so let's place bets: how long before the US invades Iran

I admit it doesn't seem like we have the manpower for invasion, but a rational understanding of logistics didn't stop us in Iraq....

And at least, no matter what Iran actually has, they will be able to confirm "stuff" was found. Oh what stuff they will find!

O.Nate's take strikes me as sound at this point. Yes, the rhetorical balderdash is kicking in but I suspect reality will be another matter.

I don't think simply "talking shit" is in the DubyaCo. playbook. They're more of a "slash and burn" type outfit.

i should point out that the iranians are 100% as culpable as the iraqis. they had the option to NOT send wave after wave of young men directly into the line of fire, and for whatever reason chose not to exercise that option.

i should also mention the hundreds of thousands of iraqi soldiers, iraqi civilians, and most of all kurds who died because, let's face it, chemical weapons are just capricious, especially in windy places like the mountainous deserts between iran and iraq.

sorry for the misunderstanding vahid (but by yr interpretation would't Iraq also have suffered at the hands of US WMDs...? making the national total 3, not 2?)

and instead the populace rising up to overthrown their theocratic oppressors, the already-paranoid & edgy Iranian government will (probably) crack down on any pro-democracy efforts for another 10 years or so.

i just want to point out that let's not forget that the iranians are coming off (having been coming off for ten years now) a war that cost millions and millions of lives (upper-bound estimate = 20 million, counting civilians, combined for the iranians, iraqis and kurds).

the iranians (and iraqis) are recovering from their WWI. so they are in a position not unlike that of the nuclear club, post WWII. they probably don't ever want to see that sort of wastage of life, again. yeah, the mullahs are deep-down-evil, but they're not insane, or monsters, or aliens. they want that reassurance that the chinese, and russians, and british, and french, and americans, and israelis share. they want to know that nobody will ever risk fucking with their borders because they've got the bomb. they don't want to waste 1000s and 1000s of people like the iraqis are doing to kill an american a week (and why would they??)

so it's safe to say the iranians have a nuclear WMD program.

kingfish, no way, no how. i dunno why i never chimed in on this thread, but it always seemed weird to me people pulling the "us gonna invade iran next" line. from a strategic standpoint, it ain't iraq. much bigger country, bigger population, and not hindered by 10+ years of sanctions. from a political standpoint, well given us involvement in the region in the past 20 years, and that even at the time we were denouncing them and they were denouncing us we were working together (arms for hostages deal, iran-contra, anybody remember?), and that there's been a huge amount of continuity from the reagan/bush I eras personell-wise into the bush II era, why would we topple a country that:

1. we obstensibly remade into the regional power.
2. we've palling around with on an unofficial basis for years (people in d.c. don't throw out their rolodexes, i have to assume it's the same in tehran).

Liberal Democracy at its best!

"Hey Iran! If you don't allow Inspectors in then we'll assume you're breaking International Law! Like Iraq! Who, um, allowed Inspectors in. And we'll attack you! Unless you've got, um, nuclear weapons. Which you're not allowed to have. Or we'll attack you. Unless you've got them. Goddamn Commies."

By mid-summer 2006 the few remaining percentages of Iraq that "kinda works" (even if it is just the Green Zone) will be in full-blown capital "C," capital "W" Civil War with 20-30 US soldiers/100+ Iraquis K.I.A. daily (note that we're almost at this level already). Iran will be blamed for border incursions which will result in a shooting match between Iran and US forces.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_Cheney_aide_clearing_path_to_0524.html

fuck Cheney.

Hilarious.

ugh

I'm still skeptical.

Cheney's Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed
By Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service

Monday 11 June 2007

Washington - A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting "senior officials" in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an "Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies" and as referring to the alleged "Iran-al Qaeda linkup" as "very sinister".

That article and subsequent reports on CNN May 30, in the Washington Post Jun. 3 and on ABC news Jun. 6 all included an assertion by an unnamed U.S. official or a "senior coalition official" that Iran is following a deliberate policy of supplying the Taliban's campaign against U.S., British and other NATO forces.

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported "NATO officials" as saying they had "caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces."

Far from showing that Iran had been "caught red-handed", however, the report quoted from an analysis which cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

Both Gates and McNeill denied flatly last week that there is any evidence linking Iranian authorities to those arms. Gates told a press conference on Jun. 4, "We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling, or exactly what is behind it." Gates said that "some" of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McNeill, implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. "When you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here," he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. "That's not my view at all."

Gates and McNeill are obviously aware of the link between arms entering Afghanistan from Iran and the flow of heroin from Afghanistan into Iran. It is well known that Afghan drug lords who command huge amounts of money have been able to penetrate the long and porous border with ease. They have undoubtedly been involved in buying arms in Iran with their drug proceeds for both themselves and the Taliban, which protects their drug routes. Smuggling is relatively easy because of the money available for bribery of border guards.

Another factor helping to explain the influx of arms from Iran, as noted by former Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Momand in an interview on Pakistan's GEO television Apr. 19, is that the Taliban now controls areas on the Iranian border for the first time. Momand said the Taliban, which is awash in money from the heroin exports to Iran, buys small quantities of weapons in Iran and smuggles them back into Afghanistan.

But the Iranian government itself is not involved in the trade in arms, Momand insisted.

The combination of anonymous statements by administration officials and the dismissal of the charge by the commander in the field contrasts sharply with the Bush administration's claims that Iran was sending armour-piercing IEDs to Shiite militias in Iraq last January and February. Those accusations, which were never backed up with specific evidence, were made publicly by Bush himself, the State Department and the U.S. military command in Baghdad.

The fact that the officials making the accusation about Iran and Afghanistan are unwilling to go on the record and the refusal of Gates and McNeill to go along with it suggests an effort by Cheney and his allies in the administration to do an "end run" around the official policy by conjuring up a region-wide Iranian offensive against U.S. forces.

Steve Clemons reported on his blog The Washington Note May 24 that an aide to Cheney has told gatherings at right-wing think tanks that Cheney is afraid Bush will not make the "right decision" on Iran and believes he must constrain the president's choices.

Iran has long regarded the Taliban regime as its primary enemy and was the first external power to support Afghan forces in an effort to overthrow it. It is not merely a sectarian Sunni-Shiite divide but the Pakistani government patronage of the Taliban that has made it an irreconcilable enemy of Iran.

The line being pushed by the Cheney group in the administration that Iran is supplying the Taliban with arms appears to be based on a highly imaginative reading of some recent intelligence reporting on Iranian contacts with the Taliban. A source with access to that reporting, who insists on anonymity because he is not authorised to comment on the matter, told IPS that it indicates Iranian intelligence has had contacts with the top commanders of the Taliban's inner Shura - the leadership council located in Kandahar.

However, the source also says these intelligence reports do not provide any specific evidence of an Iranian intention to give weapons to the Taliban.

The Cheney group is evidently arguing within the administration that the mere existence of contacts between Iranian intelligence and Taliban commanders, combined with the presence of arms or Iranian origin, is sufficient reason to conclude that Iran has changed its policy toward the Taliban.

That argument parallels a key assertion made by Cheney and other neoconservative officials in constructing the case for war against Iraq in 2002. They insisted that any contact between an official of the Iraqi government at any level and anyone in al Qaeda was sufficient proof of its support for al Qaeda terrorism.

Afghanistan specialist Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, who visited Afghanistan most recently in early 2007, says some elements of the Iranian government may be involved in arms trafficking but that it is "very small-scale support" and that Iran does not want to strengthen the Taliban.

NATO commanders in Pakistan have long been aware that the Taliban has been dependent on Pakistan for its arms and ammunition. The Telegraph reported Sunday that a NATO report on a recent battle shows the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells and had stocked over one million rounds of ammunition, all of which came from Quetta, Pakistan during the spring months.

--------

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.

Naah, the next enemy (BECAUSE THERE ALWAYS HAS TO BE ONE, don't you see?) is Russia again.

so um, moving closer?

Are you kidding? The saber-rattling on both sides is hollow-sounding.

I like the original predictions. The reality is that there is NO WAY that the US will invade Iran within the foreseeable future (like, the next 200 years), unless we resurrect Saddam and elect him president.

Comment-jockey on Glen Greenwald's post:

Bush's Approval Numbers
Would shoot up with any kind of strike against Iran. I'm shocked it hasn't already happened.

-- Wesley_Powell

Shurely shome mishtake??

I hope so Ned, but i was terrified when i watched that speech last night, maybe cos i'm ignorant. But i'll give Greenwald's piece in full here:

Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday August 29, 2007 07:11 EST
The president's escalating war rhetoric on Iran
(updated below)

George Bush, speaking before yet another military audience, yesterday delivered what might actually be the most disturbing speech of his presidency, in which he issued more overt war threats than ever before towards Iran:

The other strain of radicalism in the Middle East is Shia extremism, supported and embodied by the regime that sits in Tehran. Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran backs Hezbollah who are trying to undermine the democratic government of Lebanon. Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent, and target Israel, and destabilize the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late (Applause.)

Leave aside all of the dubious premises -- the fact that the U.S. is supposed to consider Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism" because of its support for groups that are hostile to Israel; that Iran is arming its longstanding Taliban enemies; that Iran is some sort of threat to Iraq's future even though it is an ally of Iraq's government; and that Iran's detention of American-Iranians inside its own country is anything other than retaliation for our own equally pointless detention of Iranians inside of Iraq, to say nothing of a whole slew of other provacative acts we have recently undertaken towards Iran. Leave all of that aside for the moment.

Viewed through the prism of presidential jargon, Bush's vow -- "We will confront this danger before it is too late" -- is synonymous with a pledge to attack Iran unless our array of demands are met. He is unmistakably proclaiming that unless Iran gives up its nuclear program and fundamentally changes its posture in the Middle East, "we will confront this danger." What possible scenario could avert this outcome?

By now it is unmistakably clear that it is not only -- or even principally -- Iran's nuclear program that is fueling these tensions. As Scott Ritter and others have long pointed out, the fear-mongering warnings about an Iranian "nuclear holocaust" (obviously redolent of Condoleezza Rice's Iraqi smoking gun "mushroom cloud") is but the pretext for achieving the true goal -- regime change in Tehran. Bush all but said so yesterday:

We seek an Iran whose government is accountable to its people -- instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
In other words, we "seek" a new government in Iran. Are there really people left who believe, with confidence, that Bush is going to leave office without commencing or provoking a military confrontation with Iran?

Bush also added: "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities." To underscore the fact that this is not mere rhetoric, the U.S. military in Iraq, following Bush's speech, arrested and detained eight Iranian energy experts meeting in Baghdad with the Iraqi government -- handcuffing, blindfolding, and interrogating them -- only to then release them when the Iraqi government protested. The path we are on -- with 160,000 of our troops in Iran's neighbor, escalating war-threatening rhetoric, and increasingly provocative acts -- is obviously the path to war.

The Iraq debate is over, at least from the perspective of actual results. It has been over for some time. The Congress is never going to force Bush to withdraw from Iraq. We are going to remain in Iraq in more or less the same posture through the end of the Bush presidency. That is just a fait accompli. The real issue of grave importance that remains unresolved is Iran, and it is hard to find causes for optimism there either.

There are, of course, significant steps that the Congress could take to impose at least some restraints on the Bush administration's ability to attack Iran unilaterally. It could make clear that the existing Iraq AUMF does not include authorization to attack Iran inside Iranian territory. It could enact legislation requiring Congressional approval before an attack on Iran is authorized. It could make clear that no funding will be available for any such attack in the absence of a Resolution authorizing a new war.

But all of that is exceedingly unlikely. The Bush administration is obviously aware of how weak the Congress is. Even the most mild of those measures -- an amendment which would merely have required Congressional authorization before the administration attacks Iran -- was meekly withdrawn by Democratic House leaders back in May because, as The Hill reported, Israeli-centric Congressmen and AIPAC itself "lobbied heavily to remove the Iran provision in the supplemental."

That happened a mere three months ago. Last month, the Senate unanimously passed a Lieberman-sponsored resolution gratuitously accusing Iran of acts of war against the U.S. -- a resolution with no purpose other than to strengthen the case for war against Iran. Clearly, Congress can (or at least will) do nothing to restrain the White House.

More disturbingly still, we have the same exact cast of neoconservative warmongers who brought us the invasion of Iraq, now chirping away ever more loudly, performing their tough guy war dances while courageously beating their little chests and urging on new wars.

More explicit war demands are now issuing from the warped though representative likes of Max Boot (of the Council on Foreign Relations, The LA Times, and Norm Podhoretz's Commentary Magazine) -- who wants to invade Syria and bomb the Damascus airport -- and then fueled by fresh-faced war cheerleaders like James Kirchick, who simultaneously (and revealingly) serves as Marty Peretz's assistant and writes both for the "liberal" New Republic and Podhoretz's Commentary blog. Yesterday, Kirchick -- who has convinced himself and then publicly announced that his desire to send other people off to war proves how much "grit" he has -- swaggered up and showed real grit by proclaiming:

Max is right on the crucial point, which is that Syria and Iran have effectively declared war on us. Make of that what you will. But it's not "warmongering" to simply state the fact that two rogue states are themselves complicit in unwarranted acts of warmongering against the United States and a nascent democracy in the Middle East.
They want a war not only with Iran, but also with Syria -- as do their ideological comrades such as Joe Lieberman, the only person whom Bush quoted yesterday in his speech.

The real tough Max Boot, in responding to Greg Djerejian's arguments that war cries against Syria are based on pure "hysteria," made sure to note yesterday that Djerejian is merely a "a lawyer who works at a financial services company," while Boot's pro-new-wars position is supported not only by Lieberman but also by what he calls "my current colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mike Gerson." Many of our Serious Foreign Policy experts -- and certainly the ones with the greatest influence within the administration -- are fully on board with these new wars.

The groundwork for an attack on Iran is so plainly being laid in the same systematic way as the attack on Iraq was and by the same people. Last week, Djerejian read and then dissected the full "trip report" issued by Pollack and O'Hanlon following their return from Iraq. In addition to including even more propaganda-bolstering claims about Iraq than was found in their Op-Ed, Djerejian noted that the report also recites the most mendacious aspects of the administration's case for war against Iran, including the truly idiotic accusation regarding "Iran's ability to supply al-Qa'ida" -- an accusation so absurd that nobody other than Joe Lieberman has been willing to voice it until now. Yet now it issues from our most Serious Democratic, "liberal" foreign policy "scholars": Iran is arming Al Qaeda.

The true danger here is that even if there would be marginally more political opposition to an attack on Iran than there was for an attack on Iraq -- and surely there would be, perhaps considerably more opposition -- those who favor an attack are still politically strong within the administration. And there simply are no factions which would oppose such an attack that are anywhere near strong enough to stop one. Who and where are they? What are the political factions which have sufficient political strength and who are willing to risk political capital to stop such a confrontation?

