We are in a perfect storm with Iran. We don't merely have a single event to concern us as regards Iran, but rather a multiplicity of events all converging at once. Iran is within months of crossing the nuclear threshold. Israel cannot afford to allow Iran to create a nuclear arsenal - and for that matter, neither can the West. Everyday that Iran continues its rush to a nuclear arsenal, most other nations in the Middle East, virtually all of them incubators of muslim extremism in one form or another, are also pursuing nuclear weapons out of self defense. At the same time, the Iranian regime is on the verge of a revolution. But it is a largely leaderless revolution, and there is no single individual whom we can bank on to emerge as the head of a new Iran if and when the theocracy falls. Perhaps Mousavi, but it appears ever more that events have passed him by. It truly is a perfect storm from from which any of countless possible realities could emerge, many of which would be inimical to our interests. It is time, to paraphrase from Invictus, that we engage in this matter and become "masters of our fate."
The Washington Post, in an editorial today, takes stock of the past week of protests and joins the chorus of calls for Obama to decisively support revolution in Iran:
ONE WAY or another, Sunday's Ashura holiday in Iran probably will be a turning point in the struggle between an extremist regime and an increasingly radical opposition. . . .
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei clearly is betting he can defeat the opposition Green Movement with brute force. In the past week, security forces have attacked peaceful mourners at the funeral of dissident Ayatollah Ali Montazeri and violated the tradition of restraint associated with the Ashura holiday. The predominant chant in the streets, meanwhile, has shifted to "death to Khamenei" or "death to the dictator." More street protests can be expected when the movement's new martyr, Ali Habibi Mousavi Khamene, is commemorated.
In short, Iran's political crisis now looks like a battle to the death between the regime and its opposition. No one on either side in Tehran is talking about compromise. . . . [M]ore than ever, the Obama administration and other Western governments must tailor their policies toward Iran to reflect the centrality of the Green Movement's fight for freedom. While diplomatic contact with the regime need not be broken off entirely, by now it should be obvious that it cannot produce significant results -- and might serve to shore up a tottering dictatorship.
President Obama shifted U.S. Policy . . . Monday . . . with an admirably strong statement that condemned "the violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens" and called for "the immediate release of all who have been unjustly detained."
There is, however, more that could be done to help the Green Movement. Russia and non-Western nations should be pressed to join in condemning the regime's violence. Sanctions aimed at the Revolutionary Guard and its extensive business and financial network should be accelerated; action must not be delayed by months of haggling at the U.N. Security Council. More should be done, now, to facilitate Iranian use of the Internet for uncensored communication. The State Department continues to drag its feet on using money appropriated by Congress to fund firewall-busting operations and to deny support to groups with a proven record of success, like the Global Internet Freedom Consortium.
The administration has worried excessively that open U.S. support might damage the Green Movement. Now President Obama has publicly taken sides, and the battle inside Iran has reached a critical juncture. It's time for the United States to do whatever it can, in public and covertly, to help those Iranians fighting for freedom.
The Washington Post has it right. It is time – actually long past time – for Obama to weigh in decisively and on multiple levels to support the revolution in Iran. Besides those things enumerated by Wapo, there are a host of other things that Obama needs to put in motion to support the regime. For example, Obama stripped all funding for the programs promoting democracy in Iran when he took office. He needs to refund those programs, particularly Radio Farda which ought to play a major role in getting news into Iran, both about the outside world and about events occurring inside Iran that the regime wants silenced.
If Obama were smart - and indeed, thinking of his legacy - he would embrace this option with all the fervor with which he has pushed health care reform. It is something that would, I believe, have bipartisan support. And if the revolution succeeds after he has thrown full U.S. support, then Obama's legacy will be cemented in stone. Whatever else he screws up, he will be the President who helped bring an end to Iran's evil theocracy and the President who moved the Middle East much closer to stability. It would, at a stroke, end a highly significant portion of terrorism around the world. It would remove from Hamas and Hezbollah their primary source of funding.
The joker in the deck, if you will, is that the revolution needs time to flower, if it ever will. If Obama does nothing else, time may soon run out. Iran sits on the cusp of crossing the nuclear threshold and, by Israeli estimates, will have a nuclear weapon by 2011. Israel, threatened near daily with destruction by the Iranian regime, has every justification to go to war with Iran to stop the Iranian regime from making that weapon. If Obama is going to fully support the revolution, he needs to buy time from Israel. Obama would need to provide the Israeli government with guarantees that the U.S. will underwrite the missile defense of Israel. Obama needs to further guarantee that the U.S. will, with Israel, jointly conduct that attack on Iran's nuclear sites if and when it appears that Iran's revolution will not succeed. Indeed, if need be, the U.S. should go so far as to publicly put Israel under its nuclear umbrella. For if and when the first bombs strike Iran, war will have begun. We will almost assuredly be drawn into it. And the chance to end all of this through a revolution will have ended.
In short, it is time for Obama to truly engage with Iran's revolution. He needs to set a course through the perfect storm.
Update: What Obama should not do is heed the advice of the NYT editorial board:
President Obama is right to remain open to dialogue with Iran and to continue looking for a peaceful resolution to the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He is also right to condemn the violence against Iranian civilians . . .
