Category: Iran

Halliburton’s Move to Dubai: Reasons?

In our capitalist system, Halliburton ostensibly does what’s best for Halliburton. No doubt… Halliburton (aka HAL on Wall Street) has announced it’s moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates.
This is “richly” ironic on several levels. Halliburton’s current CEO, Dave Lessar, announced in Bahrain that the company wished to be closer to its growing business interests in Asia:

“The eastern hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton’s overall portfolio.”

Balance? As the CNBC talking heads might speculate (for other companies), the statement deserves heavy “discounting.” Halliburton has other reasons for getting out of Dodge.
Remember Halliburton? This is the same oil services giant, ostensibly once run (poorly) by Vice President Dick Cheney. This same Halliburton is widely suspected of underhanded abuse of its connection to Cheney to obtain over $25 billion in lucrative, often no-bid contracts in Iraq.
Ok, sure, 38% of Halliburton’s business now comes from “the eastern hemisphere” – including Iraq… Is this new? Or is something wrong with the airport in Houston?
Just last month, Halliburton was cited by US investigators as responsible for as much as $2.7 billion of an estimated $10 billion in contractor fraud and abuse in Iraq. And last year, Halliburton made $2.3 billion in profits, though profits were down 40% last quarter.
I venture a guess that Halliburton’s reputation with the American people is right down there with Enron.
HAL’s share price is down about 25% off of its highs from last year. To be fair, the Wall Street oil services index is also off about 18% from its high.
Yet shareholder and political heat has been building at HAL. So why not get the exit underway before the party is…voted fully out of office?
On the other side of this intriguing move, remember Dubai? Dubai is the remarkable Arab trading hub that has mushroomed dramatically as a trading portal in all directions, especially to the north with Iran and to the Caspian region beyond.
Dubai is also very tax friendly to foreign corporations. It’s the Delaware of the Arab world.
And remember Dubai Ports World, the international conglomerate that, with Bush family backing, wished to invest heavily in six major American ports? “The Lobby” helped force DPW to agree to sell off those investments last year, on the rather specious argument that DPW, an Arab based company, might not be trustworthy in defending against terrorism. DPW recently threatened to reverse its decision, claiming that the New York Port Authority was trying to blackmail it.
Anybody want to put two and two together here?

Continue reading “Halliburton’s Move to Dubai: Reasons?”

The US and Iran, in Iraq

One week ago today we were sitting in the lobby of our hotel in Amman,
Jordan, talking with the very smart and well-informed Middle East
analyst Joost Hiltermann about the interactions that US power now has
in and over Iraq with Iraq’s much weightier eastern neighbor,
Iran.  (Hiltermann has worked on Iraq-related issues for many
years, including for several years now as the senior Iraq analyst for
the International Crisis Group.)

He said,

Well, the US and Iran agree on two
things inside today’s Iraq– but they disagree on one key thing.

What they agree on, at least until now, is the unity of Iraq, and need
for democracy or at least some form of majority rule there.

What they disagree on is the continued US troop presence there.  Because the US basically now wants
to be able to withdraw those troops, and Iran wants them to stay!

He conjectured that the main reason Iran wants the US troops to stay in
Iraq is because they are deployed there, basically, as sitting ducks
who would be extremely vulnerable to Iranian military retaliation in
the event of any US (or Israeli) military attack on Iran.  They
are, in effect, Iran’s best form of insurance against the launching of
any such attack.

I have entertained that conjecture myself, too, on numerous occasions
in the past.  So I was interested that Hiltermann not only voiced
it, but also framed it in such an elegant way.  (For my part, I am
slightly less convinced than he is that the decisionmakers in the Bush
administration at this point
are clear that they want the US troops out of Iraq… But I think they
are headed toward that conclusion, and that the developments in the
region will certainly continue to push them that way.)

From this point of view, we might conclude that the decisionmakers in
Teheran– some of whom are strategic thinkers with much greater
experience and even technical expertise than anyone in the current Bush
administration– would be seeing the possibility of “allowing” the US
to withdraw its troops from Iraq only within the context of the kind of
“grand bargain” that Teheran seeks.  The first and overwhelmingly
most important item in that “grand bargain” would be that Washington
credibly and irrevocably back off from any thought of pursuing a
strategy of regime change inside Iran or from any threats of military
force against it.

