Iran Affairs

Iran's allegedly secret new enrichment plants

Let me get this staright. Iran has repeatedly announced that it would build more facilities to house enrichment capabilities (the facility at Qom is not an "enrichment plant" so much as a bomb shelter meant to protect enrichment capabilities in case of attack) and yet when Iran does start to planthese sites, the papers ate screaming "secret! Clandestine! Discovered"!" lol

Miliband is lying about Iran's nuclear program

David Milliband, the UK Foreign Secretary, has an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune calling for sanctions on Iran that hits all the usual talking points: that Iran is going nuclear, that a nuclear-armed Iran would cause proliferation in the region, that Israel sees Iran as an existential threat would "act in self-defense" against Iran, and that Iran has failed to "come clean" on its nuclear progam.

All of these points are of course entirely false. Miliband conveniently forgets that Iran's nuclear program was set up by the West, with the full assistance and encouragement of the same countries that are now demanded that Iran give up the program. There is zero evidence that Iran is making nuclear bombs, and the fact that Iran's many and repeated compromise offers that would have resolved any real fear on that point - including Iran's offer to operate its nuclear progra as a joint venture -- have been totally ignored (and now, including Iran's offer for a swap of uranium on its soil) only proves that the entire nuclear issue is pretextual, just as "WMDS in Iraq" was pretextual.

In fact, Miliband outright lies when he says "the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that it is unable to verify that Iran’s nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes." In fact the same IAEA has clearly stated -- repeatedly -- that it has no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and no nuclear material in Iran has been diverted for non-peaceful uses. As I have explained before, ad nauseum, the IAEA does not very that ANY country's nuclear program is "excusively peaceful" unless that country has signed and ratified the Additional Protocol -- which places Iran in the same category as most other countries in the world, though Iran (unlike US allies such as Egypt which was caught violating its own nuclear safeguards agreement and found with unexplained traces of highly-enriched uranium) had implemented the Additional Protocol for 2.5 years with no evidence of a weapons program found, and has offered to permanently implement it once its nuclear rights are recognized.

Miliband also outright lies  when he says that "Iran offers no credible explanation for producing fissile material with a clear military application"  since Iran has not produced such material if by that Miliband means weapons-grade uranium. Thus far Iran has only produced low-enriched uranium, which cannot be used to make bombs. Even the 19% enriched uranium Iran has produced for the medical research reactor at Tehran is still low-enriched uranium that cannot be used to make bombs. And, Iran would not have had to make that stuff either had the US not prevented Iran from acquiring the fuel for the medical research reactor, thus effectively holding hostage the 800,000 Iranian cancer patients who rely on medical isotopes that Iran was hoping to produce using that IAEA-monitored reactor that the US provided to Iran in the first place.

As for Iran's supposed failure to "come clean" on its nuclear program, here are the facts: as I have explained before, in August 2007 the IAEA and Iran came up with a list of outstanding issues that had to be resolved, and by Feb 2008 the IAEA reported that all of the matters on that list had been resolved, with no evidence of a nuclear weapons program found, and that there were no longer any outstanding issues. Regarding the Feb 2008 report, IAEA director ElBaradei specifically said:

[W]e have made quite good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, with the exception of one issue, and that is the alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the past. We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran´s enrichment programme. 

At this time, the US, just to ensure that Iran can't get a total clean bill of health, finally formally provided the IAEA with some of the "alleged studies" evidence from the "Laptop of death" that it had been shopping around for year -- which no one seriously believes to be anything other than forgeries. Iran has offered to address those "alleged studies" too, upon receiving the documentation it is supposed to refute, but the US refuses to provide it to Iran, again as I have explained before.

As for Israel seeing Iran as an "existential threat" -- two points: first of all, Israeli authorities dispute that point, and many quitely conceed that Iran is not an existential threat that it is made out to be by Israeli officials for their own domestic political purposes. Second, WHO CARES?? Since when has the world had to tippy-toe around and since when have countries had to give up their sovereign rights lest Israel feel "threatened"??? Incidentally, Israel's threats to attack Iran do not constitute "self-defense" by any stretch of the imagination. Lets not forget who has actually threatened whom with nuclear destruction.

As for Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons being a cause for regional proliferation, I have dismissed this fallacious scaremongering before:

There are some very basic problems with this theory. For one thing, it is highly ironic that Iran's mere capability to build nuclear weapons can supposedly spark this uncontrollable cascade of nuclear proliferation, and yet Israel's existing nuclear weapons are not believed to have this effect. Indeed, if we are to accept, as the fallacious argument assumes, that one country's nuclear capability will force other countries to acquire their own nuclear deterrent, then the real regional culprit for proliferation must be the original nuclear power in the region: Israel. Note also that similar predictions of regional arms races have not been made when, for example, Brazil recently acquired the same nuclear technology that Iran is seeking to develop.

Finally, the argument assumes that the other countries in the region aren't already working to develop their own nuclear programmes. There has been speculation about a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear link for many years. Several other nations, including Egypt and South Korea, have been caught conducting secret and potentially weapons-related experiments. In the cases of those two US allies, however, the IAEA settled for delivering a light slap on the wrist, there was no continued speculation about the existence of "secret" nuclear intentions, and there were no demands that they abandon nuclear technology permanently, as is demanded of Iran.