The government still appears to have firm control of the main levers of power, including the brutish Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia. . . .
The Iranian people are demanding what all people have a right to demand: basic freedoms, economic security, and the knowledge that their government is committed to protecting, not killing its citizens.
These people are as out of touch with reality as they were when they called the Iraq War lost during the height of the surge. If they think that the government is firmly in control, they have not bothered to read their own paper's reporting of the events of last week. If they think the Iranian people are demanding mere "basic freedoms," they are completely misreading how these protests have evovled since June. If they think that Obama's main concern should be to keep an "open dialogoue" going with the barbaric and illegitimate government - the same government that has essentially given Obama the one finger salute over the past months - they are utterly insane. What they counsel is not a search for a "peaceful resolution" to this madness. To quote Milton fron Paradise Lost:
Thus Belial with words clothed in reason's garb Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, not peace.
The counsel of the NYT would lead us to war, sooner or later. Our best chance for peace, indeed our only one, is to move decisively in support of the revolution.
One 26 year old engineering student said: “tell the world what is happening here. This is our revolution. We will not give up.” Asked what he wanted he said “We want democracy.”
Today is the tenth anniversary of the student riots that took place after basij raided the dormitories of Tehran University. Mousavi had called for protests today, and they are happening - with chants of "Death to the Dictator" and "Death to Khameini's Son." The son of Iran mid-level cleric cum Supreme Guide, Ali Khamini, is now leading the Basij, Iran's brutal version of the Nazi Brownshirts. Meanwhile, our own feckless President and his party are turning their backs on Iran. NIAC is reporting that, "last night, the U.S. Congress shelved a controversial motion to restore $75 million in funding for regime change in Iran." Moreover, Obama, who had taken the wrong-headed stance against imposing any further international sanctions on the theocracy over their fradulent election and brutal repression of their citizens, succeeded - the G-8 went so far as to express their concern. Leadership, eh?
Meanwhile . . .
This from two messages sent to the NYT Lede by an individual who has provided reliable information in the past:
The phones are completely out. I’m hiding in an international hotel…. riot police wanted to break in but the managers convinced them. The crowd is running in the thousands, starting in Enqelab where riot police and basij started beating people. Saw one middle-age woman with blood stains. Then they pushed up kargar st to laleh park, squads of 25 police would run up the streets with batons beating people. I hid in a clock shop, like many other people who would hide in street shops and come out once these attack squads went up the streets.
Fires of trash are burning in main streets. Everyone honking, women and men of all ages out, even kids in cars (most families have driven their cars and blocked the streets). No phone so hoping there will be internet later. One 55-year-old housewife said to me proudly “This is Iran. We are all together,” in front of Fatemi street where the crowd stretches as far as the eye can see, but again crowd is moving because riot police is moving as well as the basij on motorcycles. Lots of people chanting “Down with Dictator!” and “Moussavi! Moussavi!” and “God is Almighty.”
. . . The crowds are too huge to contain. Riot police running up and down Fatemi Street beating people, barely got out of the way. The crowds just get out of their way and come back. Saw two undercover Basij, one was actually a late 40s businessman in a suit, whipped out a collapsible metal baton and started beating someone with a camera. He was beaten until the baton broke, another Basij came on motorcycle to help but crowds started surging and booed them away. Someone threw a water bottle but otherwise crowd is peaceful — keep chanting “Please Stop!” and chased the two Basij away.
Then riot police came back up. More fires in the street as trash and various containers are burned. Tear gas everywhere, no gunshots yet I think but again undercover Basij everywhere. Again I stress crowds in thousands and this is just one street. One 27-year guy in black shirt said “We don’t want war. We just want freedoms. Here, [he signals getting shot] no matter. Down with the dictator,” and people joining in the chant. Also [chanting] “God is Great!”
The main theme is that people are surprisingly non-violent. They seem very hopeful and energetic. People from all levels of society are out. No one is throwing rocks but people have been setting fires in the street.
4:30 PM (last reliable information I’m going to have today, I think). Khamenei was told the following:
* massive demonstrations * 3 killed * 78 known as seriously wounded, many broken bones and ruptured internal organs, several may not make it; other wounded may have disappeared * 600 arrests
SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM OPPOSITION: “please tell the world about these atrocities; people did nothing, silence, no provocations, no violence but fierce attacks by the government forces.”
(A great music video from Cyrus Mafia on Iran's uprising, with some English subtitles / Hat Tip Michael Ledeen)
A summary of the current situation in and about Iran:
1. Mousavi called for a 3-day strike leading up to a major rally planned on Thursday, 9 July.
2. Khameini ordered another crackdown, with hundreds more arrests and orders to confiscate all satellite dishes. He also has ordered most businesses closed, apparently in an effort to prevent a wide scale general strike being portrayed as a show of support for Mousavi
3. Money is flooding out of Iran as Iran's rich read the writing on the wall
4. The Commander of the IRGC has publicly announced that they have taken over all internal security missions since the election
5. A major development two days ago was the decision of Iran's most influential clerical body to condemn the election and the repression of protesters. Christopher Hitchens speculates that the hands of Rafsanjani and Grand Ayatollah Sistani were behind the move. He further ponders whether the example of Iraqi democracy played a substantive role in the current Iranian discontent.
