Iran 7/7 - The Pot Simmers (Updated)

(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. Amir Taheri 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.

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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-Hossein Mousavi, 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. Yadollah Javani 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's representative, 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's statement - 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 MSM regurgitating 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 Averich cogently 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 Amir Taheri 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.

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Iran Update - 25 June: Mousavi Fights Back, Dissidents Call On Israel To Help In The Commo War

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.



Prior Posts:

24 June 2009: Glimpses Into Chaos - Iran, 24 June
23 June 2009: Obama, Iran & The Rising Of The Sun
23 June 2009: Obama On Iran: A Broken Moral Compass, A Distorted Perception Of Reality
21 June 2009: Faultlines Developing
21 June 2009: When The Regime Will Fall
20 June 2009: The Regime Turns On Its Own People (Updated)
20 June 2009: Life, Death & Terrorism On Iran's Streets - Neda
19 June 2009: Countdown To High Noon
19 June 2009: An Iranian Showdown Cometh - Liveblogging Khameini's Speech At Friday Prayers
18 June 2009: Iran Update
16 June 2009: Iran 6/16: The Fire Still Burning, An Incendiary Letter From Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, State Dept. Intercedes With Twitter & Obama Talks Softly
16 June 2009: Breaking News: Vote Recount In Iran, Too Little, Too Late
15 June 2009: Iran Buys Time, Obama Votes Present, Iraq's Status Is Recognized
15 June 2009: The Fog Of War - & Twitter
15 June 2009: Chants Of Death To Khameini
15 June 2009: Heating Up In Iran
14 June 2009: Heating Up In Iran
14 June 2009: Tehran Is Burning; What Will The Iranian Army Do? (Updated)
13 June 2009: The Mad Mullah's Man Wins Again - For Now
15 April 2008: The Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match (Background On Iran's Theocracy)

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Obama, Iran, & The Rising Of The Sun

The White House, along with the assistance of the NYT, is now taking credit for the revolt in Iran, tying the motivation of rank and file Iranians to risk life and limb in protest of their government to Obama's Cairo speech occurring two weeks before the election. This becomes truly an act of divine intervention when one realizes that the "speech was not broadcast in Iran, where the goverment jammed signals to block satellite owners from watching." But Obama and his many Obamaphiles in the MSM are not about to let facts get in their way. It is impossible to imagine a more aggrandizing and arrogant spin of fantasy.

Update: Via Gateway Pundit, now Rahm Emmanuel is explicitly mouthing this ridiculous meme.

The Washington Post reported today:

. . . Since taking office, Obama has argued that reclaiming America's moral authority by ending torture and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay provides essential diplomatic leverage to influence events in such strategic parts of the world as the Middle East and Central Asia. The speech he delivered to the Islamic world in Cairo eights days before the June 12 Iranian election sought to do that by providing what the president saw as an unvarnished accounting of U.S. policy in Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We're trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves," said a senior administration official who, like others, declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Obama's approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president's words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.

Yesterday, the NYT attempted to make essentially the same argument. The claims of the White House and their NYT sycophants to the contrary, Obama contributed nothing to the cause of this rebellion. There is not a single fact to suggest that this rebellion in Iran occurred because of an "Obama effect," nor that "the mere election of Barack Obama in the United States had galvanized reformers in Iran to demand change." In his prior acts of outreach to the mad mullahs, Obama only bestowed legitimacy on Iran's theocracy.

The fact that Obama's Cairo speech never made it into Iran kind of puts the kibosh on the White House claims that the speech played a role in motivating the protests. Further, even if Obama's Cairo speech was not jammed throughout Iran, nothing Obama said in Cairo could possibly be construed as giving impetus to Iran's rank and file to risk their very lives for democracy. Indeed, Obama clearly signalled in the speech that he had no intention of continuing to promote democracy in the Middle East. And lest there be any question about that, Obama "zeroed out funding for pro-democracy programs inside Iran from the State Department budget for fiscal 2010."

A viable argument can be made that we are seeing the wages of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. As I wrote last year:

The greatest threat to Iran today comes from a democratic Iraq on its border that honors the traditional Shia practice of quietism - i.e., maintaining a wall between mosque and state. Iran is a deeply troubled country of 60 million people held under the rule of a medieval theocracy by ever greater repression. The theocracy itself is illegitimate when looked at in terms of a millenium of apolitical Shia tradition - a tradition shredded in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and his velyat-e-faqi, a new philosophy justifying and requiring theocratic rule. And indeed, the most popular religious figure in both Iraq and Iran is now Grand Ayatolah Ali Sistani, an adherent to the quietist school.

