Wampum

Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into alleged fraud during last Friday’s first, and since Ahmadinejad was credited with more than 50%, only round of the presidential election.

Iran’s state television said today that Ayatollah Khamenei asked the Guardian Council to probe the written allegations of irregularities in the election process made by Mir Hosain Mousavi, Independent Party, and Medhi Karbui, Etemad e Melli party (National Trust), the two reform candidates.

As tehranbureau.com appears to be down, here is the Mousavi letter (english version only).

In the Name of God

Honorable people of Iran

The reported results of the 10th Iranians residential Election are appalling. The people who witnessed the mixture of votes in long lineups know who they have voted for and observe the wizardry of I.R.I.B (State run TV and Radio) and election officials. Now more than ever before they want to know how and by which officials this game plan has been designed. I object fully to the current procedures and obvious and abundant deviations from law on the day of election and alert people to not surrender to this dangerous plot. Dishonesty and corruption of officials as we have seen will only result in weakening the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran and empowers lies and dictatorships.

I am obliged, due to my religious and national duties, to expose this dangerous plot and to explain its devastating effects on the future of Iran. I am concerned that the continuation of the current situation will transform all key members of this regime into fabulists in confrontation with the nation and seriously jeopardize them in this world and the next.

I advise all officials to halt this agenda at once before it is too late, return to the rule of law and protect the nation’s vote and know that deviation from law renders them illegitimate. They are aware better than anyone else that this country has been through a grand Islamic revolution and the least message of this revolution is that our nation is alert and will oppose anyone who aims to seize the power against the law.

I use this chance to honor the emotions of the nation of Iran and remind them that Iran, this sacred being, belongs to them and not to the fraudulent. It is you who should stay alert. The traitors to the nation’s vote have no fear if this house of Persians burns in flames. We will continue with our green wave of rationality that is inspired by our religious learnings and our love for prophet Mohammad and will confront the rampage of lies that has appeared and marked the image of our nation. However we will not allow our movement to become blind one.

I thank every citizen who took part in spreading this green message by becoming a campaigner and all official and self organized campaigns, I insist that their presence is essential until we achieve results deserving of our country.

[ verse from in Quran: Why not trust in God, who has shown us our ways. We are patient in face of what disturbs us. Our resilience is in god. ]

Mir Hossein Mousavi

If Ahmadinejad had delivered on his campaign promises in the last cycle, and raised the standard of living of Iran's poor, and much of Iran is poor, if he'd done what both he and Mehdi Karbui messaged, he'd be credible in the current cycle.

Formally, the request from the Supreme Leader to the Guardian Council to do anything creates a 10 day stay of any electoral outcome.

I arrive at a different conclusion from that offered by the writers for the NYT. I think that vilayat-e-faqih itself is in doubt. Recall 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.

What is touched is the legitimacy of the Rehnquist Court, not Rove. It is the captors of the 1979 Revolution, not the former Mayor of Tehran and his "sweet smell of success" party.

Posted by EBW at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mehr and Fars are both reporting that Mohammad Khatami has decided not to run for president.

If today's round of reform candidate meetings confirms the rather eager conservative media outlets, this leaves Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who declared on Tuesday, and Mehdi Karroubi as the reform candidates.

Posted by EBW at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The website for the Association of Combatant Clerics (Majma’e Rohaniyoon Mobarez) was relaunched yesterday, and at a press accessibility associated with the event, former president Mohammad Khatami told reporters "I would like to announce my candidacy for the upcoming presidential election."

I'm interested in what Mehdi Karroubi is going to do, and then there are the non-reform potential candidates.

Posted by EBW at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sam Gardner writes Russia and Iran Get Strategic in Foreign Policy In Focus.

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On the "Principalist" side there are Ali Akbar Velayati and Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, both of whom contested the 2005 election. Ironically, in 2005 Velayati withdrew from the race in favour of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who pointedly went to the polls together with former President Mohammad Khatami to vote for the 8th Majlis. If that isn't enough to give one pause, is Tehran Mayor and former Chief of Police Qalibaf really a "Principalist" or a "pragmatist conservative", the usual term given to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani?

On the "Reform" side there are former President Mohammad Khatami, former Speaker of the Majlis Mehdi Karrubi (Etemad Melli Party) and even former Primer Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, all of whom have indicated that there will be only one reform candidate in the 2009 election, unlike the 2005 election when the reform vote was split across several candidates.

I will tell all the reformists and those who may not belong to the reformist (camp) but would like to see a change in the current situation, and with respect for all who have announced or will announce their candidacies, that, God willing, (either I) or Mr. Mousavi will be the reformist candidate.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi was prime minister from 1981 to 1989 when Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei was president. He was the last prime minister of Iran before the change in the constitution which eliminated the post of prime minister. He's been out of public life for two decades.

This is why crap by people like Geneive Abdo is dangerous. Waiting until after the election to try and work constructively with the Islamic Republic (a) mistakes the President for the state, and (b) misses the current, and continuous opportunity to frame US interests, and petroleum importer interests, in constructive comparisons with the "Principalist" and "Pragmatic" and "Reform" frames of Iranian interests, and petroleum exporter interests.

WINEP’s Dennis Ross has been an economic hawk on Iran, spouting nonsense like "cutting [Iran's] economic lifeline" over the nuclear fuel cycle issue, as if (a) Japan, China and India might pass on the oil and gas to make the Bush/Cheney/AIPAC gang look good, and (b) this was a useful way to think about the Islamic Republic in the first place. If Obama selects him to be the uber-stupid for US-Iran policy, then Abdo's literary fiction will take on human form.

Posted by EBW at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Marc Lynch is moving, from Abu Aardvark to Foreign Policy. I've asked him to keep his archives available, then I clicked on through to FP and began to read. Why Not to Engage Iran (Yet) by Geneive Abdo caught my eye, so I read.

Para 1 mentions next July's elections and Mehdi Karoubi, who ran against Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad on a populist platfom in the last cycle, and the sixty academic economists letter, without bothering to mention the 3% VAT crisis (introduced in July, resulting in a Bazarini strike) or the wicked obvious crash in crude oil prices. So that para is misleading.

Para 2 manages to link Hugo Chávez, Hassan Nasrallah, and Moqtada al-Sadr to Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad, which is a peculiar choice, as Vladimir Putin, Nouri al-Maliki, and Manmohan Singh are rather more important to Iran than three names from the Bush/Cheney list of "rogues", and where is Bashar Assad in the lineup? So another misleading para.

Having framed the narrative -- Dinner Jacket needs friends and his usual posse won't do, the next two paras are a unit. Forget that DJ wrote Shrub a 16 page letter in May of 2006, he wrote a letter to Barak Obama and it is "Barack Obama -- or rather, all the advisors on the U.S. president-elect’s foreign-policy team who keep talking about the need for the United States to talk to Iran" who are the friends that Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad needs to bolstering his legitimacy. In the one week between the election and the run-off election in July of 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad messaged on the economy and managed a landslide win over Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mr. Ahmadi-nejad is "legit" in Iran, with or without a US President's blessing.

Its a rehash of "Obama’s willingness to hold unconditional talks with hostile regimes, including Iran" from the Republican rhetorical toolkit. The crash of crude oil prices puts a lot of export economies in a bind, including a lot of pro-American monarchies, not just Iran.

Para 5 has this

Under Iranian law, all candidates for the parliament and the presidency must be approved by the Guardian Council, a panel dominated by conservative clerics appointed by the supreme leader. At this point, it is unclear if Khamenei will give the nod to permit the controversial Ahmadinejad to run for a second term.

That had me in stiches. 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) and Mohamoud Ahmadi-nejad (engineer, one term then booted for lack of "competency"). That is how Geneive Abdo sees the history of the Presidents of Post-Pahlavi Iran? That Ahmadi-nejad is sent packing like Banisadr? What a hoot!

The piece concludes with this

If the Obama administration does intend to talk to Iran, however, it might be wise to wait until after the Iranian election in June. Otherwise, all the talk over the coming years is likely to be with Ahmadinejad.

