Informed Comment

Cheney Worries about Wasting the Sacrifices made in Iraq on behalf of Big Oil

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Dick Cheney reacted to the cessation of unilateral US patrols of major cities in Iraq, saying that he had concerns that the "insurgents" might launch more attacks and that �I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point."

First of all, Cheney didn't make any sacrifices in Iraq. He deferred his own military service five times because he 'had other things to do.' The 'sacrifices' were caused because he purveyed falsehoods to the US public in order to get up that war, hinting around that Saddam was in bed with Usama Bin Laden and telling senators that Iraq was two years away from having a nuclear bomb. So the sacrifices were of other people's children, and his role was merely that of an Aztec high priest cutting the heart out of the victims.

Second of all, from the dawn of time until 2003, there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq. Iraqis are not essentially violent. Like all human beings, they deploy violence at some points to further political goals. Cheney launched a violent illegal war of aggression on Iraq. And Cheney created the "insurgency" by invidious policies that unfairly disadvantaged the Sunni Arabs in the new Iraq he helped midwife.

Third, Cheney's own administration (it was Bush-Cheney, remember Dick?) that negotiated the Status of Forces agreement under which the cessation of stand-alone US patrols of major Iraqi cities was scheduled for this summer. Cheney is trying to imply that this policy is that of the Obama administration!

Fourth, Cheney kept talking about 'liberating' Iraq and democratizing the Middle East. The patrols are ceasing precisely because the elected Iraqi parliament insisted on it! Cheney only likes democracy when it functions as an elective dictatorship for him and his cronies.

Fifth, Jason Leopold reviews the documentary evidence that Dick Cheney combined his energy task force with planning for an overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

Leopold writes,

' [An] April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney. In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.

"Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets . . . The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. . . [the notorious crook] Ken Lay, then chairman of the energy-trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.'

And then Leopold adds is this:

'The New Yorker 's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated Feb. 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." [The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney's task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch.
'

In other words, what Cheney is really worried about is that a US military withdrawal from Iraq on the timetable his administration negotiated with the Iraqi parliament might lead to further instability of a sort that would keep the US oil majors from getting at Iraqi petroleum in a big way. His invocation of the 'sacrifies' made by other people's children on the basis of his hateful manipulations is the ultimate desecration.

For my own account of Cheney, Iraq and Big Oil, see

Engaging the Muslim World

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US Forces Launch Helmand Campaign; Pakistani Public turns Against Taliban but Still Rejects US Intervention

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:05:00 +0000

Some 4,000 US military personnel and 650 Afghan troops are launching an assault on Taliban positions in Helmand Province, with an aim to 'take, clear and hold' in emulation of the counter-insurgency tactics deployed successfully in some parts of Iraq. Helmand has been a particularly violent province in recent years, and is also the major poppy-producing area of Afghanistan. Past US/Afghan government forcible poppy eradication campaigns angered local farmers and probably contributed to the increased guerrilla activity. This policy of forcible eradication has now been abandoned, though drug interdiction efforts continue. I am not sure the people the US forces in Helmand will be fighting are actually 'Taliban' in the sense of being seminarians loyal to Mulla Omar of Quetta.

Presumably this campaign has been launched now in anticipation of the August 20 presidential elections, which President Hamid Karzai is widely anticipated to win. The elections will require more law and order in some southern, Pushtun provinces than has recently been the case.

A new poll by worldpublicopinion.org has found that the Pakistani public has turned against the Taliban in a big way, with 81% now seeing the Taliban in the Northwest of Pakistan as a critical threat to the country. This is up from 34% in September, 2007. And some two-thirds of Pakistanis view all religious militant groups in the country as a whole as a critical threat to it. This proportion is up from 38% in September of 2007, and it is a significant shift, since a lot of Pakistanis had view the religious militants as freedom fighters for the cause of Kashmir or the liberation of Afghanistan from Western occupation.

The bad news for President Obama is that the Pakistani public's souring on the Taliban has not resulted in higher favorability ratings for the United States. A majority does not trust Obama to do the right thing. Overwhelming majorities believe the US wants to divide and weaken the Muslim world, and 82% reject Obama's predator drone strikes on Pakistani soil. Some 79% want the war in Afghanistan ended now.

In other words, as religious nationalism appears to have declined in Pakistan (something visible in the parliamentary elections of 2008), other forms of secular nationalism have taken its place, no less anti-imperialist in character. Pakistan was born in a struggle to throw off two centuries of British rule in South Asia, and once you go through a thing like that, having Western troops actively intervening in a Muslim neighbor is just not welcome.

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Iran: Mousavi Remains Defiant; Journalists Held

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:35:00 +0000

Reuters reports that Iranian opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi is continuing to assert that the newly formed second-term government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is illegitimate. He called for a lifting of censorship and the release of the some one thousand Iranians arrested by security forces for participating in demonstrations against the allegedly stolen election. He was joined joined in this continued defiance of Supreme Leader Khamenei by his rival, Mehdi Karroubi and others in the reform camp. My guess is that they aren't far from a jail cell.

The regime is already conducting Stalinist show-trials, as in the case of Maziar Bahari, who recently appeared with me on Fareed Zakaria's GPS Sunday interview show. Please politely protest Mr. Bahari's detention and the coerced 'confession' to Mohammad Khazaee, Ambassador and Permanent Representative, email address: iran@un.int . While you are at it, demand the release of Greek journalist Iason Athanasiadis and the others listed by Amnesty International. If you can, it is best to write by land mail to: Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Howzeh Riyasat-e Qoveh Qazaiyeh, (Office of the Head of the Judiciary) Pasteur St., Vali Asr Ave.,south of Serah-e Jomhouri,
Tehran 1316814737, Islamic Republic of Iran (Salutation: Your Excellency).

Another ayatollah, Jalaoddin Taheri, has issued a fatwa calling Ahmadinejad's election illegitimate and fraudulent. In 2002, Taheri, long a critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, resigned after thirty years as Friday prayer leader of the major city of Isfahan (sort of like being archbishop of Boston). More significant senior ayatollahs, such as Yousuf Sanei, have also shown discomfort with the way the elections were conducted.

Ali Reza Eshraghi explains why most clerical authorities in Iran are afraid of rocking the boat to much, and have more or less acquiesced in Khamenei's decision.

One fall-out of the widespread questioning of the probity of the election process is that Ahmadinejad has had to cancel a trip to Libya to appear at the conference of the African Union, since his being on the roster there had become controversial. Khamenei may win his battle to move the Iranian state further to the repressive Right for the moment, but it may well be a pyrrhic victory since it is likely to isolate Iran further from the international community and to set the stage for further unrest in the future.

Hard as it is to watch all this repression unfold, I agree with Eric Margolis that there is little the US can or should do at this point. Countries have their own developmental history, class structures, and political cultures, and foreign military or covert interventions on behalf of state-building and democratization have very seldom succeeded in modern history.(See Elizabeth Thompson's new study on democratization in the Middle East for USIP-- the pdf is here.) Not to mention that Bush-Cheney and the Neocons tied up the US military and intelligence apparatuses in another illegal war of aggression, which rather weakened US international legitimacy for such purposes. As with post-Tiananmen Square China, the US will just have to deal with the Iran that exists.

Here is the graphic novel of the past three weeks' events in Iran, in the style of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (she is not involved in this production).

Aljazeera English reports from the streets of Tehran on the aftermath of the massive protests against the announced outcome of the June 12 presidential elections.

Iran experts Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Abbas Milani, and Karim Sadjadpour discuss the aftermath of the election and its implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. David Ignatius moderated the discussion.

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Coda: Final Dispatch from Tehran

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:57:00 +0000

This message was received by email from Tehran three hours ago. I have anonymized it and made a couple of orthographical corrections and am passing it on for what it is worth. - JC

And on the thirteenth day Michael Jackson died. Voice of America and BBC Persian are back up, if intermittently, and we crowd around like the rest of the world for the latest news. It is almost a relief. Being a full-time revolutionary is hard work, difficult to sustain. Seeing the non-stop coverage, the obvious distraction of his passing, we grimly joke that Michael was a martyr for the cause. At least he had the decency to delay his death until the worst violence had already passed.

