Archive for the 'Iran' Category

Meanwhile, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded an apology from President Obama, who earlier criticized the Iranian government’s brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Armed with the credibility that he earned by attempting to engage the Iranian government, President Obama instead lashed out at Ahmadinejad:

“I don’t take Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran,” Obama responded sternly.

“I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people,” he added. “And he might want to consider looking at the families of those who’ve been beaten or shot or detained. And, you know, that’s where I think Mr. Ahmadinejad and others need to answer their questions.”

It was Obama’s first direct criticism of any of Iran’s leaders. Even more, it was coupled with his first specific boost for Mousavi. “Mousavi has shown to have captured the imagination or the spirit of forces within Iran that were interested in opening up,” Obama said.

Stand With Free Iran ~ Iran election, originally uploaded by harrystaab.

Go to the link above … NOW. And then go on to The Boston Globe ~ and elsewhere.

Thank God for all our fantastic friends at ‘Flickr’.

And thank God for all fearless photographers and photo journalists.

And thank God for all the brave, honest, decent, ordinary Iranian people heroes and heroines.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

multitudes in Tehran protest election

From Reuters:

Iranian state television said on Tuesday seven people had been killed near the site of a rally in Tehran.

Iran’s English-language Press TV carried a breaking news headline citing radio as saying “Seven people killed near illegal Tehran rally.” It did not specify if the dead were opposition supporters or others.

An Iranian photographer said Islamic militiamen killed one man during Monday’s march when people in the crowd attacked a station of the Basij religious militia.

The Basij militia are linked to the Revolutionary Guard. That Basij militia has taken an active role in suppressing protests, beating supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and throwing stones at demonstrators. In the photo below, militia members attempt to storm Tehran University, where students were protesting the election:

(click to inflate, more photos here)

Meanwhile, Mir-Hossein Mousavi himself called off a major rally after the government threatened to shoot at protesters, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing that Mousavi won the election handily, with alleged winner Ahmadinejad coming in third.

Also, Iran’s Guardian Council, which has the authority to nullify the election, announced that it would conduct a limited recount. The council is closely allied with Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran. Khamenei is an ally of Ahmadinejad, so the council will probably certify the election unless it becomes clear that the nation would become ungovernable if Ahmadinejad is allowed to steal the election.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brave protesters protect journalists so that the world can see what’s really happening inside Iran (incident begins about 2 minutes in):

Interestingly, conservatives Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and Mitt Romney are saying that Ahmadinejad won the election through fraud, and that he won the election because of Obama’s new policy of engagement and diplomacy with hostile regimes.

So which is it? Did Ahmadinejad win because Iranians concluded that his confrontational foreign policy is effective, or did he have to rig the vote?

It would appear that Obama’s overtures helped swing the vote against Ahmadinejad, which is why his supporters had to engage in election fraud. In the days after Obama’s speech in Cairo, Ahmadinejad fell behind in national polling.

UPDATE: Ahmadinejad (in white) was surrounded by students at Sharrif University in Tehran and had to climb on top of his car to escape:

Apparently, the crowd is yelling Mousavi, Mousavi, Mousavi. At the end, they begin yelling ‘doorogh gou!’, which means, “liar”.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

Benjamin Netanyahu, world class hypocrite

Israeli officials feigned dismay over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory in Iran’s presidential election:

The re-election of hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a disputed vote underscores the growing threat posed by Tehran and its nuclear ambitions, two senior Israeli politicians said Saturday, urging the world not to engage in dialogue with Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, should occupy the world’s attention.

The Israelis have found that the American media is far less likely to scrutinize Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank when there is a perceived crisis elsewhere in the region. Maybe that’s why hardline Israeli officials were hoping that Ahmadinejad would be re-elected:

When it comes to the Iranian presidential elections, Jerusalem is convinced that it is in fact Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is the best candidate to serve Israel’s interests. “We’re better off with him getting elected,” said a senior political source. “The prevailing opinion here is that Ahmadinejad just speaks his mind. How are the others any different? They’re just nicer, but they think exactly like him.”

Sources in Israel argue that Ahmadinejad expresses most clearly the opinions held by the Iranian establishment, and by virtue of this fact, actually facilitates the international community’s understanding of their positions. The source explained that such an assessment was shared by all the agencies in Israel dealing with the Iranian matter.

