Category: Iran

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today announced that the days of Israel, which he calls the “filthy Zionist entity”, are numbered and the said “entity” will fall soon or later.
AFP reports this:

“I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line,” Ahmadinejad told world powers in a speech in the southern city of Bushehr carried live on the state television.
“It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall,” he said. “The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers’ days are numbered.”

I abhor such hate speech. Even if Iran’s president and many of its people are strongly opposed to the policies of the Israeli government, then describing the whole state of Israel (and by extension, its citizens) as “filthy” is a quite unacceptable and degrading way to refer to them.
Referring to Israel as “the Zionist entity” rather than the name it has as a recognized public entity in the international arena is also abhorrent.
Isn’t it also the case that that, at a time when Iran’s negotiators are dealing with the latest round of Security Council diplomacy concerned with their nuclear program, and when Iran clearly seems eager to build warmer relations with states like Egypt, which has a longstanding peace agreement with Israel– then to have the country’s president spouting off such abhorrent hate speech must be quite unhelpful to such efforts?
I’ve been very interested, over the years, to study the relationships among what the Arabs call the “Jabhat al-Mumana’a“– the “blocking front” of regional states and parties dedicated to blocking the implementation of Israeli-US hegemonist plans for the region. The main members of this front are Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hizbullah, and Palestine’s Hamas.
We should note that none of the other members of the JM refer to Israel in the same demeaning, hateful way that A-N does. First of all, the leaders of all the other JM members refer overwhelmingly to “Israel”, not to the “Zionist entity”. Secondly, they don’t use hateful descriptors like “filthy” when referring to it. Thirdly, they show varying degrees of readiness to deal with Israel as an established fact in the region.
For example, Syria participated in a lengthy, and actually remarkably productive process of face-to-face peace negotiations with Israel from 1991 through 2000. President Bashar al-Asad, like his father before him (since 1973 or so), has always stood ready to negotiate a final peace agreement with Israel. Syria sent a representative to the regional peace talks held in Annapolis, Maryland, last November.
Hizbullah has battled Israel’s armies mightily, mainly on the land of its own native Lebanon. But it has also, from 1996 on, shown itself ready to participate in indirect ceasefire negotiations with Israel and then– with one notable exception, in July 2006– to abide by the ceasefires thereby agreed. (And Israel has been a frequent violator of those ceasefires.)
Regarding Israel’s longterm stature as a mainly-Jewish state in the region, Hizbullah’s leaders have repeatedly abstained from pronouncing on that, saying that that is a matter for the Palestinian people, not the Lebanese people, to decide.
As for Hamas, its leaders talk frequently and easily about “Israel.” They certainly accept– and are sometimes eager for– the idea of limited cooperation on ceasefires and other matters, though with the general proviso that these be negotiated through third parties, not directly. Regarding Israel’s longterm stature in the region, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal repeated to me just two weeks ago the organization’s readiness to conclude a hudna of undefined length with an Israel that had withdrawn from all the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967 and had satisfied all the Palestinians’ rights including the right to return.
Hamas’s position is quite evidently different from that of, for example, PA president Mahmoud Abbas. Different, too, from the kinds of peace settlement envisaged by the vast majority of that fast-fading breed, the Israeli peaceniks, at this time. But it is also notably different from the hateful, almost specifically genocidal position articulated by Ahmadinejad.
I can’t imagine why Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei allows A-N to carry on like this.
Maybe the subtle ploy there is to make the other members of the Jabhat al-Mumana’a look moderate by comparison?

Among the spin-off benefits of a US-Iran hotline, as suggested by R.K. Ramazani in the previous entry, is the possibility that it “could help restore Iran-U.S. diplomatic relations….” As he explained,

“Contrary to widely held myths, Iran has never closed its door to diplomatic relations with the United States. Khomeini left the door ajar “if America behaves itself,” that is, if the United States refrains from imposing its will on Iran. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, subscribes to the Khomeini line, saying that Iran’s lack of contacts with the United States “does not mean that we will not have relations indefinitely.”

