Silence Is Not An Answer
M J Akbar Arab Global Network
Saturday, 13 June 2009 12:23
Israel_nuclear_arsenal
Every ruling system, no matter how radical its origins, develops a vested interest in silence. The most widely used justification for secrecy is national interest, of course; and, once in government, politicians quickly acquire the skill of extending the breadth of national interest to include their personal interests.

This personal interest does not necessarily have to be venal. It can be partisan, in the sense that a party might opt for silence in the pursuit of a hidden agenda. But the culture of suppression works wonderfully for those who need to hide the unacceptable.

What happens when a politician begins to peel off the layers that have been used to hide a dramatic truth?

We do not know when the system will force Barack Obama back into the grooves of convention, but he is still young enough in his term, and radical enough in his thinking, to challenge the established wisdom of his own turf, Washington. Perhaps the most dramatic departure he has made is in upending American policy towards Israel’s nuclear programme.

The fact that Israel has a nuclear arsenal of over 200 bombs is surely the worst kept secret of the last few decades, but till Obama became President it remained an official secret in both Israel, and in its strongest ally, America. Israel jailed any citizen who dared to utter a word on the subject, and American Presidents, across party lines, resolutely avoided any mention of the “n” word in reference to Israel. George Bush repeatedly threatened Iran with war on the grounds that it had transgressed its obligation to keep its nuclear programme peaceful; and Bush went to war against Iraq, with appalling blowback for his own country and horrific consequences for civilians in the battle zone, in ostensible search for nuclear weapons. He never uttered a word about Israel’s illegal nuclear stockpile. He was following precedence.

Obama has, bravely, ended this hypocrisy. He understands that this duplicity cannot be sustained. You cannot wink at Israel and scold Iran with the same face. It is, in essence, racist to justify Israel’s nuclear status with silence and deny a neighbour like Saudi Arabia the right to defend itself and the Arab world with matching weapons. The implication is that one nation can be trusted with restraint in its use of nuclear power, but another cannot.

Obama first permitted an official of the US government to speak openly about Israel’s weapons, and upped the ante with the demand that Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with India and Pakistan. He has now made the same point, albeit less starkly, in his Cairo speech. The credibility of his Cairo oratory was strengthened immeasurably by the previous American recognition of Israel as a nuclear weapons power.

Such candour will not persuade Israel to abandon its arsenal, and no country can force it to do so either. Israel will remain a nuclear power as long as any country in the world has a single bomb, which probably means forever. But recognition of this fact changes the dialectic of the Middle East discourse completely. It lends greater legitimacy to American pressure on Iran, and strengthens the argument for some form of a nuclear umbrella for those of Israel’s neighbours who ask, rightly, whether this institutionalised imbalance in strategic strength can be justified. So far, America has avoided a response to such a question through its non-recognition of Israeli capability. This, in turn, has persuaded nations like Iran to pursue a clandestine programme.

The history of nuclear weapons is the story of fear, cause and consequence. America and Britain developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War in the Manhattan Project for fear that Germany might do so before them. (It was a joint scientific effort, although America got all the public credit.) Stalin could not afford to be without a nuclear response once the hot war changed to a cold war. Britain was part of the original partnership; France developed an independent capability for reasons of status. China perceived both the American and the Soviet arsenals as a threat; and India, which had fought a war with China in 1962, had to find its answer. Pakistan responded to India. Israel used regional conflict as its rationale; and Israel is Iran’s implicit justification.

There is a cyclical logic in operation. North Korea also has an argument; its war for survival in the early Fifties. The rest of the world does not have any sympathy for this argument, which is why China has joined the United States in condemning North Korea’s brazen behaviour. But the very fact that the Security Council can do very little about disarming even a nation as weak and unstable as North Korea indicates the difficulties inherent in the very laudable concept of disarmament. Anyone with a couple of bombs, and the capability to launch them, has the ultimate blackmail mechanism. It might be suicide for North Korea to actually launch a bomb at Japan or South Korea, but this is surely the ultimate suicide mission. Anyone who is sane has to shudder at the sheer havoc such insanity would cause.

This, of course, leads us to the existential dilemma: what happens if a weapon ends up in the command of terrorists, or those who believe that such havoc will destroy their perceived enemy? The civil war in Pakistan is tinged by the dread that if the Taliban, or its clandestine supporters in the political establishment, succeeded, the world would enter an unprecedented age of dread. This seems unlikely just now, but the future is another story.

What is the answer? I do not know. What I do know is that silence is not an answer.

Global Arab Network
* M.J. Akbar is the Chairman and Director of Publications of the fortnightly newsmagazine Covert (www.covertmagazine.com)
Global Arab Network

Gulf Arabs give muted reaction to Ahmadinejad win
Mon Jun 15, 2009 DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arab governments fearing growing Iranian power in the region gave a muted reaction to hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election win this week.

Semi-official media in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no elected parliament, attacked the results as undemocratic.

"Falsifying the results is the easiest of tasks for a religious-security regime that does not believe in leaving to chance what it considers to be its right," wrote Abdul-Rahman al-Rashed in Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV, which has had extensive coverage, said Iran had closed its office for a week without reason. "The Saudis are paranoid about Iran and have even more reason to be so after Ahmadinejad's reelection," said a Western diplomat in Riyadh. "They had no illusions that anything there would be a major policy change."

Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in Friday's election has been contested by his opponents, prompting street protests. The win has disconcerted Western powers trying to induce the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter to curb its nuclear program.

Tehran denies Western charges, backed by Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leader of Sunni Islam and fears Washington will recognize Iran as a regional power in an eventual rapprochement.

But many smaller Gulf states, keen to preserve good relations with Shi'ite minorities, have maintained traditionally friendly ties with Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates, which hopes to resolve a dispute over islands occupied by Iran, offered early congratulations to the winner in a statement on the official news agency.

Around 200 Iranians demonstrated outside the Iranian consulate in Dubai on Monday. Dubai has become a haven for Iranians escaping United Nations sanctions on Iran.

"The only reason I support Ahmadinejad's election win is his bold defiance of the United States with the nuclear program," said Suhail Al-Rajhi, an Omani secondary school teacher.

In Bahrain, whose Sunni royal family rules a Shi'ite majority, some Shi'ite commentators praised the Iranian leader.

"He managed to convey the image of modest and simple president, which appeals to people (in the region). If he was a candidate in any Arab country against a current president, the public would vote for him," wrote Kassim Hussain in al-Wasat.

(Additional reporting by Ulf Laessing, Luke Pachymuthu, Frederik Richter, Saleh al-Shaibany; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

(Writing by Andrew Hammond; editing by Samia Nakhoul)

© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.
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Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran?
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
15 June 2009

Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days.

The Obama administration will announce that Ross has been reassigned to another position in the White House. In his new post, the former Mideast peace envoy under President Bill Clinton will deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.

Washington insiders speculate that a number of reasons moved the administration to reassign Ross. One possibility is Iran's persistent refusal to accept Ross as a U.S. emissary given the diplomat's Jewish background as well as his purported pro-Israel leanings. Ross is known to maintain contacts with numerous senior officials in Israel's defense establishment and the Israeli government.
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Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem surmised that another possibility for Ross' ouster is his just-released book, "Myths, Illusions, and Peace - Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East."

Ross, who co-wrote the book with David Makovsky, a former journalist who is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued against a linkage between the Palestinian issue and the West's policy against Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Ross and Mokovsky also raised the possibility of military action against Iran.

"Tougher policies - either militarily or meaningful containment - will be easier to sell internationally and domestically if we have diplomatically tried to resolve our differences with Iran in a serious and credible fashion," they wrote.

Another possible reason for the reshuffle could be Ross' dissatisfaction with his present standing in the State Department, particularly given the fact that Washington's two other envoys to the region - George Mitchell, who is overseeing the Mideast peace process; and Richard Holbrooke, who is dealing with Pakistan and Afghanistan - wield great influence and are featured prominently.

A diplomatic source in Jerusalem speculated that perhaps Ross preferred to work for the National Security Agency, which answers directly to President Barack Obama, and would thus be considered a more enhanced role.

Last year, Ross was an advisor to Obama's successful presidential campaign. Before Obama's inauguration, speculation was rampant as to which job Ross would assume in the new administration.

On February 24, 2009, he was officially appointed as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's advisor on the Persian Gulf and special envoy to Iran.


_______________________________________________

Appointment in Yekaterinburg
The Ending of America's Financial-Military Empire
By MICHAEL HUDSON

The city of Yekaterinburg, Russia's largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the end of the road for the tsars but of American hegemony too; as the place not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.

Challenging America is the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the so-called BRIC nations --Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The attendees have assured American diplomats that it is not their aim to dismantle the financial and military empire of the United States. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the United States, for NATO or for the US dollar as a vehicle for trade. US diplomats may well ask what this really means, if not a move to make US hegemony obsolete. After all, that is what a multipolar world means. For starters, in 2005 the SCO asked Washington to set a timeline to withdraw from its military bases in Central Asia. Two years later the SCO countries formally aligned themselves with the former CIS republics belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), established in 2002 as a counterweight to NATO.

Yet the Yekaterinburg meeting has elicited only a collective yawn from the US and even European press despite its agenda -- nothing less than the replacement of the global dollar standard with a new financial and military defense system. A Council on Foreign Relations spokesman has said he hardly can imagine that Russia and China can overcome their geopolitical rivalry, suggesting that America can use the divide-and-conquer that Britain used so deftly for many centuries in fragmenting foreign opposition to its own empire. But George W. Bush ("I'm a uniter, not a divider") built on the Clinton administration's legacy in driving Russia, China and their neighbors to find a common ground when it comes to finding an alternative to the dollar and hence to the US ability to run balance-of-payments deficits ad infinitum.

What may prove to be the last rites of American hegemony began already in April at the G-20 conference, and became even more explicit at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, when Mr. Medvedev called for China, Russia and India to "build an increasingly multipolar world order." What this means in plain English is: We have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States' military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth.

The artificially maintained unipolar system," Mr. Medvedev spelled out, is based on "one big center of consumption, financed by a growing deficit, and thus growing debts, one formerly strong reserve currency, and one dominant system of assessing assets and risks." At the root of the global financial crisis, he concluded, is the fact that the United States makes too little and spends too much, particularly its vast military outlays, such as the stepped-up US military aid to Georgia announced just last week, the NATO missile shield in Eastern Europe and the US buildup in the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

The sticking point for all these countries is the ability of the United States to print unlimited amounts of dollars. Overspending by U.S. consumers on imports in excess of exports, U.S. buy-outs of foreign companies and real estate, and the dollars that the Pentagon spends abroad all end up in foreign central banks. These banks then face a hard choice: either to recycle these dollars back to the United States by purchasing US Treasury bills, or to let the "free market" force up their currency relative to the dollar – thereby pricing their exports out of world markets and hence creating domestic unemployment and business insolvency.

When China and other countries recycle their dollar inflows by buying US Treasury bills to "invest" in the United States, this buildup is not really voluntary. It does not reflect faith in the ability of the U.S. economy to enrich foreign central banks for their savings. Nor does it represent any calculated investment preference. It is simply a matter of a lack of alternatives. U.S.-style "free markets" hook countries into a system that forces them to accept dollars without limit. Now they want out.

This means creating a new alternative. Rather than making merely "cosmetic changes as some countries and perhaps the international financial organisations themselves might want," said Mr. Medvedev at the end of his St. Petersburg speech, "what we need are financial institutions of a completely new type, where particular political issues and motives, and particular countries will not dominate."

When foreign military spending forced the US balance of payments into deficit and drove the United States off gold in 1971, central banks were left without the traditional asset used to settle payments imbalances. The alternative was to invest their subsequent inflows of US dollars in US Treasury bonds, as if these still were "as good as gold." Central banks now hold $4 trillion of these bonds in their international reserves. These loans have financed most of the US Government's domestic budget deficits for over three decades now! Given the fact that about half of US Government discretionary spending is for military operations – including more than 750 foreign military bases and increasingly expensive operations in the oil-producing and transporting countries – the international financial system is organized in a way that finances the Pentagonand also US buyouts of foreign assets expected to yield much more than the Treasury bonds that foreign central banks hold.

The main political issue confronting the world's central banks is therefore how to avoid adding yet more dollars to their reserves and thereby financing yet further US deficit spending – including military spending on their borders.

For starters, the six SCO countries and BRIC countries intend to trade in their own currencies so as to get the benefit of mutual credit that the United States until now has monopolized for itself. Toward this end, China has struck bilateral deals with Argentina and Brazil to denominate their trade in renminbi rather than the dollar, sterling or euros, and two weeks ago China reached an agreement with Malaysia to denominate trade between the two countries in renminbi. Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad explained to me in January that as a Muslim country, Malaysia wants to avoid doing anything that would facilitate US military action against Islamic countries, including Palestine. The nation has too many dollar assets as it is, his colleagues explained. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan of the People's Bank of China put an official statement on the bank's website, explaining that the goal is now to create a reserve currency "that is disconnected from individual nations." This is the aim of the discussions in Yekaterinburg.

Aside from no longer financing the U.S. buyout of their own industries and the U.S. military encirclement of the globe, China, Russia and other countries would no doubt like to enjoy the same kind of free ride that America has been getting. As matters stand now, they see the United States as a lawless nation, financially as well as militarily. How else to characterize a nation that proclaims a set of laws for others – on war, debt repayment and treatment of prisoners – but flouts them itself? The United States is now the world's largest debtor yet has avoided the pain of "structural adjustments" imposed on other debtor economies. U.S. interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.

The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors. And at home, Congress blocked, on grounds of national security, China's CNOOK from buying Unocal, much as it blocked Dubai from buying US ports and blocked other sovereign wealth funds from buying into key infrastructure. Foreigners are invited to emulate the Japanese purchase of white elephant trophies such as Rockefeller Center, on which investors quickly lost a billion dollars and ended up walking away.

In this respect the US has given China and other payments-surplus nations no alternative but to find a way to avoid further dollar buildups. To date, China's attempts to diversify its dollar holdings beyond Treasury bonds have not proved very successful. For starters, Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs steered its central bank into higher-yielding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities, explaining that these were de facto public obligations. They collapsed in 2008, but at least the U.S. Government took over these two mortgage-lending agencies, formally adding their $5.2 trillion in obligations to the national debt. In fact, it was largely foreign official investment that prompted the bailout. Imposing a loss for foreign official agencies would have broken the Treasury-bill standard then and there, not only by utterly destroying US credibility but because there simply are too few Government bonds to absorb the dollars being flooded into the world economy by the soaring US balance-of-payments deficits.

in late 2007, seeking more of an equity position to protect the value of their dollar holdings as the Federal Reserve's credit bubble drove interest rates down, China's sovereign wealth funds sought to diversify. China bought stakes in the well-connected Blackstone equity fund and Morgan Stanley on Wall Street, Barclays in Britain, South Africa's Standard Bank (once affiliated with Chase Manhattan back in the apartheid 1960s) and in the soon-to-collapse Belgian financial conglomerate Fortis. But the US financial sector was collapsing under the weight of its debt pyramiding, and prices for shares plunged for banks and investment firms across the globe.

Foreigners see the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by American military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength. US military power is muscle-bound, based more on atomic weaponry and long-distance air strikes than on ground operations, which have become too politically unpopular to mount on any large scale.

On the economic front there is no foreseeable way in which the United States can work off the $4 trillion it owes foreign governments, their central banks and the sovereign wealth funds set up to dispose of the global dollar glut. America has become a deadbeat –a militarily aggressive one -- as it sruggles to hold onto the immense power it once earned by economic means. The problem for the rest of the world is how to constrain its behavior. Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank advisor now with China's Academy of Sciences, suggested that US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner be advised that the United States should "save" first and foremost by cutting back its military budget. "U.S. tax revenue," he said, "is not likely to increase in the short term because of low economic growth, inflexible expenditures and the cost of 'fighting two wars.'"

At present foreign savings are what finance the US budget deficit by buying most Treasury bonds. The consequence is taxation without representation for foreign voters as to how the US Government uses their forced savings. It therefore is necessary for the financial diplomats to broaden the scope of their policy-making beyond the private-sector marketplace. Exchange rates are determined by many factors besides "consumers wielding credit cards," the usual euphemism that the US media cite for America's balance-of-payments deficit. Since the 13th century, war has been a dominating factor in the balance of payments of leading nations – and of their national debts. Government bond financing consists mainly of war debts, as normal peacetime budgets tend to be balanced. This links the war budget directly to the balance of payments and exchange rates.

Foreign nations see themselves stuck with unpayable IOUs under conditions where, if they move to stop the US free lunch, the dollar will plunge and their dollar holdings will fall in value relative to their own domestic currencies and other currencies. If China's currency rises by 10 per cent against the dollar, its central bank will show the equivalent of a $200 million loss on its $2 trillion of dollar holdings as denominated in yuan. This explains why, when bond ratings agencies talk of the US Treasury securities losing their AAA rating, they don't mean that the government cannot simply print the paper dollars to "make good" on these bonds. They mean that dollars will depreciate in international value. And that is just what is now occurring. When U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner assumed an earnest mien and told an audience at Peking University in early June that he believed in a "strong dollar" and China's US investments therefore were safe and sound, he was greeted with derisive laughter.

Anticipation of a rise in China's exchange rate provides an incentive for speculators to seek to borrow in dollars to buy renminbi and benefit from the appreciation. For China, the problem is that this speculative inflow would become a self-fulfilling prophecy by forcing up its currency. So the problem of international reserves is inherently linked to that of capital controls. Why should China see its profitable companies sold for yet more freely-created US dollars, which the central bank must use to buy low-yielding US Treasury bills or lose yet further money on Wall Street?

To steer round this quandary it is necessary to reverse the philosophy of open capital markets that the world has held ever since Bretton Woods in 1944. On the occasion of Mr. Geithner's visit to China, Zhou Xiaochuan, minister of the Peoples Bank of China, the country's central bank, said pointedly that this was the first time since the semiannual talks began in 2006 that "China needed to learn from American mistakes as well as its successes" when it came to deregulating capital markets and dismantling controls.

So an era is winding to its end. In the face of continued US overspending, de-dollarization threatens to force countries to return to the kind of dual exchange rates common between World Wars I and II: one exchange rate for commodity trade, another for capital movements and investments, at least from dollar-area economies.