By stark and dispositive contrast, those who are pining for an attack on Iran -- from the Weekly Standard to the AEI and various generic warmongers of the Dick Cheney/National Review strain, as well as our most pious evangelical Christian warriors -- are zelaous adherents, True Believers. Bringing about a military confrontation with Iran has always been, and continues to be, their paramount priority.

As but one example, "Democrat" Hiam Saban, who funds the "liberal" Pollack's work at the Brookings Institution as well as any Democratic candidates he can find, described himself thusly: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel . . . .On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk."

The two most extremist factions when it comes to the Middle East -- Israel-centric neoconservatives and Christian evangelicals -- have long been telling the President that stopping Iran is his most important mission, the ultimate challenge that history will use to judge his strength, character and conviction. And it is beyond question that those are the groups who continue to hold the greatest sway over the decision-making process of the Commander-in-Chief himself.

Who is going to match the zeal and influence of these warmongers in order to stop them? The notion of attacking Iran may be insane, but it is not considered such by our mainstream establishment. Those who muse about it openly -- Lieberman, McCain, Giuliani, Kristol, Max Boot -- are not considered fringe extremists or unserious radicals, even though they are. Their views are comfortably within what is considered to be the realm of serious and responsible foreign policy advocacy.

As we march step by step with barely a debate towards a confrontation with Iran -- one that neoconservatives have long been proclaiming is inevitable -- are there any meaningful efforts to avert this? We frequently hear the slogan from war critics about Iraq that "hope is not a policy." The same is true with regard to preventing an attack on Iran.

Here is the major assumption in the above piece that I take issue with Frogman:

"Viewed through the prism of presidential jargon, Bush's vow -- "We will confront this danger before it is too late" -- is synonymous with a pledge to attack Iran unless our array of demands are met."

I may be naive, but I see that as a substantial leap in logic. The mere logistics of spreading the US military into Iran make any kind of military action unrealistic in my view.

Yes that's one of the main things that doesn't compute. To us, anyway.

ive been thinking all alon theres no way bush does anything. but then i wouldnt be surprised if he did. cause you know: crazy.

Mid-to-late 2006 feels about right.
-- Fish fingers all in a line (kenan), Wednesday, February 9, 2005 7:36 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

early 2007. the US hasn't realy done a massive military thing in 20+ years that wasn't just after the mid-term elections.
-- Kingfish MuffMiner 2049er (Kingfish), Wednesday, February 9, 2005 8:07 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

draft in early 2007, unless the 2006 midterm elections have surprising effects.
-- kingfish maximum overdrunk (Kingfish), Monday, June 13, 2005 3:14 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

going into iran would require a draft. unless we pull some clinton-era offshore bombing etc and then just leave it at that. which is basically impossible because then they'll just invade iraq.

It would require a lot more than a draft, but playing along, to make it sort of surprising the president would have to drag us all out of bed in the middle of the night, suit us up, and ship us out. There wouldn't be enough equipment, so we'd probably get airdrops courtesy of American Airlines.

Clinton-era offshore bombing all occurred to countries that didn't have a strong standing military that could fight back. Iran could safely fuck us right back.

the only way we're going to fight Iran is if they fight us first. And then, thankfully, we're not going to even need to send troops in.

it would be really weird to try to do this now, though, because practically every world leader knows already that bush is out by the end of 2008 and they know his replacement is, barring a mass murder at the DNC, going to be a very different (read: non-crazy, non-warmongering, non-idiot) type of leader.

romney?

I actually don't think Bush is particularly crazy or war-mongering, so maybe that's my problem. I don't agree with the administration, but I see their reasoning. In terms of Iraq it was reasoning that was flawed, brash, and untied to any sense of history or military research. But it wasn't just crazy. As a result, I think they will follow overwhelming logic that suggests an invasion of Iran could never be advantageous or even possible.

what it is under that humansuit

Haha, why? Do I come off as an idiot?

Do you guys really think Iran would attack US troops in Iraq if we bombed some of their alleged nuclear facilities? Don't forget we've also got a substantial presence on their other border, Afghanistan.

Iran has missiles which could fuck the carrier groups in the Persian Gulf.

I'm guessing any bombing run would be preceded by moving the fleet out of range.

Stratfor reads some tea leaves:

----

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Aug. 28 that U.S. power in Iraq is rapidly being destroyed. Then he said that Iran, with the help of regional friends and the Iraqi nation, is ready to fill the vacuum. Ahmadinejad specifically reached out to Saudi Arabia, saying the Saudis and Iranians could collaborate in managing Iraq. Later in the day, U.S. President George W. Bush responded, saying, "I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world." He specifically mentioned Iran and its threat of nuclear weapons.

On Aug. 27, we argued that, given the United States' limited ability to secure Iraq, the strategic goal must now shift from controlling Iraq to defending the Arabian Peninsula against any potential Iranian ambitions in that direction. "Whatever mistakes might have been made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran," we wrote.

Ahmadinejad's statements, made at a two-hour press conference, had nothing to do with what we wrote, nor did Bush's response. What these statements do show, though, is how rapidly the thinking in Tehran is evolving in response to Iranian perceptions of a pending U.S. withdrawal and a power vacuum in Iraq -- and how the Bush administration is shifting its focus from the Sunni threat to both the Sunni and Shiite threats.

The most important thing Ahmadinejad discussed at his press conference was not the power vacuum, but Saudi Arabia. He reached out to the Saudis, saying Iran and Saudi Arabia together could fill the vacuum in Iraq and stabilize the country. The subtext was that not only does Iran not pose a threat to Saudi Arabia, it would be prepared to enhance Saudi power by giving it a substantial role in a post-U.S. Iraq.

Iran is saying that Saudi Arabia does not need to defend itself against Iran, and it certainly does not need the United States to redeploy its forces along the Saudi-Iraqi border in order to defend itself. While dangling the carrot of participation in a post-war Iraq, Iran also is wielding a subtle stick. One of the reasons for al Qaeda's formation was the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia regarded the U.S. presence as sacrilege and the willingness of the Saudi regime to permit American troops to be there as blasphemous. After 9/11, the Saudis asked the United States to withdraw its forces, and following the Iraq invasion they fought a fairly intense battle against al Qaeda inside the kingdom. Having U.S. troops defend Saudi Arabia once again -- even if they were stationed outside its borders -- would inflame passions inside the kingdom, and potentially destabilize the regime.

The Saudis are in a difficult position. Since the Iranian Revolution, the Saudi relationship with Iran has ranged from extremely hostile to uneasy. It is not simply a Sunni and Shiite matter. Iran is more than just a theocracy. It arose from a very broad popular uprising against the shah. It linked the idea of a republic to Islam, combining a Western revolutionary tradition with Shiite political philosophy. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is a monarchy that draws its authority from traditional clan and tribal structures and Wahhabi Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudis felt trapped between the pro-Soviet radicalism of the Iraqis and Syrians, and of the various factions of the Palestinian movement on the one side -- and the Islamic Republic in Iran on the other. Isolated, it had only the United States to depend on, and that dependency blew up in its face during the 1990-91 war in Kuwait.

But there also is a fundamental geopolitical problem. Saudi Arabia suffers from a usually fatal disease. It is extraordinarily rich and militarily weak. It has managed to survive and prosper by having foreign states such as the United Kingdom and the United States have a stake in its independence -- and guarantee that independence with their power. If it isn't going to rely on an outside power to protect it, and it has limited military resources of its own, then how will it protect itself against the Iranians? Iran, a country with a large military -- whose senior officers and noncoms were blooded in the Iran-Iraq war -- does not have a great military, merely a much larger and experienced one than the Saudis.

The Saudis have Iran's offer. The problem is that the offer cannot be guaranteed by Saudi power, but depends on Iran's willingness to honor it. Absent the United States, any collaboration with Iran would depend on Iran's will. And the Iranians are profoundly different from the Saudis and, more important, much poorer. Whatever their intentions might be today -- and who can tell what the Iranians intend? -- those intentions might change. If they did, it would leave Saudi Arabia at risk to Iranian power.

Saudi Arabia is caught between a rock and a hard place and it knows it. But there might be the beginnings of a solution in Turkey. Ahmadinejad's offer of collaboration was directed toward regional powers other than Iran. That includes Turkey. Turkey stayed clear of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, refusing to let U.S. troops invade Iraq from there. However, Turkey has some important interests in how the war in Iraq ends. First, it does not want to see any sort of Kurdish state, fearing Kurdish secessionism in Turkey as well. Second, it has an interest in oil in northern Iraq. Both interests could be served by a Turkish occupation of northern Iraq, under the guise of stabilizing Iraq along with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

When we say that Iran is now the dominant regional power, we also should say that is true unless we add Turkey to the mix. Turkey is certainly a military match for Iran, and more than an economic one. Turkey's economy is the 18th largest in the world -- larger than Saudi Arabia's -- and it is growing rapidly. In many ways, Iran needs a good relationship with Turkey, given its power and economy. If Turkey were to take an interest in Iraq, that could curb Iran's appetite. While Turkey could not defend Saudi Arabia, it certainly could threaten Iran's rear if it chose to move south. And with the threat of Turkish intervention, Iran would have to be very careful indeed.

But Turkey has been cautious in its regional involvements. It is not clear whether it will involve itself in Iraq beyond making certain that Kurdish independence does not go too far. Even if it were to move deeper into Iraq, it is not clear whether it would be prepared to fight Iran over Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Turkey does not want to deal with a powerful Iran -- and if the Iranians did take the Saudi oil fields, they would be more than a match for Turkey. Turkey's regime is very different from those in Saudi Arabia and Iran, but geopolitics make strange bedfellows. Iran could not resist a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq, nor could it be sure what Turkey would do if Iran turned south. That uncertainty might restrain Iran.

And that is the thin reed on which Saudi national security would rest if it rejected an American presence to its north. The United States could impose itself anyway, but being sandwiched between a hostile Iran and hostile Saudi Arabia would not be prudent, to say the least. Therefore, the Saudis could scuttle a U.S. blocking force if they wished. If the Saudis did this and joined the Iranian-led stabilization program in Iraq, they would then be forced to rely on a Turkish presence in northern Iraq to constrain any future Iranian designs on Arabia. That is not necessarily a safe bet as it assumes that the Turks would be interested in balancing Iran at a time when Russian power is returning to the Caucasus, Greek power is growing in the Balkans, and the Turkish economy is requiring ever more attention from Ankara. Put simply, Turkey has a lot of brands in the fire, and the Saudis betting on the Iranian brand having priority is a long shot.

The Iranian position is becoming more complex as Tehran tries to forge a post-war coalition to manage Iraq -- and to assure the coalition that Iran doesn't plan to swallow some of its members. The United States, in the meantime, appears to be trying to simplify its position, by once again focusing on the question of nuclear weapons.

Bush's speech followed this logic. First, according to Bush, the Iranians are now to be seen as a threat equal to the jihadists. In other words, the Iranian clerical regime and al Qaeda are equal threats. That is the reason the administration is signaling that the Iranian Republican Guards are to be named a terrorist group. A withdrawal from Iraq, therefore, would be turning Iraq over to Iran, and that, in turn, would transform the region. But rather than discussing the geopolitical questions we have been grappling with, Bush has focused on Iran's nuclear capability.

Iran is developing nuclear weapons, though we have consistently argued that Tehran does not expect to actually achieve a deliverable nuclear device. In the first place, that is because the process of building a device small enough and rugged enough to be useful is quite complex. There is quite a leap between testing a device and having a workable weapon. Also, and far more important, Iran fully expects the United States or Israel to destroy its nuclear facilities before a weapon is complete. The Iranians are using their nuclear program as a bargaining chip.

The problem is that the negotiations have ended. The prospect of Iran trading its nuclear program for U.S. concessions in Iraq has disappeared along with the negotiations. Bush, therefore, has emphasized that there is no reason for the United States to be restrained about the Iranian nuclear program. Iran might not be close to having a deliverable device, but the risk is too great to let it continue developing one. Therefore, the heart of Bush's speech was that withdrawing would vastly increase Iran's power, and an Iranian nuclear weapon would be catastrophic.

From this, one would think the United States is considering attacking Iran. Indeed, the French warning against such an attack indicates that Paris might have picked something up as well. Certainly, Washington is signaling that, given the situation in Iraq and Iran's assertion that it will be filling the vacuum, the United States is being forced to face the possibility of an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.

There are two problems here. The first is the technical question of whether a conventional strike could take out all of Iran's nuclear facilities. We don't know the answer, but we do know that Iran has been aware of the probability of such an attack and is likely to have taken precautions, from creating uncertainty as to the location of sites to hardening them. The second problem is the more serious one.

Assume that the United States attacked and destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities. The essential geopolitical problem would not change. The U.S. position in Iraq would remain extremely difficult, the three options we discussed Aug. 27 would remain in place, and in due course Iran would fill the vacuum left by the United States. The destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities would not address any of those problems.

Therefore, implicit in Bush's speech is the possibility of broader measures against Iran. These could include a broad air campaign against Iranian infrastructure -- military and economic -- and a blockade of its ports. The measures could not include ground troops because there are no substantial forces available and redeploying all the troops in Iraq to surge into Iran, logistical issues aside, would put 150,000 troops in a very large country.

The United States can certainly conduct an air campaign against Iran, but we are reminded of the oldest lesson of air power -- one learned by the Israeli air force against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006: Air power is enormously successful in concert with a combined arms operation, but has severe limitations when applied on its own. The idea that nations will capitulate because of the pain of an air campaign has little historical basis. It doesn't usually happen. Unlike Hezbollah, however, Iran is a real state with real infrastructure, economic interests, military assets and critical port facilities -- all with known locations that can be pummeled with air power. The United States might not be able to impose its will on the ground, but it can certainly impose a great deal of pain. Of course, an all-out air war would cripple Iran in a way that would send global oil prices through the roof -- since Iran remains the world's fourth-largest oil exporter.

A blockade, however, also would be problematic. It is easy to prevent Iranian ships from moving in and out of port -- and, unlike Iraq, Iran has no simple options to divert its maritime energy trade to land routes -- but what would the United States do if a Russian, Chinese or French vessel sailed in? Would it seize it? Sink it? Obviously either is possible. But just how broad an array of enemies does the United States want to deal with at one time? And remember that, with ports sealed, Iran's land neighbors would have to participate in blocking the movement of goods. We doubt they would be that cooperative.

Finally, and most important, Iran has the ability to counter any U.S. moves. It has assets in Iraq that could surge U.S. casualties dramatically if ordered to do so. Iran also has terrorism capabilities that are not trivial. We would say that Iran's capabilities are substantially greater than al Qaeda's. Under a sustained air campaign, they would use them.

Bush's threat to strike nuclear weapons makes sense only in the context of a broader air and naval campaign against Iran. Leaving aside the domestic political ramifications and the international diplomatic blowback, the fundamental problem is that Iran is a very large country where a lot of targets would have to be hit. That would take many months to achieve, and during that time Iran would likely strike back in Iraq and perhaps in the United States as well. An air campaign would not bring Iran to its knees quickly, unless it was nuclear -- and we simply do not think the United States will break the nuclear taboo first.