Things are going back to their regular marks. In the afternoons the parks fill up again with old ladies and young couples. There's badminton and soccer for kids to play at night. Well-dressed men in jackets and dress pants exercise on the cardio equipment provided by the city. The scenes around the squares, lately the places of so much celebration and trouble, are almost back to normal. Traffic is back. A car flies towards Ariashahr Square, a young man with slicked back hair and aviator glasses leans out of the passenger window chest first. He removes his shades and turns his palms upwards, beseeching the ladies in the car next to him to pull over. Unimpressed, or maybe they're being coy, the girls pull away and race ahead of their pursuers. The two boys give chase. Cops and basijis hang around the circle but do nothing, what do they care...?

Every young person I see I wonder, What were you doing three weeks ago? Who were you then? I look for signs of subversion. A girl wears a green headscarf. A kid shifts gears in his Kia Pride with an arm encased in a green cast. What does it mean? Together, in a crowd, the color green added up to something. Alone, spread apart and without context, they are just moments of coincidence.

Television has become almost unbearable. Stories alternate between the mundane and the absurd. The evening news shows us parents waiting outside of testing halls where their kids are taking the Konkur, the once-yearly high stakes university entrance exam. This year, more than ever, the Konkur is an act of faith. For the less than half who get accepted and manage to finish their studies, one wonders what kind of job market will await them. A friend remarks, We've got to be the most educated unemployed in the world. Sometimes it seems that all we do is attend class, schooling has become the ultimate distraction.

The report on the Konkur ends and the next item is the case of Neda Khanom. Like Jim Garrison in JFK, the reporter shows us step-by-step how her death could NOT have been the result of a single gunman. The caliber doesn't match, it occurred on side streets, why is there footage of her before the incident, etc.. The reporter hints ominously at darker forces active inside of the country, that her death was no doubt a setup by a foreign power. Even by IRI standards, the report is breathtaking. Rather than hide the incident or pretend like it never happened, they try to play it to their advantage. There seems to be nothing beyond the pale, no outrage too great...We reminisce about better days, when the lying had enough truth in it that you could at least fool yourself into believing.

Khoobe, khoobe, bezar begand. Harchi bishtar, baytar. Good, good, let them say it. The more the better. Hamintor khatra siatar mikonand. They'll only darken the line separating the people from the government. We sit and plot, kitchen revolutionaries at work. It is late and the drink is loosening our tongues. What we need is leadership. What about Mousavi? Poor Mousavi, all alone...If only Khomeini were still around, he would have put all of these guys in their places!, this last bit said by someone who has never accepted the Revolution. At 10 the neighbors start up, Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! We keep drinking, pressing our hands flat against the table and wondering if maybe they're letting us thrash around for a few weeks even as the screws tighten...

Still...I've written elsewhere that none of this was supposed to happen. It remains true. It is the people, the mellat, that has taken on the most creative and unexpected role in this drama. Their scenario remains the least predictable, and therefore most hopeful, of all of the actors, foreign or Iranian. Iran's conspirators clearly did not expect the population to show up in such defiant numbers after June 12 and the truth be told, neither did many of us...

We are told, Mellat e Iran ra nashenakhtim. The state says that the turnout and election results shows that the world and by implication the opposition didn't understand the Iranian people. Mellat e Iran ra nashenakhtim. We didn't understand the Iranian people, say certain analysts in Europe and the U.S.. The vote proves that Ahmadinejad is loved and the West once again didn't get the "true Iran."

Still...as the unrest continues, daily taking new forms---Iran's innumerable revolutionary, religious, and national holidays promise to be new sites of protest--it would appear that it is the state and its band of fellow travelers in the West that has failed to understand what has happened...

Cats are on the prowl in the kuchehs and sidestreets of Tehran. They've never had it better. A two-year effort by the city to outfit the capital with trash bins has gone to waste. In a few nights of protest practically every bin in the city has been kicked over, stomped on, melted into its primal elements. Neighbors have gone back to placing trash-filled yellow and black grocery bags at the end of the alley (sar e kuche) at night. The cats wait until no one is around and then show up sniffing, padding about, looking for their night's food.

Throughout the capital there are deep marks etched onto the asphalt, mottled grooves in the shape of a blocky "u" from where the bin fires burned hot against the pavement. The scars run at regular intervals across Tehran's many neighborhoods, sometimes in overlapping pairs or threes. It will be some time before these blemishes are repaired. Entirely new roads will have to be built...

(Dedicated to the geniuses at Nokia/Siemens)

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Death Toll in Kirkuk Rises to 33; Growing Arab-Kurdish Violence Threatens Stability of Iraq; 4 US Troops Killed

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:15:00 +0000

The casualty toll in the Kirkuk bombing on Tuesday has risen to 33, with about 100 injured.

Four US troops were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, as well, though the circumstances are still murky.

The Iraqi civil wars kicked off by the American invasion of 2003 continue. I'm sure a lot of observers think it is all one internal war, but it is not. It is multiple. Nor is the bombing relevant to the American withdrawal from the cities, as some press reports are implying, since there were never very many US troops in Kurdistan or the Iraqi north generally. (Though settling the Arab-Kurdish problem before they leave will be essential to a good exit for Americans).

A bombing like this in Kirkuk means something different than a similar event in Baghdad or in Shiite Nasiriyah in the south. A lot of the violence in the south is among Shiite militias; there are few Sunnis, and their freedom of movement is constrained (a Tikriti "r" is different from the "r" used in the south, and so the religio-ethnic difference can sometimes be heard; plus, Sunnis typically don't know the details of the lives of the 12 Imams sacred to the Shiites and so can fairly easily be caught out.)

A bombing in Baghdad typically indicates continued conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs, though my best guess is that Sunni Arabs are only 10-15% of Baghdad now, so that the bombings are more helpless raging revenge than effective guerrilla politics.

But in Kirkuk, even if it is the radical vigilantes ("Salafi jihadis" or what the US press calls 'al-Qaeda in Iraq') that are behind the bombing, it has a different significance. Kirkuk is the arena for a potentially epochal struggle between the Arabs (both Sunni and Shiite) and the Kurds (mostly Sunni, who do not speak Arabic as their mother tongue).

Tuesday's blast was the second major such attack in a week and a half, since 70 were killed in Kirkuk in a bombing just 10 days ago.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is a special federal region within Iraq, comprising what used to be 3 provinces that have now been conjoined into one administration. But the KRG is not satisfied with this territory. Its leaders what to annex large swathes of Iraq proper, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The Kurds, who were favored by the Neocons and assisted on the ground by powerful American supporters such as Peter Galbraith and Brendan O'Leary, had an article put into the new Iraqi constitution demanding a referendum on the future of Kirkuk, to be conducted in that province, by the end of 2007. It never happened, because it was a sort of ultimatum, and military historians know that ultimatums usually kick off a war. Since the Kurdish authorities largely control the police and security forces in Kirkuk province (a legacy of the cooperation of the Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary in helping the US take the city of Kirkuk in the 2003 war), the Kurdistan authorities have been in a good position to flood the province with Kurdish immigrants, some of them returnees who had been ethnically cleansed in the name of Arabization by Saddam Hussein, but some at least of whom are probably new to the province. So the Kurds would probably win a referendum.

But the Arabs and Turkmen, who together form at least a plurality, are die-hard against being dragooned into Kurdistan (remember, the practice in the KRG has been to erase provincial borders and meld the administration into one, which means that Kirkuk Arabs and Turkmen will be a tiny minority in the sea of a unified Kurdistan).

On Monday, 50 Iraqi members of parliament had entered a protest against the draft constitution for Kurdistan, which will be submitted to a referendum in the KRG, since it explicitly claims Kirkuk and parts of Ninevah and Diyala provinces and appears to endorse a Greater Kurdistan that would threaten Turkey, Iran and Syria as well as Arab Iraq. The new constitution is also being criticized by Kurdish secularists for making Islam the state religion and forbidding the civil legislature to pass laws contrary to sharia or Islamic canon law.

Kurdistan leaders are increasingly intolerant of press criticism, having on more than one occasion jailed journalists or confiscated runs of publications.

So the bombing is not just a manifestation of fundamentalist terrorism, though it may be that. It is political, and aims at achieving political aims, in a way that the random and ineffectual bombings in Baghdad no longer can hope to.