Under this bargain, Washington would need to agree, fundamentally, that
despite serious continuing disagreements in many areas of policy, it
would deal with the regime that exists in Teheran– as in earlier
decades it dealt with the regime that existed in the Soviet Union–
rather than seeking to overthrow it.  Teheran might well also ask
for more than that– including some easing of the US campaign against
it over the nuclear issue, etc.  But I believe there is no way the
mullahs in Teheran could settle for any less than a basic normalization
of working relations with Washington– that would most likely be
exemplified by the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between
the two governments– in return for “allowing” the US troops to
withdraw from Iraq.

There are numerous paradoxes here. Not only has Washington’s wide
distribution of its troops throughout the Iraq has become a strategic
liability, rather than an asset, but now the heirs of the same Iranian
regime that stormed the US Embassy in the 1970s and violated all the
norms of diplomatic protocol by holding scores of diplomats as hostages
there are the ones who are, essentially, clamoring for the restoration
of diplomatic relations with Washington.

… Meantime, however, a great part of the steely, pre-negotiation
dance of these two wilful powers is being played out within the borders
of poor, long-suffering Iraq.  For the sake of the Iraqis, I hope
Washington and Teheran resolve their issues and move to the normal
working relationship of two fully adult powers as soon as possible.

One last footnote here.  I do see some intriguing possibilities
within the Bushites’ repeated use of the mantra that “All options are
still on the table” regarding Iran.  Generally, that has been
understood by most listeners (and most likely intended by its utterers) to mean
that what is “on the table of possibilities” is all military options– up to
and perhaps even including nuclear military options, which the Bushites
have never explicitly taken off the table with regard to Iran.

But why should we not also interpret “all options” to include also all diplomatic options? 
That would certainly be an option worth pursuing.

    (This post has been cross-posted to the Nation’s blog, The Notion.)

Senator Webb’s Leash for the Dog of War

“We have already given… one effectual check to the dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”

–Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789

If our new Virginia Senator, Jim Webb, didn’t impress enough yet with his memorable response to the President’s State of the Union address, he’s leading the political troops again with a bold measure to rein in the Imperial Presidency.
While the new Congress muddles gingerly in efforts to restrain the President’s hand in the war already in progress in Iraq, Senator Webb has introduced new legislation intended precisely to prohibit the Bush-Cheney Administration from launching a new war on Iran – without formal Congressional authorization.
Jefferson would approve.
Below I provide the full text of Webb’s floor speech from earlier today (March 5th) introducing his legislation and a few excerpts from his afternoon press conference. It appears the main stream media has barely touched Webb’s bill — so far, even though I anticipate it may yet garner wide, even bipartisan support. (I’ll add more details on the Bill # and actual text, when I get it.) Let’s note reports we see on the bill in the discussion.
Here’s Webb’s Senate speech, with comments inserted:

“Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will prohibit the use of funds for military operations in Iran without congressional authorization. The purpose of this legislation is to restore a proper balance between the executive and legislative branches when it comes to the commencement of military activities.
“I have taken great care in the preparation of this bill to ensure that it will not in any way prevent our military forces from carrying out their tactical responsibilities in places such as Iraq and in the international waters off Iran’s coast. The legislation allows American forces to directly respond to attacks or possible attacks that might be initiated from Iran, as well as those that might be begun elsewhere and then carry over into Iranian territory. I have also excluded operations related to intelligence gathering.
“The major function of this legislation is to prevent this Administration from commencing unprovoked military activities against Iran without the approval of the Congress. The legislation accomplishes this goal through the proper constitutional process of prohibiting all funding for such an endeavor. Unlike the current situation in Iraq, where cutting off funds might impede or interrupt ongoing operations, this legislation denies funding that would be necessary to begin such operations against Iran in the first place.

Webb then approvingly notes what may be the Bush Administration’s efforts to head off widespread concerns that it was deliberately seeking a pretext to start a war with Iran:

Continue reading “Senator Webb’s Leash for the Dog of War”

Hersh’s ‘bombshells’: Real info and/or Sy-war effort?