6. The utterly spineless and wrongheaded Obama regime has come out against any international sanctions against the bloody theocrats for their repression, reasoning that any sanctions "might backfire." Fortunately, Congress is acting independently of Obama.
7. Biden has greenlighted Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and Saudi Arabia apparently will do its role to assist Israel. That said, this should not be Israel's burden to carry alone. Unfortunately, with Obama at the helm, it will be.
Update: 8. AmirTaheri writes on the likelihood that Khameini is likely to be far more brutal than the shah in attempting to put down the current unrest. He also writes on the fact that Ahmedinejad is now unwelcome in most parts of Iran. ________________________________________________________________
1. Mousavi, facing calls from supporters of Ahmedinejad for his arrest and punishment for treason, has called for a 3 day general strike leading up to a major planned protest on Thursday, "the 10th anniversary of a 1999 attack by pro-government militiamen on the dormitories of Tehran University that led to weeks of political unrest." Mousavi is not backing down. While some rumblings are being heard about arresting Mousavi, there can be little doubt that this ham-handed regime would already have done so if they were fully confident of their ability to weather the unrest.
2. According to Michael Ledeen, Khameini has ordered another round of arrests, as well as the confiscation of all satellite dishes:
The Iranian tyrant, Ali Khamenei, told his cluster of top advisers two days ago that it was time to totally shut down the protests, and he ordered that any and all demonstrators, regardless of their status, be arrested (although there is no longer room for new prisoners in Tehran’s jails; they are now using sports arenas as holding areas). He further ordered that all satellite dishes be taken down (good luck with that one; there are probably millions of them in Tehran alone). He ordered that the crackdown be done at night, to avoid all those annoying videos. By Sunday night, hundreds of new arrests had been made, including the regime’s favorite targets: students, intellectuals, and journalists.
His deadline: July 11th. He told his minions that if that were accomplished, the rest of the world would come crawling to him.
He may be right about most of the rest of the world, which has distinguished itself by its fecklessness, but he is certainly not right about his own people . . .
The regime was apparently so worried that the general strike would show massive support for Mousavi that they took the step of ordering the businesses and offices to close for three days. The Telegraph is reporting that most businesses in Tehran's Central Bazaar are closed, though there is no word coming out on the rest of the country.
3. File this one under "rats deserting a sinking ship." Underscoring the continuing seriousness of the unrest in Iran, the Telegraph is reporting on the mass movement of money out of the country:
Millions of pounds in private wealth has begun flooding out of Iran in the wake of mass demonstrations which have paralysed commercial life after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Fears of a new round of crippling sanctions are also thought to have fuelled the movement of money out of the country.
Western intelligence agencies have reported that prominent private businesses and wealthy families have moved tens of millions of dollars out of Iranian banks into overseas accounts. . . .
4. The IRGC is a corrupt organization whose leadership has a fully vested interest in seeing the theocracy propped up. The leadership of the IRGC is getting as rich from corruption, graft, and business interests as have many of the politicized members of Iran's clerical establishment. Thus it is no surprise to find that the IRGC is now running the internal security to brutally crush the protests. This from the LA Times:
The top leaders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard publicly acknowledged they had taken over the nation's security during the post-election unrest and warned late Sunday, in a threat against a reformist wave led by Mir-HosseinMousavi, that there was no middle ground in the ongoing dispute over the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the elite military branch, said the guard's takeover of the nation's security had led to "a revival of the revolution."
. . . "Today, no one is impartial," Gen. YadollahJavani said at the Sunday news conference, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. "There are two currents -- those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it."
The uniformed Revolutionary Guard leaders, joined by the turbaned cleric Ali Saedi, Khamenei'srepresentative, said they would play a more active role in defending the Islamic Republic's core values . . .
It should be noted that the basij, Iran's version of the Nazi brown-shirts, who have played a central and bloody role in repressing the protests, are under the command of the IRGC.
5. I blogged here on the recent major development of Iran's most respected clerical organization, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, who issued a statement that condemned the regime for their repression of the protests, called the regime illegitimate, and challenged the Guardian Council for certifying the election. Related to this, Abbas Milani has written an exceptional article at TNR giving the history of the split among Iran's clerics over the theocracy itself that we now see spilling out into the open.
Christopher Hitchens, writing at Slate, makes the point that the impetus for the Association'sstatement - a group that normally stays out of politics - was likely prompted by Mousavi's backer, Rafsanjani, and the most popular cleric in Iran, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Hitchens goes on to ask a salient question:
Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.
I will be amazed if, once all is said and done, we find out that Iraq's model did not play a significant role in promoting the discontent of Iran's rank and file. I have been saying for years that the greatest single threat to Iran was a border with Iraq's secular, Shia dominated democracy - and indeed, that the two could not possibly coexist. But don't expect Hitchen's question to get asked by our MSM. Instead, we have the MSMregurgitating the Obama administration's laughable claim of credit for being a cause of the uprising, pointing to the Cairo Speech. That would be the speech wherein Obama signalled a retreat from promoting democracy in the Middle East. And it would be the speech that was not broadcast in Iran. The theocracy actually jammed the signal to prevent people from picking it up on satellite dishes.