The United States is also in a tough place. While it makes sense to make threats in response to Iranian threats -- to keep Tehran off balance -- the real task for the United States is to convince Saudi Arabia to stick to its belief that collaboration with Iran is too dangerous, and convince Turkey to follow its instincts in northern Iraq without collaborating with the Iranians. The Turks are not fools and will not simply play the American game, but the more active Turkey is, the more cautious Iran must be.

The latest statement from Ahmadinejad convinces us that Iran sees its opening. However, the United States, even if it is not bluffing about an attack against Iran, would find such an attack less effective than it might hope. In the end, even after an extended air campaign, it will come down to that. In the end, no matter how many moves are made, the United States is going to have to define a post-Iraq strategy and that strategy must focus on preventing Iran from threatening the Arabian Peninsula. Even after an extended air campaign, it will come down to that. In case of war, the only "safe" location for a U.S. land force to hedge against an Iranian move against the Arabian Peninsula would be Kuwait, a country lacking the strategic depth to serve as an effective counter.

Ahmadinejad has made his rhetorical move. Bush has responded. Now the regional diplomacy intensifies as the report from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is prepared for presentation to Congress on Sept. 15.

----

More shorterly, a quote from that New Yorker profile of Giuliani - stoled from o. nate's post on Keenan's "Future" thread:

...He (Norman Podhoretz, Giuliani's senior foreign-policy adviser and leading neocon thinker) believes that Giuliani would follow his advice to bomb Iran before it gets nuclear weapons... When, recently, John McCain said that the only thing worse than bombing Iran is allowing Iran to get the bomb, Podhoretz told Giuliani, "I wish you had been the first to say that."

Podhoretz on bombing Iran:

"If he (Bush) fails to do what I think he will do, Rudy seems to me to be the best bet for doing what is necessary."

I know they're supra geniuses over there, but my understanding was that Ahmedinejad is not the locus of Iranian policy formation or implementation.

Is that some kind islamo-liberal fallacy designed to lull me into a false sense of security before Iran at last subjugates USA?

xpst

Any minute now.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct--lieberman-iran0926sep26,0,6941186.story

sigh

fucking lieberman

they'd have to bring back the draft first

BushCo and the neocons in general have already proved incapable of forecasting reasonable outcomes for their use-of-force scenarios.

Bombing Iran would 1) not incapacitate Iran's ability to make war, and 2) would, as a defacto declaration of war, legitimate Iran's attacking US forces in Iraq, or any other use of force by Iran against the USA, its allies, or its interests in the area. Presumably, they would do this in cannily enough so as to appear to act defensively.

Such attacks would compel the USA to either 1) send vast quantities of troops into the area, sparking a much wider war than the USA public is willing to accept or the military can sustain without a draft, or 2) suffer from obvious impotency and a much worse erosion of our military prestige, along with far worse instability throughout the Islamic world.

Because these outcomes are so blindingly obvious and predictable, Iran seems to think it is in a no-lose situation and is (*ahem*) emboldened to pursue its policy of seeking hegemony over the middle east. The only possible way for Iran to lose this is to provoke a nuclear exchange, at which point the USA prevails over Iran and simultaneously destroys the entire international framework it created after WWII.

The only possible way for Iran to lose this is to provoke a nuclear exchange

Umm, no. Being on the receiving end of a nationwide modern recreation of Linebacker II is a serious setback even though, as I agree, a wider war would most likely be provoked.

It's not a case in which the Pentagon will merely muss the hair of Iran in a tussle over nuclear facilities. The average person on the receiving end in Iran would in no way think they are winning something. It's more accurate to view it as a lose-lose situation.

Any second now:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/30/wiran230.xml

"Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin 'searching for things that Iran has done wrong', The Sunday Telegraph has learnt."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/us/politics/30watch.html?ex=1348804800&en=99584dd6163c334b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh

^ do read

Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Cheery.

Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

This sounds about right. Especially in putting Cheney before the president.

There will be no invasion. I'm sure BCheney is hoping Israel will just strike indie as they did in Syria. Maybe US airstrikes but no "regime change."

U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3771522

Tombot's on the money, we don't the army necessary to actually do this

This is frightening:

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/nuclear-bunker-buster-rnep-animation.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/24/opinion/edcrevald.php

I don't know why I ever thought this was likely, I guess my pessimism was getting the better of me in 2005.... but yeah while Cheney would love it, militarily and logistically and politically it just ain't feasible.

so. what happened here? the "intelligence community" collectively decided enough was enough? pulled the plug on election-year shenanigans? interesting!

guessing even the dregs/stragglers left of the cia/nsa & state dept will only tolerate giving credence to a couple of mongers (in this case cheney and ahmadinejad) for just so long

also rummy isn't around to run a whole program dedicated to cherry-picking the most ridiculous pie-in-the-sky scary shit possible

thank god

for the moment i'm happy.

Actually, VENEZUELA has the nukes; Iran was just a smokescreen.

I read about this in the paper this morning, it's quite a big deal, obviously, I wonder how much coverage it'll get in the mainstream press/TV.

in the US they were talking about it on CNN. so, some. and it didn't seem to be of the "BUT THE PRESIDENT SAID... AND THEN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY SAID... AND THEN THE PRESIDENT SAID..." variety.

What's amazing to me is how the Administration didn't somehow either successfully pressure the authors to alter the report's conclusions or, if that wasn't possible, suppress the report itself. Maybe it's a strong indicator of how much of a toll the Iraq War has taken on the Administration and its political and coercive powers.

This line, from today's NYT lead story, was the most critical to me: "But for now at least, the main argument for a military conflict with Iran — widely rumored and feared, judging by antiwar protesters that often greet Mr. Bush during his travels — is off the table for the foreseeable future."

Of course, there was also this:

John R. Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations, who recently left the administration and began to criticize it, sounded very much like Mr. Hadley on Monday, saying the assessment underscored the need for American toughness. He said Iran’s intentions would always remain a concern as long as it continued to enrich uranium.

“The decision to weaponize and at what point is a judgment in the hands of the Iranians,” he said. He added that the finding that Iran halted a weapons program could just mean that it was better hidden now.

no evidence = they hid the evidence = we have evidence!

paraphrasing MSNBC, bush credits his "harsh rhetoric" with the weapons program ending.

"i did that! that was me!"

In fairness to Bush, what else would he say, at this point? I think he's trying to sound tough while openly backpeddling b/c of the NIE report.

Mr. Khatami, tear down this secret nuclear weapons program

"what secret nuclear weapons program?"
"mission accomplished."

no evidence = they hid the evidence = we have evidence! = OTM

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

think of the horrifying possibilities, people!

lol @ chris matthews being so happy about this

"joe biden, how awesome is this report? I need you to tell me how awesome it is and then we'll talk about how crazy the administration sounds all the time."

"joe biden, how awesome is this report? I need you to tell me how awesome it is and then we'll talk about how crazy the administration sounds all the time."

Biden's clearly right to be all over the Administration. Having said that, mostly I'm relieved by the report, rather than embroiled in the politics of it. I've read theories that Ahmadinejad's hardline rhetoric is more to rally domestic support than it is to threaten the West and/or Israel, but that view is contary to his words, and his words -- and those of the hardline religious leaders shadowing him -- are very scary indeed. Better that Iran is far off from building a nuclear device.

Then there's this: Bush Behind New N.I.E. Report. Did he really conclude that attacking Iran was "a bridge too far," and therefore green-light the new report? On the one hand, it seems a stretch. On the other hand, how in the world could an explosive N.I.E. report like this be made public without prior approval and vetting by the White House?

it's quite likely he and whoever else is left around to handle things just didn't realize how wacky they would look in the aftermath. Anyway everybody already knew Bush was a nutbag on this kind of stuff, the story is all about the candidates' reactions and record on the issue.

Anyway everybody already knew Bush was a nutbag on this kind of stuff. . .

Yeah, true enough. Cheney, too. Just six weeks ago, he said:

We have the inescapable reality of Iran's nuclear program; a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. The world knows this. The Security Council has twice imposed sanctions on Iran and called on the regime to cease enriching uranium. Yet the regime continues to do so, and continues to practice delay and deception in an obvious attempt to buy time.

Maybe not a lie, in the strictest sense, but obviously misleading, given that I'm pretty sure the Administration had the N.I.E. report at the time of Cheney's comment.

It's worth noting, too, that one of Rudy Giuliani's leading foreign policy advisors -- and a leading neocon -- immediately wondered aloud if the N.I.E. report was an intentionally misleading effort by the intelligence community to undercut the President. I think we'll hear more of this in the coming weeks, especially from Giuliani, who is deeply invested in keeping primary voters scared of the Iranian threat.

lol podhoretz

Yep, that's the guy.

i for one am concerned that this is all in the hands of iranians now /bolton

Bolton is a bug-eyed crazy neocon.

Podhoretz is a genuine paranoid. With a magazine.

how apeshit crazy do you have to be before the "mainstream" right distances itself from you? is it even possible?

Podhoretz has been apeshit crazy since at least the early 70s (back when all he had to attack was Philip Roth), so I don't think he's gonna get called out now.

the NIE was being delayed for political reasons. George Bush tried his moron act again today (i.e., 'I didn’t find out about this until last week.') but this time the turd ain’t floating. The news that Iran ended its nuclear program in 2003 was briefed to George Bush in the Presidential Daily Brief. He has known about this, I am told, for at least one year. George Bush is lying when he insists he had no inkling, until last week, that the intelligence community believed Iran halted its nuke program in 2003.

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction

I stopped reading after this sentence, which is ludicrously deluded

"then universal belief" my ass

Bush now appears restrained -- temporarily, at least -- by the NIE Report. But the line you quoted was from N. Podhoretz, one of R. Giuliani's top foreign-policy advisors. What's frightening is, with counsellors like Podhoretz whispering in his ear, a President Giuliani may not feel so restrained.

more like with people like Podhoretz working for him and no Rove, a guy as unlikable as Rudy has not a chance in hell of becoming president

I love how Bush is simultaneously taking credit for halting the nuclear program and insisting that they still have one.

a guy as unlikable as Rudy has not a chance in hell of becoming president

Man-o-man do I hope you're right. I worry, tho.

yeah, the prospect is horrifying. i think i could seriously claim that i'd leave the country if giuliani became president.

Of course I'm no fan of Bush fearmongering, but there does seem to be a hair worth splitting in all this. The NIE report is apparently addressing Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, whereas much of the controversy in recent months has been about Iran's "civilian" nuclear program. While Iran may not be developing nuclear weapons at this point, any move to bolster their nuclear expertise is still quite troubling. Maybe this distiniction is just a matter of semantics though - I'm not sure.

Not that I completely trust Iran either, but is it possible that they want to prepare themselves for an oil-scarce future by diversifying energy sources?

Which of course doesn't even matter, because "Iran Dabbling In Nuclear Energy With An Eye Toward Increasing Its Expertise So As To Maybe Build a Weapon Sometime In the Distant Future" is just not a headline you go to war over, and that's what's been at issue.

ALRIGHT NOW, COME CLEAN. I MEAN IT.

i would like every country to have nuclear weapons, then the threat of MAD would ensure peace

I read a really interesting POV from an Iranian-born CalTech prof (I think it was caltech, pretty sure) who was saying that basically we're de facto putting the Iranian civilian nuclear program into the hands of the engineers who gave us Chernobyl and the Kursk etc. instead of letting them utilize the hundreds of thousands of operating-hours in expertise that the West has developed over the decades - if the wind is blowing right when an Iranian cooling tower blows its top, well, ha, never mind the body count, your oil supply can go fuck itself too.

not the the US MI complex gives a fuck, they still won't admit to depleted uranium dust being a totally horrifying weapon in its own right

do yourselves a favor, folks, don't start reading systems engineering & organizational failure studies literature

thanks for the advice

How about this one?

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x2/x13140.jpg

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x2/x13140.jpg

dammit

I've heard good things about Clarke's "Mission Improbable." I'm finally on the afterword of Perrow's "Normal Accidents" which is fucking amazing.

lol they should just cut its internet access

really smart dude sez ya rly (sorta).

Hadn't really paid much attention to this Bourse business, forgot it was this week

there was a seymour hersh piece in a late 1999 NY'er where he quoted a CIA veteran official as saying he wanted to have an Ahmed with a backhoe on the payroll in every country we might have a problem with, so in the case of hostilities breaking out we could cut the cables and force telecommunication back up into the air where SIGINT/EW is at its most effective. Take a train to tinfoil town, whoo whoo.

Serious question: is Ahmed a slur for generic muslim and/or arab dude? I've never heard that before.

Would this be a plausible tactic to force telephone traffic to be routed through hubs with an NSA closet?

This reminds of some pre-Iraq War speculation that Saddam would use motorcycle couriers to keep SIGINT / disruption from being effective (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 )

http://cryptome.org/nsa-hersh.htm

The decline of the N.S.A. is widely known in Washington's national-security community. "The dirty little secret is that fibre optics and encryption are kicking Fort Meade in the nuts," a recently retired senior officer in the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations told me. "It's over. Everywhere I went in the Third World, I wanted to have someone named Ahmed, a backhoe driver, on the payroll. And I wanted to know where the fibre-optic cable was hidden. In a crisis, I wanted Ahmed to go and break up the cable, and force them up in the air" -- that is, force communications to be broadcast by radio signals. The number of daily satellite-telephone calls in the Arab world, many of which are encrypted, is in the millions, creating severe difficulties for eavesdroppers. The mobile-telephone system used by Saddam Hussein at the height of Iraq's dispute last year with a United Nations arms-control inspection team operated on more than nine hundred channels. Each channel was separately encrypted, with multiple keys, and Saddam's conversations bounced from channel to channel with each call. A U.N. intelligence team eventually gained access to the telephone system's technical manuals and other data, and was able to record the encrypted conversations, but without these materials it could not have made sense of the intercepts. The code-makers are leaving the code-breakers far behind.

man my brain is like a steel trap for dumb shit like this

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10601584

Mr Ahmadinejad has never been able to explain convincingly why Iran is the first country to have built a uranium-enrichment plant without having a single civilian nuclear-power reactor that could burn its output

oh I can think of another one that did this.

wait wtf I just realized my Economist hasn't come for over a month!

ya rly - it's just unbelievable to me that Israel gets a pass on this shit, the IAEA/UN isn't breathing down their neck, etc. so wrong.

x-post

yeah, i can't believe iran doesn't have to do what the US says, don't they get it?

I thought Tom meant America!

yeah I was speaking specifically to lawrence berkeley national labs

looks like the cables weren't too much of a problem, the bourse opens tomorrow!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080221/ap_on_re_eu/belgium_iran_nuclear

lol pathetic. Why is is this story even being reported?

Thought the NIE report was quid pro quo for Iran ceasing the funding of certain Shi'ite militias in Iraq?

A cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots at boats suspected to be Iranian, the U.S. Navy said on Friday, underscoring tension in the Gulf as the Pentagon sharpened its warnings to Tehran.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWAT00939920080425?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

my boss is in tehran right now!

Soon or not: fite!

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668683139&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Just in case: ElBaradei repeats what he's been saying for over 5 years:

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=56533§ionid=351020104

And we all know how much credence this administration gives to the view of the UN.

Bush wants to do it. Of course it won't be anything like Iraq or Afghanistan but I would not be at all surprised to see a cruise missile strike on Iran in the next six months. Just one last petulent, 'Fuck you, I'm still the Conamder in Cheef' gesture.

cool!

Can the US afford 3 wars at once?

The cold war, the vietnam war, and gulf war ii have been wars that could be argued were not - at least on some level - fought with quick or tangible results in mind and it is difficult to imagine an invasion at the current time given how embroiling that would become. If Iraq were to at some point in future eventually become a solid base to replace Saudi perhaps more realistic? It seems more likely that a new event or trigger may occur in 2009 or 2010 but given we are still inexorably tied to 9/11 it would have to be something really quite big

Like I said, not a war but a short, sharp, pointless bombing campaign. No overthrow, just a few hundred needless casualties, several "potential weapons facilities" destroyed and a message sent. Of course the message Tehran receives will be, "fuck, we'd really better hurry up and build that nuke as a defensive measure".

Aside from the fact that there's no way in hell Congress would authorise the funding for it, the US doesn't have the troops to sustain its current commitments, let alone enable it to enter into any new ones.

If Iraq were to at some point in future eventually become a solid base to replace Saudi perhaps more realistic?

Even under an Obama administration there is likely to be a permanent American military fixture in Iraq. And that is, in my mind, one of the dumbest fucking aspects of the whole thing.

I thought it was one of the major purposes!

And that is, in my mind, one of the dumbest fucking the only non-retarded aspect of the whole thing.

Oh, and the U.S. will not attack Iran in any way, anytime soon. Having poeple think you're gonna attack them, on the other hand, can be of enormous tactical value.

Yeah, some iranian nuclear technicians working overtime tonight.

Hey America, you already have a proxy presence in the Middle East: it's called Israel.

You know how they didn't like your meddling in South America and South East Asia? They're not so keen in the Middle East either so perhaps, for once, try backing the fuck off okay? Umm, too late.

This makes sense to me contenderizer. An attack on Iran would surely have to be after the current situations were finally resolved and would require another large scale precursive event.

Any future US wars are likely to follow paths of previous US wars, and not be resolved in a short time frame. The US isn't in a position to fight another of those wars until its current endeavours are concluded

Without meaning to sound condescending, you do know America's not actually at war right?

But that's a whole different issue.

# The UK Top 50 of 1990 Poll [Started by Geir Hongro, last updated 5 minutes ago] (I Love Music) 4 new answers [POLL results]
# so let's place bets: how long before the US invades Iran [Started by Shakey Mo Collier, last updated 5 minutes ago] (I Love Everything) 13 new answers

Made me misread this as

so let's place bets: how long before Geir Hongro invades Iran

Even a 'short, sharp, pointless bombing campaign' is going to give Ahmadinejad a good excuse to start mouthing off, disrupting shit in Iraq and lord knows what else. Contenderizer's OTM, Bush is just doing his standard Texan tuff talkin' garbage.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/06/alert_cheney_wi/

David Wurmser allegedly (though he does deny it) said that Vice President Cheney felt it important to "tie the President's hands" when it came to Iran and to generate an event that would undermine the diplomatic track -- the worry now is that the crowd in power is really talking about tying the next President's hands. . .tying perhaps Barack Obama's hands.

I thought the real possibility was that we would strike Iran (or have a dramatic escalation of tension with Iran) in the final days before the November vote, in an effort to tilt the election to McCain.

dude you scare me

Why?

Oh, I get it. I didn't mean to suggest that I think the Bush Admin. will actually strike Iran to tilt the election. I've just read other people who say that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Shahab-3_Range.jpg

can we see one of those maps with Israel in the middle please?

Just move the circle, make it twice as big, and change "Shahab" to say "Jericho"

well and also change "2,100" to "4,500"

my house would be on that one!

bet you feel silly now for all that Anti-Zionist samizdat you've been pushing on the streetcorner

Finally the Islamic Republic is safe from the warmongering threats of Eritrea and and Moldova!

I hate to ask... but what exactly could Cheney do to "tie the hands" of the next president, short of direct military action?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20651

Don't know if this article by Peter Galbraith from last year was ever mentioned but some fascinating details in it emerge about a deal that Iran tried to negotiate using the Swiss as proxies:

In 2003, as Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance shows, there was enough common ground for a deal. In May 2003, the Iranian authorities sent a proposal through the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann, for negotiations on a package deal in which Iran would freeze its nuclear program in exchange for an end to US hostility. The Iranian paper offered "full transparency for security that there are no Iranian endeavors to develop or possess WMD and full cooperation with the IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments." The Iranians also offered support for "the establishment of democratic institutions and a non-religious government" in Iraq; full cooperation against terrorists (including "above all, al-Qaeda"); and an end to material support to Palestinian groups like Hamas. In return, the Iranians asked that their country not be on the terrorism list or designated part of the "axis of evil"; that all sanctions end; that the US support Iran's claims for reparations for the Iran–Iraq War as part of the overall settlement of the Iraqi debt; that they have access to peaceful nuclear technology; and that the US pursue anti-Iranian terrorists, including "above all" the MEK. MEK members should, the Iranians said, be repatriated to Iran.

Just bomb everything already, we know you're going to whether there's a reason or not, sheesh.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

so far predictions on this thread have been off. cards on the table, pundits: is it so gonna happen before November in the hopes of getting people to vote for The Party That's Strong On Defense?

is there any real chance that would go over in the court of public opinion anymore, esp considering the 'new cynicism'? the media won't won't won't buy it; they're still feeling guilt over getting played by the bush admin over iraq

Is this story getting traction anywhere? It's, well, interesting...

A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.

man, bein a pirate ain't what it used to be

That reads like a treatment for another X-Files movie.

rumor has it that some of the pirates are turning into reverse vampires!

pirates sieze cargo of tanks

They pump blood INTO your body through their teeth?

Interesting times.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces defeat if election not rigged, say Iranian experts

Good luck Iran

That link seems to have stopped working. So try this one - and see thousands of young Iranians letting their hair down.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/jun/11/iran-election

If the (relatively) moderate Mousavi gets in I'm going to start a thread about Iran that doesn't have something about bombing it in the title.

What a disaster for Iran.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8096411.stm

Record turnout in an election that was meant to be a cake-walk for Ahmadi-Nejad. Of course Mousavi, is only a moderate, a former insider, and any president only ahs as much power as the Supreme-leader and council give him, but it could mean a different tack from Iran.

― Mornington Crescent (Ed), Friday, 12 June 2009 08:01 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Because I revived a thread on ILM. Mousavi is moderate rather than reformist, which gives me more hope that he will be more successful than Rafsanjani.

Ahh, fuck it.

is the consensus that this was rigged?

yeah, the official numbers show ahmi winning over 60 percent in moussavi's home province. so pretty rigged no matter who actually "won"

I don't think there is a consensus that the vote was rigged. There have been some reports of voting irregularities (not that many at this point), but the reality may simply be that Ahmadinejad won this election. It's depressing, but it may also be true.

green is such a pretty color for political movements

there's not really any reason to think the election was rigged. sure there might be 2 million wealthy reformist voters in northern teheran willing to show up for big rallies but the truth is there are 68 million poor-ass undereducated deeply muslim voters in the provinces of iran who care more about who's handing out free bread and onions to veterans today than who's going to fix the economy long-term.

i'm overestimating the population of poor-ass muslim voters probably by about 10 million there but that's my take on it

anyway, young, tough talkin', good-lookin, take no shit populist beats stiff reformist with largely intellectual agenda who appeals to wealthier urban liberals ... sound familiar USA?

I'd seen similar comments and wondered if it was all down to that in the end. Gladhanding is sometimes all you need, combined with being in a good place to do the gladhanding to start with.

cosmopolitan/urban turnout is usually slightly higher tho right moonship? altho from what i know support for reform in the wealthier northern areas is hardly uniform. friend of mine who was in iran last year for a few months said that even in tehran province ppl were disillusioned w/ the moderates

i mean im not surprised by this at all although i dont have a great grasp on the situation so

i'd be speaking out my ass if i said i knew anything about voter turnout

but

In brief remarks in Canada, Clinton cited "the enthusiasm and the very vigorous debate and dialogue" in the run-up to the vote. "We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people," she said

knowing what i know about iranians in iran, i'd say that sadly it probably does

of course all of my news and opinion take with a grain of salt, as it's all colored by the smug expat attitude of "they get the president they deserve"

or as my mom put it, "surprise! the monkeys voted for a voted for ... guess what ... a monkey!"

yeah me too from the little i know (xxpost)

u r from the bay area right - most of my expat friends feel the same way although a couple who have actually been back r always like "its both not that bad and also worse" which at least feels true

haha ask re: bay area just because i feel like we maybe know v. similar sorts of ppl highly educated upper class cosmopolitan iranians w/close ties to elites and europe who def have their own not widely shared perspective

no i'm from southern california (lived in bay area for many years, in berkeley and palo alto) but yeah i'm sure we know the same sorts of iranian-americans

here's another underreported fact in the west that may go towards explaining the outcome: for many iranians ahmadinejad *is* the reformist candidate since a big part of his campaign (aside from the "defender of islam" bit) was an anti-corruption platform. in the run-up to the election he made a big deal of mousavi's personal wealth, investments outside of iran and ties to the shah's regime and money elites. with the wealthy-poor divide as big as it is in iran that actually probably did a lot to sway whatever urban middle class there is in iran, and tie it up for the poor vote too.

but do you think the landslide is legit? did ahmadinejad really get nearly 70% of the votes? they called it very early (with 10% of the vote counted)and by huge margin. just because ahmadinejad may have legitimately won doesn't mean there wasn't huge fraud...

but here's a guy that actually has some idea of what he's talking about, unlike myself: http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html

from the comments:

One of the Ayatollahs issued a Fatwa few days ago saying that electoral fraud was right and proper.

News coming out of Iran futher supports your thesis:

1) Party representatives were not allowed into polling stations.

2) TV footage showing Mousavi supporters being beaten and chased by plain clothed police, while those celebrating Ahmadinejad "win" are protected by them.

3) Ahmadinejad declared immediately after the polling ended that he won 64%, not far from the "official" result. How did he know?

4) The counting was so quick despite the 85% participation.

5) The head of the IRGC said a couple of days ago that he will not allow a velvet revolution.

Number 3 is particularly suspicious...

juan cole is an angry (ex) baha'i with a big axe to grind, i wouldn't take that guy too seriously

actually i myself am also a lapsed baha'i - but i am familiar with juan cole's "scholarship" and it's not that great TBH

ultimately the elections being rigged probably wouldnt be any more or less surprising than ahmadinejad winning fair and square

but obviously would be more exciting

here's another underreported fact in the west that may go towards explaining the outcome: for many iranians ahmadinejad *is* the reformist candidate since a big part of his campaign (aside from the "defender of islam" bit) was an anti-corruption platform. in the run-up to the election he made a big deal of mousavi's personal wealth, investments outside of iran and ties to the shah's regime and money elites. with the wealthy-poor divide as big as it is in iran that actually probably did a lot to sway whatever urban middle class there is in iran, and tie it up for the poor vote too.

the thing is ahmadinejad has been running on this kind of resentment since his first election--i think the hope among a lot of western observers was that his continued inability to reverse the awful economic situation (despite his position as a populist) + (perceived) change in western attitudes on the part of iranians might have lead to his ousting; the hope was probably further fueled by what ended up to be (it seems) overly optimistic polling that (likely) overrepresented the moussavi's "base"...

well jeez isnt iran like the THIRD WORLD and as im sure you know vahid the THIRD WORLD is rife with CORRUPTION

(perceived) change in western attitudes on the part of iranians

^^ this is confusing i think i meant that a lot of people were hoping that the iranians would perceive a change in western attitudes towards iran due to the obama victory--i think thats probably an over-optimistic hope for things, though not an impossible thing to believe/expect

i take it that comment was aimed at my bit about election fraud, not ahmadinejad's platform?

the only axe i want to grind is occam's razor. some of the stuff on cole's blog is so ludicrous, like his contention that the 4th party candidate from luristan should have carried the province because he is a lur. that's a bit like saying ron paul should have carried ... uh ... wherever he's from

looks like moussavi's been arrested and the iranian electoral commission has called for a nullification of the results

^^ this is confusing i think i meant that a lot of people were hoping that the iranians would perceive a change in western attitudes towards iran due to the obama victory--i think thats probably an over-optimistic hope for things, though not an impossible thing to believe/expect

okay i think im maybe not understanding u but ~~~ i do think from what ive read and heard that to a large extent american attitudes towards iran are a little beside the point i.e. what moonship is sayin about ahmadinejad's platform but there are also a lot of development issues that split factions fuzzy on these details but u get my drift

like this is stating the obv but i think we tend to overstate the importance of foreign vs. domestic issues in iranian politics simply because thats whats important to ~us~

i take it that comment was aimed at my bit about election fraud, not ahmadinejad's platform?

― moonship journey to baja, Saturday, June 13, 2009 6:22 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya sorry if that was unclear. i just mean to say that its not hard to see a certain kind of expectation among even well-educated ppl in this country for voter fraud/rigged elections in various "third world" areas i.e. the middle east/africa/south america

from al-jazeera http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613121740611636.html:

Ahmadinejad had apparently taken the northwestern city of Tabriz with some ease.

Tabriz is the heart of East Azerbaijan, and Azeris are among the tightest ethnic groups in the country, unfailingly voting along ethnic lines.

In the 2005 presidential election, Mohsen Mehralizadeh was a largely unknown and wholly unsuccessful candidate. He came in seventh and last, and yet he still won the Azeri vote in the Azerbaijani provinces. Mir Hossein Mousavi is an Azeri from Tabriz.

Elsewhere, Mehdi Karroubi failed to take his home state of Lorestan; in Khuzestan, Mohsen Rezai, a local scion, was expecting at least two million votes. His total for the entire country has failed to breach one million.

And with each updated count, Ahmadinjad's lead did not waver from a very stable range of 66-69 per cent, irrespective of which districts were reporting.

i get what you're saying but this is all rather circumstantial evidence ... my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother are azeris from tabriz, but you have to understand that the azeris only make up like a quarter of the population of tabriz. so if 85% of the population turns out, and all 25% of the azeris vote for mousavi that still doesn't mean ahmadinejad can't take more than 50% there.