Today's Iran BS: "Hojjatieh Society" coming to getcha!

LOL! As if the similarities to the build-up to the Iraq war were not obvious enough.

So there's a alleged "former CIA spy who infiltrated the Pasdaran" that has published an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor promoting his book in which he claims that Iran is "almost certainly" making nukes (he must have read my previous post about "almost certain" claims about Iran) as part of a secret radical society's plan to bring about the end of the world by sparking a confrontation with the US (the old "Hojjatiyeh" myth) and so: 

Instead of counting on watered-down United Nations sanctions, the West should cut off all diplomatic ties with Iran, close down all airspace and seaports going to or from Iran, sanction all companies doing business with Iran, and cut off its gasoline supply. We should then demand an immediate halt to all Iranian nuclear and missile delivery activities and the right to peaceful demonstration and freedom of speech for all Iranians. And if that fails, a military action should be in the cards.

Gee, got an ax to grind? Anyway, the idea of a "secret society" out to dominate the world is naturally good for a book of fiction -- it is the basis of every superhero movie plotline, isn't it? But the fact is that while an organization called the Hojjatieh Society once existed -- a non-violent, pacifist anti-Bahai organization -- it was not what is portrayed by these sorts of "secret agents", it was ordered closed by Khomeini because they opposed the concept of the "Rulership of the Supreme Jurisprudent" which is the basis of the Iranian constitution, and its membership included reformists and not just "radicals" (Kamal Kharrazi and Abdol-Karim Soroush were active in the Hojjatieh in their youth.) Former Hojjatieh members can be found among reformers and hardliners, technocrats and clerics. And furthermore the prime difference between millenialism in Shia eschatology and Christianity is that the Shia do not believe that Man can "speed up" the End Times by encouraging an Armageddon. As a commentator on Gulf2000 (whom I cannot identify due to membership restrictions of that organization) has written:

Ahmadinejad has never been a member of Hojjatieh. The rumor has no foundation.

Members of Hojjatieh did not have an esoteric or heterodox interpretation of the Coming of the Mahdi. They held the common belief of the Shiites that the coming of the Mahdi can’t be dated or correlated with historical events (based on the hadith: Kazaba al-waghghatoon) and that Jesus will accompany the Mahdi in his final mission.

In this regard the Israeli alarmism fails as much as the American Fundamentalist projections. Iranian millenarian expectations are not connected to epic historical confrontations between East and West, or an Armageddon augmented by the use of nuclear weapons.

Read more about the Hojjatieh in the Encyclopedia Iranica. (and PS: if you really want to see crazy fundamentalist who want to bring about the end of the world, I suggest you check out the "Christian Zionist" Reverend Hagee and Christians United for Israel, who are themselves pushing for a war on Iran -- just as the "secret CIA agent" wants.)

And then there's Roger Cohen who claims that a former Iranian diplomat who now has sought asylum in Norway says that he was instructed to change the ballot count at his embassy to favor Ahmadinejad -- promoting the BS claim that the elections in Iran were fixed by changing ballot counts, which is actually impossible since the vast majority of ballot counting stations in Iran were monitored by Mousavi's own representatives who have thus far not claimed any such thing themselves.

Save the Luristan Newt!

The Luristan Newt (aka Kaiser's Spotted Newt, or ) is a critically-endangered species that exists in the southern Zagros. There were about 1,000 of them left, but that population has been reduced by 80% due to internet trading of rare pets.

Amanpour, not Jewish so not objective?

Glenn Grenwald takes apart accusations of bias against Christian Amanpour, who will be hosting some idiotic "news show" (lol!):  That phrase -- "pro-Israel bias" -- is a virtual oxymoron in such circles, because the "pro-Israel" position is the default position that is deemed "objective."  By contrast, the mere accusation against Amanpour of "anti-Israel bias" from some obscure right-wing venues -- flavored with the apparently incriminating fact that she has an Iranian father and grew up in Iran -- leads Shales to condemn ABC for making "a bad choice" in hiring her

Juan Cole on Jerusalem, healthcare in Iran

I recommend Juan Cole's blog today for its entry on the so-called "everlasting" Israeli domination of Jerusalem, in which he shows that at best, Jews were dominant over Jerusalem for 170 or so years compared to the 200 or so years that the Persians ruled it, and the hundreds of years that the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans dominated it.

I would only add that according to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents the 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the United States:

Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

I applaud any religious organization that can engage in this sort of critical self-evaluation and reconsideration of basic myths. Now, if they would only inform the Israeli hasbarists of these facts!

Cole also has a good entry on the state of US healthcare for the poor, now that a law seems ready to pass in the US which actually makes health insurance companies richer:

Can US catch up to Iran in Providing Health Care to Least Privileged?