These same hardliners will tell you that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, and that Ahmadinejad has pledged to wipe Israel from the map. So why would peace-loving Israelis want Ahmadinejad to win? They wouldn’t. Government officials wanted him to win precisely because they do not want peace. They want to keep fighting, because they know that they will have to stop expanding West Bank settlements as soon as there is a lasting ceasefire. That’s why Israel helped nurture Hamas, that’s why they wanted Ahmadinejad to win, that’s why they keep expanding their settlements, and that’s why they violated a recent ceasefire.

Israel can’t get what they want in a peaceful environment, because what they want belongs to someone else. So they make a big show of pretending to negotiate with the Palestinians in order to keep American aid flowing, all the while striving to ensure that those negotiations never produce a lasting peace.

When supporters of Hussein Moussavi took to the streets to claim election fraud, riot police charged in to meet them (more photos and videos here)

Officially, hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s presidential election by a landslide. And while statistical analysis has failed to demonstrate election fraud, there are some very good reasons to believe that the election was stolen from Hussein Moussavi, a moderate opposition candidate:

It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense.

Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

Ahmadinejad’s numbers were fairly standard across Iran’s provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.

The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reformist presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Remember when all the neocons, led by Republican standard-bearer John McCain, told us that Obama’s plan to engage with the Iranian government amounted to appeasement, which would only embolden Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s anti-Western president? Maybe it’s time those neocons admitted that they were wrong:

Iran’s presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi takes the lead in 10 major Iranian cities, the local Press TV reported Wednesday, citing a recent poll.

The poll conducted in Iran’s 10 big cities showed that Mousavi is surpassing the incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by 4 percent, the report said. Some 38 percent of the people expressed their support for Mousavi while 34 percent others supported Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi, who is considered the major rival of Ahmadinejad in the presidential elections on June 12, has repeatedly criticized the incumbent government’s economic policy which he called an alms-based one. On Saturday, Mousavi also accused the incumbent president of “disgracing” the Iranian nation on the international scene.

So, just after Obama released a videotaped statement offering constructive engagement with the Iranian government, an offer that was immediately compared to the Munich agreement with Hitler (link link), the Iranians responded by throwing their support to Ahmadinejad’s main rival.

By demonstrating a willingness to negotiate, Obama took Ahmadinejad’s best issue off the table. For the most part, urban Iranians don’t like the restrictions that Iran’s reactionary government places on them, and they’ve been chafing under the effects of Ahmadinejad’s disastrous economic policies. The only reason Ahmadinejad maintained his support among urban Iranians was the fact that the American and Israeli governments kept playing into his hands with their hyper-aggressive, rejectionist stance toward Iran. Both countries refused to negotiate with Iran and repeatedly threatened attacks, which allowed Ahmadinejad to paint his pro-Western rivals as being either naive or disloyal. Now that the US no longer seems intent on bringing about Iran’s destruction, Ahmadinejad must succeed or fail on the basis of his ill-conceived domestic policies.

None of this should come as any surprise. Recall that Iran regularly elected pro-Western reformers until 2005, when Bush’s anti-Iranian bluster and militaristic foreign policy convinced many Iranians that negotiating with the West was tantamount to appeasement, and Ahmadinejad was elected president. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the neocons to admit that they were wrong about the efficacy of Bush’s foreign policy.

***

Just because Mousavi has taken a lead in the cities doesn’t mean that he’ll win the election. Rural Iranians, like rural Americans, seem more susceptible than their urban counterparts to demonization of foreign leaders and arguments that rely on a simplistic, good vs. evil view of international relations.

***

What’s always bothered me most about the neocons’ criticism of Obama has been their insistence that negotiating itself is an act of appeasement. It seems obvious that the moment of capitulation is not when one begins a negotiation, but when one gives in to demands without getting anything in return.

***

As usual, Obama’s overture to Iran inspired critics on the left as well as on the right. The latest salvo appeared last Saturday in the New York Times:

President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.

Mr. Obama is backing away from the bold steps required to achieve strategic, Nixon-to-China-type rapprochement with Tehran. Administration officials have professed disappointment that Iranian leaders have not responded more warmly to Mr. Obama’s rhetoric. Many say that the detention of the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi (who was released this month) and Ayatollah Khamenei’s claim last week that America is “fomenting terrorism” inside Iran show that trying to engage Tehran is a fool’s errand.

