Le Monde reports that it has obtained documents which attest that Tehran pursued a nuclear military program after 2003, contradicting the NIE of 3 December 2007 -- National Intelligence Estimate: Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.
I'll provide translations in the morning.
As a proxy for the whole of Iran, the 30 candidate slates for Tehran are what I'll use this cycle. Why Tehran? Because that's where the leadership generally hails from.
In our last episode, the municipal elections of 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's slate, The Pleasant Scent of Service, got pasted, and the other conservatives, the moderates, and the reform slates did better than expected.
This cycle, for the 290 seats of the 8th Majlis (national assembly), there are slates of candidates filling out as the Guardian Council confirms the "competency" of each candidate. A slate aligned with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a slate of other conservative/fundamentalist candidates not aligned with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the slates aligned with / coordinated by / advised by Medhi Karrubi and Mohammad Khatami are contesting the 30 Tehran seats.
There is some overlap between the National Confidence Party's candidate list for Tehran and the Reform Coalition's candidate list for Tehran.
There is also some overlap between the United Fundamentalist Front's candidate list for Tehran, and an umbrella coalition of fundamentalist groups, though the UFF appears to be requiring candidates to be listed exclusively on the UCC list.
Medhi Karrubi is the General Secretary of the National Confidence Party, Abdolvahed Musavi Lari chairs the Reform Coalition. Ali-Asghar Zareii (Fragrance of Service) heads the United Fundamentalist Front, and Ali Dorani chairs the umbrella coalition of fundamentalist groups.
And looking ahead to the June 2009 presidentials, Mohammad Qalibaf is in Baghdad this week, doing Mayor-to-Mayor with Sabir al-Isawi, and meeting with Nouri al-Maliki, not just Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Another Bush Wictory, DinnerJacket's on the other side of the Straits, which means everyone there has done the outcomes and probabilities for a 2nd War of the Tankers on modern hulls with modern anti-ship missiles, plus the on-shore targeting, and having mulled over the standard resource denial problem, concluded that not having a 2nd War of the Tankers is better than having it.
The NIE is out.
Thanks to Robert who noticed I'd an extra "http://" in the link.
"The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) ruled yesterday that the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, acted illegally in refusing to take the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) off the proscribed terrorist blacklist drawn up under the 2000 Terrorist Act."
The MEK/MEO/PMOI/... was among the first organisations to be banned under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000.
The claim is that they haven't carried out any ops, anywhere, since their armor was turned over to CENTCOM, and any exfiltration from and to Camp Ashraf to operational objectives in Iran would have to pass through the American Zone of Control and coordinate with US forces to the point of insertion into the Islamic Republic to avoid "friendly fire" incidents.
It is a reasonable claim, but is it sufficient to make the organization "civil"? And if any of the "information" sourced by the MEK/MKO/PMOI/NCRI since 2003 on the "Iran's covert nuclear weapons program" they've created is as bogus as the NYTimes' information on the "Iraq's covert nuclear weapons program" , how is fabrication of causus belli an act that doesn't result in proscription?
The Jebheye Mosharekate Iran-e Eslaami (Islamic Iran Participation Front), which was headed by Mohammad Reza Khatami (the brother of Mohammad Khatami, the fifth President of Iran) until the election of Mohsen Mirdamadi, at the prior congress, just held their 10th Congress.
All the obvious reasonable things were said, about temporary suspension of enrichment, about anti-semitism and the Shoah, about Iraq, about the tea in China, but the most important thing was left unsaid. What will George Bush and Dick Cheney do to keep their man -- Ahmadi-Nejad -- and the conservative parties -- the Abadgaran, the followers of Yazdi, factions of the Revolutionary Guards -- in control of the 8th Majlis and the Iranian State?
Their biggest electoral political problem in obtaining a working plurality in the 8th Majlis is to counter the advantage Bush/Cheney will give 7th Majlis incumbents.
Ideas anyone?
Primary season in Persia in the '05 cycle began (for me) with Eric's Guide to Garbage, and going over the candidates (some of whom later dropped out to advance others, e.g., Ali Akbar Velayati (and others) to advance Rafsanjani (and others)) [November 15th, 2004]. Later in the cycle Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf tossed his considerable hat into the ring, and INRA polling data had a three-way tie for third place (Rafsanjani being first, Mehdi Karroubi second), between Ali Akbar Velayati, Mostafa Moin and Ali Larijani [March 17th, 2005]. Still later Velayati did drop out, specifically to advance former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani [April 11th, 2005], prior to the blow-up that lead Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to direct the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualification of former minister of science, research and technology Mostafa Moeen and Vice-President Mohsen Mehralizadeh [May 23rd, 2005].
Reading and re-reading Robert Tait's piece in today's Gruniad, that Velayati criticised Larijani's resignation, and a letter signed by 200 members of the 7th Majlis in support of Larijani, and a separate (or perhaps the same specified differently) letter from the Majlis' foreign and national security committee to Ahmadi-Nejad, that Larijani's resignation "put the country in danger", it still seems like politics rather than substantive policy.