I read with interest Sy Hersh’s recent New Yorker article on the Bush administration “Redirection” in the Middle East. It contains a wealth of “information”– some of it new, some of it not new, all of it presented in a very scaremongery way, with the whole piece extremely disorganized.
I haven’t known what to make of it, really, which is why I haven’t blogged about it until now. Sy is an extremely energetic reportorial sleuth, who has a wealth of longtime contacts hidden deep inside the intelligence agencies of the US and more than one Middle East government. (And yes, that includes the Israeli intel agencies.) He does dig out considerable amounts of information, some of which is absolutely new, and some of which is very disturbing. But he is also an extremely disorganized writer who sometimes, it seems to me, has a fairly weak ability to sift things he hears or to test them against other sources… especially in the Middle East. Hence, I believe we should be open to the possibility that to some degree or another some of what he writes may (without him necessarily being aware of this) be a dissemination of a “(p)sy-war” effort directed by some of his danker sources.
I don’t have time to go through this entire article of his to point out the internal contradictions, or the errors of fact or interpretation that I have found in it. (As in some of his earlier work on the Middle East, too.) For now, I’ll just note this sentence, in the introductory framing of the article:

    The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Doesn’t this make it sound as though the Bushists’ new policy has brought it, largely unknowingly, into an independently existing “widening sectarian conflict”?
My own analysis is that at least some figures in the administration have been extremely happy to try to fan the flames of sectarianism in the region; and that meanwhile there are substantial indigenous political forces here that have been resisting that attempt, with some considerable success.
(I write this from Damascus, after having spent three weeks in Egypt and a few days in Jordan. So I base my view of this situation this on discussions with a wide range of people, some of whom are trusted longtime friends and colleagues. Hersh bases his reporting largely on un-named sources in intelligence agencies and on the uncritically reported views of named– and nearly always strongly pro-Israeli– analysts in distant Washington.)
He also seems fundamentally not to have understood the degree to which the Saudis have “gone off the [US] reservation” in their diplomacy– that is, have broken through the limits that the Bushites sought to place on their freedom of diplomatic action. This has been evident with regard to many recent Saudi actions– regarding Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, and above all with regard to Iran.
Actually, one of the reasons Sy’s piece is so disorganized and misleading is because it was, evidently, reported over a fairly lengthy period of time– e.g., his interview with Nasrallah was back in December– and matters have been moving extremely rapidly in all these areas of diplomacy over these recent weeks… So some of what he’s reporting there may have been the “wishful thinking” of Bushite/Israeli insiders (and their friends) back in, say, early January; and at that point there were still not many counter-facts in place that challenged the veracity of those claims.
Bottom line, I think we all need to read Hersh’s text extremely carefully and critically. There are some intriguing (but often largely unsubstantiated) pieces of new “information” in it. But there is also some misinformation (or unknowingly recycled disinformation) and a lot of extremely poor analysis.

Rafsanjani: “Let’s negotiate”

Iran’s Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani is akin to that old advertising pitch for E.F. Hutton: when he speaks, people listen… or at least they should. It’s so much “easier” for the western MSM to quote the incendiary comments by Iran’s current President. Besides, if you want to support going to war with Iran, why bother to print the comments of someone who speaks rather plainly of how to avoid war?
For more years than I’m prepared to admit, I’ve been reading the speeches and Friday “sermons” by Iran’s Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. When Rafsanjani speaks, I’ve listened and taken volumes of notes..
I have nearly all of Rafsanjani’s major speeches and Friday “sermons” since the early days of the Iranian Revolution. I have them in translation, thanks to what used to be the indispensible US Government “Foreign Broadcast Information Service” (now fledgling as the “Open Source Center”). I tracked Rafsanjani’s comments first as Parliamentary Speaker, as Khomeini’s designate in the latter stages of the war with Iraq, as President, as Chairman of Iran’s rather unique “Council for the Discernment of Expediency” (e.g., the “fixers”), and in a half dozen other roles, including top vote recipient in last November’s elections for Iran’s Assembly of Experts.
In 1985, I started analyzing and writing about what Hans Morgenthau would have seen as a “realist” streak in Rafsanjani. My first major oped was about Rafsanjani and his fellow “pragmatists” in 1989 – for the Christian Science Monitor. I later published a biographical sketch of him.
To be sure, Rafsanjani is very much of the Islamic Revolution in Iran; yet he’s also been a key articulator, at least since 1983, of the need for that revolution to adjust its “Islamic” message in light of the needs of Iran’s interests. Indeed, I’ve just learned that Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, a think tank of the Expediency Council and close to Rafsanjani will entitle its newest journal as, “National Interest.” For fellow interenational relations theorists out there, this too is news, as it should also be to those still thinking that it’s “ideology” alone that drives Iran’s foreign policy.
I kept reading Rafsanjani, even when his popularity waned badly inside Iran. He’s gone from being cast aside as too conservative by reformists to now being at the forefront of a multi-faction coalition of reformists, pragmatic “technocrats,” and “conservatives,” candidly formed to stop and reverse the damage caused by Iran’s current President Ahmadinejad.
As such, Rafsajanjani too has a phoenix-like quality. (Yet unlike Chalabi) Rafsanjani’s sources of power and support are more easily recognized. When Rafsajani or his lieutenants speak or make “grand bargain” offers, we indeed should be taking him very seriously. (Take notes Condi — you apparently chose to ignore Rafsanjani’s “grand bargain” in 2003, among the worst mistakes of your career!)
With that in mind, I offer the ending two sections of a political sermon delivered by Rafsanjani on Friday. In my view, AP mischaracterized the speech as essentially saying the same thing as current President Ahmadinejad. Read the text yourself: note especially the ending paragraphs.