Anyway, that's where Marc's taking the Aardvark. Wish he'd stay where he is, but we all make choices.

Anyway, that's one piece of the hit-Obama mosaic being set up by the NeoCons who really wouldn't have much in the way of job prospects if the US and Iran "got over" the "den of spies" "hostage crisis" and just got on with the ordinary banality of co-existance without high drama.

Posted by EBW at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been reading Hoder for years and I'm bothered that he may have been taken into custody.

via The Skeptic الشكاك.

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At the Cairo ICANN meeting I sat down to chat with someone from the .sy (Syria) registry, just as I had at a prior ICANN with someone from the .ps (Palestine) regsitry. At the Paris ICANN meeting I spoke at length with someone from the .ir (Iran) registry, which unfortunately was not possible at the Cairo meeting as his getting a visa proved impossible, just as getting visas for 30+ Chinese engineers was impossible for IETF-73 in Minneapolis. However, we communicate regularly, just as thousands of other communicating pairs of people located in North America and Iran. My work has me thinking hard on things like Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and how digits are represented, so this lovely piece of art gets a second showing.

The JESI is correct that the portion of the Cheney/Bush catastrophe which it describes as "campaigns against the Taliban and al-Qaeda" has caused and continues to cause human suffering and losses to civilization on a scale equivalent to the periods we call the Pol Pot Regime or the Rwanda Genocide, though the JESI's choice of terminology, "weakens U.S. national security" is profoundly incorrect. The JESI's next rhetorical device, the second half of a two-themed opening problem statement, was written in a suburb of Tel Aviv, not a suburb of Chicago or New York. The JESI are free to reject the plain language of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and assert that Iran may not ever fabricate reactor fuel from uranium ore, but they can't call that American foreign policy.

We fabricate reactor fuel, a bad idea but never the less, USEC exists as a creation of the American state, see the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility, Portsmouth plant, Piketon, Ohio, just as we manufacture automobiles, and we don't hint at bombing Korean and Japanese car plants or overthrowing their elected governments. Its not American public policy to start wars to preserve monopoly, though American governments have done just that, as the present Regime has, prior to being overthrown, as the present Regime has been.

The JESI makes five points:

1. Replace calls for regime change with a long-term strategy
2. Support human rights through effective, international means
3. Allow Iran a place at the table - alongside other key states - in shaping the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region.
4. Address the nuclear issue within the context of a broader U.S.-Iran opening
5. Re-energize the Arab-Israeli peace process and act as an honest broker in that process

The first is beyond obvious. However, the JESI fails to suggest that, now that we've put the Bush/Cheney Regime on notice that they must surrender on January 20th, we can reach past the creature that Regime created. The 2005 Presidential election was greatly influenced by Bush/Cheney saber rattling, resulting in the surprising, and contested margin of Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad (2d place with 5,710,354) over Mehdi Karroubi (3rd place with 5,066,316) in the first round, and the landslide in the second round over
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1st place with 6,159,452), and the winning message, Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad's, restated in his inaugral speach were poverty and the needs of the poor, and the need for the nuclear weapons states to reduce the stockpiles of weapons of mass distruction.

If those, poverty and the needs of the poor, and the need for the nuclear weapons states to reduce the stockpiles of weapons of mass distruction, aren't easy drop-ins to President Elect Obama's January 20th message, we don't need "Regime Change" in Tehran, we still need it in Washington City. And we should be looking to the parties contesting the 2009 Presidential election, just as we expect Ahmadi Nejad, and others, to look past the Bush/Cheney Regime to the Obama/Biden transition team.

The second assumes facts not in evidence, or rather, the whole Reading Lolita in Tehran thing (note the cover art was cropped for the American Patriotic Market). This "rationale" became "liberate women through B-52 strikes and keep them free by killing wedding parties" practice of the ISAF (Regional Commands North, RC(W), RC(C), RC(S) and the 101st Joint Task Force Regional Command (East).

We need to remember that there was an American program of social development and progress before the Savior (of women, or individuals) Cult hijacked US Aid.

The third point is sort of droll. We're going to "allow" the Islamic Republic to be able to effect policy goals that involve adjacent states? Try stating the converse without blowing milk, or the beverage at hand, out your nose.

The fourth point is a non-point. If weapons, then the context is regional weapons inventories, so India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and Israel. If non-weapons, then the context is NPT.

The last point is what should have been the first point. What the $#%@! are we going to do about the Zionists and their need for tension to keep their captive populations voting for one of the Zionist parties?

The Joint Experts' Statement on Iran isn't any readier for prime time than Wes Clark's notion that if we just turned over the Tribal Autonomous Regions of Pakistan to the Saudis, all our problems would be solved. It may be all the AIPAC Wing of the Democratic Party, electoral and executive can manage, but it isn't enough to really free us from the grip of crap that Al Gore and Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have tried to free us from since Dwight Eisenhower abandoned Harry Truman's position on British ownership of Iranian oil and authorized Operation Ajax to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his cabinet.

And we're the ones that have to free ourselves, not some poor Democratic centerists trying to triangulate their way to political safety.

Posted by EBW at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah settled in beside me to watch television, and the clicker was flaky so we had a few minutes of Fox were we learned that many fine people were protesting against Ahmadinejad in New York.

So I hopped over to the JPost for what the correct thinking is. The JPost credits these -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs -- but not the AIPAC, with organizing today's little media blip.

Its election season in Iran, and I'll bet next years membership cost in the American Mathematical Society that in the US/IL press, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be demonized for something he didn't say, but rather quoted, on Qods Day, and Mohammad Khatami will be lionized for saying ... the same thing, not quoting an older icon, and not on Qods Day. I still prefer Khatami, but the degree of dumbness about Dinner Jacket is about as bad as hating Elvis because of his open shirt and dancing while singing are immoral.

Posted by EBW at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last October, on the 20th and 23rd, I wrote the following two pieces. At the time, the resignation of Iran's primary negotiator with the IAEA was coded in the US and dependent presses as supporting the for-weapons narrative for fuel-grade enrichment in the Islamic Republic. I differed, which isn't very unusual in itself. I haven't covered the 8th Majlis anywhere near how I covered the 7th Majlis. There were three reasons for this -- first, I estimated the risk of US belligerency to be significantly reduced, second, the Juan Cole group blog includes content on Iran by Farideh Farhi, which fills the lack of blog coverage that motivated my Return of the King, first and second series, and finally because ...

The representative of the holy city of Qom, Ali Larijani, was elected speaker of the 8th Majlis. The vote was 232 to 31. Hassan Abutorabi-Fard and Mohammad-Reza Bahonar were elected the first and second deputy speaker of Majlis respectively winning 223 and 167 votes out of a total of 264 cast ballots.

The texts delivered, first by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, and then by Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, are interesting. I don't see any substantive US coverage or anywhere else, but perhaps Farideh or Helen will post something for the benefit of their readers.

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.

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.

Posted by EBW at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

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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.

Posted by EBW at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The NIE is out.

Thanks to Robert who noticed I'd an extra "http://" in the link.

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"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?

Posted by EBW at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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?

Posted by EBW at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Le Monde has two pages on the Revolutionary Guards. Pages 1 and 2.

For those who read French, recommended.

Posted by EBW at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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?

Posted by EBW at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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 ?

Posted by MB Williams at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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:

• Tehran municipals (Updates) (December 15, 2006).
  
• Tehran municipals continued (updates) (December 17, 2006).
  
• Tehran municpals continued some more (December 18, 2006).
  
• Tehran municipals continued even more (updates) (December 19, 2006).

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 09:32 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 05:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 12:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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".

Posted by EBW at 11:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Continue reading "Hossein Ali Montazeri" »

Posted by EBW at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 09:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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)" »

Posted by EBW at 07:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by EBW at 09:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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, Battle of the Crocodile and Shark to settle Iran's future. The final "Fighting Talk" para has copy-paste errors, simply read "Crocodile" where it has "Shark" and the reverse in the next stanza. He is one of the few that gets it that what is going on isn't Reform vs Hard Liners, rather that outside of the Reform movement(s), Ahmadinejad candidates are opposed by, and being defeated at the polls by, generally older candidates from within the Conservative movement(s).