Yet just this past week, the hawkishly neoconservative “Committee on the Present Danger” (CPD) repeats the myth. In an essay proclaiming that “It takes two to tango,” to have a diplomatic relations, to have a “grand bargain,” the Iranians are portrayed as not being willing to dance. To the contrary, CPD invokes segments from a recent speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenehi:

“Cutting ties with the United States is one of our basic policies,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, told students in the central city of Yazd just days ago. And while “[w]e have never said that they will be cut for ever,” Khamenei explained, “[t]he conditions of the U.S. government are such now that it is harmful for us to resume relations… Despite some talkative people’s claims, it has no benefit for the Iranian nation.”

CPD concludes that this “pours more than a little cold water on the suggestion that Washington should push for an immediate rapprochement with Tehran… (as) the ruling ayatollahs don’t seem interested in mending fences.”
This is selective and disingenuous cherry picking for a negative spin. Here’s the full passage of the January 3rd speech in question, without ellipses, as made available via BBC World Service.** (see note below) This is from a translation of a long report provided by Tehran Radio (Voice of the Islamic Republic). Emphasis added and my comments follow:

The leader of the Islamic revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i] referred to relations with America and said: The cutting of relations with the US is one of our principle policies. However, we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely. On the contrary, the US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment. So we should not pursue such relations.
The leader outlined the harm of establishing relations with the US and reiterated: First, the establishment of such relations will not lessen the danger posed by the US because that country had political relations with Iraq when it attacked it. Secondly, the establishment of these relations will prepare the ground for the growth of Americans’ influence in the country and the travel of their intelligence officers and spies to and from Iran. As a result, this is why contrary to the claims made by some talkative people [inside the country] these relations have no benefit for the Iranian nation. Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.
The leader added: Some accuse us of promoting enmity with America. However, that country’s enmity towards the Iranian nation is not based on the [Iranian] president and other people’s harsh interpretations. On the contrary, they are against the principles of the Iranian nation and such a thing has existed since the beginning of the Islamic revolution.

I have been reading Khamenehi speeches and Friday Prayer Sermons for 24 years, dating to when he became President amid the Iran-Iraq War. Khamenehi has long been more adaptable in his “open door foreign policy” pronouncements than commonly understood in the west. (I may prepare a full article just on this narrow, yet critical question about Iran’s “dance” with the question of if and under what circumstances it can renew ties to America.)
Yet to be brief on just this speech, consider:
1. Quite in line with Professor Ramazani’s analysis, Khamenehi yet again emphasizes that there’s no automatic bar to improving ties to the US. Characteristically, he cites the revolutionary hallmark, the cutting of the old ties to America, what became the signature “neither East nor West” revolutionary dictum, so that Iran might be independent and “self-confident,” that it might be free from the relations between “the lion and the lamb.” All that not forgotten, “we have never said that these relations will be suspended indefinitely.”
2. The standard objections and grievances to current US policy are noted. Talks and relations in themselves can bring dangers to Iran, despite the hopes of “talkative people” (e.g., Iranian reformists and pragmatists in Iran).
3. Khamenehi also delivers a back-handed lame defense of Iran’s lightning-rod President when he notes that America’s enmity towards Iran predated Ahmadinejad’s “harsh interpretations.” The fact that Khamenehi is even referencing Iranian criticisms of Ahmadinejad for “promoting enmity with America” startled many observers, and was interpreted as quite a slap.
4. Totally left out of the CPD report is the not so subtle message to America: “The US government’s present state is such that the establishment of such relations is currently to our detriment.” Hint, hint America: it doesn’t have to be this way. The US government might change, and it logically then follows that better relations might not be to Iran’s detriment.
5. As a friend suggested in a closed forum, it may also be that Khamenehi is signaling Iranian contenders in the pending Parliamentary and Presidential elections that they may campaign more creatively on foreign policy, to shield them from ideological “heat.”
6. Shamelessly omitted from the CPD essay is Khamenehi’s kicker: “Undoubtedly, when the day comes that relations with America will benefit the Iranian nation, I will be the first person to endorse these relations.”
That day may be sooner that the CPD and neocon naysayers think – say, if somebody reminds Bush Jr. of Bush Sr.’s inaugural Address (the one about “goodwill begetting goodwill”) or, by this time next year, when two new Presidents are in the wings.
(**Footnote: Curiously, the US government’s parallel translation service – the Open Source Center (formerly FBIS) data base available to the public via World News Connection – does not include the report on this speech. I’ve seen this happen before — somebody at OSC and WNC owes us an explanation)

