Wampum

"Quiconque veut conduire la société vers l'insécurité, quel que soit son rang et son titre, sera détesté par le peuple", a prévenu Ali Khamenei. "Nos élites doivent être vigilantes. Toute parole, toute action, toute analyse qui aident (les ennemis) sera contraire à la voie du peuple", a-t-il dit.

That's the non-marja Ali Khamenei slap at his probable successor, Rafsanjani.

There's a lot of Billmon worship out in the blogosphere. That investment banker took high umbrage at my writing that ... Ahmadinejad eventually hopes to force the retirement of Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei ... was one of the more unlikely and unique analyses of the balance of forces in Iranian politics and left this gem in comments:you literally have not a clue what you are writing about. to Reading Billmon (more ice please).

I don't miss him, or his coterie.

Posted by EBW at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote the first The Return of the ... One True King twenty seven months ago. In it I wrote

Around all these swirls a vast sea of names, dates, places, acronyms -- Sheik Fazlollah Nuri, Muhamad Hossain Naini, dozens of Pahlavis, Mossadeqq, Kermit Roosevelt, Zahedi, Tudeh, the Fedaiin Majority and Minority, UIC, Pekar, Mojahedin, PKD, the Siahkal Incident, and Ayatollahs and clerics, some good, some simply murderers.

Which makes this bit of text incomprehensible:

The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla action in northern Iran.

Could he mean the Tudah? They had a split in 1965, their second, and the split was over armed struggle, in theory, and its hard to be more "M-L" than the Communist Party of Iran. Did he mean Bijan Jazani and his colleagues, who split off from Tudah in April 1963? Did he mean the group lead by Masoud Ahmadzade and Amir Parviz Pouyan, that formed in 1967? Did he mean the Cherik-ha (Guerillas) Fadiian?

Everything else, GAMA, YEKA, Palestine, all formed years later, circa 1970.

• Ancheh yek enqelabi bayad bedanad (What a revolutionary must know), Iran: July 1970, 78 pp. Written by Aliakbar Safaii Farahani (1940-70) leading member of the Cherik-ha fadaii khalqin the "Siyahkal" current.
• Mobarez-e mosalehan-e ham strategi ham taktik (Armed struggle is both a strategy and a tactic), Iran: 1970, 169 pp. Written by Masoud Ahmadzadeh (1944-72) leading member of the Cherik-ha fadaii khalq.
• Rad-e teori-ye baqa va lozoum-e mobarezeh-ye mosalehaneh (The rejection of the theory of survival and the necessity of armed struggle), Iran: 1970, 141 pp. Written by Amir Parviz Pouyan (1944-72) leading member of the Cherik-ha fadaii khalq.
• Mohre-eii bar safeh-ye shateranj (A marble on the chess board). Iran: l970, 11 pp. Written by Bijan Jazani (1940-74) leading member of the Cherik-ha fadaii khalq.

Masoud Ahmad-Zadeh's Armed Struggle: both a strategy and a tactic is available on-line, as is Amir Parviz Pouyan's Rejection of Survival Theory (also available here).

For the life of me, figurative, since SAVAK executed every person I've named here in 1972, I can't figure out why someone who makes a living writing on Iranian politics puts the MEK formation in the same vague context as the Fadai's, when a decade later is the obvious correct answer, or uses "Marxist-Leninist" to label the Rajavi cult.

The fragment quoted is from the second of two pieces Amir Taheri wrote for the WSJ, "France Tries to Score Points With Iran" published June 20, 2003 and "Islamist, Marxist, Terrorist" published June 23, 2003, and oddly, there is a MEK cultist who makes some of the same points here.

We have it on Mr. Taheri's authority however, that milinary affairs are afoot in the Islamic Republic. Oddly timed milinary affairs, given the amount of ink being spilt over uranium enrichment.

Posted by EBW at 08:34 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

FYN? Friday, Yes or No? To vote or to not? To legitimize the current electoral regime -- the Guardian Council's elimination of competitive Reform candidates from the 7th Majlis and the 9th Presidential (two restored by order of the Supreme Leader) -- or to withhold legitimacy from it?

The message is circulating via SMS very widely in metro-Iran. All campaigning is now ended and there is a one-day quiet period before the polls open.

During the last week campaign rallies and field offices for Moeen (aka "Moin", the Reform candidate) have been attacked by ... gangs. There have been dumpster bombings in Tehran (no injuries), and a fast food outlet was bombed this morning in Zahedan City, injuring three.

Iranians in Afganistan are voting at the embassy in Kabul and consulates in the cities of Herat to the west, Mazari-Sharif to the north and Qandahar to the south.

Sean Penn is in Tehran as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He'll have to be there for another week, since Art. 117 of the Constitution calls for a second-round the Friday following between the two highest vote getters if no candidate receives an absolute majority in the first round. That's how I decode the non-withdrawal of three of the four Conservative candidates, they're running in a parallel universe primary. Of course it may not be the two highest vote getters, since they can withdraw allowing the next highest vote getter(s) to stand in the two-candidate final round a week from tomorrow. Christian Amanpour is covering the election for CNN. She's Farsi-speaking with some recent time in Iran, so her coverage may be the best available in the North American media market, modulo the CNN "news and content" filter(s).

Another SMS message making the rounds:

Do you know there's now a nineth candidate?

Who is it?

Dr. Mohsen Qalijaninejad.

There is something profoundly important in the boycottage question. Iranian women are much more likely to withhold their sufferage because their issues are "outside of politics". Here in the US, both parties are testosterone-driven, and the largest non-voting demographic is women between the ages of 18 and 30. MB will post on the domestic (US) piece of this in the near future.

The Interim Friday Prayers Leader of Tehran Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati in an address to thousands of worshipers at Tehran University Campus last Friday criticized unnamed presidential election candidates and said they are using "illegal" techniques in their campaigns. He accused some of the candidates of acts that "violate laws" in order to win the election and promissed them judicial prosecution unless they cease violating election laws. He then qualified the unnamed candidates -- "Now that these people do not have any official post, they are ignoring law. What would they do when they get the presidential post?" He clearly means "Dr. Mohsen Qalijaninejad" since each recently resigned from official posts (National Police, Mayor of Tehran, National Broadcasting, and maybe something else I've forgotten for the me-too-forgotnik Reza�e). Moeen and Rafsanjani have not held official posts for quite some time. He also advised the next president to avoid nepotism in selecting his colleagues and choose the officials on their merits. Merit alone. He mentioned no other ideological litmus test for the cabinet, which has a nuance in the advise-and-consent role of the (Guardian Council selected) overwhelmingly Conservative 7th Majlis.

So much for the simple Mullahs vs secular reform critique.

So, Rafsanjani and who? Moeen (Reform) or one of the four (Conservative to Fundamentalist) dwarfs? Then who next week? Rafsanjani (?) and which of the four dwarfs? And what turnout? And what turnout??

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:28 AM | Permalink

Fifteen months ago, when I was up most nights with Jonah, and MB tossed her hat into the ring to run for the Maine legislature, something surprised me. An independent candidate for the 7th Majlis disqualified by the Guardian Council and then allowed a second vetting at the expression of preference by the Supreme Leader, along with three thousand other candidates, mostly reform and independent, declined to be reinstated, and went on record that he'd not been vetted "according to defined legal procedure". Abu al-Fazl Rauf, said "I see this against my dignity as an Iranian citizen." The "this" was the core of Iranian legal theory -- wilayat-i faqih -- the primacy of the jurist.

That was what got Hashim Aghajari a death sentence, eventually commuted to life in prision, and then reduced to time served.

Former minister of science, research and technology Mostafa Moeen and Vice-President and head of the Physical Education Organization Mohsen Mehralizadeh were disqualified by the Guardian Council, along with a thousand other candidates, and their qualifications were then confirmed by the Guardian Council after the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered it through a letter addressed to the GC.

Moeen said that the Guardian Council violated the law. He's running not only in the 9th election for the President of the Islamic Republic, but against the authority of the Guardian Council.

The thing is, the deal that was reached in the Iran-E3 talks puts "whatever's next", which is usually cast as either a short trip to the UN Security Council followed by American bombing, or just American bombing, followed by follow-on forces, after the election. And Moeen may not see a need for Iran to engage in uranium enrichment on an industrial scale, at least for several years. The market price for SWUs is $112 from US/EU producers, and $89 from RU/SU producers, and stable for the past four years (the spot price for UF6 has jumped from $19/Kg in 2001 to $75/Kg in 2005), and outsourcing enrichment on an industrial scale has some economic and engineering appeal, as well as disarming Bush's most effective rhetorical device of 2002/3.

This may change the Iranian election. It may not be "war", and Moeen is a vastly better reform candidate than Rafsanjani, for a country not actually having war imposed upon it by Iraq or the United States, and simply has to do ordinary housecleaning, in the oil industry and elsewhere.

