New World Disorder

By David Ignatius

Friday, May 4, 2007; A23

After the Iraq debacle, nearly everyone seems to agree that "unilateralism" in foreign policy is a bad thing. Leading the march of born-again multilateralists is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has been meeting with representatives of Syria, Iran and several dozen other nations in the hope that they can apply a collective tourniquet to Iraq, where America's go-it-alone approach is failing.

The "neighbors" meeting is an example of the kind of cooperative problem solving that everyone favors in theory. The difficulty is that nobody today has any real experience with how a genuinely multilateral system might work. And the more you think about it, the more potential obstacles you begin to see in the passage from unilateral hell to multilateral heaven.

The nuclear strategist Herman Kahn pondered this problem in a 1983 essay on "multipolarity and stability." Kahn made his name by "thinking about the unthinkable" -- namely, the consequences of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he recognized that the bipolar world of the Cold War had an inherent stability. The two superpowers understood the rules of the game, and because the dangers of conflict were so great, they learned to discipline themselves and their respective allies.

A multipolar world eventually would be stable, too, Kahn argued. He hypothesized that by 2000, there would be seven economic giants -- the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, France and Brazil -- and that they would gradually work out orderly rules. The problem was the transition. The moment of maximum danger, Kahn warned, would be in moving from a bipolar to a multipolar world.

We are now in that process of transition, and it's proving just as volatile as Kahn predicted. American power alone is demonstrably unable to achieve world order; we can't even maintain the peace in Baghdad. But no multilateral coalition has emerged as an alternative. The United Nations, the nominal instrument of collective security, allowed itself to be run out of Iraq by a terrorist bomb in the early months of the war.

The multilateral world is disorganized on several levels. First, it's not clear what the "poles" of the emerging order are or how they will align. Is the Muslim world a pole? If so, who will lead it -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan? Can the Muslim nations of the Middle East put aside their traditional rivalries and act responsibly in resolving a crisis? That's what the meeting of Iraq's neighbors this week is testing. An exhausted America finally seems ready for a multilateral exit strategy from Iraq, but are the neighbors able to deliver it?

Does Russia intend to organize a new pole of its own? President Vladimir Putin certainly sounds like he wants to regain a share of Moscow's old influence. But listening to an acrimonious debate last weekend at the Brussels Forum among diplomats from nations that once made up the Soviet bloc, it's obvious that this pole would be anything but stable. While a Putin ally was enthusing about the new Russia, someone in the back of the room -- a Georgian? an Estonian? a Pole? -- shouted out: "Liar," and you wondered for a moment if punches would be thrown.

The disorder goes deeper. Most of the major nations are on the cusp of political change. The United States is the most obvious example: George Bush will leave the White House in less than two years, but to whom? Public rage over Iraq is buffeting the two politicians who, just a few months ago, were their party's front-runners, Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The only certainty about the next president is that he or she will represent an America that is angry and unpredictable.

Big changes are coming in France and Britain, too. Gaullist foreign policy will outlive President Jacques Chirac, just as the Atlantic alliance will survive the departure of Prime Minister Tony Blair. But both moorings will probably be looser -- adding additional drift. And what should we expect from a post-Putin Russia -- assuming he follows through on his promise to retire next year?

I listened to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say during a news conference in Tehran last year that the post-1945 world order was ending. All of its institutions, starting with the United Nations, were becoming irrelevant, he argued. A new world would be shaped by rising powers that would create new rules of the international game.

At the time, I thought it was more of Ahmadinejad's crazy rhetoric. But I suspect that this vision of a world in transition may be correct: We're all multilateralists now, but we inhabit a world that makes the Cold War seem like the good old days.

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

Between Good and Evil

April 6, 2007

By Gilad Atzmon

The main British editorials happen to agree that Ahmadinejad has scored points in this latest naval round. I find their take on it all rather disappointing. With over 650,000 innocents dead as a direct result of the invasion of Iraq and a war against Iran looming on the horizon, it is about time British columnists stopped telling us about tactical gains and losses. Instead they should once and for all be endorsing a humanist and ethical discourse that is grounded on genuine responsibility.

The battle between Ahmadinejad and Blair is not a political or diplomatic one, it is not about points. It is actually a clash between civilizations, but more than that, it seems to be a fight between humanism and cold pragmatism. As it emerges, in this battle, it is Ahmadinejad rather than Blair who reminds us where goodness rests. Seemingly, a man who has been repeatedly presented to us by our deluded Western media as a’ radical’, ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Islamofascist’ has proved beyond doubt that he is actually the one who knows what forgiveness and grace are all about. It was Ahmadinejad who has pardoned the enemy, it was Ahmadinejad that evoked some prospects of a peaceful future.

Brits and Americans should ask themselves whether they can recall Bush or Blair meeting with any of the many illegally detained Guantánamo Bay inmates. Brits may also want to ask themselves when was the last time their Prime Minister was seen chatting with Abu Hamza* or anyone like him. My usual Ziocon critics would obviously blame me for equating here ‘innocent’ naval personnel to ‘murderous bloodthirsty terrorists’. I would suggest to them to bear in mind that it is ‘us’ who label others as ‘terrorist’ as much as it is ‘us’ who generously label ourselves as ‘innocent’. I may as well voluntarily suggest to my possible critics that within this so-called ‘cultural clash’, it is again ‘us’ who launched an illegal war, it is ‘us’ who are legally and morally responsible for the ongoing genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is ‘our’ democratically elected governments that support the Israeli atrocities in Palestine. It is ‘our’ leaders who happen to be the terrorists who fail to talk to the so-called enemy. It is ‘our’ leaders who fail to offer any hope for peace. Instead they just prepare us for many more conflicts to come. More importantly, I may suggest to my critics that in the eyes of an Iranian, the captured naval personnel are part of an invasion army that destroys Arab and Muslim States.

I wonder how the majority of British people would feel about a bunch of Iranian naval commandos operating in the English Channel, stopping every Western vessel and searching its belly for some potential military goods. I wonder as well how most Brits would feel about the democratically elected Iranian government interfering with the British Parliament’s recent decision to spend dozens of billions of Sterling on a new Trident, a weapon designed for the indiscriminate killing of millions of people. Obviously there is no need to elaborate on these rhetorical questions, the answers are clear. The vast majority of Brits wouldn’t accept anyone interfering either with British politics or with the Kingdom’s territorial waters. Yet, for the majority of Westerners, constant intimidation and destruction of Muslim or Arab States seems to be nothing other than business as usual.