Imagine how sad the women must be over there. I don't want to know.

yeah it's true this is all still pretty circumstantial, but the margin of victory is still pretty suspicious...btw wikipedia says the majority of people in tabriz are azeri.

wikipedia can kiss my one azeri buttcheek

how long before wikipedia kisses moonship journey to baja's one azeri buttcheek

hahaha

ok i just double-checked with my parents and i am wrong ... wikipedia is right ... the % i had in my mind was azeris in general in iran, which they informed me was probably somewhere closer to 15%

*bows head in shame*

well i don't care who's right, i'm still hoping wikipedia kisses your one azeri buttcheek

okay i think im maybe not understanding u but ~~~ i do think from what ive read and heard that to a large extent american attitudes towards iran are a little beside the point i.e. what moonship is sayin about ahmadinejad's platform but there are also a lot of development issues that split factions fuzzy on these details but u get my drift

like this is stating the obv but i think we tend to overstate the importance of foreign vs. domestic issues in iranian politics simply because thats whats important to ~us~

― Lamp, Saturday, June 13, 2009 6:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well ya--to be a little more specific--one of the things thats been propping ahmadinejad up throughout his tenure (at least based on what i know) is his aggressive attitude towards israel/the UK/the US. the hope among a lot of people here was that a downgrading of the level of aggressiveness on the part of the US would mean that iranians would be less likely to desire an aggressive president--i think this is an over-optimistic hope for a number of reasons...

now obviously this isnt the only reason ahmadinejad has stayed in power--not by a long shot! but it is a reason--and probably one part of the reason for optimism in the US over the possibility that a. might be voted out had to do with an overemphasis placed on us's place in irans internal politics. but. it doesnt mean it wasnt A factor--and anyway all i really meant to say that it was a reason for US observers optimism, not that it was a realistic reason for a. to be voted out

Is there a thread to talk about whether the election was rigged or not? Or is this the place?

looks like this is the place to me. (wish i had more to contribute. still in the mostly-ignorant stage.)

impossible to verify or corroborate all kinds of things in here, but some damning-sounding things:

One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.

“They didn’t rig the vote,” claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. “They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.”

and look, i understand the impulse to say iran isn't really that bad etc., especially in response to all the axis-of-evil bullshit -- it's a much, much more complicated country than that. but it's not a democracy, and people shouldn't pretend that it is (even out of well-founded anti-western-imperialism). whether or to what degree the vote tally was rigged, there's no way to call this a legitimate election. authoritarian states by definition don't have legitimate elections.

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-270707

U.S. military commanders in the Middle East have been sent a highly classified message reminding American forces to maintain discipline and prudence if they encounter any Iranian military or security forces during potential unrest surrounding Iran's presidential election, CNN has learned.

This so far is the only acknowledged U.S. military reaction to the unfolding situation in Iran.

Two U.S. defense officials with direct knowledge of the message confirmed the details to CNN but said the issue is so sensitive that they could not divulge whose signature was on the message. It was distributed via secure communications in recent days. The officials talked with CNN on condition they not be identified.

^I'm failing to see the significance of above story.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-results-as-they-came-in.html :

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201157011fa76970c-800wi

Sullivan has been BRILLIANT on this, BTW.

You made me go look and so I found this: that graph does NOT prove fraud, apparently.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/that-graph-again.html

Was going to say. A follow-up post reasons that the last U.S. presidential election would have a similarly consistent slope. It's a pretty interesting analytical tool though.

So, first Moussavi was told he had won, and hours later the ministry changed their mind? http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2009/06/withholdrecognition/

And now he's under house arrest. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/13/742004/-Updated:-Breaking-Mousavi-Arrested:-Rafsanjani-Resigns,-Iranian-Police-Fleeing-from-Demonstrators

Dear news.bbc.co.uk, please try to make sure that your comment fits every frame of your animated picture gallery.

FAIL:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2unyqfl.png

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/144/iranianprotestelectionr.jpg

And from the back...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2456/3624004576_67d99b5156_o.jpg

Ok, so I'm a bit thick (especially when it comes to maths) but can someone just explain that Sullivan graph to me?
Thanks.

This helps explain why it's not what it seems: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-does-not-prove.html

yeah the graph is probably not as damning as it looks. but the problem is, of course, there's literally no way to corroborate or validate the vote count. which is the big risk for any government that wants the legitimacy of electoral victory without actually allowing free and fair elections. (you notice the chinese, say, don't make this mistake.)

Where did the "from the back" pic come from?

the back, duh

poor calvin

Did you vote for Ahmadinejad? Are you celebrating the election result? Tell us more about about your support and celebrations by filling in the form below.

Love the BBC.

wtf!

No really, if that guy has a site somewhere where he's posted a bunch of shirtless pics of his back injuries, I need a URL for personal use plz thx.

uh

Looks like someone was trying to beat "I L X" onto his skin.

Eric, I think it was Kos, it's obviously a flickr account but I haven't been able to track it down.

Yeah, it was Kos, both photos are here...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/14/742253/-Early-Report-Day-Two:-Media-Police-Run,-Protestors-Trapped-by-Police,-Ayatollahs-Daughter-Arrested.

John Cole's thoughts.

And Robert Fisk's.

An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad..."

well if the election results are good enough for some guy robert fisk knows, it must have been a fair election

Yeah, I think he was just making the point that while we were optimistically watching demos in Tehran there was a whole country still v. keen on Ahmadinejad. Obviously he's not the only person to make that point.

LOL at BBC 'demo' sarcasm.

Yeah, I think he was just making the point that while we were optimistically watching demos in Tehran there was a whole country still v. keen on Ahmadinejad. Obviously he's not the only person to make that point.

Yeah but an 85% turnout finds the incumbent with 62% of the vote? Really? Any example of that happening freely and fairly, anywhere ever?

Nothing proven blah blah blah, but come on...

the problem is that even if the numbers are right, an authoritarian regime that allowed no independent observation or validation has no way to prove the accuracy of its count. it's a catch-22 of trying to hold an election but control and contain its results -- it makes legitimacy hard to attain, domestically and internationally.

and anyway, nothing about any of this exactly screams "honest and accurate." this bit is interesting:

Ahmadinejad's position was undermined last night when it emerged that all three of the other presidential candidates had questioned the result.

Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who had fought the election as a conservative, entered the fray late yesterday, writing to the guardian council questioning his official total of less than a million votes.

"According to my election headquarters and my experts, in a worst-case scenario I should have had between 3.5 and 7 million votes," he said in a letter posted on his official website.

"This is enormous. Rezai is still very influential in the IRGC," said Ali Ansari, an Iranian expert at St Andrews University. "The elite are very divided over this. They have been publicly dishonoured [by the alleged vote-rigging."

and there's this:

A moderate clerical body, the Association of Combatant Clergy, issued a statement posted on reformist Web sites saying the election was rigged and calling for it to be canceled, warning that “if this process becomes the norm, the republican aspect of the regime will be damaged and people will lose confidence in the system.”

and who know how much to trust mohsen makhmalbaf's version of events, but if any of what he's reportedly saying is true -- about mousavi getting a call from the interior ministry to start preparing his acceptance speech, and the reformist newspapers getting clearance to prepare their front pages announcing it -- then it raises all kinds of questions about skirmishes inside the government and who was calling which shots.

shouting from the rooftops last night in tehran:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WU-cxEEJ-E

http://edendale.typepad.com/weblog/2009/06/james-longleys-translator-reportedly-detained-beaten-in-tehran-while-covering-election-aftermath.html

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1096/downwithengland.jpg

that *is* the big issue here

http://www.think-well.com/think-well/images/logos/bp_logo.jpg

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/how-to-tell-who-the-good-guys-are.html

my understanding is that as much animosity as (some/most) iranians might have towards the US its nothing compared to what (some/most) iranians (in particular older iranians) feel toward GB

yeah - the US had always stood with iran against the worst machinations of GB actually

of course then the US overthrew their country in 1953, so..

"all the shah's men" is a gripping history of nefarious UK/US stuff w/iran through the '53 coup - highly recommend - the cynicism of the US plot is fucking heartbreaking (also makes you realize what a huge difference a president makes.. as soon as ike was elected in november '52 the english oil guys were like "all right let's get this coup on the road")

theres some thread where we talked about that book & some other books about the iranian revolution

Every English person you ever meet/hear about who actually goes to Iran (including my father-in-law who worked there on many many occasions) always says that they are very friendly and welcoming though.

They seem to be able to tell the difference between UK Ltd. and the rest of us, I think, just like most people in the world then really.

wouldn't want to generalize tbh.

but, you know, authoritarian regime mobilizing injury for ulterior gain shock.

yeah max i had the feeling i was repeating myself!

i seriously want to see a movie about the 1953 coup starring the dad from heroes as kermit roosevelt, expensive crane shots of the abadan oil refineries which seamlessly go into the english management compounds where pale-skinned beauties sip pimms as their husbands play tennis on exquisitely manicured lawns

you know if the coup had failed iran nowadays would probably be a lot like egypt: c/d?

An even bigger United Arab Republic...oh wait.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/15/iran-opposition-rally-banned-mousavi

I reckon it went something like this. Mousavi starts getting vigourous support in urban areas, some Establishment high ups, either centrally or on a local level start to panic and decide to rig the election, however Ahmadnejad was probably going to poll over 50% anyway so they over egged the pudding and he ended up with 66%.

I have no doubt that Ahmadinejad is popular, and Mousavi pulled of a remarkable feat to get where he did in the short campaign time available but Ahmadinejad must have been way better than even money to win even in the absence of any fiddling. (there were even expat iranians in the UK and USA voting for him by some accounts I have read).

That link goes to a story that Khamenei has ordered and inquiry.

Much too early to comment on a situation so fluid, but assuming that Ahmadinejad stays in power after the "investigation" is concluded, the level of public outrage should quell the neocon insistence that Eye-ran is a nation of insane Islamists bent on destroying the West.

I'm not so sure, it can easily be painted as an internecine squabble, especially as Mousavi was PM in the 80s.

theres some thread where we talked about that book & some other books about the iranian revolution

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Monday, 15 June 2009 14:14 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can anyone recommend me a good book about the iranian revolution, & its causes and ramifications?

"if the coup had failed iran nowadays would probably be a lot like egypt"

err

also:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/15/iran-opposition-rally-banned-mousavi

"Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orders inquiry into vote-rigging claims in Iranian poll"

... which was posted two posts up. ignore me i am dum

baja i tht egypt is almost entirely sunni y/n

if the coup had failed iran nowadays would probably be a lot like egypt

lot of otm in this but i guess egypt would be different too in this alternate history.

Iran fascinates me, in many ways (present crisis aside) it is one of the most democratic nations in the middle east and one could see how it could evolve into a constitutional theocracy, where the supreme leader becomes more like a European monarch. Of course it is a long way from that now, even without rigging the democratic process is very restrictive in terms of who can stand and how campaigns can be conducted.

I am wondering how this plays out, Khamenei seems to be as adept at realpolitic as some iranians are cack-handed at rigging elections.

How about some scenarios.

1) 10 days time, Ahmadinejad declared the winner, Khamenei finds some evidence of fraud, but not enough to overturn the result, some scapegoats are found.
2) Election gets re-run but some reason is found to bar Mousavi from standing.
3) Runoff is called between Ahamadinejad and Mousavi, Ahmadinejad picks up votes from the other two candidates, either legitimately or through a more subtle rigging.

Assuming Khamenei wants Ahamadinejad to be there for the next 4 years he has got to find some way of convincing people of his legitimacy. I assume mousavi must have some kind of powerbase within the regime or he would never have been allowed to stand.

one of the most democratic nations in the middle east

well, yes.

I realise this is a very low hurdle.

tracer you are correct but i am talking about the effects of nationalizing the oil industry and cozying up to the russians (see: anwar sadat)

wasn't the "commie iran" meme overblown though? i.e. tudeh was like 2,000 people at best

i guess in those days if the us decided they were against you then you basically had one other choice of partner.. who knows

also not quite sure why i mentioned that about sunni vs shia.. and i am carefully treading here since i obv know way less about it than you - but i have always imagined that iran has a kind of rugged underdog mentality that would lead it to difft places than a sunni country

anyway, "if the coup had failed" - yes but in what way? if the u.s. had actually succeeded in convincing the u.k. to deal with mosaddeq and come to an agreement over oil - and the u.s. came very close to doing this, pre-ike - it's certainly conceivable that iran could have become a fast friend and favored trading partner

the level of public outrage should quell the neocon insistence that Eye-ran is a nation of insane Islamists bent on destroying the West.

there's already plenty of examples of the opposite being true; max boot & marty peretz are both dead sure that ahmadinejad's margins are completely legitimate (and robert fisk, too, apparently. popular authoritarianism is a useful concept to some ppl i guess)

besides, it's not like evidence makes a difference to what those people think or say one way or another.

anyway if you're reading what i'm reading doubtless you've come across that stuff too, sorry to be a pedant

No, I don't doubt it. But I meant that defining "Iran" as a monolithic block of Islamists and therefore a suitable bombing target is harder now.

Even more results.

I think Karroubi is a tad optimistic.

We rig these things better in the USA.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/TehranToday.jpg

this is from today, in tehran

We rig these things better in the USA.

yeah. from a friend of mine:

These guys waited until the last minute and made up the numbers instead of purging the voter rolls in advance, but they're getting the hang of it and I'm sure they'll do a slicker job of it next time.

http://www.slate.com/id/2220520/

Hitchens, if anyone's interested

Sullivan's coverage has been pretty great but isn't the 'outage/web attack/service disruption' a little tin-foil hatty?

A little but if his site is known as a place to exchange news on this then hey.

student protest here on campus, looks like about 80 ppl marching and yelling

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23745.html

"Tech Update

After more research, the tech staff has now ruled out a DNS attack. They thought it was earlier, hence my post. But after a thorough investigation, it turns out our servers have just been overwhelmed. "

...>:[

But one could more plausibly suggest that if a “coup” is being attempted, it has been mounted by the losers in Friday’s election. It was Mousavi, after all, who declared victory on Friday even before Iran’s polls closed.

I feel like this is possibly true and not a bad thing.

I think we are going to see, incrementally, perhaps, a rise in the ratings of former president Bush.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3601/3629194747_cf913a494b.jpg

Update | 6:58 p.m. The Boston Globe’s Big Picture photo blog has a round up of images from the last three days in Iran.

There are fears that a 90-minute disruption of Twitter service later tonight, for previously scheduled maintenance, could be a blow to the efforts of Iran’s opposition to mobilize support for their actions on Tuesday.

The twitter revolution?