I am not sympathetic to movements coming out of 19th century romantic nationalism, which tend to reify ethnicity in an almost racist manner and posit essentialist connections between land and people (especially silly in those parts of the Middle East, such as Iraq, where a third to a half of people were pastoralists wandering around until the twentieth century). The Arab-Kurdish divide in Iraq is extremely unfortunate and economically irrational. If Iraq can ever reestablish security and develop the southern oil fields, which are enormous, Kurds will be drawn down south as workers in large numbers, and get spread around the country. The Kirkuk fields are old, water-logged and on the way to being worked out. Iraq's future probably lies elsewhere and therefore probably so does the future of Kurdish citizens of Iraq. Kurds would be wiser to forget about trying to control territory in the 19th century way and surrender to the messiness, ethnic mixing and multiple identities, and uprootedness of postmodern life. And nothing better exemplifies such postmodernism than the polyglot hydrocarbon states of the Gulf. If Kurds aren't careful they'll be stuck landlocked, with small resources, and surrounded by powerful local enemies fearful of their separatism, while Nepalis, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans get rich working in the oil economy of the Arab Shiite south of Iraq.

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With a Whimper, not a Bang; A Milestone on the Way to the End of American Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:09:00 +0000

T.S. Eliot wrote at the end of "Hollow Men" in 1926, "This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper." He may as well have been talking about the war George W. Bush launched in Iraq in 2003.

The end of routine, independent patrolling of major Iraqi cities by US troops today is a major milestone in modern Iraqi history.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared Tuesday "National Sovereignty Day." Some 86 US bases have been closed in recent weeks (see the Jim Muir report). The LAT says that on Monday night, people in Baghdad danced in the streets, sang and set off (non-lethal) fireworks even in the midst of a dust storm.

Some Americans might find all this celebrating offensive. But the US public has mostly moved on, little interested in the foreign wars its armed forces are still fighting, and worried much more about the long-term consequences of the Republican Party's Ponzi-scheme economy of 2001-2008, the collapse of which has cost them or their family and friends their jobs. As in the 1930s, even celebrity gossip and the glitz of Hollywood are more present in people's minds than distant armies on the march. The public and the mass media mysteriously ignored the Afghanistan War right from 2002, and now Iraq is being given the same treatment, even though there are 130,000 or so US troops in Iraq and 38,000 in Afghanistan, and both contingents are still fighting and dying.

The end of US patrolling should neither be exaggerated nor downplayed as a turning point. Of course, US troops will still be in Iraqi streets from time to time, accompanying Iraqi forces. Special Operations teams will likely engage in surgical strikes in coordination with their Iraqi colleagues for years to come.

But there is an essential difference between such occasional interventions of a collaborative sort and routine patrols by a foreign military of densely populated urban areas in an Arab, Muslim country. The latter is viewed as a form of neo-colonialism by most Iraqis. The former could be welcome if it adds to law and order.

I was talking to a US military officer who had been in Baghdad in December, and he told me that he thought that Iraqi troops were now capable of patrolling independently, something he would not have said a year or two earlier. If they get into trouble, he said, they stand and fight. They still have poor logistical support. If the firefight lasts 5 hours rather than one hour, they might be in trouble because no one is bringing them ammunition and water. Az-Zaman writes in Arabic that the governor of Najaf remarked Sunday that US troops would still provide logistical support to Iraqi ones, despite the end of routine American patrols.

The Iraqi military has been setting up extra patrols and checkpoints in preparation for the cessation of American patrols. The az-Zaman article cited above speaks of some mysteries, including the incarceration of dozens of Iraqis in the provinces. And there is the sudden release of a major Mahdi Army militia commander. Is Washington trying to cut a deal as it leaves?

That the Iraqi military has experienced a sudden increase in efficiency is attested by relatively successful campaigns in 2008 against the Mahdi Army Shiite militia in Basra, Amara, Nasiriya, and Sadr City (East Baghdad). Security appears tangibly to have improved in the south in the aftermath. Still, of course the Iraqi police and other security forces have a long way to go toward professionalism.

Aljazeera English has video on the constant threat to police from guerrillas:

Of course, the operations in Basra and east Baghdad succeeded in part because the US air force gave the Iraqi military close air support. That is another way that the US is not just vanishing from Iraq. Iraq does not have an air force and will not have one for something close to a decade, and its government wants the US to act as a surrogate Iraqi air force for the time being. Note, however, that such air support can be proffered from al-Udeid base in Qatar. It does not require a base inside Iraq.

More US troops will be withdrawn, though Gen. Ray Odierno wants to have a big enough force in January to help provide security for the parliamentary elections that month. I think there is some fear that if US troops are not sufficient in number to help lock down the country for the elections, that paucity of troops may encourage Sunni Arab radicals to disrupt the balloting with massive car bombings. Moreover, there is a danger of Iranian hard liners trying to steal the Iraqi elections, as a repeat performance of what happened in Iran on June 12, by using petrodollars to buy votes for their hard line Shiite allies.

In the medium term, the bombings by Sunni Arab guerrilla groups who cannot reconcile to the Shiite- and Kurdish-led new government, will likely continue. It is not clear, however, that such bombings can actually undermine the new government or force a radical change. If they cannot, they are useless.

The end of major US combat operations, prematurely announced by Bush on the USS Lincoln in 2003, may finally be at hand. Iraq faces many challenges going forward. Corruption is almost crippling for reconstruction. There has been little political reconciliation. Guerrillas are still deadly, as are sectarian militias. An Arab-Kurdish struggle over oil-rich Kirkuk of some ferocity could break out at any time. Increasingly, however, these problems will have to be dealt with by the new Iraqi elite itself.

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Sunday's Protest March Broken Up; Rafsanjani Defers to Khamenei

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0000

The phase of mass protest in the aftermath of the controversial election results of June 12 has drawn to a close for the moment. Movement activists can no longer put tens of thousands of protesters in the street because the security forces are too well organized and too loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to allow it. Opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi has been increasingly indecisive on tactics even if he has been steadfast in demanding a rematch with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

AP reports that the march for Mir Hosain Mousavi on Shariati Street by some 3,000 activists was violently repressed by the security forces, despite its having been a legal procession in part commemorating the killing in 1981 of revolutionary founding father Mohammad Beheshti (see below). Police used tear gas and clubs to disperse the marchers, attacking them and in some case breaking bones. The demonstrators had been chanting "where's my vote?" and some were wearing green, the symbolic color of the Mousavi movement. They also by their chants tied Mir Hosain Mousavi to Imam Hosain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhmmad, who was killed by the repressive Umayyad government in 680 CE. The implication is that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the equivalent of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid, who is despised by Shiite Muslims as the author of the martyrdom of Imam Hosain.

Opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi himself had joined in the march on Sunday.

The European Union condemned Iran for detaining 8 Iranian employees of the British Embassy on charges that they were involved in fomenting the post-election protests-- charges that the British government vehemently denied.

Reuters reports that late Sunday some of the embassy personnel were released.

In a bad sign for Mousavi, his ally former president Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani appeared to desert him on Sunday. The USG Open Source Center translates from official Iranian radio:

'FYI -- Iran: Rafsanjani Cites 'Complicated Plots,' Calls for 'Solidarity'
Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Tehran Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 in Persian at 1630 GMT on 28 June broadcast its scheduled newscast, which included an item on remarks by Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Chairman of the Expediency Council, in a meeting the families of the "martyrs" of the 7 Tir incident, that is 28 June 1981, when the head of Judiciary and some other officials were killed in a bomb blast.

Rafsanjani referred to the recent incidents after the results of the presidential elections, saying: "The incidents were the results of complicated plots by obscure sources with the aim of creating separation and differences between the people and the system. And with the aim of making the people distrust the Islamic system."
He said Ayatollah Khamene'i's expedience in extending the deadline by the Guardian Council for a better study of the issues and providing convincing explanations and clearing any doubts was a very valuable measure. He added: "In my opinion, the recent order by the leadership was one of the very valuable decisions he made. That is he asked the Guardian Council to extend the legal time, which was over, to study the complaints. And a group was appointed to help the Guardian Council with this regard."

Rafsanjani said: "We should all make a step with cooperation and solidarity to remove the obstacles and solve the problems." He also said: "We should always end the election results with solidarity. If every election would result in discord - we have an election once a year - and there would be hatred and fighting, then there will be nothing left." . .

(Description of Source: Tehran Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 in Persian -- state-run television) '

Rafsanjani has clearly decided to defer to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on handling the outcome of the elections, and has come out as critical of the crowd politics and occasional turbulence they produced. As a multi-billionaire and man of the establishment, he may well have been frightened that the massive street rallies for Mousavi a week ago signalled a danger to the status quo, which he is attempting to preserve. From Rafsanjani's point of view, Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and others have been making a slow-motion coup, reducing the sigificance and openness of the of the system by excluding the reformists from running for office. Wanting to go back to 1997 is not the same as wanting a revolution.