And if you want to see how that was having an impact on Iranians, do see this 2007 Boston Globe article, "Shi'ite Cleric Gains Sway Across The Border."

That said, even if Iraq plays some role in Iran's uprising, it is beyond challenge that the major causes of Iran's rebellion have been present for years. Brutal repression, a mysoginist culture that legally treats women as second class citizens, a thoroughly corrupt theocracy, unemployment above 20% and inflation at equal numbers. All of that is multiplied in importance by the fact that a majority of Iranians are under thirty years old and who have little opportunities open to them under Iran's theocracy. Most of these causes were present in Iran a decade ago and gave life to the "Tehran Spring" uprisings. The final straw giving rise to those uprisings was a belief that conservatives were keeping the reformist President Khatami from enacting reforms. In the instant case, what has caused today's revolt is the perception that mid level cleric cum Supreme Guide Khameini committed massive election fraud in order to keep a reformer out of office.

For Obama or his sychophants to claim credit for this uprising leaves one near speechless. It follows the same logic as saying that, because Obama said the sun will rise yesterday, the fact that it rose today is proof that Obama is the cause of it. That this tripe is being peddled by the NYT yesterday and reported without the scorn it deserves from the Washinton Post today - apparently without either even checking to see whether the speech was broadcast in Iran - establishes possibly the high water mark of the MSM's unquestioning love for the One. They are not a questioning press. They are instead unfiltered conduits for raw spin from the White House. To go any further than this in order to show their love for the One requries a hotel room.

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Iran 6/16 - The Fire Still Burning; An Incendiary Letter From Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, State Dept. Intercedes With Twitter & Obama Speaks Softly

Much is happening in Iran:

- Despite the theocracy's promise to do a selective recount of votes and despite Mousavi asking his followers not to protest today, Iran's electorate is not mollified. They are marching in the tens of thousands in Tehran and likely elsewhere. Reports are that today's protests are actually larger than Monday's.

- The theocracy has now cut off the visas of all foreign journalists, perhaps setting up for an attempt at a brutal repression.

- Throwing fuel on the fire - the model of Iraq and the words of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, once the successor to Iran's revolutionary founder, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. Montazeri has written a letter calling the election a fraud, calling the supression of speech a relgious failing, and warning Iran's security forces that they will be judged by God and, therefore, should not repress the protests by force regardless of what they might be ordered to do.

- The State Dept. reportedly asked Twitter, now the prime engine of organization of this rebellion, not to go offline to do a planned upgrade.

- Obama's response yesterday to the ongoing protests in Iran was as strong as he could make it. Let's hope his covert response is far more robust.
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The New York Times is reporting that large scale demonstrations continue in Iran despite Mousavi's call for his supporters to refrain from demonstrating today. The BBC is reporting that "[w]itnesses on the ground in northern Tehran are telling the BBC that a rally even larger than Monday's is currently taking place." And as the BBC's reporter in Tehran, Jon Leyne puts it: "This has gone way beyond disputed elections." What started as a protest over the Presidency is now on the cusp, if not already, a revolt of the people against the totality of a deeply corrupt and repressive theocratic regime. Thus it is not surprising that Mousavi's calls should not stop the protests. This from the NYT:

Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered in the streets here on Tuesday for a second day of mass demonstrations protesting the official results of Friday’s presidential election, unsatisfied by a top government panel’s agreement to conduct a partial recount.

As the political tumult grew, the Iranian government instituted tough restrictions on foreign journalists, formally shutting down their ability to report on the unrest on the streets. Press credentials of journalists temporarily in the country to cover the election were revoked; journalists stationed in Iran were required to get explicit permission to report beyond the confines of their offices.

Reporters Without Borders said that security services had moved into some newspaper offices to censor content and that four pro-reform newspapers have been closed or prevented from criticizing the official election results.

The result was a dearth of initial photographs and video of Tuesday’s enormous opposition protest, which began on Valiasr Street, a major thoroughfare, and headed north. The tens of thousands of marchers — perhaps more — gathered without the help of text messaging or cell phone service, relying on word of mouth and internet social media platforms such as Twitter.

A senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, used the Internet to issue a public letter supporting the peaceful demonstrations and excoriating the government for “declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe.” . . .

That last bit about Montazeri weighing in could become critical. Let me explain why. The theocracy imposed on Iran under Khomeini's theory of the velyat-e-faqi violates over a millenia of Shia apolitical tradition. That tradition holds that there should be separation between mosque and state. Moreover, the theocracy is widely viewed as wholly corrupt, with the wealthiest people in Iran today being clerics. All of this is brought into stark relief by the secular democracy next door in Iraq. And lastly, the Supreme Guide, Grand Ayatollah Khameini lacks religious legitimacy. He isn't a real Grand Ayatollah. He was a mid-level cleric appointed to that rank as an honorarium so that he could become Supreme Guide of Iran after Khomeini died. A 2007 article from the Boston Globe elaborates on many of these points:

Iran's ruling clerics have long prided themselves on running the world's only Shi'ite Muslim state -- a state that imposes religion, dictating what imams can preach, what the media can report, and what people can wear.

So some Iranians are intrigued by the more freewheeling experiment in Shi'ite empowerment taking place across the border in Iraq, where -- Iraq's myriad problems aside -- imams can say whatever they want in political Friday sermons, newspapers and satellite channels regularly slam the government, and religious observance is respected and encouraged but not required.

In Tehran's storied central bazaar, an increasing number of merchants are sending their religious donations, a 20 percent tithe expected from all who can spare it, to Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric -- rather than to clerics closer to Iran's state power structure, said Jawad al-Ghaie, 48, a wholesaler of false eyelashes and nail extensions and a respected lay donor.

Speaking carefully to avoid directly challenging the Iranian government, he and several fellow merchants suggested that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani holds more spiritual sway because of his lifelong commitment to quietism. That is the school of thought that says Shi'ite leaders should stay out of government, and Sistani has stuck to it despite the great temptation to wade into the chaos of Iraqi politics.

Haamed Hussein Warraqi, another merchant, contrasted the different ways in which Sistani and the Iranian religious authorities deal with overly exuberant revelers on Arbayeen, an important Shi'ite holiday. In Iran, he said, riot police line the streets to rein in men who cut their scalps with knives -- a show of mourning that the Iranian government and some religious scholars deem Islamically incorrect.

In contrast, "Sistani uses the authority of his word," said Warraqi, 27. "The domain of Sistani is in religion, and he is obeyed by the people. Here they want to rule according to politics. That's why they have to use the riot police."

"Any time religion is imposed by the government," Ghaie added, "there is a bad reaction."

. . . But ever since US-sponsored elections brought the Shi'ite majority to power, Iraq's imperfect liberation has quietly influenced the debate among religious Shi'ites about the role of religion in government .

After Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini founded a state that rests on his concept of velayat e faqi, or guardianship of the jurist. There are elections and parliamentary debates, but ultimate authority rests with a supreme leader who is appointed by a council of clerics.

Traditionally, Shi'ites have believed that clerics should stay out of politics until the return of the Mahdi, the last of the revered early Shi'ite imams, who disappeared in the ninth century. Shi'ites believe he went into hiding and will someday reveal himself.

Only he can establish a perfect Islamic state, according to traditional believers -- including some in the Tehran bazaar, whose influential religious merchant class backed the revolution but has since grown more skeptical of the ruling clerics.

"Only the Mahdi is the genuine leader," said Ghaie's brother Mohammad, 45, whose family, like many Iranian merchants, has lived in both Iran and Iraq over generations.

Expressing such opinions is dangerous: Several prominent religious scholars -- chief among them Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri -- are under house arrest or other official sanctions for opposing clerical rule or proposing limits on it. . . .

Iraq's importance to what is happening today in Iran is being ignored, but it is of great importance. But that aside, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri carries a great deal of legitimacy. Montazeri is one of just a handful of Shia clerics who have earned the rank of Grand Ayatollah. He was in fact slated as successor to Khomeini, but fell out of favor because he supported quietism, not the autocratic theocracy Khomeini and now Khameini have created. Montazeri has been under house arrest since the death of Khomeini. Here is his letter spreading across Iran today. He offers full support of the protestors and a bald warning to those who would repress them by force:

In the name of God

People of Iran

These last days, we have witnessed the lively efforts of you brothers and sisters, old and young alike, from any social category, for the 10th presidential elections.