Update: Le Monde reports that in Mashad the Jame-e Modaressin Hoze Elmie Qom (Qom Theological Society Teachers) slate did much better than the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [farsi unknown] (Theological Schools and Universities Experts) slate.

Things are looking up. Bush is a lame duck. Olmert is a lame duck. Ahmadinejad is a lame duck. Broken elections, fake wars, phony controntationalism simply are non-salable products, at least when presented a second (or third) time to the market.

Posted by EBW at 08:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi has reported high participation, but no figures. Turnout was just under 50% in 2003, and in Tehran it was barely in the double digits.

The conservative vote in Tehran is divided between former mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani cast their votes side-by-side at the polling station in the Jamaran mosque in north Tehran. That's proof this is the real deal, and the "international event" of the 11th and 12th a distraction.

Updates as the votes are reported. I expect Tehran City to be late. It is unclear whether the counts will be by computer or hand counted. The Elections Headquarters (national) and the Supreme Supervision Council over Tehran Constituency City and Rural Islamic Councils Elections contradict each other for Tehran City and the rural council elections.

Updates:
16:30 GMT Polling extended until 8 p.m. due to turnout.
17:30 GMT Polling extended until 9 p.m. due to turnout.

Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi describes the turnout as "very high", "unprecedented" and in excess of 60% of the eleigible vote in most provinces.

The Interior Ministry's announced that the results will be released Sunday evening, except for Tehran. There are three elections being held simultaniously, one for the Assembly of Experts (4th), one for the local councils (3rd), and one I hadn't noticed, the second by-elections for the 7th Majlis in three constituencies -- Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr (unified), Bam and Ahvaz.

The Assembly of Experts elections are conducted at the provincal level, and the tabulations are being done at eac provincial capital. The results of the AoE elections for Tehran (province) may be released Sunday.

The municipal elections are tabulated in each municipality and reported district offices, then provincial governors, then to the Supervisory Board which will make the official announcements.

The election results from Bam and Tehran for the Majlis by-election will be announced on Saturday. I don't yet have information on the by-elections for Ahvaz.

Turnout is high. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won on wicked low turnout in '03 (Tehran City) and '05 (Presidential).

In Hamedan province Ayatollah Ali Razini was elected to the AoE with about a third of the total vote. Personally, I'd preferd the prosecutor of former Tehran mayor Qolam Hossein Karbaschi to be prosecuted, not elected. Another person I'd prefer to see voters reject is Ayatollah Rahim Mohammadi Ilami, who was elected to the AoE with about half the votes from Ilam province. Ilami is a stoning-for-adultry cleric. Click on the link, sign the petition, it goes to Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, head of the Judiciary (Sharia judge) until 2009, and amusingly, also of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and Golam-Ali Haddad-Adel, who's the current speaker of the 7th Majlis. The Women's Field (meydaan.com) website is one that is blocked by the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani was also elected to the AoE from Qazvin province. When the London bombings took place (July 7th, 2005) he sensibly said to Tony Blair that it wasn't al-Qaeda, rather it, to paraphrase using the Observer's reporting of the Home Office report, the work of four men with a few hundred pounds between them. Also Ayatollah Mohammad Mo'men was elected to the AoE from Qum, ahead of an associate of Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, which is a good thing. Yazdi's one of the Ahmadinejad gang.

Note to self: Who was on the Jame-e Modaressin Hoze Elmie Qom (Qom Theological Society Teachers) slate, and who was on the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slate for the AoE? Ans: Rafsanjani and Mesbah-Yazdi, respectively, for Tehran, where else was there a substantive difference, and who won?

More updates: Mehr reports the Ahmadinejad list lost all but four of the 15 seats on the Tehran city council, with Qalibaf's list picking up 8 seats and the Reform list getting 3 or 4 seats, and that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is polling ahead of Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi in for the AoE seat from Tehran. Good news if true.

More updates: Kar reports that Mostafa Tajzadeh (Islamic Iran Participation Front) claims the Ahmadinejad camp has lost the elections. Good news if true.

More updates: Four more Provincial AoE outcomes:
Mazandaran province: Hojatoleslam Nourollah Tabarsi
Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province: Alireza Eslamian
South Khorasan province: Ibrahim Raees Sadati
Ardebil province: Hojatoleslam Hassan Ameli and Ayatollah Mir-Ibrahim Seyyed Hatami

RFE has Ameli carefully supporting the IRML during the 33 Day War, which is a good sign.

What does it all mean? My friend Chris frequently asks me to write a wee bit more comprehensibly. My "style" when doing the Return of the ... One True King and it's extensions ROTOTK (NS) and Is Pakistan? originates in the sleepless hours of midnight-to-dawn during the height of Jonah's Sleep Disturbance Events (six nights in seven some weeks, and all weeks all years for years, less now). If you've read this, then as of now (mid-day, EST), you know more fact than anyone one else. For meaning you've yours, or mine. Fortunately, my ROTOTK work is never linked to, so I've no distractions, other than the occasional MEK/MKO/PMOI/NCR/ rep.

More updates:

The Mehr / Kar reports are confirmed. Rafsanjani over Yazdi for AoE (Tehran) by a wide margin with half the vote counted.

Posted by EBW at 08:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2005 Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour was a member of the Assembly of Combatant Clerics' Central Council, and a leader of the Second Khordad Coalition (May 23rd Front) that tried to field Mir Hossein Mousavi as the single Reform Movement candidate for President. When Mousavi declined he managed the presidential campaign of former parliament speaker Hojatoleslam Mehdi Mahdavi-Karroubi, one of the Reform candidates in the 2005 cycle. He also went on record when the former higher education minister Mostafa Moin, also a Reform candidate in the 2005 cycle, was initially disquallified by the Guardian Council:

The disqualification of Moin is an illegal and ugly move.

In 2004 Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour was one of the 500+ candidates who withdrew in protest over the irregularities in the 2004 election of the 7th Majlis, his name appears with that of Hashem Aghajari, then sentenced to death (see Prof. Hashem Aghajari and Return of the ... One True King (XIII)), who contested the political primacy of Velayat-e Faqeeh, and who also urged boycot over the irregularities in the 2004 election of the 7th Majlis.

He was Iran's ambassador to Syria in 1982. He helped start the political movement that moved a Lebanese demographic from political no-account rural farmers and urban laborers, to a major social and political force in Lebanon, and which in turn formed an armed wing, the Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia (Islamic Resistance Movement in Lebanon (IRML), and defeated Tsahal in a 33 day contest of stand-off munitions and a fragile offense run by an integrated C³I command verses defense-in-depth with little more than light infantry weapons and little or no centralized operational command structure. He is known as the "Godfather" of Hezbollah because of the role he played in the formation of organisation when he was in Damascus. He has also held the post of Minister of the Interior, the head of all police powers in the Islamic Republic.

Currently Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour is Secretary General of International Congress to Support Palestinian Intifada, the domestic projection of his work in Syria after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel (First Lebanon War), the "causus belli" for which was the attempted assassination of Israel's ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov by the Abu Nidal Organization.

He's in the news this week. But before I try to put together his text from the fragments available via IRNA, PARS and all the explosive bits that are in the exile and Western presses, a detour:

1. Karol Wojtyla could not utter the word "Shoah", and the ... what ever it was, was a "Golgotha of the modern world" in which "six million Polish POWs" lost their lives. The Wehrmacht captured less than a million Polish Army officers and enlisted men. Civilians are never "prisioners of war", at least under the Jus ad bellum (Just War) doctrine that has been the center of Christian Theology of force since the Middle Ages, with the obvious exception of European Jewery, according to Pope John Paul II, (and Indians according to anyone who has ever held the office of Pope).
   
2. Joseph Ratzinger could not utter the word "Shoah", and the ... what ever it was, was because "the National Socialists, hostile to Christianity, sought to destroy European Jewery, witnesses of God, because the National Socialists sought to kill God". Anti-Semitism does not modernly exist and does not explain the demographic change of Mittle Europa in the middle of the 20th century, according to Pope Benedict XIV
   

So if Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour's current work calls into question the Shoah narrative, he's got a lot more company than "67 intellectuals from 30 countries", which is what IRNA is reporting today. After the quotes, which will have most standard frame of reference readers ready to move on to something less ... irritating, I've a final para. If you don't read that, there's no point in reading this at all.