I better admit it; I do not know exactly where the fifteen British sailors were captured. I am far from being qualified to say who tells the truth about this saga, whether the seamen were captured in Iranian seas or if it was in international waters. Reading some expert commentators about the subject, I tend to believe that no one has a clear-cut answer to offer. In fact, most British papers have now adopted the notion of ‘caught in disputed waters’ just to disguise their premature judgment some days ago.

However, the issue here has nothing to do with truth. The question to be asked here is: “why is it so complicated for us, Western people, to accept the possibility that the truth of the other may be slightly or even very different from ours?” I may admit that I find it rather concerning that the British press willingly and blindly bought the British government account of the naval dispute while dismissing the possibility that the Iranians may have had an adequate argument to offer.

At the end of the day, we may have to face it, Blair and his government’s record for telling the truth is not very impressive. In the last five years the British government has managed to lie more or less about everything; whether it was Iraqi WMD, 45 minutes of deployment of those imaginary weapons, or more worryingly, whether it was a phantasmic pretext for an illegal war.

It would be fair to comment that as much as Blair can hardly tell the truth, President Ahmadinejad has yet to be caught telling a lie. Ahmadinejad, though being rather unpopular in Britain, is far from deceiving his listener. Indeed, he has some harsh things to say. Unlike Blair who was generous enough to admit that the Iranian people have some past to be proud of (“we respect Iran as an ancient civilization, as a nation with a proud and dignified history” Tony Blair, 4.4.06), President Ahmadinejad insists that Iranian people are entitled as well for a present and even for a prospect of some future.

The President whom some of us call ‘Islamofascist’, believes actually that the Iranian people are equal human beings. Thus, he genuinely believes that like more or less every Western country, his country and his people have the right to benefit from atomic energy and nuclear research. Is it that outrageous? I may suggest that considering Western governments are becoming increasingly enthusiastic about atomic energy, it is basically impossible to produce any sufficient ethical argument against Ahmadinejad on that matter. Moreover, bearing in mind the Israeli nuclear might, there is not a single moral argument for preventing any of Israel’s neighbours from having at least a similar deadly capacity.

Ahmadinejad doesn’t shy off. He says what he believes to be right. He believes for instance that if the Europeans feel guilty for their past crimes against the Jews, it is the Europeans who should face their past and take responsibility for the Jews rather than dumping them in the Middle East at the expense of the Palestinian people. Again, this thought is rational as well as implacably ethically grounded. Whether we like its implication or not is a different matter. Ahmadinejad may be seen by some as a Holocaust denier, yet as far as I can see, he is one of the very few statesmen who manages to internalise the real meaning of the Holocaust. He says No to racism. Accordingly, he believes that Israel, the ‘Jews only State’, a racially orientated nationalist entity, has no right to exist as such. Ahmadinejad has never called for the liquidation of the Israeli people but rather for the dismantling of the Zionist apparatus. Again, I see nothing ethically wrong with that.

In the last days, Ahmadinejad proved again that as far as humanism and peace seeking are concerned, he is ahead of his Western rivals. Seemingly, we have a lot to learn from our Muslim brothers. In this cultural clash, it is we, the West who have lost touch with the notions of empathy and ethics. May I suggest that we start to assume some level of responsibility for things and admit that it is not Blair and Bush who should be blamed, it is we the people who are failing collectively to listen to the cry of the other. Rather than blaming Blair and his shrinking circuit of supporters, we are the ones, the silent crowd who should launch into a serious self-searching process. If humanism, rationality, analytical thinking and ethics have been seen as Western cultural assets at a certain stage, it is currently the leaders of the so-called Muslim ‘fundamentalists’ who grasp the real meaning of those qualities far better than we do.

Ahmadinejad was there to remind us all what grace was all about. Seemingly, it is Ahmadinejad who evokes the feeling of goodness and it is Blair who couldn’t match it. It was Blair who couldn’t even recruit the minimal dignity and kindness to salute his foe. British columnists should know better. Ahmadinejad didn’t win by points; it wasn’t about winning a political battle. This was just another chapter in an ongoing clash between civilizations, between Good and Evil and as it seems, we are stuck at least momentarily with Bush, Blair and their Ziocon philosophy, not exactly the civilized one and not remotely the carrier of ‘goodness’, so to say.

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3752517.stm

Iran’s Operative in the White House: NICHOLAS KRISTOF - Dick Cheney

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Iran’s Operative in the White House

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 20, 2007

Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?

f an 18-year-old American soldier were caught slipping obscure military paperwork to Iranian spies, he would be arrested, pilloried in the news media and tossed into prison for years.

But in fact there’s an American who has provided services of incalculably greater value to Iran in recent years. So you have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney 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?

--MORE--

Will Surge Hurt US More Than Sanctions Hurt Iran?

POLITICS:

Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (IPS) - The winds of fortune in the Iranian nuclear stand-off seem to have shifted, judging by the U.S.'s new confidence. But in Washington's apparent quest to get an upper hand, misreading the causes of the backlash against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran may cause the U.S. to lose rather than gain leverage.

Over the past few months, Iran's hard-line president has suffered several political defeats at home. The most important of these were the Dec. 15 municipal elections last year where candidates allied with the president fared miserably, while centrist conservatives close to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani -- a key rival of Ahmadinejad -- made significant gains.

Ahmadinejad's defeat, coupled with increased criticism against him at home over his economic policies and his failure to evade U.N. Security Council Sanctions, have left Washington with the impression that its efforts to squeeze Iran's access to international finance has borne fruit at a surprising rate.

Washington's euphoria over this perceived success has been used as an argument with its European allies that the pressure is working and that if only Europe joins the U.S., Iran will eventually be brought down to its knees.

This argument is likely to be repeated today when the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany meet to discuss how to respond to Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, as requested by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737.

But Washington's reading of developments in Iran is severely flawed. Most importantly, there is likely no significant causality between the U.S.'s recently imposed unilateral financial sanctions and Ahmadinejad's dwindling popularity.

The George W. Bush administration seems to be confusing its sanctions policies with Ahmadinejad's incompetent economic policies. The push-back against Ahmadinejad has, according to observers of Iran's domestic political scene, far more to do with his failed economic policies and his populist promises, which have created exaggerated expectations among the Iranian populace, than with Tehran's nuclear posturing or Washington's financial sanctions.

A key trigger of the anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments has been rising inflation, which has been caused by an influx of liquidity into the Iranian economy rather than a shortage of it.