Alert readers here are aware that a few weeks ago I started paying good attention to the blog “China Matters” written by someone identifying her/himself only as “China Hand.” I was impressed, primarily, by the decidedly non-US-centric and extremely well-informed way that CH was commenting on developments in Pakistan. I do think the “China” references in the title and the monicker are little misleading: this person knows a LOT about many other regions of the world in addition to China.
Yesterday, CH reminded his longer-term readers that back in October he had called Bush’s policy of ratcheting u the confrontation with Iran as being “deaddeaddeaddeaddeaddead.” In yesterday’s post he commented:

It was a situation that was pretty clear only if one saw how determinedly key players in other capitals were pushing back against our Iran policy.
It’s an unsurprising but regrettable fact of life that the United States—and its opinion leaders and shapers—find it difficult to understand an international situation in which our framing and priorities are not necessarily decisive.
The true surprise is how abruptly we kicked the props out from under the Israeli government…

He also described the Bush administration’s general Middle East policy as “creeping Bakerism.” Personally, I prefer the term “stealth Bakerism”, which I find crisper and giving less of an impression that we might think Jim Baker was a “creep”. But the general idea’s the same– and China Hand called it exactly right!
He helpfully reproduces the whole of his October 26 post on the subject. The main methodology he used there was to pay careful attention to the ways that the Russian and Chinese leaders were framing issues of nuclear proliferation/nonproliferation and to conclude that:

Russia and China—two of the five veto holders on the Security Council—want the North Korea deal to serve as the template for Iran.
What does this mean?
It means that world opinion has abandoned the Bush administration on the creation of a united front of coercion against Iran.

Precisely. And a lot of the rest of the post is worth reading, too. Especially CH’s observations on how the US has come to use economic and financial sanctions more to discipline and punish those of its own supposed allies who are inclined to step out of line, than to punish the accused “evildoers.”
As a relative newcomer to CH’s blog, I am really delighted he decided to blow his own horn a bit in yesterday’s post and refer us back to the October post. It is obviously going to become increasingly necessary to be able to see things in a non-US-centric way– and to have the knowledge-base with which to do so. China Matters looks like an increasingly important resource for us all.

Excellent news today: the US government’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence made public a key “National Intelligence Estimate” report stating on p.6 of that PDF file that:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…
* We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
• We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.
• Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

This is of course, excellent news. Both in itself, and because the release (and the meticulous-looking quality) of this report indicate that the important intelligence organs in this country have lost the cowed, excessively politicized character they had in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The ODNI was working on finalizing the text of this report even as President Bush and Vice-Prez Cheney continued to voice escalatory accusations against the Iranians, claiming they were still continuing with a well-established nuclear-weapons program.
As I’ve written here several times before, ever since I first came to the US in 1982, I have heard US and Israeli officials and semi-official sources claiming that Iran is “just two to five years” or thereabout away from having a nuclear weapon. I note that 1982 is now 25 years into the past and it hasn’t happened yet. Hence, my level of skepticism about all these very drumbeating and fear-inducing allegations is very high.
Regarding timeframe estimates, today’s NIE seemed to be all over the shop (i.e., the analysts were really not being willing to commit themselves to any firm estimate, which seems to me appropriate.) Here’s what they said:

* We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.
• We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame. [Note that technical capability is a different issue from having and pursuing an intention to produce nuclear weapons. ~HC] (INR judges Iran is unlikely to achieve this capability before 2013 because of foreseeable technical and programmatic problems. INR is the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which in 2002 was the intel-analysis agency that, as it turned out, got it the most right on Iraq’s WMDs ~ HC) All agencies recognize the possibility that this capability may not be attained until after 2015.