Posted by EBW at 10:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I watched Jackie Beninion's "Iran: Going Nuclear" on PBS, last night, aired during AIPAC's sweeps week in Washington City. I missed the "Blair Witch Project", but what I saw seemed similar to what I know about that project -- "art film" sequences of scenes shot from moving cars, views of Tehran, Isfahan (conversion from U3O8 to UF6), and Natanz (U-235 enrichment from .7% to 3.5% to 5%) and the Bushehr reactor (conversion into fuel rods and element assemblies) in winter -- cars on urban streets, Iraq-Imposed War memorial signage used to frame shots, some satallite images available at John Pike's globalsecurity.org, interviews with IAEA staff who don't do interviews, and of course, the fish that got away. The 19 minutes of bad travelog. I was laughing my ass off at the end.

Here's the key moment:

So they opened our cases, started throwing our stuff around. There were six guys, apparently from the security services, and they confiscated our phones and told our translator to leave. I was really worried, protesting through our translator that we needed him to be able to communicate, and one of the men laughed at me. "Mr. Kenyon," he said, "We all speak English."
I was presented with a weird kind of social etiquette question: do you laugh back, or don't you? I decided to be completely formal. "Why don't you speak English with us, then?" I asked.
"We hate the English," he said. Finally they took all our tapes and sent us back to our hotel.

I'm not likely to get a grant to go to Tehran with a crew and shoot footage and then assemble the footage into a third of an hour tutorial on anything intended for an audience that ranges from Air Force photo interpretation and targeting inventory specialists to Peace Action Maine activists, and all the persons in various persistent vegetative states between those two sample sets, but I think I could do better. I actually watched the show because I thought the production team would use footage produced and commercially available from several major content sources during the government sponsored walk-through six weeks ago -- footage of the facilities, not jerky through-a-fogged-up-moving-car-window approach shots of garden variety WWII style anti-aircraft gun positions and wire fences. The Rice-bots at Foggy Bottom can say running 50 journalists through the set of facilities was just a media event, but they at least don't pretend it didn't happen and that they don't have the footage too. BTW, the BBC had a reporter on that particular bus.

It was wicked underwhelming.

Then there was their purpose statement -- "... what our program set out to do was offer a look at the Iranian point of view: that Iran has an absolute right to a nuclear energy program..." I was reminded of the famous exchange between a Kersan woman and an academic. "We have a corn song. I will not teach it to you." The exchange is famous because the academic expected, because he was saving Indian culture, making a living out of it, that he'd get it all. He he he.

Twenty minutes of interviews with Iranians, women and men, in Los Angeles, Germany, and Iran, about gender, about the reform movement, about Islam and social justice, about businesses and moneymakers, about the record of the 6th and election of the 7th Majlis, and the records of the 5th and 6th (Rafsanjani) and 7th and 8th (Khatami) Presidents, and the election of the 9th, and Ayatollah Khamenei, that could be more interesting than yet another 19 minute Kevin Costner epic about the Sioux, even if the Tribal Police hadn't bagged most of the stock when the crew tried to sneak off reservation.

The final show of the hour was worth the wait. The pottery of Juan Quezada and his atalier in the village of Mata Ortiz. We did a lot of "ooh" and "aah" during that slice of the pie.

Posted by EBW at 08:46 AM | Permalink

Update: May 23 13:20:10 EDT IRNA reports that Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei directed the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualification of former minister of science, research and technology Mostafa Moeen and Vice-President Mohsen Mehralizadeh, after a request to that effect by Majlis Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel. No mention of Rafat Bayat, as the context of this struggle between conservatives to retain the international legitimacy the elections the IIPF won for the regime is the application of the Expediency Council's December 1999 directive which mandates the Council to qualify the candidates based on solid reasons and evidence. The EC is currently chaired by Rafsanjani, but it is the Interior Ministry which put that issue in play by fax today.

Moeen is on record that he personally won't vote in a rigged election -- he didn't formally contest disqualification by the GC, and instead said he's taking the issue to the nation. A boycott by the IIPF is still possible.

Yesterday the pro-reform Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) which won the presidential elections of 1997 and 2001, electing and re-electing President Mohammad Khatami in landslides over conservative candidates, issued a statement that disqualification of reformers will affect turnout. Today the Guardian Council, twelve clerics who banned most of the competitive pro-reform candidates for the 7th Majlis, approved the candidacies of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (13.9%), former state TV head Ali Larijani (3.9%), current Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad (?), former IRGC commander-in-chief Mohsen Rezaei (?), former police chief Brigadier General Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (?), and former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karroubi (4.8%).

Not approved were current Vice-President Mohsen Mehralizadeh (?) and former Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mostafa Moeen (4.1%), the candidate of the IIPF, both allies of President Mohammad Khatami, and current Majlis member Rafat Bayat (?), one of 12 women elected to the 7th Majlis, which appears to answer the "rejal" question.

I'm surprised by the GC rejection of Mehralizadeh and Moeen, though not Bayat. I haven't found if Ali Akbar Velayati (independent conservative), Akbar Alami (conservative), Reza Zavarei (bazarini), Naser Hejazi (soccer star), Aazam Taleghani (reform), and Mohsen Mehralizadeh (reforms-ports) withdrew or were also on the GC's rejection list.

I assume Ebrahim Yazdi was disqualified by the GC. He is every time, and like Rafat Bayat, his candidacy is really just a test of the GC.

Ahmad Tavakkoli (independent conservative) withdrew on May 1st.

The total number of people who filed applications to compete the election is 1,014. All but a score are local gestures.

Percentages shown are from the IRNA poll of 7,100 people in 11 cities a few months ago. Those shown "?" were not included in that poll.

It is possible the IIPF will call for a boycott of the election, and it is also possible that turnout will be well below the 50% mark.

I'll update with more recent polls (one was conducted in May) and annotate the candidates later in the day.

Posted by EBW at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The deadline is the 14th, then the GC has ten days to winnow out the unfit (there may be 100 filings) and the election takes place on the 17th. IRNA text follows.

Head of Expediency Council (EC) Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared here Tuesday night his intention to stand as a candidate in the upcoming 9th presidential elections on June 17.

In an official bulletin released to the Iranian people, a copy of which was received by IRNA, he said: Once again, it is necessary that I declare my intentions to run for presidency and put myself to your vote.

A detailed description of the bulletin will be transmitted later.

Update: Absent progress in negociations with the E3, Iran announced it is restarting the U3O8 (yellowcake) to UF6 (hexafloride) conversion. The second week of the 2005 NPT Review Conference has gotten nowhere. Hans Blix is interviewed by Al Jazeera, and in a nutshell, its Bush, Bush, Bolton, and Bush.

Posted by EBW at 08:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'll update the candidate info but "breaking news".

The psychopathic liar who's held the Pentagon's "Iran Desk" during most of the Bush regime to date was bagged this morning. Lawrence A. Franklin was one of the "in crowd" in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office, up until June 30, 2004, when his TS (or above) clearance was suspended. The former DIA analyst surrendered this morning to the FBI, where he was placed under arrest and charged with disclosing classified information to two Israelie spys (cover American Israel Public Affairs Committee). The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia charges that on June 26, 2003 Franklin provided classified military information on Iraq to two individuals.

Feith, "the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet" (Tommy Frank's opinion) had Franklin invent the sinister twist to Iran's uranium commercial fuel enrichment centrifuge story, making it wicked dangerous to adult American journalists, who don't lose a wink of sleep over the technically equivalant (but not Franklo-Feith'd) United States Enrichment Corporation's American Centrifuge project in Piketown Ohio.

His other accomplishements have been to transform the support for the Northern Alliance by Iran (and the US) during the Afgan War, and the arrests of Al Quida cadres (over five hundred, some quite high-level) by Iran into Iran's obstruction of the War on Terror, the transformation of the 4,000 MEK cultists bagged at Camp Ashraf into a "popular resistance organization" (credits shared with Swift Boater Corsi), and turning the Iranian efforts to calm Iraq, which cost Khalil Naimi, the first secretary of the Iranian Embassy his life, and to some benefit to Iran, but not at a cost of hundreds of car-bombed political, para-military and civilian Iraqi casualties plus a sprinkling of American dead and wounded each week, into ... Iranian infiltration and destablization.

One of Cheney's men. Only 10 years. Kevin Mitnick's initial charge sheet was good for 35 years on a phone phreaking beef. Kevin Poulsen, who worked for me at SRI, had a charge sheet that ran for 37 years, again the core complaint was a phone phreaking beef. If Kevin had moved TS data out of the SRI SCIF (where I sent him to daily re-key a link to SAC somewhere not in California), I expect he'd have gotten 27 more years, not 27 less. Is a dime with down-sentencing and time off really enough to ensure that a criminal subordinate turns on a criminal superior?

Posted by EBW at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Twenty five years ago today a series of operational errors lead to too many aircraft, rotary and fixed wing, in too small an area, in too minimal visibility conditions, caused the deaths of Maj. Richard L. Bakke, USAF, navigator, Maj. Harold L. Lewis Jr., USAF, pilot,, Tech. Sgt. Joel C. Mayo, USAF, flight engineer, Capt. Lyn D. McIntosh, USAF, co-pilot, Charles T. McMillan, USAF, navigator, Sgt. John D. Harvey, USMC, Cpl. George N. Holmes Jr., USMC, and Staff Sgt. Dewey L. Johnson, USMC. The operational errors arose from ordinary error, inter-service rivalries, a profoundly problematic operational plan and a strategy driven by domestic political expedency.