I'm still of the ignorant opinion that its 8th Majlis electioneering, since all of the participants have a stake in the outcome of next March's election.
Ari Larijani resigned today. In the last cycle he finnished 6th in the first round, with 1,740,162 votes and I was surprised when he joined Ahmadi-Nejad for a highly visible post. Color me surprised again.
My uninformed-guess-at-a-distance is that its not substantive w.r.t. the pilot production of LEU for fuel, either at the single in-country (and incomplete and idle) electrical generation reactor, or more likely (according to me anyway) the unfilled millions of SWU (red area) in the regional electrical generation reactor LEU fuel market.
My WAG is that the 8th Majlis election cycle just kicked off. By February of 2004 Persian politics was in total meltdown, and the ballots will go out in about 150 days, about when Super Tuesday used to happen, before someone got a bunch of state parties to front-load the hell out of the primary and caucus cycle. Coding this as nukes-only is like coding Dodd's popularity as a sudden party preference for white hair, and missing the FISA filibuster.
Hossein Derakhshan ("Hoder") mentioned something recently that's been nagging me for years, and not too long after Juan Cole wrote a note to the same point. Hossein's piece is a critique of the Rafsanjanists, both in Iran and in exile. Juan's piece is a critique of the War Hawks who lead in funds raised in both the RNC and DNC presidential horse races.
Hossein is concerned that the Democrats are more sophisticated, and therefore more dangerous, than the simpler Republicans. Juan is concerned that the front-runners in both major parties are messaging "regime change" in Iran, that war with Iran is the litmus test of the 2008 cycle.
Iran was the war Jimmy Carter declined. It is the war the "ultras", to adopt Selig Harrison's term in this month's Le Monde Diplomatique, are in bi-partisan agreement to embark upon, at some unspecified date in the post-election future.
Here is a litmus test. Check the pH of your candidate of choice:
Iran is a legitimate, democratic, and sovereign state
There are three claims: (i) legitimate, (ii) democratic, and (iii) sovereign. Which does your candidate of choice contest, and what is the gravaman of the candidate's claim?
Which of (i) does s/he prefer? The royalist claims of Reza Pahlavi, aka "His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah II"? The resistance claims of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi? After all, the standard PMOI/MEK text that the West needs to go to war with Iran in order to install the MEK in power. Those two sets of claims exhaust the expat claims to delegitimate the Islamic Republic, leaving only ... the political movements, secular reform and clerical reform, of Mostafa Moin and Mehdi Karroubi, respectively, and former Presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami ... each of whom supports claims (i), (ii), and (iii).
Perhaps (ii)? So the major gains made by the Reform slate in the December 2006 municipal elections, winning or controlling over 250 town or city councils, pasting Ahmadinejad's "Sweet smell of service" slate, or the win by independent and reform candidates to the open seats in the 7th Majlis, or the lead the Qom Theological Society Teachers slate obtained over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Theological Schools and Universities Experts slate, the high point of which was the 400,000 vote margin Akbar Hashemi Bahramani Rafsanjani obtained over the next highest candidate, with Ahmadinejad's candidate, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, placing 6th, and almost not being elected to the Assembly of Experts at all, are gefilte fish?
That leaves (iii).
In case I've lost anyone, is there a Democrat competing in the current DNC primary and caucus cycle who messages that US -- Iran relations will, under his or her watch, be relations between two legitimate, democratic, and sovereign states?
If not, then Hoder is right, and Juan drew the Iran Hawk line too high, and ... the Iran War will not be prevented by impeaching Bush or Cheney or pinioning their wings until noon, January 20th, 2009. Merely delayed.
About 150 members of Congress signed a letter in 2002 attempting to get the Rajavi cult off the Foreign Terrorist Organization list. I'm looking for the names and I'll publish them when I find it.
The FSB (ex-KGB) isn't commenting, but a spokesperson for Vladimir Poutine's administration (aka "the Kremlin") disclosed to AFP that they have been informed of a plot to kill the President during his scheduled visit to Tehran.
More as this develops.
This is from the University of Tehran, where the students were protesting Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's entry (as President of the Islamic Republic, not as a former college professor (civil engineering), for reasons so awkwardly uttered recently by Lee Bollinger, in his personal capacity as Public Scold, not as President of Columbia University.
This isn't unprecedented, recall that Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's slate got creamed in the municipal and the Assembly of Experts elections, and students protested last December at the Amir Kabir Technical University.
Putin's going to Iran. That's about as clear a signal as the Cheney weenies could visibly ignore. Putin's visit is set for mid-October for the Caspian Sea Summit.
The Other Ms. Bush had words with Serge Lavrov today. The diplomatic press is reporting it as "un échange de mots virulent á propos de sanctions contre l'Iran".
Hey. Its only the Russians, so what could it matter?
