Author: Scott H

Waterloo, Iranians & the Mennonite Dialog

On Memorial Day, American and Iranian diplomats finally managed to “talk” in Baghdad, Iraq — as we noted here with approval. The same day, by contrast, protesters forced the cancellation of public sessions of a conference on “spirituality” between Iranian Shia Muslim and Mennonite Christian scholars in Waterloo, Canada.
Since when is talking with Mennonites — that’s right, pacifistic Mennonites – such a perfidious affront that it needs to be forcibly stopped? Is this 2007 or 1527?
While I am still seeking documentation from both sides, perhaps this entry might encourage the protesting academics and conference participants to articulate their positions further, in the discussion below. (That’s an open invitation.)
Let me first try to recount the basic outlines of the dialog and the protests:
The dialog:
1. The conference in question was sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and by humble Mennonite Conrad Grebel University College. Conrad Grebel is affiliated with Canada’s University of Waterloo. While the conference convened on the UW campus, the larger University was not the sponsor.
2. The conference, entitled “Shi’ah Muslim–Mennonite Christian Dialogue III,” continued a series of exchanges between “North American” Mennonite scholars and Shia scholars from Qom, Iran. Papers from two previous conferences, one at Waterloo and one, in Qom, were published in the Conrad Grebel Review. Several Mennonites have studied in Qom, and several Shia have pursued theology Ph.D.’s in Toronto. Shorter-term student delegations have also been part of the mix, including with Mennonite Universities in the US.
3. The dialog has been hosted on the Iranian side for nearly a decade by the Imam Khomeini Education & Research Institute (IKERI). IKERI is reputed to be among the more conservative graduate seminaries in Iran, and its current director, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, is known as a spiritual adviser to Iran’s current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
4. The dialog itself may have been the fruit of the Mennonite’s “diaconal method” (from the Greek diakonia or service). In Iran, the Mennonites earned considerable good will for their sustained humanitarian responses to earthquake disasters since 1992. Such “good deeds” helped open doors to exchange of “good words.”
5. As a controversy emerged, Mennonite leaders tried to state clearly the conference purposes. According to Rich Cober Bauman, program director of MCC Ontario, the conference was

“an academic conversation between theologians and philosophers who may not always agree, but seek to better understand each other’s faith… We regard this conference as an effort to foster communication in a time when the refusal to demonize each other is sorely needed. We recognize that there are risks inherent in relating to groups some would label as our “enemies”. But our Christian faith calls us into these conversations which, rather than creating isolation, we believe have the potential to build real and lasting peace…”

Conrad Grebel President Henry Paetkau noted that from the Mennonite faith perspective, inter-faith dialog, particularly with a country that is portrayed in the west as the “enemy”, is a practical expression of the biblical command to be “agents of reconciliation”.
Jim Pankratz, Grebel’s academic dean, characterized the conference as “an important expression of open dialog and freedom of speech. Through such dialog we have learned to understand that all Iranians (like Canadians), and even all members of a single educational institution, do not speak with a single voice.”
The protests:
The protesters had a starkly different image of what the conference represented. I’ll try first to present accurately their concerns. (And I welcome additional material from any who think I misrepresent the complaints.)

Continue reading “Waterloo, Iranians & the Mennonite Dialog”

Bacevich: “I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose”