On the other hand, Grand Ayatollah Bayyat Zanjani issued a statement defending the right of the protesters to rally peacefully and condemning the violent crackdown on them. There are nearly 30 grand ayotallahs in the Shiite world, the majority of them resident in the holy city of Qom in Iran. Despite their lack of political power, they could be influential in determing how the public remembers the election and what aspirations Iranians have for the future.

The real victors of a successful squelching of the protest movement would be the Revolutionary Guards, who have been making a hard line slow-motion coup for some time.

Dilip Hiro explains the background of the current events and concludes that Iran's regime has moved in an authoritarian direction, raising questions about whether a fundamentalist Muslim movement is compatible with democracy.

Middle East Report has a substantial overview of the Iran crisis and its historical roots.

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Moaddel Guest Op-Ed: Iran�s Crisis and the U.S. Option: Support Mousavi now or fight Ahmadinejad tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Mansoor Moaddel writes in a guest editorial for IC:

The current civil uprising in Iran reflects not just a protest against a rigged election. Nor is it primarily a symptom of contentions for power or clashes between opposing perspectives on the nature of the Islamic regime. It is, rather, resistance against a political coup, whose engineers plan to impose a Taliban-style Islamic government on Iran. The coup has been organized by an alliance between the supreme leader and the most militant and fundamentalist faction within the ruling establishment, backed by the Revolutionary Guard.

The political attitudes of one of its most notorious ideologues, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, demonstrates the danger Iranians and the world would be facing should this militant faction get its way. Mesbah Yazdi does not believe in the republican aspects of the Islamic regime, but rather views Islamic law as supreme and must be unquestionably followed. The supreme leader, he says, is not elected but rather discovered by the clerics. For him, Ayatollah Khamenei is the exemplar of such a leader. He has characterized the ideas of representative government and legislative functions as belong to the decadent system of Western liberalism. He has likened reformist ideas to the AIDS virus. He has publically endorsed the construction of a nuclear bomb.

These ideas have much appeal for Ahmadinejad, who claims that the past governments were corrupt and deviated from the Islamic path. Some of the former leaders, people like Rafsanjani and Natiq Nouri, have abandoned the ideals of the revolution. Ahmadinejad argues that for the sake of Islam, such individuals must be sacrificed and the society must be restored to the principles of the Islamic revolution. Under his presidency, be claims, this restoration has been launched, ushering a new beginning for a truly Islamic state in Iran.

Ahmadinejad�s deeds are Islamic extremism in action. He has already restricted the freedom of Iranian citizens, expanded men�s authority over women, increased political persecution, undermined the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, and supported terrorism and political adventurism abroad. He has also recruited members of the Revolutionary Guard to fill key governmental positions and awarded them lucrative government-sponsored projects. These actions, and his administration�s economic mismanagement, promoted the formation of a broad coalition in Iran comprised of reformist politicians, conservative pragmatists, and ordinary citizens representing the majority of the Iranian public.

Realizing the growing strength of this coalition in the run up to the election, the Revolutionary Guard acted to stifle the movement and the ruling party awarded itself a landslide victory � an uncontestable mandate for four more years of growing religious extremism and global isolationism.

The outcome of the current civil uprising is certainly consequential for the development of democracy in Iran. It has also far reaching implications for regional stability, international peace efforts, and the security of the United States. At this point, the regime cannot secure its rule without unleashing a reign of terror. And if this coup succeeds, the regime will forge ahead with its expressed plans for nuclear development and support for religious extremism abroad.
It would be a mistake to think that people like Ahmadinejad are reasonable. It is counter productive to base policy on the untenable premise that he would be amenable to a cost-benefit analysis on the nuclear issue. Time and again he has announced that the nuclear issue is off the table. To believe or hope otherwise would be a profound and resonant error.

The option that is left for the United States is either to effectively support Mousavi�s camp today or risk a military confrontation with Ahmadinejad tomorrow.

Mansoor Moaddel, Professor of Sociology, Eastern Michigan University
Research Affiliate, Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan

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5,000 March Silently in Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:06:00 +0000

CNN is reporting that 5,000 dissidents marched silently on Shariati street near a major mosque in downtown Tehran, ostensibly in honor of cleric Mohammad Beheshti, who was killed in a bombing by the terrorist organization Mojahedin-e Khalq (Holy Warriors of the People) in 1981. But in fact they were protesting the stealing of the recent presidential election and the betrayal of the ideals for which Beheshti died. By casting their march in the terms of a commemoration of a martyr to the revolution at the hands of a despised dissident group, the crowd cleverly made it difficult for hard liners to depict them as agents of a foreign power or revolutionaries seeking an overturn of the government. CNN says that they walked slowly as part of their protest, despite attempts of government security forces to move them along.

The resort to licensed, legal demonstrations is a way for the movement to keep making news and coming in public, something the regime refuses to allow in the case of unlicensed protests. Opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi is alleged to have promoted today's event via Facebook.

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Maliki Says Iraq can Patrol Own Cities

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki maintained Saturday that Iraq is ready to provide its own security in the cities, as US troops cease patrolling.

This despite the raft of bombings that kille about 200 people last week.

Aljazeera English has video on the lack of political progress and the failure of reconciliation in Iraq.

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Cont'd (click below or on "comments")

Mousavi's Web Site Closed; Manages to send Message to Iranians Abroad

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:05:00 +0000

CNN says that Iran's National Security Council met recently with opposition leaders Mir Hosain Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai. Ismail Kowsari, spokesman for the NSC, is said to have complained to Mousavi that his position, that the presidential election was stolen, is "illogical" and that he should not have repeated it after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei addressed the nation on June 19.

Kalemeh, the web site of opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi, has been closed down, as the regime tightens the screws in its crackdown on protests against what reformists see as the stealing of the Iranian election.

At another web site Mousavi has posted a letter to expatriate Iranians who had voted in the presidential election, explaining his current stance. He pledges to continue his campaign through legal channels:

' I would like to give you my assurance that I remain true to my existing pact with you and all layers of the great people of Iran, and using all legal avenues will demand your deserved rights that have been violated at the ballot boxes.

Unfortunately, as you witness in the international media, contrary to the letter of the constitution, and the stated freedoms in the Islamic Republic, all my communication with the people and you has been cut off, and people's peaceful objections are being crushed.

The national media which is being financed with public funds, with a revolting misrepresentation is changing the truth, and labels the peaceful march of close to three million people as anarchist, and the media that are being controlled by the government have become the mouthpiece of those who have stolen the people's votes.

I'd like to thank you again for your peaceful objections which have received widespread coverage across the world, and would like to ask you that by using all legal channels, and by remaining faithful to the sacred system of the Islamic Republic, to make sure that your objections are heard by the authorities in the country.'

He also cautions the expatriate dissidents not to get involved in revolutionary groups that want to overthrow the Iranian government.

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Mousavi Agrees to Seek Rally Permits; 9 am Bazaar Gatherings called in Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:01:00 +0000

AP is reporting that opposition leader Mir-Hosein Mousavi has agreed to the Interior Ministry's demand that he apply for a permit one week in advance for any demonstrations, and will cease calling for unlicensed rallies. This is an about-face on Saturday from his stance just 24 hours earlier, when he said that the election theft attempt would be crushed. Mousavi did complain that rallies for his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are allowed without all this rigamarole, implying that the Interior Ministry is treating him and his followers unfairly. D'oh.

The Iranian authorities are now alleging that they have examined a series of ballot boxes and found no evidence of fraud. The problem with this approach, which is being echoed by some Western observers, is that you have to explain the wholly implausible outcome first. Ballots can always be phonied up in various ways. When has there ever been a whistleblower in Egypt who explained how exactly the ruling National Democratic Party always wins parliamentary elections? And yet we know they are fixed. It isn't interesting how-- the *outcomes* tell us that they are.

Meanwhile grassroots protesters are still calling on Iranians to gather in the traditional markets at 9 am in Tehran and other cities, as an attempt to reinvent mass gatherings. This is a way for them to achieve a shop strike indirectly, hurting the economy and putting pressure on the regime.