Marty Longman's got a post up at BooMan Tribune about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is worth reading. It is an abbreviated version of what I've been writing for ages in the Return of the ... One True King (new series) and the latter parts of Return of the ... One True King series on the politics inside the Islamic Republic. Here's something I wrote the week after Ahmadi-Nejad's win in the 2nd round of the '05 cycle.
Lines are for lemmings.I'm trying to find a way to write away the label "hardliner" and its cognates to describe the former mayor of Tehran, the college professor (civil engineering), the appointed (by Ali Larijani), and subsequently elected, governor general of the newly established northwestern province of Ardebil, the post-war Islamic Revolution Guards (IRG) officer, the war-time IRG (Internal Security) officer and civil administrator (West Azarbaijan and Kurdestan provinces), the University student.
In the one week between the election and the run-off election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad messaged on the economy and managed a landslide win over Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. It is important to note that Ahmadinejad had non-economic support, but it is even more important to note that it was the economic voters -- the poor -- urban and rural -- who turned out and are the landslide.
The two themes that really stand out from his inaugral speach are poverty and the needs of the poor, and the need for the nuclear weapons states to reduce the stockpiles of weapons of mass distruction. The themes in the US/EU presses are "hardliner" and "nuclear weapons program".
Former Presidents of the Islamic Republic: Abolhassan Banisadr (non-cleric, impeached), Mohammad-Ali Rajaei (non-cleric, assassinated), Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei (cleric, promoted to Supreme Leader), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (cleric, two terms) and Mohammad Khatami (cleric, two terms).
Meanwhile, Governor Schwarzenegger (R-CA), Governor Perry (R-TX), both politicans running for re-election in the '08 cycle, are pushing divestiture. It is hard to judge, after one cup of coffee, which theory of right is funnier -- Ahmadi-Nejad's or Bush/Cheney/Schwarzenegger/Perry/... but Lee Bollinger has better reviews, dare I say, National Reviews, in Hawk Politics, or as a Sunday morning Hawk Policy Talking Head, then as the head of a research university.
Corine Lesnes' has an editorial in today's Le Monde which is a somber note from outside of the American Echo Chamber Bush attaquera-t-il l'Iran ?
Najmeh Bozorgmeh, writing for today's FT, has this Khatami plots comeback, a piece that simply begs for some polling data, but is better than anything coming out of the Cheney-by-way-of-Rice journabalisms.
Here is Zero Degree Turn, which Scott Harrop wrote up at Helena Cobban's Just World News. I'd like the rights to the American market.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to deliver himself of a text, but he hasn't delivered on his campaign promises -- promises Mahdi Karubi also made. I'd rather hear from former President Mohammad Khatami, or former Presidential candidate (1st round) and Speaker of the 6th Majlis, Mahdi Karubi, or former Minister for Education and Presidential candidate (1st round), Dr. Mostafa Moin, or former President and former Presidential candidate (2nd round), and current Chair of the Assembly of Experts, (and possibly the next Supreme Leader), Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The vote was 41 to 30. It is interesting for several reasons. First, the huge margin Rafsanjani obtained in the Tehran municipal election is not fluff -- Hashemi Rafsanjani had the highest vote for the Assembly of Experts from Tehran, and because, at its base, the selection of the apparently autocratic Supreme Leader, to be capable of emulation within the theory of the Shi'i Islamic State, must reflect the consent of the governed ... (from Hossein Ali Montazeri, link below). Second, it was a seriously contested election, and the factions associated with Ahmadinejad lost.
Prior work of note on the last election cycle, which was a simultanious ballot on all municipal and Assembly of Expert (provincial allocation) seats, and on several open majlis seats:
Also, one snarky note on the lack of clue at the LA Times (largest Iranian expat population in the US), Kim Murphy is not a Wampum reader (January 25, 2007), and a background piece on succession in the Islamic Republic, Hossein Ali Montazeri, which runs from wilayat-i faqih to the characteristics of the Tor-M1 surface to air missile.
Farideh Farhi writes at Juan Cole's new blog Hashemi Rafsanjani is back!, which is worth reading if you read anything about Iran in the present moment.
When I first blogged about the arrest of Haleh Esfandiari on the day of her arrest (May 10th, 2007), I suggested that the arrest arose from domestic (Iranian) cause(s), rather than the nuclear brinksmanship played enthusiastically by the matched pair of idiots -- Bush and Ahmadinejad. There is competition between Ahmadinejad's faction and Rafsanjani's (and/or Khatami's) faction(s), which can be acted out by proxies, using Anglo-American aligned Iranian exiles and expats.
Then there's the substantive issue raised by the association of the National Endowment for Democracy, established by law on November 23rd, 1983, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Reasoning by analogy can be misleading, but the NED has a track record as an instrument of national policy, in particular against the regimes currently in place in Cuba and Venezuela.
Juan Cole's take on her arrest and release and mine differ, for several reasons. I simply don't see this as a black-and-white issue, nor even one that is better viewed as a proxy for the Anglo-American vs Islamic Republic struggle for intellectual and diplomatic market share. However, your milage may vary.