Our youth, hoping to see their rightful will fulfilled, came on the scene and waited patiently. This was the greatest occasion for the government’s officials to bond with their people.

But unfortunately, they used it in the worst way possible. Declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe, and despite all the evidence of crafted results, and to counter people protestations, in front of the eyes of the same nation who carried the weight of a revolution and 8 years of war, in front of the eyes of local and foreign reporters, attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence. And now they are attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and Scientifics.

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.

2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.

3- I invite everyone, specially the youth, to continue reclaiming their dues in calm, and not let those who want to associate this movement with chaos succeed.

4- I ask the police and army personals not to “sell their religion”, and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before god. Recognize the protesting youth as your children. Today censor and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth.

I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.

That last warning to military and police could prove absoloutely critical as this protest goes forward. The protests are too widespread throughout Iran and too large for the riot police and the thug basij militia to put down. This is quickly headed towards the point where the theocracy will be tempted to repress the protests with massive military force. As I wrote several days ago, what the military opts to do, whether they follow orders to shoot, whether they remain neutral, or whether they defend the protestors could well become the deciding factor in all of this. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri's warning to the military and police that, whatever their orders, they will be judged by God could not be more important, nor more timely.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph is reporting that "Twitter, the social networking website, postponed a scheduled maintenance shutdown after a US State Department request that it keep publishing during the Iran election protests." With the theocracy trying to shut all communications in Iran, Twitter has proven invaluable. Thumbs up to the State Dept. for recognizing this and interceding with Twitter. And indeed, the Twitter site #iranelection is receiving about 1,000 twits every five to ten minutes.

And lastly, there is the question of U.S. response to this nascent revolution in Iran. Beyond doubt, the overriding goal of the U.S. - and indeed, the entire free world - should be to see an end the brutal, bloody, hyperaggressive, and soon to be nuclear armed theocracy in Iran. The goal should be to see a true democracy put in its place, both for our self defense and for the good of the Iranian people. The only restraint on that goal should be that none of our overt actions provide a pretext for the regime to claim that the grass roots resistance to the theocracy is actually a foreign plot - a replay of the 1953 CIA led Mossadeq coup. And do not underestimate Iran's fixation on that coup. It is central to the theocrat's historical narrative. Anything that smacks of U.S. invovlement in Iran's internal politics is cast through the lens of that coup.

With that in mind, as to Obama's speech yesterday, many seem upset by his lack of robust support for the protestors. For example, Gateway Pundit is pointing out that Sarkozy has denounced the Iranian election as fraudulent and taking Obama to task for not doing the same. Hot Air has similar criticism for Obama.

My own belief is that Obama went as far as he could reasonably go in his speech. We are not at the point where there is massive repression and tanks in the street. It would be very easy, therefore, for anything Obama says to cross the "Mossadeq" line and allow the regime to justify such acts of repression. In this case, Obama's failure to robustly promote democracy and stand foresquare with the protestors was probably for the best. That said, I am concerned about two things.

One, Obama's continued statements regarding his intent to go forward with unconditional talks is absolutely wrong headed. It sends the message that whoever occupies the Presidency in Iran will be sufficiently legitimate for the U.S. and, conversely, that the protests do not matter in that regards. Those are the polar opposite of the messages we should be sending.

Two, I am concerned that Obama may not be pursuing regime change in Iran, particularly given his statment on unconditional talks. Iran has been an intelligence nightmare for thirty years because it is so closed and repressive. But with the border between Iran and Iraq now open, and with thousands of Iranians and Iraqis crossing it every day, Obama has a golden opportunity for gathering intelligence and as a means to quietly support the protest movement. I hope that is what he is doing, but everything that I know about Obama - his apologetics for America, his refusal to actively promote democracy, etc. - suggests that we are not. Time will tell. Obama's promise to hold unconditional talks with Iran is naive and counterproductive. But a failure to exploit this golden opportunity for intelligence and to support regime change in Iran would be far worse. It would be criminal negligence.