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/mondays-updates-on-irans-disputed-election/

http://blog.twitter.com/2009/06/down-time-rescheduled.html

The world is upside down: Sullivan approvingly quoting BEVAN in a blog post.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/15/rafsanjani-iran-elections

yeah it's definitely important not to get carried away with the "reformist" credentials of the opposition leadership. this is a power struggle at the highest levels of iranian insiderdom.

thank God an election could never be bought or stolen in America

I don't know how much traction it's getting, but that 7-point manifesto, with the calls for the Ayatollah to step down and a more liberal temporary supreme leader, seems far more important than the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi.

yeah this doesn't appear to be so much about mousavi anymore. it's much, much larger now.

well, these things tend to follow one of two templates. if the state is strong, there's a period of upheaval and uncertainty, during which it briefly seems like the genie can't possibly be put back in the bottle, followed by a severe crackdown and genie-rebottling. (prague spring, tiananmen, myanmar monks, etc.) if the state's weak you can get an orange revolution. but obviously here the state's still strong, so ... i'm afraid of bad things to come.

A recount, eh?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8102400.stm

well, 20 million votes is definitely within the margin of error.

thank God an election could never be bought or stolen in America

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, June 16, 2009 6:46 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-slowburner.gif

free market baby

http://www.utne.com/uploadedImages/utne/blogs/Media/ishr213.jpg?n=4553

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090615_western_misconceptions_meet_iranian_reality

it's funny how all these "ahmadinejad won. deal with it" articles only focus on how pointy-headed "american experts" are misreading the situation. they never address why millions of iranians think ahmadinejad cheated.

Pat Buchanan. Hmm.

The Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and should not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.

For the Iranian theocracy has just administered a body blow to its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and the world.

Before Saturday, the regime could credibly posture as defender of the nation, defiant in the face of the threats from Israel, faithful to the cause of the Palestinians, standing firm for Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear power.

Today, the regime, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is under a cloud of suspicion that they are but another gang of corrupt politicians who brazenly stole a presidential election to keep themselves and their clerical cronies in power...

There are other reasons Obama should not heed the war hawks howling for confrontation now.

When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way. That is a rule of politics Lyndon Johnson once put into the most pungent of terms. U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs and portray the candidate robbed in this election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as a poodle of the Americans...

The dilemma for America is that the theocracy defines itself and grounds its claim to leadership through its unyielding resistance to the Great Satan—the United States—and to Israel.

Nevertheless, Obama, with his outstretched hand, his message to Iran on its national day, his admission that the United States had a hand in the 1953 coup in Tehran, his assurances that we recognize Iran’s right to nuclear power, succeeded. He stripped the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad of their clinching argument—that America is out to destroy Iran and they are indispensable to Iran’s defense.

it's funny how all these "ahmadinejad won. deal with it" articles only focus on how pointy-headed "american experts" are misreading the situation. they never address why millions of iranians think ahmadinejad cheated.

― "Bytchass of Juxberry" rules (hmmmm), Tuesday, June 16, 2009 10:49 AM (57 seconds ago) Bookmar

....because they lost?

i mean, i'm appalled by what's happening in Iran right now, but riots in the street shouldn't be read as ~proof~ of election fraud

but riots in the street shouldn't be read as ~proof~ of election fraud

No, but they do mean that they don't believe in the legitimacy of the present government and that's conceivably worse. If the majority of citizens votes for a dislikable candidate, you usually grumble and go along but in the case of the Islamic Republic, the people are not sovreign, are not allowed to be sovreign for fear that they might interpret religious law in ways at variance with the interpretations of the mullahs. In the end, this may not be about Mousavi but about allowing the majority to decide the fate of the nation, instead of some paternalistic special interest clique.

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/06/15/silence-is-golden/

I bet the Chinese Communist Party are nervous watching this right now.

In many cases, there really is fraud being perpetrated by the other, “anti-Western” side, and I don’t doubt that this is true to some extent in Iran, but the truly incomprehensible thing for so many Westerners is the possibility that the authoritarian populist whom Washington loathes actually commands majority support in his own country and could probably win without fraud. Why would such a person commit fraud and use violence to increase the scale of a victory that was already in his hands? Ask Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. They know the answer, and the answer is fairly straightforward. The reason for doing this is to acquire and consolidate power. One way to do this is to provoke the opposition, bait them into resistance and then pose as the defender of social and political order. The Kremlin has been doing this to Russian liberals for the better part of a decade. If these were people deeply concerned about legitimacy as we think of it, they would have respect for the law. There is, however, no contradiction between seeking democratic mandate and engaging in lawlessness. The two are more allied than we like to believe. Indeed, what are we seeing from the protesters except an expression of the conviction that they are the rightful majority, which entitles them to disregard the formal law so long as they are fighting for the recognition of their votes?

from that article

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/16/iran/

stratfor seems a lot more certain in the validity of the election than any other iran-watcher i've read...

Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.

i mean...?

right. the idea put forward in that amcon article i linked seems more plausible now? ie the election wasn't stolen outright--the numbers just were just padded to incite resistance and, in quelling that resistance, shore up control

There are others that speculate that not only this election was stolen but the 2005 one was, too.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/iran-does-have-some-fishy-numbers.html

right. the idea put forward in that amcon article i linked seems more plausible now? ie the election wasn't stolen outright--the numbers just were just padded to incite resistance and, in quelling that resistance, shore up control

Playing with fire a bit there

?

yeah i dunno about that, seems a little too cinematic frankly (but what do i know). it seems equally likely that as the mousavi/change/reform campaign gained more and more steam, the incumbents did what they could to nudge their votes up, and did it badly and baldly enough to spark the revolt...

there was some analyst chatter in the early hours of this thing that it was a semi-secularist right-wing coup, even! as in, ahmadinejad manufacturing a blowout for himself.

Playing with fire to "incite resistance", I mean

bait them into resistance and then pose as the defender of social and political order. The Kremlin has been doing this to Russian liberals for the better part of a decade

Failing to see much connection between Russian liberals and what's been going on on the streets of Tehran

I think there's far more support for reform in Iran than there is a coherent 'liberal' constituency in Russia.

i don't buy everything in hitchens' rant, but i do think he's right that debating the possible "legitimacy" of the vote sort of misses the point. that government cannot have a legitimate election. which doesn't mean there isn't some value in the exercise, or that what's going on right now isn't important in various ways. but speculating about whether the vote count is real or not is giving entirely too much credit to the idea of an "election" under the auspices of the current iranian government.

Everything's gone green.

I wore a green tie, last night, but I suspect it's significance (as such) wasn't much noted.

Everything's gone green.

go BBC

Ah! I was just swinging by here to post that! Incredible.

A few years ago, when 'Persepolis' had its English-language debut, I interviewed Marjane Satrapi. I was looking around to see if she'd said anything about this in the media but I'm sure she worries about the safety of her parents. We had a pretty interesting conversation about the US conception of Iran and the way nobody exactly challenged stereotypes during the hostage crisis in America, but *at least* people who didn't already know what Iran was really like are getting a very quick primer.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf seems to be the go-to guy for Moussavi in Europe.

Has the been site gone green in support of iran or just as part of the general dicking around they seem to be doing at the moment. (if the former, expect all hell to break loose).

Not sure I think it's wise for the BBC to go green considering its links to the government and Anglo-Persian history, just as I don't know about the President wearing green, right now. I think it's fine for Sullivan (or me) but the governments of the U.S. and U.K. had best just stay out of the way, methinks.

i don't buy everything in hitchens' rant, but i do think he's right that debating the possible "legitimacy" of the vote sort of misses the point. that government cannot have a legitimate election. which doesn't mean there isn't some value in the exercise, or that what's going on right now isn't important in various ways. but speculating about whether the vote count is real or not is giving entirely too much credit to the idea of an "election" under the auspices of the current iranian government.

― would you ask tom petty that? (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, June 16, 2009 4:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

This is entirely OTM. I'm quite surprised by all those "get over it" blogs. Get over what? Living in a country without free press, without free internet, with an army of cops beating the hell crap out of you or simply starts firing a machine gun in massive crowds? Get over that and then over the election result?
Whether or not the elections were rigged seems a less important fact than knowing that these days, over a million Teherans run the streets in protest (illegaly, the demonstration was forbidden, but they went), a size of crowd last seen in 1979 during the revolution. That's what's so important about this. It's a breakthrough. And it almost certainly will not lead to a more fair everyday life for the people, Ahmadinejhad will not step down, but at least it's a signal. It's taking a stand. And 'we', the world watching, should not simply reply "get over it".

Why isn't my beeb homepage green? :(

yeah i'm not really hearing these lecturing type analyses that the whole structure is a sham so don't get your hopes up -- the whole point is that even in the full knowledge of the vote's underlying sham-ness, millions of ppl had the temerity to take it seriously

It's only green if the bit on the left is pointing at the 'comedy' - if you tab on any of the other pages it's a different colour. Methinks this is just a coincidence.

Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Article 27 [Freedom of Assembly] states that “Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam.”

NYT's The Lede blog says

Update | 2:07 p.m. Just to knock down a rumor spreading online, the BBC’s home page has been green for long before the color was adopted as a symbol of the Iranian opposition. The corporation did not change the color in sympathy with Mr. Moussavi’s campaign.

Interestig site, Sullivan linked earlier:

http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/16/turmoil-follows-silent-protest/

the bbc homepage color is chosen to complement the photo in the main promo - for instance the domestic homepage right now has "rock ness" as the main promo. the background of the photo is purple, therefore the page is purple.

It would be a pretty egregious violation of basic journalistic principles for BBC to make its webpage green.

Well said Gerard xp. I feel like I say this about every international crisis, but this isn't about us, it's about them - the 'told you so' types aren't interested in that. (not to mention the usual demonstrators who haven't shown on the streets of London because it's not the west/israel to blame)

I thought about going to the London demo but I had too much to do.

Thanks Ismael, although in fairness - to the people in Iran - this doesn't need bringing Israel into the discussion as well, I think.

Wow. Joe Klein OTM:

For two years now, John McCain has been entirely consistent on Iran: every last statement he's made--at least, those that I've seen--has been (a) fabulously uninformed and (b) dangerously bellicose. He's still at it, apparently. There is no question that President Obama's more prudent path is the correct one right now. There is also no question that the neoconservatives are trying to gin up this situation into an excuse for not engaging with the Iranian government in the near future--and also as a rationale for their dearest, looniest dream, war with Iran. I've come home more pessimistic that much can be accomplished in negotiations with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad government, but we certainly should continue to make the effort to lure the Iranians into the civilized world. It may even be the case that Khamenei decided that Ahmadinejad's reelection was a pre-requisite for negotiations.

Meanwhile, Pete Wehner has a post at the Commentary blog comparing Iran in 2009 to the Soviet Union of the 1980's which, of course, is completely ridiculous. I visited Russia back in the day and I've now visited Iran twice. There is no comparison. The Soviet Union was the most repressive place I've ever been; its residents lived in constant terror. I'll never forget my first translator in Moscow telling me that his parents had trained him never to smile in public--it could easily be misinterpreted and then he'd be off to the Gulag. There was no internet in those days, no cellphones, no facebook or twitter.

Iran, by contrast, is breezy with freedom. It is certainly freer now, despite Ahmadinejad, than it was when I first visited in 2001. There are satellites dishes all over the place, which bring accurate news via BBC Persia and the Voice of America. The place is awash in western music, movies and books. The Supreme Leader has a website; ayatollahs are blogging. You can get the New York Times and CNN online. (I was interested to find, however, that most blogs except those, like this one, that are associated with a mainstream media outlet, are filtered by the government.) There is, in fact, marginally more freedom of expression in Iran than in some notable U.S. allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia--although the danger of imprisonment always exists if a journalist or politician takes it a step too far for the Supreme Leader's watchdogs. It is not even clear that Ahmadinejad--who has significant backing from the sort of people who support Republicans here (the elderly, the religious extremists) plus a real following among working-class Iranians--would have lost this election, if the votes had been counted fairly. (I tend to believe that they weren't counted at all, but that's just my opinion.)

Marjane Satrapi says she can prove Mousavi won: http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.3433629806

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/06/17/open-letter-to-robert-kagan/

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-fear-has-gone-in-a-land-that-has-tasted-freedom-1706912.html

^^^best on the ground reporting I've seen so far, dude is amazing

he is kind of a dick which has stopped me reading him.

what does freedom taste like – french fries?

he is kind of a dick which has stopped me reading him.

care to elaborate?

is this one of those "Brits hate overexposed UK celebrity" sorta things?

Not Fisk's fault, but I heave at the arrogance in this subhead: "In defiance of the ban on foreign reporters, The Independent's Middle East correspondent ventures out to witness an extraordinary stand-off on the streets of Tehran."

well whatever I doubt he wrote that

altho I don't really get the arrogance of stating a fact - I don't see CNN's correspondent on the ground over there

Yes, but it's as if Iran doesn't matter – only getting OUR Middle East correspondent on the streets of Tehran in defiance of the ban on foreign reporters.

he is kind of a dick which has stopped me reading him.

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, June 17, 2009 5:54 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

Is there anyone who don't think is a dick?

wow a british newspaper bragging about their gutsy reporting in a silly overwraught way--who would have thought

^^lolz yeah my thoughts exactly

'You' (can't type - distracted by Simpsons episode I haven't seen yet on tv)

wow a british newspaper bragging about their gutsy reporting in a silly overwraught way--who would have thought

Because US reporters stay in the bar until it all blows over?

none of you guys are reporters

ned tell us about yr time workin as a stringer in sierra leone, while the americans hid in their bottles of whiskey

Fisk is a long-time LBZC punchbag for some reason, I think it's because he takes a very dogmatic stance and could be interpreted as being anti-Israel, which tends to wind up some of our Brit ILX political enthusiasts

none of you guys are reporters

Nah -- I train them. That's why reporters don't write headlines.

it's too bad you don't train britisher copy editors--you could show them the error of their ways

they are called subeditours, get with it

Michael Ledeen needs more than a copy editor:

There's a useful lesson here for President Obama and those who think they can somehow be a little bit pregnant in a brothel: You're going to be accused of meddling anyway, since out there in the real world you are believed to be the leader of the forces of freedom and democracy. So stop pretending to be a sweet innocent, and get in there and fight for people who are dying in the name of our values, and who want to be part of our world.

fisk is basically a US/UK/israel-are-responsible-for-everything-bad-ever kinda dude + amazingly pompous. basically has classic foreign correspondent syndrome and it's not entirely his fault.

Is there anyone who don't think is a dick?

er yeah

US/UK/israel-are-responsible-for-everything-bad-ever

reading the Great War For Civilization right now and I don't get this at all - he lays a shit ton of blame on "Islamist" fundies, brutal autocrats of all denominations, etc.

he is a little pompous but I put that down to him being a Britishes (er technically Irish I guess but whatever)

LBZC

dunno what this is?

ilx clique.

haven't read the fiskster in years tbqh

Cleft sticks beat CNN 9 times out of ten.