Bottom line: there’s still time for engaged diplomacy to work.
The NIE says as much, too:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program. It is difficult to specify what such a combination might be.

I’ve been trying to figure out what the development was that gave the ODNI the level of “high confidence” the NIE describes, regarding the fall 2003 halt in Iran’s NW program. The best guess I can make is some of the information contained in the report that IAEA Director General Mohamed elBaradei submitted to his board on November 15. The info in that report also, apparently, gave Russia the confidence it felt it needed to start shipping nuclear fuel rods– under IAEA supervision– to Iran’s Bushehr power plant.
ODNI’s public release of its report should considerably brake the rush that some portions of the Bush administration (especially people in Cheney’s office) have apparently been making, to ramp up the pressure on Iran and try to launch an attack against it before Bush leaves office. It is very good news indeed that the DNI himself, Adm. Mike McConnell, seems to have done his job in a highly professional, objective way– as opposed to George Tenet, who as Director of Central Intelligence in 2002 acted much more like a courtier, cherry-picking the intel at the whim of his political superiors.
Having McConnell in place now instead of Tenet, and Bob Gates instead of the criminally reckless Donald Rumsfeld, means the Bush administration is much, much less likely to launch a completely unjustified war against Iran in the months ahead than it would have been if those former high officials were still in place.
Great news.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told reporters in Saudi Arabia that he will be discussing with the Gulf Arab countries a plan (that they had proposed earlier) enrich uranium for their projected nuclear power program in a neutral country “such as Switzerland.”
The plan earlier proposed by the six (all-Arab) members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was for the establishment of a consortium for this purpose that could provide nuclear fuel to Iran and any other Middle East states (though perhaps not including Israel?), who might be planning their own nuclear power programs.
Ahmadinejad’s confirmation of interest in the GCC proposal, and his naming of Switzerland as the possible location for this project, are both very significant. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had suggested that his country could provide uranium-enrichment services for Iran, but that proposal got nowhere. As I recall, that was due in good part to the opposition of Washington; but Ahmadinejad was only lukewarm about it, too.
Interesting if this time around, he is signaling a much greater degree of interest in this outsourcing proposal…
Switzerland’s involvement in the current plan is interesting. On its face, it would seem not to portend the formation of a potentially hostile anti-US bloc, as the idea of Russian involvement did for many people. Also, I imagine the GCC countries would be a lot happier to have Switzerland host the enrichment project (and to put their money into the project there), than to have that all happen in Russia.
Also this weekend, Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey confirmed that her country is actively pursuing a plan to engage the US and Iran in direct negotiations. According to that link, which is to an AP story in the IHT, Calmy-Rey told a Swiss weekly paper that her country’s long-held tradition of neutrality in international relations,

puts it in a key position to mediate the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
“It is a fact that the … big powers have so far been unable to prevent Iran from pursuing uranium enrichment,” she said in an interview published Sunday, her first public comments about Switzerland’s role.

Switzerland has, of course, handled consular affairs between Iran and the US ever since the two broke off relations in 1979. But the new diplomatic role Calmy-Rey is carving out for her country seems to go far beyond the provision of such purely technical services.
All power to her!
The AP story also notes that Calmy-Rey,

has said Switzerland rejects the proliferation of nuclear technology but recognizes the right to use the technology for peaceful purposes.