Still, Washington is right in pointing out that Tehran has been thrown off course and that divisions within the Iranian government regarding the nuclear file are growing. But the impetus for this rift is likely the psychological shock Tehran suffered when the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1737 in December of last year rather than any economic pain resulting from Washington's pressure.

Tehran seemed to have thought that it could evade sanctions throughout 2006, and then face a potentially more lenient Council in 2007 with the entrance of states such as South Africa into the U.N.'s highest body.

The problem for the West, though, is that Tehran will recuperate from a psychological shock much faster than it would had the shock been economic in nature. As a result, the West's perceived advantage over Iran may prove transitory and short-lived.

If the Bush administration is really seeking negotiations, that is, if its policy of seizing and releasing Iranian diplomats in Iraq and its military build-up in the Persian Gulf are geared towards gaining leverage over Iran to be used in a future negotiation rather than to produce a pretext to start a war with Tehran, then Washington would be wise to start those negotiations sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, whatever difficulties Iran may find itself in currently, and whatever pain additional economic and financial sanctions may incur on Tehran, these costs must be measured against Washington's intensifying predicament in Iraq once the Bush administration's surge strategy has run it course.

The White House is virtually alone in believing that the surge will change Iraq for the better. Tehran is in agreement with the U.S. Congress and Washington's European allies in predicting that the Bush administration cannot reverse the negative trends in Iraq through a moderate increase in U.S. troop levels, while refusing to engage Iran diplomatically or pressure the Saudi government to clamp down on elements within its territory who are supporting the Iraqi insurgency with funds and arms.

Still, the State Department is pressing on with its twin policy of surging troop levels in Iraq and reducing diplomatic activity with Iran. The idea of punishing Iran by imposing new and stricter sanctions is also attractive to hawkish Democratic members of Congress who feel a political need to differentiate themselves from the Bush administration and its perceived war plans, while at the same time remaining tough and hostile towards Iran.

By late summer 2007, however, the U.S. public's patience with the surge policy will likely dry up. Public and Congressional opposition to the Bush administration's Iraq policy will cross a new threshold and the White House will be pressed to either show positive results or accept a significant shift in its Middle East policy.

This is where the underlying flaws with Washington's faulty reading of internal developments in Iran in which causalities are seen where none exist may become devastating to the U.S.

If no success in Iraq has been produced by this summer, Iran will likely be in a stronger position vis-à-vis the West than it is now, even if Washington succeeds in imposing robust sanctions on Tehran. However stringent the next round of U.N. sanctions on Iran may be, they will likely not impose enough damage on Iran to offset the damage the failure of the surge will do to the U.S.'s position.

As a result, in a bid to find leverage against Iran by increasing pressure but without boosting diplomacy, Washington -- and its European fellow-travelers -- may end up squandering the little leverage they have left.

*Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliances -- The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" (Yale University Press, 2007). He is also president of the National Iranian American Council (http://www.niacouncil.org/).

Iran sets condition to halt nuke program ; Ahmadinejad rejects UN nuclear deadline ; ElBaradei interview

Related

FT interview: Mohamed ElBaradei at Financial Times, Feb 19

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Note that the U.S. may respond with a strike on Iran... today. Have you practised bending over and kissing your *** goodbye?

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer 52 minutes ago

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran would only halt its uranium enrichment program and return to negotiations if other Western nations do the same.

Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in northern Iran one day ahead of a U.N. Security Council deadline that it was no problem for his country to stop, but that "fair talks" demanded a similar gesture from the West.

"That ... we shut down our nuclear fuel cycle program to let talks begin. It's no problem. But justice demands that those who want to hold talks with us shut down their nuclear fuel cycle program too. Then, we can hold dialogue under a fair atmosphere," Ahmadinejad said.

The Security Council has set Wednesday as a deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment or face further economic sanctions.

Ahmadinejad spoke in a far more conciliatory tone than the one he usually adopts, avoiding fiery denunciations of the West with a call for talks.

"We are for talks but they have to be fair negotiations. That means, both sides hold talks under equal conditions," he said.

He added, however, that it was unacceptable for countries to demand that Iran stop its nuclear activities without reciprocity.

"We say how is it that your (nuclear fuel) production facilities work 24 hours a day, but you feel threatened by our newly established complex and we need to shut it down for talks," he asked.

Iran has long insisted that it will not stop its nuclear activities as a condition for negotiations to start.

"The condition they set for talks is a condition that deprives us of our rights," Ahmadinejad said of the United States and its Western allies. "We have never been after confrontation and tension. We have always been for dialogue but dialogue under fair conditions."

On Dec. 23 the Security Council agreed to impose limited sanctions against Iran and gave the country 60 days to halt enrichment or face additional measures.

At the time, Iran rejected the resolution as "illegal" and said it would not give up its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

The United States and several of its Western allies believe that Iran is using its nuclear program to produce an atomic weapon — charges Iran denies, saying its aim is to generate electricity.

Enriched to a low level, uranium is used to produce nuclear fuel but further enrichment makes it suitable for use in building an atomic bomb.

Ahmadinejad said Iran would not give in to coercion and warned the United States and its allies they will fail to force it into give up its nuclear program.

"If you want to speak from the position of power and make use of the oppressing leverage of some international institutions, you have to know the you will fail against the unity and resistance of the Iranian nation," he said.

Russia's nuclear agency spokesman warned Tuesday that Iranian delays in payments for the construction of a Russian-built nuclear plant would push back its launch date and uranium fuel deliveries from Russia.

A top nuclear official in Iran on Monday rejected Russian claims that Tehran had been dragging its feet on payments, and accused Moscow of trying to delay the launch of the reactor.

But Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency spokesman Sergei Novikov insisted Tuesday that Iran has made no payments this month, and paid only a quarter of what was due last month.

Novikov told The Associated Press that Iran was to pay Russia $25 million a month for construction works at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran, adding that Iran has continuously dragged its feet on meeting the obligations.

___

Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov contributed to this report from Moscow.

War, Iran, and Who will Pay!

by Dana Smith

February 14, 2007 12:00 PM EST

Many people have mention that they thought from the start our President George Bush intended to attack Iraq all along. The evidence today points to the fact that it was far from just Iraq, and looks to the nation of Iran as a potential target. The New Yorker magazine, in an article on the possibility of war with Iran, mentions that the White House views the President of Iran as another Hitler. With this view, there is real potential for a war with Iran.

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be "wiped off the map." Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. "That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ "

Further, the New Yorker quotes a military planner who said that "in my view, if you had to name one nation that was his (George Bush) focus all the way along, it was Iran...