Proponents of unregulated capitalism, or if you will, the 'free market,' maintain that it provides a better life for all than do other systems. This allegation is demonstrably untrue if the question is public health across the board. In Iran, under the hyper-capitalist Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, infant mortality was 122 per 1,000 in 1970. Today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is 28.6 per 1,000, an incredible decrease. Some 94% of the population has access to health services, and around the same percentage have access to affordable medicine. The state is authoritarian and controlling, but it cares about the welfare of even the poor among its citizens in a way that the US-backed, capitalist Pahlevis clearly did not. In the last year of George W. Bush's presidency, at a time when he had drastically limited Federal support for stem cell research, Iran committed $2.8 billion to such high-powered medical research.

It is to the point where Mississippi, which has among the worst health statistics in the US, and where 20% of the population lacks health insurance, is looking to Iran for a model of how techniques pioneered in a third-world society could improve health care for Americans living in third-world conditions.

Fiancé of slain Iranian protester Neda Soltan meets Peres

Boy, it didn't take too long for his handlers to make this to happen.

Peres apparently told this guy:

“You can kill a person, but you can’t kill his or her spirit. A single candle can cast a bright light in the darkness. This is a candle that can never be extinguished."

Then, he proceeded to kill more Palestinians.

MEK paid US congressmen to work for them

THis should come as no surprise:

In his previous position with the lobbying firm DLA Piper, Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey promoted the interests of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, otherwise known as Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an organization that the State Department brands a terrorist group. ... Armey also represented the Iranian-American businessman Saied Ghaemi, who from 2005-2008, paid DLA Piper $910,000 specifically for Armey's services bringing issues relating to Iran to the attention of Congress, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the White House, the National Security Council and the Department of Treasury.

Labeling Ahmadinejad

Today's news is about how the Iranian parliament may give in to the subsidy-reduction plans of the Ahmadinejad administration in Iran. This is pretty big news, though you wouldn't know it based on the dearth of coverage. It marks a pretty radical revision of the basis of the 1979 Islamic Revolution which promised -- and to a large part, delivered -- a redistribution of wealth through increased subsidization and nationalization (which is also being reduced.)

The subsidies were ridiculous though. In no country -- not even an oil producing one -- should gas be cheaper than water as it was in Iran. The prime beneficiary of these sorts of subsidies were not average people but the smugglers who made a nice living selling the cheap gas to neighboring countries. That's my impression at least, but I'm not an economist so I'll leave the details to be argued (as economic issues always are) by others.

However what's interesting to me is how this is yet another instance in which Ahmadinejad doesn't "fit" into the boxes he's usually catorgized into as a "hardliner, ultraconservative, radical" etc. He was supposed to be a populist who gave away the country's resources cheaply to the people in order to buy their support (note that this sort of thing is only "bad" when developing countries do it) but here he is proposing to cut subsidies.

And, he was supposed to be a religious zealot who was expected to crack down on social freedoms etc. but he was also the one who for example proposed that men and women should be able to attend soccer games together (though he was struck down by the ayatullahs on this point.)

The irony is that everyone in the West complains so loudly about a "clerical regime" in Iran, and yet Ahmadinejad is not a cleric, but is a technocrat with a PhD in engineering. His opponents are the likes of Rafsanjani -- one of the founders of the Islamic Republic and a representative of the class that got rich after the revolution, along with all the alleged attendant corruption etc.

I'm not suggesting of course that he's Mr. Perfect. No politician is. But he's hardly the crazed lunatic zealot he was made out to be either. So why did Ahmadinejad get such a bad rap? Here's what I think happened:

Remember, the prior president --Mr. Khatami proposed a dialogue with the US and established a center for "dialogue of civilizations" and went on TV to offer negotiations with the US. THere were those in the US -- pro-Israeli lobbyists -- who were surpised by this move, and were caught flat-footed, trying to prevent a US-Iran rapprochement. Khatami -- which his smiling image and experience living in Germany and decidely non-zealous attributes, posed a danger as far as they were concerned, and so they started promoting the talking-point that Iranian presidents and their peace offers should be ignored since Iranian presidents are nobodies who don't hold much actual power.

And when Ahmadinejad was elected, they weren't about to get caught unaware again, so they started a pre-emptive campaign of demonization against him in order to prevent any liklihood of improved US-Iran ties -- for example, by falsely claiming that he was an embassy hostage-taker -- and also claimed that he was dangerous and a messianic zealot who should be feared because he wants to create an  Armageddon (contrary to their prior talking-point that Iranian presidents are not to be taken seriously.) This was all BEFORE Ahmadinejad had said anything controversial about the holocaust etc.

THis external effort at demonizing Ahmadinejad was also assisted -- perhaps no deliberately, but definitely knowingly - but his own internal opponents inside Iran who were similarly vehement in opposing him.

But anyway, we live in a world where people are labelled all the time. Labels are "thinking shortcuts" that we all use -- it is inherent in human nature and pscyhology unfortunately. So, what label WOULD be appropriate for Ahmadinejad?