... Saying that Holocaust is a myth does not mean that the Nazis committed no crimes in the course of World War II. ... They committed horrendous crimes during WWII, but the Zionists' narration of the massacre of six million jews at Nazi death camps is far from reality. ...

The press is all over this. Shiraz Dossa, St. Francis Xavier University, attended to present an essay on the abuse of the imagery of the Holocaust. He was surprised to find a lot of nuts there, but do their presence imunize political Zionism from its failings? Apparently they do. David Duke put in a cameo, as did a sundry assortment of European Neo-Nazis, and that is where the media lens is focused. Meanwhile, the head of the DCCC and the incoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee are coming out for more enforcement of the employer sanctions provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, contrary to the express policy of the AFL-CIO, which in 1999 began calling for the repeal of sanctions, and for giving the undocumented legal status.

As if winning the Republican hearts and minds on Immigration wasn't really about keeping the cost of manual labor down, and keeping suburbia Juden-Frei English-Only.

Noam Chomsky was right on the use by the Allied Powers of the European and Asian Wars of 1936-1963 to maintain domestic political hegemony. Two-term Republican President, and former Supreme Commander, Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't need Chomsky to point out the obvious in 1961 -- the military-industrial complex and its acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, on a theory of persistent danger. Michael Moore was right on the fiction of the present permanent danger.

This is the final para. Of the first narrative.

To participate in any Iranian Reforms, we need to work with Iranian Reformers. They can't be invented without warts. To participate in any work that reduces the conflicts in the Middle East, we need to work with operational forces that can defeat us, or our allies and proxies. They can't be invented without operational capability. Mohtashamipur is not the only Iranian Reformer. Mohtashamipur is not the only leading figure of operational forces that have defeated us, or our allies and proxies. But he is both. And he is both preferable to, and perhaps more real, than current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Aliakbar Velayati/Ali Larijani/Ahmad Tavakoli/Gholem-Ali Hadad-Adel Traditional/NeoCon set of factions, and an alternative to Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Finger wagging won't cut it.

The second narrative is on Friday Iran is holding municipal elections. The Reform set of factions, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), the Assembly of Combatant Clerics (ACC), and smaller formations and individuals are running against the Traditional/NeoCon set of factions, and they are the opposition minority. They need to win the municipals, then a stronger plurality, even a majority, in some future Majlis, and eventually take the Presidency, to put the Velayat-e Faqeeh back in its 19th century context of advisory influence, rather than its 1979 et seq context of absolute State power.

To win a majority in the munipal venues, where the overwhelming majority of voters have their own (also imposed) version of the standard narrative, they are going to have to run against Tsahal and its masters, the Likudniks, and do so from a position of ... well, having beaten Tsahal on the ground once, and able to do it again, by proxy or if Tsahal imposes the contest, directly.

There are two narratives, and each has two narratives. Enjoy.

Posted by EBW at 09:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hoder's gone over to the other side. He's got his change of views note up as an OpEd piece at the WaPo.

I think he's wrong, but I'm curious. For what set of packages and what sets of targets and mechanisms of delivery is a "defense" mission credible for the inventory?

As always, first, what are the threat models?

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

Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, and chief officer in charge of Iran policy in the U.S. Department of State, on October 11, 2006, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

... I am the person in the State Department that directs Iran policy for Secretary Rice, and I've been doing this for 18 months. And I have never met an Iranian government official ...

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami was in Chicago five weeks ago, on the Persopolis Tablets repatriation issue. I wonder how anyone who cares about US-Iran relations could have missed it.

Posted by EBW at 11:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Via Persian Students is this gem:

Militarilism, Corruption, Torture, and Denial

Browsing YouTube for clips about Iran, I came across a few interesting old clips from the 70's, some are interviews with the Shah. They are amazing and I thought I'd share them with you. It's funny how all the four words I mentioned in the title of the post were/are being repeated in today's Iran, and how statesmen and politicians in our country tend to forget the past quickly and never seem to learn the lessons of history. What do you think?

In an interview (in English) with Mike Wallace of American TV programme CBS 60 minutes:

(1) Shah denies torture by Savak.

(2) Shah denies corruption in his government and accuses the west (particularly Americans) for being corrupt.

(3) Shah claiming he's in touch with the people of Iran, and that it's OK to execute traitors!

Mike Wallace is the same person who recently interviewed Ahmadinejad.

(4) Iran's Imperial Guard; it fascinates me to see how these officers seem to love to look like German Nazi officers. And they seem to be very proud of their army which, unlike the Nazi German or American or British armies, was not an Iranian product but entirely purchased from the west (the hardware I mean). As a side note, some of the military tunes they play in this clip are familiar to me, they were later played during the war with Iraq by the revolutionary Army.

(5) 2500th Anniversary of the Persian Empire; when Shah sent his famous message to Cyrus the Great: "Sleep in peace because we are awake". The truly glorious party where everyone was invited except unfortunately the people of Iran.

Posted by EBW at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There is now a second entry. The first is here, the second is here. I'll eventually post on what he's written. In the meantime, you've the same links I have.

Posted by EBW at 12:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was mildly surprised by the news that Mohammed Kazemeini Boroujerdi had been, or was about to be, arrested. It isn't every day that an Ayatollah is arrested by the Islamic Republic, though it has happened previously, and of course, by the governments of the Pahlavi Shahs -- Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and the Reza Shah Pahlavi, and the Qajar Shahs -- Ahmed Shah, Mohammed Ali Shah, Mozaffar o-Din Shah, Naser o-Din Shah, Mohammad Shah, Fath'Ali Shah and Agha Mohammad Khan before the Pahlavis, and of course the brief spot of republican democracy of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq (a Qajar), put to pasture by the CIA during Dwight Eisenhower's tenure in the Oval.

Some of the more interesting bits of modern Iranian history is, at least for me, demarked by the arrests, and assassinations, of, and also the public madness of, certain Ayatollahs. Ayatollah Taleghani, poisioned. A friend of a friend. Ayatollah Beheshti, assassinated. Ayatollah Shariatmadari, stripped of the title of marja-e taqlid. Ayatollah Montazeri, denounced and subject to house arrest. Ayatollah Khalkhali, the crazy, the murderer. Ayatollah Tabatabaei, the scholar. And Hojjat ol-Eslam Karrubi Are you loyal to Islam if you pray daily but flaut the rights of the people?

Before them all however was Boroujerdi, Ayatollah Uzma Brujerdi, the father of Mohammed Kazemeini, and one of the notables of the 2nd Pahlavi regime. Ayatollah Behbahani, Ayatollah Kashani and Ayatollah Falsafi all obtained political cover from Uzma Brujerdi in overthrowing Mosaddeq and restoring the Anglo-American Pahlavi regime.

So I was mildly surprised by the news that Mohammed Kazemeini Boroujerdi was both in, or proximal to, the hoosegow, and styled as "Ayatollah" or "dissident cleric" and advocating some variation on the velayat-e faqeeh -- a return to "traditional religion", a return to the quietism of Ayatollah Haeri (Qom), or modernly, of Ayatollah Sistani (Najef), from Khomeini's activism -- Governance of Jurist ( Velayat-e Faqeeh ) / Islamic Government (94pp, .pdf).

But that wasn't the only thing that caught my eye in the space of a day or so. There was the question Jimmy Carter posed of his guest -- Do you believe we should ignore the advice of Jesus ("Render under Caesar...") and Thomas Jefferson ("Build a wall...") in keeping separate the church and state?.

In the background of course is the statements of ordinary Iranians, and some not so ordinary Iranians. The guy in the Majlis who wouldn't accept the legality of religious intrusion into his, or anyone else's, status as a candidate. The professor at Tehran U who wrote that emulation isn't an exercise for monkeys, and nearly hung for it.