Prior Posts

Breaking News: Vote Recount In Iran, Too Little, Too Late
The Fog Of War - & Twitter
Chants Of Deat To Khameini
Iran Buys Time, Obama Votes Present, Iraq's Status Is Recognized
Heating Up In Iran
Tehran Is Burning; What Will The Iranian Army Do? (Updated)
The Mad Mullah's Man Wins Again - For Now
The Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match (Background On Iran's Theocracy)

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Al-P False Report on Sistani (Updated)

The most important Shia cleric in both Iraq and Iran is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He has been very stabilizing, pro-government influence. Just within the past three months, he has given a major snub to Iran's President Ahmedinejad and thrown his support to the government in their call to disarm all militias, including Sadr's. So it was jaw dropping when al-P reported that Sistani was about to issue a fatwa calling Shia to arms against the U.S. And, indeed, it is false.

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Grand Ayatollah Sistani is of the quietist school and, in the tradition of that school, does not involve himself in politics to a significant degree. He has been a hugely stabilizing influence in Iraq. Yet false stories about Sistani make into our MSM with fair regularity.

Last year, the NYT ran an article on their front page claiming that Grand Ayatollah Sistani had scuttled plans by the government to enact legislation bringing de-Baathification to an end. This would have been a huge setback for the reconciliation process - if it were true. Within two days, Sistani's office released a statement calling the story false. NYT never printed a correction. A similar scenario played out in the days after it was falsely reported that Sistani supported the continued existence of Sadr's Mahdi Army.

And thus we come to just an incredibly outlandish Al-P story that made its way around the blogs yesterday. Al-P, citing unnamed sources, reported that Sistani was on the cusp of issuing a fatwa to give his blessing to the targeting of American soldiers in Iraq. That would be unthinkable, really. Besides being wholly out of character, there were two dead giveaways that this report was false. One was the reporters' claim that Sistani also opposed the disarming of Sadr's militia - a topic Sistani has already clearly weighed in on to the contrary. The second was that the odious Juan Cole gave his impramatur to the general belief that Sistani would take such a stand. Mr. Cole's bias has left the accuracy of his prognostications below that of a broken clock. He's not even right twice a day.

Iraqi scholar and former Iraqi government official Nibras Kazimi found the al-P's story wholly unbelievable:

If we’ve learned anything from the recent events in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul—by the way, these are Iraq’s three largest population reservoirs—it should be that the reporters and commentators who are tasked to describe Iraq to American and western audiences are at worst dishonest and duplicious, at best some string puller’s chorus of useful idiots.

It is in this vein that this AP story is released; to distract from other things that could be reported in Iraq, such as how things are dramatically improving and how this war has been decisively won.

Read the entire post. Mr. Kazimi's suspicion that this was to put a damper on too much good news coming out of Iraq would seem a stretch but for subsequent events. No sooner had he blogged this, than Sistani's office responded through the Iraqi press, denying the report. Gateway Pundit has the translation.

Update: There is an article at the Weekly Standard confirming the falsity of the AP report and further discussing how AP regularly reports Sadrist propaganda.

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Two Myths Of The Left - Iraq Has Increased Terrorism Worldwide and Made Iran Stronger

We have heard for years the arguments that the American invasion of Iraq has only increased worldwide jihadi recruitment and, as repeated most recently by Obama, that Iran is stronger today because of the "failed policies of Bush and McCain." But a look at both arguments in light of today's situation shows both to be demonstrably false.

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A long favored claim of the left is that the Bush administration's war on terror and its invasion of Iraq has increased jihadi recruitment world wide. Human nature being what it is, that was probably true two years ago. One would expect that those with jihadi sympathies were energized by the 9-11 attack and then responded to bin Laden's calls when the U.S. fought back. Indeed, two years ago, it appeared that they were backing a "winning horse," to use bin Laden's words. But this is not 2006.

As General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker noted in their recent Congressional testimony, both believe that the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq and the successful rejection of al Qaeda by the Sunni Awakening Movements are playing a signficant role in discrediting jihadism world-wide. While its impossible to verify that with the certainty of a Pew poll, the downward trajectory of jihadi attacks world wide strongly supports their argument. This from Reuters:

A study released on Wednesday reports a decline in fatal attacks of terrorism worldwide and says U.S. think-tank data showing sharp increases were distorted due to the inclusion of killings in Iraq.

"Even if the Iraq 'terrorism' data are included, there has still been a substantial decline in the global terrorism toll," said the 2007 Human Security Brief, an annual report funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Britain.