There is no doubt that this President and those who share power with him, surely will go to war. They have invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran is on the marker. The words coming from Iran don’t help any. As a matter of fact, the words help seal the deal for most Americans. We are told plainly by our President "If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio.

That leaves little doubt as to whether we will go to war. The President of Iran believes the Madhi, the Islamic Messiah will arrive in the spring and he has said so. With the teachings of this Madhi come the future visions of Islamic war with the brutal invader and chief rival of the devil. Of course, this refers to all unbelievers against this regime in Iran. If we are waiting for Iran to quiet down, we are in for a very long wait. There is no doubt; they will chomp at the bit to have it out with us. The question remains whether Russia and China will keep sitting still for the American taste for bloodshed and war. No doubt, if our invading continues, these countries will attack us.

Planning is going on within the walls of the White House rooms and in Washington D C. A Washington based intelligence analyst named Vincent Cannistraro, was quoted by the Guardian in an article saying: "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

In another article posted by Arab American news, John Pilger wrote in his article "Iran: The War has already begun" saying the attack on Iran is due by spring. This backs up the news stories, and analysts who are saying the same thing. War with Iran in the spring is not a certainty, but is likely. The attack, said author Pilger will be one of a catastrophic nature. He comes to the conclusion as others who all say that "tactical nuclear weapons" will be used.

The one piece of "solid evidence" is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022-02, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled "Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization," was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorized the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This does not mean Bush will use them against Iran, but for the first time since the most dangerous years of the cold war, the use of what were then called "limited" nuclear weapons is being discussed openly in Washington. What they are debating is the prospect of other Hiroshima’s and of radioactive fallout across the Middle East and central Asia. Seymour Hersh disclosed in the "New Yorker" last year that American bombers "have been flying simulated nuclear weapons delivery missions . . . since last summer."

The war that is coming is not the same as one with Iraq. This nation has been building up their jihadists for years. With the failure of the Bush administration to secure our borders, there is a certainty we have Iranian agents already in place in America. This is one part of the equation that most Americans have never faced. That is nuclear terror, bombs, and death on our own streets. From the corridors of the White house to the plains of Texas and beyond, we have people in our nation that will use these devices. All they are waiting for is the day of the Mahdi and jihad.

Steve Emerson was the first American journalist to document in chilling video format the militant Islamic support networks and terrorist groups secretly operating on American soil. Counter-terrorism officials from the National Security Council, Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have acknowledged that Emerson's documentary demonstrated that he had more reliable and accurate information about the secret terrorist networks on American soil than the US Government. There have been many reports of the Islamic Jihadist sleeper cells in the US. Only the terrorists know for sure. We can know this, our borders have been unsecured, and as a result, many enemies could have gotten through.

With the war in Iran, many say this will be an air campaign, which is another word for no need for troops. This we know is false. For you cannot secure anything without troops. Some say that the opposition party in Iran will step up to the plate, but how do we know this. One thing for sure is, Americans will pay the price. More blood will flow, and this time, the war will come to our shores.

Add to this the need for energy and you have real trouble. There is no doubt that the price of oil will surge as well. I have seen estimates ranging from ninety dollars a barrel to two hundred and fifty dollars a barrel for oil. According to the head of the National Security Foundation and Center for Asian studies, Peter brooks, this price could increase to Two hundred dollars per barrel. This was reported by Regnum online. They stated, quoting Peter Brooks the following:

If war begins in Iran, oil price can increase up to $200 per barrel. Head of the National Security Foundation and Center for Asian Studies, Peter Brooks declared it during a round table in Washington. Answering a question, to what extent the situation of beginning military actions with US participation in Iran is real, Brooks said, it could not be excluded but, at first, the existing problem should be resolved at negotiating table. At the same time Brooks’s added, military actions in Iran will differ from Iraqi ones, because the Iranian army is better trained and armed, reports RSN.

Either way, our nation always seems to want to go to war. The problem this time is that the war will make the American public pay more than ever before. We have gone through wars and never have seen the carnage as in WWII, and other conflicts overseas occur on our own streets. Our nation has lived in peace, security, and was better off during these times. We have not seen the devastation that other nations have seen when war came to their nation. This time, though, war will come. You can thank the policies of our war machine, the lack of border security, and the rise of the militancy that has gripped our leaders. With this will come much more bloodshed, both abroad and at home.

Ahmadinejad puts his faith in the 'wise people in US' to avoid conflict

· Iranian leader says Bush trying to find scapegoats
· Blair backs claims that arms are going to Iraq

Julian Borger, Robert Tait in Tehran and Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

Ahmadinejad: US trying to hide defeats. Photograph: AP.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yesterday shrugged off the threat of a US attack and said accusations that Tehran was arming insurgents in Iraq represented an attempt to find a scapegoat for American "defeats and failures".

The British government, however, backed Washington's claims of covert Iranian arms supplies to insurgents, including sophisticated armour-piercing roadside bombs. A Downing Street spokesman said Tony Blair had been "at the cutting edge of identifying this problem", first raising the alarm over the alleged influx of Iranian weaponry in October 2005.

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The row over Iraq has added to growing tension over Iran's nuclear ambitions. A UN deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment is due to pass next Wednesday, amid simmering speculation that the US is contemplating taking military action against Tehran's nuclear programme.

Mr Ahmadinejad brushed aside the threat. In an interview with America's ABC News, he said: "Why should we be afraid? First, the possibility is very low, and we think that there are wise people in the US that would stop such illegal actions. But our position is clear - our nation has made it clear that anyone who wants to attack our country will be severely punished."

The Iranian president said his government and Iran's revolutionary guards were "opposed to any kind of conflict in Iraq", and he dismissed evidence presented by American military officials at the weekend pointing towards a covert revolutionary guard role behind the insurgency and the sectarian violence in Iraq.

"You are showing us some piece of papers and you call them documents," he said. "There should be a court to prove the case. We think that the US is following another policy, trying to hide its defeats and failures, and that's why it is pointing its fingers at others."

Tony Snow, the White House press spokesman, yesterday stood by the allegations by US military intelligence, but denied that they were intended to pave the way for an attack. He said they simply presented "evidence to the effect that there's been the shipment of weaponry, lethal weaponry, into Iraq, some of it of Iranian provenance. And this is something that we think if the president of Iran wants to put a stop to it, we wish him luck and hope he'll do it real soon."

However, Democratic Congressmen expressed scepticism about the timing of the allegations, noting parallels to the build up to the Iraq invasion. The House of Representatives is due to begin today debating a resolution critical of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq conflict, as the Democratic majority flexes its new political muscles.