I know I (Scott) should say something about Andrew J. Bacevich’s heartbreaking WaPo essay, “I Lost My son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.”
A brave, grieving father. Our sympathies to him and his family.
This hits close for me – as I too am an academic type, opposed from the beginning to this misadventure. My oldest son is a “gung ho” Lieutenant in the Army National Guard, when he’s not an engineer-in-training for VDOT and a first-time father-soon-to-be.
I often wonder late at night, like right now, of all the ways I failed him, of how I didn’t better inoculate him from the siren songs of the recruiters and the neocons. When he earned his ROTC scholarship, 9/11 had just happened; Iraq was still on the neocon drawing board. My son is now living the dream of his late West Pointer grandfather, not mine. At least he still talks to me — well, usually. He still desperately wants to believe that his “duly elected leaders” wouldn’t be sending him on a fool’s errand, and that his father is the one with the screw loose.
I share Bacevich’s anger, his disgust at the pathetic non-responsiveness of our democracy — of the corrupting “money,” the rabidly fanatical Christian-zionists, and certain “Middle East allies” who’ve hijacked US foreign policy.
Morgenthau was wrong; no country automatically follows its NATIONAL INTEREST. It’s not written in the gene code.
I also share Bacevich’s indignation at those who blame the father for his own son’s death, for having given “aid and comfort to the enemy” with his criticisms of “our” side. Vile indeed.
For today, we have a family reunion on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near a special family spot at “hump-back rocks.” I try not to think of where we might be next year, or if…
May all the families currently separated be brought together soon. My son won’t like this, but my (selfish) idea of supporting our troops will be to bring them home – much sooner rather than later! I must do more.
Peace to all.

US-Iran Talks — and a partnership?

US-Iran watchers are holding their collective breath in hopes that the talks between America and Iran bear fruit.
I’m guardedly impressed that the talks are happening. President Bush has belatedly adopted what he had previously rejected – a core recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton commission to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
Is the switch borne of “realism” or “desperation?” And on whose part? Does it matter? It at least seems the insubordinate Cheney-Abrams-neocon wing of the Administration has been leashed – for now. Condi Rice also seems to have abandoned her previous nonsense about not wanting to talk to Iran, lest “diplomacy” might “legitimize” the Iranian system.
Similar observation for the Iranian side: It’s perhaps as difficult, if not more, for Iran to talk to the US, given that so much of the Revolution’s fury and subsequent dynamics have been driven by suspicions of American intentions and actions. The ghosts of 1953 still loom large. Repeatedly, for the past 20 years, Iranian figures who floated ideas to talk to America had their ears pinned back, beginning (it is long forgotten) when Iran’s current Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenehi) once advocated such talks when he was President.
That Iran’s political “weather had changed” dramatically was confirmed when former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati gave a long and extraordinarily candid interview ten days ago on Iran’s state TV channel. Now the foreign policy advisor to Leader Khamenehi, Velayati addressed concerns that America was both accusing Iran of causing trouble in Iraq and yet asking for Iran’s help in resolving Iraq’s troubles. Velayati also warned his compatriots of the “mirage” of seeing in the talks the solution to all of Iran’s problems, even as he also chided those Iranian “neocons” who saw dark conspiracies afoot — it’s not that “complicated.”
Bottom line: Velayati confirmed that Iran would participate in talks with America, provided they take “place between two counties in equal positions, without any preconditions, claims, rudeness or negative propaganda.”
US-Iran tensions of course have been running high from multiple sources, including nuclear questions, accusations of Iran supporting all manner of contagion in Iraq, the continued mysterious detentions of five Iranian “diplomats” by the US in Iraq (over Iraqi objections) and horrendous arrests of Iranian-American scholars in Iran.
Even more ominously, we have two US aircraft carrier battle groups again circling their rudders in the cramped Persian Gulf, Iran’s front door, a hair-trigger situation that even a curious editorial in the Kabul Times (friendly to America) characterized as “greatly alarming.”
Last Tuesday, ABC News ran a story claiming that President Bush had signed off on a CIA “black ops” order to destabilize Iran. I now wonder if this report was leaked by those wishing to sabotage the talks.
Unfazed, Iran is still coming to the table.
On Saturday, by contrast, the Boston Globe ran a scoop reporting that the US State Department had disbanded , a special unit that had been set up to orchestrate aggressive action against Iran and Syria – e.g. “regime change.” (Hat tip to Christiane in a thread below for catching this intriguing story for us.)
Yet despite these and other tensions, I share in the restrained optimism about the prospects for these talks. Both sides are well represented by multi-lingual diplomats, with rare experience with low-key contacts with the other side. America’s Ryan Crocker has already received considerable praise. Iran’s team includes its current Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, and two key Iran observers of Iraqi developments, Reza Amiri Moghaddam and Hossein Amir Abdolhayan.
So what’s to talk about?
I’ve already touched on a long list of tensions and problems needing discussion, even if confined just to Iraq. Yet I offer now an original essay by R.K. Ramazani that focuses on one one area where there should indeed be profound US-Iran common interest and cooperation: al-Qaeda.
I had a hand in pulling the quotes together for this essay, including several that to our knowledge have not appeared elsewhere in the Western media. America’s concerns about al-Qaeda should be obvious, even as many critics scorn Bush’s recent Coast Guard speech wherein he focused on al-Qaeda in Iraq as a key reason for us to stay in Iraq.
Lesser known in the west are the many reasons why Iran too has great reasons for bitterly opposing al-Qaeda.

