also a member of parliament.

The parliament should consider the delayed payments in the (upcoming) additional budget bill," he said. According to Mahjoub, some 18.5 percent of Iran's 70 million population live under the poverty line. The Tehran MP also expressed concern over the high inflation rate during the past few months, describing the rising prices as the "the root of the current economic problems."

In the past few weeks, Iranian officials have denied inflation is rising, putting the rate at about 10 percent, even though staple items have become more expensive in markets and unofficial sources estimate the figure to have reached at least 20 percent. However, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacted to the criticism by putting the blame on "national and non-national media" for rising consumer prices.

Scorsese's 'The Departed' ROCKS!

2006-10-09T14:27:00.000-04:00

Martin Scorsese's "The Departed"-- his best movie since Casino (1995) in my opinion-- is a superb effort by a legendary cinema maestro who quenches moviegoers' desire for a great storytelling by his remake of the Hong Kong movie 'WuJianDao' (Internal Affair). That's why this movie had the biggest opening sales ever for Marty and is already on IMDB's top 250 best movies of all time!

"The Departed" is a sweet reminder of Scorsese in "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas", yet it is in a class of its own because of its unique style of unfolding the characters , events and the storyline, not to mention the twists toward the end of the movie that just blow your mind away.

Scorsese's magic touch is everywhere in this gangster flick which is a genre of movie he does best; from his signature storytelling and cinematagrophy to the music which does make you feel "Comfortably Numb" as you follow the story.

Martin Scorsese's magnificent storytelling in "The Departed" and the legendary Jack Nicholson and Leonardo Dicaprio's powerhouse acting (Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg are also great) all should be rewarded with an oscar. Will Clint Eastwood and his "Flags of our Fathers" let that happen? I don't know, but as a big Scorsese's fan and with all due respect for my other favorite Clint Eastwood, I truly believe this should finally be Scorsese's year.

Thank you for "The Departed" Marty.

Anna Politkovskaya: Another outspoken Putin critic shot dead in Moscow

2006-10-08T12:58:00.000-04:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow, police said."According to initial information she was killed by two shots when leaving the lift. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift.
Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya.

AP-Slain Reporter Was Writing Torture Story

MOSCOW - A journalist shot to death in an apparent contract killing was about to publish a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya when she was slain, her editor said Sunday, as Russia's top prosecutor took charge of the case.

Times of London-Death of the woman who shamed Moscow

RUSSIA’S most famous investigative reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block yesterday in an apparent contract killing. A fearless opponent of Russia’s wars in Chechnya who once described President Vladimir Putin as a “KGB snoop” and compared him to Stalin, she was shot as she returned home from a shopping trip at 4.30pm. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body.

NY Times: Journalist Critical of Chechen War Is Shot Dead

MOSCOW, Oct. 7 — Anna Politkovskaya, the veteran Russian journalist and author who made her name as a searing critic of the Kremlin and its policies in Chechnya, was found dead on Saturday in her apartment building, shot in the head with a pistol, the authorities and her colleagues said.

Arrested in Afghanistan: An Iranian jihadist 'rejected by the Taliban'

2006-10-03T22:21:00.000-04:00

The Guardian-Abdullah had reached the end of a pitifully short career as a Taliban fighter. He had been arrested hours earlier, just 10 days after signing up to the insurgency. "I come from Iran," he said in a quavering voice, wringing his hands nervously. "They told me the Americans had invaded Afghanistan and I should go and fight jihad.

Military and diplomatic sources said they had received numerous reports of Iranians meeting tribal elders in Taliban-influenced areas, bringing offers of military or more often financial support for the fight against foreign forces. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the meetings took place in Helmand province, where more than 3,000 British troops are based, and neighbouring Nimroz, a lawless desert province bordering eastern Iran.

Abdullah said he had left his home in Kamyaran in the western province of Kurdistan six weeks earlier, telling his family he was going to Tehran to work. Instead he continued hundreds of miles east until he reached the desert city of Zahedan and slipped across the Afghan border. All he carried was an address given him by a jihadi leader named Abdullah Shafi, he said.