6. As I posted here, Obama has come out against any international sanctions against the theocrats for their bloody repression because of concern that any sanctions "might backfire." As Robert Averichcogently points out on his blog, such a move could not be more counterproductive, nor more useless.
Fortunately, Congress is acting independently of Obama. McCain and Lieberman announced two weeks ago that they were sponsoring a bill to require the U.S. to assist with the communications into and out of Iraq - perhaps the most critical area where we can assist the nascent revolution in Iran. Unfortunately, that also tells us that if we are having to legislate such actions, Obama must have our covert operators sitting on their thumbs, doing nothing to assist the protests. That, if true, is an atrocity. But it would comport with Obama's simply mystifying continued push to hold talks with this illegitimate and brutal theocracy. The Telegraph also reports on more legislation in the U.S. pipeline:
. . . Republican congressman Mark Kirk has claimed there is growing support for a bill he is sponsoring which would strip American support for foreign companies supplying refined petroleum to Iran.
Iran is a large oil producer but decades of financial isolation means it must import petrol and other end products from abroad.
Reliance, the Indian operator, provides one-third of Iran's daily needs while also enjoying a massive trade loan from the US.
Another bill that would exclude companies involved in the trade from doing business in the US was put on hold earlier this year as a gesture from President Barack Obama to improve relations.
Iran's economic problems are severe. Their per capita GDP is only slightly over $3,100, inflation is running almost 25%, and their unemployment rate is well into double digits. These are not transitory conditions that just came about as a result of the global economic meltdown, but are the result of years of misrule by clerics and now Ahmedinejad. Real sanctions, particularly ones that attack the theocracy's dependence on foreign refined fuel products, could prove very effective in furthering unrest in Iran. But with Obama seeking to derail international sanctions over Iran's brutal repression, it is unlikely he would ever sign such bills.
I recommend that you take a look at how Obama has long approached such issues to evaluate their effectiveness. We learned today that Obama was highly critical of Reagan in 1983 for going ahead with the deployment of new nuclear missiles in the face of Soviet opposition and opposition in Germany - the so-called nuclear freeze movement. Obama was very much on the wrong side of history there, and if his policies were then in place, we might still be facing the Soviet Union. Let us hope Obama does not manage to throw a lifeline to our own modern "evil empire," Iran's bloody theocracy.
7. VP Biden has greenlighted Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, stating that Israel is a "sovereign nation" entitled to make its own decisions on security without U.S. interference. Given the current state of Iran, Israel would be foolish to pull the trigger yet. If they strike Iran, they may put back Iran's nuclear weapons program by a few years but unite a country on the verge of toppling. Conversely, if Iran's theocracy falls, the threat to Israel would likely vanish overnight.
That said, it is also being reported that Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow Israel to overfly Saudi airspace to attack Iran. It is now being denied, but I do not doubt that this is true. For all of the vile hatred Wahhabists preach against Israel and the Jews, the bottom line is that Israel is no threat to the House of Saud. Iran, however, is not only a religious enemy of the Wahhabis because they practice Shia'ism, but Iran also poses a major threat to the Sauds. Iran has long been reaching out to all Shia in the Middle East in an effort to expand their influence. The House of Saud rules over a substantial and strategically placed Shia minority. Anything that the Sauds and most of the other Sunni countries could do informally and covertly to assist Israel against Iran has probably already been considered and discussed.
To go one further, Daled Amos, blogging at Soccer Dad, ponders the question of whether it is time for there to be a Sunni-Israel alliance directed against Iran and what it would take to achieve such an alliance. I doubt that a formal alliance would ever coalesce until the Sword of Damocles visibly appears over the Arab Sunni world. But it is a sign of the times that such an issue is even being discussed with seriousness.
Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon was one issue that President Bush clearly wanted to deal with on his watch. It was only vociferous intervention led by Obama, Reid and Pelosi against even the threat of force, coupled with the release of a highly politicized NIE, that tied Bush's hands. Now Obama owns the Iranian problem and is responsible for countering the mad theocracy's rush for a nuclear arsenal that will threaten the U.S. every bit as much as Israel.
During his campaign, Obama said he would consider using force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That was then, this is now. In light of totality of Obama's approach to Iran, it is fair to assume that Biden's statement was, if not a public punting of the ball to Israel, then at least an acknowledgement that Israel is on its own in this.
The Obama administration has given us many things things already - a record debt, rising unemployment, a failing dollar to name but a few. What they haven't given us or the world is anything remotely approaching leadership. Apparently, that is now Israel's job. At least the House of Saud seems to recognize it.
8. Iranian columnist AmirTaheri has several recent articles on Iran. In "For Mousavi: Three Roads Ahead," Taheri points out that Khameini is no longer even making a pretense that Iran has a "republican" system of government and that Khameini will not shirk from using all of the violence necessary to stay in power:
Thanks to Mousavi’s decision to fight back, the current crisis has already produced at least one positive result. It has clarified the situation by exposing the composite noun Islamic Republic as an oxymoron. The space allocated to the "republic" has shrunk to its smallest since the start of the Khomeinist regime.