The myth of Obama engaging Iran

So on occasion of Obama's Persian New Year (NoRuz) message to Iran, it is claimed that Obama ofered an "open hand" to Iran only to be met by a "clenched fist". Rubbish. In fact, Khamenei responded to his letter by stating plainly that Iran would judge Obama's offer of engagement on the basis of actions not talk. And, the action has plainly been a continuation of the same old Bush policies.

The indisputable fact is the US approach to Iran thus far has been nothing more than threats, ultimatums, and offers (such as the uranium swap deal) which were meant to be rejected, so that Obama could paint Iran as the intransigent party and justify sanctions and a further escalation of affairs with Iran -- in other words, precisely what we're seeing happen right now.

Obama, if you really wanted to show how much you "support the people" of Iran, why not do something practical which shows some genuine concern for them -- such as removing the ban on the sale of civilian aircraft parts to Iran's aging Boeing fleet. This ban is not only illegal and contrary to the Chicago Convention, it needlessly threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iran.

Then, how about accepting Iran's perfectly reasonable counter-offer on the uranium swap deal, instead of insisting on "my way or the highway" -- that is, if you really wanted the deal to go through at all.  Go on, I dare you. Truth is, you can't. You're Israel's little lapdog, and can't deliver anything you say because you've handed off the Iran portfolio to Dennis Ross, who has openly espoused a policy of making a war with Iran "sellable". AIPAC is coming into town, after all.

Israel using Iran to cover up ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

Pro-Israeli congression wrote a letter (no doubt dictated by AIPAC) to Obama telling him "nevermind the ethnic cleasing ... Iran! Booga Booga!"

This kind of reminds me of how my cousin distracts her baby boy by jingling her car keys in front of him whenever he's about to cry.

 LOL

How the US is like Al-Qaeda: Axiological targetting.

Funny thing: the al-Qaeda bombing of the WTC was a case example of what some (really boring) people call "axiological targetting" (aka terrorism) -- the idea that you can force a favorable political change in a country by bombing the people who live there.

Course, it didn't quite work out that way.

Similarly, the threat of bombing Iran's nuclear programs are also an example of "axiological targetting" -- the idea being that if Iran is bombed, then they'll put an end to their nuclear program.

Course, it won't work out that way.

If you think about it, in most cases, axiological targetting has been counter-productive, causing a backlash and strengthening the resolve of the target population.

Watch out IRI! Wealthy London exiles are going to getcha!

Like I said before, one of the many reasons why the "Green Movement" in Iran fizzled out was because a bunch of discredited or irrelevant exiles who had no real gravitas of their own tried to jump on the bandwagon and claim the movement for themselves. Well, just to prove my point, the Guardian has an article about one "Amir Jahanchahi, an exiled Iranian businessman" who is calling for a revolution in Iran, and has organized an entity called...wait for it ... the Green Wave.

I have never heard of this fellow but according to the Guardian, he is a wealthy businessman who lives in London. Ehem. And, his father was a minister under the Shah. Double ehem. And the movement is to be headed by Mehrdad Khonsari, who I have to admit is a family acquaintance. Triple ehem.

Look folks, the Khonsaris and Nourizadehs etc of the world aren't going to topple the regime. About the only thing these people have actually accomplished in the last 30 years it to set up various groups and organizations with interesting names. (Democratic Alternative; Constitutional Movement of Iran (Front Line); Coalition for Freedom and Democracy in Iran; Freedom Front; etc etc)  COllectively, I call these people "ExileTV" because they're so entertaining on their LA-based stations.

 So get over it.

Iran's uranium-swap offer, and why it will be rejected

So Iran has officially stated that they're willing to exchange their low-enriched uranium for fuel for their medical research reactor, but on Iranian soil and only as part of a simultaneous exchange of uranium-for-fuel.

"When they (the major powers) deliver the 20 percent fuel to us, they can then take the LEU out of the country."

Previously the US had demanded that Iran simply hand over its low-enriched uranium, and then sit around for a year, in the hopes that perhaps one day maybe the US will see fit to perhaps contribute some bit of reactor fuel for those cancer patients in Iran...or not.

And you see, that's precisely why this Iranian offer -- perfectly reasonable as it is -- will be rejected and dismissed off-hand. Like I keep saying, the offer by the US to swap uranium was never expected to be accepted, and was intended to be refused. The nuclear issue is entirely a pretext and a fig-leaf for a different policy by the US just as "WMDs in Iraq" were a pretext. It has to be kept alive artificially. Even if this offer is magically accepted, the US will still insist that it is a one-shot deal, and that Iran should give up enrichment entirely, and not produce medical isotopes domestically but purchase them (nevermind the fact that isotopes are in short  supply worldwide, and that Iran would lose billions of dollars in doing so.) 

Turkey: Iran nuclear programme 'solely civilian'

The Prime Minister of Turkey -- which happens to be a rotating member of the UN Security Council and so entitled to vote on any US-inspired sanctions -- has said it bluntly:

In an interview with the BBC's Nik Gowing, Mr Erdogan said he believed it was Iran's "most natural right" to develop a nuclear programme for civilian purposes.

It was, he added, "unfair" of nuclear-armed countries to "manipulate the facts" about Turkey's neighbour while at the same time not telling Israel to dispose of its nuclear weapons.