The Religious Right in the US is attempting to subordinate religion to the state, and to a political party. They think they are restoring religion to its rightful place, dominating the state and politics, but the experience of Iranians is that when religion becomes the state, it is the institution of religion, not the institution of the state, that is deformed. They will give the Caesars their Churches.

Incidently, the RTL/RFE and their financial downstream media outlets, and the Moonie Times, are really playing up the Boroujerdi non-event, which is about as silly as Timmy Keating scrambling planes all over North America on the actionable information from ... whatever some excitable television newsreader had put in front of him or her.

Posted by EBW at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

July 11th. Seven bombs during the evening commute, in the suburban trains and stations of the economic capital of India, killing 186 and wounding more than 800.

"Nous avons résolu l'affaire du 11 juillet (...) Tout était organisé par les ISI au Pakistan et le LeT [organisation islamiste Lashkar-e-Taiba] avec l'aide d'agents locaux ici. C'était une opération professionnelle, précise et bien préparée."

Again, remember what's important:

1. a second, larger, plutonium-production reactor at Kusab, augmenting a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility at Kahuta, and a small plutonium-production heavy water reactor at Kusab and an existing inventory of 30-50 HEU-based, and 3-5 Plutonium-based nuclear warheads,
   
2. sale of 18 new F-16 fighter aircraft as well as 26 old F-16s,
   
3. China's access to Gwadar, both for oil and gas, and for naval basing, and
   
4. control of the Sui gas field.

What's not important (to the Regime in Washington City) is closure on the OBL organization, abandoned in November/December 2001, and ballot boxes anywhere.

Posted by EBW at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I recall when the Majlis was debating Mahoud Ahmadinejad's initial nominees for ministries and the short list for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security was Mostafa Pourmohammadi (deputy to former Minister of Intelligence Hojattoleslam Ali Fallaliah, during the 1990s, when there were many killings of dissidents, e.g., the "chain murders" of three writers and a politician by Ettellat), Ibrahim Reissi (no bio), and Gholamreza Mohseni-Ejei (since 1997, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran). During the confirmation hearings Emad Afrough said: "You must realise that when someone comes from such a ministry... our reaction is to shudder with fear." He was alluding to the murder of dozens of intellectuals and dissidents by Intelligence Ministry agents in the 1990s.

Someone at State denied Pourmohammadi a visa to attend the UN High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development.

Now Pourmohammadi couldn't possibly make a substantive contribution to a meeting on migration and development, unless migration of torture and execution professionals and/or development of torture and execution as industries was the focus of the meeting, but what is absurdly ironic is that Pourmohammadi personally exemplifies what George W. Bush means when he talks about "intelligence services" conducting torture "legally".

You'll note the members of the Majlis in the photo are none too keen to feel the touch of the hem of Pourmohammadi clerical dress.

Posted by EBW at 08:35 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

That unsurprisingly sums up the best thinking of the Regime's flunkies in the House. Its all been covered here on Wampum. Here's the patrio-crap (.pdf 29pp) with the catchy title Recognising Iran as a Strategic Threat, and here's the reasoned reponse (.pdf 2pp).

The name to remember is Fredrick Fleitz. He's the guy trying to start a war. An October Operative. A name to place on a warrant the afternoon of January 20th, 2009.

Posted by EBW at 09:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami was in Chicago yesterday. Thomas Corcoran now represents the interests of the Islamic Republic in the Persopolis Tablets, now at UofC.

Posted by EBW at 11:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

via IRNA: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a meeting held on Tuesday, cautioned heads of universities to stay out of politics.

"Iranian youth are becoming more progressive with every passing day in the fields of science and technology," Ahmadinejad said, adding that Iran's young generation should naturally play a major role in national development.

Now there may not actually be much time before the Bush Regime starts its next war, but Ahmadinejad is targeting Moeen and others in the Reform Movement.

I recommend catallarchy for material on the violence against teachers in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution.

Posted by EBW at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Two days ago Dawn reported that the Pak Army and the Tribals in North Waziristan had reached a deal. I didn't post it because I'd posted a lot of Central Asia stuff in the past few days, and the real importance is not that Osama is now a retired "western social engineer", or that North Waziristan, rich in little but armed Pashtu speaking Waziris, rated a mutual surrender, where profoundly rich and not Punjabi-at-all Baluchistan got fire-for-effect, but that just across the border, NATO is attempting to kill every colorably Taliban Pashtun.

Do I need to point out the irony of the entire failed Afgan War? Or the profound humor in the Bush Regime yesterday confirming that the sale of F-16s to the Musharaff Regime is untroubled by the "situation in Baluchistan".

I suppose it is wicked important not to connect any dots on or about the September 13th, 2001 vote to authorize the Bush Regime to do any damn thing it pleased, without any Congressional oversight.

By Our Correspondent

MIRAMSHAH, Sept 2: Militants reached an understanding with the government on Saturday on restoring peace in North Waziristan but said the agreement would be signed in a couple of days.

The understanding was reached in a meeting between a shura of local militant leaders and a jirga formed by the government to mediate on its behalf at Madressah Ashrafia near Miramshah.

The breakthrough was achieved after the government accepted most of the militants' demands -- the release of all their men, return of their weapons and vehicles seized during various operations, dismantling of checkpoints including the strategic posts at Esha, Khajori and Boya, restoration of all perks and privileges of the tribal people and compensation for those killed and property damaged.

The government has released most of the men, returned some of their weapons and dismantled some checkpoints.

Authorities said the remaining few militants were expected to be released soon.

The unresolved issues are: compensation for the deaths and destruction caused during military operations and withdrawal of military from checkpoints to its fortes in Waziristan.

The amount demanded by the militants as compensation is not known but an official said the figure was "astronomical".

Sources said the militants had been assured that army would be withdrawn to the fortes as soon as peace was restored.

The sources said the militants had accepted the government's demand of immediately ceasing attacks on civil and military installations.

In a major concession, the government had said that foreign militants could either leave the region or abide by the law of the land after furnishing tribal guarantees of good conduct, the sources said.

They said the draft of the agreement was ready and the jirga would return to Peshawar on Sunday to present the document to NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai.

Posted by EBW at 10:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Several pieces I've looked at over the past week have mentioned a "new doctrine", and the one one that ventured a guess at what the "new doctrine" might be was a shift from defense to offense, but that was really just persiflage wrapped around where the overwhelming focus has been -- the Saeqeh launches.

I don't know why it is so hard to simply read the Wargames' News Headquarters press releases (via IRNA), its there in black and white.

Prior doctrine addressed the two decades of potential, and actual conflict with the Iraqi state, manouver and attrition necessities of theatres confined to the Shatt al-Arab, the Mehran-Khorramabad axis, Khorramshahr (where a friend of mine from the Berkeley Math Department vanished into the mass casualty graves) in the Imposed War.

... simultaneous dispatch of 12 divisions of the Islamic Republic Army's ground forces within framework of 120,000 forces to different regions where the exercises are underway.

The maneuver is reportedly underway in Tehran as well as in the northeastern, northwestern, eastern, southeastern, northern, western, and southwestern parts of Iran, including the cities of Zahedan (Sistan-Balouchestan Province), Mashhad (Razavi Khorassan Province), Gorgan (Golestan Province), Shahroud (Semnan Province), Tabriz (East Azarbaijan Province), Pasveh (West Azarbaijan Province), Kermanshah (Kermanshah Province), Khorramabad (Lorestan Province), Ahvaz (Khuzestan Province) and Sanandaj (Kordestan Province).

The forces taking part in the operations managed to fulfill their mission and fight the aggressive enemy.

I don't have any better name for this than 4+1. The IR's ground and aviation forces, including the Saeqeh rocket artillery launches, were sucessfully articulated in simultanious perimeter defense against a primarily air-mobile opponent, as well as a central air defense. I've written about the possibility of any US initiated conflict expanding from the Imposed War theater, interdiction of Gulf tanker traffic, conflict in Baluchistan and collapse of the Punjabi military defense perimeter, there is no point repeating old material. The current exercise demonstrates the new doctrinal focii -- manouver on at least three fronts, from response to initiative, with 10m CPE targeting for 100kilo payloads upto 80 km deep available to all four frontal commands, which is pretty unimportant but its all the press is covering -- the new surface-to-surface asset from Department 140.