Here are the original, and translated into Farsi texts, of Hernando Calvo Ospina's piece that ran in the July issue of Le Monde Diplomatique. Quand une respectable fondation prend le relais de la CIA and Farsi text. Enjoy.
Le Monde reports today that the Parliamentary Report (UK) released today on the maritime border incident of last March is substantially in agreement with the material I and others posted then. The HMS Cornwall was in Iranian waters, Blair was lying or negligently uninformed, and the process could have been shortened by a week if London had used their heads and talked with the Tehran.
There was only about two of us, Craig Murry and myself, at the time who were posting on the substantive issue. Anyway, the other shoe finally dropped.
H. Con.Res.21 and S.970 continue to make their way through the lower and upper houses of the Democratic majority federal legislature, along with the IED pretext ... towards eventual worst-use by the Republican Executive.
Sort of makes the point of '06 hard to recall. Thanks Joe! Another Adventure in Cordite for the AIPAC checkbook is what every Dem needs.
Today former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami offered to mediate between Fatah and Hamas. He conducted meetings with representatives from each organization.
You have exactly 5 seconds to decide if you should express encouragement or discouragement. You may prevaricate and mumble something about "study the issue", but if so, you're not ready for primary time.
Pretend you're some congressional or above candidate and jot down in comments your (assumed) character and his or her decision or lack of one.
Rationing went into force yesterday in Iran. The per-vehicle monthly allotment is 100 liters. Le Monde reports long lines, some resistance (12 stations burned in Tehran). The police report making 80 arrests, also in Tehran.
The plan of record is that rationing will be in effect until October or December. Recall that the mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ran for president of the Islamic Republic on a platform of uplifting the poor. His initial nominees for the Oil and Welfare-and-Cooperatives ministries, Ali Saeedlou (Oil) and Hashemi (Welfare), both deputies in the Ahmadinejad administration of Tehran, were rejected by the Majlis, and this is where he's in trouble, again.
Five months ago I wrote about the limited circulation report by the Majlis on sanctions. Ahmadinejad and Larijani have said that sanctions couldn't hurt Iran, the authors of the Majlis report came to the conclusion that freezing (or seizing) its overseas bank accounts, an embargo on crude oil from Iran, and an embargo on refined petroleum products, gasoline in particular, to Iran, would hurt Iran economically, and therefore socially.
I suppose its time to enter Iran in Marc Lynch's Who'll be the first t'blow? spec-u-race over at Abu Aardvark. Not because the remaining Rehnquist Puchists (aka "the Cheney Gang") are twisting the right knobs in Congress (the S.970 fiasco is really about restarting the arms race with the Soviet fissiles inventory custodian, packaged neatly for the members of the Federal Legislature who let Cheney and Rumsfeld Gates do their thinking for them), because no one in Iran uses uranium in any form to get from point A to points B and C, but for the same reasons many Americans associate failure with the Carter years.
I've no idea if the average '00 or '04 Bush/Cheney voter has buyer's remorse, but I expect I'll see former Speaker of the (6th) Majlis, Medhi Karrubi (Assembly of Combatant Clergy, 1st-Gen revolutionary clergy, as well as a reformer), who offered to make the poor in Iran at least $62 better off, in the news again.
In the US, which in 1942 was, like Iran then and today, a petroleum exporter, the general population (class A) was limited to 4 gallons/week, those essential to the war effort (class B) were limited to 8 gallons/week, and doctors and mullahs clergy, etc. (class C), and members of Congress were not rationed.
Only Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Bernie would have made three, were he not in the Senate.
Its twice as many as the last important moment, when only Barbara Lee voted correctly.
She's being held at Evin. Its probably part of the present attack on "immoral women" and unrelated to the nuclear chess game played in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Tel Aviv, New York, and Tehran, or the dying embers of the Damascus-Tehran fire worshiped by dual-national (neocon/Likudnik) Zoroastrians.
Which leaves the problem of how to obtain her release and the return of her passport.
ABC is reporting that the attack on a bus transporting some Revolutionary Guards in Zahedan (Sistan-Baluchestan province) was an American op, carried out by proxies.
Here's what I wrote the day it happened, Valentine's Day:
An attack team of two persons mounted on motorcycles engaged a bus used to transport the local Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) with automatic weapons and a pre-positioned car bomb in Zahedan, in the Sistan-Baluchestan Province this morning. The initial casualty report is that 18 IRGC were killed and "many" wounded.This is an unusual event in Iran. Bombs in trashcans during elections, the occasional bombings in the Arab areas on the Iraq border, firefights in Kurdistan, and very occasionally, something on the Baluchistan border.
This pretty much settles the question of who has activated PMOI ops carried out from Iraq and Baluchi ops carried out from Baluchistan (aka "Pakistan").
I suppose I should point out that retail killing has no military utility. A bus full of people or a building full of people, neither has the slightest material consequence. Political utility is another matter of course. Retail killings can start a war, or a domestic tyranny.