"Countries with nuclear weapons are not in a position to turn to another country and say: 'You are not supposed to produce nuclear weapons,'" he said.

Well, I guess that's what happens when you deliberately insult the Turks.

America is falling

I have to say that nowdays I wish there was no internet because what I read everyday is so depressing. I realize that the myth of the US as the "land of the brave and home of the free" was always precisely that, a myth (ummm...slavery?) but nowdays a simply click of a button shows quickly to what depths this nation has fallen, where legal advisors to presidents say that crushing a child's testicles is acceptable, and UN ambassadors openly ridicule international law, torture is legalized and unpunished, and Vice Presidents get their faces spat upon by "allies" and Presidents are apparently entirely helpless in shaping this nation's foreign policy is the face of foreign lobbyists. And that's all just the result of only 10 minutes of casual browsing. I shudder to think what a few more minutes of browing on things such as the cost of education and social disparity would show. (Average CEO pay is 344 times the pay of an average U.S. worker - in other words the average CEO earns in a day what an average worker earns in about a year.)

My God, is this the America that is supposed to be winning "hearts and minds"? This is a slow motion crash, baby, a crash.

You know a war with Iran is coming when...

...when there's a false flag "terrorism" operation attributed to Iran. Look for it.

New York rabbi curses Persian Jews

Iranian-Jewish friends in Long Island have described to me a long history of issues with other non-Iranian Jews but things are apparently becoming ridiculous. An Ashkenazi rabbi broke into house of a Persian Jewish family in Great Neck who were holding a birthday party for their daughter, and cursed them all :

 The actions of Rabbi Mordechai Aderet — and the sheer incongruity of medieval-like curses being hurled at well-off Persian Jews in Great Neck, of all places — have sent shockwaves through the local Jewish community. . .

Said a guest who attended the party: “It was like bin Laden — all they needed were guns. My daughter was terrified after — she was screaming. She didn’t talk for three days after.”...

“The community is moving in different directions in a way that didn’t happen when we were still living in Iran,” observed community member Ellie Cohanim, who did not attend the party. “There is a group that is becoming more secular, and there’s a group that’s taking on this very haredi brand of Judaism — and neither of those trends is normative to the Middle East. It’s not normative to how our parents and grandparents observed Judaism.”

Once when I was visiting Tehran, I happened to walk past the entrance of a small local hospital. I saw a young man sitting on the stairs, quitely crying. I bought two ice cream cones from the store next door, sat down next to him and offered him one of the cones. He wiped his tears and took the ice cream. He spent two hours telling me about his dad who had just passed away. I remember well the salty taste of my own tears mixed with the sweetness of the thick, rose-water scented Iranian-style ice cream. He thanked me and left. I never thought I'd be in his position so soon.

Dr. Cyrus Safdari, Sr.

December 12, 1936 - March 8, 2010.

Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs

My readers may be interested in a new journal, the Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs, published under the auspices of an affiliate of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research.

Iran gasoline sanctions redux

So you've read the news about how two companies are supposedly refusing to sell any more refined gasoline to Iran. The funny thing is this: Iran refuses to stop enrichment and rely exclusively on foriegn uranium fuel for its reactors because it says that the energy supplies can be interrupted for political reasons and to blackmail Iran. So, we're stopping energy supplies in the form of gasoline for political reasons to Iran to blackmail Iran into giving up enrichment...thus proving their point.

Anyway, as for the claim that Iran "lacks refining capability": that's only because Iranians are massive consumers of state-subsidized gasoline, which is so cheap in Iran that neighboring countries are actually the beneficiaries of cheap smuggled Iranian gas. In other words, their problem is excess consumption due to the fact that gas costs less than water, and not inadequate supply. And anyway the Iranians have been addresing the refinery shortage by building new refineries, and have been addressing the consumption side of the equation by for example making cars that run on CNG and introducing gas rationing -- which while it was an unpopular move in the past, can now be blamed on foreign interference and sold as a nationalistic measure that people would support. Even then, there are countries which would not play ball with the US's gasoline sanctions -- Venezuela and Russia come to mind.  Anyway, the whole idea that if you punish the people, they will eventually rise up and topple their regime for you, is idiotic and repeatedly proven wrong. Cuba, a much smaller and less powerful country, has weathered 50 years of pointless US sanctions, after all.

But all of this of course misses the bigger point I've always tried to remind people of: the question of whether the gasoline sanctions on Iran would be effective or not is really not the point. THe proponents of sanctions don't care about that, really. To them, sanctions -- whether effective or not by themselves -- are really just an incremental step towards their ultimate goal, which is a war on Iran to suit Israel. As long as the US is imposing sanctions on Iran, they're not really engaging or talking to Iran -- which suits these Iran-hawks just fine because the last thing the hawks want to see is Iran and the US resolving their differences. And more importantly, as they force the Obama administration down the sanctions path step by step, their boxing-in the administration into a coercive, aggressive policy on Iran which ultimately will end in an all-out war.