On Tuesday, the official Islamic News Agency (IRNA) published the text of a long sermon by the "Supreme Guide" in the province of Kurdistan and for the staff of the elite 27th Division, spelling out the nature of the regime.
This is what Khamenei says: "Islamic society is the society of the imamate. This means that the imam is at the head of the system. {The Imam is} a man who exercises power because the people follow him as their leader from their heart and because they have full faith in him."
Khamenei makes no mention of the presidency or any other organ of state because the system he is defending has a single, all-embracing institution: the imamate.
With pretensions about democracy and popular will gone, the current system in Iran is closer to models such as the imamate in Yemen and the "Islamic emirate" in Afghanistan under the Taliban, than to a republic in which Mousavi, or anybody else, could claim a mandate based on victory in an election.
Khamenei's sermon also contains a clear warning that the regime is prepared to provoke a bloodbath to maintain its hold on power. Khamenei says that had the Shah killed half a million people he would not have been overthrown.
He criticizes the Algerian Front for Islamic Salvation (FIS) for not having called the masses onto the streets and provoked a bloodbath by confronting the army. "Had they brought the crowds onto the streets there would have been an Islamic government in Algeria today," he says. "But they were afraid and showed weakness."
With admiration, the "Supreme Guide" recalls the massacre of one million Communists in Indonesia under General Suharto that he claims saved the system in that country.
A reluctant hero, Mousavi has succeeded in drawing the true battle lines in Iran's politics. Whether he wishes to be present on those lines, for how long, and with how much determination remains to be seen.
This throws into stark relief the paucity and imprudence of the Obama administration's decision to minimize sanctions against the regime. Khamieini is set on his path and beliefs. Nothing Obama could possibly do will light a fire in the regime that was unlit before. To the contrary, the best hope of limiting the repression against those braving it in a fight for democracy would be to significantly increase the external pressure on the regime, making the regime's already noticable faultlines into crumbling chasms. As is becoming a regular pattern, Obama is doing the polar opposite.
Taheri also writes in a seperate article, A Suddenly Most Unwelcome Guest, that Ahmedinejad has been cancelling most of his travel plans inside Iran because of the likelihood of his presence leading to mass protests. Ahmedinejad is, writes Taheri, a very diminished figure whose "legitimacy is challenged at all levels of Iranian society, including every segment of the Khomeinist establishment." I don't see this ending well for Ahmedinejad.
Iran is still simmering; there is still fire beneath the ashes of the savage repression, and no one knows what the tens of millions of anti-regime Iranians will do in the coming weeks and months.
With a brutal hand, Iran's theocracy has been successful over the past days in driving the protestors off of Iran's streets. It is a tactical victory, just as the Shah had tactical victories in the early days of Iran's year long revolution three decades ago. It does not mean that the war is won or lost.
The regime is still pushing the meme that the election was fair and that the discontent is the result of "traitors," including Mousavi, in the pay of the U.S. and U.K. Iran's theocracy, like medieval theocracies of old, depends for its legitimacy on the governed believing that their clerical overlords are acting in accordance with divine guidance. Few if any in Iran can be operating under such a fantastical belief now. And in an important development, one of the major religious organizations in Iraq issued a public statement calling the election a fraud and the government illegitimate. This from the NYT:
An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant . . . setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult.
“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. “Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei.”
The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.
The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters. . . .
“The significance is that even within the clergy, there are many who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the election results as announced by the supreme leader,” said an Iranian political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. . . .
The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.
It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections.
“Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.
Perhaps more threatening to the supreme leader, the committee called on other clerics to join the fight against the government’s refusal to adequately reconsider the charges of voter fraud. The committee invoked powerful imagery, comparing the 20 protesters killed during demonstrations with the martyrs who died in the early days of the revolution and the war with Iraq, asking other clerics to save what it called “the dignity that was earned with the blood of tens of thousands of martyrs.”
The statement was posted on the association’s Web site late Saturday and carried on many other sites, including the Persian BBC, but it was impossible to reach senior clerics in the group to independently confirm its veracity.
The statement was issued after a meeting Mr. Moussavi had with the committee 10 days ago and a decision by the Guardian Council to certify the election and declare that all matters concerning the vote were closed.
But the defiance has not ended.
With heavy security on the streets, there is a forced calm. But each day, slowly, another link falls from the chain of government control. Last week, in what appeared a coordinated thrust, Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Khatami all called the new government illegitimate. On Saturday, Mr. Milani of Stanford said, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani met with families of those who had been arrested, another sign that he was working behind the scenes to keep the issue alive.
“I don’t ever remember in the 20 years of Khamenei’s rule where he was clearly and categorically on one side and so many clergy were on the other side,” Mr. Milani said. “This might embolden other clergy to come forward.” . . .
Read the entire article. Our concentration should be on isolating and punishing the bloody theocracy and insuring that news such as statement from the Shia clerics this makes it around government efforts to control the news in Iran. Obama's concentration is, as I posted below, the opposite.