Even without capital controls, the nations meeting at Yekaterinburg are taking steps to avoid being the unwilling recipients of yet more dollars. Seeing that U.S. global hegemony cannot continue without the spending power that they themselves supply, governments are attempting to hasten what Chalmers Johnson has called "the sorrows of empire" in his book by that name – the bankruptcy of the US financial-military world order. If China, Russia and their non-aligned allies have their way, the United States will no longer live off the savings of others in the form of its own recycled dollars, nor have the money for unlimited military expenditures and adventures.

US officials wanted to attend the Yekaterinburg meeting as observers. They were told No. It is a word that Americans will hear much more in the future.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com

North Korea Says It Will Start Enriching Uranium
Blaine Harden, The Washington Post
DPRKNorth Korea adamantly denied for seven years that it had a program for making nuclear weapons from enriched uranium.

But on Saturday, a few hours after the U.N. Security Council slapped it with tough new sanctions for detonating a second nuclear device, the government of Kim Jong Il changed its tune, vowing that it would start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9061300636.html

Reports: Russia Says Bank Problems Delay Bushehr Associated Press The head of the Russian company building Iran's first nuclear power plant said Wednesday that it is unclear when the reactor will be switched on, Russian news agencies reported, potentially casting doubt on Iranian hopes for a startup before the end of the year.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...Fgtj1QD98NTVUO1

Syria Plays Down Uranium Find by UN Nuclear Agency
Associated Press
Syria's nuclear chief is suggesting the U.N. nuclear agency's discovery of new uranium traces in the country do not harden allegations that Damascus has a hidden nuclear program.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...99x07AD98RRKMO0

White House on Iran Election: A Diplomatic Plus Massimo Calabresi, Time When Obama Administration Iran czar Dennis Ross and top U.S. Iran negotiator William Burns were planning the details of the President's outreach to Tehran with senior European diplomats earlier this spring, they discussed a possible nightmare scenario for the June 12 presidential elections in Iran.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1904628,00.html

STRATFORvideo
Iranian Elections, Israel and the United States

http://www.stratfor.com/media_room/stratfo...tm_medium=email

Hamas Calls for Palestinian State in 1967 Borders

By Middle East Online

The head of the democratically elected Hamas in Gaza said on Tuesday the movement supported the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day war. Continue

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22840.htm

Iran and Russia Nip at US Global Dominance

By Fred Weir

At conference in Siberia, leaders of Russia, China, India, and Iran float idea of new 'supranational' currency. China offers $10 billion to neighbors. Continue

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22843.htm

Obama: North Korea can not be a nuclear power: US President Barack Obama has said North Korea’s track record of proliferation makes it unacceptable for Pyongyang to be a nuclear power.

Obama labels nuclear-armed NKorea 'grave threat': -- Declaring North Korea a "grave threat" to the world, President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged the U.S. and its allies will aggressively enforce fresh international penalties against the nuclear-armed nation and stop rewarding its leaders for repeated provocations.

U.S. Recommits to Keeping S. Korea Under its Nuke Umbrella: U.S. President Barack Obama pledged anew on June 16 to defend South Korea by keeping the country under its nuclear umbrella as North Korea's nuclear and missile threats heighten.

DPRK threatens to launch pre-emptive strike against U.S.: "Under the present situation where the Korean People's Army (KPA) is technically at war with the U.S. imperialists, and as the Armistice Agreement has lost its legal binding force, the KPA will promptly exercise the right to a pre-emptive strike to beat back the enemies' slightest provocation," Pak said.

Obama Is No Reagan -- A Commentary
WNU Editor: When Poland imposed martial law in mid-December 1981, President Reagan forcefully presented the American position of supporting freedom and the protesters in Poland. As Ed Morissey at the Hot Air blog so eloquently puts it .... Reagan didn't remain silent on Poland.

Three decades later, with another society in open revolt against their oppressors, we have this:

From Breitbart:

President Barack Obama says he believes supreme leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei has deep concerns about the civil unrest that has followed the hotly contested presidential election there. Obama repeated Tuesday at a news conference his "deep concerns" about the disputed balloting. He said he believes the ayatollah's decision to order an investigation "indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns." But at the same time, Obama said it would not be helpful if the United States was seen by the world as "meddling" in the issue.

Sigh ....

Dennis Praeger is correct .... "Dear Iranians: Don't Count on America (or Any Country Led by Left)"

http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.com/2009/06...commentary.html

Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- News Updates Photo: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, gestures while arriving in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, Russia, Monday, June 15, 2009. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will host leaders from China and Central Asia Monday at the summit of a regional grouping dominated by Moscow and Beijing. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)

Emerging Economic Powers Meet in Russia -- New York Times

MOSCOW — Leaders of some of the world's most powerful economies gathered Tuesday to discuss how they can exert more control over the global financial system as it takes its first wobbly steps toward recovery.

Yet not an American or Western European was in the bunch.

The first summit meeting of the so-called BRIC group — Brazil, Russia, India and China — was intended to underscore the rising economic clout of these four major developing countries and their demand for a greater voice in the world. And Russia, the group's host and ideological provocateur, was especially interested in using the summit to fire a shot across Washington's bow.

Read more ....

More News On The Shanghai Cooperation Organization

First summit meeting of BRIC leaders begins in Yekaterinburg -- China View
Russia, China seek greater international clout -- Yahoo News/AP
Russia Hosts 'Counterbalance' to U.S., 'Shanghai Cooperation Organization' -- FOX News
Medvedev calls for new reserve currencies -- AP
Russia challenges dollar, China offers loans -- AP
China, Russia Woo Central Asian Countries With Bailout Cash -- Bloomberg
Big four emerging economies meet for first summit -- Canada.com
Backgrounder: Brief history of Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- China View

Pakistan's 'Loose Nukes'

From BBC News:

Every now and then in this business someone in a position to know some enthralling secret passes information on to you, but you have no means of backing it up from other sources.

A few years ago, I was told about extraordinary US contingency plans to recover Pakistan's nuclear weapons, in the event of a collapse of law and order or an extremist coup in that country.

My informant gave me considerable detail. A super-secret agreement had been put in place early this decade following confrontations between India and Pakistan, two nuclear armed nations, over the disputed Kashmir region.

Read more ....

My Comment: I find it hard to believe that the U.S. has the resources and abilities to go into Pakistan, isolate their nuclear arsenal, and then move it out. The logistics and resources necessary to conduct such an operation would be staggering. We are not talking about a few boxes, we are talking about a considerable amount of nuclear material and equipment .... nuclear material that will have to be handled with great care and caution.

Is there a "secret plan" for the U.S. to move in and remove Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the event of a catastrophic situation .... my gut tells me no.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/marku...oose_nukes.html

Uri Avnery

20.6.09

When He Says Yes – What Does He Mean?

“YOU MUST be celebrating,” the interviewer from a popular radio station told me after Netanyahu’s speech. “After all, he is accepting the plan which you proposed 42 years ago!” (Actually it was 60 years ago, but who is counting?)

The front page of Haaretz carried an article by Gideon Levy, in which he wrote that “the courageous call of Uri Avnery and his friends four decades ago is now being echoed, though feebly, from end to end (of the Israeli political spectrum).”

I would be lying if I denied feeling a brief glow of satisfaction, but it faded quickly. This was no “historic” speech, not even a “great” speech. It was a clever speech.

It contained some sanctimonious verbiage to appease Barack Obama, followed right away by the opposite, to pacify the Israeli extreme right. Not much more.

NETANYAHU DECLARED that “our hand is extended for peace.”

In my ears, that rang a bell: in the 1956 Sinai war, a member of my editorial staff was attached to the brigade that conquered Sharm-al-Sheikh. Since he had grown up in Egypt, he interviewed the senior captured Egyptian officer, a colonel. “Every time David Ben-Gurion announced that his hand was stretched out for peace,” the Egyptian told him, “we were put on high alert.”

And indeed, that was Ben-Gurion’s method. Before every provocation he would declare that “our hands are extended for peace”, adding conditions that he knew were totally unacceptable to the other side. Thus an ideal situation (for him) was created: The world saw Israel as a peace-loving country, while the Arabs looked like serial peace-killers. Our secret weapon is the Arab refusal, it used to be joked in Jerusalem at the time.

This week, Netanyahu wheeled out the same old trick.

I DO NOT underrate, of course, the significance of the chief of the Likud uttering the two words: “Palestinian state”.

Words carry political weight. Once released into the world, they have a life of their own. Unlike dogs, they cannot be called back.

In a popular Israeli love song, the boy asks the girl: “When you say no, what do you mean?” One could well ask: When Netanyahu says yes, what does he mean?

But even if the words “Palestinian state” passed his lips only under duress, and when Netanyahu has no intention at all of turning them into reality, it is still important that the head of the government and the chief of the Likud was compelled to utter them. The idea of the Palestinian state has now become a part of the national consensus, and only a handful of ultra-rightists reject it directly. But this is only the beginning. The main struggle will be about turning the idea into reality.

THE ENTIRE speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them.

He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the “Palestinian community”, and that, of course, “without preconditions”. Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu’s part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.

Condition 1: The Arabs have to recognize Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people” (and not just “a Jewish state”, as many in the media erroneously reported.) As Hosny Mubarak has already answered: No Arab will accept this, because it would mean that 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are cut off from the state, and because it would deny in advance the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees - the main bargaining chip of the Arab side.

It should be remembered that when the United Nations resolved in 1947 to partition Palestine between a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state”, they did not mean to define the character of the states. They were just stating facts: there are two mutually hostile populations in the country, and therefore the country has to be divided between them. (Anyhow, 40% of the population of the “Jewish” state was to consist of Arabs.)

Condition 2: The Palestinian Authority must first of all establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. How? After all, the Israeli government prevents travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian force can pass from one to the other. And the solution of the problem by establishing a Palestinian unity government is also ruled out: Netanyahu flatly declared that there would be no negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that includes “terrorists who want to annihilate us” – his way of referring to Hamas.

Condition 3: The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. This is not a new idea. All peace plans that have been put forward up to now speak about security arrangements that would protect Israel from Palestinian attacks and Palestine from Israeli attacks. But that is not what Netanyahu has in mind: he did not speak about mutuality, but about domination. Israel would control the air space and the border crossings of the Palestinian state, turning it into a kind of giant Gaza Strip. Also, Netanyahu’s style was deliberately overbearing and humiliating: he obviously hopes that the word ‘demilitarized” would be enough to get the Palestinians to say “no”.

Condition 4: Undivided Jerusalem will remain under Israeli rule. This was not proposed as an opening gambit for negotiations but presented as a final decision. That by itself ensures that no Palestinian, nor any Arab or even any Muslim, could accept the proposal.

In the Oslo Agreement, Israel undertook to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem. It is an accepted legal rule that if one undertakes to negotiate, one accepts to do so bona fide, on the basis of give and take. Therefore, all peace plans provide that East Jerusalem - wholly or partly – will be returned to Arab rule.

Condition 5: Between Israel and the Palestinian state there will be “defensible borders”. These are code-words for extensive annexations by Israel. Their meaning: no return to the 1967 borders, not even with a swap of territory that would allow for some of the large settlements to be joined to Israel. In order to create “defensible borders”, a major part of the occupied Palestinian territories (which altogether make up just 22% of pre-1948 Palestine) will be absorbed into Israel.

Condition 6: The refugee problem will be solved “outside the territory of Israel”. Meaning: not a single refugee will be allowed to return. True, all realistic people agree that there can be no return of millions of refugees. According to the Arab peace initiative, the solution must be “mutually agreed” – which means that Israel has to agree to any solution. The assumption is that the two parties will agree on the return of a symbolic number. This is a highly charged and sensitive matter, which must be treated with prudence and the utmost sensitivity. Netanyahu does the opposite: his provocative statement, devoid of all empathy, is clearly designed to bring about an automatic refusal.

Condition 7: No settlement freeze. The “normal life” of the settlers will continue. Meaning: the building activity for the “natural increase” will go on. This illustrates the saying of Michael Tarazy, a legal advisor to the PLO: “We are negotiating about sharing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it.”

All this was in the speech. No less interesting is what was not in it. For example, the words: Road Map. Annapolis. Palestine. The Arab peace plan. Occupation. Palestinian Sovereignty. Opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings. Golan Heights. And, even more important: there was not a hint of respect for the enemy who must be turned into a friend, in the words of the ancient Jewish saying.

SO WHAT is more important? The verbal recognition of “a Palestinian state” or the conditions which empty these words of all content?

The public response is interesting. In an opinion poll taken immediately after the speech, 71% supported it, but 55% believed that Netanyahu just “gave in to American pressure”, and 70% did not believe that a Palestinian state would really come about during the next few years.

What exactly do the 71% support? The “Palestinian state” solution or the conditions which obstruct its implementation – or both?

There is, of course, an extreme right-wing minority which prefers a head-on collision with the United States to giving up any territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Along the road to Jerusalem one can see large posters showing a manipulated photo of Obama wearing an Arab headdress. (It sends a shiver down the spine, because it reminds us of seeing exactly the same poster with Yitzhak Rabin under the keffiyeh.) But the great majority of the people understand that a break with the US must be avoided at all costs.

Netanyahu and the right-wing hoped that the Palestinians would reject his words outright, thus painting themselves as serial peace refusers, while the Israeli government would be seen as taking the first small but significant step towards peace. They are sure that this could be achieved for nothing: the Palestinian state will not be set up, the Israeli government will not give up anything, the occupation will remain, settlement activity will go on and Obama will accept all this.

SO THE main question is: how will Obama react?

The first reaction was minor. A politely positive response.

Obama is not seeking a frontal collision with the Israeli government. It seems that he wants to exert “soft” pressure, vigorously but quietly. To my mind, that is a wise approach.

A few hours before the speech, I met with ex-President Jimmy Carter. The meeting took place at the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem. It was organized by Gush Shalom, with several other Israeli peace organizations taking part. In my opening remarks, I pointed out that we were in exactly the same room where 16 years ago, while the Oslo agreement was being signed in Washington, Israeli peace activists and the leaders of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem met and opened bottles of champagne. The euphoria of those moments has disappeared without leaving a trace.

Israelis and Palestinians have lost hope. On both sides, the overwhelming majority wants an end to the conflict but do not believe that peace is possible – and each side blames the other. Our task is to rekindle the belief that it is indeed possible.

For this there is a need for a dramatic event, a kind of invigorating electric shock – like the historic visit of Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977. I suggested that Obama should come to Jerusalem and speak directly to the Israeli public, perhaps even from the Knesset rostrum, like Sadat.

After listening intently to the participants, the former President encouraged us in our activities and put forward some proposals of his own.

THE DECISIVE point at this moment is, of course, the matter of the settlements. Will Obama insist on a total freeze of all building activity or not?

Netanyahu hopes to wriggle out of it. He has now found a new gimmick: projects that have already started must be allowed to be finished. One cannot stop them in the middle. The plans have already been approved. The tenants are waiting for their apartments, and they must not be made to suffer. The Supreme Court will not allow a freeze. (A particularly ridiculous argument, like the court allowing a thief to spend some more of the money he has stolen before passing sentence.)


If Obama falls for this, he should not be surprised to find out belatedly that these projects include 100,000 new housing units.

This brings us to the most important fact of this week: the settlers did not raise hell after Netanyahu’s speech. On the contrary. Here and there some feeble criticism could be heard, but the large and armed settler population kept remarkably quiet.

Which brings us back to the unforgettable Sherlock Holmes, who explained how he solved one of his mysteries by drawing attention to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“But the dog did nothing in the night-time!” someone objected.

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Holmes.
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In Gaza on Tuesday, former US president Jimmy Carter (l.) pressed senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (r.) to accept international conditions for negotiations. Suhaib Salem/Reuters Why Israel and Hamas are meeting with Jimmy Carter

The former president met with Israeli settlers as well as top Hamas leaders on a week-long tour of the region that wrapped up Tuesday in Gaza.
By Erin Cunningham | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor from the June 16, 2009 edition: Gaza City, Gaza

- Amid softened tensions between Israel and the US after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Sunday, a familiar face is edging his way into the melee: Jimmy Carter. On Tuesday, the former president capped a week-long tour of the Middle East by meeting senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Carter has been shunned in the past by both the Bush administration and Israeli leaders, who criticized his efforts to engage the militant Palestinian group that he says is crucial to any lasting Arab-Israeli peace. But analysts say Carter's ties with the more like-minded Obama administration, which has taken a firmer stand with Israel on some issues, may bolster his effectiveness as a regional peace broker.

"There is a big difference between Carter operating under Bush [and] Carter operating under Obama," says Alon Liel, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry director general. "His efforts had little value during the eight years of the Republicans. They have greater value now. He has access and connections with the leaders of [the] new America."

Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to Mr. Haniyeh, also acknowledges Carter's ties with Obama and potential to act as a go-between with the US, which considers Hamas to be a terrorist group. As a result, Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has not met with Hamas leaders.

"He is close to President Obama and nobody in his type of position understands the conflict with all its problems like he does," says Mr. Yousef in a phone interview. "I think he will give Obama the information and analysis he needs to address this conflict in a proper way and to restore the image of America in the region after two decades of failed diplomacy."

Hamas reportedly thwarted two bombs targeting Carter's vehicle on Tuesday, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz and news agencies.

Carter to Hamas: Accept US conditions for talks

On Tuesday in Gaza and last week in the Syrian capital, where Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal lives, Mr. Carter urged the militant group ruling Gaza to accept the conditions for talks laid out by the international community, including renouncing violence, accepting previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, and recognizing the Jewish state's right to exist.

"I called on Hamas leaders that I met with in Damascus and I told Hamas leaders in Gaza today to accept these conditions," said Carter to reporters after meeting with Haniyeh for the first time. "They made several statements, and showed readiness to join the peace [process] and move towards establishing a just and independent Palestinian state."

Haniyeh, who welcomed the "new spirit" of the US as evidenced in Obama's June 4 Cairo speech, said Hamas will support a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, provided it would be under "full Palestinian sovereignty."