In Europe, Iran's chief negotiator, Ari Larijani, kept up a flurry of diplomacy ahead of next week's UN deadline, holding talks with the Swiss government after weekend discussions with European Union officials. He said his country did not want atomic weapons, because it would trigger a Middle East nuclear arms race and would contribute nothing to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He told the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung that Iran was willing to give "all imaginable guarantees" that it was not developing weapons, but he insisted it would not abandon uranium enrichment as a precondition to negotiations.

Javier Solana, the EU's top foreign policy official, met Mr Larijani in Munich, but conceded yesterday that the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were "not immense". European foreign ministers meanwhile agreed on the implementation of limited sanctions ordered by the UN security council in December.

Iran insists it has the right to enrich uranium for civil power generation, but the US and its allies suspect it of secretly planning to develop nuclear weapons. The UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has criticised Tehran for failing to disclose all the elements of its programme, and last Friday the IAEA halved its assistance programme to Iran.

The IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, is due to report to the security council on Iranian compliance next week. Yesterday he welcomed Tehran's stated willingness to negotiate, but added that nothing short of "full transparency" would lead to a resumption of substantive talks.

Only the US hawks can save the Iranian president now

Ahmadinejad is failing to deliver for the poor and losing support, but he could yet survive because of the international threat

Ali Ansari
Tuesday January 30, 2007
The Guardian

The honeymoon is over. Iran's controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has finally come unstuck. His popularity with the Iranian electorate - the subject of much incredulous analysis in 2005 - seems to be falling back at last, and the country's latest exercise in populism seems to be reaping the rewards of unfulfilled promises bestowed with little attention to economic realities.

Those realities have sharpened with the onset of UN sanctions. Ahmadinejad's casual dismissal of the sanctions has apparently earned him an unprecedented rebuke from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei - reflecting growing concerns among the political elite, including many conservatives, who are increasingly anxious at Iran's worsening international situation. As if to emphasise this point, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's defeated foe in the 2005 presidential election, echoed the condemnation of the president's public complacency, stressing that the threats against Iran were very real. Indeed, as a second US carrier group heads for the Gulf, there is belated questioning of the president's competence. His critics argue that not only does he appear to have courted the anger of the US, but his economic mismanagement and political nepotism have weakened the internal integrity of the Islamic republic - and proved to be a gift to Iran's enemies.

Ahmadinejad was elected on a platform of anti-corruption and financial transparency, and few appreciated how rapidly he was intoxicated with the prerogatives of his office. He very soon forgot the real help he had received in ensuring his election, basking in the belief that God and the people had put him in power. Ahmadinejad soon had a view for all seasons: uranium enrichment. Of course Iran would pursue this, and what's more, sell it on the open market at knockdown rates. As for interest rates, they were far too high for the ordinary borrower, so cut them immediately. And then there was the Holocaust.

None of this might matter so much, if the president had based his rhetorical flourishes on solid policies. But much to everyone's surprise nothing dramatic materialised. Ahmadinejad appeared to follow the dictum of his mentor, Ayatollah Khomeini - "Economics is for donkeys". Indeed, his policies could be defined as "anything but Khatami" (his predecessor). So the oil reserve fund was spent on cash handouts to the grateful poor, and the central bank, normally a bastion of prudence, was instructed to cut interest rates for small businesses.

These had the effect, as Ahmadinejad was warned, of pushing up inflation. The rationale for high interest rates was to encourage the middle classes to keep their money in Iran. Now they decided to spend it. Richer Iranians, worried about rising international tension, decided it would be prudent to ship their money abroad. This further weakened the rial, and added to inflationary pressure. In the past few months the prices of most basic goods have risen, hurting the poor he was elected to help. Moreover, far from investing Iran's oil wealth in infrastructure to create jobs, he announced recently that Iran's economy could support a substantially larger population, as if current unemployment was not a big enough problem.

Views such as these, along with his well publicised unorthodox religious convictions, have earned him the ridicule of political foes. What is more striking perhaps is the growing concern of those who should be considered his allies, especially in the parliament. These are people who supported him and expected results. They expected their populist protege to overturn the heresy of reform.

Much to their irritation, not only has Ahmadinejad singularly failed to consolidate and extend his political base, the recent municipal elections saw his faction defeated throughout the country. Traditional conservatives and reformists reorganised and hit back, ingeniously using technology to work round the various obstacles placed in front of them. Now, over the past weeks, with biting weather, shortages of heating fuel are further raising the political temperature, while his political opponents point to the burgeoning international crisis for which the globetrotting president seems to have no constructive answer. Talk has turned to impeachment.

Ironically, it is this very international crisis that may serve to save Ahmadinejad's presidency, a reality that the president undoubtedly understood all too well. As domestic difficulties mount, the emerging international crisis could at best serve as a rallying point, or at worst persuade Iran's elite that a change of guard would convey weakness to the outside world.

There can be little doubt that US hawks will interpret recent events as proof that pressure works, and that any more pressure will encourage the hawks further. Yet the reality is that while Ahmadinejad has been his own worst enemy, the US hawks are his best friends. Ahmadinejad's demise, if it comes, will have less to do with the international environment and more with his own political incompetence. There is little doubt that it will take more than a cosmetic change to get Washington to listen to Iran. But the real question mark, as the Baker-Hamilton commission found to its cost, is whether Washington is inclined to listen at all.

· Ali Ansari is director of the Iranian Institute at the University of St Andrews.

aa51@st-andrews.ac.uk

Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders

The Israeli public buys into the government propaganda(remember Americans swallowed Bush's guff. The Israeli army runs the country. After an embarassing loss in Lebanon and waning power at home, they could use an easy win and Cheney is just itching to make more cash off another war.

Ahmadinejad does not and has never made the major decisions in Iran. The Supreme Leader Khamenei handles those.

Even White House insiders say privately Iran is 10 years away from producing sufficient bomb grade uranium.
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Boasts of a nuclear programme are just propaganda, say insiders, but the PR could be enough to provoke Israel into war

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

Sunday January 28, 2007
The Observer

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.

Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.

The disclosures come as Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], that it plans to install a new 'cascade' of 3,000 high-speed centrifuges at its controversial underground facility at Natanz in central Iran next month.

The centrifuges were supposed to have been installed almost a year ago and many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the 'installation' will more probably be about propaganda than reality.