“Abu Musab Zarqawi, the late al-Qaida operative responsible for the decapitation of Americans and other captives in Iraq, launched a merciless crusade against the Shia. Branding them as a “lurking snake,” a “malicious scorpion,” Zarqawi considered the Shia as an “insurmountable obstacle” to al-Qaeda’s global plans….
Zarqawi declared “total war” on the Shia and Iranians on Sept. 14, 2005. His minions catalyzed open sectarian Shia-Sunni warfare by destroying the Shia shrine at Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006. Since then, millions of Iraqis – of all sects – have been killed, exiled or driven from their homes….

Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 in al-Qaeda and reputed chief strategist, has similarly taken aim at Shias and Iran:

Al-Zawahiri’s May 5th (2007) tape included an intensified al-Qaeda’s verbal attack on the Shia, Bush and Iran, in anticipation of U.S.-Iran talks. Apart from incendiary insults aimed at Shia belief and practice, al-Zawahiri chided Iran for having given up its slogan “America, the Great Satan” [for] the slogan “”America, the Closest Partner.“

Talk about an insult (!) — yet one with more than a grain of truth in it, from al-Qaeda’s perspective.
Unreported in the west, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied with a full-bore blast aimed at al-Zawahiri:

“Why do you, who want to kill Americans, kill innocent people and place bombs in the [Iraqi] market place?… On behalf of all the women and children in Asia, Europe and America, who have been victims of al-Qaida terrorists, I wish for you and your terrorist group hellfire, and would gladly sacrifice my life to annihilate you.”

Strange thing for an alleged closet ally of Al-Qaeda to say, eh?
Anyway, if I say so myself, do read the whole essay here.
And indeed, let’s hope, as the essay concludes, that “cooler heads will prevail.”
Fitting that today is Memorial Day in America. May that be a sobering reminder of the stakes.

Judith Miller sighting – @ the Guardian?

There ought to be a dictionary entry for Judith Miller — as in 1.) “journalist” of dubious reputation, 2.) front-page fiction writer; 3.) war fodder. Related google “search terms” could be: aluminum tubes, cakewalk, “un-named sources,” al-Qaeda linked, Chalabi, and “Michael R. Gordon.” Unkind thesaurus entries might be: shill, Benador, troll, and embed.
Yet never mind the recent timid documentaries on how the war to invade Iraq was “sold” to the American public, there’s been no shortage of Judith Miller clones in the media, doing their part to “sell a war” on Iran.
The latest sighting of Judy Miller wannabees appears, shockingly, in today’s Guardian – a paper alleged to be far to “the left” of the US mainstream media. The recent Guardian story hyping Iran’s alleged role in “taking over” Basra was bad enough. (as flagged here on the jwn sidebar) Simply being Shia doesn’t mean taking orders from Iran.
Ask Ayatollah Khomeini. When Iran pursued withdrawing invaders back into Iraq in 1982, Khomeini implored Iraqi Shia to rise up and unite with their would-be liberators. Didn’t happen then; not happening now..
In today’s Guardian, chaos theory reigns in a breathless front-page article entitled, Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq.”
Written by no less than one of the Guardian editors, Simon Tisdall, this isn’t another shallow and dubious story of Iranian components alleged to be in roadside mines (e.g., “IED’s”) or about Iran supporting this or that Shia militia in Iraq.
Nope, it’s Miller Time.