For example, lets start with the gas sanctions. Everyone knows  that they will be ineffective, so the next step will consist of the Iran-hawks raising a clamour about the need to "tighten" the sanctions. This will inevitably lead to a maritime blockade and perhaps even
interception of shipping to Iran. And once that happens, its only a matter of time before we get to "pin point strikes" and sinking of ships etc -- in other wars, a shooting war, the real desire of the Iran hawks. By then, Obama will not be able to reverse the course (he probably can't do so even now) and another war will be a fait accompli. 

Ahmadinejad and 9/11 conspiracy

So Ahmadinejad has reportedly said that 9/11 was an intelligence conspiracy that was used as a justification for the US to launch its war on Iraq and invade Afghanistan. As for the second part of that assertion, that 9/11 was used as a justification for the war, I don't think any reasonable or even sane person questions that anymore. Contrary to all of the efforts at the time by the NeoCons and Cheney to link Iraq to 9/11, the fact is Iraq had nothing to do with it.

As for the first assertion, that 9/11 involved a conspiracy, count me in. Now I'm not saying the same thing as some of the nut-jobs out there who theorize that the planes were empty and set on autopilot, or that there were actually no planes involved (I saw the second one hit myself, with my own eyes) nor do I really buy the notion that the building were pre-rigged to explode. However, I can accept the idea that the event could have been stopped, but was not, deliberately in order to create what the NeoCon proposed Project for New American Centiry called "another Pearl Harbor" which the US regime could cite as a justification to carry out some plans it had previous formed.

And if you think I am being naive, I would like to remind you of the case of one Emad Salem, an undercover FBI informant who had infiltrated the group that carried out the first WTC bombing back in 1993. He was smart enough to record his conversations with the FBI. Turns out, he specifically warned the FBI of the bombing, and offered to replace the bomb material with a harmless substance, but the FBI said no. Now tell me that's not fishy. Go on, I dare you.

Then consider all the opportunities that were "missed" and all the "intelligence blunders" in stopping the second bombers. One or two mistakes can be theoretically possible, but a whole chain of them? Like I said before, how many of these mistakes amount to a deliberate pattern of looking the other way?

Anyway, the amusing irony is that in suggesting that there was a conspiracy behind 9/11, Ahmadinejad's views correspond to the that of around half of Americans. And if you still think this is all conspiratorial, may I remind you of Operation Northwoods.

Manufacturing pretexts for war is a long and well-worn part of statecraft, even if it costs a few civilian lives.

Now let me say that the idea that no Jews were killed in the event is nonsense. However, lets remember that there were a few fishy news items  involving Israelis too including the infamous "5 dancing Israelis" and the mysterious text message warning sent to an Israeli company called Odigo that was sent  just 2hrs before the attack

The Qom Enrichment Facility: Was Iran Legally Bound to Disclose?

I wonder if the folks at the New York Times will stop automatically referring to the facility in Qom as being "clandestine" after someone reads Daniel Joyner's legal analysis of the question of whether Iran violated any law in the timing of its disclosure of the Qom facility, which concludes: "it is not at all clear that Iran violated any legal obligations incumbent upon it in the timing of its Qom declaration."

The operative point of the analysis is this:

"This absence of specification regarding the process for entry into force of the Subsidiary Arrangements, in light of the detailed specification of the process for entry into force of the Safeguards Agreement and amendments to it, including the constitutionally required consent of the Iranian domestic lawmaking institutions, is probative textual evidence that Iran did not intend for the Subsidiary Arrangements to be legally binding per se. Rather, the Subsidiary Arrangements would appear to be more accurately characterized as agreed guidelines or understandings for implementation of the Safeguards Agreement by the parties, of a non-binding legal character...

If the various Subsidiary Arrangements agreements between Iran and the IAEA were in fact non-legally-binding in character, the only legal obligation with regard to the disclosure of design details for enrichment facilities incumbent upon Iran would be the provision in Article 42 of its Safeguards Agreement which states that “such information shall be provided as early as possible before nuclear material is introduced into a new facility.”

It is uncontested that no nuclear material had, as of September 2009, been introduced into the Qom facility."

No dating Arabs!

This isnt' really related to Iran affairs directly but it is too funny to pass up. Reportedly the officials in a city in Israel* have started a program to "locate and treat" Jewish girls who date Arab guys.

Moria Ben Yossef, Zman Tel-Aviv [Maariv Tel-Aviv Weekly Magazine] February 23 2010 [Hebrew original here]

The municipal finance committee decided three weeks ago to  give NIS 250,000 [~$66,000] to what it refers to as “‘an aid program for immigrant girls at risk”. The program will be launched this month in the Shapira, Kiryat Shalom and Nevs Ofer neighborhoods. The committee said some of the project’s aims are ‘locating immigrant girls at risk… case-specific family and community intervention to locate the girls… and locating the appropriate figures in the community to treat the girls.’

The program is aimed to treat up to 120 young women under 22, and is jointly run by the Tel Aviv Municipality, the Absorption Ministry (which will sponsor 75 percent of it), and the World Congress of Bukharan Jews.