Shafi, a Kurdish militant from northern Iraq, is a former leader of Ansar al-Islam, a Taliban-like group with links to al-Qaida. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Shafi became known for despatching suicide bombers to Baghdad. Although Shafi was subsequently expelled from Iran, Abdullah said his organisation is still recruiting fresh militants - like him. Abdullah was sent to a secret training camp near the Iraqi border that he believed was run by the Iranian government. "They gave us weapons, money and accommodation, and made sure we would not be arrested," he said. "Our government doesn't like America. It wants to install a Shia government in Iraq like in Iran. It is doing its best to achieve that." Most graduates at the camp were destined for Iraq or Lebanon, Abdullah said - 19 of his 20 classmates were subsequently sent to Iraq...

More...

EU-Iran talks appear to have failed

2006-10-03T20:56:00.000-04:00

GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press: NEW YORK (AP) -- Iran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment has sabotaged talks meant to defuse the standoff over its nuclear program, opening the way for the U.N. Security Council to start considering sanctions next week, senior U.N. diplomats said Tuesday.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity, citing agreement not to publicly pronounce the talks dead before a final attempt by European Union envoy Javier Solana and Ali Larijani, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, to bridge differences in a phone call scheduled for Wednesday.

On Tuesday, another diplomat said Larijani - considered a moderate - told Solana he had been unable to sell the concept of even a limited enrichment freeze to the more hard-line leadership in Tehran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said as much during the weekend, telling professors at Tehran University that Iran would not suspend enrichment for a single day.

Wednesday's planned Larijani-Solana phone call is to be followed by a meeting Friday in London by the foreign ministers of the five Security Council nations and Germany or their senior representatives. Then, the Security Council could meet as early as Monday to start work on a resolution imposing the first of a series of sanctions meant to make Iran turn course. One of the diplomats said Western council members - the United States, Britain and France - favor an embargo on sales of nuclear or missile technology to Tehran as a first step, to be followed by others, including travel bans on Iranian officials and the freezing of their assets...

In other news:

BBC- Key powers to seek Iran sanctions: The US and key EU powers will seek a fresh UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear policy. The move comes after EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana concluded that Iran was not going to suspend uranium enrichment, said a senior UK official.

AP-Oil Prices Fall Below $59 a Barrel: Oil prices settled at a seven-month low below $59 a barrel Tuesday as rising global supplies, slack demand and a mild Atlantic hurricane season forced geopolitical worries to the backburner.

Gulf Times-Rice in Saudi, Iran issue on top of agenda: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived yesterday in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a Middle East tour set to be dominated by the Iran nuclear standoff.

Iran mulled nuclear bomb in 1988

2006-09-29T14:09:00.000-04:00

By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran:

A letter from 1988 in which Iran's top commander says Iran could need a nuclear bomb to win the war against Iraq has come to light in Tehran.

The commander is quoted in the letter, written by the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, to top officials in the final days of the war.

It has only now been made public - by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. The letter seems at odds with Tehran's statements that Iran is not seeking a bomb because it is against Islam.

The letter from Ayatollah Khomeini lists the requirements of military commanders if they are to continue fighting against Iraq.

It mentions more aircraft, helicopters, men and weapons, and also quotes the top commander saying Iran would within five years need laser-guided and atomic weapons in order to win the war.

More...

The US media's interviews with Ahmadinejad: What a mockery!

2006-09-24T11:57:00.000-04:00

Newsweek/Washington Post:

Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth?

AN-We need to look at the scene in the Middle East—60 years of war...

Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?

AN-Our suggestion is very clear ...

You've been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth. Is that your belief?

AN-What I have said has made my position clear...

You've made statements about the Holocaust, saying it was exaggerated. Is that your opinion?

AN-It's not the numbers that are important ...

TIME:

You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?

AN-People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do not insist they should change their views

Anderson Cooper, CNN:

At the U.N., you spoke with great passion of -- of brotherhood, of peace and respect for all nations. Yet, in Tehran last year, you spoke about wiping Israel off -- off the face of the -- the map, wiping Israel off the face of the map. That doesn't sound to many people in the United States, not just in the government -- to many people here, who heard that through the media, that doesn't sound like great respect for other nations. Do you want to wipe Israel off the face of the map?

AN-I'm surprised why American politicians are so sensitive and biased with -- with regards to Israel...