The terms of the Treaty of Algiers (March 6th, 1975), concluded between President Saddam Hussain and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, specific to the Shatt al Arab, was the frontier between Iraq and Iran would be adjusted, including the following of the thalweg (deepest flow) along the entire length of the Shatt al-Arab.
Iraq's stated war aims for its 22 September 1980 attack on Iran, abrogating the Treaty of Algiers, were to recover rights of exclusive navigation of the Shatt al-Arab, to regain several islands, the three Gulf islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb, held by Iran since 1971.
The theory of right was the appeal to median baselines (midpoints), rather than deepest flow. The latter was adopted by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 (see Art. 5, Normal baseline, Art. 7, Straight baselines, Art. 9, Mouths of rivers, Art. 15, Delimitation of the territorial sea between States with opposite or adjacent coasts, and Art. 16, Charts and lists of geographical coordinates), and some prior international law treaties such as the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea.
The choice of mechanism, thalweg vs baseline, has been present in Shatt al-Arab boundary determination for all of the 20th century. In 1932 King Faisal I visited Iran. Shah Reza Pahlavi requested an adjustment of the border according to the thalweg principle, i.e. following the midpoint of the river's narrow and deep main channel of navigation. Faisal refused, and by 1934 Iraq appealed its case to the League of Nations. After the 1936 coup in Baghdad, Iraq agreed to make the border between Iraq and Iran follow the thalweg for four miles opposite Abadan. See the Iraqi-Iranian Frontier Treaty of 1937.
From the accessible page of Hussein Sirriyeh's Development of the Iraqi-Iranian Dispute, 1847 to 1975, a nice one-para backgrounder with a correction and a continuation in []:
The dispute over Shatt al-Arab (the channel constituted by the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates and stretching for about 50 miles before it flows into the Gulf) is traceable to the Ottoman-Persian frontier dispute in the seventeeth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was settled by the [Second] Treaty of Erzurm on 31 May 1847, which gave the Ottomans the right of confrol over the whole Shatt al-Arab. The Ottoman-Persian frontiers were demarcated in 1913 -- 1914 according to a protocol signed in Constantinople in 1913 and a demarcation ... [commission, which wasn't particularly successful and was interrupted by the Crimean War (1854-56), the Anglo-Persian War (1856-57), and the Russo-Turkish War of 1876, as Anglo-Russian colonial conflict completely subordinated Ottoman-Persian conflict. ]
Where Tony Blair enters this mess is in the wanton and willful choice of pretending there is no choice of mechanism, hence there is no boundary dispute, and that the absence of decenial adjustments to the boundary reflecting the natural movement of the watercourse, independent of mechanism (thalweg or baseline), since the Iraq-Iran War, or the better part of 30 years, has no effect in law of determining whether the HMS Cornwall was illegally in Iraqi waters, or illegally in Iranian waters.
As to the lawfullness of acts of belligerency arising over a dispute over the boundary, there is this to consider.
On 9 December 1991, the UN Secretary-General reported the following to the UN Security Council:
That Iraq's explanations do not appear sufficient or acceptable to the international community is a fact. Accordingly, the outstanding event under the violations referred to is the attack of 22 September 1980, against Iran, which cannot be justified under the charter of the United Nations, any recognized rules and principles of international law or any principles of international morality and entails the responsibility for conflict.Even if before the outbreak of the conflict there had been some encroachment by Iran on Iraqi territory, such encroachment did not justify Iraq's aggression against Iran -- which was followed by Iraq's continuous occupation of Iranian territory during the conflict -- in violation of the prohibition of the use of force, which is regarded as one of the rules of jus cogens.
On one occasion I had to note with deep regret the experts' conclusion that "chemical weapons had been used against Iranian civilians in an area adjacent to an urban centre lacking any protection against that kind of attack.
See also Craig Murray's blog for another well-informed discussion.
There is Craig Murray's set of notes. I don't think he wrote about the choice of mechanism, and may not be aware that from an Iranian (or Persian), or even an Iraqi (or Mesopotamian, or an Ottoman) point of view, subordination of thalweg (mid point of deepest flow), that is, shared navagability, may be both a more rational (or useful) means to partition a shared maritime resource than median baseline from tidal or other fixed point markers, _and_ the better choice of law, being not imposed by the 19th century colonial actors and subsequently re-imposed as "international law".
I suspect that is why Iran will proceed to some law venue, to make the point that the choice of mechanism is not moot because it pleased Saddam Hussein in 1980 and it pleases Tony Blair in 2007.
We know this because s/he just got a two-pager in the LATimes, Dissent grows in Iran, and in the august pages of the newspaper of record of California s/he demoted the two-term former President of the Islamic Republic and Chairman of the Expediency Council and the highest vote getter for the Assembly of Experts in Tehran, to candidate for the legislature.
So, um, s/he missed the point that Rafsanjani is either the next Supreme Leader, or one of the controlling votes for the next Supreme Leader, and went to the polls and voted with another two-term former President of the Islamic Republic, and just about everything else of significance in the Tehran municipals, other than the date they were held.