Personally, I'd say that Fisk is an important writer in the Middle Eastern dialogue, and for the most part a good man. I haven't read enough of his stuff to say more. Certainly his newspaper work bears the stamp of a man who knows what he's talking about, and genuinely tries to see the situation from the fairest angle. Sometimes he lapses into melodrama, such as when he claimed to have been brutally assaulted, and yet 'could understand and sympathise with' his attackers, and their assault upon what they perceived he stood for as a white Westerner.

i think he is famous for reporting from palestinian hospitals.... which is good but not the most neutral starting point

I hate Fisk's worldview, but a couple of friends of mine went Beirut and were looking around one day like lost tourists and were approached by a friendly old guy who turned out to be Fisk (he lives there) and showed them the immediate neighborhood, took them home, gave them baklava etc. Part of me thinks I misjudged him, and part of me thinks it was a little creepy.

such as when he claimed to have been brutally assaulted, and yet 'could understand and sympathise with' his attackers, and their assault upon what they perceived he stood for as a white Westerner.

this episode seems to bother quite a lot of people, I don't really get why. Is it a distrust of him stating this position, that claiming to have understood/sympathized with people beating him seems unrealistic? That kidn of interpretation strikes me as both willfully cynical, but also unrealistic given the nature of Fisk's reporting and his experiences living in the middle east for the last 40 years.

like - okay he gets beaten and attacked, do you automatically expect him to revert to some "those savage brutes!" kind of reaction? This would not be consistent with his worldview or his life.

Surely you must find it at least slightly amusing?

not really

I can think of a number of widely lionized/canonized figures who expressed sympathy and understanding with their attackers

http://twitpic.com/7ki6e

http://twitpic.com/7ki6e

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/large/12713990.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1245266421&Signature=aUkaRf2cg5YGol7v3FmjvGIe1HQ%3D

ahem

SMC, you make a fair point. I was merely observing that it wound quite a few people up with its impassioned defence of an act of violence.

xposts

"a little creepy" is the word i heard </suzy>

impassioned defence of an act of violence.

I haven't gotten to that chapter yet but dude seems pretty down on violence, I find it hard to believe he would "defend" it (as opposed to "explain" it, which has, y'know, been his job for decades)

Ah gotcha, well fair enough then. I'm just saying that people thought it odd he could be so seemingly self-loathing.

ahh the World Cup

from a practical standpoint, is there really anything any outside players (Western or Arab) can do to assist the pro-Moussavi elements? Anything that wouldn't provide a pretext for (or provoke) a more brutal crackdown? Obviously anything overt that any outsiders do would immediately be construed as meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation...

Meanwhile while all this is going on:

Comedy Central says "Daily Show" correspondent Jason Jones is reporting from Iran for a week of dispatches titled, "Access of Evil."

His reports will air on the spoof news program anchored by Jon Stewart beginning Monday.

Jones' dispatches, taped the past month, find him interviewing a cross-section of society, including an Iranian family, an underground rapper and a feminist blogger. He also attends a speech by President Ahmadinejad

was wondering about that: how long ago was it taped?

"past month" ok duh

lots of interesting stuff flying around about internet access in Iran - seems kinda unprecedented, the degree to which info is getting out via hackers and whatnot

think lots of foreign hackers are facilitating this, if the nerd news websites are to be believed

Andrew Sullivan's done a lot of good lately, but this made me hurl:

Among the more moving emails I've received these past few days have been from Iranians asking why on earth I seem to care so passionately about what's happening right now. The premise - that somehow Iranians' fight for freedom is a parochial issue that the rest of us should not be concerned with - is heart-breaking. But here's my answer: this is the central event in modern history right now. The forces of democracy have marshalled in Iran for accountability, transparency and fairness. Wherever they marshall, we should stand with them, especially in the blogosphere, where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment

yeah absolutely - I'm just going by what I've seen from CNN and people's Twitters, seems pretty crazy. Genie's out of the bottle when it comes to the global transfer of information these days.

(er x-post)

Outsiders sending Iranians proxies.

where our Iranian brothers and sisters built the foundation for this moment

Alfred, you do know Iran has a huge number of bloggers, right?

But they owe Brother Andrew a heap of gratitude.

Sullivan a little heavy on the internet hyperbole there perhaps, but depending on how this plays out (ie, Khamenei goes down? major structural changes to the Iranian gov't?) this could indeed be a huge historical moment. Having a homegrown functioning Islamic democracy would be a massive, massive shift for the Middle East - esp in terms of a power dynamic between Sunni and Shia, since basically every Sunni regime is a fucking corrupt, oppressive, ineffectual joke.

Or it could just be another Tianenmen (entirely likely) and things go on as before.

x-post

He can be, perhaps, a bit histrionic but I don't think he's asking for gratitude. I remember the zeitgeist in '89 and this rather reminds me of that, hence I believe, Sully's enthusiasm.

esp in terms of a power dynamic between Sunni and Shia, since basically every Sunni regime is a fucking corrupt, oppressive, ineffectual joke.

ummm this is racist

or just retarded idk, take yr pick

lolz Sunni and Shia are not races?
thx for playing

I mean sure the vast majority of Shia are Persian but... well I dunno what your point is. Point me to a Sunni regime that isn't a dictatorial fuckup.

Fwiw:

http://iranelection.posterous.com/

http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/

http://community.livejournal.com/persians/

most "races" aren't races: it's still racist.

my only point is that if Iran comes out of this as a more functional democracy, then Iran will become a helluva lot more attractive to your average Muslim than the Saudi Royal Family, or the American-bred Iraqi regime, or Egypt, or what have you.

Shakey, how about Jordan? Not exactly a paragon of political virtue but essentially a moderate constitutional monarchy with a parliament. Same might be said of Morocco. Tunisia is, by Arab standards, not entirely horrible. I'm not denying that any of these countries has some major and rather ugly problems, but compared to Saudi or Egypt or Libya, they're still markedly better.

Point me to a Sunni regime that isn't a dictatorial fuckup

Bangladesh

I also think that Shakey's not being racist there. You can disagree with the gist of his argument but a discussion of Snni/Shia relations is completely appropriate and playing the race card is not only a little self-loathing but distracting. Would you tell an Iranian cleric or layperson that the study or discussion of Catholic/Protestant relations in European history wasn't appropriate?

Not comparing like with like there

Would you tell an Iranian cleric or layperson that the study or discussion of Catholic/Protestant relations in European history wasn't appropriate?

I wouldn't get close enough to try.

Why don't I go up the street and ask them?

shakey u kind of sound like ur talkin out of ur ass here no offense

Scraping the surface of SoCal-related activity/interest in the whole thing -- and yes, that photo at the top was really taken in Irvine.

It may not be apples to apples but it's at least apples to pears. Why are we quibbling about this, when Shakey's essential point, that an Iran which has shown the power of the street, the power of progressive ideas and progressive technology might make some waves in the area and even outside the area. Hello, China! Don't you think there are sme people in the CPC who are sleeping a little less comfortably these days?

That was mostly to you, Tom.

iran, of all places, doesnt need to be shown the power of the street or of radical ideas

i don't think sunnism is the problem with Muslim theocracies. i mean, as distinguished from shia islam.

whoa xposts never mind

yeah max ur right

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/7803/anon.jpg

yeah I'll grant that I picked the worst examples of Sunni regimes there and yes of course there is a scale. Iran strikes me as a bit different from places like Tunisia and Morocco and Jordan and Bangladesh tho - its huge, its wealthy/relatively stable, its the site of the first modern Islamic revolution, its technologically advanced, etc. It can easily be held up as a paragon of a successful Muslim state in a lot of ways - and its assumption of a more genuinely populist, progressive identity would be a monumental shift in the region - the kind of thing DubyaCo wished they were accomplishing with Operation Iraqi Freedom and bungled so badly.

x-posts

well shit now that 4chan has gotten involved democracy will reign free across the globe

i don't think sunnism is the problem with Muslim theocracies. i mean, as distinguished from shia islam.

this was not my point at all.

i don't know what there is to say about this at this point, but i must say i'm very curious how this is playing (officially and unofficially) in north africa, in the gulf, in turkey, in pakistand and india, in iraq (how have we had no reporting on that, btw?)

yeah okay. i should just read the whole thread, i guess.

xpost

yah i think a good use of ur thursday afternoon would be to read 300+ posts of ilxors talkin about iran

haha it's probably not going to happen.

^^^ democracy hater

my dad kind of looks like ahmedinejad, i think

iran, of all places, doesnt need to be shown the power of the street or of radical ideas

However, the rest of the Middle East might take notice. A Sunni could perhaps be induced to write off the Iranian Revolution as something co-opted by a clerical order of a schismatic sect but if a grass-roots movement can ask for simple respect and democracy, s/he may take more notice.

The Sunni/Shia rift may not be as important here as the Arab/non-Arab one. Anther mostly Sunni country with a not-totally-fucked-up govt we neglected to mention in the Middle-East; Turkey.

Turks would object to being called Middle Eastern

They probably would but considering the sway they held in the region and the legacy they left, I don't particularly care.

yeah they're European dontchaknow lolz

Held sway over a lot of Europe too!

yeah they're European dontchaknow lolz

They might be in the European Union within a few years, so I don't get the lolz

the lolz is their whole application process to the EU - which has been complicated by the fact that Turkey and Europe spent an awful lot of time trying to invade/conquer each other (Austria's still peeved about 1683!)

I mean, there's a certain level of irony in a once imperial nation grovelling to be all buddy-buddy with its former nemeses and join their club

^^^ total kneeslapper

Bit like the Russians? Except I don't think Europeans ever got very far trying to invade Turkey.

xpost -- Especially since I know you read that as 'menses'

the lolz is their whole application process to the EU - which has been complicated by the fact that Turkey and Europe spent an awful lot of time trying to invade/conquer each other (Austria's still peeved about 1683!)

― Kitchen Paper Towel (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 18 June 2009 13:26 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And there was me thinking it was just simple racism.

well that too

not mutually exclusive, really

Racism with shiny buttons and a hussars cap then.

Turkey is a secular democracy that prints the bearer's religion on its passports. It does not distinguish there between Sunni or Shia, it's all "Islam".

Turks and Turkish people have been all over Asia and Europe. What I am really leading at is that, whereas the Persians were exploited and humiliated by the West in the 20th Century, Arabs have basically been humiliated by some 'other' since Selim I conquered them in the early 16th Cent (after the Mongols had seriously hurt them before).

They probably would but considering the sway they held in the region and the legacy they left

Brits!

The brits fucked with the ME (not talking Crusades and not talking Egypt) for less than a hundred years whereas the Turks were there for almost four hundred.

Actually a tad more than four hundred

MW, Turks are some of the most Francophile people in the entire world. Istanbul is full of French-inspired architecture and people's second language is just as likely to be French as it is to be English.

Yeah, it's weird considering the French expression 'tête de turc' and the number of Turks in Germany, how many Francophone and Francophile Turks I've met.

One reason Turkey isn't going to get into the E.U., is their treatment of the Kurds and the PKK and another is Article 301 of their penal code.

...aaaanyway most of my Turkish info comes from a good friend who came to UK at 6 with her Communist parents, as a refugee.

If we haven't posted tis one yet:

http://j.photos.cx/12981027-580.jpg

Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane

oh man even the trees are protesting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8108661.stm

Singles out the UK for special criticism. But we didn't even invent twitter!

Britain would never stir up street mobs in Tehran to depose someone they didn't like though, surely.

"There is 11 million votes difference," the ayatollah said. "How one can rig 11 million votes?"

Can Muslims be said to be "singing from the same hymn sheet"?

"How can it be wrong? The Bible says it!"

"American officials remarks about human rights and limitations on people are not acceptable because they have no idea about human rights after what they have done in Afghanistan and Iran and other parts of the world. We do not need advice over human rights from them."

Oh, snap.

Oh, snap.

Like a gay Iranian's neck in a noose

or the sovereign ruler of another country!

Not In My Noose

noose talk costs lives

I like the huge puppet show thing he does his speeches from though...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2462/3640454311_96d76a1e5c_o.jpg
Very colourful.

That's the way to do it

http://images5.cafepress.com/product/30541765v1_350x350_Front.jpg
Needs a more flamboyant stage presence though, especially if he wants to capture the all-important youth vote. This sleeveless t-shirt would be a good start.

so Khameini's basically signalled that the Basij are gonna be given free reign with this speech, no? ie, clampdown imminent?

I totally lol'd at this non-sequitur, I must say:

He even made an apparent reference to the deaths of people -- what he called the "burning alive" of 80 men, women and children -- during the federal siege of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, in 1993.

"We have raised the flag of human rights through Islam," Khamenei said.

I don't think either state has much of a monopoly on the moral high ground of protecting human rights but come the fuck on

kind of touching that paranoids of all nations really care about waco

also touching that Islam was totally down with slavery long after the rest of the world had abandoned it, not to mention the whole torture/dismemberment/execution of political prisoners, gays, etc.

hard to find an american down with torture or persecution of gays these days, yeah

persecution maybe, but torture?

er I should say persecution sure more like

Hanging is out too in the US

Of gays that is

http://wheniwrite.com/2009/06/05/black-man-dragged-to-death/

jeez which is worse, islam or america????? the world might never now

^^^lolz yeah

http://www.eurthisnthat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/tyler_perry2009-as-madea-headshot-large2.jpg

Blimey

http://wheniwrite.com/2009/06/05/black-man-dragged-to-death/

I know we're heading down a slippery slope here, but hate crimes are kinda different when committed by private citizens as opposed to the government...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Issue-15-cover-small.png

Britain would never stir up street mobs in Tehran to depose someone they didn't like though, surely.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, June 19, 2009 1:51 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

slowburner.gif

Putting ideas in Ayatollah Khameini's head there

http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iranelection/2fyaPZQmoibB7zyxxjJWUU6LHQjsFuWD1DH7Rc0Myy1GAFepm3UNv9uyJ2ln/DSCF2813.jpg

^^^ I am dum and need that explained to me (ie, who's the picture on the left)

Mossadegh

ah. never seen a photo of him

jeez which is worse, islam or america????? the world might never now

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Friday, June 19, 2009 11:35 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this is where I get off the lefty train

As far as political propaganda goes, I think it clever inasmuch as it counters the you're-agents/dupes-of-Britain/Great Satan rhetoric of Ahamadinejad/Khameini with a kind of it-doesn't-matter-who-denies-the-Iranian-people-their-right-to-choose-their-leaders statement. Developed, this would be a very useful riposte to the regime's usual demogoguery and xenophobic blather.

yeah - agreed its important to deflect any branding of the protestors as anti-Republic, counterrevolutionary, etc.

I don't have time to read this thread right now but man, this Iranian stuff really makes my blood boil. If they insist on having their religious bullshit, hey, they can have it (letting alone the extremist, terrorist, shariah law crap for the moment), but that doesn't mean they can't have a fair election, quit the propaganda and communicate with the outside world. Makes me sick.

Thanks, I was waiting for your insight.

I rise in reluctant opposition to H Res 560, which condemns the Iranian government for its recent actions during the unrest in that country. While I never condone violence, much less the violence that governments are only too willing to mete out to their own citizens, I am always very cautious about "condemning" the actions of governments overseas. As an elected member of the United States House of Representatives, I have always questioned our constitutional authority to sit in judgment of the actions of foreign governments of which we are not representatives. I have always hesitated when my colleagues rush to pronounce final judgment on events thousands of miles away about which we know very little. And we know very little beyond limited press reports about what is happening in Iran.