Why Israeli settler met with Carter

In Israel, whose government also considers Hamas a terrorist organization, Carter has on recent trips met with a cool reception – or no reception. But this time, he visited the Knesset and met with Israel's security cabinet. Even Shaul Goldstein, a prominent West Bank settler, agreed to meet him.

"Nobody in his position ever agreed to meet settlers. People won't meet settlers," says Mr. Goldstein, who heads the regional council of the Gush Etzion settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"Carter is not the enemy," he says. "Maybe he's talking to the enemy. But Carter is not a terrorist, and he's not part of Hamas. The main goal is a dialogue, not a monologue. It is very important in the future to meet this kind of person."

In a surprising move, Carter said the settlements should be allowed to remain part of Israel.

'Not a giant step for mankind, Mideast peace'

The official charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel, and it has provoked Israeli anger by firing rockets across the Gaza border and kidnapping an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Both Israelis and Palestinians see potential for Carter to facilitate a prisoner exchange. Mr. Shalit's parents reportedly gave him a letter to deliver to their son, and Hamas expressed hope that he could help free Palestinians.

"We are encouraging the talks to reach an honorable prisoners' exchange deal with Israel," said Haniyeh. "We welcome all the efforts ... in which Mr. Carter can help in order to reach a prisoners' exchange deal."

But foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor downplays Carter's role. "It's not a giant step for mankind and for peace in the Middle East," he said, calling it a "humanitarian perk" Shalit and his parents.

The key, Mr. Palmor says, is to look at tangible results.

"It's very simple. Are there tangible results from bringing together people from different spheres and making them listen to each other?" he asks. "If the answer is yes, if you can point to concrete projects that have seen the light of day, and real improvement – however modest – in Israel-Arab relations, then this is a positive action. If there are no tangible results, then we should either be patient and wait, or conclude that these efforts are completely inefficient for the moment."

Hamas: 'Carter is the messenger we trust'

Carter, who said he was moved almost to tears by the situation in Gaza, promised to bring a "report" of the destruction he saw to Obama, as well as to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell.

"Someone as high-profile as Carter, coming to the region to meet with Hamas and the government of Ismail Haniyeh but also [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas, is very positive," says Mr. Yousef. "He can convey messages to President Obama about the situation in Gaza and in the West Bank and the consequences this blockade has had on our lives. Carter is the messenger that we trust – and that the world community trusts."

• Safwat al-Kahlout in Gaza City and Joshua Mitnick in Tel Aviv contributed reporting.

Published on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 by CNN Carter Decries Destruction in Gaza by CNN Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on a visit to Gaza that he had to "hold back tears" when he saw the destruction caused by the deadly campaign Israel waged against Gaza militants in January.

<img title="carter_haniya.jpg" alt="[Ismail Haniya ®, the prime minister of the Islamist Hamas, movement presents a souvenir to former US President Jimmy Carter during their meeting in Gaza City. Carter on Tuesday met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a lifting of Israel's blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated " width="275" align="right" height="167"> Carter was wrapping up a visit to the region during which he met representatives of all sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Among the sites he visited was the American school that was destroyed by the bombings Israel initiated in response to rocket attacks launched from Gaza into southern Israel.

"It is very distressing to me. I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been raked against your people.

"I come to the American school which was educating your children, supported by my own country. I see it's been deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my country and delivered to the Israelis. I feel partially responsible for this -- as must all Americans and all Israelis," Carter said at a news conference.

"The only way to avoid this tragedy happening again is to have genuine peace," he added, pointing out that many Palestinians are now fighting each other in the West Bank and Gaza because of their affiliations with Hamas or Fatah.

"It's very important that Palestinians agree with each other, to cooperate and stop attacking each other and to build a common approach to an election that I hope to witness and observe next January the 25th."

After the briefing, Carter headed to a graduation ceremony for students who completed a human rights curriculum provided by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

"The human rights curriculum is teaching children about their rights and also about their responsibilities," Carter said in his speech to graduates.

In his speech to graduates, Carter said bombings, tanks and a continuing economic siege have brought death, destruction, pain and suffering to Gaza. "Tragically, the international community largely ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are treated more like animals than human beings."

"The responsibility for this terrible human rights crime lies in Jerusalem, Cairo, Washington, and throughout the international community," Carter said.

At a news conference later in Tel Aviv, reporters asked the former president about media reports early Tuesday that said Hamas had thwarted a possible assassination plot against him.

The Israeli daily Maariv, quoting a Palestinian source, said explosives had been placed on a road Carter was due to travel on. Citing the source, the newspaper said it was a plot by an al Qaeda-affiliated group based in Gaza.

"I don't believe it's true," Carter said. "I don't know anything about it.

"None of our people were aware of being rerouted. I asked our driver and I asked the others in charge of making the arrangements, (and) they didn't know anything about it."

Carter said some of his staff asked Gaza's minister of interior, who is in charge of security, and he also was unfamiliar with the report.

Also in Gaza, Carter met with Hamas leaders, who he said "want peace and they want to have reconciliation not only with their Fatah brothers but also, eventually, with the Israelis to live side by side.

© 2009 Cable News Network
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Unnatural Growth
By Gershom Gorenberg

Posted June 2009
Bibi Netanyahu says the Israeli settlements in the West Bank must grow to accommodate population expansion. He's full of it.

Rooms available: Enlarging the settlements only makes them harder to dismantle in the future.

It must be said that Benjamin Netanyahu has learned a little from Barack Obama. True, the Israeli prime minister has been remarkably slow in grasping that when the U.S. president says he wants a freeze on settlement building, he means a freeze. But at least Netanyahu has learned that the way to reframe your foreign policy is to give a big, well-publicized speech at a university campus.

So on Sunday, June 14, Netanyahu will speak at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. I can't guess what the prime minister will say. But here's one thing he absolutely shouldn't say: "Construction must continue in settlements to accommodate natural growth." If he does make this argument, no one should take it seriously. It's built on layers of myth and misconceptions.

Let's take them one by one.

Obama wants a baby ban: First is the completely misconceived notion -- put out by everyone from Israeli politicians to American pundits -- that Obama's stance is a decree against having babies in settlements. This is silly. The president is reiterating what's stated in the 2003 road map for peace: Israel must freeze "settlement activity," meaning building and expansion of settlements. The issue is construction, not reproduction.

The fact is that even if all building in settlements stopped cold today, the number of Israelis in settlements would keep rising. Young couples who have bought apartments or houses in bedroom communities like Ma'aleh Adumim and Beitar Illit have done so with growing families in mind and have picked homes accordingly. If a couple decides to have more kids than they planned on, they have prosaic middle-class alternatives, just like couples elsewhere in the developed world: They can use the space in their current home differently, or they can shop for a house elsewhere.

Grown children must live next door to their parents: Obama's critics also claim that he's denying homes to young people who have grown up in settlements. But who said that people in modern societies have a basic right to live in the same neighborhood as their parents? Parents living in Israeli cities know that their children won't necessarily live down the street when they grow up. Settlers may also have to drive to visit their grandchildren. They may have to enter Israel. That's not a denial of human rights, or of Zionism.

Pinchas Wallerstein, director-general of the Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, admitted this week in an interview on Israel Radio that "natural development," as he called it, isn't meant to make room for settlers' own children. Instead, he argued, the number of homes being built should match the number of settler couples getting married -- regardless of who actually lives in those homes. But Wallerstein's yardstick -- the number of marriages -- is arbitrary. His goal is simply to continue and accelerate settlement growth.

Natural increase is the only reason that settlements grow: Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reports that in 2007 -- the most recent year for which there are figures -- the West Bank settlement population grew 5.6 percent. That's three times faster than the growth of the Israeli population as a whole.

Partly, that's due to a high birthrate. But more than one third of the growth resulted from continued migration into settlements. The influx isn't a product of some "invisible hand" of the real estate market. Far from it. The Israeli government has encouraged growth through planning, state-initiated projects, and subsidies.

Under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the government pushed development in the major "settlement blocs" -- areas that Olmert hoped to hold onto in a peace agreement. The reason for the rush to build is precisely that no agreement has been reached with the Palestinians over the future of the blocs. By building, Olmert wanted to make withdrawal from those areas more difficult.

That fits an old pattern: Since settlement began in 1967, weeks after Israel's victory in the Six Day War, the purpose has been to "create facts" that will obligate future governments and constrain any diplomatic process. Settlers who are honest with themselves know that their communities were built as part of a political bid to impose a particular vision of the future of the West Bank -- one that could fail at any time. The settlement enterprise has always had the risk of a freeze or an evacuation built into it.

Since we're negotiating, building doesn't matter: Most previous U.S. administrations have avoided confrontation over settlements if peace talks were in progress. Obama is right to avoid this mistake, because construction is aimed at preempting the negotiations.

Unintentionally, Wallerstein made the point clear in his radio interview. There are already 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, he noted. (The figure doesn't include the Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.) If we really make peace, he said, it won't matter if the number has risen to 325,000. A few seconds later, he recalled the trauma to Israeli society caused by evacuating 9,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

The classic definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents and begging for the mercy of the court because you're an orphan. Adding thousands of settlers to existing communities so that later you can claim that evacuating them would be too great a trauma could be another definition.

It's OK to build inside existing settlements. Recently, Israeli officials have claimed that there was an understanding, partly oral, with the Bush administration that construction could continue within or next to the built-up areas of settlements. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says there's no record of such an agreement. The kindest reading of the dispute is that what Washington saw as a discussion, Jerusalem interpreted as an agreement.

But if former President George W. Bush did agree to building within existing settlements, he didn't grasp the issue. One reason for building is to increase the size of settlements, and therefore the area that Israel will keep. Another is to increase the number of people in settlements, so that evacuation looks more difficult. Building within the existing area of settlements doesn't serve the first purpose -- but it serves the second purpose well.

The bottom line is that all settlement construction is political. The "natural growth" argument is a ruse meant to disguise the real goal: determining the future of the territory before anyone has a chance to negotiate. If Netanyahu has really learned something from recent tensions, he won't repeat the ruse in his speech on Sunday.

Gershom Gorenberg is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977, and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He blogs at SouthJerusalem.com.
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Iranian Elections, Israel, and the United States

A FAKE FINANCIAL FIX by Mark A. Calabria June 18, 2009 THE Obama administration yesterday presented a misguided, ill-informed remake of our financial regulatory system that will make crises more likely and more costly. Our financial system, particularly our mortgage system, is broken -- but the Obama plan ignores the real flaws to focus on more convenient targets. Instead of putting an end to bank bailouts, the plan makes bailouts a permanent feature of our regulatory landscape. In fact, it extends the possibility of taxpayer-funded bailouts to any company choosing to become a financial-holding company. This will likely include every large insurer, as well as major consumer-finance companies like GMAC. Of course, the administration tells us that bailouts won't be needed -- because the same regulators who missed the signs of the current crisis will get added powers to prevent the next one. We're supposed to believe that, if only the Federal Reserve had the same oversight powers over AIG as it now has over Citibank and Bank of America, that the bailout of AIG would have been avoided. Just think: If only AIG had been managed and regulated as well as Citibank -- because Citi is in such great shape now. In the wake of this crisis, it's understandable that the Obama plan increases regulation and oversight of the largest financial institutions -- but why do it in ways that reduce the market discipline on those same companies? By assembling a list of institutions deemed "too big to fail," the president is announcing that any of these select corporations will be bailed out if it fails. As a result, these institutions will face lower funding costs than smaller lenders -- which will allow them to gain market share. That is, the Obama plan guarantees increased concentration of our financial markets: We'll have fewer banks, but larger ones -- insulated from market pressures. In short, the Obama plan puts the entire safety of financial system on hoping that regulators at the Fed get everything right. Meanwhile, the plan barely mentions two institutions at the very heart of the mortgage-market meltdown -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead, the administration tells us that it will study the issue and come back with alternatives at a later date. Yet Fannie and Freddie were the single largest source of funding for the subprime market during its height, buying more than 40 percent of all subprime securities at the market peak, while also leading the market in the reduction of credit quality. In all likelihood, their ultimate cost to the taxpayer will be greater than that of the bank bailouts known as TARP. Combined taxpayer losses from Fannie and Freddie could well exceed $300 billion -- twice the expected cost of bailing out AIG. Any reform plan that leaves out Fannie and Freddie can't be taken seriously. Even when it gets things right, the plan gets it wrong: It recognizes the failure of the credit-rating agencies, but misses the source of that failure -- namely, the fact that those agencies are a government-created monopoly. So it insists on more disclosure -- which won't solve the problem. What's needed is an end to the exclusive government privileges that have been granted to the rating agencies -- and an end to the practice of having government regulators outsource their jobs to these companies. Then there's the mortgage section of the plan. Naturally, the Obama team doesn't address the largest single problem -- the federal government's obsession with extending homeownership to households that can't sustain it. Instead, it calls for increased "consumer protections" in the mortgage industry. Sadly, the administration can't confront the basic fact that the most important mortgage indicator is the borrower's equity: How much of its own money a household puts into the home tells us far more about probable default than whether the loan was adjustable-rate or has a prepayment penalty. Admitting these facts, of course, would mean admitting that programs like the Federal Housing Administration have been at the forefront of pushing unsustainable mortgage lending. In short, the Obama team has once again put politics ahead of policy, offering "answers" that will sound good to the uninformed without threatening any of the vested Washington interests that played so large a role in creating the current crisis. [i]Mark Calabria is director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute (cato.org).[/i]

North Korea May Fire a Missile Toward Hawaii Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

Obama And The Iran Crisis: Why Washington Is Playing it Safe - Gregor Peter Schmitz, Spiegel: "In Washington the implications of the current escalation in Tehran for Obama and his closely watched Cairo speech to the Islamic world are now being discussed. Ahmadinejad's apparent triumph at first looked like a setback for the US president. Critics who regard Obama's outreach to Iran as politically naïve felt vindicated. Leverett [Flynt Leverett from the think tank New America Foundation] for one called such public diplomacy 'a waste of time.' 'What is going to matter is the substance of your policy,' he said. 'If you don't put substantial offers on the table, all the nice speeches of the president won't change anything.' But the images of demonstrations coming from Tehran could also provide support for the White House's approach, suggesting that the president, with his offer of a new dialogue, has directly reached ordinary people -- including Tehran's active bloggers, who are thought to number up to 100,000."

How Long Can Israel Resist U.S. Pressure? – Free Internet Press: "One of the new things about the Obama administration is the unified approach it is taking with its current policies. In Washington, the approach is called 'public diplomacy,' a reference to the fact that the president publicly identifies the U.S.' national interests in the world's major conflicts and appeals to the participating countries to contribute to finding a solution. In addition to negotiating with his peers, Obama is talking to anyone willing to listen, just as he did during his campaign. Washington's diplomacy, in a new twist, involves including the public in its discussions about problems."

Obama changing Islam's opinion of U.S. - Ron Walters, Chicago Defender: "Barack Obama went to Cairo to answer this question by saying in effect that the U.S. must hold out its hand in peace, and if the fist of Muslims is unclenched, there is a chance. But he also had to admit, like Bill Clinton did on his trip to Africa as President, that the U.S. had not always been on the right side of history. Then, as now, right wing radicals have called the President an apologist. In fact, here we have a president who has captured the attention of the entire Islamic world, whose speech has been translated into 12 languages and who is roundly accepted on the Muslim street as a positive force. But we find the reluctance to accept this triumph of public diplomacy in his own country."

America's Bankruptcy Will Bankrupt Its Military -- A Commentary
The American Empire Is Bankrupt -- Truthdig

“China is trying to get rid of all the dollars they can in a trash-for-resource deal,” Hudson said. “They will give the dollars to countries willing to sell off their resources since America refuses to sell any of its high-tech industries, even Unocal, to the yellow peril. It realizes these dollars are going to be worthless pretty quickly.”

The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next closest national military budget is China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Read more .... http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/20090...re_is_bankrupt/

U.S. Military Tracking North Korean Ship Suspected Of Proliferating Missiles, Nukes From FOX News:

A ship named Kang Nam left a port in North Korea Wednesday and could be carrying missile parts or nuclear materials in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

The U.S. military is tracking a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The ship, Kang Nam, left a port in North Korea Wednesday and appears to be heading toward Singapore, according to a senior U.S. military source. The vessel, which the military has been tracking since its departure, could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials.

Read more ....

Update: Gates Orders Measures to Protect Hawaii From North Korea Missile -- Bloomberg

A New Base? Al Qaeda Rises In Yemen.
From Christian Science Monitor:

Suspected in the kidnapping of nine foreigners last week, the militant group appears to be gaining momentum – thanks in part to weak central government.

Sanaa, Yemen - The recent kidnapping of nine foreign aid workers in Yemen, three of whom were reported killed Monday, has heightened attention on the activities here of Al Qaeda – which some analysts blame for the attack.

The group appears to be using Yemen's factionalism to gain momentum in the country, one of the poorest in the Arab world.

A separatist movement in the south and an unrelenting rebel group in the north have left Yemen's central government with little control reaching beyond the capital of Sanaa. That makes the country an ideal place for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – the regional branch of the international movement – to gain popularity among those disenfranchised by the government.

Read more ....

North Korea Chemical Weapons Threaten Region: Report
From Yahoo News/Reuters:

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea has several thousand tonnes of chemical weapons it can mount on missiles that could be used on a rapid strike against the South, said a report released on Thursday by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

North Korea in recent weeks has raised tensions in North Asia, responsible for one-sixth of the global economy, with missile launches, threats to attack the South and a May 25 nuclear test that led to U.N. sanctions.