Prior work: Hmm. How about this and this and this and this and this. Oh, and this.
I managed to self-inflict some MSM time over the past 72 hours so I was unfortunate enough to catch the media cycle that ran with "a new mission for the USAF", doing border patrol. At first I thought it was a sop to the Tancredo/King/Brownback/Buchanan wing of the RNC, with Zoomies burning up Jet A over the NoGringo NoGo.
Then the penny dropped.
Iran. To interdict those famous IEDs. The next war's pretext. At some point some Zoomie is going to go to guns on a truck, and this will get replayed:
One Israeli air strike hit a farm near Qaa, close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley where workers, mostly Syrian Kurds, were loading plums and peaches on to trucks, local officials said. They said 33 people were killed and 20 wounded.Television footage showed bodies of what appeared to be farm workers lined up near the ruins of a small structure in fruit groves. Strewn nearby were fruit baskets.
"I was picking peaches when three bombs hit. Others were having lunch and they were torn to pieces," said Mohammad Rashed, one of the wounded. Syria's official news agency said 17 of the dead were Syrian workers, five of them women.
"The air force spotted a truck that was suspected to have been loaded with weapons cross from Syria into Lebanon on a route that is routinely used to transport weapons," an Israeli military source said. "The truck entered into a building and remained inside for an hour, then left and returned to Syria."
He said that when the truck left, the building was attacked.
By all means, if Olmert's band of idiots couldn't win the 33 Day War using the wrong weapons, then Bush's band of idiots can try even harder.
Gordon Johndroe, spokesperson for the NSC:
The president and his national security team over the last several months have continued to receive information that Iranians were supplying IED equipment and or training that was being used to harm American soldiers.
Dowlat Nowrouzi, spokesperson for the MEK/PMOI/NRO in the UK:
Thousands of members of SCIRI and the Badr Brigades are still on Teheran's payroll. They receive monthly sums in Rials in return for carrying out "terrorist attacks" and causing "chaos".
Good to know who's running the Regime's Iran policy. Maryam Rajavi and her happy band of elves status terrorists.
Concerning contacts with Iranian opposition groups, there are numerous such groups in the United States and abroad that do not espouse violence and whose political aims range from supporting a return of the monarchy to establishing a constitutional democracy. Many focus their efforts on Iranian human rights abuses, and work closely with the U.N. Human Rights Committee and private human rights groups. We do meet with representatives of such groups at their request, and believe these contacts are useful as an informational exchange.However, the National Council of Resistance is closely linked to the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Both groups are led by Masud Rajavi. The Administration maintains a policy of no contacts with the PMOI and, by extension, the NCR. This decision is based on our opposition to the PMOI's use of terrorism. Just as we vigorously oppose the Iranian Government's support for terrorism, we do not condone the use of terror and violence in turn by the Mojahedin or any other opposition group. Nor can we forget that U.S. citizens were the victims of PMOI terrorism in the 1970s, or that the group supported the takeover of our Embassy in 1979 and the holding of U.S. diplomats. The PMOI's claim that the organization is not responsible for actions carried out while its current leaders were in jail is a facile one and, in the case of the Embassy takeover, erroneous. As shown in attached 1981 excerpts from the PMOI's own newspaper--published after current PMOI leader Masud Rajavi was released from jail in February 1979--the group fully supported the Embassy takeover and opposed releasing our diplomats. Only in recent years has the PMOI sought to distance itself from its past in order to gain Western support.
Other factors support our view that it would be inappropriate to deal with the PMOI/NCR. The National Council of Resistance's claims to be a democratic organization have never been substantiated by its actions. The NCR did, at its inception, include a diverse range of Iranian opposition groups. However, within three years most of the groups that were not controlled by Masud Rajavi had left the organization. According to Ervand Abrahamian's book The Iranian Mojahedin (Yale University Press, 1989), these groups left because the NCR was not democratic, but rather manipulated by Rajavi.
In years since, most Iranian opposition groups have continued to refuse cooperation with the NCR. A recent example was a 1992 interview with the late Dr. Sa'id of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Iran), who denied any links or connections with the PMOI, and said, `In our opinion, our cooperation with the PMOI right now is impossible.' We have no reason to believe the PMOI has become democratic, nor that an Iranian government established by the NCR would be.
In a different area, I would note that the PMOI/NCR reporting often contains questionable statements and assertions which do not stand up to later examination. Our intelligence community judges that their reporting is not reliable without validation from other sources.
Our own analysis does not support PMOI claims to widespread support inside Iran. The PMOI's military wing, the national Liberation Army, continues to be based in Iraq and retains the support and financing of Saddam Hussein's regime. The PMOI joined Iraqi forces in the eight-year war with Iran. These ties to Iraq have discredited the Mojahedin and NCR in the eyes of many Iranians, and the organization does not represent a significant political force among Iranians.