The last time I spoke to him, a former co-worker was making IR beaconing LZ gear for rotary wing units deployed in Iraq that are encountering the same dust conditions.

Between the 1953 overthrow of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the restoration and years of support for Reza Pahlavi and the SAVAK state police apparatus, and the general trajectory of the CIA in Europe, Africa and Latin America under previous administrations, the Carter administration could have eaten crow, gone through some show trials for intelligence officers attached to the US Embassy in Tehran, and normalized relations with the Islamic Republic. But that would have handed Ronald Reagan the election in November, so a military rescue, rather than a diplomatic rescue, was ordered.

We are surrounded by the debris of those errors today. In London Charles Kennedy (Lib Dems) is campaigning not only on Tony Blair's going into Iraq illegally and on a string of lies, but the risk that Britain could be dragged into a new Middle East war in Iran if Tony Blair is re-elected. Bill Clinton spoke Sunday on a video hookup from New York to a Blair rally in London's Old Vic theater, as if Iraq, and Iran, existed in an alternate universe, and the Bush regime weren't inherently dangerous.

Not even the Big Dog could go to Tehran and rescue the United States from its 444 days of self-imposed blindfolds and day-counts, the odd miracle of Iran-Contra, and the rest of the Reagan / Bush legacy, up to and including NRO provisioning of targeting data for Iraqi use with chemical weapons from 1984 to the April to August 1988 offensive at the Al-Faw peninsula, around Basrah and the Majnoun Islands.

This morning Hashemi Rafsanjani accepted the bitter draught ... "The issue of presidency is among my current preoccupations and although I would like someone else to take up this responsibility, I think I have to take this bitter medicine. I think I have to take this bitter medicine since what I didn't like to happen is apparently occurring." He's referring to the lack of a well-known pragmatic or moderate candidate, and the importance of getting a turn-out at or near the 60% level.

In his remarks a few days ago he said what I've thought was obvious for some time, and not predicated on some slender reed of possession of some trivial inventory of intermediate-range exotic weapons -- "that the US was pressing Iran in a brutal manner as the focal point of the resistance by the Islamic world and regretted that certain foolish people in the region helped the US in this connection ignorant of the fact that they would be most seriously damaged if Iran is harmed." Does that really need decoding?

In other election news, Rafat Bayat, one of 12 women elected to the 7th Majlis, tossed her hat into the ring too. She's testing if being approved as a candidate for the Majlis by the Guardian Council, and elected by her district, is sufficient to meet the Guardian Council's �rejal� requirement for candidates for presidency.

Ali Larijani also formally tossed his hat in to the ring at a meeting of conservatives last week. He is the former head of the state broadcasting apparatus and for the moment, the rising star of the well-connected conservatives. His numbers were 3.9% in the latest IRNA poll. It is interesting that the rest of the conservatives and young neo-cons haven't folded their tents and gotten with the program.

Mustafa Moeen (Reform) (photo) has a blog link

See also XIX and XIII and X.

update: Mohsen Mehralizadeh just announced. He's an unalligned reformer, and currently vice-chair of an atheletic organization. He'll drop out if the reformers reach a compromise, and he'll stay in if they don't. Not very useful, but he thinks the conservatives won't get their act together, which is interesting.

Mostafa Moeen is messaging on management, productivity and infrastructure.
Mohsen Mehralizadeh is messaging on presidential authority, efficient government and social calm.

Posted by EBW at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm the last to know. Tom Engelhardt published on his blog, which to tell the truth I never read anyway, Michael Klare's piece on Iran, which has now found a publisher at Mother Jones as Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran.

I've written upwards of 30 pieces on or wicked close to the subject, and Juan Cole comes in a respectable second when his NeoCon agenda and Iran intel pieces are counted, but Michael Klare, citing Sy Hersh, has discovered the Coming War with Iran, Oil and Geopolitics.

Some things to keep in mind.

First, Iran sells its oil under long-term deals with Shell, British Petroleum, TotalFinaElf, etc., and directly to independent refineries, again, under long-term agreements. Iran is a dependable long-term energy exporter. It does not offer its oil on the commodities market. Contractually, Iranian oil is one of the least fungible sources of oil in the global market. Disrupting the sources means disrupting the destinations, or forcing "market discipline" (spot market prices and fluctuations) on independent refineries, Shell, British Petroleum, TotalFinaElf, etc.

Second, approximately sixty percent of Iranian crude is sold sold in Asia. To really get a grasp on why that is so, one needs to look at the US oil market. The following is from the NYNEX description for "Light, Sweet Crude Oil Futures" (CL):

Light, sweet crudes are preferred by refiners because of their low sulfur content and relatively high yields of high-value products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and jet fuel.

Deliverable Grades
Specific domestic crudes with 0.42% sulfur by weight or less, not less than 37� API gravity nor more than 42� API gravity. The following domestic crude streams are deliverable: West Texas Intermediate, Low Sweet Mix, New Mexican Sweet, North Texas Sweet, Oklahoma Sweet, South Texas Sweet.

Specific foreign crudes of not less than 34� API nor more than 42� API. The following foreign streams are deliverable: U.K. Brent and Forties, for which the seller shall receive a 30 cent per barrel discount below the final settlement price; Norwegian Oseberg Blend is delivered at a 55��per�barrel discount; Nigerian Bonny Light, Qua Iboe, and Colombian Cusiana are delivered at 15� premiums.

Now from a random Asian bulk petrochemicals commodities wholesaler:

Iranian Light crude oil , Specification Test Units Average
API gravity 33-34
...
Total sulpher content % wt 1.00 to 1.70

Next there is natural gas. Again, Iran is a policy-defined energy exporter. Natural gas isn't treated differently from oil (or hydroelectric power, sold to its northern neighbors), and contracts and pipeline manuvers across Pakistan (see my "Is Pakistan?" series) to India are pending, and somewhere between Tehran and Karachi is the definition-subject-to-modification-by-pending-war Central Asian access corridor from Gwadar (PK) and the Sui gas field or Bandar Abbas (IR) and the South Pars gas field.

To paraphrase Patton, its not our poor dumb necks we're trying to keep from getting squeezed, its some other poor dumb bastard's neck we're trying to squeeze.

Other nits. Klare should situate Iran's commercial uranium enrichment program within the stable energy exporting context rather than assume that Iran is making, or intends to make fission bombs (PK has upwards of 50, IN about 30, IL over 200, and the US inventory in the CENTCOM AOR plus the Indian Ocean is ... non-trivial, and that doesn't count the FIS or the PRC). Klare could also label the MEK as a cult rather than as an opposition group momentarily stuck with a statute-terrorist label.

I guess I'm most pissed that what I hoped to learn from, a piece by a Nation/Jones writer on Iran, is something I could have written if I forgot everything I knew. If we're going to critique a war we'd prefer didn't start, getting the details correct seems resonable.

The Syrian tyne of the fork bent rather suddenly, but Walking Backwards is still my best attempt to dissern causation and actors. Then there's the other 30 to 50 pieces.

Posted by EBW at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf formally tossed his hat into the ring today. He'd resigned a head of the national police last week as the prelude to starting his retail political campaign for the June election. Qalibaf was head of the air force wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and frontline veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war before becoming the national police chief. Some quotes:

I am a pragmatist, I believe in basic principles, I am not a rightist nor a fundamentalist. I have no attachments to any conventional political wings.

In today's world it is essential to have relations with all the countries. I do not see any limitations in this respect; we have to consider our national interests and use our entire capacity,

So what didn't Qalibaf say? He didn't create limitations w.r.t. either the Zionist Entity or the Great Satan. Of course, both the Sharon regime and the Bush regime are exceptionalist towards Iran, and are postured towards a relationship of war, not a relationship of peace. So Qalibaf is running a pragmatic defense of the realm campaign, with the message to the voters that compeating campaigns that adopt exceptionalism towards Israel and/or the United States act contrary to the defense of the realm, so that's a caution to, and a distance from, the actors who interfered with the campaigns for the 7th Majlis, broadly, the religious activist conservatives, creating exceptionalist litmus tests for determining legislative candidate fitness, and with the message to the voters that Iran's best defense is not some secret war plan, but the front pages of Le Monde. I expect Rafsanjani will message similarly, and this is what Mohammad Khatami has been doing, diplo work to isolate the US, for the last several months.

It must be tough to campaign with cruise missile populated submarines and carriers to the south, over 130,000 troops, armor, and air to the west, more troops and forward air bases to the north and east, and the steady infiltration of logistics and prepositioned troops and air assets to the east, and message what is in effect ... "Wait for it. Wait for it. Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes."

Posted by EBW at 12:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Police Chief Brigadier General (head of the national police) Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf tossed his hat into the ring Sunday. His previous billet, prior to leading the powerful internal security forces was head of the air wing of the Revolutionary Guards. President Khatami bumped him up to fight Saddam's PMOI, so it is ironic that the Americans are running the PMOI as the local color face on round 3. Another pragmatic capable of running the defense.

Payvand has a nice write up on Rafsanjani, who on Monday held a press opportunity and announced he was "completely ready" for a comeback in the June 17 election. The link is here.

IRNA fielded a poll of 7,100 people in 11 cities. The most popular candidate was former president Rafsanjani (1989 to 1997), with 13.9 percent.