Read more .... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090618/wl_nm/us_korea_north

Netanyahu’s Dilemma by Patrick Seale
Israel has two historic errors two make right: the land-grab in the occupied territories, started in 1967, that continues to this day, and the doctrine that Israel’s security lay, not in making peace with its neighbours, but in dominating the entire region militarily
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2035

Ban's Way by Barbara Crossette (The Nation)
General Ban Ki-moon is halfway through his first term. Whether he gets a second term depends on his ability to get results
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2036

Iran's Rural Vote and Election Fraud by Eric Hooglund
Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my research over the past 30 years, including just recently.
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2034

Freedom from Fear by Nadia Hijab
Although Netanyahu reiterated a description of the world grounded on fear -- as the American neocons would have it -- Obama’s speech expressly announced that the United States was moving beyond this world of fear.
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2033

Iran’s Culture Clash by Richard Bulliet
Whether last week’s election was fair may never be known. In a fair election the baby boomers may already have the numbers to win. But if not, their share of the electorate is bound to grow in coming years.
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2032

Nothing New from Netanyahu by Rami G. Khouri
Netanyahu wants for the Israelis today what God promised the ancient Hebrews in Deuteronomy, Exodus and Numbers: eternal, exclusive, pure, powerful, secure statehood in a land owned by others that will be miraculously ethnically cleansed with Divine mandate and legitimacy.
more... http://www.agenceglobal.com/Article.asp?Id=2031

What Kind of Two-State Solution? by Immanuel Wallerstein
Obama takes a strong position on issues the ultra-right Israeli government refuses to accept: dismantle settlements and the two-state solution. Positive and courageous in the context of US internal politics, dangerous in terms of any real solution.
more...

Beijing cautions US over Iran

The meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Russia on Tuesday once again shows Beijing has a clear idea about the ebb and flow of Iranian politics. China anticipated the backlash against Ahmadinejad's victory and is now warning Washington about letting the genie of popular unrest get out of the bottle in a region waiting to explode. - M K Bhadrakumar (Jun 19,'09)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF20Ak03.html

bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable

Edition 23 Volume 7 - June 18, 2009

Iran's elections

• A revolutionary situation - Yossi Alpher
If the militants prevail, we are looking at an Islamic dictatorship, not an Islamic republic.

• The world must let Iranians solve their domestic problems - Saad N. Jawad
The western response to Iran's elections is more critical than the instability in Tehran.

• Liberty leads the people, even in Tehran - Mark Perry
The people in the streets of Iran are not protesting the outcome of a vote, but the foundation of a system.

• Historic elections - Sadegh Zibakalam
A new political dawn appears to have emerged

A revolutionary situation
Yossi Alpher

Thirty years ago, I followed the revolution against the Shah of Iran closely on behalf of the government of Israel. One of the key lessons I drew from that experience was that a "revolutionary situation"--whether in Iran or elsewhere--does not lend itself easily to logical intelligence analysis. It is impossible to predict how it will end, if only because the protagonists on the ground do not themselves know how it will end or even, in some cases, how they want it to end. The best anyone--participants or observers--can do is try to describe accurately what is happening. As for the future, we can only speculate on the basis of our knowledge and experience, with no assurance whatsoever that this or that scenario will ultimately reach fruition.

Now, 30 years later, we again appear to be confronting a revolutionary situation in Iran. The most superficial attempt to describe it tells us that it is radically different from the revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the Shah. Back then, militant Shi'ite Islamists organized carefully from the grassroots to overthrow a secular monarchy and create an Islamic republic. Now, in contrast, we are witnessing a falling out within the Islamic regime. Militant elements who support President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad apparently falsified election results to ensure that they remain in power by defeating Mir Hussein Mousavi. The latter seemingly represents a less doctrinaire and extreme face of the regime, but he is most decidedly part of it and seeks to right the situation by appealing to regime institutions.

Nor do Mousavi's followers, the millions of citizens taking to the streets of Iran's cities night after night, appear as an organized group to be challenging the principles and underpinnings of the Islamic Republic. True, the pro-Mousavi masses feel betrayed by the regime they supported and served. Some undoubtedly have more extensive "freedom" agendas that may yet emerge in a more coherent form, and there is no telling where that might lead them. But for now no one is proposing an alternative to the Islamic regime.

Three decades ago, too, the broad regional and global communities recognized that an Iran weakened and destabilized by revolution might fall prey to hostile or opportunist neighbors like the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's Iraq or to secessionist minorities like the Kurds. That is precisely what happened when the Kurds revolted and Iraq invaded Iran barely a year after the revolution.

Today, with the possible exception of Iranian ethnic minorities that traditionally rear their heads when Tehran is weak, this is probably not the case. Certainly Iran's state neighbors do not pose a threat. Iraq is weak, fragmented and militarily occupied and is subject to heavy Iranian influence. Russian forces no longer sit on Iran's borders. Were the United States, with its extensive military deployment in and around the Gulf, still led by George W. Bush or his followers, conceivably they would see an opportunity here to intervene. But not the Obama administration, which advocates soft diplomacy and dialogue and remains poised to engage whoever comes out on top in Tehran. Hence Israel, too, will sit tight. Besides, outside intervention would play right into the hands of Iran's militants.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the powers that be in Iran would have seen no need to "fix" these elections had Bush still been in power: one interesting theory that explains what is happening is that the prospect of Mousavi dialoguing with Obama is precisely what set off the hardliners' decision to void the former's election in the first place--though they obviously grossly underestimated the popular reaction.

The Middle East has been characterized in recent years by the strength of its non-Arab (Iran, Israel, Turkey) and non-state (Hizballah, Hamas, al-Qaeda) actors and the weakness of the Arab state system and Arab leadership. Now, if the chaos continues, we have to contemplate the ramifications of a weak and destabilized Iran. Regardless of who is ultimately declared president, an unstable and convulsed Iran could turn in either of two directions: its temporary weakness could cause it to be more accommodating to the West, reduce its own penetration into Iraq and seek to negotiate nuclear issues; or it could become more extreme and more dangerous to the region. It is impossible to say at this juncture how a victorious Ahmadinezhad or a victorious Mousavi would address the region in terms of the domestic political and global strategic interests of his camp.

Three broad conclusions, however, do appear fairly certain. First, any Iranian government will pursue the country's nuclear program, if only as a bargaining card (Mousavi, after all, inaugurated that project some 20 years ago). Second, if the militants prevail, we are looking at an Islamic dictatorship rather than an Islamic republic. This might have the beneficial effect of rendering Iran and its allies and proxies somewhat less attractive to the Arab masses. And finally, the substance of the anticipated US-Iran dialogue will of necessity change as a result of these events.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

The world must let Iranians solve their domestic problems
Saad N. Jawad

Iran's elections caused two main features of the domestic situation in the country to stand out. One is the undeniably large support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad among the poor of Iran. The other is the depth of disappointment of the young, educated and urban intelligentsia with his re-election.

This last group feels that long awaited moves toward modernization of Iran and better relations with the outside world have been aborted by the re-election of Ahmadinezhad. How long these people will continue their protests and how effective these demonstrations will be is not clear. It is safe to assume, however, and in view of Iran's political, social and religious systems, that the popular unrest will not affect the result of this election.

Some analysts believe that what is really happening is a struggle for power between the conservatives, headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinezhad, and the moderates, headed by the previous president Mohammad Khatami and the challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi. Others believe that both Khatami and Mousavi are simply a front for the challenge of Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, another former president, who is trying to return to power through Mousavi. Whatever the case, the young and educated Iranians just now protesting in the streets will have to wait another four years to pursue their dreams of modernization, unless the United States or Israel foolishly step in, thereby either consolidating the rule of the religious institutions or turning Iran into another haven for backward and terrorist groups, as in Iraq.

Indeed, the response of the United States and European countries to the results and the re-elected president is more critical than the unstable situation in Tehran. Are these countries going to show the same interest in opening a dialogue with an incumbent returned to power after an election shrouded in controversy? Are they prepared to let down the huge number of liberals who have taken to the streets of Tehran?

Perhaps the muted reaction and the mild official protests by the above-mentioned governments are indicative. They may mean that western governments are neither going to endorse the results nor are they prepared to deal with the elected president. It also means that the West may now see an opportunity to work, unofficially and mainly through the media, to destabilize Iran.

But if this happens, Ahmadinezhad and his administration will escalate their defiance of the US and the West. And this will augur ill for the region in general and Iraq in particular. One of the most efficient ways to counter any US-European attempts to weaken the Iranian regime will be for Iran to challenge the US-European influence and presence in the region. The weakest link, needless to say, is Iraq.

It is a well-known fact that Iranian influence in Iraq is both significant and effective. Iran could easily impair US plans to withdraw from Iraq, or, alternatively, prevail there after a withdrawal. In other words, instead of being weakened and besieged, Iran will expand its influence into Iraq and will complete a physical axis stretching from southern Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Such a scenario, combined with the continued difficulties the US-European coalition is facing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would not only endanger the position of the coalition but could also be the end of any presence or influence for any such western coalition in the region in the medium term.

This will clearly bring Israel into the picture again, and western opposition to Israel's stated desire to carry out air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets will wane. This is despite the fact that such action will likely only strengthen the Iranian regime by silencing the opposition.

How prepared the US-European coalition is to risk such a potentially dramatic strategic change is something only the reactions of the US and the European Union will answer. Only the wise decision to not get involved in what is a domestic Iranian matter, and thus leave the Iranian opposition free to continue demonstrating peacefully, will keep the Iranian regime embroiled in its domestic turmoil and thus unable to trouble other regional and international actors.

Such a position will also demonstrate US-European respect for the popular will and democratic choice of a people. The worst option now for the West is to try to impose democracy in the same way it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Saad N. Jawad is a professor of political science at Baghdad University.

Liberty leads the people, even in Tehran
Mark Perry

We in the "the West" have a special place in our traditions for anniversaries. We celebrate two important ones just now. It was twenty years ago that thousands of children arrived in China's Tiananmen Square to petition their leaders for greater rights. They built a papier-mache statue of a white-clad lady that looked familiar to us. They carted her around for a time, as a kind of icon for their movement. Then one night they were murdered in their thousands, as the world looked on. The US ambassador there, James Lilley, told me, "it is a sad time for the Chinese people".

It was a sad time for all of us.

The lady first appeared 220 years ago this July, in a painting by Jacques-Louis David, a French painter and revolutionary. By most accounts he was not a pleasant man, but he knew about mass appeal. Painters before him had focused on the Messiah. But David took him down from his cross, clothed him in white, made him a woman and placed a tricolor in his hand. Women who came to see the painting sank to their knees, as Mary once had before the empty tomb. The painting changed the world: on one side of this new symbol of modernity a boy surged into the future. All innocence, eyes ablaze, he understood the meaning of freedom. On the other, a wounded veteran and patriot marched, dedicated to the new catechism of freedom. Jesus no longer led the people; it was a simple woman. Liberty.

Zhou En-lai, the former premier and foreign minister of China got this right. Asked once in the 1950s to assess the impact of the French Revolution, he answered, "it's too soon to tell." She moves on, this woman, like a wave.

After Tienanmen the symbol was no longer western, but universal, as was democracy itself. Liberty led the people in South Africa and South America and in Eastern Europe. The impossible happened through no agency of our own: the Berlin Wall fell and the politburo washed away so suddenly it left us breathless. Ideas themselves did what no force could accomplish.

We anger history to ignore this, do violence to our ideals to reject it. They our not simply "our" ideals, they are everyone's. Mother Courage bore witness to what happened to the revolutionaries of France; they transformed a society of nobles into a nation not of "peoples" but people. They bore witness to the children of Tiananmen who stood helpless in the face of those who, acting on behalf of "the workers" and "the party", shed their blood. We, in the name of realism, stood silent.

What is it that Barack Obama doesn't get about this?

The people in the streets of Iran are not protesting the outcome of a vote, but the foundation of a system. It does not matter who won. The issue is not votes, but the system. No recount will set it right. It is not a recount Iranians seek, but freedom. They do not fear their leaders; they fear a future without liberty. It does not matter to them whether we support them or not, and it will make no difference to their inevitable victory. But it will matter to us. Our silence will show complicity, especially from the current US president.

Barack Obama is showing great care, because after a season of meddlesome politics America must show that nations and people must act on their own. And he has said this. That's all to the good. But that's not enough. America did not elect Barack Obama simply because we hoped he would be a realistic president--though that is certainly what we wanted. We also elected him because he talked in ideals. We believe in those ideals. We understand them. We would like to live up to them, knowing we often do not. And so Barack Obama must say the obvious: we will not meddle, we will not interfere, and we will leave this to the Iranian people. But in each and every instance, when the people speak we are with them. We are for the people of Iran and we must hope they prevail.

Liberty is leading the people again, this time in Tehran. We must stand with them and with her.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Mark Perry is a director of the Washington and Beirut-based Conflicts Forum and the author of Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace.

Historic elections
Sadegh Zibakalam

Even before the astonishing results of the Iranian presidential election became known, some Iranian analysts had referred to it as a watershed in the history of post-Islamic Revolution Iran. When Mohammed Khatami, the ex-president and symbolic leader of the country's reform movement, quit the presidential race in February, many Iranians assumed that was the end of the reformists. The only chance for the reformists and for that matter anyone else who opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad, was for Khatami to lead the reformists in the election. With his sudden and unexpected departure, many believed there was no other serious challenger to Ahmadinezhad.

Before withdrawing, Khatami stated publicly that he would wholeheartedly back Mir Hossein Mousavi. But many opponents of Ahmadinezhad argued that the younger generations, who are in their twenties and thirties, do not know Mousavi, who had been prime minister in the 1980s, and therefore would not vote for him. Others argued that Mousavi was too radical and leftist to be able to lead the present reformist movement that is broadly liberal in its orientation. But Khatami resisted this criticism and refused to stand as a presidential candidate. Mousavi thus entered the race with many reformists entertaining serious doubts about the chances of his success.

Two months later, an avalanche was shaking the Islamic Republic. Millions of Iranian youth were enthusiastically supporting Mousavi. Many of them were not even born when he was active as prime minister or at the most were attending primary school, yet were now determined to support him wholeheartedly.

It is still a mystery why millions of younger-generation Iranians decided to rally behind Mousavi. The "wave of support for Mousavi", as it became known in Iran, primarily started among the students when a handful of them wound a green stripe around their wrists. Their numbers grew rapidly, and by the end of May most of the students throughout the country had the green stripe. Many female students with full Islamic "hijab" pinned the green stripe to their long Islamic scarves.

The "wave", however, rapidly went beyond the universities. Green became the symbol for Mousavi's supporters. Then came the turn of the "midnight rallies". Nearly two weeks before the June 12 election date, from 10 at night until three or four in the morning hundreds of thousands of Iranians in large and small cities gathered on the streets to support Mousavi. Fearing a crackdown by the security forces, not many people initially went out. But to their surprise, they saw no police or Basiji paramilitary militia or any other security forces. As the late-night rallies continued, more people joined them.

Gradually, the crowd began to chant anti-Ahmadinezhad slogans. The fact that the supreme leader directly or tacitly supported Ahmadinezhad didn't stop the crowd. Those nights acted as a crash course in politics for the younger participants. For more than four years, Ahmadinezhad had spoken without his audience having a chance to reply. Now it was the turn of the people to express their views on what the hard-line president had said and done during the past four years.

Then came the turn of the candidates' debates. For the first time in the life of the Islamic system, the four candidates held live 90-minute debates with one another. The first round, between Mousavi and Ahmadinezhad just ten days before elections, turned into the climax. That debate, watched by 50 million Iranians, made history. Ahmadinezhad embarked on his well-known tactic, arguing that everything that happened before he became president was wrong, inadequate, inefficient and incomplete; that on the nuclear issue the people who were in charge had given in to the wishes of the 5+1 and had halted enrichment and that the country's nuclear program had to all intents and purposes been stopped. He went on to claim that the rate of inflation had declined, unemployment figures had dropped, more foreign companies were investing in Iran than ever before and, in short, he had revolutionized everything.

For the first time, however, he was challenged by Mousavi on every aspect of his achievements. It was at this point that he went for his next tactic. Ever since becoming president, Ahmadinezhad has tried systematically to project an image of someone who has launched a crusade against leaders who had abused their power to gain wealth and power. This time he named Hashemi Rafsanjani and his family as well as another senior clerical figure as examples of the kind of corrupt but powerful figures that he had been fighting against during the past four years.

This time, however, the tactic of appearing like a hero who was bravely fighting corruption and powerful vested interests didn't work. Ahmadinezhad clearly lost the debate. He appeared as a demagogue who recognized no limits in destroying others while Mousavi appeared as an honest person who would not be so ruthless in achieving his ends. The debate convinced many Iranians who still had not decided whether or not to take part in the elections, to vote for Mousavi.

It was against this backdrop that the officially declared results angered millions of Iranians who had queued for hours to vote. The election was declared by the Iranian supreme leader as yet another heavy blow to the enemies of the Islamic Republic; he thanked Iranians for their heroic sacrifices. While the ayatollah was declaring the elections over, thousands of Iranian youth took to the streets to demonstrate against the results. For many who had voted for the first time, a new political dawn appears to have emerged.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of political science at Tehran University.



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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.

bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable

Edition 23 Volume 7 - June 18, 2009

Iran's elections

• A revolutionary situation - Yossi Alpher
If the militants prevail, we are looking at an Islamic dictatorship, not an Islamic republic.

• The world must let Iranians solve their domestic problems - Saad N. Jawad
The western response to Iran's elections is more critical than the instability in Tehran.

• Liberty leads the people, even in Tehran - Mark Perry
The people in the streets of Iran are not protesting the outcome of a vote, but the foundation of a system.

• Historic elections - Sadegh Zibakalam
A new political dawn appears to have emerged

A revolutionary situation
Yossi Alpher

Thirty years ago, I followed the revolution against the Shah of Iran closely on behalf of the government of Israel. One of the key lessons I drew from that experience was that a "revolutionary situation"--whether in Iran or elsewhere--does not lend itself easily to logical intelligence analysis. It is impossible to predict how it will end, if only because the protagonists on the ground do not themselves know how it will end or even, in some cases, how they want it to end. The best anyone--participants or observers--can do is try to describe accurately what is happening. As for the future, we can only speculate on the basis of our knowledge and experience, with no assurance whatsoever that this or that scenario will ultimately reach fruition.

Now, 30 years later, we again appear to be confronting a revolutionary situation in Iran. The most superficial attempt to describe it tells us that it is radically different from the revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the Shah. Back then, militant Shi'ite Islamists organized carefully from the grassroots to overthrow a secular monarchy and create an Islamic republic. Now, in contrast, we are witnessing a falling out within the Islamic regime. Militant elements who support President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad apparently falsified election results to ensure that they remain in power by defeating Mir Hussein Mousavi. The latter seemingly represents a less doctrinaire and extreme face of the regime, but he is most decidedly part of it and seeks to right the situation by appealing to regime institutions.