That has been, of course, the sticking point in the current international conflict over Iran’s nuclear program. The US, Israel and a handful of other countries, including France and the UK, have been very strongly opposed to Iran gaining a working nuclear program even for power generation, arguing that it could too easily be converted to a program to develop nuclear weapons (which the US, Israel, the UK, and France all already have, and show no signs whatever of giving up.)
If the fuel enrichment for Iran’s nuclear power program can be done outside Iran, that makes the “conversion/diversion” danger much, much smaller.
Ahmadinejad’s apparently strong expression of interest in the GCC proposal looks remarkably statesmanly. It is also some pretty smart diplomacy. Especially at a time when the US has been rushing around trying to enroll all the Arab states into its drum-beating, anti-Iran “crusade” (oops, sorry, make that “campaign.”)
I should just reiterate at this point the judgment I have held to for a long time now, that though many Arab states have misgivings– some of them quite strong ones– about Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East, still, they all without exception fear the fallout from any possible US-Israeli military attack against Iran much, much more, and are willing to work hard to avert such an attack.
So maybe the Switzerland-GCC plan is a good way in which the tension over Iran’s nuclear program can be de-escalated, and relations between Teheran and Washington returned to a much more even and less globally destabilizing a tone.
Let’s hope so!
However, many of those who have been agitating hardest for a US (and/or US-Israeli) military strike against Iran can be expected to be upset about this. This is particularly the case of all those who urged such a strike not, basically, because of their fears about Iran’s nuclear program, but because they sought regime change in Tehran and have been prepared to rack up and use the issue of the Iranian nuclear program in order to “justify” the military attack.
But if the GCC-Swiss proposal can verifiably meet people’s concerns regarding the Iranian nuclear program, it should be welcomed by everyone.
Meanwhile, Calmy-Rey is 1,000% correct to continue to push her campaign for the opening of serious direct talks between the US and Iran. Only through the direct contacts between these two parties, and the concomitant establishment of an all-party, Iraq-plus-all-its neighbors-plus-the-UN-and-the-US negotiation can the US ever hope for an orderly withdrawal of its troops from the continuing quagmire in Iraq.
All the rest of the world also desperately needs the US-Iran relationship to stabilize.

The WaPo’s sad “insider wannabe” columnist Jim Hoagland, still unrepentant for all the disinformation and escalatory war-wongering he propagated that helped catapult the US into invading Iraq, is now fully back in the same business: target Iran.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, Jim Hoagland was an honest journalist. You know, the kind of person who would dedicatedly investigate facts and test the truth value of the various claims made by all kinds of politicians.
Yes, a very long time ago.
The lead in today’s piece was this:

Iran is working to produce a 20-to-50-pound stockpile of enriched uranium that it can use to build atomic weapons within eight to 10 weeks, once it decides to do so — and has consistently lied to the United Nations about those efforts.
That headline conclusion is one of two basic points that I draw from a series of private meetings on Iran’s nuclear ambitions involving diplomats, leading academic experts, senior military officers and experienced analysts from around the globe.

So, we’re supposed simply to take Jim’s word on the lead judgment there? He’s not going to name any of the “diplomats, leading academic experts, senior military officers and experienced analysts” whose info he claims to cite?
One aspect of this that I find intriguing is that he writes that these “conversations [were] organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).”
Oh, really?
I’ve been a member of the IISS for more than 20 years. No-one has ever told me about these “conversations,” or the data or analysis that Hoagie claims was presented in them.
So either the IISS is heavily engaged in organizing what look like extremely one-sided, bellicose briefings for a portion of its members– or Jim Hoagland is talking a lot of hot air.
Either one is, I suppose, possible. Though I’d like to think that the IISS still holds to some standards of objectivity and rigorous pursuit of the facts.
Hoagie’s piece is titled “How to rein in Iran without War.” But he uses some fairly dishonest argumentation at the end of it (as well as a lot of completely unsubstantiated allegations along the way.)
At the end he writes this:

time is running out on the diplomatic track, where Russia and China are blocking a third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran. This allows Cheney and other hawks to argue that waiting on diplomatic results is a waste of time. Blocking sanctions actually increases the pressure on Bush to move unilaterally and militarily.