Wendy R. Sherman, Assistant Secretary, Legislative Affairs, to Rep. Lee Hamilton (D), September 28, 1993, who then advocated "opening a dialogue with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which espouses democracy and human rights".
When Ali Khamenei dies, and he's under the weather with flu according to his spokesperson, the Assembly of Experts will select his successor. Khamenei wasn't actually a marja, he didn't meet the jurisprudence qualifications to become the Supreme Leader, and anyone reading this and wanting to know the "why" should read Abbas Amanat's From ijtihad to wilayat-i faqih: The Evolving of the Shi'ite Legal Authority to Political Power, but Mohammad Shirazi, Hussein Ali Montazeri-Najafabadi, Hassan Tabatabai-Qomi and Yasubedin Rastegari. all declined to accept Ali Khamenei as a figure to emulate for Shi'a inside Iran, and all are Grand Ayatollahs.
Ali Montazeri has made it known he is concerned about the leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, about the wisdom, necessity and utility of nuclear posturing, of sanctions-caused inflation running closer to 50% than 13%, of "governing on slogans" -- even a line that would be unremarkable in Washington City -- extremism does not serve the interests of the people.
Hashemi Rafsanjani had the highest vote for the Assembly of Experts from Tehran, and because, at its base, the selection of the apparently autocratic Supreme Leader, to be capable of emulation within the theory of the Shi'i Islamic State, must reflect the consent of the governed, whether Ali Khamenei decides to instruct the President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to trim his sails, or not, the direction of the Islamic Republic will not follow President Ahmadinejad at some point in the proximal future.
Former President and Hojatoleslam Seyed Ali Khamenei Khamenei may be influenced by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the original designated successor to the Imam Khomeini, or not, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as adrift in Tehran as Geoge W. Bush is in Washington City.
Apropos of nothing, an unknown, but non-zero number of, possibly 29, possibly more, Tor-M1 surface to air missiles, deployed in Iran within the past few days. Because I worked on equivalent tech, all the details John Pike had on hand are in the extended area. The conjecture is that they are deployed around the nuclear facilities ... which is fine if you think Red Player is planning on running a multi-point interior defense of its symbolic assets, rather than say, theater defense while projecting interdiction of Blue Player's non-symbolic assets.
Le Monde has obtained a limited circulation report by the Majlis on sanctions. While Ahmadinejad and Larijani have said that sanctions couldn't hurt Iran, the authors of the Majlis report came to the conclusion that freezing (or seizing) its overseas bank accounts, an embargo on crude oil from Iran, and an embargo on refined petroleum products, gasoline in particular, to Iran, would hurt Iran economically, and therefore socially.
Its interesting. Here's the link to the original: L'embargo qui fait peur à Téhéran
Ahmadinejad ran on poverty, as did Karrubi. But Ahmadinejad hasn't delivered a noticable benefit to Iranians too poor to substitute their material well-being for ... Iraq-under-the-Americans queues for gasoline and Iraq-under-the-Americans intermittant electricity and the Iraq-under-the-Americans economy.
It takes years to prepare for a war-time economy, and Ahmadinejad simply hasn't got the "sweet smell of service" for anything resembling national self-sufficiency in refined petrochemicals, let alone an export market to Pakistan and India, or Afganistan and Central Asia. He hasn't bought up years worth of spare parts for everything Europe sells that Iran can't manufacture. I'm struck by the similarity of his response to the Euro-American "discovery" of the fissiles program of Reza Shah and the Islamic Republic and the "Thrusters" of War Plan Orange, before, and after, December 7th, 1941. Rather than wait, build, and "do nothing", he's charging off towards the nuclear weapons states Home Islands with battleships begun under the Fiscal Year 1906-1919 programs in the van, supported by CV 2, CV 3 and CV 6, looking for a decisive win. Ahead waits the most sophisticated Navy in the world.
It will be a spectacularly short strike by a union with no strike fund, or lock-out by mine management with no inventory above ground.
It wasn't why he was hired.
Of course, on our side of the bitter water there's Henry Kissenger who's writing completely idiotic crap about Iran being imperialist. He's advising the remaining Rehnquist Puchists, who themselves went charging off to start ground wars in Central Asia on their "December 7th". Projection. Godzilla sees nothing but large lizards lacking attitude adjustment, except when looking in the mirror, where Bambi always waits.
Hassan Ghafouri-Fard was a major independent candidate in the '01 cycle presidential race. He picked up 452,801 or the 2,111,037 votes cast for the Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr (taken as one) constituency, taking one of the two seats. Soheila Jelodarzadeh was one of 14 women are elected to the Fifth Majls (1996-2000):, and to the Sixth Majles (2000-2004). She ran on the (unified) Reform slate and picked up 307,618 votes to win the second open seat.
Note: Four women were elected to the First Majles (1980-1984), all from Tehran, four women were elected to the Second Majles (1984-1988), again, all from Tehran. Three women were elected to the Third Majles (1988-1992), all from Tehran, and nine women were elected to the Fourth Majles (1992-1996), five from Tehran. Source: Appendix: Chronology of Events Regarding Women in Iran since the Revolution of 1979, by Elham Gheytanchi.