Nor do Mousavi's followers, the millions of citizens taking to the streets of Iran's cities night after night, appear as an organized group to be challenging the principles and underpinnings of the Islamic Republic. True, the pro-Mousavi masses feel betrayed by the regime they supported and served. Some undoubtedly have more extensive "freedom" agendas that may yet emerge in a more coherent form, and there is no telling where that might lead them. But for now no one is proposing an alternative to the Islamic regime.

Three decades ago, too, the broad regional and global communities recognized that an Iran weakened and destabilized by revolution might fall prey to hostile or opportunist neighbors like the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's Iraq or to secessionist minorities like the Kurds. That is precisely what happened when the Kurds revolted and Iraq invaded Iran barely a year after the revolution.

Today, with the possible exception of Iranian ethnic minorities that traditionally rear their heads when Tehran is weak, this is probably not the case. Certainly Iran's state neighbors do not pose a threat. Iraq is weak, fragmented and militarily occupied and is subject to heavy Iranian influence. Russian forces no longer sit on Iran's borders. Were the United States, with its extensive military deployment in and around the Gulf, still led by George W. Bush or his followers, conceivably they would see an opportunity here to intervene. But not the Obama administration, which advocates soft diplomacy and dialogue and remains poised to engage whoever comes out on top in Tehran. Hence Israel, too, will sit tight. Besides, outside intervention would play right into the hands of Iran's militants.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the powers that be in Iran would have seen no need to "fix" these elections had Bush still been in power: one interesting theory that explains what is happening is that the prospect of Mousavi dialoguing with Obama is precisely what set off the hardliners' decision to void the former's election in the first place--though they obviously grossly underestimated the popular reaction.

The Middle East has been characterized in recent years by the strength of its non-Arab (Iran, Israel, Turkey) and non-state (Hizballah, Hamas, al-Qaeda) actors and the weakness of the Arab state system and Arab leadership. Now, if the chaos continues, we have to contemplate the ramifications of a weak and destabilized Iran. Regardless of who is ultimately declared president, an unstable and convulsed Iran could turn in either of two directions: its temporary weakness could cause it to be more accommodating to the West, reduce its own penetration into Iraq and seek to negotiate nuclear issues; or it could become more extreme and more dangerous to the region. It is impossible to say at this juncture how a victorious Ahmadinezhad or a victorious Mousavi would address the region in terms of the domestic political and global strategic interests of his camp.

Three broad conclusions, however, do appear fairly certain. First, any Iranian government will pursue the country's nuclear program, if only as a bargaining card (Mousavi, after all, inaugurated that project some 20 years ago). Second, if the militants prevail, we are looking at an Islamic dictatorship rather than an Islamic republic. This might have the beneficial effect of rendering Iran and its allies and proxies somewhat less attractive to the Arab masses. And finally, the substance of the anticipated US-Iran dialogue will of necessity change as a result of these events.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

The world must let Iranians solve their domestic problems
Saad N. Jawad

Iran's elections caused two main features of the domestic situation in the country to stand out. One is the undeniably large support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad among the poor of Iran. The other is the depth of disappointment of the young, educated and urban intelligentsia with his re-election.

This last group feels that long awaited moves toward modernization of Iran and better relations with the outside world have been aborted by the re-election of Ahmadinezhad. How long these people will continue their protests and how effective these demonstrations will be is not clear. It is safe to assume, however, and in view of Iran's political, social and religious systems, that the popular unrest will not affect the result of this election.

Some analysts believe that what is really happening is a struggle for power between the conservatives, headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinezhad, and the moderates, headed by the previous president Mohammad Khatami and the challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi. Others believe that both Khatami and Mousavi are simply a front for the challenge of Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, another former president, who is trying to return to power through Mousavi. Whatever the case, the young and educated Iranians just now protesting in the streets will have to wait another four years to pursue their dreams of modernization, unless the United States or Israel foolishly step in, thereby either consolidating the rule of the religious institutions or turning Iran into another haven for backward and terrorist groups, as in Iraq.

Indeed, the response of the United States and European countries to the results and the re-elected president is more critical than the unstable situation in Tehran. Are these countries going to show the same interest in opening a dialogue with an incumbent returned to power after an election shrouded in controversy? Are they prepared to let down the huge number of liberals who have taken to the streets of Tehran?

Perhaps the muted reaction and the mild official protests by the above-mentioned governments are indicative. They may mean that western governments are neither going to endorse the results nor are they prepared to deal with the elected president. It also means that the West may now see an opportunity to work, unofficially and mainly through the media, to destabilize Iran.

But if this happens, Ahmadinezhad and his administration will escalate their defiance of the US and the West. And this will augur ill for the region in general and Iraq in particular. One of the most efficient ways to counter any US-European attempts to weaken the Iranian regime will be for Iran to challenge the US-European influence and presence in the region. The weakest link, needless to say, is Iraq.

It is a well-known fact that Iranian influence in Iraq is both significant and effective. Iran could easily impair US plans to withdraw from Iraq, or, alternatively, prevail there after a withdrawal. In other words, instead of being weakened and besieged, Iran will expand its influence into Iraq and will complete a physical axis stretching from southern Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Such a scenario, combined with the continued difficulties the US-European coalition is facing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would not only endanger the position of the coalition but could also be the end of any presence or influence for any such western coalition in the region in the medium term.

This will clearly bring Israel into the picture again, and western opposition to Israel's stated desire to carry out air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets will wane. This is despite the fact that such action will likely only strengthen the Iranian regime by silencing the opposition.

How prepared the US-European coalition is to risk such a potentially dramatic strategic change is something only the reactions of the US and the European Union will answer. Only the wise decision to not get involved in what is a domestic Iranian matter, and thus leave the Iranian opposition free to continue demonstrating peacefully, will keep the Iranian regime embroiled in its domestic turmoil and thus unable to trouble other regional and international actors.

Such a position will also demonstrate US-European respect for the popular will and democratic choice of a people. The worst option now for the West is to try to impose democracy in the same way it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Saad N. Jawad is a professor of political science at Baghdad University.

Liberty leads the people, even in Tehran
Mark Perry

We in the "the West" have a special place in our traditions for anniversaries. We celebrate two important ones just now. It was twenty years ago that thousands of children arrived in China's Tiananmen Square to petition their leaders for greater rights. They built a papier-mache statue of a white-clad lady that looked familiar to us. They carted her around for a time, as a kind of icon for their movement. Then one night they were murdered in their thousands, as the world looked on. The US ambassador there, James Lilley, told me, "it is a sad time for the Chinese people".

It was a sad time for all of us.

The lady first appeared 220 years ago this July, in a painting by Jacques-Louis David, a French painter and revolutionary. By most accounts he was not a pleasant man, but he knew about mass appeal. Painters before him had focused on the Messiah. But David took him down from his cross, clothed him in white, made him a woman and placed a tricolor in his hand. Women who came to see the painting sank to their knees, as Mary once had before the empty tomb. The painting changed the world: on one side of this new symbol of modernity a boy surged into the future. All innocence, eyes ablaze, he understood the meaning of freedom. On the other, a wounded veteran and patriot marched, dedicated to the new catechism of freedom. Jesus no longer led the people; it was a simple woman. Liberty.

Zhou En-lai, the former premier and foreign minister of China got this right. Asked once in the 1950s to assess the impact of the French Revolution, he answered, "it's too soon to tell." She moves on, this woman, like a wave.

After Tienanmen the symbol was no longer western, but universal, as was democracy itself. Liberty led the people in South Africa and South America and in Eastern Europe. The impossible happened through no agency of our own: the Berlin Wall fell and the politburo washed away so suddenly it left us breathless. Ideas themselves did what no force could accomplish.

We anger history to ignore this, do violence to our ideals to reject it. They our not simply "our" ideals, they are everyone's. Mother Courage bore witness to what happened to the revolutionaries of France; they transformed a society of nobles into a nation not of "peoples" but people. They bore witness to the children of Tiananmen who stood helpless in the face of those who, acting on behalf of "the workers" and "the party", shed their blood. We, in the name of realism, stood silent.

What is it that Barack Obama doesn't get about this?

The people in the streets of Iran are not protesting the outcome of a vote, but the foundation of a system. It does not matter who won. The issue is not votes, but the system. No recount will set it right. It is not a recount Iranians seek, but freedom. They do not fear their leaders; they fear a future without liberty. It does not matter to them whether we support them or not, and it will make no difference to their inevitable victory. But it will matter to us. Our silence will show complicity, especially from the current US president.

Barack Obama is showing great care, because after a season of meddlesome politics America must show that nations and people must act on their own. And he has said this. That's all to the good. But that's not enough. America did not elect Barack Obama simply because we hoped he would be a realistic president--though that is certainly what we wanted. We also elected him because he talked in ideals. We believe in those ideals. We understand them. We would like to live up to them, knowing we often do not. And so Barack Obama must say the obvious: we will not meddle, we will not interfere, and we will leave this to the Iranian people. But in each and every instance, when the people speak we are with them. We are for the people of Iran and we must hope they prevail.

Liberty is leading the people again, this time in Tehran. We must stand with them and with her.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Mark Perry is a director of the Washington and Beirut-based Conflicts Forum and the author of Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace.

Historic elections
Sadegh Zibakalam

Even before the astonishing results of the Iranian presidential election became known, some Iranian analysts had referred to it as a watershed in the history of post-Islamic Revolution Iran. When Mohammed Khatami, the ex-president and symbolic leader of the country's reform movement, quit the presidential race in February, many Iranians assumed that was the end of the reformists. The only chance for the reformists and for that matter anyone else who opposed President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad, was for Khatami to lead the reformists in the election. With his sudden and unexpected departure, many believed there was no other serious challenger to Ahmadinezhad.

Before withdrawing, Khatami stated publicly that he would wholeheartedly back Mir Hossein Mousavi. But many opponents of Ahmadinezhad argued that the younger generations, who are in their twenties and thirties, do not know Mousavi, who had been prime minister in the 1980s, and therefore would not vote for him. Others argued that Mousavi was too radical and leftist to be able to lead the present reformist movement that is broadly liberal in its orientation. But Khatami resisted this criticism and refused to stand as a presidential candidate. Mousavi thus entered the race with many reformists entertaining serious doubts about the chances of his success.

Two months later, an avalanche was shaking the Islamic Republic. Millions of Iranian youth were enthusiastically supporting Mousavi. Many of them were not even born when he was active as prime minister or at the most were attending primary school, yet were now determined to support him wholeheartedly.

It is still a mystery why millions of younger-generation Iranians decided to rally behind Mousavi. The "wave of support for Mousavi", as it became known in Iran, primarily started among the students when a handful of them wound a green stripe around their wrists. Their numbers grew rapidly, and by the end of May most of the students throughout the country had the green stripe. Many female students with full Islamic "hijab" pinned the green stripe to their long Islamic scarves.

The "wave", however, rapidly went beyond the universities. Green became the symbol for Mousavi's supporters. Then came the turn of the "midnight rallies". Nearly two weeks before the June 12 election date, from 10 at night until three or four in the morning hundreds of thousands of Iranians in large and small cities gathered on the streets to support Mousavi. Fearing a crackdown by the security forces, not many people initially went out. But to their surprise, they saw no police or Basiji paramilitary militia or any other security forces. As the late-night rallies continued, more people joined them.

Gradually, the crowd began to chant anti-Ahmadinezhad slogans. The fact that the supreme leader directly or tacitly supported Ahmadinezhad didn't stop the crowd. Those nights acted as a crash course in politics for the younger participants. For more than four years, Ahmadinezhad had spoken without his audience having a chance to reply. Now it was the turn of the people to express their views on what the hard-line president had said and done during the past four years.

Then came the turn of the candidates' debates. For the first time in the life of the Islamic system, the four candidates held live 90-minute debates with one another. The first round, between Mousavi and Ahmadinezhad just ten days before elections, turned into the climax. That debate, watched by 50 million Iranians, made history. Ahmadinezhad embarked on his well-known tactic, arguing that everything that happened before he became president was wrong, inadequate, inefficient and incomplete; that on the nuclear issue the people who were in charge had given in to the wishes of the 5+1 and had halted enrichment and that the country's nuclear program had to all intents and purposes been stopped. He went on to claim that the rate of inflation had declined, unemployment figures had dropped, more foreign companies were investing in Iran than ever before and, in short, he had revolutionized everything.

For the first time, however, he was challenged by Mousavi on every aspect of his achievements. It was at this point that he went for his next tactic. Ever since becoming president, Ahmadinezhad has tried systematically to project an image of someone who has launched a crusade against leaders who had abused their power to gain wealth and power. This time he named Hashemi Rafsanjani and his family as well as another senior clerical figure as examples of the kind of corrupt but powerful figures that he had been fighting against during the past four years.

This time, however, the tactic of appearing like a hero who was bravely fighting corruption and powerful vested interests didn't work. Ahmadinezhad clearly lost the debate. He appeared as a demagogue who recognized no limits in destroying others while Mousavi appeared as an honest person who would not be so ruthless in achieving his ends. The debate convinced many Iranians who still had not decided whether or not to take part in the elections, to vote for Mousavi.

It was against this backdrop that the officially declared results angered millions of Iranians who had queued for hours to vote. The election was declared by the Iranian supreme leader as yet another heavy blow to the enemies of the Islamic Republic; he thanked Iranians for their heroic sacrifices. While the ayatollah was declaring the elections over, thousands of Iranian youth took to the streets to demonstrate against the results. For many who had voted for the first time, a new political dawn appears to have emerged.- Published 18/6/2009 © bitterlemons-international.org

Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of political science at Tehran University.



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Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.

US-MIDEAST: Carter Adds Weight to Shuttle Diplomacy Push
Analysis by Helena Cobban*

WASHINGTON, Jun 19 (IPS) - Pres. Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and peace envoy Sen. George Mitchell have been moving steadily ahead with the campaign Obama launched on his first day in the White House, to broker a comprehensive and sustainable Arab-Israeli peace.

They have been supported in this effort by another quiet but very effective envoy, too: former Pres. Jimmy Carter. Carter, like Mitchell, has just returned from an intensive fact-finding tour of the Arab-Israeli region.

IPS has learned that on Thursday, Carter briefed senior administration officials on his findings.

Unlike Mitchell, Carter visited Gaza on this trip. While there he decried the extensive damage that he saw, that was inflicted by Israel during the war of last December-January.

He met Hamas leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria, and while in Israel he met the Israeli security cabinet and prominent settler leader Shaul Goldstein.

At the official level, this week Sec. Clinton held notably firm on Washington’s demand that Israel cease all settlement construction in the occupied territories, roundly rejecting suggestions from Israeli officials that there should be an exception that could allow for what the Israelis describe as "natural growth".

News also emerged Thursday that in late May, the Obama administration sent a firm and formal "diplomatic note" to Israel protesting the tight siege it has maintained on Gaza’s 1.5 million people and demanding that Israel allow considerably more goods into Gaza than at present.

A reporter for Israel’s Haaretz daily wrote that the U.S. note demanded that Israel allow more food, medicine and cash into Gaza, along with the basic construction materials that are urgently needed to rebuild the thousands of homes and other structures destroyed and damaged during the recent war.

Washington’s campaign against Israeli settlement construction has been firm and clear for some months now - though critics have noted that this rhetorical firmness has not yet been accompanied by the introduction of any new policy measures to hold Israel actually accountable on this issue.

By adding the Gaza situation to its list of firmly expressed concerns in late May, Washington seemed to be moving closer to a large-scale showdown with Tel Aviv on peace-related questions.

One former high-level official who has pushed for many years for bold U.S. action on Arab-Israeli peace told IPS recently that he wished Obama had been faster, and gone further, in tackling the "big" challenge of brokering final peace agreements between Israel and the three Arab neighbours with whom it still needs one - the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon.

But this source, speaking on deep background, said it was his understanding that Obama had judged that a "slow and steady" approach was better.

"Indeed," he noted, "the good backing the president enjoys in this country for his Arab-Israel policy seems to be holding steady, and even, quite possibly, increasing. So maybe his strategy is working well, after all."

Jimmy Carter has also worked tirelessly - for decades - for Arab-Israeli peace. On Wednesday, the 84-year-old former president wrapped up a grueling two-week tour that took him to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

One day after his return he had his meeting with senior administration officials here in Washington. That event underlined the change in Carter’s relevance and status in the Obama era. The visits he made to the Middle East while George W. Bush was president were barely tolerated by the administration, which kept him at arm's length.

While in Lebanon on the latest trip, Carter headed a team of 60 monitors sent by the Atlanta-based Carter Centre, which he founded and still heads, to monitor the country’s Jun. 7 elections.

Carter Centre senior adviser Robert Pastor told IPS that the monitoring mission and the elections both went well. "If all the parties accept the outcome of an election, that makes it successful," he said, noting that that was the case in Lebanon.

Pastor noted that the election-monitoring mission in Lebanon was relevant to broader peace issues. He said he had met with leaders of the country’s Hezbollah party, which has participated in Lebanese elections since 1992 though it is still on the State Department’s "terrorism list". (The Hezbollah leaders had, he said, refused to meet with Carter.)

Pastor has designed and headed scores of election-monitoring missions around the world during 25 years with the Carter Centre. He told IPS he is now strongly convinced that Hezbollah "is committed to the Lebanese political process, rather than to maintaining its hostilities against Israel."

In Syria, Carter and Pastor met with President Bashar al-Asad and other officials. Pastor said he judged that those meetings, like the one George Mitchell had with Asad a little later, had been helpful in identifying ways to improve the U.S.’s badly strained relations with Syria.

But it was the meetings that Carter had in Damascus with the overall head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, and in Gaza with elected Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyyeh, that were the most controversial items on his itinerary.

Carter had met Meshaal in Damascus at least twice before. And back in January 2006, he and Pastor headed the mission the Carter Centre sent to monitor the Palestinian parliamentary elections held in the West bank and Gaza.

Those were the first Palestinian elections that Hamas, which like Hezbollah is still on the State Department’s "terrorism list", participated in. All the teams monitoring the elections determined they had been free and fair, and that Hamas had won.

Israel and the Bush administration responded by refusing to deal with the elected government. Israel - with strong backing from Washington - also imposed a tight siege on Hamas’s Gaza home base from then on.