The detailed descriptions of Iran's problems in enriching more than a few grams of uranium using high-speed centrifuges - 50kg is required for two nuclear devices - comes in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture being painted of Iran's imminent acquisition of a nuclear weapon with which to attack Israel. Instead, say experts, the break-up of the nuclear smuggling organisation of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadheer Khan has massively set back an Iran heavily dependent on his network.

A key case in point is that Tehran originally procured the extremely high-quality bearings required for the centrifuges' carbon-fibre 'top rotors' - spinning dishes within the machines - from foreign companies in Malaysia.

With that source closed down two years ago, Iran is making the bearings itself with only limited success. It is the repeated failure of these crucial bearings, say some sources, that has been one of the programme's biggest setbacks.

Iran is also believed to be critically short of key materials for producing a centrifuge production line to highly enrich uranium - in particular the so-called maraging steel, able to be used at high temperatures and under high stress without deforming - and specialist carbon fibre products. In this light, say some experts, its insistence that it will install 3,000 new centrifuges at the underground Natanz facility in the coming months is as much about domestic PR as reality.

The growing recognition, in expert circles at least, of how far Iran is from mastering centrifuge technology was underlined on Friday by comments by the head of the IAEA, whose inspectors have been attempting to monitor the Iranian nuclear programme.

Talking to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Mohamed El Baradei appealed for all sides to take a 'time out' under which Iranian enrichment and UN sanctions would be suspended simultaneously, adding that the point at which Iran is able to produce a nuclear weapon is at least half a decade away. In pointed comments aimed at the US and Israel, the Nobel Peace prize winner warned that an attack on Iran would have 'catastrophic consequences'.

Yet some involved in the increasingly aggressive standoff over Iran fear tensions will reach snapping point between March and June this year, with a likely scenario being Israeli air strikes on symbolic Iranian nuclear plants.

The sense of imminent crisis has been driven by statements from Israel, not least from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has insisted that 2007 is make-or-break time over Iran's nuclear programme.

Recent months have seen leaks and background briefings reminiscent of the softening up of public opinion for the war against Iraq which have presented a series of allegations regarding Iran's meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, the 'genocidal' intentions of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and its 'connections' with North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

It also emerged last week in the Israeli media that the country's private diplomatic efforts to convince the world of the need for tough action on Iran were being co-ordinated by Meir Dagan, the head of Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad.

The escalating sense of crisis is being driven by two imminent events, the 'installation' of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz and the scheduled delivery of fuel from Russia for Iran's Busheyr civil nuclear reactor, due to start up this autumn. Both are regarded as potential trigger points for an Israeli attack.

'The reality is that they have got to the stage where they can run a small experimental centrifuge cascade intermittently,' said one Western source familiar with the Iranian programme. 'They simply have not got to the stage where they can run 3,000 centrifuges There is no evidence either that they have been stockpiling low-enriched uranium which could be highly enriched quickly and which would give an idea of a malevolent intent.'

Another source with familiarity with the Iranian programme said: 'Iran has put all this money into this huge hole in the ground at Natanz; it has put a huge amount of money in these P-1 centrifuges, the model rejected by Urenco. It is like the Model T Ford compared to a Prius. That is not to say they will not master the technology eventually, but they are trying to master very challenging technology without access to

everything that they require.'

Ahmadinejad be damned

While Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has been traipsing around South America hatching energy plots, all is not well on the home front. Ahmadinejad is subject to crossfire from conservatives and reformers alike, with the former particularly upset over his handling of the nuclear dossier and wanting to rein him in. Washington might need to start manufacturing another "new Hitler".

Jan 19, 2007

THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar

It's all over the Iranian press: President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, self-described "street cleaner of the people", is in deep political trouble at home, subjected to crossfire from conservatives and reformers alike. All the more ironic considering the biblical tsunami of Washington spin portraying Ahmadinejad as the newest "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein, after all, fell victim to a lynch mob).

As far as geopolitical strategy is concerned, it's as if Ahmadinejad might be as clueless as his US counterpart, President George W Bush. Well, it's not that simple. The conservative Etemad e-Melli newspaper rhetorically asked what exactly the Iranian president was up to in Latin America while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was lobbying dictatorial Arab regimes - from Egypt to Saudi Arabia - to deep-freeze Iran over alleged "interference" in Iraq.

Well, he was consolidating what the White House already regards as the new "axis of evil" - the strategic relationship between Iran and Venezuela, sealed last September during Ahmadinejad's first visit to Caracas, right inside what the US historically considered its "back yard".

The ultra-conservative Keyhan newspaper, very close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei, could not help but consider it "a great victory for the diplomacy of Ahmadinejad's government".

In the lightning-quick Latin America tour that took him to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, meeting re-elected leftist stalwart Hugo Chavez, the recently elected former guerrillero Daniel Ortega, and US-educated economist Rafael Correa, the key Ahmadinejad stop was in Caracas. A joint Iran-Venezuela US$2 billion fund for myriad projects will also benefit other friendly developing countries in Latin America and Africa that, in Chavez' words, "are making efforts to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke".

Both Iran and Venezuela are key members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Washington's nemesis Chavez once again was clear: "There's too much crude in the market." So both presidents agreed on Saturday to lobby OPEC for a further cut in production to boost crude-oil prices.

That's not what major OPEC producer Saudi Arabia wants - or what Washington "suggested" Riyadh not to want. OPEC had already reduced production by 1.2 million barrels a day in November and will reduce by another 500,000 barrels a day from February 1.

Both Chavez and Ahmadinejad want more - Chavez to fuel his ambitious domestic social programs, Ahmadinejad at least to start a few. Even if global oil prices fell sharply - an unlikely scenario - Venezuelan analysts project that Chavez would still proceed full speed ahead with oil at $30 a barrel. But for Iran, that would be an economic disaster.

To boost Washington's ire to stratospheric levels, Chavez once again stressed that the Bolivarian and the Islamic revolutions were "sisters" - a link impeccably translated by the official exchange of gifts: Ahmadinejad received a Persian translation of a book on Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, while Chavez received a Spanish translation of a book on ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution.

Now shut up and work
Ahmadinejad being hailed as a post-modern co-liberator of South America was not enough to placate criticism back in his part of the world. For the conservative Iranian religious newspaper Jomhouri Islami - also very close to Khamenei - in an unusually blunt article, the president's non-stop interference with the nuclear dossier was viewed as ruining Iranian diplomacy (Ahmadinejad expelled experienced diplomats from the Foreign Office in 2005, sprinkling it with his Revolutionary Guard allies).