Continue reading “Judith Miller sighting – @ the Guardian?”

McCain v. Sa’di

I once admired Senator John McCain. We even appeared together 16 years ago on a national radio call-in show, just after I returned from my first trip to Iran. I complimented him then for his “independence” and for then having one of the better observers of the Arab world on his staff (Tony Cordesman). One of my best students then was a niece of the Senator. During the last decade, it was Senator McCain, despite his own harrowing ordeal as a POW in North Vietnam, who helped normalize ties with Vietnam, even without “regime change.”
Alas, I don’t recognize the McCain of late, especially this past month amid his “Straight Talk” campaign to be President. His “April Fool’s Day” Alice-in-Wonderland tour of Iraq was bad enough. His comments last week at a South Carolina VFW rally hit an even lower “note.” Challenged with an uber-hawk question about “when are we going to send an air message to Iran,” McCain started by singing the version of the famous Beach Boys tune, “Barbara Ann” with a few bars of “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb…” (Iran.)
The video-clip of McCain’s performance has been played far and wide, and is now enshrined at YouTube.
One wonders if McCain was familiar with last year’s sardonic anti-war video spoof by Adam Kontras, found, naturally, at letsbombiran.com.
More likely, McCain remembers, as I do, the 1980 “propaganda parody” version of “bomb Iran” by “Vince Vance and the Valiants” amid the diplomatic hostage crisis. I found an “mp3” version here. Note the pronunciation then of “I-ran.” Their record label, a sign of the times then was, “Towel Records,” as in “Towel-heads.”
Alas, McCain’s handlers may figure that most Americans are still hostage to those same black and white images of Iran from 1980. In the following clip McCain laughs off a question about the “insensitivity” of his bomb joke with the reply, “Insensitive to what, the Iranians?”
One suspects McCain has watched 300 too much. Or maybe he was trapped by a leading question, cracked a nervous poor-taste joke, and now can’t figure out how to take it back without offending his shrinking base. That would be a charitable interpretation.
Regarding McCain’s quip for critics to “get a life,” Ali Moayedian’s rejoinder will “strike a chord” (if you will) with many:

“Mr. McCain, I will get a life. I do have a life. But what do you have to tell to all the dead? How can you look into the eyes of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children and sing your happy bombing tune? Can you tell them to get a life? I wouldn’t be surprised if you can. I always wonder if people like you have a soul?”

And on the matter of being “insensitive” to Iranians, Moayedian, who writes from California (where hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Americans vote), poignantly asks what Iranians of all stripes will be wondering,

“Mr. McCain, I know it’s too much to expect you to be sensitive to Iranians. After all they must be less of a human. You don’t care about Americans. Why should you care about Iranians?”

Ironically, on the day McCain’s “bomb Iran” clip began circulating, Iranians around the world were commemorating Sa’di day, in honor of the great Persian poet.
Writing seven centuries before Nelson Mandela spoke of “we are humans together or nothing at all,” Sa’di may be best known in the west for his poetic lines on the oneness of humanity:
The sons of men are members in a body whole related.
For a single essence are they and all created.
When Fortune persecutes with pain one member solely, surely
The other members of the body cannot stand securely.
O you who from another’s trouble turn aside your view
It is not fitting they bestow the name of “Man” on you.
Not bad for a writer in the 13th Century – anywhere
Sa’di’s works have been translated into English since the 18th Century, and several recent works on Sa’di are available. I gather too that leading World Literature texts in American high schools now include passages of Sa’di wisdom and wit.
McCain too should be familiar with the “oneness of humankind” poem, as it has graced the walls of the United Nations since its founding. The UN recently put on display a priceless carpet, donated by Iran, with Sa’idi’s original words woven into it in Gold.
Even the current Iranian Mission to the UN features a modern, gender neutral rendering of the same passage on its web home page:
All human beings are limbs of each other
Having been created of one essence
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs cannot at rest remain.
Sounds more “human” to me than, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”
A final irony here: The original “Barbara Ann” song was not written or first performed by the Beach Boys. Rather the song was a 1961 “doo-wop” hit by The Regents. Fred Fassert, who wrote the ditty in honor of his little sister, and Chuck Fassert who sang it, were of Iranian descent….