Of course Ahmadinejad should be taken to the task for making such outrageous comments about Israel and the Holocaust. But for God's sake isn't there ANY OTHER QUESTION you can ask him? Why do you keep asking him the same questions over and over again, thus allowing him to preach you so arrogantly with the same nonsensical sermon? Why don't you grill him the way you do your own officials? What can he and his thugs do to you here in the land of free?

Why don't you ask him about imprisonment, torture and cold-blooded murder of Iranian students and pro-democracy activists? Why don't you ask him about his role in the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Austria in 1989? Why don't you ask him about human right's violations in Iran? Why don't you ask him about his regime closing more than 100 newspapers, jailing and torturing bloggers, filtering the internet and seizing people's satellite dish's (NBC's Brian Williams was the ONLY reporter who just touched on this subject). why don't you ask him about his involvement in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis? why don't you ask him about his regime financing terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah?

After Ahmadinejad's session with with a high-level group from the Council on Foreign Relations for ninety minutes, the President of CFR, Richard Haas is quoted as saying: “I’m not sure we learned anything new,” and CFR reporter Bernard Gwertzmen admits: "Ahmadinejad repeated what he has said in previous interviews."

Really? I'm wondering why...

By the way, Anderson, we actually have a free press in America, unlike in parts of Iran? What on earth is "in parts of Iran" supposed to mean?

Watch me this Friday on Voice of America's live Persian talk show

2006-09-19T00:05:00.000-04:00

My dear Iranian friends and readers,

Barring any unexpected development, I'll be the guest of VOA's "A Round-table with You" (mizegerdi ba shoma) this Friday, September 22 (31 shahrivar) which will discuss "disinformation" in Iran.

If you are inside Iran, you can watch it on Hotbird satellite and if you live outside the country, you can watch it here: http://www.voanews.com/persian/roundtable.cfm.

The program is aired live every day from 1:30 to 2:30 pm here on the east coast. In case you can't watch it live, the show will be available to view online for one week after its live broadcast on September 22 . Hope you'll like it and be kind enough to let me know about your opinions.

Iranian interior minister denied US visa for UN visit

2006-09-15T14:25:00.000-04:00

Kash Kheirkhah

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and quoted by the IRNA news agency, Mostafa Pur-Mohammadi has complained to the United Nations that U.S. authorities have blocked his participation in a UN gathering by failing to issue him a visa. Pourmohamadi said the move contravenes the United States' international obligations as the host country of the UN and violates Iran's rights. The letter was delivered to the UN on September 14. Pourmohamadi had applied for a U.S. visa to attend this week's UN meeting on migration.

This development once again puctuates the significant difference that exists between the way US sees human rights violations in Iran and the way the appeasing Europeans do. While the US blocked Pur-Mohammadi's visa, Saeed Mortazavi, Iran's notorious prosecutor who has been involved in the torture and murder of Iranian dissidents, was recently allowed to participate in a human rights conference in Geneva. This is why Europe can NEVER be trusted and this why the only true ally the Iranian people have is the United States.

But who is Mustafa pur-mohammadi?

Human Rights Watch-- Minister of Murder:

During Pour-Mohammadi’s tenure as top deputy of the Ministry of Information from 1987 to 1999, agents of the ministry systematically engaged in extrajudicial killings of opposition figures, political activists, and intellectuals. In 1988, the Iranian government executed thousands of political prisoners held inside Iranian jails. The deliberate and systematic manner in which these extrajudicial executions took place may constitute a crime against humanity under international law, Human Rights Watch said. Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi was a member of the three-person committee that ordered prisoners held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison to their summary executions. From 1990 to 1999, Pour-Mohammadi was director of foreign intelligence operations in the Ministry of Information. During this period, dozens of opposition figures were assassinated abroad. In some of these cases the hand of the Iranian government has been well established, while in others there are credible allegations of government involvement. Pour-Mohammadi is at the center of strong allegations of direct involvement in orchestrating these assassinations. In 1998, agents of the Ministry of Information killed five prominent activist intellectuals in Tehran. An Iranian source with first-hand knowledge of the investigation told Human Rights Watch that Pour-Mohammadi was implicated by investigators in those killings and even that an arrest warrant was about to be issued for him. “But instead it was arranged that he leave his post in the Ministry of Information,” this source said.