The article aptly translates the fierce battle going on in the opaque nationalist theocracy's corridors of power. And Ahmadinejad's faction appears to be losing the battle. The Supreme Leader - who is responsible for the nuclear dossier anyway - seems to have had enough, and has in essence ordered the president to shut up.

Khamenei and his supporters - the clerics' faction - believe that Ahmadinejad's explosive tirades have been used as firepower by the US to persuade the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran. In addition, Ahmadinejad's faction - via his mentor Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi - lost ground in last month's election to the Council of Experts, the only body that can hold the Supreme Leader to account. Victory went to perennial Machiavellian Hashemi Rafsanjani - who leads a moderate, semi-secular faction hostile to Ahmadinejad's.

There's now ample speculation in Tehran that new, Supreme Leader-appointed faces will shake up Iran's nuclear negotiation team. And in the middle of all this, eyebrows East and West were raised when Keyhan slipped in an editorial last Friday saying that Iran "is only a few steps away from becoming a nuclear power". Was that a fact, a warning, or a figure of speech?

Ahmadinejad anyway will have to shelve his rhetoric - and start delivering. A group of reformist and moderate Parliament members is signing petitions to force him to explain his (non-existent) policies. Jomhouri Islami even issued a prescription: "Speak about the nuclear issue only during important national occasions, stop provoking aggressor powers like the United States, and concentrate more on the daily needs of the people." Not to mention fulfilling electoral promises of fighting inflation, corruption and the oil mafia.

Keeping Ahmadinejad on a leash will be a crucial part of the nationalist theocracy's strategy of doing everything in its power not to incur further US wrath - as the Bush administration escalates its formidable array of acts of provocation. Ahmadinejad is now seen as too much of a loose cannon to be left to his own devices - especially when 45 centuries of accumulated Persian diplomacy can be effectively deployed.

Iran enjoys good political relations with the majority of countries around the world - especially in the South. The glaring exceptions are the US and Israel. Iran is not a backward, repressive regime like Saudi Arabia. The talk in Tehran is that the Supreme Leader and professional diplomats have concluded that the best course of action for Iran is to ride the tempest of provocations - sanctions, illegal raids on consulates, US intelligence infiltrating sensitive Khuzestan province, encirclement by nuclear-equipped aircraft carriers, propaganda over Iranian "networks" killing Americans in Iraq - while advancing Iran's interests in Lebanon, Central Asia, China, Russia and South America.

Washington might need to start manufacturing another "new Hitler".

Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.

Iran's crocodile rocked

Moderates, with unexpected gains in the weekend's elections for the influential Council of Experts, have dealt Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his extreme-right mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi (also known as "the crocodile"), a hard blow. But the real winner is Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei, whose vast powers remain undiluted.

Dec 19, 2006

THE ROVING EYE

By Pepe Escobar

With votes still being hand-counted, there's every indication Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's moderate faction has scored a stunning victory over the extreme right in the crucial election for the 86-member Council of Experts, according to Iranian state TV.

"Hashemi" - as he is known in Tehran - as well as Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi - the gray eminence and spiritual leader of vPresident Mahmud Ahmadinejad - will be among the 16 clerics representing Tehran in the Council of Experts.

The Council of Experts (86 clerics only; no women allowed) is key because it's the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of holding the supreme leader accountable and even removing him from office. It is the system's Holy Grail. The supreme leader - not the president - is where the buck stops in Iran.

Once again, this election has been a case of the extreme right against the moderate/pragmatists. Or the recluse Yazdi - aka "the crocodile" (in Farsi) - against the eternal insider, relative "friend of the West", former president (1989-97), opportunist and king of the dodgy deal, Rafsanjani.

Yazdi is the dean of the Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute in Qom, a hardcore hawza (theological school) that has prepared and configured the world view of key members of the Ahmadinejad presidency. It's impossible to interview Yazdi - officially because of "government rules", unofficially of his own volition.

Rafsanjani, aka "the shark", remains the chairman of the Expediency Council and virtually the regime's No 2, behind Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei and ahead of Ahmadinejad. Iranian pop culture, with a tinge of Discovery Channel, delighted in describing this as the battle between the crocodile and the shark.

It was heavily symbolic that moderate Rafsanjani and another former president, the progressive, sartorially impeccable Mohammad "dialogue of civilizations" Khatami, voted together in the Jamaran mosque, where the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, used to deliver his speeches. Iranian reformist papers did not fail to publish the emblematic photo sealing the alliance on their front pages this past Saturday. Rafsanjani's victory was sweeter because he had lost to Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 presidential elections.

There have been rumors in Tehran for months that Yazdi and his followers were on a power grab. They had won city and village council elections, then parliamentary elections, and the presidency (with Ahmadinejad), and were ready to conquer the Council of Experts and thus be in position to choose the next supreme leader. There have been unconfirmed reports that Khamenei may be seriously ill.

Saudi Wahhabis may complain there are "no free elections in Iran" (as if there were any elections in Saudi). Anyway, popular participation in these, one may say, "relatively free" elections was a healthy 60%.

Clerics running for the Council of Experts must pass a difficult theological exam - and must be approved by the Council of Guardians, which, as with anything that really matters in Iran, is controlled by the supreme leader. The six key mullahs out of the council's 12 jurists are directly appointed by the supreme leader. So inevitably the election for the Council of Experts had to be supreme-leader-controlled. No wonder Khamenei described it last week as the most important in the whole country, stressing that candidates "should comprise honest, wise, competent, benevolent and trustworthy people". Given the election results, the Council of Experts is expected to remain under the ironclad dominance of Khamenei's conservative bloc.

On municipal elections nationwide, the extreme right - clustered on Ahmadinejad-endorsed lists - also fared worse than expected. The results for the crucial Tehran City Council will only be known next week, but certainly there won't be a sweep by the extreme right - rather a surge by the reformists mixed with Ahmadinejad-faction allies plus a coterie of technocratic conservatives.

What the crocodile has been up to
Yazdi and his followers have always stressed they want to implement "real Islam". They view the Rafsanjani camp as a bunch of filthy rich, morally and legally corrupt decadents, totally oblivious to the concerns of "ordinary people", whose self-styled key symbol happens to be Ahmadinejad.

Yazdi is also the spiritual mentor of the Hojjatieh, a sort of ultra-fundamentalist sect whose literal interpretation of Shi'ite tradition holds that chaos in mankind is a necessary precondition for the imminent arrival of the Mahdi - the 12th hidden (since AD 941) Shi'ite imam who will come to save the world from injustice and widespread corruption. Ahmadinejad may not be a Hojjatieh himself, but he understands where they are coming from.