In April 2008, Carter and Pastor carried important messages between Hamas and Israel that helped to midwife an agreement for a six-month ceasefire between the two sides that went into operation two months later. It remained largely successfully in force until early November, and was not renewed.

Pastor said that during his latest round of visits with Hamas leaders, Carter "pushed them very hard" to find a way to bridge the distance between their stated positions and the requirement the U.S. government still has that Hamas meet three preconditions before Washington will talk to it.

These three preconditions were put in place by the Bush administration, and have been kept in place by Obama. They stipulate that Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence, and commit to all the agreements previously endorsed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its offshoot the Palestinian Authority.

"The Hamas leaders are still mulling over our ideas," Pastor said.

In a possibly related development, a London paper close to Hamas has revealed that Meshaal will make a big policy speech Jun. 20, in which he will outline a "new strategy".

In an interview with IPS in Damascus on Jun. 4, Meshaal reiterated Hamas’s desire to be "part of the solution, not part of the problem". He also restated Hamas’s desire to see the speedy establishment of an independent Palestinian state in all the Palestinian areas occupied by Israel in 1967, and said it would be up to that state to establish the nature of its relationship with Israel.

It is still unclear if there will be a breakthrough in Hamas-U.S. relations any time soon. But Mitchell has now made four visits to the region. With the results of those visits - as well as Pres. Carter’s latest visit - now fully available to them, it is clear the Obama team has some big decisions to make.

*Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at www.JustWorldNews.org

TIME - SWAMPLAND

6/19/09

There Will Be Blood

Joe Klein

The Washington Post's increasingly strident op-ed page offers a double-barreled neocon assault on President Obama's Iran position today by Charles Krauthammer and Paul Wolfowitz. And it's interesting to see these fellows--among the smartest of the neos--deploy the usual intellectual shortcuts in the neoconservative bag of tricks: Broad, unsupported statements of opinion posing as fact...and false historical analogies.

Take Krauthammer. He boldly states this:

The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

They do? Which ones? Name one. And if that word came, what then? Would it be the same as the "word" Dwight Eisenhower sent, and later regretted, supporting the Hungarian protesters in 1956 when he had no intention of supporting them militarily? Or the "word" that George H.W. Bush sent the Iraqi Shi'ites after the first Gulf War, who then rebelled against Saddam Hussein and were slaughtered? In fact, it seemed clear to me when I was in Iran--and even more clear, given the events of the past few days--that the protesters realize that they have to do this on their own. And that an American endorsement would taint their movement, perhaps fatally.

Wolfowitz deploys an interesting historical analogy from his own past--the Reagan intervention in the Philipine elections--but it is flawed as well. For one thing, no winner had been announced when Reagan intervened, after a period of restaint, in favor of Corazon Aquino and those who voted to topple President-for-Life Ferdinand Marcos. For another, the Philippines were a former U.S. colony that remained, at that point, very much a U.S. client state. We had military bases there. We had real power. (Wolfowitz also doesn't deal with the fact that there were announced results in the Iranian elections--and that Ahmadinejad might well have won without the fraud.)

Iran is quite the opposite from the Philippines. It never was an American colony, but the U.S. policy toward the Persians was relentlessly neocolonial. The U.S. has had, in fact, a notably disgraceful history of intervening in Iranian affairs. There was the CIA involvement in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1953, which Obama spoke about in his Cairo speech. There was the U.S. support for the Shah, who ran a regime every bit as repressive and arguably more brutal than the Mullahs. There was the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war--and this remains a bleeding wound in Iran: I spoke with a woman in South Tehran last week whose husband is incapacitated by the poison gas Saddam used during the war (and which allIranians, including those in the streets, are convinced was supplied by the Americans). There are many chemical victims of the war in Iran, and many war dead, a constant reminder of U.S. meddling. And there was George W. Bush's pronouncement of Iran as part of an Axis of Evil, which many of the Iranians I first met in 2001 and have kept in touch with ever since--vehement reformers all--found insulting.

If Charles Krauthammer had bothered to ask anyone, he would have learned that the reform movement is every bit as outraged by the history of U.S. meddling as the Ahmadinejad supporters are--arguably more so, because they are well-educated, sophisticated people who despise the neocolonialist condescension toward Iran that marked American presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

The failure to understand this basic fact--the failure to even care what Iranians, even the Iranians who hate the regime, actually think--is at the heart of the lethal carelessness that marked the Bush Junior's Administration and neoconservative thinking in general. I would guess that the Supreme Leader--which is the man's actual title, no matter how Krauthammer disdains it--is itching for an excuse to send tanks into the streets. (Which he may well do anyway.) If Barack Obama were sounding like John McCain, the tanks would have been in the streets days ago, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people killed, and a ready excuse that would have great credibility with the Iranian people: the U.S. was at it again, trying to foment a revolution to overthrow the duly elected government of Iran.

But then, in the long-term scheme of things, the neoconservatives would undoubtedly argue, blood will be spilled in the pursuit of freedom. Undoubtedly true, but you don't want the blood to be on your hands. You want it to be the choice of those who are risking their lives in the streets.

An critical perspective from James Petras that deserves careful reading, given the political convenience of the conventional wisdom on this issue. The person who brought this to my attention wondered out loud whether we might not consider putting the four active and one retired Supreme Court justices who voted to terminate the Florida recount dispute in our presidential elections on a plane to Tehran to straighten this one out.

Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax

James Petras


“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation…Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”

Financial Times Editorial, June 15 2009

Introduction

There is hardly any election, in which the White House has a significant stake, where the electoral defeat of the pro-US candidate is not denounced as illegitimate by the entire political and mass media elite. In the most recent period, the White House and its camp followers cried foul following the free (and monitored) elections in Venezuela and Gaza, while joyously fabricating an ‘electoral success’ in Lebanon despite the fact that the Hezbollah-led coalition received over 53% of the vote.

The recently concluded, June 12, 2009 elections in Iran are a classic case: The incumbent nationalist-populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (MA) received 63.3% of the vote (or 24.5 million votes), while the leading Western-backed liberal opposition candidate Hossein Mousavi (HM) received 34.2% or (3.2 million votes). Iran’s presidential election drew a record turnout of more than 80% of the electorate, including an unprecedented overseas vote of 234,812, in which HM won 111,792 to MA’s 78,300. The opposition led by HM did not accept their defeat and organized a series of mass demonstrations that turned violent, resulting in the burning and destruction of automobiles, banks, public building and armed confrontations with the police and other authorities. Almost the entire spectrum of Western opinion makers, including all the major electronic and print media, the major liberal, radical, libertarian and conservative web-sites, echoed the opposition’s claim of rampant election fraud. Neo-conservatives, libertarian conservatives and Trotskyites joined the Zionists in hailing the opposition protestors as the advance guard of a democratic revolution. Democrats and Republicans condemned the incumbent regime, refused to recognize the result of the vote and praised the demonstrators’ efforts to overturn the electoral outcome. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, the Israeli Foreign Office and the entire leadership of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations called for harsher sanctions against Iran and announced Obama’s proposed dialogue with Iran as ‘dead in the water’.

The Electoral Fraud Hoax

Western leaders rejected the results because they ‘knew’ that their reformist candidate could not lose…For months they published daily interviews, editorials and reports from the field ‘detailing’ the failures of Ahmadinejad’s administration; they cited the support from clerics, former officials, merchants in the bazaar and above all women and young urbanites fluent in English, to prove that Mousavi was headed for a landslide victory. A victory for Mousavi was described as a victory for the ‘voices of moderation’, at least the White House’s version of that vacuous cliché. Prominent liberal academics deduced the vote count was fraudulent because the opposition candidate, Mousavi, lost in his own ethnic enclave among the Azeris. Other academics claimed that the ‘youth vote’ – based on their interviews with upper and middle-class university students from the neighborhoods of Northern Tehran were overwhelmingly for the ‘reformist’ candidate.

What is astonishing about the West’s universal condemnation of the electoral outcome as fraudulent is that not a single shred of evidence in either written or observational form has been presented either before or a week after the vote count. During the entire electoral campaign, no credible (or even dubious) charge of voter tampering was raised. As long as the Western media believed their own propaganda of an immanent victory for their candidate, the electoral process was described as highly competitive, with heated public debates and unprecedented levels of public activity and unhindered by public proselytizing. The belief in a free and open election was so strong that the Western leaders and mass media believed that their favored candidate would win.

The Western media relied on its reporters covering the mass demonstrations of opposition supporters, ignoring and downplaying the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad. Worse still, the Western media ignored the class composition of the competing demonstrations – the fact that the incumbent candidate was drawing his support from the far more numerous poor working class, peasant, artisan and public employee sectors while the bulk of the opposition demonstrators was drawn from the upper and middle class students, business and professional class.

Moreover, most Western opinion leaders and reporters based in Tehran extrapolated their projections from their observations in the capital – few venture into the provinces, small and medium size cities and villages where Ahmadinejad has his mass base of support. Moreover the opposition’s supporters were an activist minority of students easily mobilized for street activities, while Ahmadinejad’s support drew on the majority of working youth and household women workers who would express their views at the ballot box and had little time or inclination to engage in street politics.


A number of newspaper pundits, including Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, claim as evidence of electoral fraud the fact that Ahmadinejad won 63% of the vote in an Azeri-speaking province against his opponent, Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri. The simplistic assumption is that ethnic identity or belonging to a linguistic group is the only possible explanation of voting behavior rather than other social or class interests. A closer look at the voting pattern in the East-Azerbaijan region of Iran reveals that Mousavi won only in the city of Shabestar among the upper and the middle classes (and only by a small margin), whereas he was soundly defeated in the larger rural areas, where the re-distributive policies of the Ahmadinejad government had helped the ethnic Azeris write off debt, obtain cheap credits and easy loans for the farmers. Mousavi did win in the West-Azerbaijan region, using his ethnic ties to win over the urban voters. In the highly populated Tehran province, Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad in the urban centers of Tehran and Shemiranat by gaining the vote of the middle and upper class districts, whereas he lost badly in the adjoining working class suburbs, small towns and rural areas.

The careless and distorted emphasis on ‘ethnic voting’ cited by writers from the Financial Times and New York Times to justify calling Ahmadinejad ‘s victory a ‘stolen vote’ is matched by the media’s willful and deliberate refusal to acknowledge a rigorous nationwide public opinion poll conducted by two US experts just three weeks before the vote, which showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – even larger than his electoral victory on June 12. This poll revealed that among ethnic Azeris, Ahmadinejad was favored by a 2 to 1 margin over Mousavi, demonstrating how class interests represented by one candidate can overcome the ethnic identity of the other candidate (Washington Post June 15, 2009). The poll also demonstrated how class issues, within age groups, were more influential in shaping political preferences than ‘generational life style’. According to this poll, over two-thirds of Iranian youth were too poor to have access to a computer and the 18-24 year olds “comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all groups” (Washington Porst June 15, 2009). The only group, which consistently favored Mousavi, was the university students and graduates, business owners and the upper middle class. The ‘youth vote’, which the Western media praised as ‘pro-reformist’, was a clear minority of less than 30% but came from a highly privileged, vocal and largely English speaking group with a monopoly on the Western media. Their overwhelming presence in the Western news reports created what has been referred to as the ‘North Tehran Syndrome’, for the comfortable upper class enclave from which many of these students come. While they may be articulate, well dressed and fluent in English, they were soundly out-voted in the secrecy of the ballot box.

In general, Ahmadinejad did very well in the oil and chemical producing provinces. This may have be a reflection of the oil workers’ opposition to the ‘reformist’ program, which included proposals to ‘privatize’ public enterprises. Likewise, the incumbent did very well along the border provinces because of his emphasis on strengthening national security from US and Israeli threats in light of an escalation of US-sponsored cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan and Israeli-backed incursions from Iraqi Kurdistan, which have killed scores of Iranian citizens. Sponsorship and massive funding of the groups behind these attacks is an official policy of the US from the Bush Administration, which has not been repudiated by President Obama; in fact it has escalated in the lead-up to the elections.

What Western commentators and their Iranian protégés have ignored is the powerful impact which the devastating US wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan had on Iranian public opinion: Ahmadinejad’s strong position on defense matters contrasted with the pro-Western and weak defense posture of many of the campaign propagandists of the opposition.

The great majority of voters for the incumbent probably felt that national security interests, the integrity of the country and the social welfare system, with all of its faults and excesses, could be better defended and improved with Ahmadinejad than with upper-class technocrats supported by Western-oriented privileged youth who prize individual life styles over community values and solidarity.

The demography of voting reveals a real class polarization pitting high income, free market oriented, capitalist individualists against working class, low income, community based supporters of a ‘moral economy’ in which usury and profiteering are limited by religious precepts. The open attacks by opposition economists of the government welfare spending, easy credit and heavy subsidies of basic food staples did little to ingratiate them with the majority of Iranians benefiting from those programs. The state was seen as the protector and benefactor of the poor workers against the ‘market’, which represented wealth, power, privilege and corruption. The Opposition’s attack on the regime’s ‘intransigent’ foreign policy and positions ‘alienating’ the West only resonated with the liberal university students and import-export business groups. To many Iranians, the regime’s military buildup was seen as having prevented a US or Israeli attack.

The scale of the opposition’s electoral deficit should tell us is how out of touch it is with its own people’s vital concerns. It should remind them that by moving closer to Western opinion, they removed themselves from the everyday interests of security, housing, jobs and subsidized food prices that make life tolerable for those living below the middle class and outside the privileged gates of Tehran University.

Ahmadinejad’s electoral success, seen in historical comparative perspective should not be a surprise. In similar electoral contests between nationalist-populists against pro-Western liberals, the populists have won. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and even Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have demonstrated an ability to secure close to or even greater than 60% of the vote in free elections. The voting majorities in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires.

The consequences of the electoral victory of Ahmadinejad are open to debate. The US may conclude that continuing to back a vocal, but badly defeated, minority has few prospects for securing concessions on nuclear enrichment and an abandonment of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. A realistic approach would be to open a wide-ranging discussion with Iran, and acknowledging, as Senator Kerry recently pointed out, that enriching uranium is not an existential threat to anyone. This approach would sharply differ from the approach of American Zionists, embedded in the Obama regime, who follow Israel’s lead of pushing for a preemptive war with Iran and use the specious argument that no negotiations are possible with an ‘illegitimate’ government in Tehran which ‘stole an election’.

Recent events suggest that political leaders in Europe, and even some in Washington, do not accept the Zionist-mass media line of ‘stolen elections’. The White House has not suspended its offer of negotiations with the newly re-elected government but has focused rather on the repression of the opposition protesters (and not the vote count). Likewise, the 27 nation European Union expressed ‘serious concern about violence’ and called for the “aspirations of the Iranian people to be achieved through peaceful means and that freedom of expression be respected” (Financial Times June 16, 2009 p.4). Except for Sarkozy of France, no EU leader has questioned the outcome of the voting.

The wild card in the aftermath of the elections is the Israeli response: Netanyahu has signaled to his American Zionist followers that they should use the hoax of ‘electoral fraud’ to exert maximum pressure on the Obama regime to end all plans to meet with the newly re-elected Ahmadinejad regime.

Paradoxically, US commentators (left, right and center) who bought into the electoral fraud hoax are inadvertently providing Netanyahu and his American followers with the arguments and fabrications: Where they see religious wars, we see class wars; where they see electoral fraud, we see imperial destabilization.

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'No Comment' Is Not an Option

By Paul Wolfowitz
Friday, June 19, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1803496_pf.html

Stratfor
---------------------------



IRAN: AN EXPLOSION AND CONTINUING PROTESTS



A bomb blast near the mausoleum of Islamic Republic of Iran founder Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, located in southern Tehran, has left one person dead and at
least two others wounded June 20. It is not clear who was behind the blast but
the authorities will use this incident to engage in a wider crackdown to quell
the ongoing protests in Tehran and strengthen their claims that the unrest in
the country is part of a Western-backed plan to topple the Islamic republic.

The shrine is a sensitive target, and an explosion there gives the government
means to characterize the protesters as not simply angry citizens opposed to the
election's outcome but as complete renegades. It is also interesting that the
blast comes a day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a rare Friday
prayer sermon, in which he said, "Street demonstrations are a target for
terrorist plots. Who would be responsible if something happened?" This statement
and the fact that the original reports of the blast came from state media make
the explosion a suspicious development which may have been engineered by the
security establishment, but there is no way to confirm this.

Meanwhile, security forces -- now under the command of the country's elite
ideological military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- fired into
the air and used tear gas and water cannons to contain protesters gathered in
Revolution Square. While the number of demonstrators remains unclear, protests
appear to be taking place even though authorities refused to permit rallies --
as per the orders of Khamenei, who warned in his prayer sermon the previous day
that protests will not be tolerated.

There are unconfirmed reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main
challenger, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, is leading the protests.
However, it is not clear that either Mousavi or former parliamentary speaker
Mehdi Karroubi is leading the protests. Earlier, neither Mousavi and Karroubi
attended the Guardians Council meeting designed to discuss the issue of
electoral fraud with the defeated candidates, which indicates that they are
unlikely to accept the supreme leader's verdict. Press TV reported earlier that
authorities warned Mousavi June 20 that he will be held responsible for any
violence in the country.

At this stage the protesters do not seem to be out in large numbers, but this
situation could change quickly.

Copyright 2009 Stratfor.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?ed...ticle_id=103153



The Arabs' turn to respond to Netanyahu
By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech on Sunday outlining his views on Arab-Israeli peace-making offered nothing new, which is why it represents an important challenge for the Arab world that deserves more than perfunctory rejection. Netanyahu reiterated core, hard-line Zionist positions that most of the world finds unreasonable, and most of the Arab world finds racist, in giving Israeli Jews greater primacy or rights over Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims.

In demanding that the Arabs declare, a priori, that the state of Israel must be Jewish, secure and militarily more powerful than its neighbors, Netanyahu has given a speech couched in biblical dimensions. He wants Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa to guarantee Israeli Jews today what God promised the ancient Hebrews in the biblical books of Deuteronomy, Exodus and Numbers: eternal, exclusive, pure, powerful, secure statehood in a land owned by others that will be miraculously ethnically cleansed with Divine mandate and legitimacy to make room for a Jewish state.