The obsession over "ethnic purity" in Israel should not come as a surprise since Zionism was the product of the same sort of European "blood & soil" chauvinistic nationalism (aka racism) that gave rise to Nazism there. I thought the fuss over the genetic study paper by Spanish researcher Antonio Arnaiz-Villena was funny - (it concluded that Jews and Arabs are related and Jews aren't a particularly "special" people at all) - especially when the pro-Israeli lobby was so outraged by that concludion they managed to force the publishers of the scientific journal Human Immunology to not only withdraw the peer-reviewed paper but send a message to libraries asking them to physically rip it out the offending pages.  I thought THAT was pretty funny too.

* Occupied Palestine.

A history of Iraq war lies

Harper's magazine has an article entitled "A History of the Iraq War, Told Entirely in Lies" which shows how different reality was with the lies that the American public was fed in order to support the war. I wonder if one day someone will similarly writes the history of the lies about Iran and its nuclear program.

Iran's reply to the IAEA report of Feb 2010

As a followup to my analysis of the latest IAEA report on Iran, see Iran's official response to the report posted by CJ Harwood on his site, WarLaw. Thanks to CJ more people can see the role that Amano seems to have taken, which was to be expected as he was the US's favored candidate for the job of the head of the IAEA but was strongly opposed by the developing nations.

Anyway, here's the interesting paragraph regarding the uranium swap offer:

…the Islamic Republic of Iran is still seeking to purchase the required fuel in cash. However, if the Agency is not able to fulfill its duty under Article 3, then Iran is ready to exchange the TRR required fuel assemblies with the LEU material produced at Natanz, simultaneously in one package or several packages in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Do you suppose the US will accept this perfectly reasonable offer by Iran? Of course not -- because the swap offer was never intended to be accepted. It was just a way for the US to paint Iran as the intransigent party, so as to justify an escalation towards war, the real goal of the US.

Visit Carrickmacross, Ireland

If you're ever in Ireland, make sure to visit Carrickmacross and shake everyone's hands there.

Drug abuse in Iran due to Afghanistan

There's a website I am not familiar with that carries a story about how drug abuse in Iran is aided by Iran's unfortunate proximity to Afghanistan. An expert cited in the article says:

“It’s simply due to Afghanistan,” he continued. “Opium and heroin [from Afghanistan] are exported via Iran to turkey and then to Europe. They also supply the goods to the Iranian markets, not very much smaller than the markets of Western Europe.”

So far so good -- but the article goes off the tracks by citing "an influential blogger" who theorizes that the regime in Iran is turning a blind eye to drug abuse for political reasons. Of course, not an iota of evidence is presented to back this claim up.

Funny thing, the same regime is criticized for executing drug pushers, and has been extensively applauded (even by the US and EU) for its anti-drug efforts. Every year, hundreds of Iranian policemen die in battles with the drug smugglers, as Iran single-handedly holds back a "heroin tsunami" that could sink Europe.

Germany's poor human rights record

So Germany complains about Iran's membership in the UN Human Rights Council. THe same Germany that was the primary source of Saddam's chemical weapons. (Apparently gassing people is a "thing" the Germans enjoy promoting.) The same Germany that have given Israel, a racist apartheid state, the submarines to launch nuclear weapons against Iran.

Germany has the blood of innocent Iranians on its hands. It has no moral standing to complain about Iran or anyone else's human rights record.

Persian New Year tradition: DO something good - DONATE BONE MARROW

I have a suggestion for everyone that is looking forward to the Persian New Year. In addition to the usual traditions -- jumping over fire, growing sabzi, going on a picnic etc. -- why not also DO something good and constructive for fellow human beings too? For example, REGISTER TO BECOME A BONE MARROW DONOR. This is especially crucial for Iranians who live abroad, since sick Iranians who need bone marrow may not easily find matching donors except amongst other Iranians.

SO DO SOMETHING GOOD: REGISTER TO BECOME A BONE MARROW DONOR.

I wish the Iranian-American community groups of all sorts -- regardless of their politics -- would promote this idea. After all we can all agree that the slight discomfort and time it takes to donate bone marrow is certainly worth potentially saving the life of another human being. Think of it this way: if a man's house had caught fire in front of you, and you had a bucket of water handy, would you hesitate for a moment to use the water to help extinguish the fire? So why would you possibly hesitate in registering to become a bone marrow donor when its benefits are so much more concrete and important?

Read more about bone marrow donation here and here.

Analytical warfare in Tehran and Washington - really?

Daniel Brumberg has what is a relatively thoughtful piece (in comparison to the usual raving lunacy one finds in the papers re Iran) in the Washington Post about the state of Iran's "opposition" challenges in which he concludes:

A strategy of state-controlled mobilization and fear mongering might sustain the regime for some years. But escalating economic woes that cut across class and geographic lines, combined with periodic challenges from the urban middle classes, could eventually create significant fissures in the regime itself.