Note on this translation:Ordinarily, I would have posted the translation from our taxpayer funded “Open Source Center” – (FBIS). Yet when I first started working on this post, I only had the BBC World Service version (funded by the British taxpayers), which, by the way, is usually identical to the OSC version. The decades long FBIS/OSC/BBC relationship is still not admitted publicly, perhaps to guard the BBC’s reputation, but it’s widely known. The subheadings below are by the BBC.

Continue reading “Rafsanjani: “Let’s negotiate””

US church leaders finish Teheran visit

A delegation of thirteen leaders from US church institutions has just finished a six-day visit to Iran, culminating in a 150-minute discussion with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The delegation includes two leaders from Quaker organizations: Joe Volk, the head of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and Mary-Ellen McNish, the had of the American Friends Service Committee.
Today (Sunday), the delegation issued a statement in which the members said,

    What the delegation found most encouraging from the meeting with President Ahmadinejad was a clear declaration from him that Iran has no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons, as well as a statement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political, not military means. He said, “I have no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some goodwill.”
    We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S. – Iranian relations. The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran. We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.
    As additional steps in building bridges between our nations, we call upon both the U.S. and Iranian governments to:
    * immediately engage in direct, face-to-face talks;
    * cease using language that defines the other using “enemy” images; and
    * promote more people-to-people exchanges, including religious leaders, members of Parliament/Congress, and civil society.
    As people of faith, we are committed to working toward these and other confidence building measures, which we hope will move our two nations from the precipice of war to a more just and peaceful settlement.

You can read more about the delegation if you read this page from the FCNL website. which has links to a number of interesting “diary” entries that Joe Volk made during the early days of the trip.
I am in Jordan right now. My personal view from here is that a U.S. military attack on Iran remains a live possibility. People I’ve talked to here– as in Egypt– say the consequences for their country in the event of such an attack could be very dire indeed.
These are two countries whose leaders are closely allied with the US. However, opinion amongst these two countries’ peoples is very strongly opposed to the idea of a US attack on Iraq, which they see as very destabilizing for the whole region.
As I’ve noted many times before,the Bushites have been working very hard indeed to try to frame the issues in the Middle East in a “Sunni vs. Shiite” way, or an “Iran vs. Arabs” way, and to project the idea that “most” Sunni Arabs would actually welcome a US move to diminish Iranian/Shiite power in the region. I cannot stress strongly enough here the fact that this is not so.
Anyway, tomorrow, the participants in the church leaders’ delegation will be having a press conference in Washington DC, so I hope we will all hear a lot more about the conversations they had on their trip.
(As for me, tomorrow I travel to Damascus.)

Farzaneh Milani: “Iran as Enigma to Americans”

I have the pleasure to highlight an important essay by another leading light here at the University of Virginia – Farzaneh Milani. Professor Milani, a distinguished scholar of Persian literature and women’s studies, focuses attention on the misleading narratives about Iran that provide fertile soil for those bent on provoking a US attack on Iran.
Her timely essay in The Daily Progress urges us to recognize the sources of such myths and cast off the blinders that publishers and our government perpetuate and exploit:

“Although the American public has begun to speak out against a catastrophic attack on Iran, it’s important to remember the quarter-century unpopularity of this previously close ally. At a time when the stories we believe can guide U.S. foreign policy, we cannot afford to suspend critical judgment or accept as facts compelling, but misleading, narratives about Iran.
Despite a long history of friendship and cooperation between the two nations, Iran is now seen as a purveyor of aggression in the United States. What used to be Persia, “the land of the rose and the nightingale,” is now Iran, the vanguard of a terrorist apocalypse.
It is an “axis of evil,” a rogue state, a “greater challenge” than any other country, according to President Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy.”

It didn’t start with Bush II or I.