Netanyahu's speech was aimed at two primary and two secondary audiences: primarily, US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu's own right-wing coalition government partners; and, secondarily, public opinion in the Arab world and Israel. The two important battles the Israeli prime minister faces are to hold together his right-wing coalition and to maintain the close US-Israeli strategic relationship. He outlined positions that he thought would achieve these goals, and probably correctly read the pressures on him in both cases. He also totally ignored the rest of Arab and Israeli public opinion, in the best manner practiced by professional politicians who care only for their incumbency and by nationalist-supremacists who view their people's rights as superior to that of others.

Netanyahu did not offer plausible peace conditions; he merely offered to enter into a protracted negotiating process that he knows will go nowhere due to his very harsh opening position. The idea that his "acceptance" of a Palestinian state is a breakthrough or a major step forward, as many in the West have described it, combines insult and ignominy. The imbalance between national and individual rights that Netanyahu ascribes to Israel and to the hypothetical Palestinian "state" is so severely in Israel's favor that talk of a "two-state" solution becomes comical, and should be more accurately described as "slave statehood."

Netanyahu would like us to spend years discussing what Israel means when it says it will live with a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, accepts continued growth of settlements, and does not insist that the right of return for Palestinian refugees from 1948 be recognized. These are not new positions. Previous Israeli governments have negotiated on the basis of two states, an Israeli and a Palestinian one, being the outcome of negotiations.

Netanyahu now wants the Arabs and the world to accept Israeli preconditions as the starting point for talks, and he will use the American insistence on freezing all settlement activity as a key negotiating card to win concessions on other issues, especially refugees. He will also try to get Palestinians and Arabs to engage in an endless round of talks that will either repeat the fruitless cycle we experienced from the Madrid talks in 1992 until today, or wear down the Arab side until it surrenders.

Neither of these alternatives will happen, which is why the Netanyahu speech is important. It clarifies the official Israeli position, which is at great odds with the Palestinian and Arab position, and at some odds with the American position as articulated by Obama. Much faster than was expected, within just five months of Obama's inauguration, we are witnessing important potential turning points in the Middle East. US-Israeli positions are diverging on some issues, such as settlements, as Washington seems serious about renewing its role as a mediator in order to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, permanently and comprehensively.

If the US and Israeli positions are clearer, the Arab position is not. As long as the Arab world merely rejects Israeli positions, calls on the United States to do more, and sits around waiting for others to rescue it from its diplomatic incompetence, we should not be surprised to hear the kinds of things that Netanyahu said. The Americans have declared an intention to re-engage. The Israelis have declared an intention to dig in and cement their supremacist, colonial ways. The Arabs have done nothing more than repeat old positions that have impressed and moved nobody.

The combination of the new American posture in the Middle East and the reaffirmation of hard-line Israeli positions should be an opportunity for the Arab world to work more seriously than before in generating momentum for progress towards a negotiated peace, in a manner more eloquent and effective than merely rejecting Zionism's colonial ways.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

Thank God Obama favors the 'old' Mideast
By Leon T. Hadar
Commentary by
Friday, June 19, 2009 State Condoleezza Rice travelled to Lebanon in an effort to bring an end to the war raging there between Israel and Hizbullah. At the time, she tried to market to reporters in Washington a somewhat odd spin on the violence taking place, not only in Lebanon but also in Iraq and Israel and Palestine. "What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing - the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East," Rice explained. Indeed, the Bush administration's Freedom Agenda was challenging the status quo in the "old" Middle East by using US military and diplomatic power to promote democracy in Iraq (by ousting Saddam Hussein and holding free elections), in Lebanon (by forcing Syria to withdraw its troops and holding free elections), and in the Palestinian Authority (by pressing for elections), a process that would eventually produce political reforms in the rest of the Middle East, including Iran.

Ignoring the lessons of history, and dismissing warnings about the hurdles facing a campaign to implant Western-style democracy at gunpoint, the Bush administration inadvertently helped to give birth to a "new" Middle East in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, that was in some ways, less peaceful, less tolerant, and less democratic than the "old" one. And these efforts all had the effect of strengthening Iran.

The recent good news has been that President Barack Obama seemed to favor the more realistic US approach towards the Middle East that assumed the need for American diplomatic engagement with the existing regimes in the region. Focused on securing US interests, the Obama team has downplayed the importance of exporting American-style democracy. Notwithstanding the soaring rhetoric of his historic address in Cairo, Obama seems to be going back to the "old Middle East."

There is no doubt that Obama's rejection of neoconservative grand designs of fighting Islamo-fascism and remaking the Middle East, like his commitment to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, has helped reduce anti-Americanism while empowering those players that favor stronger ties with the United States and the West.

From that perspective, the victory of the pro-Western coalition in Lebanon's parliamentary election, as well as the energizing of the reformist forces during the presidential election in Iran, could be attributed in part to the impact that Obama's message had on political groups calling for political change and openness to the world. Such individuals are now less concerned that they would be perceived as puppets of an anti-Muslim and militaristic United States.



But Obama's Cairo address should not be seen as the launching pad for a new and gentler American campaign - using soft power this time - to democratize the Middle East.

To be sure, Washington and its allies should be relieved that the coalition led by Hizbullah, and backed by Iran, failed to emerge as the winner in Lebanon. But the outcome of the election there should not be misconstrued as a victory for liberal democracy. The system of confessionalism that exists in the country helps to secure the power of recognized religious groups based on demographics. But the current arrangement is based on a distribution that reflects the results of the last official census taken in 1932. Claims that the winning coalition necessarily represents liberal values are undermined by the revelation that it received considerable financial support from Saudi Arabia, which, unlike Iran, doesn't permit women to vote in elections.

In fact, the elections in Lebanon and Iran (as well as earlier contests in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority) point to the fact that the drive for democracy - and, in particular, the push for elections - poses a threat to US interests in the Middle East. These elections have empowered social groups, including the working class and the rural poor, who tend to be more conservative, more religious, and more nationalistic in their political outlook and who don't necessarily share the more secular and liberal values of the West.

Watching the young and "cool" men and women in Tehran, demonstrating in support of the "reformer" Mir Hossein Mousavi (a member of the political establishment), many Westerners seemed to have adopted the wishful thinking that Iran is on a brink of a Western-oriented democratic revolution. The notion that the majority of Iranians may not be "like us" and don't share our dreams or aspirations was clearly very difficult to accept.

But any move on Washington's part to further isolate the ayatollahs in Tehran in order to force political change there would likely be as ineffective as the effort to punish the communists in Beijing in the aftermath of the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Instead, as in the case of China, US diplomatic and economic engagement with Iran could help create conditions more conducive for economic and political reforms, perhaps without the added pain of those birth pangs.



Leon Hadar is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and the author of "Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East." This commentary was written for THE DAILY STAR.

Another alternative view....
These are the birth pangs of Obama's new regional order

The turmoil in Tehran reflects a refusal to accept Ahmadinejad is popular and confusion about how to respond to the US

o Seumas Milne
o The Guardian, Thursday 18 June 2009

'They have elected a ­Labour government," a Savoy diner famously declared on the night of Britain's election landslide in 1945. "The country will never stand for it." From the evidence so far coming out of Iran, something similar seems to be ­happening on the streets of Tehran – and in the western capitals just as desperate to see the back of Iranian president ­Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Of course the movement behind opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi spreads far beyond the capital's elite, as did the supporters of Winston Churchill against Clement Attlee. In Iran, it includes large sections of the middle class, students and the secular. But a similar misreading of their own social circles for the country at large appears to have convinced the opposition's supporters that it can only have lost last Friday's election through fraud.

That is also reflected in the western media, whose cameras focus so lovingly on Tehran's gilded youth and for whom Ahmadinejad is nothing but a Holocaust-denying fanatic. The other Ahmadinejad, who is seen to stand up for the country's independence, expose elite corruption on TV and use Iran's oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority, is largely invisible abroad.

While Mousavi promised market reforms and privatisation, more personal freedom and better relations with the west, the president increased pensions and public sector wages and handed out cheap loans. So it's hardly surprising that Ahmadinejad should have a solid base among the working class, the religious, small town and rural poor – or that he might have achieved a similar majority to that of his first election in 2005. That's what one of the few genuinely independent polls (the US-based Ballen-Doherty survey) predicted last month, when the Times reported Ahmadinejad was "expected to win".

But such details have got lost as the pressure has built in Tehran for a "green revolution" amid unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen. The strongest evidence appears to be some surprising regional results and the speed of the official announcement, triggered by Mousavi's declaration that he was the winner before the polls closed. But most official figures don't look so ­implausible – Mousavi won Tehran, for instance, by 2.2m votes to 1.8m – and it's hard to believe that rigging alone could account for the 11 million-vote gap between the main contenders.

If Ahmadinejad was in fact the winner, then there is an attempted coup going on in Tehran right now, and it is being led by Mousavi and his western-backed supporters. But for the demonstrators facing repression in Tehran, the conviction that they have been cheated has created its own momentum in what is now a highly polarised society. That is given more force by the fact that the protests are underpinned by a split in the theocratic regime, of which Mousavi and his allies are a powerful component.

Part of that is about a perceived threat to their own economic interests. But the division also reflects differences within the establishment about how to respond to Barack Obama and the overtures from Washington. All factions uphold Iran's right to continue nuclear reprocessing, but Mousavi's campaign was critical of the level of support given to Hezbollah and Hamas, while Ahmadinejad's supporters argue that only toughness can win western acceptance of Iran's status as a new regional power.

Iran is of course at the centre of an arc of crisis across the greater Middle East, from Palestine to Pakistan: the legacy of the Bush administration's catastrophic failure in Iraq and the wider war on terror. And as the US attempts to reconstitute its hegemony in the region on a new basis – for which Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo was supposed to set the tone – there's reason to believe that the birth pangs of the new order may yet turn out to be as painful as the death throes of the old.

Last Friday, even before the polls had closed in Iran, the US president ­commented that people were ­"looking at new possibilities" in Iran, just as they had in Lebanon's elections the previous weekend. In fact, the unexpected defeat of Hezbollah's opposition coalition (which nevertheless won the largest number of votes) seems to have had more to do with local Lebanese sectarian issues and large-scale vote buying than the Obama effect. But the implications of his remarks were not lost in Iran, where the US is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars in covert destabilisation programmes.

Obama's public engagement over the Israel-Palestine conflict has so far elicited a commitment by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to the paper ­principle of a Palestinian state – backed by both his predecessors and George Bush and hedged around with so many restrictions it would barely merit Ruritanian status – but no climbdown over illegal settlement expansion. The chances of a negotiated deal in such conditions seem minimal, particularly in the absence of Hamas, and the prospects that a US plan for a settlement might then fail and plunge the region back into conflict relatively high.

Meanwhile, ­resistance and wider violence have been growing again in Iraq, as US occupation troops pull back from the cities. And in Afghanistan, far from ­winding down the occupation, Obama is ­escalating the conflict as promised, with another 21,000 US troops being sent this ­summer to fight the ­unwinnable war, as attacks on Nato forces have reached an all-time peak. At the same time, the spread of the Afghan war into ­neighbouring Pakistan has left thousands of civilians dead, created more than two million refugees and led to a civilian carnage from US drone attacks across the northwest of the country.

In case anyone imagined such wars of western occupation would become a thing of the past in the wake of the ­discredited Bush administration, ­General Dannatt, head of the ­British army, recently set out to disabuse them. Echoing US defence secretary Robert Gates, he insisted: "Iraq and ­Afghanistan are not aberrations – they are signposts for the future".

In such a context, the neutralisation of Iran as an independent regional power would be a huge prize for the US – defanging recalcitrants from Baghdad to Beirut – and a route out of the strategic impasse created by the invasion of Iraq. But so far, the signs from Tehran are still that that's unlikely to be achieved by a colour-coded revolution.

A Palestinian perspective on Netanyahu's exercise of his right of reply to President Obama.

Netanyahu's "brilliant" peace plan

By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
17 June 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10606.shtml


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a peace plan so
ingenious it is a wonder that for six decades of bloodshed no one
thought of it. Some people might have missed the true brilliance of
his ideas presented in a speech at Bar Ilan University on 14 June,
so we are pleased to offer this analysis.

First, Netanyahu wants Palestinians to become committed Zionists.
They can prove this by declaring, "We recognize the right of the
Jewish people to a state of their own in this land." As he pointed
out, it is only the failure of Arabs in general and Palestinians in
particular to commit themselves to the Zionist dream that has caused
conflict, but once "they say those words to our people and to their
people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems
between our peoples." It is of course perfectly natural that
Netanyahu would be "yearning for that moment."

Mere heartfelt commitment to Zionism will not be enough, however.
For the Palestinians' conversion to have "practical meaning,"
Netanyahu explained, "there must also be a clear understanding that
the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's
borders." In other words, Palestinians must agree to help Israel
complete the ethnic cleansing it began in 1947-48, by abandoning the
right of return. This is indeed logical because as Zionists,
Palestinians would share the Zionist ambition that Palestine be
emptied of Palestinians to the greatest extent possible.

Netanyahu is smart enough to recognize that even the
self-ethnic-cleansing of refugees may not be sufficient to secure
"peace": there will still remain millions of Palestinians living
inconveniently in their native land, or in the heart of what
Netanyahu insisted was the "historic homeland" of the Jews.

For these Palestinians, the peace plan involves what Netanyahu calls
"demilitarization," but what should be properly understood as
unconditional surrender followed by disarmament. Disarmament, though
necessary, cannot be immediate, however. Some recalcitrant
Palestinians may not wish to become Zionists. Therefore, the newly
pledged Zionist Palestinians would have to launch a civil war to
defeat those who foolishly insist on resisting Zionism. Or as
Netanyahu put it, the "Palestinian Authority will have to establish
the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas." (In fact, this civil
war has already been underway for several years as the American and
Israeli-backed Palestinian "security forces," led by US Lt. General
Keith Dayton, have escalated their attacks on Hamas).

Once anti-Zionist Palestinians are crushed, the remaining
Palestinians -- whose number equals that of Jews in historic
Palestine -- will be able to get on with life as good Zionists,
according to Netanyahu's vision. They will not mind being squeezed
into ever smaller ghettos and enclaves in order to allow for the
continued expansion of Jewish colonies, whose inhabitants Netanyahu
described as "an integral part of our people, a principled,
pioneering and Zionist public." And, in line with their heartfelt
Zionism, Palestinians will naturally agree that "Jerusalem must
remain the united capital of Israel."

These are only the Palestinian-Israeli aspects of the Netanyahu
plan. The regional elements include full, Arab endorsement of
Palestinian Zionism and normalization of ties with Israel and even
Arab Gulf money to pay for it all. Why not? If everyone becomes a
Zionist then all conflict disappears.

It would be nice if we could really dismiss Netanyahu's speech as a
joke. But it is an important indicator of a hard reality. Contrary
to some naive and optimistic hopes, Netanyahu does not represent
only an extremist fringe in Israel. Today, the Israeli Jewish public
presents (with a handful of exceptions) a united front in favor of a
racist, violent ultra-nationalism fueled by religious fanaticism.
Palestinians are viewed at best as inferiors to be tolerated until
circumstances arise in which they can be expelled, or caged and
starved like the 1.5 million inmates of the Gaza prison.

Israel is a society where virulent anti-Arab racism and Nakba denial
are the norm although none of the European and American leaders who
constantly lecture about Holocaust denial will dare to admonish
Netanyahu for his bald lies and omissions about Israel's ethnic
cleansing of the Palestinians.

Netanyahu's "vision" offered absolutely no advance on the 1976 Allon
Plan for annexation of most of the occupied West Bank, or Menachem
Begin's Camp David "autonomy" proposals. The goal remains the same:
to control maximum land with minimum Palestinians.

Netanyahu's speech should put to rest newly revived illusions -- fed
in particular by US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech -- that
such an Israel can be brought voluntarily to any sort of just
settlement. Some in this region who have placed all their hopes in
Obama -- as they did previously in Bush -- believe that US pressure
can bring Israel to heel. They point to Obama's strong statements
calling for a complete halt to Israeli settlement construction -- a
demand Netanyahu defied in his speech. It now remains to be seen
whether Obama will follow his tough words with actions.

Yet, even if Obama is ready to put unprecedented pressure on Israel,
he would likely have to exhaust much of his political capital just
to get Israel to agree to a settlement freeze, let alone to move on
any of dozens of other much more substantial issues.

And despite the common perception of an escalating clash between the
Obama administration and the Israeli government (which may come over
minor tactical issues), when it comes to substantive questions they
agree on much more than they disagree. Obama has already stated that
"any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's
identity as a Jewish state," and he affirmed that "Jerusalem will
remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided." As for
Palestinian refugees, he has said, "The right of return [to Israel]
is something that is not an option in a literal sense."

For all the fuss about settlements, Obama has addressed only their
expansion, not their continued existence. Until the Obama
administration publicly dissociates itself from the positions of the
Clinton and Bush administrations, we must assume it agrees with them
and with Israel that the large settlement blocks encircling
Jerusalem and dividing the West Bank into ghettos would remain
permanently in any two-state solution. Neither Obama nor Netanyahu
have mentioned Israel's illegal West Bank wall suggesting that there
is no controversy over either its route or existence. And now, both
agree that whatever shreds are left can be called a "Palestinian
state." No wonder the Obama administration welcomed Netanyahu's
speech as "a big step forward."

What is particularly dismaying about the position stated by Obama in
Cairo -- and since repeated constantly by his Middle East envoy
George Mitchell -- is that the United States is committed to the
"legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a
state of their own." This formula is designed to sound meaningful,
but these vague, campaign-style buzzwords are devoid of any
reference to inalienable Palestinian rights. They were chosen by
American speechwriters and public relations experts, not by
Palestinians. The Obama formula implies that any other Palestinian
aspirations are inherently illegitimate.

Where in international law, or UN resolutions can Palestinians find
definitions of "dignity" and "opportunity?" Such infinitely
malleable terms incorrectly reduce all of Palestinian history to a
demand for vague sentiments and a "state" instead of a struggle for
liberation, justice, equality, return and the restoration of usurped
rights. It is, after all, easy enough to conceive of a state that
keeps Palestinians forever dispossessed, dispersed, defenseless and
under threat of more expulsion and massacres by a racist,
expansionist Israel.