Many things of import happened in Iran today, but I held off writing this post to see if a rumor spreading on twitter could be verified. That rumor was that Iraq's senior cleric - and Iran's most popular cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - had publicly denounced the Iranian regime for its brutality. I've blogged about Sistani's importance here. If you haven't read it, you should also see this 2007 Boston Globe article, "Shi'ite Cleric Gains Sway Across The Border." If the rumor was true, the importance of a public denunciation from him could not be overestimated. Unfortunately, I could not verify it.
The most important development has been Mousavi's decision not to capitulate to pressure from the theocracy and to come out swinging. This from yesterday's LA Times:
After days of relative quiet, Mir-Hossein Mousavi launched a broadside against the Iranian leadership in comments published today, suggesting that the political rift over the country's disputed presidential election is far from over.
The former prime minister turned artist and scholar accused Iran's supreme leader of not acting in the interests of the country and said Iran had suffered a dramatic change for the worse.
He slammed state-controlled broadcast outlets, which have intensified a media blitz against him and his supporters with allegations that recent unrest over the disputed June 12 presidential election was instigated by Iran's international rivals. And he vowed to pursue his quest to have President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection annulled.
Read the entire article. There has been some question, given his relative quiet of the past few days, whether Mousavi was getting cold feet and would fall from the titular forefront of this revolutionary movement. That is the subject of Krauthammer's article today, noting that the revolution may wilt if it does not find its Yeltsin. Mousavi appears, for the moment, back on track now to try to fill Yeltsin's shoes, though the effectiveness of the theocracy's repression is relentless. Indeed, the same LA Times article linked above goes on to say that Mousavi met with a 70 person group of university professors on Wednesday and that, immediately following the meeting, the professors were arrested en masse by the regime.
Several days ago, I blogged that the U.S. should be doing all in its power to covertly support the uprising, noting in the comments that the greatest need was to counter the theocracy's attempts to shut down communications and to facilitate as much as possible communications to and inside of Iran. Congressional Quarterly is reporting that Senator's McCain, Graham and Lieberman are drafting legislation to require the U.S. to do precisely that. Good for them, but what that tells us is it is likely Obama has our covert operators sitting on their thumbs at the moment. If so, that is an atrocity. If Obama still has dreams of crafting a grand diplomatic bargain with the butchers of Tehran, he is a danger to us and the world. As Robert Averich states, Obama seems to have graduated from the "Neville Chamberlain school of international relations."
Communications is critical to this ongoing revolt. In fact, it is important enough so that some of the protesters inside Iran are reaching out for assistance to Israel. This from Arutz Sheva News:
. . . "Dear Israeli Brothers and Sisters," writes Iranian dissident Arash Irandoost, "Iran needs your help more than ever now. And we will be eternally grateful. Please help opposition television and radio stations which are blocked and being jammed by the Islamic Republic (Nokia and Siemens) resume broadcast to Iran. There is a total media blackout and Iranians inside Iran for the most part are not aware of their brave brothers and sisters fighting and losing their lives daily. And the unjust treatment and brutal massacre of the brave Iranians in the hands of the mullah's paid terrorist Hamas and Hizbullah gangs are not seen by the majority of the Iranians. Please help in any way you can to allow these stations resume broadcasting to Iran.
"And, please remember that we will remember, as you have remembered Cyrus the Great's treatment of you in your time of need," Irandoost concludes, signing his blogged call for help "Your Iranian Brothers and Sisters!"
In an interview with Israel National News, Iranian expatriate pro-democracy activist Amil Imani said that Irandoost's message represents the sentiments of much of the youth in the streets in Iran. They have a strong belief in the technological know-how of the Israelis to overcome the Iranian regime's attempts to block communications. . . .
Shiran Ebadi, famous Iranian female lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, made a statement the other day that she is willing to represent the family of the slain girl, Neda Soltana, in an action against the government. Iranian News announced today, reported at the blog NIAC, that a formal complaint has been filed against Ebadi to strip her of her license to practice law for "repetitive infringement of Islamic decrees, Sharia law and the constitution."
I blogged in the post Faultlines Developing that significant cracks throughout the regime were becoming apparent. Yet another became apparent today when President-elect Ahmedinejad held his formal victory party. All members of Iran's 290 person stong Parliament were invited to attend. The BBC is reporting that a substantial majority, 185, did not attend. The BBC, stating the obvious, notes "the move is a sign of the deep split at the top of Iran after disputed presidential polls."
There was supposed to be a general strike on Tuesday, though there was no confirmation of it occurring from any of the news sites. The progression of the 1979 protest went from street demonstration to general strikes. That will likely be the next phase of things if the revolution continues to grow. Gooya News now has pictures from a strike among the bazzaris in at least one city, Saghez, in the Kurdish region of Iran.
Lastly, via Hot Air, here is a BBC interview of the doctor who attempted to treat Neda, the girl brutally murdered by the basij during a protest in Iran.