Of course I do not support attempts by foreign governments to suppress the democratic aspirations of their people, but when is the last time we condemned Saudi Arabia or Egypt or the many other countries where unlike in Iran there is no opportunity to exercise any substantial vote on political leadership? It seems our criticism is selective and applied when there are political points to be made. I have admired President Obama's cautious approach to the situation in Iran and I would have preferred that we in the House had acted similarly.

I adhere to the foreign policy of our Founders, who advised that we not interfere in the internal affairs of countries overseas. I believe that is the best policy for the United States, for our national security and for our prosperity. I urge my colleagues to reject this and all similar meddling resolutions.

Who was that? I don't like the reasoning particularly, but strategically staying out of it seems like the smartest thing to do - the less credible the allegations of foreign meddling, the better.

Yeah, for once I think Ron Paul is right. 'Twere better to have simply re-affirmed our support for freedom of assembly and freedom from political harrassment and maybe the right to free and fair elections anonymously if they had to make any gestrues at all.

Of course I do not support attempts by foreign governments to suppress the democratic aspirations of their people, but when is the last time we condemned Saudi Arabia or Egypt or the many other countries where unlike in Iran there is no opportunity to exercise any substantial vote on political leadership?

yeah Ron Paul is a joke but this is totally on point and - more importantly - accurately poinpoints the lens through which any US gov't actions will be interpreted by the vast majority of Mulsims

yeah, stopped clock phenomenon there

http://intranet.abpg.com/2004/images/odds/sdYsolKXXovcgewoSy7JVMJ6o1_500.jpg

"the founders told us not to meddle" and "we don't say anything about egypt or the saudis" are opposite arguments. well, kind of.

Fwiw, they conspicuously DO have elections in Egypt though totally usually unfair ones but even that is slowly changing and as recently as 2005, Condoleeza Rice was telling Mubarak and the Egyptians that the world would be watching their parliamentary elections.

I wouldn't normally have a problem with the US saying stuff about torture, thuggery, rigged elections, etc., but it would be particularly unhelpful wrt Iran where we have a history of actual, real meddling.

also we're a bit less credible on the torture/thuggery thing than we were say 10 years ago

I agree, we shouldn't meddle or be seen to be meddling. Totally agree.

also we're a bit less credible on the torture/thuggery thing than we were say 10 years ago

Which is why that shit has been making me so mad all this time. Fcuking arm-chair neo-cons and their concept of hard power etc... At least the old cons were canny bastards.

speaking of armchair neocons - I have been genuinely surprised over the last few days that that douchebag Kristol (or someone similar) has not publicly intimated that the current democratic unrest in Iran is a direct result of our fabulous experiment with "democracy" next door in Iraq....

cuz I can totally see Kristol or Wolfy trying to take credit for it (this was what they wanted all along, right...?)

You know what, Shakey, I actually do think that w/o the removal of Saddam and the Baathist supremacy, this would never have happened since memories of the Iran/Iraq war are fresh with both sides and political stability even at teh cost of reform (see 2003 Iranian elections, for example) would have appealed to a greater number of Iranians, though how much of all this present unrest stems from the current demographics of the country, their relatively good connection to the web and its culture and other shit I couldn't possibly know. I agree that Kristol is a human dildo, though.

Thr problem among the neo-cons is that although they wanted their little foray into Iraq 'to create democracy' (or so they kept claiming), they prefer having a bogeyman in the IRI than in seeing a peaceful protest movement show the world that their childishly violent ways might be counterproductive. It probably also irks them that, if the iranians succeed, they will have largely done it by themselves, without having to be grateful to any foreign governements. Given Iran's position on nuclear power (one highly unlikely to change under any regime, frankly), I think the AIPAC hawks hate how this has humanized the Iranian people and made the threat of American or Israeli strikes less likely.

I don't entirely disagree, like I said I'm just surprised one of those jerks hasn't poked their heads above ground to publicly make the argument. The threat of Sadaam removed was probably a huge relief/schaudenfreude moment for Iran, and now they will probably be able to exert more influence in internal Iraqi politics than ever before, what with the wobbly coalition currently in power. (Although it seems to me that the long-term viability of the Iraqi state is highly questionable, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if after the US leaves the ancient splits between the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shi'a all spring back to the fore, but we'll see... whether or not that's to Iran's benefit is also open to debate)

I've noticed in perusing all this stuff over the last week that there's a lot of bad blood between Arabs and Persians that goes back long before Saddam invaded. One guy's blog said wrt to going out to protest tomorrow and his fear for his life that he was writing, "So (future generations) know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not suurender to despotism." (see 6/19/2009, 3:09 pm) They are an immensely proud people but they have undergone much and their relgiion tends to make them remember past injustice well.

weird to not equate that whole surrendering to Arabs thing with becoming Muslim (or is dude a Zoroastrian lolz)

They're super ambivalent, eh? Yeah getting conquered brough them Islam but it also meant that, whereas they had usually had the upper hand, now they had lost it. Islam is, a pretty colorblind religion, though.

That said, I'd rather not be an Iranian-Arab.

Also where he writes surrender, you should probably read, 'got our asses beat', especially by the Mongols (who were obliging enough to do it the Arabs, too, and could have pretty much taken anyone they could get at the time).

thats_racist.gif

i'm just going to take a second to say that it's very easy and very hypocritical to characterize iranians as a backward-thinking people with a long racial memory or something. this coming from the country where people are holding "boston tea party" tax protests, endlessly referencing lincoln in the last election, lining up around the block for "passion of the christ", wrangling over whether or not to put engraved copies of the ten commandments in our courthouses, etc.

this country (and every other country on the world map) is just as backward-thinking as any other; it just doesn't lend itself well to being reduced to caricature.

i guess it also bear saying that the mullahs in qom lend themselves well to caricature by still dressing like it's 1152 or something (and making women do the same), whereas our crazies do a better job of covering up in a nice navy suit and red tie.

slow your roll there
no one called anyone "backward thinking" wtf

I think yr seriously misreading Michael there is all

They are an immensely proud people but they have undergone much and their relgiion tends to make them remember past injustice well.

yeah i mean i'm not sure what there is to misread in this line

maybe i'm just being immensely proud here but

I never said backwards, did I? When you have a very long history, have people in several other countries that speak a version of your language, etc, there's no harm in knowing your own history and being proud of it. Also, Boston Tea Parties, okay, still only 234 years ago, Lincoln, dead 144 years ago; don't really compare to remembering when your people (and I won't talk about racial memory like the Shah might have because of the diversity of their population now and the numerous times, such as under the Ghaznavids, when they Persified their conquerors or assimilated them more or less) were conquered by the Arabs 1359 years ago, not to mention when you conquered Egypt some 500 years before Christ.

You do know about Sh'ia, right moonship journey?

Guys I think this is simple -- I think Baja meant "backward thinking" as in a long memory and a mind on the past, not "backwards" as in "uncivilized"

i know a few things about iranians, michael

okay we'll see if we're still talking founding fathers 1359 years from now, i suspect if america is still around we will

huh i thought hulagu converted but that must have been a l8r mongol

haha - I can see taking issue with the "proud" thing (lolz generalizations about entire nations are never gonna hold up to serious scrutiny)

BUT

there does seem to be a tendency within Islam for its practitioners to be very cognizant of its long history - and related interactions with the West - in a way that is quite different from the willful ignorance and myopia of much of the West. I mean, you cite the tea party thing, but that's a case of American citizens getting their history TOTALLY WRONG, for example.

whoah x-posts

yes that's the sense in which i meant backward thinking, and no i don't see what makes their fundamentalists that much more backward thinking than ours.

also megalolz at the US lasting another 1500 years

at least their fundamentalists actually live in the historical spaces where things actually happened and don't have to make it all up i'm looking at you mormons (as long as we're being arbitrarily prejudiced itt)

i'm just saying everyone has that sense of history ... like for example the chinese have a very long sense of history too but it makes no sense to try to explain their politics in terms of it. so why we single out islam for that except that it's an easy caricature based on appearances i'm not sure.

anyway i'll sign off by saying whites are a beastly race, what with their endless generalizations about other cultures, tends to get you a bit heated sometimes

whew, glad that worked, I was envisioning a long argument where Michael and Shakey were like "wait, no one ever called Iran (the other sense of) 'backward'"

xpost - if I were going to say anything about Islam as a whole it would probably be more informed by the relative shortness of certain histories

like for example the chinese have a very long sense of history too but it makes no sense to try to explain their politics in terms of it.

um, it doesn't?

anyway i think that quote is less suggestive of "bad blood" with arabs and, er, mongols, than it is of the notion of surrender being a lasting part of persian history, or some trait of the persian "character" or patrimony or whatev. i wonder how that idea has been sustained and deployed politically over the years, i don't know anything about iran, ancient or modern.

if I were going to say anything about Islam as a whole it would probably be more informed by the relative shortness of certain histories

also ^^^this, which I was trying to formulate a clear way of saying but Nabisco beat me to it

from what little i know of it, one of the sad things about the islamic revolution in iran is that in insisting on a dogmatically religious view of the world, it has subsumed persian national identity and history into a pretty ahistorical framework. an awful lot of persian culture has been downplayed or brushed aside because it doesn't comport with the revolution's moral agenda. so even though the revolution was a nationalist movement, it came to some degree at the expense of national identity and history. or that's my impression.

(and i guess i shouldn't use the word "persian" at all, since it's not what iranians call themselves. but what i mean is that the country's history and culture appears to me to be much richer than the constrained reading the post-revolution government has permitted it.)

even mosaddeq himself has been "disappeared" from national memory and that was just 50 years ago

i dude frankly i don't know shit about it

an awful lot of persian human culture has been downplayed or brushed aside because it doesn't comport with the revolution's moral agenda.

fixed.

basically this is what happened every time there was a regime change in China the world over the course of 5000 years...

So I wouldn't've figured the Iranian government to have been so tone-deaf as to bomb Khomeini's shrine and then claim it was a 'suicide bomber' that carried it out but any port in a storm, it seems.

Where I'm generally tracking things today:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23iranElection

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/liveblogging-day-8.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/20/iran-unrest

anyway i'll sign off by saying whites are a beastly race, what with their endless generalizations about other cultures

Hee hee.

Another liveblog seemingly on the ground.
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/2009/06/minute-by-minute-with-revolution.html

DO NOT CLICK on the footage at the end of the post (before the comments) unless you want to see what look like the dying moments of a woman allegedly shot by the Basij. Fucking horrifying.

The sheer potential of the liveblogging is thrilling. Popular uprisings seem inconceivable without it, I wonder how they managed logistically in the past?

Roger Cohen on today.

Just been watching a documentary on Tiananmen - heartbreaking to see that old footage for probably the first time in my adult life.

hopefully by the end of the weekend it won't be an entirely appropriate comparison

Some pretty incredible footage. The photographer is holding rocks in his hand, you see women handing out rocks to men, there's an eerie calm in the street, and it's kind of easy to watch it and separate yourself from "the action", but as he gets nearer the rioting, you hear the shooting and then at about 3.20 it all gets horrifically real. Any everywhere people taking photos on their phones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYaL4mA-bSY

The sheer potential of the liveblogging is thrilling. Popular uprisings seem inconceivable without it, I wonder how they managed logistically in the past?

― Ismael Klata, Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:22 AM

from Why are the Iranians dreaming again?, by Ali Alizadeh, researcher at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University in London.

...[twitter, facebook,youtube, etc.] have come to play a significant role in sending the messages and images of the movement to the outside world. However, the creative self-organization of the movement is using a manifold of methods and channels, many of them simple and traditional, depending on their availability: shouting ‘death to dictator’ from rooftops, calling landlines, at the end of one rally chanting the time and place of the next one, and by jeopardizing oneself by physically standing on streets and distributing news to every passing car. The appearance of the movement which is being sold by the media to the western gaze – the cyber-fantasy of the western societies which has already labelled our movement a twitter revolution, seems to have completely missed the reality of those bodies which are shot dead, injured or ready to be endangered by non-virtual bullets.

I would agree with that I think - as I was watching that footage I was watching it like a film, I dunno, like Bertolucci or something, thinking - oh, neat shot showing yourself holding the rocks and I'm saying to myself - it's amazing that we can be there, watching this - isn't technology wonderful, blahblahblah, and then they actually drag a dead guy into the street and it's suddenly 'oh that's right - this is real, people are actually dying' - you can twitter as much as you like but the bad guys have got the guns and the tear gas and putting yourself in front of them is not some liveblog moment but can actually be fucking fatal.

translation of the few bits of understandable language in footage, which is rather depressing

0:07 - "dude, when it gets dark, go home ... there's nothing left"
1:27 - no idea, he is either speaking turkish, farsi in a heavy dialect or slang
1:47 - marg baar dictator - "death for dictators!"
2:11 - just after the first bullets, sounds like he says alon meeshe which means "now it's happening"
2:25 - he's pointing out the street names of the intersection, of which is ironically named something like "freedom avenue" (azadi shadne)
2:32 - "they're shooting real bullets for us, then"
2:45 - "how far ahead is the crowd?" (said with the inflection of awe, as if, damn, they could be standing much further back from the danger)
3:08 - god is great, etc
3:18 - "army helicopters!"
3:50 - he starts yelling "samad!" which would be a friend's name
4:15 - i am not entirely sure but it sounds like he is saying "the army are getting us one by one" or "the army got one"
4:42 - woman is screaming "now it's over, now it's over" or "now it's ending" depending on how you translate it

5:18 - "look, they're killing people, they're killing people for the dictator"

unfortunately most of it sounds like gibberish to me which is why i don't work for the CIA

To clarify, because it's been bugging me - by 'thrilling', I meant mostly my excitement at how mass peer-to-peer communication and dissemination of information is levelling one playing field where authoritarian regimes formerly held an overwhelming advantage. I'm obviously not positing that this makes revolutions and uprisings somehow 'new', just easier - for me, that's thrill enough

That piece you cite seems to miss the point - the selling of the movement isn't being done by our media, but rather by the blogs/youtubes/twitters themselves. Without them, we'd likely know little of all of this. I read it as him imposing a chomskyesque manufacturing-consent angle, when in fact it's the opposite. I don't think it's covering up the carnage at all, and I think it's patronizing of him to suggest as much

thanks for translating moonship, sounds really heavy.

gotta figure autocrats the world over are watching this and trying to figure out how to keep a lid on the tweets and blogs and phones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyZo2jOOYY
Lighting fire to the natural gas lines at Basij HQ!

DO NOT CLICK on the footage at the end of the post (before the comments) unless you want to see what look like the dying moments of a woman allegedly shot by the Basij. Fucking horrifying.

I'm so stupid. I clicked on the link (via DIGG). :-(((