The announcement says, 'If [the authorities] try to prevent us from doing this, they will inevitably close down the bazaar. If they don't prevent it, we will gather in such numbers that anyway the bazaar will be closed." They say people should just go, initially pretending to be ordinary shoppers, shouting no slogans and wearing no green. But once the pedestrians swell to large numbers in the bazaar, they should simply mill around and decline to buy anything, which will have the effect of making it impossible for real customers to buy anything, either. They portray this method as likely to avoid any bloodshed. (Bazaars are admittedly labyrinthine, and getting a bead on someone inside one may not be easy; and, the bazaaris or shopkeepers and artisans would rather mind gunplay around their merchandise, and they are a backbone for any regime in Iran that wants to survive very long.)

The organizers also say that they hope to see this message spread around the blogosphere, maintaining that the more Iranians who know about it, the better it will work.

This is the announcement in Persian:

Click on the image for larger text.
(Hitting the 'control' button and the plus sign on the keyboard will also size the image up further in most browsers. But go to the larger text first, since it will show more clearly).

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200 Killed in One Week in Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:50:00 +0000

As the dramatic events in Iran have taken the world focus off Iraq, the news that some 200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in bombings and other political violence during the past week has been overlooked by many in the West.

On Friday, a bus station in Baghdad was bombed, killing 7 persons and wounding 31.

Still, Big Oil is nevertheless getting back into Iraq -- my guess is that they are positioning themselves for the filigire even though the terms and the security now are bad. In future they will have built a good working relationship this way.

A lot of Iraqis vaguely wish the reformers well in Iran, but mostly they want the Tehran regime to stay out of their hair.

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Baez: We Shall Overcome/ Ma Piruz mishavim yek Ruz

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Joan Baez adds her support to the Iranians campaigning for more rights, singing "We Shall Overcome" with Persian stanzas toward the end.

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Michael Jackson, Islam and the Middle East

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:27:00 +0000

Michael Jackson's sad death at age 50 has provoked an outpouring of emotion around the whole world. Because of globalization, it is an event that affects fans in Asia and the Middle East, as well. In early 2007, his brother Jermaine, a Muslim, announced that Michael would embrace that religion. In November of 2008, just months before his death press reports said that Michael Jackson had formally converted to Islam.

Jackson was a man of multiple identities, which helped account for his enormous worldwide popularity. It seems clear that he was deeply traumatized by his rough show business childhood, and that things happened to him to arrest his development. Just as a stem cell can grow into any organ, Michael's eternal boyishness made him a chameleon. Increasingly androgynous, he expressed both male and female. A boy and yet a father, he was both child and adult. In part because of his vitiligo, he interrogated his blackness and became, like some other powerful and wealthy African-Americans of his generation, racially ambiguous. Toward the end of his life he bridged his family's Jehovah's Witness brand of Christianity with a profound interest in Islam. He was all things to all people in part precisely because of his Peter Pan syndrome. A child can grow up to become anything, after all.

Jermaine Jackson explained that it was the experience of touring the Gulf that brought family members into contact with Islam. Interestingly, he found that Islam resolved some dilemmas he had about Jehovah's Witness beliefs. Just as Malcolm X had been converted by his pilgrimage to Mecca from a narrow sectarian folk religion in America to Sunni anti-racist universalism, so Jermaine took a similar path.

We can only speculate about the attractions for Michael Jackson of Islam, but likely his 2005 trial in which he was acquitted of all charges was implicated in his desire for a change. The court psychiatrist confirmed his psychological innocence, saying he had been arrested at the stage of a 10 year old. Michael Jackson was deeply hurt and humiliated by the experience, and his withdrawal to Bahrain and search for a different tradition of spirituality may well have come out of that abasement.

Those who lived through the 80s will never forget the Michael of "Thriller" and other breakthrough videos.

But it seems to me that the iconic later Jackson is "Black or White," which powerfully makes the points above about the fluidity of identity in a globalized world, and underlines the common humanity of us all, something that the eternal boy could see through the ravages of hurt that clouded his never-ending childhood. Young children don't know about racial or religious prejudice. The great tragedy of Michael Jackson is that his childlike withdrawal from reality may have left him more vulnerable to himself and others, and never protected him from bigotry or, other human realities. After all, children shouldn't die.

Here are the lyrics of "Black or White":

Jackson is still enormously popular in the Middle East. Here is a Gulf tribute to the King of Pop. Given the stereotyping of Gulf Arabs as medieval and fanatical, and given the hurtful prejudice against their very form of clothing in the West, it is only right that they should have the last word here on Michael Jackson's universal appeal:

(People are saying that the sound track was added over globalized Gulf music here; OK, but it is the height of hybridity either way.)

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Mousavi Vows to Continue Efforts; Ahmad Khatami calls for Death Penalty on Protest Leaders

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:54:00 +0000

At his Friday prayers sermon on Friday, hard line cleric Ahmad Khatami (no relation to former president and liberal Mohammad Khatami) called for capital punishment for leaders of the popular demonstrations against the outcome of the election. This call is a new and dangerous turn, since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had praised the opposition leaders and simply urged them to accept the official results. Ahmad Khatami is close to the hard line faction of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and is surely voicing the sentiments of the worst of the Basij and Revolutionary Guards elements who have attacked the protesters.

Iran's opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi vowed to continue his campaign for a reexamination of the results of the recent presidential election, which he and his followers argued was marred by fraud:

' Mousavi, who last led a massive protest rally a week ago, described his growing difficulties for the first time in a statement on the site. He said authorities were increasingly isolating and vilifying him to try to get him to withdraw his election challenge, but Mousavi added he would not back down. "I am not ready to withdraw from demanding the rights of the Iranian people," he said, adding that he was determined to prove electoral fraud and that those behind it were "the main factor for the recent violence and unrest and have spilled the blood of the people." He also was quoted by his Web site as saying that the Iranian people have the right to express "their opposition to what happened in the election and after that." '

All but 4 of the 70 professors arrested by the regime on Thursday for meeting with Mousavi were released the same day.

On the other hand, various forms of restriction are being imposed on the Mousavi camp. Abolfaz Fateh, a media campaign aide to Mousavi, has been forbidden to leave the coutnry while being investigated for his role in fostering 'illegal gatherings.'

The other reform candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, cancelled planned mourning processions on Thursday, for lack of an official permit. Karroubi had called on his followers to protest and commemorate the killing of protesteAbolrs on Saturday. Mousavi is said to have made his own application for a permit for such a rally.

Although the regime has found means of stopping big street protests for the moment, the Iranian elite is still deeply divided over the legitimacy of the election process, and as long as no consensus or compromise is reached, the crisis will continue on some level.

Robin Mills wonders whether the Mousavi camp can and will deploy the general strike method in the oil sector. This move would be a possibility, assuming the oil workers support reform (not known), but Mousavi appears to be keeping it up his sleeve in case he is arrested. The danger is that if he doesn't use such a weapon when his movement is prominent and popular, it may not work as well once a crackdown has already taken its toll. There is a danger of loss of momentum.

One wonders if sympathy for Mousavi was the reason that deputy oil minister Akbar Torkan was abruptly fired Friday.

Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi weighed in on the crisis on Thursday, urging national conciliation and rejecting any purely cosmetic solutions. This statement is significant because it constitutes a clear rejection of the stance of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has declared the issue settled. You would not need practical reconciliation if the issue was settled.

All sorts of solutions are being floated by various influential figures, including actually holding a run-off between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi; or having Ahmadinejad resign without requiring a confession of fraud; or having the Expediency Council resolve the dispute (it is headed by Mousavi ally Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; or even removing Khamenei and replacing him with a council of high clergymen. Most of these suggestions are highly unlikely to come to pass. The most likely outcome is that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad will crush their critics. Whether this repression can work in the short, medium or long term is not clear. The Shah seemed to successfully put down a rebellion in 1963, but was overthrown after a long interval of outward social peace in 1978-79.

Eurasia.net reminds us that there are more factions in Iran than just reformers and hardliners, to wit, anti-populist conservatives like Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani. Larijani, his highly-placed family and networks, do not like incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and have reportedly been signalling that they think he stole the election. On the other hand, this group dislikes the reformists and is very invested in the survival of the system. Eurasia.net speculates that the outcome of the current crisis might depend on whether the Larijani conservatives ally with the pragmatic conservatives around former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (an ally of Mir Hosain Mousavi).