Chatham House has done perhaps the definitive study on the vote in Iran's Presidential election, finding vote fraud pervasive. Obama continues to give the protesters in Iran short shrift while holding out hopes of still engaging what is now a wholly illegitimate theocracy in talks over its drive for nuclear weapons. And yesterday, as protesters took to the streets again, suffering beatings and murder at the blood stained hands of the butchers of Iran's theocracy, Obama chose that time to assure the theocracy that they were invited to attend 4th of July celebrations. That is not merely immoral, its obscene and so contrary to our interests as to be inexplicable.
The revolt against the regime continues with a general strike called for today. There are several possible ways that this may be resolved, two of which would involve the end of Iran's theocracy. That is the best case solution for both Iran and Western civilization, yet Obama seems utterly - and ominously - oblivious. Is he seriously considering throwing the theocracy a life line over the bodies of the dead protesters so that the regime acquiesces on paper to his major demands? Is he really that amoral, narcissistic and detached from reality? ___________________________________________
As a threshold matter, whether Iran's theocracy engaged in massive vote fraud should have been beyond question the moment the Supreme Guide announced final vote totals two hours after polls closed in an election done with tens of millions of paper ballots. Any lingering doubt should be answered by the analysis done of the election by Chatham House, a left wing British think tank. You can read the analysis here. They found overwhelming evidence of fraud based on publicized election results and prior voting patterns. One snippet of their conclusions:
In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, 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.
Obama has yet to acknowledge that actual vote fraud took place, nor to make a statement that actually supports the protesters. While I supported Obama's initially restrained response because of the popular belief in Iran that the U.S. underminded the Iranian government in 1953 and has been behind plots since, that restraint should have ended as soon as it became clear that this was a grass roots protest and that there was blood in the streets.
Bill Kristol documents the time line of Obama's responses to the protests at the Weekly Standard. Instead of a robust response, we were at first treated to days of silence as riots swept Iran, then tepid statements that reached their nadir when Obama attempted to answer criticism by claiming that the two Iranian Presidential candidates, Ahemedinejad and Mousavi, were "two of a kind." I am still not sure if that was raw political cynicism at its worst or whether Obama was that clueless about what was occurring in Iran. One hopes the former, as the latter would mean that Obama is a naif who will cause tremendous damage to our country.
During the Presidential campaign, Mousavi, despite having revolutionary credentials exceeding those of Ahmedinejad, advocated real and fundamental reforms that utterly energized the Iranian populace. Iranian specialist Michael Ledeen took note, writing on July 10, two days before the election, that Mousavi had lit a firestorm in Iran by offering reforms, particularly in the area of women's rights, that threatened "the whole structure of the Khomeinist regime . . ."
So for our President not to grasp this and to try to sidestep criticism by claiming that Ahmedinejad and Mousavi were "two of a kind" was both a distortion of reality and, as the Mousavi camp noted in a letter to the President, highly destructive. As Mousavi's office put it, the President's "two of a kind comparison, was "a specially grave insult for those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom." Mousavi's office rightly assessed that Obama was being deliberately misleading as he held on to false hopes of a "dialogue with this regime."
The protests began almost as soon as Khameini announced the "divine assessment" of the electorate, supposedly voting for Aheminejad in a landslide. The repression followed almost immediately. Tens of thousands have been beaten, gassed, arrested and/or murdered, with the most barbaric symbol of the regime's brutality and illegitimacy being the murder of Neda, a woman peacefully standing in the street during a protest.
And yet Obama mutes his criticism because he does not want to be seen as "meddling" - a pretextual excuse at this point since the Iranian government is portraying this as an American directed plot regardless - and despite all of this, he continues his outreach to this illegitimate regime. According to WaPo, Obama is trying to "calibrate his comments to the mood of the hour" so as to "preserve the possibility of negotiating directly with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, links to terrorism, Afghanistan and other issues." Indeed, under this rubric, yesterday, while this bloody theocracy was involved in the beating and murder of its citizenry, Obama's State Dept. took the opportunity took the opportunity to assure the theocracy that they were still invited to attend 4th of July celebrations. That is not merely immoral, its obscene and so contrary to our interests as to be inexplicable.
And Obama is the person explaining to America that our moral compass is broken because the majority of us believe that its okay to waterboard a terrorist if it will save American lives? Obama's moral compass is the one broken. There could be no clearer demonstration that Obama sees the world through a reality distorting lens then his response to this protest and his continued reaching out to the butchers of Iran's theocracy.
The reasons to pressure the theocracy and support these protesters are crystal clear, both as a moral and a practical matter. Morally, who can possibly condone or do business with a regime that uses beatings, arrests, and indiscriminate murder to thwart the will of its people. As a practical matter, leading international pressure on Iran can only help the protesters. It matters not a wit to the theocracy, since they are claiming we are the cause of this uprising anyway . It is a transparent pretext that, with the facts established, can fool no one in or outside of Iran.
Further as to the practicalities, there was never any chance that talks with the theocracy would do anything to convince them to forgo their drive for a nuclear arsenal that existentially threatens the U.S., Europe and Israel. For one, what could Obama possibly offer this illegitimate regime moving ever closer to the edge of oblivion at the hands of its people? What could he offer that would make the regime give up a nuclear arsenal it had heretofore utterly refused even to discuss giving up?