“The genesis of this hostility can be traced back to Nov. 4, 1979, when a group of militant students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. A sense of anguish etched itself into the collective consciousness of a justifiably outraged nation.
“America in Captivity” was the headline that captured the mood of a country in psychic pain.
“Nuke Iran,” read graffiti and T-shirts and posters.
“The only thing that could ever straighten out this screwed-up country is an atomic bomb! Wipe it off the map and start over,” recommended “Not Without My Daughter,” the most popular book about Iran ever published in the United States.”

Remember that last quote next time you hear reference made to the current Iranian President’s overheated rhetoric about a “map” and “Israel.” As a first step in reducing the temperature between Iran and the US, I propose a mutual moratorium on “map wiping” rhetoric.

Twenty-eight years later, Iranians find themselves hostages of their own hostage-taking.

Continue reading “Farzaneh Milani: “Iran as Enigma to Americans””

Thread to discuss the Bushists’ anti-Iran claims

I don’t have time right now to write anything substantive on the whole campaign the Bushists have been waging to build a “casus belli” against Iran… Dan Froomkin had an excellent roundup of the coverage on Monday in a broad range of US media. I’ve put that link and a few other relevant ones into the Delicious section of the sidebar here.
The total money quote in the Froomkin roundup is this one, from Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari:

    At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. ‘They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,’ says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. U.S. officials insist they have no intention of provoking or otherwise starting a war with Iran.

No word on the circumstances or timing of Ms. Mann’s exit from her post there, by which almost certainly hangs an intriguing tale…
Meanwhile some commenters here have gone off-topic and started discussing this “casus-belli-building” issue in the previous thread, which was on the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution. Tsk, tsk, friends! Henceforth, please try to keep these discussions separate… Thanks!
Update: One intriguing tidbit in the Hirsh-Bahari piece is that they quote James Dobbins, who was the Bush admin’s chief representative at the crucial talks on the political future of Afghanistan that were held in Bonn in December 2001 as recalling this about a discussion he had in Bonn with Javad Zarif, the head of the Iranian government team there (who later became Iran’s ambassador to the UN):

    Dobbins… recalls sharing coffee with Zarif in one of the sitting rooms, poring over a draft of the agreement laying out the new Afghan government. “Zarif asked me, ‘Have you looked at it?’ I said, ‘Yes, I read it over once’,” Dobbins recalls. “Then he said, with a certain twinkle in his eye: ‘I don’t think there’s anything in it that mentions democracy. Don’t you think there could be some commitment to democratization?’ This was before the Bush administration had discovered democracy as a panacea for the Middle East. I said that’s a good idea.”

Lots more there, too, about other strands of the US-Iranian cooperation in the months right after 9/11… That is, until a neocon Bush speechwriter in decided to put the whole “Axis of Evil” thing into Bush’s SOTU speech in late January 2002…
But anyway, that was just my little digression there. The main topic of this post is still the Bushists’ casus-belli-building campaign.

Ramazani: “Wider Conflict Threatens”

The reputed “Dean” in America of Iran foreign policy studies weighs in this morning on the dangers inherent in the looming US-Iran clash and on a better way to engage Iran. Having published widely on Iran-US matters for over five decades (sic), I’m posting Professor Ramazani’s essay here in full – for the interest of jwn readers. (We look forward to your reactions.)
I will be commenting myself on additional materials separately, including the alleged new “intelligence” that Iran is somehow “killing Americans” in Iraq. Before the neocons at Faux and CNN are done, we’ll have the Iranians somehow aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan — just like Rice ignorantly claimed in 2000. (Oh wait, General Karl Eikenberry, having presided over a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan for the past 21 months, just claimed “links” between Iran and the Taliban — without mentioning Pakistan! Utterly cynical nonsense.)
As argued in the current issue of Vanity Fair, the very same “wonderful folks” who brought us the war with Iraq are yet again pulling the strings to provoke a confrontation with Iran.
Here’s Professor Ramazani’s sober analysis:
—————-
Wider Conflict Threatens
By R. K. Ramazani
(originally published in The Daily Progress, February 11, 2007)

The Bush administration’s aggressive confrontation with Iran over the war in Iraq and Iran’s nuclear program threatens armed conflict throughout the Middle East. A better approach would be for the administration to seek a constructive way to engage Iran.
President Bush’s pledge to “seek out and destroy” the Iranian networks allegedly fueling sectarian war in Iraq and to “kill or capture” Iranian operatives suspected of killing American soldiers could spark a proxy war between Iran and the U.S. on the chaotic battlefield of Iraq.
Furthermore, the Bush administration’s campaign to create a regional alignment of Sunni states against Shia Iran promises to stoke the fire of ancient enmities between Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Persians, enhancing the prospects of armed conflict throughout the Middle East.

