Iran – Page 11 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

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”

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?”

Swiss-American prof urges attack on Iran

Louis-René Beres, a professor who teaches international law at
Purdue University (but not in a law school there) had a very warmongery
op-ed piece
in yesterday’s Christian Science
Monitor, titled The
case for strikes against Iran: Diplomacy alone won’t stop Iran’s
nuclear ambitions.

Beres has been a pro-Israeli ultra-hawk on nuclear issues for a long time. I came across his name when I was
first researching Israel’s massive and already very “mature”
nuclear-weapons program back in the 1980s. (See, for example,
footnote 6 in this
(be aware: that’s a large PDF file there) 1988 article of mine
titled Israel’s Nuclear Game: The
U.S. Stake.)

Well, Beres is stilll going strong. In 2003-04 he was Chair of
something called the “Project
Daniel Group that gave strategic advice about nuclear issues to PM
Sharon. E.g., this:

The Group recommended to the Prime
Minister that “Israel must
identify explicitly and early on that all enemy Arab states and Iran
are subject to massive Israeli reprisal in the event of a BN
[Biological or Nuclear] attack
upon Israel” We recommended further that “massive” reprisals be
targeted at between 10 and 20 large enemy cities…and that the
nuclear yields of such Israeli reprisals be in
the megaton-range. It goes without saying that such deterrent
threats
by Israel would be very compelling to all rational enemies, but — at
the same time — would likely have little or no effect upon irrational
ones. In the case of irrational adversaries, Israel`s only hope for
safety will likely lie in appropriate acts of preemption — defensive
acts to be discussed more fully in the next column of my ongoing
Project Daniel series.

A policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) which was obtained
between the United States and the Soviet Union, would never work
between Israel and its Arab/Iranian enemies. Rather, the Project Daniel
Group recommended that Israel MUST prevent its enemies from acquiring
BN status, and that any notion of BN “parity” between Israel and its
enemies would be intolerable…

So anyway, I thought it might be helpful for me to annotate Beres’s
recent piece in the CSM:

Continue reading “Swiss-American prof urges attack on Iran”

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)”

Iran and Britain in the Gulf, contd.

The 15 British naval POWs arrived home yesterday, after having been freed by Iran late Wednesday night. But even as they were boarding their plane to freedom in Teheran, four British soldiers on a patrol in Basra were killed— along with their Kuwaiti interpreter– when a roadside bomb blew up their vehicle.
A good friend of mine here in London who watches such things closely told me yesterday that every time the British forces in and around Iraq do something to pique the Iranians, then the pro-Iranian militants inside Iraq hit back by killing one or more British soldiers… Interesting, if so.
But quite evidently, everyone involved in the potentially extremely lethal military tangle in and around Iraq has been deeply engaged in probing and counter-probing each other’s forces and capabilities in a host of different ways, over the past four years.
Anyway, here in England, there have been some discreet but mounting questions over two aspects of the sailors’ capture: firstly over why they did not resist capture in the first place, and secondly over why they had not had firmer orders to give only “name, rank, and serial number” to their captors, resisting the Iranians’– as it turned out, fairly successful– attempts to interrogate them further and even to get them to utter filmed “confessions”.
Royal Navy head Lord Admiral Jonathan Band said today that the crew “reacted extremely well in very difficult circumstances”.
However, Lt Gen Sir Michael Gray, former commander of the 1st Battalion of the (always much more gung-ho) Paratroopers, was reported by the BBC there as describing the situation as a “shambles”.
And then, from what I very much hope is his comfortable wheelchair in Washington, here is neocon blowhard Charles Krauthammer:

I suppose he would rather have seen this small engagement lead to the outbreak of World War 3? What a sad guy.

Crazed retired US Air Force general urges war on Iran

I can’t get full-text versions of Wall Street Journal articles online. So it’s good that on Friday WaPo blogger Bill Arkin offered some substantial excerpts from a crazed and inflammatory opinion piece that retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney had in that day’s WSJ…
Arkin tells us that McInerney’s favored approach to Iran would be,

what he calls “minimal military pressure” through a “tit-for-tat” of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities every time an American soldier is killed with a so-called “explosively formed penetrator,” a shaped charge being used in Iraq in IED attacks. A soldier is killed in Iraq, the U.S. bombs in Iran, that’s McInerney’s recommendation.

Arkin, who lives considerably closer to the real world than McInerney, is completely (and rightly) scornful of this idea:

I would add to this the extremely salient fact that any US airstrike on any kind of target inside Iran would, by constituting a clear act of war, put at immediate risk not only the 140,000-plus US soldiers distributed throughout Iraq but also all the very thick (and vulnerable) supply lines that support them.
McInerney lives in cloud cuckoo-land. (Didn’t stop him working in the past as a Vice President for the huge US defense contractor Unisys/Loral.)
Arkin does us all a service by underlining this:

the professionals in the military dismiss this kind of armchair generalship for what it is: amateurish and promiscuous speculation devoid of any political context or reality.