The next most popular candidate was former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi, with 4.8 percent.

In a three-way tie for third are: former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, with 4.2 percent, former education minister Mostafa Moin with 4.1 percent, and National Security Council member and media mogule Ali Larijani with 3.9 percent.

Overall, the conservatives aren't doing that well in the poll, which either means that the regime in Washington's rhetoric about the necessity of "freedom" in Iran refers to some other Iran, or a consensus has formed that running the defense against the American assault isn't a job for jumped up social conservatives, which is pretty much what the Imam decided when he let the Shah's air force out of pokey to kill Iraqi armor and artillery and end the movement phase of the Iraqi invasion.

This Wiki is recently developd a surprisingly good section on the election: http://www.answers.com/topic/iranian-presidential-election-2005

See also: Return of the ... One True King (XIV).

When this line is removed, it means I think I'm done with this installment of Rot ... OTK.

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Jonah was kind enough to allow me to read the news this morning between 2:30am EST and 5am EST. Below is the best coverage on a story that broke this morning -- does the constitutional qualification rajal for candidates for Presidency of the Islamic Republic also refer to women? From the English section of Women in Iran, which isn't in the media coverage, discussed below.

A Gathering to Ask for Women Presidency

In a gathering today, nine members of the committee of women from Society of Iran of Tomorrow declared their opposition to the lack of clarification in the definition of the word �men� in the Islamic Republic Constitution and informed the presidential election commission.

In an Interview with the Iranian Student�s Press, Farah Khosravi, the president of the Society of Iran of Tomorrow, at the beginning of the gathering said, �We asked this question from the authorities four years ago, and we have been repeating it this year. About a month ago we also sent an inquiry letter to the Council of Guardians, but we did not get a response. We are hoping that their silence means they are going to give us a positive response.�

She also added that Islam is more open-minded and ahead of other religions in dealing with women�s issues. �It used to be that governments forced people to define women�s roles in the society in a certain way, but today, if a country is thinking about reform it has to consider women in politics. Otherwise it can�t traverse the path of globalization.�

She continued, �It should not matter whether the movement is led by women or men, but we want them to acknowledge the equality of the sexes and pay attention to women�s roles in the political arena. This is the first women�s movement led by the Society of Iran of Tomorrow and we will stay hopeful until the presidential election.�

Khosravi also talked about the Presidential Election. �In the previous presidential election (2001), I nominated myself as the only woman candidate and was one of the 11 presidential nominees in the country. Many authorities contacted me and asked me to decline the position because I was a woman. So I accepted.� She discussed the future plans of the Society of Iran of Tomorrow as to increase recreation, agriculture for women and said, �If another political candidate has these plans in his political agenda, we will be supporting him. However, we are attempting to have a woman candidate in the upcoming election.�

She elaborated the word �men� as it is written in the Iranian constitution explaining that it is a very general term, which in essence includes men as well as women. �Just like how the word man in English means human being as a whole, so is men as used in the Constitution, but so far it has only been used to refer to men. Because the authority figures were always male, they never paid attention to women�s rights, and we have some future plans to change that. I think we have more power than we are using.�

It was also recognized at the gathering that women have long been involved in the political decision making processes and execution of law, and that today they are among the most responsible members of the society. Additionally, it was mentioned that the genius and talent the Iranian women have shown over the course of years proves their reliability and merit.

At the end of the gathering it was concluded that the clarification of the word �men� could get Iranian women involved in the highest executive political offices in the society and would enable Muslim Iranian women to run for office of the President. This gathering was scheduled to take place in the vicinity of one of the government buildings, but instead it took place at Laleh Park and ended at 11 o�clock.

The following slogans were used in the gathering:

- We elect so we must be elected.

- Today men and women move together towards reform. (from Imam Khomeini)

- To respected officers: after 25 years please answer this question whether women are allowed to run for the President.

- Everyone take notice that even in Afghanistan and Pakistan women have the right to run for the President. How about women in Iran?

- Women�s abilities are not less than those of men, but women need space to flourish. (President Khatami).

Translated by: Shahrzad Farshi

This is "below".

Which of the following is surprising to find in the sites Google picked up as having content related to a statement by Gholamhossein Elham, spokesman for the Guardian Council, that women may stand in the May election for President of the Islamic Republic? Its news right?

The BBC, the Seattle PI, Al Jazeera, Reuters, Iran Focus, Radio Free Europe, Newsday, South African Broadcasting Corporation.

If you picked Iran Focus, you win. What surprises me is that a PMOI front is cited, even algorithmically, as a source of news. Any kind of news. Even inside-the-koolaid-pitcher news. The breakdown of coverage is all of the real news outlets ran the story -- the qualification rajal could also refer to women, and Iran Focus ran a subsequent retraction. I suppose it is possible that the spokeman for the Council of Guardians gives exclusive retractions to the Washington Offices of the 101 Fighting Keyboarders, Mujahideen-e-Khalq Division.

After all, in theory, all the vote-not-recounted Florida votes in 2000 went for Bush, and all not-allowed-to-vote-by-technical-means, and vote-apparently-corrected-by-software, and vote-not-recounted Ohio votes in 2004 also went for Bush.

I'm going to update this through the weekend as time allows. I'll cover the election data to date and summarize the diplomatic offensive.

Update I: I'll be damned! The Islamic Republic New Agency is running the repudiation. The MEK got it right. One extra-large helping of crow served over a bed of old coffee grounds for me.

Update II: OK. IRNA was running the GC relenet very early this morning (EDT), then ran the GC's retraction by mid-morning. Make it a half-portion of crow on a bed of old coffee grounds.

Posted by EBW at 10:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I think that Ali Akbar Hachemi Rafsandjani just announced his availability to be drafted as the war-time President of the Islamic Republic. See "What Wampum's Reading" on the left sidebar.

President Seyed Mohammad Khatami has been in Africa the past week. He's in Zimbabwe yesterday and today. I've been putting together the details and I'll post those soon. Its wicked smart. Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mali, Benin, Zimbabwe and Uganda. Europe is done. Turkey is done. The UK is done. The CIS (except for the states the Americans "own" via proxy) is done. China was done before this began (or is the cause within all causes), and now Africa.

Apropos of nothing, the Revolutionary Court has notified Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi that it erred in issuing her a summons to explain her activities.

If I were in Tehran this week I'd be watching the seismographs. The earth may have moved.

The house is warmer now that it is snowing. One of those odd northern facts. When the temprature is below 17° Farenheit, it is too cold to snow.

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Today the King is the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Seymore Hersh is worth reading. You know how to find the New Yorker.

Recently I ran across a comment by someone to the effect that he didn't know specifically why political actors in Iraq were calling for a delay of the legislative elections the Occupation Authority/Interim Government set for the end of this month. The commentor also mentioned that he didn't know what they hoped to achive by rescheduling the elections.

I have an answer. Two of them actually.

Part I: Why does form matter?

First the US domestic politics answer. As soon as there is an election, independent of process and outcome issues, the message that "Iraq is solved" becomes domestically salable. Iran becomes a legitimate target, where illegitimacy is measured by reckless over-extension of the military, not by reckless extension of the military. If cab drivers in Baghdad know that it is only a matter of time before the Americans attack Iran, how credible is it that political actors don't know that they are conducting, among other things, a holding action in the American rear area?

Second the Iraq domestic politics answer. The strategy of the Occupation Authority is to acquire the political asset of "legitimacy" without substantive recourse to International Law. As no shortage of strategists have observed, since Sun Tsu, the way to defeat the enemy is to defeat the enemy's strategy. The Americans initally chose the mechanism of ministerial appointments, which did not have the intended outcome of "legitimacy", followed by the mechanism of civic religions ritualism -- the "transfer of partial sovereignty", which also did not have the intended outcome of "legitimacy", and are now committed to their third choice, the plebecite ritual in pursuit of "legitimacy".

The someone who's comments I picked up was Ilyad Allawi, the CIA operative at the head of the Allawiite Militias. The persons observed to have called for a delay that has "Interim Prime Minister" Allawi puzzled are Sheik Chazi Al-Yaouar, who was selected by the Ministerial appointees 48 hours before the "transition" ritual, contrary to the Occupation script, and Hzim Al-Chaalane, who is the chief of the Allawiite Militias, or "Minister of Defense". Other persons in Iraq civil society too are calling for a delay in elections. Most of the media coverage goes to those who use the light-infantry and overrun-position repitorires of political tools.

Part II. Why does time matter?

I have an answer. Again, two of them actually. I'm very self-similar.

First the Iranian domestic politics answer. There will be an election during the Spring. The Iranian electorate needs to select who will be the head of government during tne next several years of war with the United States, Britian and Australia. There are candidates well-suited to run a civil government in peacetime, and candidates well-suited to run a civil government in wartime, and candidates well-suited to run campaigns supported by conservative factions within Iranian civil society, but not civil governments in times of war or peace. Iran needs time to choose the principle focus of its leadership going into a war that will bring down the military dictatorship in Pakistan and put the Pakistani and Indian nuclear arsenels into operational readiness, that will close the Straits for the duration (War of the Tankers, part 2), and will take the GCC states into the conflict as well. Mostafa Moin isn't my choice. I'm still betting on Rafsanjani.