Pour-Mohammadi and the 1988 Prison Massacres

Pour-Mohammadi and the 1998 Serial Murders of Dissident Intellectuals

Bush's message to Iran

2006-09-15T06:57:00.000-04:00

David Ignatius asks President Bush to talk directly to the Iranian people. Yet, I am sure that under a regime that shuts down free papers, invades people's homes to remove satellite dishes and proudly boasts of success in filtering more than 10 million websites, the majority of the Iranians won't ever find out about the President's words-Kash:

David Ignatius-Washinton Post: What would President Bush say to the Iranian people if he had a chance to communicate directly with them? I was able to put that question to Bush in a one-on-one interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday. His answer made clear that the administration wants a diplomatic solution to the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program -- one that is premised on an American recognition of Iran's role as an important nation in the Middle East.

"I would say to the Iranian people: We respect your history. We respect your culture. We admire the entrepreneurial skills of your people. I would say to the Iranian people that I recognize the importance of your sovereignty -- that you're a proud nation, and you want to have a positive future for your citizens," Bush said, answering quickly and without notes. "In terms of the nuclear issue," he continued, "I understand that you believe it is in your interest -- your sovereign interest, and your sovereign right -- to have nuclear power. I understand that. But I would also say to the Iranian people, there are deep concerns about the intentions of some in your government who would use knowledge gained from a civilian nuclear power industry to develop a weapon that can then fulfill the stated objectives of some of the leadership [to attack Israel and threaten the United States]. And I would say to the Iranian people that I would want to work for a solution to meeting your rightful desires to have civilian nuclear power."

"I would tell the Iranian people that we have no desire for conflict," Bush added.

The Khatami visit "said that the United States is willing to listen to voices," Bush explained. "And I hope that sends a message to the Iranian people that we're an open society, and that we respect the people of Iran." Clearly, the White House wants to reach out to segments of Iranian opinion beyond the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I asked Bush what next steps he would favor in opening dialogue with Iran. "I would like to see more cultural exchanges," he said. "I would like to see university exchanges. I would like to see more people-to-people exchanges." "I know that the more we can show the Iranian people the true intention of the American government," Bush concluded, "the more likely it is that we will be able to reach a diplomatic solution to a difficult problem."

More...

Kissinger warns of possible "war of civilizations"

2006-09-14T20:33:00.000-04:00

AFP-Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned that Europe and the United States must unite to head off a "war of civilizations" arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East. In an opinion column in the Washington Post, the renowned foreign policy expert said the potential for a "global catastrophe" dwarfed lingering transatlantic mistrust left over from the Iraq war. Kissinger wrote that the big threat lay in the erosion of nation states and the emergence of transnational groups. Iran was at the centre of the challenge, he said, with its support for Hezbollah, radical Shiite groups in Iraq and its nuclear program.Washington must accept that many European nations were more optimistic about talks designed to convince Iran to halt uranium enrichment -- a process Tehran denies is aimed at making weapons, he wrote. But in return, he said, Europe should accept the process must include a "bottom line" beyond which diplomatic flexibility must not go and a time limit to ensure talks did not become a shield for "developing new assaults."

Yahoo News-Reza Pahlavi Offers Senators Three-Pronged Approach on Iran; Confront and Pressure the Regime, Support the People: Hosted by US Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Mel Martinez (R-FL) Reza Pahlavi of Iran affirmed the world needed to focus on the big picture regarding the crisis facing his homeland, proposing an integrated three- pronged policy approach to the clerical regime of Iran. Offering his views to US law makers, he said "the best way to deal with the Iranian regime is by confronting it, pressuring it, at the same time supporting the Iranian people." Rejecting war as a policy option, the former jet fighter pilot said, "the option of war must be taken off the table." Pronouncing "endless diplomacy" as equally ineffective, he said "it has been fruitlessly pursued, with the full weight, backing and prestige of the European Union, Russia, the UN and the United States for several years now, only resulting in the clerical regime's inching closer to its objectives of acquiring WMDs." Pahlavi reminded his audience that the Iranian regime had been dangerously emboldened by "the lack of resolve it has seen amongst practitioners of international diplomacy on Iran."