I beg your pardon? How does that argument go again?
Then this:

The administration has too often pitched the confrontation with Iran as one that Bush alone will decide. Russia, China and Europe should do everything they can to prevent this from becoming necessary. Not backing the new U.N. sanctions brings it a scary step closer.

He just comes across like a second-rate thug. And the WaPo pays him how much annually, to peddle these kinds of bullying threats?
For the record, here’s what IAEA chief Mohamed el-Baradei has been saying about Iran recently.

I come back to the US and to analyst/blogger mode after my great break in Spain, and find many signs of escalating tensions on the world scene. It’s hard to know where to start…

* The horrible recent bombing in Pakistan, presaging the strong probability of continued political deterioration there?
* News of continued security deterioration in Afghanistan?
* The sharp rise in tensions between Turkey and northern Iraq?

… And it is at this point that Vice-President Cheney chooses to up the rhetorical ante against Iran??
His recklessness is almost unbelievable.
In remarks delivered yesterday at the annual conference of the AIPAC-sired “Washington Institute for Near East Policy” (WINEP), Cheney promised “serious consequences” if Iran doesn’t abandon its present nuclear policy (which the Iranians have said is aimed only at enriching uranium to power-generation olevels, not the much higher levels required for nuclear weapons.) He also warned that:

“The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences…The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

Many people have already noted that this language is almost exactly the same as the tension-raising rhetoric that Cheney and Bush both used in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Just days before Cheney’s speech, Bush himself had warned in a press appearance that Teheran’s achievement of even the knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb could lead to World War 3. (This seemed like a silly threat, since the knowledge as such is widely available on the internet.) Bush later tried to deny he had been raising the tensions there… But then Cheney chimed in with his Sunday statement.
For many months now, people have been speculating about the chances of the Bush administration launching an attack (or permitting Israel to launch an attack) on Iran.
Until recently, I have remained fairly sanguine on this score, considering the probability to be considerably less than 50%– say, about 30% (max.)
On Sunday, I think the probability went up. So today, I have produced a little graph to illustrate what I think has happened:

The reason that, despite Cheney’s alarmist rhetoric, I still haven’t raised the number above 50% is because this time, unlike in late 2002, we no longer have Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. I have a lot more confidence in the good (realist) sense of Bob Gates than I ever did in Rumsfeld.
I have the strong impression that Cheney is once again now, as in 2002, trying to “corner” the President into seeing “no alternative” but to launch the military attack that, apparently, Cheney seems to strongly favor. (On Iran this time, as on Iraq five years ago.) He may well be doing this at this point by claiming to the president that the rhetorical escalation is an essential part of the “coercive diplomacy” required to force the Iranians to back down on the nuclear issue. My judgment is, however, that this will not force the Iranians to back down, for a number of reasons– and also, that Cheney most likely shares this assessment. So then, Cheney could hope that two things may happen: (1) The Iranians in their turn would also up the rhetorical ante, or even the policy ante, by one or more further notches in response to the braggadocio from Washington, thus (in Cheney’s view) even further “proving” their irrationality and the danger this poses, both to Bush and to the US public, and (2) Bush would also find it harder to bring his administration down the tree of escalation that Cheney has been assiduously pushing it up into…
And thus would Cheney “corner” his man.
Back in late 2002, we can certainly nowadays discern a very similar cornering effect at the level of escalating the accusations and the hate-rhetoric against Saddam. But there was also another form of cornering going on: that from the military preparations that Rumsfeld was assiduously masterminding from over in the Pentagon. By February of 2003, Rumsfeld had in place (or, well on the way to the battleground) just about all the forces he thought he needed for the assault on Iraq. Keeping armies of such a size in the field is an expensive undertaking. In the recent El Pais account of the conversation between Bush and Aznar on the eve of the war, you certainly heard Bush talking about the “need” to use the invasion force soon.
(But oh! From today’s perspective we can see how very, very much cheaper and better it would have been for everyone all round if he had never launched them into battle that March, but merely kept them hanging around while the diplomacy continued its course… )
This time, though, I feel fairly sure that Gates is not playing the same game as Cheney. At this point, I think of Condi and Hadley both as being empty ciphers on this issue. Maybe I’m wrong.
So the months ahead will be really momentous ones.
Unfortunately, the dynamics of a US election year can too often be dynamics that favor belligerency and the braggadocio that leads to it. And I feel no confidence at all that, on the issue of Iran, the Democrats will be any cooler and saner than the administration.
I wish the “international community” had a few effective adults in it– leaders who could step in and persuasively explain to Pres. Bush just how crazy it would be to attack Iran. (They could also explain how crazy and destabilizing the present rhetorical escalations already are.) I don’t, however, see any such adults from outside the US playing any effective role in this direction.
I guess we, the US citizenry, are just going to have to be our own adults, and exert whatever pressures we can to rein in this escalation and take our country back to a saner path.
Anyway, from now on, I’m going to try to keep my little “Probability of Attack on Iran Counter” updated, at least once a month. I have the cut-off date for it, as of now, at Inauguration Day 2009. There may well be some periods of particular sensitivity along the way between now and then– determined by the political calendar…. I’m also trying to imagine which way the political pressures may push Bush in that strange twilight period after the election… In the past, in those uber-lame-duck nine weeks, presidents have done a number of surprising, and not always belligerent, things.
(Also, of course, January 20, 2009 will not necessarily see the sudden arrival of realism and sanity in the White House… )