Second the Iranian domestic military answer. The Americans are certain to conduct air operations until they have exhausted the target inventory, and then will switch to bombing civilian infrastructure such as the electrical grid. The Americans are also certain to conduct insertion operations until they have exhausted the target inventory. Neither of the operations will have the strategic effect however of causing "regime change" and the end to autonomous Iranian energy development, in oil, gas, and commercial uranium fuels, discussed in earlier parts of this series. To achive that end, Tehran must be taken, and even that may not be sufficient. To take Tehran, the Iraq-Iran war must be refought, on the ground, in the province of Khuzestan. How OPLAN 1002-05 extends beyond that point, how it wins where OPLAN 1002-82 failed, that will be the unexplored territory.

The Iraqi-American playbook in 1980 read two axis of advance, one crossing the Shatt al Arab at Basra, heading littorially east to Khorramshahr, the other moving north-east to Ahvaz. The Shah's air force stopped the Iraqis at the battle for Dezful, and one of my classmates at Berkeley returned home to disapear in the defense of Khorramshahr, and the modality of war changed from manouver to eight years of Ypre-like attrition.

The Shah's air force isn't waiting in jail for President Bani Sadr to let them out to fight the Iraqi-American agression, so the 100km/day advance should continue right up to the Zagros mountains, ending Iranian control over most of the oil resources, and some of the water and electrical generation capacity. The latter will have been bombed anyway. At some point, the modality of war changed from manouver to attrition.

Time matters because the Americans can't run a 100km/day advance during high summer. The air campaign has to begin two weeks before the movement order. They have to start in the early Spring, or wait until Fall, and every Spring actual looks better than the following Fall anticipated.

As the American strategic goal is to manage China's access to energy, for reasons I've written about earlier in this series, it is prudent to think about how India, between the Americans astride the oil in the Gulf, and China and Japan.

This continues Notes and Notes.

Posted by EBW at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

The Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) drafted former minister of science, research and technology Mostafa Moin to run in the Spring presidentials. Moin was the Minister of Culture and Higher Education under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1993) and President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2000) and later the Minister of Science, Research, and Technology (the same post, with a changed name) under President Khatami (2000-2003). He resigned two times, first after the student protests of July, 1999, and then in July, 2003 after the Council of Guardiansrejected a bill that he put forward to restructure his ministry.

Two years ago Hashem Aghajari was sentanced to death by a lower court in Hamedan for writing that true imitation is not thoughtless. He challenged religious emulation, underscoring the need for explanations from the religious leaders on the decisions they make binding for their followers. I wrote about it when his second death-sentence was overturned and during the election of the 7th Majlis, when the reformers stood-down as a body with some very similar reasoning Return of the ... One True King (IV). During the first trial at Hamedan, then Minister Moin wrote to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei "Aghajari is a war veteran and has proved his commitment to Islam both in theory and action bringing such a heavy charge against him is irrelevant."

Moin was elected as representative of Shiraz in mid-term elections of first Majlis in 1982.

Moin's announcement mentioned corruption of the Pahlavi regime in a generational context (he was born in 1951) so he is running as a Revolutionary, and he criticized the oil dependence of the economy and the current economic planning (see drat! I thought I wrote about that open letter) and the brain-drain.

Update. Found the open letter. See XI.

Thus far Moin is the only declared candidate. I'll keep updating this as I think of things.

Posted by EBW at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In the 6th part of this series (February '04) I wrote about the ban on Americans editing Iranian works for publication. Since this is now lifted, I can now edit the Iranian NIC and NOC technical pubs for publication. So this is part VI bis.

Other items of interest. After getting Iran to agree to a suspension of its enrichment program in exchange for accession into the WTO, the US vetoed the accession talks. The Gang of Fools prefers that Afganistan enters the WTO before Iran does. No doubt this is because of Afganistan's export dominance, under American tutelage, post-Taliban, in the world heroin market. A couple of days ago (and before coffee) MB mentioned to me that Joe Corsi was going on about Iran. I said "Who?" and MB said "Oh, you know, Swift Boat Veterans." I said "Oh. I wrote about that a couple of weeks ago."

After cofee I brightened up. I realized my work would be wider read if I would just publish it three weeks after I wrote it. Here's the link. And here's another link, for the road. As far as I can tell only Peatey read it, which is one more reader than enough.

What else ... For the first time Iran has been invited to attend a session of the 25-member club of countries mastering the nuclear fuel cycle. A European delegation will visit Iran after New Year's to discuss construction of a research reactor. Details on these later.

Over at the Telegraph (or the conservative rhino if you've lived in the UK), Damien Mcelroy has a scoop. If Iran builds an anhydrous hydrogen fluoride fab facillity, and Iran currently imports "significant amounts" of AHF, which is used in the petro-chemical industry, and the AHF fab fac is scheduled to be completed in 2006, then ... (big breath in) ... its got to be part of Iran's secret plan to flush the remaining 35 tons of 'yellowcake' (U3O8) into uranium hexaflouride gas (UF6) and (we really need a flaming screaming font directive, I suppose I should write the .css) make atomic bombs!.

Only this story went up on www.mafhoum.com/press4/128P81.htm circa 22 January 2003. Woopie. I remember being amazed by the petrolium engineering discipline at Stanford circa 1970. The kind folks over at Yingpeng Chemical (Zhejiang Province, PRC) are ready to ship industrial grade anhydrous hydrofluoric acid in handy 10kg/25kg/ polythene plastic buckets or stylish 320kg/640kg steel cylinders, or by standard ISO rail tanker, to discerning buyers anywhere. And Yingpeng Chem goes the extra distance because there is a lot of competition in the inorganic acid market.

The only "secret" part of the secret plan is why anyone even squirms when the loonies shout "WEAPONIZED FROG!!!".

Make no mistake, HF can be used for enrichment. It is used in the Y-12 plant at Oakridge. The transport system at Oakridge takes the HF from the receiving dock to the reactor building (9212 B-1 Wing), where it is used in the process of HEU (uranium metal) production.

Fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine ... the hydrogen halides. That was the fun part of high school chemistry. Then there was the day I managed so set my hands on fire with phosperous in solution ... wicked good fun, but not a halogen tale. Look for droning und drooling by the highly educated media 'leets about "fluoride" and "enrichment" (or covert contamination of the nations water supply and body fluids) in the coming weeks.

Posted by EBW at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

The political merry-go-round in Tehran just hit a brick. Eleven nationally prominent economists, from universities and state-enterprises co-authored a letter that was published in Tehran yesterday. In a nutshell, the economy sucks, and all the values theater of the last election cycle was ... values theater .

Some quotable quotes: "society infected by politics" and policies dictated by "emotions and idealism regardless of their economic consequences".

The letter may take some of the heat energy out of the trads v neos generational cyclone of the primary season. A second brick I've not yet decoded was the announcement by the GC that the election date set by the Ministry of the Interior has to be reset.

Whoever wants to hold the potato needs to get some face time in Dehli and Beijing and Paris and Moscow. Ottowa would be prudent too.

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First, Eric's Guide to Garbage: If the writer uses the embassy takeover to frame any piece on Iran, its domestic propaganda, or the product of a neo-plagerist with a stopped clock. If the writer uses "reform" vs "something other than reform" to frame any piece on Iranian politics, its domestic propaganda, or an MEK media placement. Think of the MEK as 1,000 way-way-way-bitter-ender-Saddamists, who in 2024 are plotting to liberate Iraq, using new, improved theology and the occasional cross-border remote village smash-and-grab, with real mock-executions, from a base camp in central Fantasy-stan. Only they're Iranian, and God's Gift to the Present Drooling NeoCon America. I might as well be writing this in Farsi.

Anyway, Primary season in Persia.

Mohammad Khatami is winding up his second, four-year presidential term. Color him "reformist" and term-limited out, for the next four years anyway.

Now, on to the next would be kings. This election is being defined by generational conflict within the dominant forces within Iran, and the pending military conflict with the United States. That is it. The generation that came to power with Imam Khomeni, that exercise power through the major clerical politicial institutions -- the Association of Combatant Clerics (which didn't join the Reform boycott of the elections to the 7th Majlis last spring), the Association of Theological Teachers and the Islamic Coalition Society, versus a generation that would like to come to power, and didn't do too badly in the elections for the 7th Majlis earlier this year, courtesy of the Guardian Council and the re-invigorated Revolutionary Guards. The United States vs Iran. More on that later.

The candidates:

• Aliakbar Velayati, former Foreign Minister. Color him "Traditional".
  
• Ali Larijani, former managing director, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). Color him "Traditional".
  
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, mayor of Tehran. Color him "NeoCon".
  
• Ahmad Tavakoli, influential member of parliament. Color him "NeoCon".
  