For example, global terrorism fatalities declined by 40 percent between July and September 2007, driven by a 55 percent decline in the "terrorism" death toll in Iraq after the so-called surge of new U.S. troops and a cease-fire by the Shi'ite militant Mehdi Army, the brief said. . . .

Read the entire article.

The second myth of the left is that Iran has been made stronger by the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror. That was Obama's message a few days ago. Certainly, as things stood in December, 2006, that was correct. Iran indirectly benefited from having the U.S. remove two implacable enemies, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, from its borders. Further, Iran had deeply invested in support for its creations, the Mahdi Army of Sadr and the Badr Brigades of SICI. As Michael Ledeen explained in an article written during the dark days of 2006, Iran was on the cusp of "Lebanizing" Iraq as the U.S. withdrew.

But then something happened on the way to the mosque. The President rolled the dice with the surge and all has been changed - Iran's incredibly bloody proxy war in Iraq has been exposed, the SICI changed its loyalties from Iran to Iraq's traditionalist Grand Ayatollah, Ali Sistani, and now Sadr's militia has been decimated. With the fall of both Basra and Sadr City, Iran's proxy is left without a base.

The greatest threat to Iran today comes from a democratic Iraq on its border that honors the traditional Shia practice of quietism - i.e., maintaining a wall between mosque and state, to put it in American terms. Iran is a deeply troubled country of 60 million people held under the rule of a medieval theocracy by ever greater repression. The theocracy itself is illegitimate when looked at in terms of a millenium of apolitical Shia tradition - a tradition shredded in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and his velyat-e-faqi, a new philosophy justifying and requiring theocratic rule. And indeed, the most popular religious figure in both Iraq and Iran is now Grand Ayatolah Ali Sistani, an adherent to the quietist school. This is deeply problematic for Iran. As Reuel Marc Gerecht explained recently:

Although conscious of the fleeting loyalty of Iraqi Shiites who once took refuge in Iran from the wrath of Saddam Hussein and are now blessed with ever-larger Iraqi oil revenues, Tehran probably didn't anticipate how quickly Shiite sentiment in Iraq could change. The Iranians didn't see the rapid rise of the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has become the most popular ayatollah in Iran as well as the most powerful cleric in Iraq. Iranian and Iraqi clerical ties are old, complicated, intensely personal, and often quite affectionate--all of which now plays powerfully against the Iranian ruling elite's cynical politics in Mesopotamia.

It is a very good bet that Sistani and other prominent Iraqi clerics have remonstrated vociferously with their Iranian interlocutors in Qom against Iranian-fed violence among Iraqi Shiites. We can see the Iranian side of this in former president Mohammad Khatami's accusing [Iran's Supreme Guide] Khamenei virtually by name of spilling Shiite blood in Iraq and turning Iran's Islamic revolutionary message into a call for violence and upheaval beyond its borders. Khatami's recent speech at Gilan University is an astonishing sermon from a man not known for boldness.

Read the entire article. Since 2003, Iran has won tactical victories in both Gaza and, just days ago, Lebanon. But in Iraq, the theocracy of Iran is facing a mortal threat to its legitimacy and an enticing example of democracy to its deeply troubled populace that, not a decade ago, appeared on the edge of a counter-revolution. Obama's claim that Iran is stronger now could not be more false. Indeed, unless the U.S. leaves Iraq and allows the Iranians to resume their Lebanization of Iraq - something that would happen if troops are withdrawn too soon, as General Petraeus noted days ago in written testimony to the Senate - Iran's theocracy is far more threatened by their peaceful neighbor than by Saddam Hussein or the Taliban. Obama and the left need to find new arguments. The decision to invade Iraq may yet achieve its initial promises of reducing terrorism and provide a dangerous example of a Muslim democracy both in the heart of the Middle East and on the border of Iran.

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Taheri on Sadr's Closing Gambit

The Iraq government is pushing quickly ahead to capitalize on its gains against the militias, and particularly Sadr's, in the wake of the Basra offensive. Sadr has taken a dangerous turn in asking the Iranian clerics of Qom for a fatwa on whether the Mahdi Army should disband, refusing acknowledge the primacy of Iraq's elected government and refusing to rely on Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - who has already publicly announced his support for the government to disarm all militias. And in a further blow to Sadr, his right hand mand - and brother in law - is assassinated in Najaf, quite possibly in revenge for earlier murders he himself had masterminded against other Shia clerics.