The nickel tour is the IR's defense forces are doctrinally prepared for simulatanious attack from Pakistan, Afganistan, the GCC states and off-shore platforms, and Iraq, and are no longer waiting for the return of Saddam's tank columns and a conflict operationally conducted at the technical level of the Korean Conflict along a well-defined front and limited number of axis. They are spending five weeks finding out how prepared they are, how capable they are, to operate at the level of the first US - Iraq Conflict. They know they have to beat Stormin' Norman -- massed armor on one axis and freedom of manuver on several other axis. Bog down the main thrust, successfully detect and counter-attack the off-axis Hail Mary(s), then on to attrition against a numerically inferior opponant with enormous logistical exposure, and the War of the Tankers, this time with anti-ship missiles, rather than Zodiac-mounted infantry armed with RPGs.

Posted by EBW at 10:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Le Monde reports that Shirin Ebadi's group of human rights lawyers has been banned by Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi.

Pour-Mohammadi is supposed to be bringing to justice the gang that used police uniforms for disguise and kidnapped, blindfolded, handcuffed, and shot in cold blood, 12 people on the side of a highway between the cities of Kerman and Bam last May, and similar gangs that operate in South Eastern Iran. Failing that, he faces impeachment initiated by the Majlis.

Jailing human rights lawyers in Tehran really shouldn't be his highest priority, and there are too many deaths in custody in Iran.

Posted by EBW at 04:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday most of the judicial oversight imposed on the MEK, aka PMOI cadres in France in June, 2003, was lifted. Maryam Radjavi and the 16 other cadres, and the MEK, are still status terrorists, according to the EU and the US, but the investigation conducted since the June 2003 raid did not discover sufficient evidence to support the specific charges of association de malfaiteurs en relation avec une entreprise terroriste.

The most recent polemic by Maryam Radjavi was a repeat of the standard MEK text that the West needs to go to war with Iran in order to install the MEK in power. The same text that Ariel Sharon and Michael Leeden and Michael Rubin and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi read from, modulo the beneficiaries of the "necessary and trivially obtained victory".

The MEK is just an armed cult, so other than targeted, and untargeted attacks, in Europe, and Western Iran from its base at Camp Ashraf, it is of no political signifigance, op-ed pages of the MSM excepted.

For background click here or here.

Posted by EBW at 06:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Those of you who both read French and are either interested in contemporary Iranian politics, or biting your fingernails waiting for the NeoCons to entrench themselves out of the Iraqmire via conventional or nuclear force excerises proximal to Tehran, you could do worse than read the following: link.

For those not able to read Le Monde, the monarchists, and communists, in exile in Europe, and the US, but primarily in Los Angeles, are hoping for something, but not a military conflict. The exception to this, naturally, is the MEK, who hope to be promoted to Likudniks and help usher in the New American Century, as junior partners to the Likudnik and NeoCon nutcases, slightly to the east of Tel Aviv.

Posted by EBW at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Juan Cole has a good piece on Iran this morning, and catches what I generally ignore -- a media op in the CanWest Global publication.

Here's the original -- A COLOUR CODE FOR IRAN'S 'INFIDELS' -- from benadorassociates.com. Fair Warning: Sipping coffee or tea is not advised while reading the material below, unless you were planning on washing your keyboard and screen anyway. Any milk or even a cheerio that goes up your nose while reading the material below is your lookout, er, blowout, since you were warned. Reading the material twice may cause abdominal injury. Consult your physician if pain persists.

This bit of journalism got picked up by the JPost, the KSStar, the MoonieTimes, the LaLaTimes, the SeattleTimes, and another hundred or so uncritical downstream print outlets.

Google for "TAREK AL-ISSAWI", that's fun too. Judith Miller's got some real competition for fabricated "Why we go to war" paid writing.

Continue reading "Journalistic Fashions" »

Posted by EBW at 05:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was looking around at who's writing what about Iran, something I normally don't bother to do, being insular and ignorant and all, and I came across something at Billmon's that made me feel like I was watching ducks land on ice.

... Ahmadinejad eventually hopes to force the retirement of Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei ...
...
... Ahmadinejad is seeking to curb, and ultimately crush, the pragmatist faction (remember, it's a relative term) centered around his rival in last year's election, Ollie North's negotiating partner, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
...
Ahmadinejad's goal, I suspect, is to keep his domestic enemies (particularly Rafsanjani) on the defensive by forcing them to ...

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, who he, and the Reform candidate, Moeen, convincingly messaged as corrupt beyond tolerance or redemption. The Guy Who Blew The Economy And Got Rich Too.

Ahmadinejad is in his first year of a probable two-termer, and setting policy, domestic and foreign, are what gate that 2nd term. Get rid of Khamenei, Rafsanjani's predecessor, doesn't improve the odds of beating Rafsanjani or Khatami, who, like Rafsanjani, can run for a 3rd term after being out of office for a single term, or of beating Moeen, who may have actually beaten Rafsanjani, had the dead not voted. All he has to do to "curb" Rafsanjani is hire an honest cop, an Iranian Fitzgerald, and tell him he is free to dig up bodies buried during the Rafsanjani period, people or profiteering.

It would be as if MB got a fellowship feathership to hire backhoes, cats, drills and gradstudents to hand dig in the Republican Tribal middens, guided by ground penetrating radar, with MB doing the image analysis, dig planning, and object interpretation work. A field day for crows.

Does anyone really think that Ahmadinejad is risking high-energy inbounds to accomplish what any competent West-or-South Asian public prosecutor does on a civil servent's income?

I haven't met the man, and probably never will. He's got 3 years to make what Moeen and Khatami and Karroubi and half a dozen other first-time-flyers from all factions will run against. State politics is more than just a ballet of names. The poor must be lifted up, the corrupt corrected, and the foreign devils held at bay. Bailing out the PA was smart and obvious, and getting oil above $70 was smart and obvious, and being prepared to close the Straits of Hormuz, not "absolutely", just enough to sink the names of Lloyds, which is sufficient, for most of a decade and pick up any debris, Sui gasfield or the 70 packages, or both, from the disintegration of the American Punjabi State, is at least prudent. So is being prepared to invert the occupation of most of Iraq and extend the opponent into Khuzestan.

I wrote this last August. I don't think it got much reading then. It won't now either. It was ROT ... OTK (NS) I.

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).

It wasn't Cole's best day either. He'd a guest piece yesterday or today that was about as bright as a banana. See Invest in America, where I come close to inventing a criminal conspiracy and getting pin money at the same time. To be fair, the Iranian air over at TPM is, as Dwight notes, lumpy.

It is way past time to open a volume of Persian miniatures and look at something meant to delight the mind.

Posted by EBW at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I would like to make some money. A lot of money. An obscene amount of money.

I have a plan.

I will cause the value of the hydrocarbons I already control to triple, and I will prevent the entry of a competitor into the market for fissiles, which will have a secondary medium-term effect of raising further the value of the hydrocarbons I already control.

I will bomb Iran.

I will say the cause for war is not this.

I will say it is some other malarky.

And morons will guest post on Juan Cole's Informed Comment a Wicked Dumb Guest Post or at ABC or at XYZ or ... that all Iran needs to do is ... not get into the enriched uranium fuel market, and instead chase the evolutionary "Advanced" tail of the deuterium oxide D₂O cooled and moderated pressurized heavy water reactor series (PHWR), and stay the hell out of the rest of the Gen III and all of the Gen IV reactor fuel market. Because the malarky is seasoned to taste.

Prior work: Iranian Nuclear Fuels, Inc.
See also: Wampum's Atomkraft series.

Posted by EBW at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

UNITED NATIONS - The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, Wednesday compared the threat from Iran's nuclear programs to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

"Just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat. I think that is the threat," Bolton told ABC News' Nightline. "I think it's just facing reality. It's not a happy reality, but it's reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant."