Then there are the loose canons. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, term-limited (two consequtive terms) former president. Color him ... "calico", he chairs the Expediency Council, the final (non-religious) political arbitration body. The Any-Body-But-Rafsanjani candidate, Gholem-Ali Hadad-Adel, Speaker of the 7th Majlis. Color him "neocon" and a relative of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Somewhere behind all the party positioning, will the trads side with the refs against the neos, the usual stuff of any competitive primary season, there is a real question of calculation. The next President has to be concealed from the American attack, as does the ministerial government and the provincial governments (except Khouzestan), just as the Supreme Jurist has to be exposed to it. The election isn't simply over infantile "hardline" assaults on the status of women or any "values" issue as fundamentally stupid in Iran as elsewhere, it is over who will be running the multi-year war of defense, in an Iran that won't need wilayat-i faqih, at least for the duration, until the occupation of Khouzestan is ended, or the war is generalized to more of the former Central Treaty Organization (nee Baghdad Pact), the Gulf Cooperation Council, and former Soviet states.

It won't be simple. Whoever wins has to run a war of attrition and get at least a cease-fire on terms no worse than those in Security Council Resolution 598. If Mir-Hossein Mousavi were in the running, my money would be on him. He didn't stand for the 1997 election, so his supporters set on Ali Khamenei, who won by a large majority.

While this piece has been in-prep, the UK/DE/FR/IN talks have progressed, and Sunday Iran sent the IAEA a text announcing the suspension of uranium enrichment. Nothing can remove the American pretext for war, not even the Fords, the Carters and the surviving Reagans, traveling jointly to Tehran to apologize to Ayat Allah Ali Khamenei (Supreme Jurist) and Ayat Allah Ahmad Jannati (Guardian Council) at the tomb of the Imam Khomeni, and then to President Muhammad Khatami and the entire 7th Majlis assembled in parliament for the American support for the Pahlavis and the dirty war that kept the Anglo-American regime in place, and the American support for Saddam and the decade of war his regime imposed on Iran under Reagan and Bush (1), and accepting the regrets and apologies of Iraninans for the deaths of American soldiers attempting to rescue the Embassy staff and the American casulties of three decades of intermittant conflict by proxy. It does however under cut the pretext for joining the American war on Iran for European states predisposed to do so, so it is an important diplo-military win for Ali Khamenei and all who sailed with him.

At the end of the Tarrantine War (1607-1615) between the Mic'macs, who won, and the Abenakis, who lost, peace was made when the parties met and performed condolence. There is no "right" or "wrong", only condolences for the crimes of war. The tune isn't snappy and the ceremonial dance takes a long, long time, but the parties don't simply "make peace", they weep for each other's losses, they share suffering, the only bond that matters. It is still part of Wabanaki musical repitoire.

[1] All bad things in Iranian popular consciousness end with "because of the British". It doesn't matter if the Iranian is a royalist or a communist or any point in between.

Posted by EBW at 06:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Do read Juan Cole today. He writes on the subject of (to borrow from an unfortunate turn of phrase by Atrios -- the singular) "the Iranian Opposition" and the Bush Administration. I've been writing about this as well, both in the context of the elections for the 7th Majlis last Spring, and the uranium casus belli many people are stroking. He also writes about the Niger "yellow cake" affair and the uranium casus belli. I'm pleased to see Juan cover this. Atrios does as well.

OK. One self-referential link. Read the comments. For the larger context there is my series on the 7th Majlis, "Return of the ... One True King", which you can google, or you can google +wampum +iran and +wampum +uranium just to be catholic, er, all inclusive.

Updates: Self-referential link added, and reference to Duncan Black's post in Escheton.

Posted by EBW at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Iran is on the block.

The Bush regime has just declared that the 3,800 or so surviving members of the Mujahedeen e Khalq (MEK or MKO) or National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) or People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) that it held at Camp Ashraf, after having bombed them during the invasion of Iraq, and having declared them status terrorists, and having declared a cease-fire with them (so there was firing to cease), and having found the MEK to be a terrorist organization (since 1997) that has previously carried out armed opperations against US targets is ... cordially welcomed to the status of protected persons (non-belligerents) under the Fourth Geneva Protocol, ending the risk of collective punishment or forced deportation.

Of course, the Camp Ashraf population are still status terrorists, and must continue to have US military escorts when traveling outside of Camp Ashraf, and if any can be proven to have committed acts of terrorism against the United States or Britian or ... then they may be punished.

This isn't good. The threat of nukes was the selling of the last war, and the enrichment story is running in all the "respectable" media outlets.

Posted by at 05:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

David Ignatus writes in today's WaPo Lost Chances in Iran a piece that discloses yet another amazing NeoCon adventure in the making, this time in Iran.

Post invasion, the US and its partners in crime had bagged about 4,000 members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, which I last mentioned with something less than admiration in part 4, which contains a link to an OpEd piece in the the NY TImes by Ali Safavi, who cheerfully mentions Maryam Rajavi (Mujahedin-e Khalq) as a bell weather for the popularity of Western-initiated regime change in Tehran. Interested readers should read this. Negociations, described in Ignatus' piece, resulted in a pledge by Tehran to

grant amnesty to most of the 4,000 Mujaheddin-e Khalq captives, to forgo the death penalty for about 65 leaders who would be tried in Iranian courts and to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to supervise the transfer.

What would the US get in return for this largess to a civilized Iran?

Over 500 al Qaeda cadres, bagged by Iran in the Winter of 2001-2002, and another group of senior al Qaeda cadres, up to the General Staff equivalents in that organization, who were bagged by Iran in the Spring of 2002. Not thousands of indiscriminately arrested Iraqis, including children, but a significant fraction of the al Qaeda general combatant, field command, and head-quarters staff officer populations.

So why did our Idiot King prefer to keep 4,000 Mujahedin-e Khalq cadres in some jug or another in Iraq, rather than trade up for better quality cadres who actually want to blow up Washington, rather than Tehran? Because Cheney's gang of idiots think they're going to overthrow the Mullahs and the Majlis with the Mujahedin-e Khalq.

For those that don't follow Iranian politics, it is difficult to characterize just how unlikely it is that the
Mujahedin-e Khalq can affect "regime change" in Tehran. For those that do follow American politics, giving blanket amnesty to al Qaeda cadres who choose to be disarmed and taken into custody in Iran, and not invoking what amounts to an extradition agreement to interrogate senior members of the al Qaeda movement, should contribute to "regime change" in Washington.

Posted by at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For background see this.

Over dinner conversation with Marwen Radwan, responsible for the Palestinian ccTLD registry, I remarked off-hand that the US should involve Iran in the management of Iraq, as the Iranian government would show more restraint, and greater understanding of the nuances, than the US.

Yesterday I wrote about Mark Kimmit and John Abazid and Ricardo Sanchez, who appear to believe that career military officers must speak like hicks. I didn't include this gem from General John Abizaid, Commander, U.S. Central Command (its bold so you'll know he's not just some uniformed moron):

Q: Generals, Bret Baier again at Fox News Channel. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said last week that Iran is meddling in the situation inside Iraq. General Abizaid, can you tell us how Iran is playing a factor in the current situation on the ground? And have you taken any action along the border that may have involved Iranians?

Abizaid: Well, we haven't taken any action recently on the border that had to do with any specific Iranian activity. But clearly, there are indications from intelligence folks that there are some Iranian activities going on that are unhelpful, as the secretary put it. He's absolutely right. And there's also unhelpful actions coming from Syria.

But on the other hand, with regard to the Iranians, there are elements within Iran that are urging patience and calm and trying to limit the influence of Sadr. So it's a complicated situation. But what we need is all of the nations around Iraq to participate in calming the situation and assisting with a sovereign and stable government emerging.

Sanchez: If I may add, Bret, as part of our ongoing operations, we had increased the capacity of the border police out in the Iranian sector, and we had also increased some of our patrolling along the southeast and up in the central part of the country to prevent some of the illegal movement that had been occurring from Iran. So, as part of our current operations over the course of the last 30 to 45 days, we had increased some of our ops in that area.

Abizaid: I would like to go back to a previous point on a different question, and just to clarify the situation somewhat. There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we're facing here in Iraq today. There may be combinations of Iraqi and American solutions to the Sadr problem, to the Fallujah problem. There may be purely Iraqi solutions that are arrived at. So it's a combination of military and political action, both on the Iraqi and the American side, and on the coalition side, that will ultimately work towards a more secure environment here.

Sanchez: The mission of the U.S. forces is to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr.

Wednesday, April 14th, a diplo team headed by Hossain Sadeqi, the DG of the Iranian Foreign Ministry (Gulf Affairs), entered Iraq. Here is what they accomplished. They guaranteed the personal jurisdiction over Moqtada al-Sadr would be exercised by post-occupation court(s), religious and secular, on the three pending criminal charges. That made every day of what passes for a cease-fire between the opposing forces in Falluja possible. That made the talk about negociations, about pre-conditions, then the lack of pre-conditions, the talk about a stand-down of his militia, and finally the talk about exile, possible.

Bremmer, Abizad, Sanchez and Kimmit wasted 89 US KIA and another 100+ wounded on a farce and had the Iranians not acted, this week would be a repeat, or worse, of last week. There are 80+ troops alive today that would be dead, and another 100+ that would be limbless-in-Ramstein, had Kamal Kharazi blown off the covert channel (via the Swiss).

Which part of the absurdly disfunctional criminal enterprise we call our government had the sense to call the Swiss sometime before April 7th?

Khalil Naimi, the first secretary of the Iranian Embassy, was shot dead this morning. There is a price to peacemaking. The next time some worthless neocon CF rants that Persia is the Great Evil, remember, 80+ toe tags and 100+ stump kits and colostomy bags were not issued this week.