Threats of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities also could lead to war between America and Iran. Claims by the United States that it desires a diplomatic resolution ring hollow so long as it insists it will join negotiations with Iran only after Iran stops enriching uranium. Iran claims that its nuclear program is essential for producing electricity and helping economic development to meet the needs of a growing population.
But the U.S. pretense of diplomacy with Iran could be a prelude to war just as it was before the invasion of Iraq.

Continue reading “Ramazani: “Wider Conflict Threatens””

Sunni Arab view of US-Iran Tensions

If jwn readers and our generous host will pardon me, I (Scott) wish to draw early attention to Helena Cobban’s important column in today’s Christian Science Monitor. Writing from Cairo, Helena provides us with her reading of Sunni Arab sentiment towards a war with Iran.

As the level of tension rises between the US and Iran, I am very concerned that the Bush administration is trying to paint a scenario of the probable consequences of a possible US military action against Iran that is far more rosy than the situation warrants.
One key example: Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley have talked about the great threat that Sunni Arab countries perceive from Iran, which is predominantly non-Arab and Shiite. Some advocates of an attack (in the US and Israel) have argued that a US strike on Iran would be welcomed in Sunni-dominated nations and would therefore generally bolster the region’s forces of stability. My current tour in Egypt contradicts that. The Egyptians I’ve talked to so far – including retired diplomats, experienced political analysts, and journalists – have expressed unanimous opposition to any US attack against Iran.

This profoundly “different” observation challenges depressing contentions here in the US that some Sunni Arab governments may, like the Israelis, be pushing for the US to confront Iran militarily. Helena’s Arab sources are not nearly so enthused.
Recalling how wrong the “cake walk” scenarios for invading Iraq were, the respected Egyptian scholar and reformist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim tells Helena that, “A US attack on Iran could spread the same chaos we now see in Iraq to a number of other Arab countries. No one wants that.”
As for Hadley’s claim that Sunni Arabs feel threatened by an Iranian pursuit of nuclear options, Helena notes the telling counter view of one Egyptian diplomat: “We have lived beneath Israel’s nuclear weapons for many years, so even if Iran gets nuclear weapons it wouldn’t be anything new. Anyway, they are not that close to it.”
To the repeated mantra that Sunnis – as Sunnis – are fearful of an aggressive “Shia arc” stretching from Iran to Lebanon, Helena observes an even deeper rising regional anger – at America:

It’s true there are some concerns among Sunni Arabs about the growing influence of the (sometimes Iran-backed) Shiite populations present in many Arab countries. But well-informed Egyptians have stressed to me that anti-Americanism now runs much, much deeper than any concerns about Iranian or Shiite influence. That anti-Americanism has been hardened, they say, by the policies Washington has pursued toward Iraq and the Palestinian territories, and toward Israel during its destructive attack on targets in Lebanon last summer.
Many Sunni Arab leaders find themselves trapped uncomfortably between those popular attitudes and their own strategic alliances with Washington. Their reactions during last summer’s Israel-Hizbullah war were instructive. They started out expressing timid support for Israel’s attacks on Hizbullah. But as their publics swung behind Hizbullah, they quickly joined the growing calls for a very rapid cease-fire. In the event of a US strike on Iran, these leaders will probably need to show similar responsiveness to public pressure. And that pressure is now strongly anti-American.

How convenient it has been for Hadley & Rice to forget Pogo and instead try to change the subject – to blame Iran for the dark shadow across the region. That might work in America, but not, as Helena sees it thus far, in the Middle East.
In case you missed it, the subtitle for Helena’s column reads:

There’s virtually unanimous opposition to a US attack on Iran.

“Bottom line” implication follows for Americans:

In 2007, as in 2003, they need to be very skeptical indeed of the rosy scenarios being conjured up by the advocates of war. An attack on Iran risks bringing terrible harm to US forces and innocent civilians both in and far beyond the locus of any such attack.
Back in 2002-03, the Bush administration ignored the advice offered by the vast majority of Middle East specialists. Listening only to ideologues and others with a strong pro-war bias, it rushed the US into a war that continues to have terrible consequences for everyone concerned. We cannot let that happen again. Now, as then, there is no rosy scenario. Now, as then, many diplomatic channels for resolving our differences exist. Our leaders must now use them.

Well said Helena! No doubt you will have much more for us to “see” from your independent listening post in Cairo…