Remember the controversy over the current Iranian President’s inflammatory questioning of the Holocaust, at one point doubting its extent, at other moments playing up old regional wounds, asking why the Mideast had to “pay” for Europe’s sins? Iran’s image has taken a severe beating as a result of such rhetoric.
Ironically, Iranian state television since April has been showing an extraordinary series, entitled “Zero Degree Turn.” The most expensive production in Iranian TV history, the government approved and funded program sympathetically portrays the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and depicts an Iranian embassy employee in Paris as a hero who helps his Jewish love and her family flee.
The intriguing series has been a smash hit inside Iran. It’s also gaining an audience internationally, via satellite and net re-broadcasts. Here’s a ten minute sample, with English sub-titles, on YouTube.
For an overview of the series, see Sunday’s AP report. Among Israeli reviews, here’s an early skeptical Ha’aretz report in June. Ynet ran this more upbeat assessment just last week. Ynet draws from an interesting interview of the series producer, Hassan Fatthi, in The Wall Street Journal..
Some may object to Fatthi’s comment that, “The murder of innocent Jews during World War II is just as despicable, sad and shocking as the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children by racist Zionist soldiers.” Yet even David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post is more impressed by the fact that,

“Monday night after Monday night across Iran, Fatthi is broadcasting an unmistakable challenge to his own president’s efforts at historical revisionism. State TV is essentially telling Ahmadinejad to shut up.”

While the show’s central love story is fictional, Fatthi’s inspiration for his series is true, of an Iranian diplomat in Paris during WWII, Abdol Hussein Sardari, who “saved over a thousand European Jews by forging Iranian passports and claiming they belonged to an Iranian tribe.”
Move over Cyrus.
—————-
I don’t have the time to highlight these reports and comment. In the next few days, I’m finishing an essay about the previous Iranian President’s critically important reformist legacy, one that Iran doubters dismiss too readily. Anybody else miss Khatami’s “Dialogue Among Civilizations?”
Funny thing, just as I’m crossing the “T’s,” this report appears in today’s Financial Times: “Khatami Plots a Comeback.”
If “they” let him run in 2009, my sense of the Iranian landscape (at least as of today) is that he’d win in a landslide. Imagine, we could have a second chance at a Khatami-Clinton Summit.