I think Brumberg doesn't realize that this is hardly the first such challenge to the regime in Iran, and as in the past, the regime will probably find ways to coopt the "opposition" (however you define that term - he himself admits that the majority of the "opposition" are not really fundamentally opposed to the basic Islamic tenents of the regime.) In any case it would probably behoove the regime to find ways to channel dissent constructively through institutional means. I think the regime knows this full well as it has done so in the past. Brumberg has made the mistake of drinking the coolaid in thinking that Iran is a "populist dictatorship" without realizing that it has always existed as "a deeply
divided society that pits elites against elites, and popular constituencies against popular constituencies" and indeed this has been a strength of the regime.

WINEP's anti-Iran propaganda suggestions

The pro-Israeli front Washington Institute for Near East Policy has issued a paper calling for the US to engage in clandestine propaganda activities against Iran by trying to manipulate issues of human rights for their own advantage.

Amongst their suggestions are:

Feed the regime’s anxieties about the security forces’reliability by, for example, publicizing reports of disquiet in the ranks over their repressive role.

Condemn the show-trials of reformists.

Publicize the cases of prominent regime victims.

Quietly assist Iranian expatriate groups that disseminate internet videos depicting violence by the security forces.

One interesting angle they propose to try to manipulate human rights concerns to tie it to the nuclear program is this:

Exploit Ahmadinezhad’s close identification with the regime’s nuclear program in order to delegitimize its efforts to create a nuclear weapons option. Portray it as an intrinsic part of Tehran’s efforts to block popular demands for change and maintain its grip on power by force, based on the reasoning that a nuclear Iran would be less vulnerable to international pressure regarding human rights.

It must really burn their asses that the nuclear program in Iran is so massively popular!

Anyway, I am not sure where the folks at WINEP have been until now, but pretty much every tactic they encourage has already been played out on Iran. For example, with regard to this tactic:

Raise constant questions about the regime’s stability, long-term viability, and reliability as a patron and partner, planting doubts among rejectionist groups and regimes throughout the region and beyond.

I already mentioned how the US media has been predicting the imminent collapse of the regime in Iran on a daily basis for the last 30 years.

Look folks, here's a bit of advice: Governments that backed Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons, and which train and arm nun-raping death squads in Latin America, and which torture people,  and help Israel maintain death camps in Gaza, simply don't have the legitimacy to lecture other governments. OK?

Iran moved its Low-Enriched Uranium...so what?

I'm sure by now you're aware of the news that Iran temporarily moved a container of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) from an underground (IAEA-monitored) facility to the surface, in order to remove some of it for 20% enrichment to manufacture nuclear fuel for its medical research reactor.

There followed all kinds of convoluted media speculation about why Iran would do this, all of which of course were based on the assumption that Iran was hellbent on making nukes and were trying to "goad" the Israelis into attacking and bombing the LEU, thus allowing the Iranians to withdraw from the NPT and ...wait for it...build nukes.

Now comes an answer:

Diplomats there discounted the notion of political reasons for Iran having
moved much of its LEU stockpile above ground.

“A more likely reason was that Iran needed a large container to provide a
steady feed with sufficient pressure for 20 percent enrichment,” said one
senior diplomat close to the IAEA.

“In any case, this container can be moved back and forth between the pilot
and main Natanz facilities in a half hour.”

Whether this is the real reason or not, is not the point. THe point is, why did the media so quickly resort to promoting twisted speculation instead of, you know,  looking for more prosaic reasons for this event? I mean, leaving aside basic jouranlistic ethics and objectivity, I am sure the folks at the NY Times have heard about Occam's Razor.

Can there be any doubt left that the US corporate media has given up all semblance of objectvity and is pushing hard for a war on Iran?

Peter Casey: Read the Iran IAEA Report

Peter Casey comments on the New York Time's apparent deliberate distortion and hyping of the recent IAEA report on Iran:

The overwhelming response of American media grossly overstated its significance and rewrote it beyond recognition. The Times‘ story, however, is transparently dishonest, and it raises the legitimate question: Is America’s "paper of record" consciously misrepresenting facts to "accelerate confrontation" between Iran and the West?

Ehud Barak: Iran nukes will start arms race in Mideast

Don't you just luv it when the "defense" official of the only country* in the Mideast that actually has nukes, claims that someone else's non-existent nukes will start a nuclear arms race in the region? I mean seriously, that takes some gall! Who do you suppose the Arabs fear more -- Israel, which has nukes, has been the aggressor in several wars with them, and came close to using nukes in at least one war...or Iran, which hasn't attacked one of its neighbors in more than a couple centuries and which is an NPT member?

Meanwhile, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who disclosed the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons program by leaking photos to the Western press and who was imprisoned for it by Israel for years, has been trying to get the Nobel Peace Prize officials to remove his name from their list of candidates because he doesn't want to be associated with Shimon Peres, who was also another Nobel Peace Prize winner. Needless to say, the award of the Peace Prize to the likes of Peres, who is also a terrorist and a war criminal, not to mention to Obama whose acceptance speech consisted of a defense of war (or Henry Kissinger before that) has permanently removed whatever moral value and weight the Nobel Peace Prize ever had. However, the authorities in charge of the prize refuse to remove Vanunu's name from their list of candidates, I guess in a desperate effort to retain some credibility.