Bolton ratcheted up the rhetoric as the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council failed again to reach agreement on how to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions after a fifth round of negotiations.

Not content to have killed the NPT, he's going to start his own historic "preventative" nuclear war, and before his recess appointment has to be confirmed. He's a man with a mission.

Posted by EBW at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

During the current artificial¹ crisis I'll keep this as a running note.

In November Iran wanted 20 centrifuge machines for "research and development ".

Some fundamentals:

• cost, schedule and performance data are critical before any business (or state) begins construction of a $1 billion to $1.5 billion commercial plant, in the States or in Iran, with or without ex-Sov HEU/Pu stocks, or post-Sov financing and technical assistance,
  
• TC12 technology (Urenco's current) produces about 40 SWU/year/machine. I'll have to dig up the numbers for the TC21, and of course, the wicked evil P-series technology (Iran's current) machines,
  
• $1 per barrel hike in oil prices translates to a $1.4 billion increase in Russian revenues,
  

In comments to my prior post Jeff Lewis writes:

David and Corey, at ISIS, did a thorough analysis on the Natanz facility, drawing on commercial satellite images.

A later article, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, has some additional information.

The introduction of UF6 is to master the process of enriching in a cascade. The Iranians are still some years away from starting up full scale operations and churning out bomb grade fissile material.

I'm inviting Jeff Lewis armscontrolwonk.com and John Pike globalsecurity.org to co-blog or do something similar, and in any event, I encourage anyone interested to read widely (where is Kim Jong Il today?) and carefully and send me anything you think useful.

¹ Natural crisis being events like unplanned famine, fire, disease, storms, earthquakes, etc.

Posted by EBW at 07:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As I try to write usefully, if only for myself, I'm keenly aware of what I don't know, and how little I know that I don't know. I only just realized that mid-November, the controlling authority for any and all Russian-Iranian deals was abruptly flushed. Alexander Rumyantsev's predecessor was the Pittsburgh-indited Yevgeny Adamov, and his successor is Sergey Kirienko, who's first working visit to Iran will take place in February 2006.

Between Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation on Dec. 28th, 1999, and the present, are the Abramoff bribes, the mysterious $1,000,000 contribution from a London law firm, for oil, or gas, the scrambling for nuclear security dollars, by Russian, and American, white collar criminals, and the outing of Valerie Plame and the Brewster Jennings network, ending her NOC non-proliferation work in central and west Asia. Constant throughout was the proliferation of fissiles and enrichment technologies and weapons by Pakistan, Israel, and India.

There is still a lot of bad writing about Iran, and no shortage of things that the Iranian regime, like the US regime, does inviting disbelief or distain.

I just came across Arms Control Wonk. They are worth reading.

Posted by EBW at 08:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

By coincidence, or targeting, at 6:50 pm (Tehran time) Thursday, a group of vehicles was engaged with light automatic weapons by pre-positioned forces near the town of Zabol in Sistan-Baluchestan province. The driver of the lead vehicle was killed and one other person was wounded during the ambush.

This would be otherwise unremarkable non-news, except that the group of vehicles was the Presidential motercade, and both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad andDefense Minister Mohammad-Najjar were in the motorcade when it was engaged.

Ahmadinejad and Mohammad-Najjar were conducting a military preparedness tour along the Gulf of Oman and the Baluchestan (Pakistan) frontier.

Posted by EBW at 09:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Three months have passed since the Majlis rejected four of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nominations for ministerial portfolios -- Oil, Education, Cooperatives and Welfare. and Social Security. Having used 70 days of the three months allowed to come up with replacements, and apparently having made at least one last minute substitution (replacing Aliasghar Zarei, an academic with Sadiq Mahsouli), Mr. Ahmadinejad's letter read in Wednesday's open session of the Majlis contained his new nominees. They are:

Oil -- Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, currently caretaker after Ali Saeedlou failed to obtain the required vote of confidence of parliament, to be replaced by Sadiq Mahsouli. Mr. Mahsouli has no oil industry experience. He used to be governor of the western city of Orumiyeh and his highest office was deputy defence minister in charge of planning. Institutionally he is associated with the Revolutionary Guards.

Education -- Ali-Asghar Fani, caretaker (Ali Akbar Ash'ari rejected nominee), to be replaced by Mahmoud Farshidi. I've read one of his essays (in translation), it was unremarkable conformism.

Cooperatives -- Mohammad Nazemi Ardakan, caretaker (Alireza Ali-Ahmadi rejected nominee), to be made Minister.

Welfare and Social Security -- Davoud Madadi, caretaker, (Mehdi Hashemi rejected nominee) to be replaced by Parviz Kazemi. Kazemi's currently head of a company making truck suspensions.

The last minute switch for Oil is interesting. As recently as 10.31 Kamal Daneshyar, who heads the Majlis' energy commission told Reuters that Zarei was the nominee. Rigzone reported the same from a senior official, with this interesting tidbit: Ahmadinejad intended to also nominate Ali Beheshtian for the same post, and whoever fails to be appointed as oil minister will take over the position as head of Iran's National Oil Company. Zarie is currently vice-chancellor of Imam Hossein University in Tehran. Beheshtian is on the board of the oil industry's investment corporation and a former deputy oil minister for onshore affairs.

Ahmadinejad later appointed Saeedlou vice-president in charge of executive affairs.

What to take away from this? First, that Ahmadinejad is unable to nominate outside of the ideological wing of the conservative coalition that settled on him in the the second round of the presidential election. Second, that no members of the Khatami government will join the Ahmadinejad government, both because the conservatives will not allow it, and because the reformers will also not allow it. Third, that the four Ahmadinejad nominees the Majlis rejected previously were rejected, by some conservatives and all reformers, for lack of experience, so these four are not all likely to get votes of confidence by the Majlis on Wednesday, and as Oil is 80% of the foreign exchange generator, handing it to a pseudo-academic who did some time in an oil school, and had a job in the oil patch, before finding his career elsewhere, seems really unlikely to get confirmation.

Interestingly, Ahmadinejad just sent out a circular telling government at all levels not to waste money putting up pictures of himself, or sending him letters of congradulations. It goes with his simple and asture persona.

Posted by EBW at 09:10 AM | Permalink

The Majlis just voted on a motion to cease implementation of the (voluntary) additional protocol (snap inspections) of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The vote was 162 to 42 with 15 abstentions.

Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, Speaker of the Majlis, commented that ceasation of implementation of the additional protocol is not withdrawal from the NPT (but look for that in a tabloid near you), and anyway, the bill has to make the rounds of committee and pass muster as being Islamic when reviewed by the Guardian Council -- and my guess is that not allowing snap (foreign, and non-believer) inspections of peaceful muslims engaged in peaceful atomic energy activities may turn out to be not Islamic.

Oh. Keep in mind that Venezuela voted against the EU-proposed resolution that was passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors on Saturday. That's 1.3 million barrels of refined gasoline a day.

Posted by EBW at 10:39 AM | Permalink

The exchange of notes between Juan Cole, University of Michigan and Gilbert Achcar, Universit� Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis over the weekend has been illuminating. The protests in Washington and London, which Le Monde reports at 100,000 and 10,000, respectively, are the proximal cause.

Each struggles with the question of what should be done, by the Occupation States (the US and UK primarily), in Occupied Iraq.

I've another concern. The deployment by the US of a significant force structure in West Asia, and the latent risk that the war Jimmy Carter was too wise to start in 1979, will finally be realized.

Cole argues for the withdrawal of a portion of the force structure -- the US/UK infantry from Iraq, and a re-creation of another portion of the force structure -- heavy manuever and artillery battalions, within the militias nominally cooperating with the Occupation, also known as the "Iraqi Army", and the retention of another portion of the force structure -- the US/UK combat air assets. This would yeild a "national" force structure capable of fielding troops, armor, direct and indirect fire artillery against "sub-national" or "non-national" force structure(s), and which would be incapable of engagements with Occupation forces, lacking air defense artillery (ADA), air combat, and air transport capabilities.

It is a neat package, and it could work, for some values of work, and no one has a decent crystal ball, except those who admit that they don't have a crystal ball.