Agence France-Press reports that reformists now claime they had made major gains and were controlling over 250 town or city councils.
Rafsanjani, wearing the hat of Chairman of the Expediency Council, only one sunset after being confirmed as the highest vote getter for the Assembly of Experts in Tehran, said that the the nation expects the government not to evade the goals of the strategy plan. The strategic plan he's referring to is the '20-Year Strategy for Economic, Cultural and Social Development Plan (2005-2025), which is scheduled for a conference in the very near future. I read that as a veiled reference to Ahmadinejad, who ran on delivering those goals in the '05 cycle, and hasn't.
Unrelated, another Bush Victory -- Iran is switching from the US dollar to the EU euro. The Petro-Dollar is dead, long live the Euro-Dollar!
With 695,985 votes counted from 2,013 ballot boxes, the Tehran municipals standings are as follows:
1- Mehdi Chamran: 169,978
2- Morteza Talaie: 153,525
3- Hadi Sa'ie: 120,435
4- Rasoul Khadem: 120,387
5- Abbas Sheibani: 108,275
6- Alireza Dabir: 92,820
7- Hamzeh Shakib-ba: 88,134
8- Masoumeh Ebtekar: 72,611
9- Ahmad Masjed-Jame'i: 68,208
10- Parvin Ahmadinejad: 65,701 ("Sweet smell of service" slate)
11- Mohammad-Ali Najafi: 64,248
12- Masoumeh Abad: 54,556
13- Hassan Bayadi: 53,662
14- Khosro Daneshjou: 52,536 ("Sweet smell of service" slate)
15- Abdolmoqim Nasehi: 52,527
(16-50 continued in the extended area.
Continue reading "Tehran municipals continued even more (updates)" »
The by-election results for the constituencfor Ahvaz and Bam to the 7th Majlis are out. Shabib Jouijari was elected with 72,803 votes out of 406,808 in Ahvaz, and Moussa Ghazanfar-Abadi was elected with 108,186 votes out of 153,845. I don't know anything about either of these two men, or the political divisions contesting these two seats to the Majlis at present.
The AoE ballot in Tehran Province had only 32 candidates, and the 2.1 million ballots were tabulated yesterday. The Tehran City Council and Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr constituency had 1,200 and 100 candidates, respectively. Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi says it will take more time to do the job carefully.
The number of election problems is down remarkably from the 2005 Presidential levels. Either the forces, and there were a lot of them, sufficient to steal both rounds of that election, didn't make the same errors voting the dead and so on, or they weren't available. My guess from the edge of my little tide pool is (b), because there was something really important in this election, the legitimacy of the outcome of the AoE election, and the center of that was the Tehran overlap, where Ahmadinejad's clerical surrogate lost big (AoE), and Ahmadinejad's sister and her slate also lost big (municipal).
Look for this meme in the MSM (current at Reuters):
Political analysts said the elections, the first since Ahmadinejad's stunning 2005 presidential win, would have no immediate impact on policy in the Islamic state where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word on all matters.
Remember that Ahmadinejad ran in '05 on delivering to the poor, and that his municipal slate lost Tehran and Isfahan, if not all the major urban contests, with both competing slates, Reform (united this cycle) and Traditional (non-Ahmadinejad) messaging that he'd not delivered on the basics. Further, if Ali Khamenei is in fact seriously ill, or may become so during the tenure of the 4th Assembly of Experts, oversite of Ali Khamenei's function as Supreme Leader, and pre-selection competition, even the revisiting of Ali Khamenei's status as a non-marja in candidates for his successor, such as Rafsanjani, will be determined by the composition of the 86 member of the 4th Assembly of Experts.
First, the AoE results for Tehran. Akbar Hashemi Bahramani Rafsanjani first, by a 400,000 vote margin over the next highest candidate, and Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi only managed to place sixth. That is particularly gratifying as it is both a theological loss for former Tehran mayor and current President of the Islamic Republic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a political win for former Presidents Khatami and Rafsanjani, that is, for "Reform" with "continuity".
The AoE results are in for the provices other than Tehran, I simply haven't had time to look up the winners, but I'm assuming that the Jame-e Modaressin Hoze Elmie Qom (Qom Theological Society Teachers) slate did much better than the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's [farsi unknown] (Theological Schools and Universities Experts) slate.
Jomhouri Islami reports that Reform candidates took three seats on the Isfahan city council, with other non-Ahmadinejad candidates, independent and conservative, taking additional seats. Mehr continues to report that Qalibaf list and the Reform list hold a comfortable majority of the Tehran council seats and the Ahmadinejad list will hold only a few seats. The Tehran municpal results will be offically announced tonight (Tehran). Tick tick.
I don't have the results yet for Mashhad, Tabriz and Shiraz.
Michael Theodoulou has a worthwhile read at the Times Online,