The news that the regime has appointed Saeed Mortazavi to investigate those arrested in connection with protests against the rigging of the presidential election. Canada had a bad experience with Mortazavi when a Canadian journalist was imprisoned in Tehran and later died in custody under suspicious circumstances, and Canadian officials dealing with prosecutor Mortazavi found him wholly uninterested in human rights issues.

Aljazeera English reports on Thursday's news in Iran:

Video from Youtube of the June 24 demonstration:

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Ahmadinejad Slams Obama; 70 Professors Arrested; Wednesday Protest Violently Attacked

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:30:00 +0000

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands accused of stealing the recent election in Iran, lashed out at Barack Obama on Thursday. He demanded an apology from the White House for what he termed interference in Iranian affairs, and said Obama had started talking like George W. Bush. He said that Obama's current stance was not a promising basis for going forward with direct talks, a clumsy threat to refuse to cooperate with Washington in any way.

Obama, of course, has not in fact interfered in Iranian domestic politics, for which he has been slammed by hawks who apparently want an invasion. All he did was to object to regime violence toward peaceful protesters and regime abrogation of the right to peaceable assembly.

The BBC is reporting that a victory celebration by the Iranian elite to which 290 MPs were invited ended up being poorly attended, with only 105 showing up.

Ahmadinejad's attempt to shift the blame for the crisis to Obama is an appeal to his base, which I would estimate at 20% of the population, who live for conspiracy theories. But if he were really a politician instead of just being a martinet he would be trying to craft a discourse that would attract the center and mollify the reformists. He is incapable, obviously, of achieving such broad appeal, and no doubt deeply envies Obama's widespread popularity, even inside Iran.

The LAT reports that 70 professors have been arrested in Iran for meeting with Mir Hosain Mousavi, the opposition leader who alleges that the vote in the recent presidential election was rigged. The report in Persian is here. They are members of the Islamic Association of University Teachers.

Hundreds of rock-throwing demonstrators tried to gather in downtown Tehran on Wednesday afternoon, but they met a phalanx of determined security forces who dispersed them by main force. Some 1,000 protesters were said to have gathered near the parliament building before allegedly being attacked.

Opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi's web site denied that he was under house arrest, as some observers had alleged, but acknowledged that he was under surveillance. He vowed to continue to attend peaceful rallies. His wife, Zahra Rahnevard, said at the web site that Iran had descended into "martial law."

Patrick Martin at the Globe and Mail wonders if the mass protest movement is petering out in Iran. He raises the question of whether the process of a successful crackdown on the reformists will leave Iran more militarized and more rightwing than ever before. Chilling.

Then there were two. Mohsen Rezaie, one of four candidates for president in the recent elections, has withdrawn his objections to the vote tally, which alleged that Rezaie got less than a million votes and that incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gained almost 63%. Rezaie, a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is, like Ahmadinejad, a hard liner. But he had joined his two reformist rivals in questioning the official vote tallies. He said he was withdrawing his complaint because "political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election . . . I feel it is my duty... taking into account my pledge as a soldier of the revolution, the leader and the people, to inform you that I renounce following up on my complaints."

I stressed last week that the outcome in Iran would depend in some large part on whether the security forces split. Neil MacFarquhar has been doing good analysis at the NYT on the new leader of the Revolutionary Guards, Muhammad Ali Jafari, a counterinsurgency specialist; and the way in which Ahmadinejad packed these security forces' leadership with his men.

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70 Dead in Bombing of Shiite Area, Baghdad

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:01:00 +0000

A massive bomb shook Shiite east Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 70 persons and wounding 135. It was unclear, Ned Parker of the LAT reports, who was behind the strike, whether Sunni radicals or Shiites involved in a faction fight. Me, I'd put my money on Sunni radicals. There has at no point been any proof of any Shiite Iraqi engaging in a huge suicide bombing. The militiamen have set roadside bombs against the Multi-National Forces, but they haven't been proved to hit Iraqis this way. If it was a struggle for power in Sadr City, there would be better ways to win than random violence. Whoever did this is still trying to destabilize the new government.

It should be noted that this bombing occurred despite the US patrols, which will cease next week (or be far less frequent or conventional). So logically I cannot understand the proposition that the bombing tells us something about what it will be like when the patrols cease.

The violence is likely to go on either way.

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Washington and the Iran Protests: Would they be Allowed in the US?

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:15:00 +0000

President Barack Obama had this to say about the Iran crisis on Tuesday:

' First, I'd like to say a few words about the situation in Iran. The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days.

I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.

I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran's affairs.

But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.

The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future. Some in Iran -- some in the Iranian government, in particular, are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others in the West of instigating protests over the elections.

These accusations are patently false. They're an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran's borders.

This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won't work anymore in Iran. This is not about the United States or the West; this is about the people of Iran and the future that they -- and only they -- will choose.

The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That's precisely what's happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice. Despite the Iranian government's efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cell phones and computers. And so we've watched what the Iranian people are doing.

This is what we've witnessed. We've seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We've seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard.

Above all, we've seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we've experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets.

While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech.

If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion.

That's what Iran's own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. "

The thrust of these comments is to deplore the Iranian state's interference in the people's right of peaceable assembly and nonviolent protest, a right guaranteed in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is a good statement, insofar as it is phrased in terms that recognize an ongoing debate inside Iran and rejects US interference in Iranian domestic affairs.

But there are dangers here. Obama will likely be as helpless before a crackdown by the Iranian regime as Eisenhower was re: Hungary in 1956, Johnson was re: Prague in 1968, and Bush senior was re: Tiananmen Square in 1989. George W. Bush, it should be remembered, did nothing about Tehran's crackdown on student protesters in 2003 or about the crackdown on reformist candidates, which excluded them from running in the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections, or about the probably fraudulent election of Ahmadinejad in 2005. It is hard to see what he could have done, contrary to what his erstwhile supporters in Congress now seem to imply. As an oil state, the Iranian regime does not need the rest of the world and is not easy to pressure. So Obama needs to be careful about raising expectations of any sort of practical intervention by the US, which could not possibly succeed. (Despite the US media's determined ignoring the the Afghanistan War, it is rather a limiting factor on US options with regard to Iran.) Moreover, if the regime succeeds in quelling the protests, however odious it is, it will still be a chess piece on the board of international diplomacy and the US will have to deal with it just as it deals with post-Tiananmen China.

And, the more Obama speaks on the subject, even in these terms, the more he risks associating the Mousavi supporters with a CIA plot. Iranian media are already parading arrested protesters who are 'confessing' that 'Western media' led them astray. In nationalist and wounded Iran, if someone is successfully tagged as an agent of foreign interests, it is the political kiss of death.

The fact is that despite the bluster of the American Right that Something Must be Done, the United States is not a neutral or benevolent player in Iran. Washington overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953 over oil nationalization, and installed the megalomaniac and oppressive Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, who gradually so alienated all social classes in Iran that he was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1978-1979. The shah had a national system of domestic surveillance and tossed people in jail for the slightest dissidence, and was supported to the hilt by the United States government. So past American intervention has not been on the side of let us say human rights.

More recently, the US backed the creepy and cult-like Mojahedin-e Khalq (People's Holy Warriors or MEK), which originated in a mixture of communist Stalinism and fundamentalist Islam. The MEK is a terrorist organization and has blown things up inside Iran, so the Pentagon's ties with them are wrong in so many ways. The MEK, by the way, has a very substantial lobby in Washington DC and has some congressmen in its back pocket, and is supported by the less savory elements of the Israel lobbies such as Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson. I am not saying they should be investigated for material support of terrorism, since I am appalled by the unconstitutional breadth of that current DOJ tactic, but I am signalling that the US imperialist Right has been up to very sinister things in Iran for decades. A person who worked in the Pentagon once alleged to me that then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was privately pushing for using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. And Dick Cheney is so attached to launching war on Iran that he characterized attempts to deflect such plans as a "conspiracy." Given what the US did to Fallujah, it strikes me as unlikely that a military invasion of Iran would be good for that country's civic life. And there are rather disadvantages to being nuked, even by the kindliest of WASP gentlemen of Mr. Rumsfeld's ilk.