The very fact of such talks would add legitimacy to this failed regime. But this gets far more insidious. Iran has rejected every carrot offered by the West, and every reasonable one has been tried multiple times - including the inane suggestions of Obama during the campaign. What could Obama possibly offer the theocracy in their final hours that would induce them to suddenly change their position (on paper at least, as to expect this regime to hold true to their written word is to ignore decades of history to the contrary). Literally the only things they could want that would be worth the price of agreement would be tools that would allow them to survive the challenge of their people. In other words, Obama would have to throw the protesters to the hyenas of tyranny to get any movement from the theocracy. That would be an abomination. Yet it is the only possible logical outcome of talks under the current circumstances.
The reality is that this revolt presents a golden opportunity to end the nuclear ambitions of the mad mullahs as much as it is an opportunity for the people of Iran to end their oppression. If this rebellion flowers into a successful revolution, it will change overnight the dynamic of the Middle East every bit as fundamentally as the founding of Israel changed the dynamic in 1948.
How to approach Iran in this instance has clear lessons from our recent history. The playbook on this was written in 1981. It does not involve playing nice, weinie roasts or conducting "business as usual." This from Sean Hannity via Gateway Pundit:
As I write this, Obama is holding a news conference. In his speech moments ago, he said this on Iran:
The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, 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.
. . . [T]he United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.
. . . Some in the Iranian government are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd. They are 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.
Good, but not yet a condemnation of blatant vote fraud, nor an endorsement of the goals of the protesters - human dignity and democracy. Further, in response to a question from Major Garret as to whether in fact Obama still was holding open the invitation to 4th of July celebrations to the theocracy, Obama hemmed and hawed, leaving the clear impression that the answer is yes. Just amazing.
It was relatively quiet in Iran yesterday. The government has achieved its immediate objective of largely clearing the streets and has further hardened its position. The Guardian Council announced today that they would not annul the election. The government is engaged in mass arrests, including today Mousavi's staff. That completes the arrest of essentially the "top two tiers" of leadership in Mousavi's organization. Additionally, the theocracy has "retired" the soccer players who wore green wrist bands in the match with South Korea. Yet all is not returning to normal. As I wrote here, major faultlines are becoming apparent in the regime.
Still Mousavi and another Presidential candidate, Kharoubi have called for a protest march tomorrow. The few protesters who have shown up on the streets yesterday and today are turning the tables and conducting hit and run attacks on the basij. Mousavi has called for a strike today, though it is not clear whether one has occurred and, if so, how widespread it is. This is a revolt still in its nascent stages. Coups can happen overnight, but grass roots revolutions do not. Indeed, the closest antecedent to what is happening in Iran today is the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah. It began in 1978 and played out over a year, going through periods of intense protests and violence followed by long lulls.
There is yet another way that this could end - a clerical coup that ends Khomeini's three decades old experiment in theocracy. It is not one that I imagined possible as there are too many clerics in the theocracy with vested interests, financial and otherwise, in the theocracy's survival. But it seems that is now under discussion in Qom at the highest levels of Iran's clerical establishment.
An article in the Saudi's Al Arabiya, "Iranian clerics seek supreme leader alternative," states that Rafanjani, president of the Guardian Council, is in Iran's home of Shia scholarship, Qom, holding "secret talks" with Iran's top Shia clerics about doing away with the position of Supreme Leader. Whether this would be a full scale retreat from theocracy or a partial one, going from a "Supreme Leader" to a "Supreme Council," is unclear.
As I have pointed out many times before, Khomeini's creation of the Iranian theocracy based on his personal theory of the veleyat-e-faqi (rule of the jurisprudent) is a complete reversal of over a millenia of Shia tradition holding that there should be separation between mosque and state. Khomeini's veleyat-e-faqi was not only a break from tradition, it was a radical and complete reversal.
When Khomeini established the theocracy thirty years ago, he split with many senior clerics in Qom who believed his experiment wrong-headed. And indeed, three decades later, Iran's theocracy is facing a popular revolt from a population many of whom have been secularized as a result of the misrule and massive corruption of the theocracy.
It is of important note that Rafsanjani's meetings have "included Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq." Sistani is an ardent traditionalist who believes in separation of mosque and state. His last contact with the Iran's theocracy was to snub Ahmedinejad when Ahmedinejad visited Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is also the most popular clerical figure in Iran. His presence in the meetings suggests that the options under consideration are far reaching. And indeed:
An option being considered is the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president following condemnation by the United States and other European nations for violence and human rights violations against unarmed protesters.
This could itself work a sea change to Iran - and it might just work. It would end with the the corrupt theocracy fading into the woodwork, the evil doers with their scalps still attached to their skulls, but out of power. It would likely overcome the IRGC without firing a shot because they too rely on the authority of the ayatollahs as their raisond'etre. At worst, it might kick off an active civil war between IRGC elements in a naked power grab and the rest of Iran's military. Steve Schippert has more on this at Threats Watch.
This is something that we can only support indirectly, just like the protests, by keeping the pressure on Iran's theocracy to allow democracy, free speech and rights of free association. But so long as we have a President who is seeing the world through a reality distorting lens and navigating with a broken moral compass, that will not come from him.
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