When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)

Matters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been “captured,” supposedly on their way to the Taliban? It sounds suspiciously like the tired old formula; when matters go really bad somewhere in the Middle East, change the subject and blame Iran.
Michael R. Gordon today is competing yet again to be chief salesman for such ominous news. Media bloggers have taken to deeming him the resident “ghost of Judith Miller” at the New York Times, the journalist most willing to “take out Cheney’s trash.”
Lately, Gordon has been quite active in reviving support for getting tougher on Iran.
Last week, I commented here on the Pentagon’s odd claim that Iran was now not only supporting Iraqi Shia insurgents, but Sunni fighters as well. On February 10th, it was Michael R. Gordon who started the latest round of Iran-as-the-source-of-trouble-in-Iraq” with a front-page “scoop” that breathlessly cited un-named US sources contending that Iran was providing deadly munitions that were killing Americans. Gordon’s follow-up report generously allowed his sources to defend their claims amid the “controversy,” which even a NYTimes editorial criticized. (Amazingly, that editorial neglected to mention that it was their own reporter – Gordon – who catalyzed the controversy).
Like Judy Miller, Gordon has long specialized in providing red meat for neoconservative circles.
Last November, it was Michael R. Gordon reporting that “Iran-backed” Hizbullah was training Iraqi Shia fighters. And throughout the fall, Gordon filed multiple “reports” citing “experts” and “analysts” cautioning against quick withdrawal from Iraq, then condemning the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (particularly the idea to talk to Iraq’s neighbors), and then advocating a “surge” of more troops into Iraq.
Back in 2002, it was Michael R. Gordon who wrote regularly with Judith Miller about Iraqi WMD capabilities, most infamously about the aluminum tubes presumed for Iraq’s nuclear program. The obvious intent of such articles was to drum up support for invading Iraq sooner rather than later.
The New York Times flagellated itself last year for such bad reporting, and specifically cited the Miller-Gordon “tubes” story as one of the worst examples. Yet Michael R. Gordon remains the Times’ lead “military” correspondent.
In a contentious interview last year with Amy Goodman, Gordon claimed that he was merely a recorder of the best intelligence and analysis available (pre-Iraq invasion) and that later “dissenters” had not contacted him.
That’s a curious defense. Shouldn’t the reporters be the ones casting about for different views?
Gordon may have thought himself funny when he told Goodman: “I’m actually not Judy Miller.” !
Really?
Today, the NYTimes designates none other than Michael R. Gordon to tell us that Iran is supporting the Taliban (sic) in Afghanistan. That’s right, Iran is now accused of sending arms to the Taliban, Iran’s mortal arch-enemy.

Continue reading “When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)”

When all else fails in Iraq,…

blame Iran.
It’s a tried, tired, and (not) true neocon formula, dating to the very first signs of trouble in Iraq after Saddam, four years ago. It’s the same ole’Allan Jackson country music tune “they” trot out, figuring Americans mostly still “love Jesus and talk to God,” but they just don’t know “the difference ‘n Iraq and Iran.”
According to the Voice of America, top US spinmeister General William B. Caldwell (the IVth) told a Baghdad press conference yesterday of familiar “charges” about Iranian weapons and training for Iraqi insurgents :

“We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them… We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month, from detainees debriefs.”