Moreover, very unfortunately, US politicians are no longer in a position to lecture other countries about their human rights. The kind of unlicensed, city-wide demonstrations being held in Tehran last week would not be allowed to be held in the United States. Senator John McCain led the charge against Obama for not having sufficiently intervened in Iran. At the Republican National Committee convention in St. Paul, 250 protesters were arrested shortly before John McCain took the podium. Most were innocent activists and even journalists. Amy Goodman and her staff were assaulted. In New York in 2004, 'protest zones' were assigned, and 1800 protesters were arrested, who have now been awarded civil damages by the courts. Spontaneous, city-wide demonstrations outside designated 'protest zones' would be illegal in New York City, apparently. In fact, the Republican National Committee has undertaken to pay for the cost of any lawsuits by wronged protesters, which many observers fear will make the police more aggressive, since they will know that their municipal authorities will not have to pay for civil damages.

The number of demonstrators arrested in Tehran on Saturday is estimated at 550 or so, which is less than those arrested by the NYPD for protesting Bush policies in 2004.

I applaud the Iranian public's protests against a clearly fraudulent election, and deplore the jackboot tactics that the regime is using to quell them. But it is important to remember that the US itself was moved by Bush and McCain toward a 'Homeland Security' national security state that is intolerant of public protest and throws the word 'terrorist' around about dissidents. Obama and the Democrats have not addressed this creeping desecration of the Bill of Rights, and until they do, the pronouncements of self-righteous US senators and congressmen on the travesty in Tehran will be nothing more that imperialist hypocrisy of the most abject sort.

American politicians should keep their hands off Iran and let the Iranians work this out. If the reformers have enough widespread public support, they will develop tactics that will change the situation. If they do not, then they will have to regroup and work toward future change. US covert operations and military interventions have caused enough bloodshed and chaos. If the US had left Mosaddegh alone in 1953, Iran might now be a flourishing democracy and no Green Movement would have been necessary.

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30 Killed in Iraq Violence; Kurds: Oil Contracts 'Unconstitutional'

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:10:00 +0000

Bombings and other violence left 30 dead in Iraq on Monday, and the three-day death toll is 100. Monday's strikes included a bombing of a mini-bus with students aboard in Shiite Sadr City.

In my own view,the Shiites won the battle for Baghdad and largely ethnically cleansed the city of Sunni Arabs, who I suspect are now only 10-15% of the capital's population. So this sort of terrorism is now more revenge than anything else, and it is hard to see what political change it could effect. It is just a way of keeping the pot boiling and challenging the ensconcing of the Shiite-dominated al-Maliki government.

The real danger ahead is Arab-Kurdish conflict in the north. In that regard, the building constitutional crisis between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the al-Maliki government in Baghdad over oil contracts is very bad news.

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Guardianship Council Rules out Annulment of Election Results; Reformists Planning Strikes, Mourning

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:03:00 +0000

Iran's Guardianship Council, a sort of clerical senate on Tuesday ruled out any cancellation of the results of the recent presidential election, as called for by the opposition. The official outcome gave incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term. The vote tallies for Ahmadinejad have struck large numbers of Iranians as wholly unbelievable. So the Supreme Leader has spoken and the Guardianship Council has spoken.

It should be underlined that as it developed in 1979-1980, the revolutionary Iranian regime has two wings. There is a sphere of clerical authority, represented by Khamenei, and a sphere of popular sovereignty, represented by the parliament and, later, the president. The clerical sphere includes not only Khamenei but also two collective bodies, the Guardianship Council and the Expediency Council (which has among other duties the charge of reconciling conflicts between the civil parliament and the Guardianship Council). The clerical sphere also includes the judiciary.

The sphere of popular sovereignty is subordinate to the clerical sphere, but not a puppet of it. The parliament has passed laws that were known to be disliked by Khamenei. The popular sphere was a place that ordinary laymen could blow off steam. Reformists such as former president Mohammad Khatami used the presidency as a bully pulpit to press for more freedom of expression and more rights for women. He was largely blocked by the clerical sphere, but while he was president he did effect changes.

The election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 changed these dynamics, since his views overlapped in some areas with those of the clerical sphere. In essence, Iran moved closer to being a one-party state. By stealing the election for Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has effectively made a coup on behalf of the clerical sphere in alliance with lay hard liners, which threatens to virtually abolish the sphere of popular sovereignty. That is what Mousavi and Karroubi and their followers are objecting to so vehemently. From the outside, Iran was often depicted as a totalitarian state. But from the inside it seemed to have wriggle room. The reformers are saying that the regime has just moved toward really being a totalitarian state and is now removing any space for dissent.

In response, a leader of one of Iran's genuine political parties, Hosain Marashi of the Kargozaran, which supports former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a pragmatic conservative line, has called for the formation of a broad political bloc to work over time to challenge the "illegitimate" (na-mashru`) government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mir Hosain Mousavi, the chief rival of Ahmadinejad, met Monday with senior Iranian clergy to complain about the regime security forces attacking peaceful protesters and killing some of them. He maintains that such repression will only worsen the current crisis. That Mousavi, a former prime minister, is still getting access to senior ayatollahs and has not been arrested shows that the regime is proceeding cautiously in its crackdown. Mousavi has openly challenged the Supreme Leader, who so far has been helpless to silence him because of mass public support for him.

Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist presidential candidate, has called for nationwide mourning of the demonstrators killed last Saturday, to be held on Thursday. Among the victims on Saturday was Neda Agha Sultan, who has become an iconic martyr for the reform movement.

Aljazeera English carries Neda's fiance's account of her death:

Mourning martyrs is central to Shiite Iran's religious sensibilities, and Karroubi's appeal plays on powerful cultural themes.

About 1000 protesters gathered in downtown Tehran late afternoon Monday, but the security forces dispersed them with main force. Attempts were made by protesters to block traffic in parts of Tehran on Monday afternoon, but they appear to have been effectively broken up. Western reporters in Iran have had severe restrictions placed on them.

An eyewitness report from a list I am on, about Monday's broken-up scattered demonstrations in Tehran:

' I cannot sleep and not write this.

Today in Haft-e Tir, there were so many members of basij that they outnumbered the demonstrators 3 or 4 to 1. They were less focused on women. This must be related to the murder of poor Neda. And this was also why whenever they got hold of a man, women would surround them and shout don't beat him, don't beat and they would turn and anxiously say we didn't beat him. It was astonishing. They explained; they talked.

But they didn't allow us to congregate; they kept telling us to walk and the crowd walked quietly for 2 hours in the circle (meydaan) and spontaneously gathered in whichever area they were not present. About 2000 of us were walking around the circle and only shouting Allah-o Akbar until they were forced to disperse us with tear and pepper gases. I thought people's patience and persistence was great, although there were also many bad scenes and I cried.

They arrested a whole bus load of people. There were many intelligence folks in the crowd too. They would point to a person and the basijis would arrest that person. There was no one from Sepah and the police was obviously sympathetic to the crowd. I swear some of the Basijis were only 14 or 15, or at least what they looked like to me. On the other hand, women are playing an amazing role in the streets; both in terms of numbers and effectiveness.. '

Since demonstrations are becoming so hard to stage, what with motocycle Basij forces constantly patrolling and the regime's willingness to break heads even just for having a peaceful demonstration, the opposition is rumored to be shifting tactics.

Mir Hosain Mousavi is said to be planning to call for a national strike. It is hard to keep people from closing their shops and declining to go to work, and if the transportation workers join in, it can close down the city. (The Pakistani public used this tactic in its successful quest to reinstate the supreme court chief justice dismissed by a military dictator). In fact, if the transportation workers strike, they can force most people to miss work . . .

So this item, which appeared on an email list, is potentially very important:

' Excerpts from Statement by Tehran and Suburbs Bus Workers Syndicate Published at this site

Translator�s note: The Tehran Bus Workers� Syndicate has been in the forefront of Iranian labor struggles since 2005. Their leader Mansour Osanloo has has been languishing in prison since the Summer of 2007. Other members of the organization have been under attack and in and out of prison.

�We Condemn the Suppression and Intimidation of Civil Institutions�

During the past few days we have witnessed the passionate struggle and presence of millions of women, men, old and young, ethnic and religious minorities in Iran . They demand that the government recognize their most basic rights, that is, their right to choose freely, independently and without fraud. This right has been recognized in most parts of the world where every effort is made to protect it. In the midst of this situation, we have witnessed intimidation, arrests, murders and an egregious crackdown which is about to expand and lead to the deaths of many innocent human beings. This crackdown will only lead to more protests among the people, and not their retreat.

The Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate had said the following in a statement that it had issued prior to the June 12 presidential election. �In the absence of freedom of organization, our organization is naturally deprived of a social institution that would protect it. The Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate considers political activity to be the definite right of each member of society. If the presidential candidates present their labor charter and give us practical guarantees on their election promises in relation to labor, workers have the choice to participate or not participate in this election.�

It is clear to all that the demands of the majority of Iranian society goes far beyond economic demands. During the past few years, we have emphasized that so long as the principle of freedom of organization and choice is not realized, any talk of social freedom and economic rights is more of a joke as opposed to reality.

On the basis of this reality, the Vahed Bus Workers Syndicate supports those who are giving their all to build a free and independent civil institution. We condemn any kind of suppression and intimidation.

In order to recognize economic and social rights in Iran, Friday June 25 has been declared an international day of support for imprisoned workers and trade unions in Iran. We are calling on everyone to consider this day to be more than a defense of economic rights. Let�s transform this day into a commemoration of human rights in Iran and ask our fellow workers around the world to take actions in defense of the pummeled rights of the majority of Iranians.

For the Expansion of Justice and Freedom Vahed Workers Syndicate June 2009'

Likewise suggestive is this piece, appearing in the student newspaper Amir Kabir News and translated by a group of UCLA students, which was posted to an email list:

' Amir Kabir News: A group of faculty and professors at Sanati Sharif University's Chemistry College resigned yesterday. These scholars in protest to the recent committed crimes resigned as a group. Prior to this, several faculty members at Tehran University had also resigned in protest to the crimes committed on the University campus. A group of scholars from AmirKabir University also resigned last saturday after gathering at the university mosque in protest to the recent events against the people, the students, and the election frauds.'

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IRGC Breaks up Demonstration in Downtown Tehran

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:46:00 +0000

AKI is reporting that Iran's national guard, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, with help from the popular militia, Basij, just broke up a demonstration by hundreds of Mousavi supporters in downtown Tehran. They used tear gas and beatings, characterizing the peaceful assembly as "sabotage." The small crowd was successfully dispersed.

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Mousavi, Defiant, Calls for More Rallies

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Reformist presidential aspirant Mir Hosain Mousavi called Monday morning for another round of big street protests by his supporters against the attempt of the regime to steal the election for hard liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has replied by warning it will crush any further street protests with a "revolutionary confrontation."

FT points out that given Mousavi's continued challenge to Khamenei's decisions, the regime may well arrest him, feeling the step is necessary to remove his freedom of action. Of course, Iranian Shiites all know the pitfalls of creating martyrs, since the religion is all about resisting the tyrants in history who made the martyrs. An arrest of Mousavi would either push Iran over the brink or would indeed consolidate power for the time being in the hands of the hard liners.

There were no large rallies on Sunday, which the BBC attributes to the security forces fanning through the streets. But the security forces had fanned through the streets on Saturday, too. More likely, the reformists were regrouping after the violence and clamp down on Saturday, which left up to 13 dead. Those 13, including the unarmed young woman known as Neda Agha Sultan (1983-2009)--whose murder by a Basiji was caught on camer-- need to be mourned. The authorities cancelled memorial service for her at Nilufar Mosque. Likely it will now be held in the streets.

The Guardianship Council has admitted that more votes were counted in 50 cities across Iran than there were voters-- the difference could be as much as 3 million questionable ballots. (See below for why the over all vote tallies are anyway implausible.)

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Chatham House Study Definitively Shows Massive Ballot Fraud in Iran's Reported Results

noreply@blogger.com (Juan Cole) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:30:00 +0000

An authoritative study from Chatham House (pdf) , the renowned UK think tank, finds that with regard to the official statistics on the recent presidential election in Iran released by the Interior Ministry, something is rotten in Tehran. The authors compared the provincial returns in the 2005 and 2009 elections against the 2006 census and found:

' � In two Conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of
more than 100% 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 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 took not only all former conservative voters, and all
former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former
Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two
groups.

� In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and
Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas.
That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim
that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces
flies in the face of these trends.'

Note that many reformists did not vote in 2005, because they had become discouraged by the way the hard liners had blocked all their programs. Some 10.5 million persons who did not vote in 2005 did vote in 2009. It is highly unlikely that most of these non-voters in 2005 were conservatives who now came out for Ahmadinejad in 2009. But to do as well as the regime claimed, Ahmadinejad would have needed to attract substantial numbers of these voters to himself.

Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani got 6.2 million votes in 2005. He is a centrist, pragmatic conservative. How likely is it that his constituency abandoned pragmatic conservatism for Ahmadinejad's quirky hard line? Over 10 million voted in 2005 for reformist candidates.

Ahmadinejad got 13 million more votes this time than the combined total for all conservatives in 2005. The authors of this study concede that Ahmadinejad could have held on to all the 11.5 million hard line voters from 2005. But how likely is that, really? Some of those who voted hard line surely found Ahmadinejad's style abrasive and his policies, such as provoking high inflation through pumping too much oil money into the economy as a reward to his constituents, annoying.

So over all, let's say he captured Rafsanjani's entire faction in the face of Rafsanjani's own dislike of him. That would have give him less than half of his new votes. So he would have had to convinced over half of the voters who sat 2005 out to vote for him; but those were the ones most disgusted with the hardliners. Or he would have needed to win over substantial amounts of the old Khatami reformist vote. Not likely.

And in 10 of 30 provinces, the hard liners did poorly enough in 2005 that Ahmadinejad would have had to gain the votes of all those who did not vote that year but did vote in 2009, of all the Rafsanjani pragmatic conservatives, and of nearly half the reformist vote.

Even in East Azerbaijan, here were the numbers in 2005

Ahmadinejad: 198,417
Hard Liners 232,043
Non-voters: 684,745
Rafsanjani (pragmatic conservatives): 268,954
Reformists: 690,784

and the result in 2009:

Ahmadinejad: 1,131,111

We could say that a little over 400,000 of these votes are not surprising, since that is the number that was hard line in 2005. But Ahmadinejad picked up over 700,000 votes after 4 years. The non-voters may probably mostly be counted as reformists. So again, Ahmadinejad needed all the non-voters in 2005 to switch to him in 2009 plus a large proportion of the Rafsanjani voters. It makes not sense. And this outcome requires us to believe he picked up all those votes among people who deeply disliked him 4 years ago despite running against a favorite son from Azerbaijan! (And no, that Ahmadinejad speaks broken Azeri would not make Azeris vote for him any more than Latinos voted in 2008 for all those Republicans who speak good Spanish.)

As I had noted earlier, the official results ask us to believe that rural ethnic minorities (some of them Sunni!) who had long voted reformist or for candidates of their ethnicity or region, had switched over to Ahmadinejad. We have to believe that Mehdi Karroubi's support fell from over 6 million to 330,000 over all, and that he, an ethnic Lur, was defeated in Luristan by a hard line Persian Shiite. Or that Ahmadinejad went from having 22,000 votes in largely Sunni Kurdistan to about half a million! What, is there a new organization, "Naqshbandi Sunni Sufis for Hard Line Shiism?" It never made any sense. People who said it did make sense did not know what a Naqshbandi is. (Quick, ask them before they can look it up at wikipedia).

I was careful in my initial discussion of why I thought the numbers looked phony to say that catching history on the run is tough; and I later characterized myself as a mere social historian (i.e. not a pollster or statistician). But this study bears out most of my analysis with the exception that the authors dispute any rural bias toward Ahmadinejad. I think they are too categorical in this regard, however. When people, including myself, said that rural people liked Ahmadinejad, we meant Shiites living in Persian-speaking villages on the Iranian plateau, in fair proximity to cities such as Isfahan, Tehran and Shiraz. We weren't talking about Turkmen or Kurds (both Sunnis), or about Lurs (everyone suspected Karroubi would get that vote). I suspect that some of those to whom we referred as rural are being categorized as living in 'small towns' by the Chatham House authors. But field workers even in the Shiite, Persian-speaking villages point out that they often encounter anti-Ahmadinejad sentiments there, as well.

But that is neither here nor there. The numbers do not add up. You can't have more voters than there are people. You can't have a complete liberal and pragmatic-conservative swing behind hard liners who make their lives miserable.

The election was stolen. It is there in black and white. Those of us who know Iran, could see it plain as the nose on our faces, even if we could not quantify our reasons as elegantly as Chatham House.

The Nation will soon have a fine piece by Robert Dreyfuss on this study.

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