One of the ironies is that, modulo the allowed operation of ADA, air combat, and air transport capabilities within a restricted operating area (bounded by the northern and southern, original and extended, "no fly zones"), and the political composition of the Iraqi state, this is a return to the Intra-Wars (March, 1991 to March 2003) period balance of forces. Operationally, though not politically, whether the political framework is Baghdad-centric or Washington-centric, every call for a cease-fire and disengagement of forces, made from March 2003 to the present moment, is equivalent to this -- a return to the February, 2003 positioning of forces.

The case Juan makes for this is political (Baghdad-centric), and operational -- occupations cause uprisings.

This package leaves 10^^6 troops, armor, artillery, air and naval assets, along with their logistical tail and scheduled rotational and follow-on forces deployed in or deployment-capable to, the Persian Gulf, at least through 2008.

Over the same weekend, India voted for reporting Iran to the UN Security Council over its nuclear plans which the US and the UK and France (Chirac) and Germany (now without a government for the foreseeable future) say is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. This is a major diplomatic event, and arguably consequent to the July 18, 2005, Indo-US nuclear agreement, in which the US offers a now-NPT-abiding India nuclear energy, obviating any necessity for a trans-Pakistan pipeline to Iran's Fars gas field.

See my "Is Pakistan?" series for some of the details, and my post-Tsunami Andaman Islands series for more details, and ... if you know more than I do please share your data.

Today's Telegraph (Calcutta) praises "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (who) personally cleared the decision to vote with the US and the so-called EU-3, namely Germany, France and the UK, in favour of referring Iran at an unspecified date to the Security Council on suspicions of pursuing a programme to acquire nuclear weapons in the full knowledge that the vote ..." The 'Graph brings this celebratory sentance to a close in the context of Left plus BJP vs Congress domestic politics. The alternative formulations are "the vote ... significantly weakens the Non-Alligned Movement." and "the vote ... clears the way for an American war against Iran in the foreseeable future." But the 'Graph has more.

Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush�s term ends. In 2002, a year before the US invaded Iraq, high-ranking Americans had similarly shared their definitive vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, making it clear that they would change the regime in Baghdad.

Not to be blind, the Kommersant (Moscow) reports today that Moscow �has stepped up military-technological cooperation with Tehran,� attributing both profit and policy as the motives.

Both Cole and Achcar share a comon perspective -- that if Democratic Party dissent (Cole) or Dissent in a Democracy (Achcar) is sufficient, that Bush can not issue the order to start air operations against Iranian military, political and civilian targets. I think they error. I think that Bush Constitutionally may, and personally intends to, issue the initial ATO authorization. I also think that the current Pentagon (civilian) and CENTCOM (military) leaderships will follow the order, despite the posture of Congress.

I'll give more thought to Achcar's posts and write more on this later.

Posted by EBW at 09:22 AM | Permalink

I've been waiting for the announcement of, and parliamentary response to, nominees for the cabinet offices in the Ahmadinejad presidency. The Majlis voted yesterday, and for the first time since 1989, didn't approve all of the incoming administration's nominees. Left out in the cold were moniees Ali Saeedlou (Oil) and Hashemi (Welfare), both deputies in the Ahmadinejad administration of Tehran (City). Also left out in the cold were the editor-in-chief of the Tehran municipality-owned Hamshahri newspaper, Ali Akbar Ashari (Education), and Ali Ahmadi (Cooperatives), a contractor with close ties to the municipality,

Science and Technology Ministry nominee, (recall, Moeen held this post in a Katami administration) Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi sqeeked by on a margin of one vote.

Above the fold in the Mardomsalari (daily) was "Parliament did not vote for Ahmadinejad's special friends." Mahoud Ahmadinejad took the 17 newly approved ministers to the northeastern city of Mashhad for their first cabinet meeting today, along with two caretakers (oil and welfare).

INRA reports that Ahmadinejad wrote the four and expressed regret that they would not be able to "use your strength and commitment to clear the dust of sorrow from the face of our nation," Just what the "dust of sorrow" is on the face of Iran is left to the imagination.

Now why this matters is that Ahmadinejad messaged on poverty (Welfare and Cooperatives) and corruption (Oil), which sunk Rafsanjani, and Moeen messaged on -- was -- education and science personified. So, close Ahmadinejadiis on the core issues of the two elections were rejected by the Majlis.

If you read the BBC or the rest of the MSM, you'll be getting a rather different picture -- Ahmadinejad and a dubious lot of "hard liners" triumphant, rather than this.

Posted by EBW at 01:43 PM | Permalink

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).

Feel free to download these gifs.

Posted by EBW at 09:50 AM | Permalink

The issue to understand is why would Iran want 20 centrifuge machines for "research and development ".

USEC and the NRC provide the immediately obvious answer to the question, why a commercial plant developer would seek to operate a set of 20 centrifuge machines:

On Feb. 12, 2003, USEC Inc. submitted a license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to construct and operate the so-called American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility at its Portsmouth plant in Piketon, Ohio. "Scheduled to begin operation in 2005, the demonstration facility will contain a lead cascade of up to 240 centrifuge machines, the first new centrifuge enrichment machines in the United States. The lead cascade is the basic building block of a commercial enrichment plant. It will yield cost, schedule and performance data before USEC begins construction of a $1 billion to $1.5 billion commercial plant later in the decade."

As of March 24, 2003, the license application is available for download from ADAMS [ebw: the NRC's on-line document library, still partially shutdown due to "terrorist" concerns].

Cost, schedule and performance data, before construction of the production facillity. Pretty sane stuff.

At the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC) in Honolulu last March Ron Green claimed that USEC's centrifuge design features untapped technical margins which would allow the throughput to increase to about 400 SWU/year/machine. This was later "clarified" that the centrifuges wouldn't be run at 20% over the design and it turns out there is a lot of "iffyness" about generating ecomically reliable data from small lead cascades, and running them "maintenance free". Incidently, USEC's lead cascade (03/04) is 30, down from the (02/03) quote of 240 centrifuge machines. The USEC number is 300 SWU/year/machine. Cite: Nuclear Fuel April 26, 2004, WASTE MANAGEMENT; Vol. 29, No. 9; Pg. 4 "Many questions remain about USEC's centrifuge performance", by Mark Hibbs, Bonn.

Ron Green is the Senior VP for Wowserisms at USEC. He's more wedded to powerpoint than to a slide rule, so he wouldn't do quite so well in the management team of Iranian Nuclear Fuels, Ltd. I'm not even going to try and count how much of the news fleets, print and pancake, goes running off with "20 shinny spinning things make us wicked dizzy so it must be bombs" but it should be Iraqi WMDs deja news all over again. They know there's a schedule to keep, flap in December, elections in January, withdrawal from urban centers (other than those logistically necessary for the pivot), the mid-term litmust test vote for Congress and then Drang nach Osten before high-summer, with air before ground by several thousand sorties.

One other thing: The spot price is now about $18.50/lb U3O8 compared to a price of about $11.20/lb on July 30, 2003.

And another: Urenco�s current TC12 technology produces about 40 SWU/year/machine. I'll have to dig up the numbers for the TC21, and of course, the wicked evil P-series machines.

And another: USEC permitting paperwork allows them to enrich up to 10%, which is a lot bigger than 3.5%. Glad I'm not a minority investor. Pre-planned negligence.

If you live in Hartsville (Tennessee), and you read wampum, rethink one or both of those properties.
Dr Pat Upson, Managing Director, Technical, in Urenco Limited (responsible for all site operations, new plant design and construction, research and development, centrifuge manufacturing and diversification, former Enrichment Division Manager of British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd.) and the other partners of the re-spun Louisiana Energy Services (aka "LES-II", who remind you that as the -II business model does not require government funding or customer investment, other than the three surviving LES-I partners, Exelon, Entergy, Duke, the rest is just narrowly-held commercial debt and reactor vendor Westinghouse, they don't have to listen to voters, or rate-payers) would like to move in with you, or move you out, for the long long haul.

Posted by EBW at 03:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)