I note, too, that it was a technology-crazed air-force planner– Chief of Staff Dan Halutz– who got Israel into all the bad trouble it got into last summer (and hasn’t recovered from since), when he “sold” to his political bosses there the idea that the use of airpower-based “massive retaliation” against Lebanon could solve all his country’s problems there…
Arkin continues,

At the head of the piece, Arkin writes,

As I noted above, in my view the Iranians already have plenty of human “bargaining chips”, in the form of the US (and UK) troops spread out throughout Iraq.. The wide distribution of those troops gives Teheran much more “insurance” against US military adventures than any small group of 15 UK sailors and marines. And what’s more, the US not only put those bargaining chips into place for the Iranians but has also recently been adding to their number!
I am worried, though, about what Arkin writes about the general political mood in Washington regarding Iran:

Iran has not so slowly taken on the mantle of favorite enemy to many in Washington, even to the geopolitically challenged who seem content, even desperate, to join the neocons in blithely referring to war there as more justified than Iraq.

Are the war-drums for an attack on Iran really being drummed so heavily and with such success in Washington as he implies? This seems extremely scary to me. I’d really welcome any information or evidence that readers can provide on this point.

Molewatch: Cheney & Ahmadinejad?

On a lighter note, Nicholas Kristof recently suggested that Americans will learn more about Israel’s real problems by reading Israeli papers than in the self-censored pablum in the US mainstream media. He might have added that one can get great ideas for new columns there too.
Back on March 1st, Isreali columnist Guy Bechor revealed that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was in fact Our {Israel’s} Secret Agent in Iran.

“Could it be that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is working for us? He is after all doing an excellent job for Israel. This week, while Teheran is divided between pragmatic elements calling to suspend Iran’s nuclear program (or at least enter dialog with the US,) and militant elements who are not prepared to make any concessions – militant Ahmadinejad should definitely be supported.”

Bechor then satirically bullets Ahmadinejad’s “top achievements” in isolating Iran and making his own reputation as “as the world’s problem child.”
How else can we explain that one man brought such pressure down upon Iran and support for Israel? Obviously, he must be a deep cover Israeli mole. Oh but of course.
And now we have Nicholas Kristof, by coincidence no doubt, asking if our own Vice President Dick Cheney is “an Iranian mole?”

“Consider that the Bush administration’s first major military intervention was to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Iran’s bitter foe to the east. Then the administration toppled Iran’s even worse enemy to the west, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
You really think that’s just a coincidence? That of all 193 nations in the world, we just happen to topple the two neighboring regimes that Iran despises?

Moreover, consider how our invasion of Iraq went down. The U.S. dismantled Iraq’s army, broke the Baath Party and helped install a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. If Iran’s ayatollahs had written the script, they couldn’t have done better — so maybe they did write the script
We fought Iraq, and Iran won. And that’s just another coincidence?

Oh, but of course! Cheney is Iran’s man in Washington. Didn’t he once criticize Clinton policy on Iran for hurting American oil companies? One of his implants must get transmissions from Tehran.

Continue reading “Molewatch: Cheney & Ahmadinejad?”

US-Iran Thaw: Is it for Real?

R.K. Ramazani writes on the signs of a US-Iran “thaw” and asks ”Is it for Real?” Read the extended essay here.
To get you started, I offer a few personalized accents:

On March 10, the representatives of the United States and Iran faced each other in a regional conference in Baghdad, Iraq. The event has raised crucial questions. Is this a real shift away from the Bush administration’s dogged stance against talking to Iran, allegedly “the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism”?
Is it a real change in American strategy or is it a tactical gimmick, one of pretending to pursue diplomacy while preparing for confrontation and war?…

The Professor first hones in on problems that I have noted here repeatedly, issues central to my own work:

“The Bush administration has adamantly refused to talk to Iran, claiming that to do so would bestow legitimacy on its revolutionary regime.
Even a novice in world politics would know that a regime’s legitimacy is given or withheld by a combination of international and domestic acceptance. Muhammad Reza Shah’s international legitimacy was in effect bestowed by America rather than by the international community. He lost his throne ignominiously because the Iranian people no longer trusted him.”

One wonders how Secretary Rice will explain that talking to Iran now doesn’t contradict her previous statements.
Ramazani laments that the U.S. blew off a serious offer from Iran in 2003 – the “grand bargain” by which Iran offered concretely to resolve all outstanding issues between the US and Iran, ranging from terrorism to a two-state solution for Palestine to nuclear aspirations. Secretary Rice lately has been less than candid in her own lamely parsed testimony claiming that she doesn’t recall such an offer. Such denials have prompted two former top aides of hers to accuse her of prevaricating.
That “little” matter aside, the fact that US and Iranian officials can admit to talking at all, courtesy the Iraqis, is an important, if precarious development. At least the two sides can belatedly and in the same room admit to having much common ground in Iraq. But Ramazani then warns that

“these expressions of common interest between Iran and the United States may yet founder on shoals of inveterate hostility and mistrust that have developed over the past half a century. It was not always that way.”

Ramazani reminds us that for the century prior to 1953, Iranians generally had a profoundly favorable view towards America. Dating to the first half of the 1800’s,

Continue reading “US-Iran Thaw: Is it for Real?”