Through history it was never leaders who defined rights, but the
people who struggled for them. It is no small achievement that for a
century Palestinians have resisted and survived Zionist efforts to
destroy their communities physically and wipe them from the pages of
history. As long as Palestinians continue to resist in every arena
and by all legitimate means, building on true international
solidarity, their rights can never be extinguished. It is from such
a basis of independent and indigenous strength, not from the elusive
promises of a great power or the favors of a usurping occupier, that
justice and peace can be achieved.


Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at
the United Nations.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
Metropolitan Books, 2006).

A version of this article first appeared in The Jordan Times and is
reprinted with the authors' permission.

The first media accounts to present a factual basis for questioning the validity of the Iran elections was published today by CNN and the BBC, based on a Chatham House examination of official statistics.
Iran: Survey Raises Election Questions
June 21, 2009 | 1654 GMT

An examination conducted by a U.K. think-tank uncovered irregularities in the contested Iranian election, and raised “serious doubts” about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory, CNN reported June 21. The examination conducted by the Chatham House of official statistics obtained from the Iranian Interior Ministry showed that the number of votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in two provinces, and that Ahmadinejad’s sweep of rural provinces also contradicts previous election trends.

This is the CNN report:
Survey raises questions about Iran vote results
Sunday, June 21

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A survey of Iran's election results raises "serious questions" about the victory that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is said to have won and uncovers irregularities in the official results, a British think tank said Sunday.

Iranian expatriates protest the June 12 presidential election results on Sunday in Berlin, Germany.
Official statistics obtained from Iran's Ministry of the Interior show the votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters in two provinces, said Chatham House, a London-based institute that analyzes international affairs.

Claims that Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, swept the board in rural provinces also flies in the face of previous results, said Chatham House, which conducted the survey with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Release of the survey results comes on the heels of violent demonstrations that followed Iran's disputed June 12 presidential election.

Anti-government demonstrators have protested the results in street rallies and marches, defying warnings from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not to engage in such action.

Iran's foreign minister Sunday disputed allegations of ballot irregularities.

For the survey published Sunday, researchers worked from the province-by-province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by the official Statistical Center of Iran, Chatham House said.
The survey made four main observations:

# In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded.
# At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his announced victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
# In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad had received not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters and all new voters but also up to 44 percent of former reformist voters -- despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
# In the 2005 election, as in the elections of 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates -- and Ahmadinejad in particular -- were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That makes it "highly implausible" that the countryside swung substantially toward Ahmadinejad.

"The analysis shows that the scale of the swing to Ahmadinejad would have had to have been extraordinary to achieve the stated result," said professor Ali Ansari, a co-author of the survey who is director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at St. Andrews.

Data from the June 12 election suggests a sudden shift in political support toward Ahmadinejad in rural areas, which had not previously supported him or any other conservative, the survey said.

At the same time, the official data suggests the vote for challenger Mehdi Karrubi -- who was extremely popular in the rural, ethnic minority areas in 2005 -- has collapsed entirely, even in his home province of Lorestan, the survey said.

In that province, his vote went from 55.5 percent in 2005 to 4.6 percent in the most recent vote, the survey found. At the same time, Ahmadinejad won 50.9 percent of the vote in this election, including the votes of nearly half (47.5 percent) of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005, the survey found.

Such an outcome is "highly implausible," the survey said.

The Iranian government has said Ahmadinejad won the election by a huge margin. Ahmadinejad's main challenger, Mir Hossein Moussavi, and his supporters have contested the results.
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"In a country where allegations of 'tombstone voting' -- the practice of using the identity documents of the deceased to cast additional ballots -- are both long-standing and widespread, this result is troubling but perhaps not unexpected," the Chatham House survey said.

"This problem did not start with Ahmadinejad," the report added. "According to official statistics gathered by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm, there were 12.9 percent more registered voters at the time of Mohammed Khatami's 2001 victory than there were citizens of voting age." ========================
#

Another account, apparently based in part on the Chatham House surveiy, was published today in the BBC News online site:
#
Suspicions Behind Iran Poll Doubts

By Catherine Miller
BBC News

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the landslide victor in Iran's presidential election - less than 24 hours after polls closed - the shock on the streets of Tehran was palpable.

Mr Ahmadinejad had won 63% of the vote, his challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, 34%.

"I thought at least 80-90% of Tehrani voters were in favour of Mousavi, I can't really believe it," said one man.

Disbelief quickly turned to anger and hundreds of thousands of Mr Mousavi's supporters came out in protest.

But Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the final authority on all constitutional matters, has stood by the result, saying the Islamic Republic "would not betray the vote of the people".

Mobile polling stations

Opposition concerns about the running of the election emerged early in the process.

Monitors from their campaign teams, who by law are allowed to oversee every polling station, were issued with invalid ID cards or refused entry.

And there was a 10-fold increase in the number of mobile polling stations - ballot boxes transported from place to place by agents of the interior ministry, which is run by a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad.

"One third of the ballot boxes were mobile," says Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"They were out of the control of the local authorities and the representatives of the candidates, and nobody knows what they have done to them".

Polling day saw a record turnout and Iranians queued for hours to cast their ballot in an election which all agreed was critical to the future direction of their country.

"Early on polling day, the SMS network was shut down, that made me worried about what was going to happen," says Tehran journalist Ali Pahlavan.

With little access to the state-controlled broadcast media, Mr Mousavi's largely young, technically savvy supporters use text messages to campaign.

"Then the interior ministry [where results from polling stations around the country are collated] started kicking out its own employees so that just a skeleton personnel and the top officials were left," says Mr Pahlavan.

Quick results

Despite the high turnout, the count was remarkably quick, and the results unusually consistent, with none of the typical variations between different regions and cities.
“ This is something more than a manipulated election, this is a coup ”
Mehdi Khalaji

"Iran is a huge country, nearly four times the size of France and they began announcing the results within four hours, in past elections it's taken 24. It just seems to me the fix was in," says Juan Cole, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan.

Others point to particular results which appear unlikely.

For example, in Mr Mousavi's home province of East Azerbaijan, which is known to have fierce regional and ethnic loyalties to the reformist candidate, he polled far worse than expected.

And the liberal cleric Mehdi Karroubi polled 5% in Lorestan, despite having won 55% there in the first round of voting in 2005 when he also stood as a candidate.

"In some provinces like Khoresan or Mazandaran the number of people who voted exceeded the number of eligible voters in those provinces," points out Mr Khalaji.

"If they wanted to do a manipulation as they have done before, they could have done it in a more elegant and delicate way.

"This is something more than a manipulated election, this is a coup".

Irregularities

But others say there is no proof of a large scale plot by the establishment.

"The opposition has not provided any hard evidence yet that the elections were rigged," says Arshin Adib Moghaddem of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

"If there had been a strategic plan to hijack the elections, I wonder why people like Mohsen Rezai the head of the Expediency Council, who was also one of the presidential candidates, did not know about it. It is highly unlikely".

But with their monitors excluded from the voting and counting process it is difficult for the opposition to come up with such hard evidence.

The Guardian Council, the country's highest supervisory committee is investigating 646 complaints of misconduct.

"It's an admission there were irregularities," says Prof Cole.

"But the problem is, the Guardian Council is headed by a cleric, who is a far-right hardliner and known big supporter of Mr Ahmadinejad," he adds.

"So asking that body to review the ballot is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop."

Loss of faith

No-one may ever know exactly what happened on the night of Iran's elections, or who the rightful winner is.

Even critics of the process say it is possible Mr Ahmadinejad won.

An independent poll taken in May by the US organisation Terror Free Tomorrow found 34% of those surveyed would vote for Mr Ahmadinejad, with 14% for Mr Mousavi and 27% undecided.

But the opposition believes this crisis has now gone beyond the question of who the true victor is.

Iran's particular brand of religious democracy has always promised a balance between clerical leadership and the will of the people.

Now many people's faith in that system has been lost. It may take more than a recount of the votes to restore it.

In Iran, one woman’s death may have many consequences
By Robin Wright, Time, June 21, 2009

Iran’s revolution has now run through a full cycle. A gruesomely captivating video of a young woman — laid out on a Tehran street after apparently being shot, blood pouring from her mouth and then across her face — swept Twitter, Facebook and other websites this weekend. The woman rapidly became a symbol of Iran’s escalating crisis, from a political confrontation to far more ominous physical clashes. Some sites refer to her as “Neda,” Farsi for the voice or the call. Tributes that incorporate startlingly upclose footage of her dying have started to spring up on YouTube.

Although it is not yet clear who shot “Neda” (a soldier? pro-government militant? an accidental misfiring?), her death may have changed everything. For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat — a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran’s rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah’s security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles. [continued…]
* The photograph above, circulating on Twitter, is said to be Neda’s passport photograph.

Editor’s Comment — It seems tragically fitting that images of a dying young women will become the icon of what in so many ways is a women’s revolution.

Grand Ayatollah declares 3 days of national mourning
By Muhammad Sahimi, Tehran Bureau, June 21, 2009

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most important living cleric in Iran, and one of the most outspoken foes of the conservatives and hard-liners, has issued a statement about the attacks of the security forces on the demonstrators and the resulting casualties.

In the name of God

We all come from Him and will go back to Him

The great and dignified Iranian nation:

With much sorrow I was informed that, during peaceful rallies to defend their lawful rights, the great Iranian people have been attacked [by the security forces], beaten, and bloodied, and killed. While expressing my condolences for this painful event and the losses, and feeling the pain of the nation, I declare Wednesday [June 24], Thursday and Friday days of national mourning. I express my strongest support for the Muslim nation [of Iran] in their defense of their rights in the framework of the Constitution that recognizes republicanism [direct and free elections, and respect for the votes] as one of the pillars of the [political] establishment, and declare that any action that would harm the republicanism of the system is not permitted [is against religion]. Every one of our religious brothers and sisters must help the nation in defending its lawful rights. Based on this principle, any resistance in this direction [against people who are defending their right], particularly use of violence, beating, and killing of [the people of] the nation is acting against the Islamic principle that the nation must decide its own fate and path and, therefore, I declare it to be religiously haraam [the worst sin].

Hossein Ali Montazeri [continued…]

This Is Why We Must Fight And Win In Afghanistan A video grab from an undated footage from the Internet shows Al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan Mustafa abu al-Yazid making statements from an unknown location. REUTERS/REUTERS TV

Al Qaeda Says Would Use Pakistani Nuclear Weapons -- Reuters

DUBAI (Reuters) - If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.

Pakistan has been battling al Qaeda's Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.

Read more .... http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/id...-40495320090621

More News On Al Qaeda Threats To Use Nuclear Weapons

Al-Qaeda threatens to use Pak nuclear weapons against U.S. -- The Hindu
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200906221113.htm

Al-Qaeda ready to use Pakistan's nuclear weapons against US -- M&C
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/sou...ons_against_US_

Qaeda vows to fire Pakistan nukes at US -- Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/98717.htm?sectionid=351020401

Al-Qaeda to use Pak's atomic weapons against US -- Fresh News
http://www.freshnews.in/al-qaeda-to-use-pa...ainst-us-150921

The Saudi Nuke -- Strategy Page
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/T...e-6-20-2009.asp

Dirty Little Secrets
The Saudi Nuke
by James Dunnigan
June 20, 2009

The United States believes that Pakistan has 60 nuclear weapons, and is producing nuclear material for at least 5-6 more bombs a year. The U.S. has provided money and technical assistance to ensure the security of those weapons. It is believed that Pakistan stores its nukes with the nuclear material kept separate from the rest of the weapon (which contains the explosives that compress the enriched uranium, causing the nuclear explosion, as well as the electronics and warhead components needed to trigger the explosion.)

Pakistan built its nuclear weapons in order to guarantee its independence from Indian attack, invasion and conquest. India has no interest in conquering Pakistan. That would nearly double the number of Moslems in India, as well as adding an area that has a lot more poverty and corruption. Then there are the Pakistani tribal territories, with over 20 million tribal people who have, for thousands of years, raided into, and occasionally invaded, India. Pakistanis are coming to accept this Indian attitude as true, and for the last five years, the two countries have been negotiating to settle the territorial and political differences that have caused decades of violence (and four wars) between the two nations. Most people, on both sides of the border, agree that a nuclear war would be a tragic disaster for both nations, insuring that neither could claim "victory" with a straight face.

Pakistan denies that it is expanding its nuclear arsenal, but U.S. intelligence (and their Indian counterparts) believe otherwise. Sixty weapons should be sufficient to maintain the "balance of terror" with India. What no one wants to discuss openly is the risk of Pakistan selling its "surplus" of nukes to another country. Pakistan certainly needs the money, and already has a track record of peddling nuclear weapons technology. The UN IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) continues investigating Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist A Q Khan's illegal nuclear weapons technology smuggling organization. IAEA believes that Khan's group not only had a wider reach than previously thought, but is still in business.

Khan is suspected of peddling nuclear secrets as far back as the late 1990s. In 2004, Khan finally admitted it. There was popular outrage in Pakistan at a local politicians suggestion that A Q Khan, who originally stole technology from the West and created Pakistan's nuclear bombs, be questioned by foreign police for his role in selling that technology (as a private venture) to other nations (like Libya and North Korea). Khan was placed under house arrest after he confessed, and kept away from journalists, but was otherwise untouchable, because he was a national hero for creating the "Islamic Bomb." Popular demand eventually led to Khan being released from house arrest last year.

The IAEA continues to question Khan's customers, some of whom (particularly Libya) have been very cooperative. It is now known, for example, that most of the nuclear weapons documents provided were in electronic form. Thus the information could be easily copied and distributed. There's no way to track down how many copies there are or who has them. It is known that the documents are not in wide distribution, but it is likely that someone (especially in Iran and North Korea) has copies. But there are indications that the documents are still on the market.

A prime customer for Pakistani nukes is Saudi Arabia, which fears increased Iranian aggression once Iran acquires nukes. The Saudis have already bought ballistic missiles from China (which is suspected of supplying Pakistan with some nuclear weapons technology.) Saudi Arabia has the cash to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan (along with the technology to build a ballistic missile warhead for them). Saudi Arabia would need several dozen nuclear weapons to provide them with an adequate counter to Iranian nukes. This would benefit Pakistan in that Iranian control of Arab oil in the Persian Gulf would put Pakistan at a disadvantage against their Iranian neighbor.
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/T...e-6-20-2009.asp

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/storyp...,338729,00.html?

Business Times - 23 Jun 2009

Ignore the chickenhawks pushing for an Iran coup

By LEON HADAR
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

MUCH has been said and written in recent days about the way the demonstrators in Tehran have been utilising new kinds of 'social media' to challenge the Iranian theocratic regime. Protestors blog, post to Facebook, and most intriguing, coordinate their protests on Twitter, the messaging service.

On Twitter, young Iranians and their supporters post reports and links to photos from demonstrations along with accounts of street fighting and casualties around the country. So will this revolution be twitted?

Perhaps. But in any case, with all the attention focused on Tehran's Twitter Revolutionaries, we shouldn't forget the other impressive group of revolutionaries that has emerged in Washington just as the media started reporting on allegations about a rigged Iranian presidential election and angry protesters were gathering in Teheran.

I'm referring here to the many brave US lawmakers, op-ed columnists, television talking-heads, think-tankers and bloggers who are angry that President Barack Obama has refused to punish the Ayatollahs in Iran by, say, bombing Iran into the stone age or doing a regime change in Tehran. Hence Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain - thank God for small mercies - is now criticising the man who beat him last November for not talking tough with the Iranians like - I kid you not! - former President George W Bush.

'Look, these people are bad people and I know that it was unpopular to call them part of an axis of evil or whatever it was, but we just showed again that an oppressive regime will not allow democratic elections, free and democratic elections,' Mr McCain told reporters last week.

Yep. President Obama should follow the footsteps of his predecessor who certainly knew how to talk tough ('Bring them on') to Osama Bin Laden (and then let him get away to Pakistan) and to Saddam Hussein (and then generating a military fiasco in Iraq) and to Iran (and then helping it emerge as a regional power).

So Mr McCain, who during the campaign entertained an audience while singing Bomb, Bomb Iran to the tune of an old Beach Boys hit, is now advising President Obama on doing his version of the 'right thing' in Iran.

Mr McCain is at least a war veteran. Most of the other critics of Mr Obama's policy of maintaining a distance from the political upheaval in Iran are veterans of the battles of the blogs that took place before and during the Iraq War. They are so-called chicken-hawks who continue to protect such neoconservative bastions as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Weekly Standard, and who not long ago were promising us that the Iraq War would be a 'cake walk', and that Iraqis would greet Americans as liberators with garlands and sweets.

Now after that Iraqi Mission Not-Really Accomplished, they seem to be coming back to life, showing up once again on all the televisions news shows and authoring new op-eds for prestigious publications, despite the fact that much of their foreign policy agenda has been bankrupted and is now lying ruined on the sands of Mesopotamia.

Well . . . never mind. Now they suggest that America should exert all its power to lend a helping hand to former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi as he and his supporters attempt to challenge the presidential election results, a move that will only play into the hands of the ruling Ayatollahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who hope to portray Mr Mousavi and the protesters as American stooges.

Ironically, these same American critics who now depict Mr Mousavi as Iran's Gorbachev were warning on the eve of the Iran election that even if Mr Mousavi would win, the Americans would have no choice but to confront Iran over its nuclear military programme and consider giving Israel a green light to strike that country's nuclear facilities.

But now they explain that Mr Mousavi's election will ignite a democratic revolution in Iran and mark the start of a new era in US-Iran relationship. Trying to make sense of that kind of intellectual gibberish that passes for foreign policy analysis in Washington these days, I recalled Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum, those two silly characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

The two were known for talking nonsense all the time: 'This must be Thursday. Never could get the hand of Thursdays, though on a whole, Thursdays have been pretty good'. Their names derived from the expression 'twiddling my thumbs' which is to say they had nothing to do, like: 'Oh, I'm doing nothing, but twiddling my thumbs'.

So let's forget about Twitter. When it comes to the revived chickenhawks of Washington, the revolution will be twiddled.

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