Caldwell clarified that the mentioned “training” of Iraqi insurgents was done by intelligence “surrogates” for Iran.
I wonder what “methods” were used on the “detainees” to get such desired evidence.
The material “evidence” trotted out this time was apparently different from previous briefings. Most media reports focused on weapons claimed to have been captured on Monday, after a “citizen tip” in a Sunni section of Baghdad named “Jihad” (sic). According to the NYTimes,

“The soldiers found a black Mercedes sedan and on its back seat, in plain view, a rocket of a type commonly made in China but repainted and labeled and sold by Iran, said Maj. Marty Weber, a master ordnance technician who joined General Caldwell at the briefing. In the trunk were mortar rounds marked “made in 2006….”
The weapons that the military officials said were of Iranian origin were labeled in English, which Major Weber said was typical of arms manufactured for international sale.”

How convenient!
Why didn’t the New York Times apply the laugh test to that one? Does this mean the Iranians “sold” them or “donated” them? By the way, I don’t recall those alleged Iranian arms in 2002 on the Karine-A headed for Palestine being labeled in English? eh? It is especially thoughtful of those “Iranians” to now mark weapons from Iran in English. It will save American “disinformation” specialists from having to stencil them in Persian or Arabic. (which of course they just wouldn’t do anyway, as my son the Lieutenant would insist…)
The real “headline” grabber though, the change off the broken record, came when US Major General Caldwell remarked,

“We have in fact found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence sources have provided to Sunni insurgent groups some support.”

He apparently didn’t elaborate. But “the quote” gave CNN’s perma-embed @ the Pentagon, Barbara “yes-sir” Starr, a breathless top-billing on CNN for the next eight hours (last I checked). All she could say was, “this is new…, really new.”
Yes, new – and bizarre.

Continue reading “When all else fails in Iraq,…”

Making Persian Gulf Security Durable (Ramazani)

FYI, here’s a recently published short essay by R.K. Ramazani, as I mentioned in discussions here several days ago.
Seeking to go beyond the immediate details of the recent UK-Iran dispute, Ramazani has three main objectives:
1. Provide historical context for understanding why bilateral conflict resolution in the Persian Gulf rests on fleeting sand. Bilateralism, unilateralism, and power balancing as approaches to maintaining Persian Gulf security have all broken down – and will inherently falter again:

“As long as Britain and America approach Gulf disputes by such means as playing regional powers against each other, by bullying tactics, by calls for regime change and by the threats of military strikes against Iran, there is little hope that Persian Gulf conflicts will ever be prevented in the future or that durable solutions can be found for the present ones, including the British-Iranian dispute today. As a result, the secure export of Gulf oil supplies to world markets will be threatened and the price of oil will soar beyond the capacity of the world economy to tolerate.

2. “Collective Security” is the only sustainable alternative.

“The real question, therefore, is whether Britain and the United States will be able to shake off their addiction to using force and embrace a comprehensive collective security system that would include the Persian Gulf states and major outside powers with high stakes in the region, including Britain and the United States, under the auspices of the United Nations.”
Short of that, Iran, as the major Persian Gulf state, will continue to resist British and American pressures. Its resistance to foreign bullying and pressures is rooted in a millennial and proud sense of glory and power in ancient times, in a deep-rooted sense of national identity and in a resentment of discrimination against the Shia, who are, today and in history, a minority in the larger Muslim world, by the Sunni majority.”

3. Security for the Persian Gulf also requires a “holistic” recognition that “the problems of the Persian Gulf are intertwined with the major conflicts of the broader Middle East and beyond.” Put differently, resolving conflicts in the Persian Gulf are incomplete without attending to conflict causes in the Eastern Mediterranean. That holds true both ways.

Continue reading “Making Persian Gulf Security Durable (Ramazani)”

So this is Progress? (Najaf march)

I see we have new competition for Tony Snow’s job.
Today, “tens of thousands” of Iraqis marched in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of Baghdad’s fall to American forces and in response to calls from firebrand cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.
Colonel Steven Boylan, a top U.S. military spokesman, praised the peaceful nature of the demonstration, saying Iraqis “could not have done this four years ago.”