Yazdi's "real Islam" has nothing to do with Western democracy. He wants a kelafat - a caliphate. Ayatollahs like Yazdi are simply not concerned with worldly matters, foreign policy, geopolitical games or Iran's nuclear program; the only thing that matters is work for the arrival of the Mahdi. Yazdi is on record as saying that he could convert all of America to Shi'ism. But some in Tehran accuse him of claiming a direct link to the Mahdi, which in the Shi'ite tradition would qualify him as a false prophet.

Even facing a relative defeat at the polls, the Ahmadinejad faction - known as Isaargaraan ("the Self-Sacrificers") - maintains a huge, countrywide popular base in the military-security establishment, in the tens of millions, ranging from the Pasdaran - the Revolutionary Guard - to the Bassijis, the hardcore paramilitary, also known as "the army of 20 million", and expanding to the pious, apolitical, downtrodden masses, mostly rural but also urban (in sprawling south Tehran, for instance). But the defeat at the Council of Experts signals their efforts for an all-out power grab have certainly been thwarted.

It's important to remember that Ahmadinejad, more than a politician, is fundamentally a believer in the Mahdi. Ahmadinejad even has his own roadmap for the return of the Mahdi; he drew it himself. According to Shi'ite tradition, the Mahdi will rise in Mecca - not in Qom - where he will preach to his close followers (Jesus Christ puts on a guest appearance), draw up the armies of Islam and finally settle down in Kufa, Iraq.

I'm supreme
The only crucial policy the Council of Experts has implemented since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 has been to appoint Khamenei as Khomeini's successor and new supreme leader, in 1989. It was in fact a white coup - because according to the constitution at the time the supreme leader had to be a marja (source of imitation and top religious leader). Khamenei was not up to standards. Khomeini died while the constitution was being revised; so Khamenei was in fact appointed by a law ratified only after he was already installed as supreme leader.

Yazdi has been trying a different strategy - to take over the Council of Experts from the inside and then overwhelm Khamenei. It's fair to argue that Khamenei has played a very deft hand. He firmly supported Yazdi before the 2005 presidential election, but lately has rallied his followers - and the full machinery of the system - to keep Yazdi and his protege, Ahmadinejad, under control.

"Hashemi" may have been a winner - but most of all it's the supreme leader who seems to be as much in control as he ever was. Khamenei has been politicizing the religious system non-stop, to the point of the Islamic Republic nowadays being neither a democracy nor a theocracy: rather, it's a clerical autocracy.

Neo-conservatives and the Washington establishment should not jump to hasty conclusions. There won't be regime change in Tehran any time soon. This year there has been a serious crackdown on the reformist press, the Internet, personal weblogs, satellite dishes and academia - where more than 50 reformist professors have been targeted.

What is happening now is the moderate/pragmatists reaching a more solid position allied with the reformists - with the extreme right held in check by a supreme leader more supreme than ever. The crocodile may have been rocked. But the Islamic Republic's fierce internal power play is far from over.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year: Jewish editor says Ahmadinejad was the 'choice', but ``it just felt to me a little off selecting him''

Time Magazine's Person of the Year: You

Sunday December 17, 2006 10:16 AM

By LARRY McSHANE

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Congratulations! You are the Time magazine ``Person of the Year.''

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals - citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

``If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people,'' said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. ``But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone.''

The magazine did cite 26 ``People Who Mattered,'' from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to Pope Benedict XVI to the troika of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

And Stengel said if the magazine had decided to go with an individual, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the likely choice. ``It just felt to me a little off selecting him,'' Stengel said.

The 2006 ``Person of the Year'' package hits newsstands Monday. The cover shows a white keyboard with a mirror for a computer screen where buyers can see their reflection.

It was not the first time the magazine went away from naming an actual person for its ``Person of the Year.'' In 1966, the 25-and-under generation was cited; in 1975, American women were named; and in 1982, the computer was chosen.

``I always love it when it's a person - and it is a person, not a computer or something like that,'' Stengel said. ``We just felt there wasn't a single person who embodied this phenomenon.''

Last year's winners were Bill and Melinda Gates and rock star Bono, who were cited for their charitable work and activism aimed at reducing global poverty and improving world health.

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On the Net:

Time: http://www.time.com/

Ahmadinejad says Zionists are criminals

United Press International
12/14/2006

EHRAN, Dec 14, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran called Thursday on world powers to end the "fake Zionist regime" of Israel.

Ahmadinejad said not all Jews are Zionists, and called for "a referendum in order to determine the type of regime the Palestinians prefer, with the participation of all Palestinians -- including Jews, Christians and Muslims," Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.

This week, Ahmadinejad was the host of a Holocaust denial conference for about 70 attendees, including members of the ultra-conservative Neturei Karta Jewish sect that doesn't believe there should be a Jewish nation until the Messiah appears.

Israel Hirsch is sect member who attended, and said Ahmadinejad's view was "very logical," as Germany had committed the genocide, Ynetnews reported.

"So they (Germany) should at least pay compensation to the Jewish nation and establish a Jewish state within Germany and not within the land of Israel, which belongs to the Palestinians," Hirsch said.

Wednesday night, Israel's Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger said the Neturei Karta members "sabotaged Israel" and should not be allowed entrance to temples.

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Metzger represents Jews who make Satan look good.

(Note UPI, once known for honest analysis, refers to a"denial" conference. I call bullshit on UPI.

Ahmadinejad letter to Americans: 'U.S. governs by coercion'

Ahmadinejad letter to Americans: 'U.S. governs by coercion'

Iranian president: "U.S. governs by coercion"

By Irwin Arieff 39 minutes ago Reuters

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a letter to the American people on Wednesday, accused their government of "coercion, force and injustice" and urged the United States to pull out of Iraq.

Ahmadinejad's five-page letter also called on Washington to recognize a Palestinian state and cautioned the Democratic Party that, after gaining control of the U.S. Congress, they would be "held to account by the people and by history."

The letter was given to Reuters by Iran's Mission to the United Nations.

The Iranian leader, who wrote an 18-page letter to President George W. Bush in May that Bush never responded to, said he was now writing to the American people in friendship because Iran and the United States shared a responsibility "to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity."

"Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the U.S. administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people," he said.

"It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice," Ahmadinejad said.

On Iraq, he said that with a constitution and government now in place, "would it not be more beneficial to bring the U.S. officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical U.S. military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?"

"As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061129/ts_nm/iran_usa_letter_dc