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This today from Iranian columnist Amir Taheri:

RIAD al-Noori liked to boast that a "host of angels" protected him, along with his 250 heavily armed bodyguards. Yet, he has just been gunned down in his home in Najaf, Iraq's principal "holy" city, by a three-man hit team that managed to get away without any of the angels or bodyguards making a move.

Noori was a bad man but an important player in the dirtiest corner of Iraqi Shiite politics. He headed the special bureau of Muqtada al-Sadr, the maverick mullah sponsored by Tehran. Himself a mullah, Noori was also married to Muqtada's favorite sister. The two were as thick as thieves. More importantly, perhaps, Noori distributed a good part of the Iranian money in Iraq.

Noori's removal from the scene leaves Muqtada without his eminence grise and his Mahdi Army without its ideologist.

Noori, whose family hails from the Iranian province of Mazandaran, earned notoriety in April 2003 when he organized the murder in Najaf of two prominent clerical opponents of Saddam Hussein just as the Ba'athist regime was collapsing everywhere. The two were Majid Mussawi Kho'i and Heydar al-Rufaii, moderate and reform-minded theologians who had welcomed the US-led Coalition's war of liberation.

A few months later, the transitional authority under Ambassador Paul Bremmer issued an arrest warrant for both Noori and Sadr. But an attempt at arresting the two men led to an armed showdown in Najaf, and Bremmer was asked by his Washington bosses to back down. Nevertheless, Iraqi police managed to arrest Noori and prepared a strong case to try him on a charge of multiple murders.

Soon, however, the case was put on the backburner by Ibrahim Jaafari, the first elected prime minister of new Iraq, in a bid to placate the Sadrists and their Iranian backers. Noori was allowed to escape from prison and join Muqtada in starting the Mahdi Army.

The fact that Noori died on exactly the same day that he and his cohorts had killed Khoei and Rufaii five years ago makes the episode look like an execution.

Having allied himself with the mullahs of Tehran in their bid to seize control of Basra, Iraq's second largest city and most important port, Sadr is clearly on the run. The latest rumors claim that his Iranian masters have asked him to leave the "holy" city of Qom and return to Iraq.

To muddy the waters, Sadr has announced that he has written to senior ayatollahs in Najaf and Qom seeking fatwas with regard to the fate of his Mahdi Army. If the ayatollahs rule that it must disband, it will, Sadr promises. If, to the contrary, they rule that it should stick around, it will, keeping its illegal weapons.

Sadr's move is clearly designed to undermine Iraq's still-fragile democracy.

. . . The fact that Sadr included the mullahs of Qom, including two of his Iranian teachers there, shows that he doesn't regard Iraq as a sovereign state whose affairs ought to be decided within its borders.

In the Khomeinist system, "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei is designated as "leader of the Islamic ummah" as a whole. One must assume that the Qom mullahs to whom Sadr wrote wouldn't issue a fatwa on Iraq without clearing it with their "supreme guide."

That means that Sadr is trying to transform Iraq into a de facto province of the Islamic Republic, just as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and his associates are seeking a similar fate for Lebanon.

Sadr may argue that such concepts as nation state, democracy and constitutional rule are Western inventions not binding on Muslims. Most Iraqis, however, don't wish to be ruled even by the mullahs of Najaf, let alone Qom and Tehran.

. . . Sadr may be trying to replicate the move of Lebanese Hezbollah, which wants its bread buttered on both sides - having seats in the parliament and the Council of Ministers while maintaining a private army financed by a foreign power. So far, none of the ayatollahs has responded to Sadr's letters. Let's hope none will.

The Iraqi parliament has decided to disband the militias. Its writ must be obeyed. Any attempt by the ayatollahs to second-guess the parliament and the Council of Ministers could provoke a crisis that would harm Iraq.

In rule by fiat, as was the case under Saddam Hussein, a single despot exercised power. In rule by the gun, a few thousand militiamen and other criminals project power through violence. In rule by fatwa, half a dozen mullahs claim the power of life and death over a nation. Only in a system based on free elections does everyone have a share of power.

Iraq has said goodbye to rule by fiat and is in no mood to succumb to rule by fatwa. The militias must be disarmed so that the new Iraqi state can grow.

Read the entire article.

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