“This is the right to assemble, the right to free speech – they didn’t have that under the former regime… This is progress, there’s no two ways about it.”

But of course. And by the way, just what was it that the marchers were chanting?
That America go home. “Get out, get out occupier!”
Progress indeed.
Yesterday, al-Sadr’s written marching orders included a call for Iraqi partisans to stop fighting each other and instead unite to concentrate on their common arch enemy – America:

“Oh my brothers in the Mahdi Army and my brothers in the security forces, stop fighting and killing because that is what our enemy and your enemy and even God’s enemy hope for….”
“God ordered you to be patient and to unite your efforts against the enemy and not against the sons of Iraq. They want to drag you into a war that ends Shiitism and Islam, but they cannot.”

Anybody else hear an echo to the William Wallace “Braveheart” line about “sons of Scotland?”
Yet Colonel Boylon wants to characterize Iraqi streets filled with protestors calling for America to go home as an unequivocal sign of “progress?” One wonders if he also was in charge of Senator John McCain’s April Fool’s Day tour of Baghdad?
Back to al-Sadr, Edward Wong’s report yesterday ominously noted that,

“Mr. Sadr’s statement on Sunday indicated he might be ready to resume steering his militia, the Mahdi Army, toward more open confrontation with the American military.”

Yet I am aware of analyses suggesting that Sadr’s latest rhetoric and this march are an effort to “let off steam” for frustrated followers, or a sign of “desperation” in the face of recent US military attacks against his Mahdi “Army” in Diwaniyeh. (These assaults, by the way, included the use of US bombers….) In the following extended McClatchy story, we have:
Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group observing that Sadr’s “lie-low” strategy has backfired among his more militant followers:

“Shiites who were targets [of sectarian violence] want to respond, and Muqtada is coming under more pressure to call for some kind of retaliation… [The mass demonstrations are] “one way of allowing people to let off steam.”

And this from Vali Nasr of the US Naval Postgraduate School, who contends that Sadr’s response to the U.S. troop assault against his once government-protected militia has put his position of power in jeopardy, and that his statements were meant to distract his followers, including militiamen who are eager to retaliate.

“This tough rhetoric essentially camouflages the decision not to fight.”

Perhaps they are correct. But my comment for the moment reduces to two words:

Wishful thinking.

UK sailors released…. “stunning” ?

(5:05 pm. update: Gary Sick’s G2k comments are now appended in the continuation)
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has announced that “he” will be releasing the British sailors. The US airwaves are now filled with quotes characterizing this very welcome release announcement as a “stunning surprise.”
No doubt it was a shock to Ted Koppel, the former ABC News anchor. Just two days ago, Koppel’s NPR commentary had knowingly proclaimed that this current hostage drama was deja vu from 1979. Koppel speculated that the crisis wouldn’t be over until Tony Blair was out of office. Koppel must be missing his Night-Line gig.
Surely I’m not the only one not surprised that this crisis is being unwound. After all, the world’s stock markets rallied yesterday (Tuesday) and oil prices plunged in anticipation that something positive was in the works.
A good thing too – I was getting nauseous from all the plausible to bizarre theories purporting to explain which Iranian faction was behind the capture, what their agendas were, and how the crisis presumably was playing into the hands of Iran’s confrontational hardliners. (never mind the “regime change” ideologues in the US and Israel) Even Juan Cole in Salon published a version of such interpretations.
A few lonely voices had contemplated that the crisis might have been consciously provoked by the British, or that the situation was recklessly stoked when Blair proclaimed he was “utterly confident” over the facts of the original British operation. It became a mutual TV propaganda war. (and the US mainstream media largely bought the official British version, “hook, line, and sinker.”)
I don’t know yet which account to believe on the immediate catalysts. I was more concerned that the “neocons” on both sides were painting themselves into corners from which a resolution would be supremely difficult to reach.
Over the past few days, however, close observers could see a series of encouraging signs from both London and Tehran suggesting that creative language was forming that could indeed be acceptable to both sides. From the British side, there was less blather about “absolute certainty” that their sailors had been on the Iraqi side of a maritime border line – a line that in fact does NOT exist in treaty form.
Richard Schoffield and Craig Murray were quite “spot on,” even as their early voices of sanity were pointedly ignored by most of the mainstream media. The problem at hand is rather “simple,” as Schoffield told the BBC over a week ago,

“Iran and Iraq have never agreed to a boundary of their territorial waters. There is no legal definition of the boundary beyond the Shatt al-Arab.”