Posted by at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been writing a process series on the elections for the 7th Majlis (Iran's legislature), held on the 20th of this month. A running side-bar has been most of the American press coverage reduces to very, very few independent primary reports, they ran several days behind the European, Asian, and Middle Eastern press, and generally were conclusionary -- "here endeth the lesson" -- day after day. The lowest point personally (remember no one you actually know knows you blog) was when the paper of record for Southern Maine ran 500 words of editorial that elections were good and mullahs were bad.

In writing the Return of the ... One True King series I used sources from inside Iran, including the web site of the 6th Majlis, and began to read Iranian bloggers, both at home and in exile. I edited, redacted, munged, illuminated, and I'm sure I also obsured, text that originated in Iran. The point of writing about Iran and restricting oneself to texts that geographically originate "about, but not within Iran" eluded me, but today I've found that point.

I was violating US law. The "Return of the ... One True King" series of posts was a series of criminal acts, because it was ... Criminal Editing of the Enemy. I've been trading with the enemey. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control is letting publishers subject to its jurisdiction (which excludes Yas-e Nou and Sharq, already closed by Iran's Guardian Council exercising their jurisdiction) know that trading with the enemey (in the form of editing scientific publications, poetry or news) is ten years and/or $500,000.

Now much of what I wrote was the result of being up at all hours with Jonah (age 4, autistism, sleep disorder), so breathy, rushed, disjointed, like bird watching. I haven't yet tried the hard problem, of writing about, rather than observing others write about. I'll get around to it, after all, the cast of characters in Tehran and Washington are not going anywhere soon. More's the pity.

It is simply amazing to think about, for those of us who came up on Soviet mathematical and scientific publications and Soviet and Chinese military and political publications, collected, translated, summarized, digested, glossed, ... that the manuscript for a volumn of 17th century Persian poetry in Farsi, with an American English translation, can not be lawfully edited for publication within the confines of the United States. Neither for that matter can the debates of the 6th Majlis on reform of the law concerning the damages for wrongful deaths -- tort reform -- which currently contains a 10-to-1 statuatory disparity in the "blood money" valuation of human life along confessional lines.

If there are any Americans that want access to texts originating from Iran which are edited for publication, they will have to attempt that access exterior to the political jurisdiction of the United States.

Oh. IRNA reports today that it intercepted a Pushtu language broadcast that ...

Continue reading "Return of the ... One True King (pt 6)" »

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[Note: We fudged the date on this to move it down, relative to MB's announcement. The real date is a about 8 hours after MB's announcement. 784.]

[Update: 2/17, 11pm EST, the NYT runs an op-ed piece by Ali Safavi, who cheerfully mentions Maryam Rajavi (Mujahedin-e Khalq) as a bell weather for the popularity of Western-initiated regime change in Tehran. Interested readers should read this.]

I spent part of yesterday evening reading From ijtihad to wilayat-i faqih: The Evolving of the Shi’ite Legal Authority to Political Power by Abbas Amanat. The "why" is unimportant, though the proximal cause was looking up the press coverage on Professor Hashim Aghajari -- I'm only tracking a few arrests, and I bumped his to the top of my stack after reading this in Al Jazeera.

It isn't often I find stuff on Iran that makes me sit back and think, think, think. [Too much "Blue's Clues". Ed.]

OK. So the current Western and Arabic press has reform 0, clerics 1, as of this evening, but ...

550 candidates approved by the Guardian Council during its 2nd pass over the 3k candidates it had disqualified earlier, at the specific instruction of Ayatollah Khamenei ... recall them? They just stood down. First there were 50 or so, then a day of chicken followed, then there were 600 more, and that was it, as far as the GC would go, and then only on the specific instruction of Ayatollah Khamenei.

So why did they stand down? To support the boycott? Read this carefully. Recall that both President Muhammad Khatami and speaker of the 6th Majlis, Mahdi Karubi, wrote, as did Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Guardian Council, to Ayatollah Khamenei in his capacity as ... what?

This from another article in Al Jazeera:

One candidate who withdrew, Abu al-Fazl Rauf, said he had not been vetted "according to defined legal procedure".

"I see this against my dignity as an Iranian citizen," said Rauf, an independent.

There is no difference between the statement, and more importantly, the act, by Abu al-Fazl Rauf, and the substance of the intellectual arguement advanced at Hamedan 18 months ago by Professor Hashim Aghajari. Rauf rejects the vetting which passed him -- the 2nd one -- the one that took place at the specific instruction of Ayatollah Khamenei, as extra-legal and contrary to the dignity of a citizen of Iran.

This. This is the big stuff. The guy in Tienamin Square stopping a tank. There are between 5 and 6 thousand GC-approved candidates for the 7th Majlis -- between 15 and 25 compeating for each seat. Ten percent just took a bye, and the soundbite is ... Ayatollah Khamenei lacks the legal standing, the institutional role he holds, the direct successor of Ayatollah Khomeini, sometimes referred to as Imam Khomeini, lacks the legal foundations to have ordered the second vetting. Neither the letter by the Secretary of the Guardian Council, nor the letter by President and Speaker, each addressing the same electoral issue, could have been answered one way or another by ... a cleric. Even a ranking cleric. Even the highest ranking ... cleric.

Abu al-Fazl Rauf teaches neither at Yale, nor at Tarbiat Modarress University in Tehran. That is what makes his act important.

Back on 2/7 I wrote

[Update: 2/7, 1pm EST: Islam Online reports that Khatami committed to holding the election earlier today, with a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei oddly similar to the languate INRA quoted GC Sec. (and Ayatollah) Jannati -- elections were due to expediency and by order of Ayatollah Khamenei. In effect, this has both parties -- {President, Speaker of the Majlis, majority of members, provincial governments}, and {Sec. of the Guardian Council, etc.} -- pointing their fingers at Ayatollah Khamenei. The GC has implemented "term limits" in the form of ineligiblity for a plurality pro-reform incumbants. That doesn't mean they control the voters, or have eliminated all the ballot choices the reform parties can select from.

Today's Le Monde (always a lifetime ahead of the American press which is still running the "reform 0, clerics 1story") has this:

Nombreux sont ceux qui ont le sentiment qu'ils ne trouveront pas leurs candidats dans maintes circonscriptions, mais ils peuvent, avec un peu d'indulgence, trouver ceux qui se rapprochent le plus de leurs conceptions"

Appologies to my spouse, who'd really like to be above the fold for a whole day on the day she tossed her hat into the electoral ring.

Posted by at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

New readers, please read this first, and then this second. Note to self: the id is 769.

Old readers, I'm going to continue the update format, top-posting. viz [now][old][older][the press].

[Update: 2/10, 8pm EST: An opinion piece worth reading in Al Abawaba. I had to skip the Jewish Lobby and Monarchist bits, but the rest seems on point. link.
[Update: 2/10, 7am EST: Ayatollah Khamenei's letter of the 8th has the effect of keeping the Association of Combatant Clerics (the elder Khatami and Karubi) from joining the boycot.]
[Update: 2/9, combined: Our own little blat, the Portland Press Herald, ran an opinion piece on this story. Elections good, clerics bad. In five hundred words. Not much happening in the real world either. Students start march, police stop march. Battons. ISNA reports.]
[Update: 2/8, 2pm EST: Al Jazeera reports that Ayatollah Khamenei has written to President Muhammad Khatami and speaker of the 6th Majlis, Mahdi Karubi. 75 incumbant members of the universe of splinters that are called "reform" are still not on the ballot, including Muhammad Reza Khatami, head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front -- the largest of the pro-reform parties, and brother of the President (who heads the 2nd of Khordad Front, see below).

Parties committed to the boycot:
- Islamic Iran Participation Front
- Muhajidin of the Islamic Revolution

Not yet committed to the boycot:
- Association of Combatant Clerics (Khatami, aka "2nd of Khordad Front")_
- Servants of Construction (Rafsanjani)

To give a sense of the means tests applied by the GC, it disqalified Elaheh Koulaee because a web site two years ago accused her of cooperating with the Russians. Well, got to go. The 7th Majlis appears to be both predetermined in composition, and in turn-out.]

[Update: 2/7, 3pm EST: The Jomhuriye Eslami yesterday had "informed quarters" saying that if the government didn't do ahead with the elections, someone else would run them. Khatami et al are preserving the function of the constitutional govermnent, while at the same time warning that the turn-out will be lowered by the illegitimacy of the lists.]

[Update: 2/7, 1pm EST: Islam Online reports that Khatami committed to holding the election earlier today, with a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei oddly similar to the languate INRA quoted GC Sec. (and Ayatollah) Jannati -- elections were due to expediency and by order of Ayatollah Khamenei. In effect, this has both parties -- {President, Speaker of the Majlis, majority of members, provincial governments}, and {Sec. of the Guardian Council, etc.} -- pointing their fingers at Ayatollah Khamenei. The GC has implemented "term limits" in the form of ineligiblity for a plurality pro-reform incumbants. That doesn't mean they control the voters, or have eliminated all the ballot choices the reform parties can select from. I don't think this is done yet, although the press keeps calling one side or the other the daily winner. I suppose the proximity to Florida and the majority gaming the rules in the legislature, and the Killer Dees in Texas are too close for comfort, and everyone loves a horse race. Wierd when you think that only a year ago, Iran was #2 on the list of places to invade this term.]