But this ignores the real reason Iranian leaders have not responded to the new president more enthusiastically: the Obama administration has done nothing to cancel or repudiate an ostensibly covert but well-publicized program, begun in President George W. Bush’s second term, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, the Iranian government — regardless of who wins the presidential elections on June 12 — will continue to suspect that American intentions toward the Islamic Republic remain, ultimately, hostile.

In other words, by failing to publicly acknowledge an ongoing destabilization campaign, an act which would have profound consequences in terms of confronting Iran on its nuclear program and which would likely ensure Ahmadinejad’s re-election, Obama has missed a golden opportunity to thaw relations with Iran and put the US and Iran on the path toward normalization of relations. It seems obvious, though, that the most important step toward constructive engagement with Iran would be the defeat of Ahmadinejad at the polls. And there’s no reason that ending the covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian government has to be a public affair.

And is it really true that many Obama administration officials have been privately saying that engaging with Tehran is a fool’s errand? Or was that just a poorly-constructed paragraph?

While we readily admit that today we’re taking a sarcastic sort of swipe at the pretty dumb practice of stating the sodding obvious, we ourselves wish to make it perfectly obvious that we are in no way “having a go” at Ireland’s excellent ex President, Mary Robinson.

Since the sad truth is that there are still millions of westerners convinced that bums like George Bush and Tony Blair, to mention just a pair, always told us all the truth.

Just take a look at this.

GENEVA (Reuters)

Washington’s “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies,” the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its “war paradigm.”

“There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed,” she told a news conference in Geneva. “We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws.”

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

“We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less,”

So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, we have to say that we like your style. Like it a lot, in fact. Truth be told, maybe we even love it.

Now read the rest of this Reuters’report.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Binyamin Netanyahu, the once and future prime minister

Right wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu, who is poised to regain his former position as prime minister, seems determined to attack Iran. And according to a former Reagan official, he’ll probably be able to drag the United States into the fight:

The Israeli prime ministerial frontrunner will win a US blessing to enter war with Iran, says a source familiar with US Mideast policies.

Aaron David Miller, the US State Department’s top analyst in the 1980s, said Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu will be able to convince President Barack Obama that a military attack is the only solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

“The Israelis will be pushing [Washington] to ensure that Iran never gets to that point and failing that, they will consider a military strike,” Reuters quoted Miller — who is a former US Middle East peace negotiator and is currently an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center — as saying late Friday.

“It need not be conclusive or threatening, but it will be very serious and … scare the daylights out of the president that unless the international community mobilizes to address the situation, the Israelis will,” he said.

This seems to be yet another effort by the Neocons to persuade the American people that war with Iran is inevitable. I’d take this very seriously if McCain had been elected, but I’m confident that Obama is smart enough to avoid attacking Iran. But I’m not surprised to see a former Reagan official trying to push us into this lunacy.

To get an idea of how crazy it would be to attack Iran, consider the fact that Iran is larger, in terms of both area and population, than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Consider also the fact that Russia would not sit idly by and watch the US and Israel turn the entire Middle East into a de facto colony. They share a border with Iran, and there would be no way to prevent them from getting weapons to the Iranian government (or, in the case of a ground invasion, to the Iranian resistance).

We’re already in the midst of a gigantic financial crisis, and we’re already fighting two wars. Opening up a third front right now would likely mean the end of America’s position as the world’s premier military and economic power. Thank goodness we voted for the right man last November. Because we know what McCain would have done:

Barack and Mahmoud in happier times

Looks like Ahmadinejad is no longer Obama’s Best Friend Forever:

Iran’s parliament speaker has criticized U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for saying that Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. Ali Larijani said Saturday that Obama should apply his campaign message of change to U.S. dealings with Iran.

“Obama must know that the change that he talks about is not simply a superficial changing of colors or tactics,” Larijani said in comments carried by the semi-official Mehr News Agency. What is expected is a change in strategy, not the repetition of objections to Iran’s nuclear program, which will be taking a step in the wrong direction.”

In his first post-election news conference Friday afternoon, Obama reiterated that he believes a nuclear-armed Iran would be “unacceptable.” He also said he would help mount an international effort to prevent it from happening.

Hmmm… maybe John McCain, Fox News, and the Wingnuttosphere were wrong, and Obama isn’t going to tell Ahmadinejad that it’s OK if he builds a nuclear weapon.