That didn’t stop the New York Times (for starters) from reprinting the British “fake” map in their pages — with no indication that the boundary line indicated was not at all settled.
Even the British naval commander of the operation, Commodore Nick Lambert, had carefully observed in the early hours after the detention of his sailors that,

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.”

Ambassador Murray was widely vilified for pointing out that it was ill-advised for Blair to have been “utterly confident” that Britain’s ships were on the Iraqi side of a “fake” line. Yet a week later, Murray noted that the border’s unsettled nature had become widely admitted within British foreign policy decision-making circles and even in the British media.
I suspect that this key shift “back” in British rhetoric contributed to today’s news.
From the Iranian side, there was recognition that the crisis was only increasing Iran’s woes in the international community. The public parading of the sailors, however relatively “different” from the images of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, etc, was also reviving ghastly images from the US hostage crisis of 1979. And few Iranian leaders wanted to re-live that isolation.
President Ahmadinejad is but one spoke in Iran’s complex decision-making wheel. The hub of that consensus forming wheel is Iran’s “Leader” – Ali Khamenehi. No doubt Khamenehi, in consultation with veteran key players in the top inner circles (e.g. Rafsanjani, Khatami, Velayati), decided that the boil had to be lanced.
Ali Larijani, the Iranian who gave the encouraging interview with Britain’s Channel 4 on Monday, chairs Iran’s Supreme National Security Council – a body that reports directly to Khamenehi – not Ahmadinejad. When asked if Iran would put the sailors on trial, Larijani replied,

“Definitely our priority would not be trial… Our priority is to solve the problem through diplomatic channels. We are not interested in having this issue get further complicated.”

Such conciliatory comments were welcomed by Britain.
While AN may have been granted the privilege to announce the pending release of the British sailors, the decision was hardly his alone to make.
Hats off then to the “grown ups” in both the British and Iranian foreign policy teams. Both sides surely realized that neither country had an interest in the sailors’ plight turning into a “hot” war in the Gulf.
The challenge now is to craft mechanisms to insure that such incidents don’t recur.
If a boundary is at long last to be agreed upon between Iran and Iraq, both in the Shatt al-Arab river, as well as in the territorial sea, it cannot be imposed from the outside. Instead, it will have to be achieved bilaterally between Iran and Iraq, and supported multilaterally by the interested international community.
All interested parties should also “fix minds” on dropping “gun boat diplomacy” in favor of “collective security” arrangements, beginning with all eight littoral states of the Persian Gulf. As is so often forgotten from the outside, local security is relatively more “vital” to the states that “live” there. It’s their front yards! As my mentor (Ramazani) long ago wrote, they all need to get their oil and gas securely to world markets, “they can’t drink it.”
Yet the Gulf’s littoral states also have the curse and luxury of the entire world also seeing their fragile waterway as critically important. Why not then dare to imagine more sustainable security arrangements as guaranteed through the UN Security Council rather than via the gunboats or aircraft carriers of any one outside imperial power?
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Update (as of 5:05 pm EST)
Gary Sick (now a respected Professor at Columbia U., a key Carter NSC member during the hostage crisis, and a former Navy Captain) made the following 8 points on the “Iran-UK contretemps” via his closed Gulf 2000 forum (and which he just indicated can be quoted publicly) I disagree with him on some points, agree in most others. (Guess which?) See continuation:

Continue reading “UK sailors released…. “stunning” ?”