Base: 2/6, 5pm EST: Yesterday the GC had sent 51 of the 600 resubmits that it got from Intel, on to Interior. Today 200 more were added to that number. Recall, the critical issue is the 130 incumbants that the GC ruled were unqualified. Apparently some were in today's cohort of 200. Interesting minutea: It is the spokesperson for the 2nd of Khordad Front (universe of splinters forming the party of the president) who gave the number, and the unspecific information that some were incumbants (or otherwise famous). The Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of Ithe GC, would not publically commit to a number, or comment on any candidate. It isn't the 9th yet, so the claim by the GC that today it reached the end of its process appears to be today's chicken call.
Ayatollah Jannati went on record that the reinstatements were due to expediency and by order of Ayatollah Khamenei. The US press is still at the 51-out-of-600 story of 36 hours ago, with the reform defeated.

Posted by at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

[Update: 2/6, 6am EST, again, the US press is behind, and mostly recycled Reuters.
The GC "isn't finnished" and has set its own deadline of the 9th (compare, the governments' deadline of the afternoon of the 5th) to complete its review.
INRA has this gem from Mohamad Kazem Anbarloui, editor-in-chief of Resalaat, at Friday prayers in Qom. "Those current MPs whose qualifications have been rejected by the Guardians Council are US spies and were implementing US rules instead of Islamic rules." INRA has another gem, this from Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, head of the Judiciary, late yesterday. "If any of the government bodies impedes the Majlis elections process in violation of legal and religious boundaries, then it would be considered a criminal act and would be prosecuted." Note the liability for prosecution is explicit to government bodies.
Al Ahram is worth reading, and better than any of the summary pieces in the US media.
The Daily Star in Lebanon has an opinion piece by Ahmad Sadri which is worth reading. It covers the same ground as Amir Taheri's opinion piece in the Gulf News of two days earlier, with the nuance that he connects the Bush policy dots from Afganistan (abandoned to warlards) to Iraq (abandoned to tribalism) to Iran (democracy abandoned).
One canary to watch, Iran Libya Sanctions Act application to the Austrian oil and gas group OMV AG, which this week signed a deal with the National Iranian Gas Export Company for investment in the Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Austria.]

[Update: 2/5, 12pm EST, two new problems -- Richard Boucher (State) has opinions (he didn't have about Florida) on the legislative disqualifications, and Richard Armitage (State) has opinions about the IAEA report (and the axii of evil (including PK, now boiling over)). This is not the moment for American policy junkets. The FM goes on record that this is "an internal affair".]

[Update: 2/5, 4pm EST, most of the press is current as of today. Intelligence approved 600 candidates previously stricken by the GC. The GC submitted only 10% to Interior. Everybody's going to the mattresses -- all the legislative resignations are now for real, the count now is 150, and the election's GOTV phase may play as "Guns or Taliban Victims".]

[Update: 2/5, 7am EST, AFP reports the number is now 130, this afternoon (Tehran time) deadline is repeated by several sources, and the hard-liners now want to put the resigners up on quasi-criminal charges -- the coded threat of force. US press is still running the "election row solved" story.]

[optional reading: Amir Taheri's opinion piece Iran's Islamic republic faces moment of truth in the Gulf News. I should have put this up yesterday.]

[Update: 2/4, 7am EST, WaPo has caught up with the events. Ayatollah Khamenei also orders the Guardian Council to review all disqualifications. The Miami Herald also. The Intelligence Ministry, possibly not controlled by the conservatives, is to conduct the actual review. Al Jazerra too. The consequences-unstated deadline for the government is Thursday. Crisis possibly resolved. The bulk of the English language press are running the 2/2 story on 2/4, nearly all the same 2/2 story.]

[Update: 2/3, 10pm EST, NYT reports all 28 provincial governors have sided with the government (reform), the Interior Ministry won't hold the election, and that the Guardian Council is ignoring both. Conjectures military holds elections. Quote: The possibility that the Khatami government will step down is being widely discussed.]

[Update: 2/3, 5pm EST, Ayatollah Khamenei supports Guardian Council. Look for more resignations.]

[Update: 2/3, noon EST Al Jazerra reports that protest permits will not be given, reform newspapers have been cautioned, and that the circle of actors is getting larger.

La Derni�re Heure (Bruxelles) gets two sound bites:
1. President of the Majlis, Mahdi Karroubi: �Etes-vous loyaux � l'�gard de l'Islam si vous priez quotidiennement mais que vous bafouez ensuite les droits du peuple?�
2. President of the Republic, Mohammad Khatami: �Mon gouvernement n'organisera que des �lections libres et concurrentielles, (car) le Parlement doit repr�senter les vues de la majorit� et inclure toutes les tendances (politiques).�

The next shoe to drop will be the provincial governments, who actually carry out the elections.]

[Original 2/2 posting begins.]

First, having looked at nearly 100 print pieces that have appeared in the last three days, from the Gulf, from Central Asia, and from the West, I don't think that more than three distinct sources of information are covering the crisis. Second, this really is a crisis. If Jim Capozzola wants to replace Arlen Spector, getting Arlen in Tehran sometime in the next two weeks would be a really good idea. Third, the mass resignations weren't simply "for show", with the legislative clock for certification of each resignation stretching out significantly towards the 20th, when the legislative elections are currently scheduled. The last three weeks of token legislative sit-in are not a dependable guide to the next three weeks. Fourth, the resignation count is 126, out of 290. Fifth, Mohammad Reza Khatami, head of the Islamic Participation Front and brother of President Mohammad Khatami, has decided that the IPF will not participate in the election set for 17 days from today, and is using the words "military" and "coup" to describe where the Islamic Republic is headed. Sixth, applications are in from student reform organizers for permits to hold protest rallies on the 4th.

Seventh, eighth and ninth, the conservatives or integralists or ... its complex, and I don't want to explain Nuri v Naini, or a 12 Shi'i, or ... are stuck. Iraq's clerics are taking the path not taken by the Iranian Imams. Their landslides last Spring were low turn out. The hard-line daily Resalat has published a criticism of the maximalist position of the Guardian Council. They've been visibly undemocratic, resorting to unelected religions institutions to veto reforms voted by the Majlis, and visibly exploitive of apathy resulting from frustrated reform, and a boycott of the election would delegitimize the Islamic Republic, even Ayatollah Khamenei.

Tenth, Ayatollah Khamenei has suddenly found it necessary to retire to a hospital for a few days. His staff indicates that he does not wish to arbitrate the candidate-decertification vs mass-resignation and election boycott trainwreck. Talk of deinstiutionalizing the role of Ayatollah Khamenei, the successor of Ayatollah Khomeini, has begun.

In the 25 years since the two weeks that saw the departure of the Shah to Aswan and the return of the Imam from Paris, nothing like this has happened. This is not the moment for American policy junkets.

Posted by at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

It is hard to overstate the importance of February 1st in Iran. Set the Wayback machine to Tehran in the Winter of 1979. Pahlavi-American absolutism, guaranteed by SAVAK, sputtered through gestures at reform and reaction throughout 1978, ending in mid-January with the Pahlavis fleeing to Egypt. Today Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deplaned in Tehran, from Paris, after 14 years in exile, and was greeted by ... millions of people.

A sea of names, heads of SAVAK, ministers, generals, Anglo-Americans in and out of uniform, in oil, in state security services, technocrats, cardiologists ... precede this moment. The moment of the Alavi Secondary School for Girls -- of the Komiteh-ye Imam.

A sea of names, Bakhtiar, the Kometehs, the Pasdarans, 37 days, Bani-Sadr, Beheshti, Bazargan, Ghotbzadeh, the coup attempts, the executions, the Americans ... follow this moment ... to the present moment, defined in part by the disaster at Bam.

Around all these swirls a vast sea of names, dates, places, acronyms -- Sheik Fazlollah Nuri, Muhamad Hossain Naini, dozens of Pahlavis, Mossadeqq, Kermit Roosevelt, Zahedi, Tudeh, the Fedaiin Majority and Minority, UIC, Pekar, Mojahedin, PKD, the Siahkal Incident, and Ayatollahs and clerics, some good, some simply murderers.

Joe Biden met with Kamal Kharrazi at Davos. Javad Zarif got an over-night pass out of the restricted-New-York box and allowed to travel to a dinner on the Hill. Arlen Specter wants to travel to Tehran. All very busy-buzzy in Washington policy circles.

Meanwhile, 117 of the 290 members of the Majlis resigned over an issue of the first importance in Persian politics -- the powers of the successor-in-interest of the Komiteh-ye Imam -- the clerical Guardian Council -- to select candidates for elections to the Majlis. Faced with their own 12th-of-December moment, the progressives and moderates of that legislature have chosen to walk away from a suspension of Democracy. They chose this day. The Day.

At least Iran appears to be off the Bush-Cheney re-elect war plan.

[Update: The resignation count is now 126. The Mellat Electronic Newspaper is here: mellat.majlis.ir.]

Posted by at 12:09 PM | Permalink