Tag: Iran

Eli Lake has some details on the alleged plot:

Officials told The Daily Beast that President Obama first learned of the alleged plot in June, as undercover agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency were working on a sting against an Iranian American accused in court documents Tuesday of trying to pay Mexican gangsters to murder Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir…The plot, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday, was approved at the top levels of Iran's elite Quds Force, an organization the United States has accused in the past of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and plotting lethal attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The Quds is an arm of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard tasked with carrying out the Islamic regime’s agenda outside the country.

Ken Pollack worries that this attack marks a sea change toward aggressiveness in Iranian foreign policy. Daniel Serwer thinks the right response is ratcheting up international pressure on the nuclear program and calling Ahmadi's "bluff" on negotiations:

How do American diplomats make nice with Ahmedinejad while announcing to the world that Iran’s security forces have been plotting murder, even mass atrocity if one version of the alleged plot had taken place, inside the United States?  But it is precisely at a moment like this–when Iran is going to find itself weakened and isolated–that the international pressure might be sufficient to force progress on the nuclear issue, with the added potential benefit of further fragmenting a regime whose president and “supreme leader” are already on the outs.  Maybe taking up the offer privately, cautiously and conditionally would work too.

Robert Haddick focuses on the implications for our ability to deter Iranian attacks.

AG Holder alleges Iranian special operatives planned to bomb Saudi and Israeli targets in Washington, DC. Steve Clemons demands a response:

This is a serious situation — and this kind of assassination is the sort that could lead to an unexpected cascade of events that could draw the US and other powers into a consequential conflagration in the Middle East. If Iran was indeed willing to attack a Saudi Ambassador and close confidante of the Saudi King on US soil and countenance the death of 100-150 Americans, then the US has reached a point where it must take action.

Josh Rogin thinks we will be seeing one. Michael Rubin, bizarrely, blames Obama “projecting weakness” for the plot, though he also has a substantive take on who in the Iranian government might have been responsible for it. An Iranian reader close to the Green Movement is skeptical about the whole thing:

As you know this is a huge story with long term implications for US-Iran relations and possibly a turning point that could put the two countries on a collision course. But can it be true? There are lots of credible voices tonight raising red flags about jumping on the bandwagon. If, as the US government claims, they were trying to attack a restaurant where the Saudi ambassador frequented and had actually succeeded in killing him and possibly a few other Americans, that would have been considered an act of war by Iran. Now, I can’t think of one “sane” Iran expert who can look you straight in the eye and say the Iranians (or any of its elements) really want a war with US! 

In other words: what would the Iranian government gain from hitting the Saudi Ambo in DC? Nothing other than providing the excuse to AIPAC and neocons to push for a military attack! If Iran wants to hit its rival in the region, there are plenty of targets there, so why on earth would they do it on US soil? And why would they get some amateur 56-year-old Iranian who has been living in small town Texas for 30 years (with an American wife) to contact a Mexican Cartel on his own!!? Just sounds fishy.

It does a little. But this could be a rogue element in the Quds force. Or some function of Iranian factional politics. I would note, however, that leading nuclear scientists in Iran have also been assassinated in their cars by foreign agents, almost certainly the CIA or Mossad. But targeting a Saudi in Washington, a third country? Surreal.

Ray Takeyh and Ken Pollack support more coercion. Steve Walt counters:

Pollack and Takeyh never confront the inherent contradiction in the “two-track policy” (which, to repeat, they admit has been a failure). This policy is supposed to convince Tehran that the United States is not irrevocably hostile, and that we would really, really like to have a better relationship. It is also designed to convince Tehran that it has no need for a nuclear deterrent, or even a latent nuclear capability that could be used to get a bomb at some point down the road. But while we are supposedly trying to reassure Iran about our intentions, the United States has been ratcheting up sanctions, almost certainly engaging in covert action against the clerical regime, pointedly emphasizing that all options (including the use of force) are “on the table,” and making it abundantly clear that we would be perfectly happy if regime change occurred. 

Daniel Serwer mediates.

Albeit indirectly:

Perhaps the biggest achievement of negotiations to date has been their facilitation of the imposition of tough international sanctions against the Iranian government and its nuclear program. As a recent IAEA report revealed, these sanctions have been instrumental in slowing the progress of the Iranian program. This view is now shared by former Israeli defense officials such as Gabi Ashkenazi, who in a speech at the Brookings Institution stated that sanctions were the best course of action against Iran. Meanwhile, in a recent visit to the IAEA, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor acknowledged that sanctions against Iran could work. Another Israeli security official, speaking on background in an interview with the authors, said that, while Israelis initially "were skeptical about a possible positive outcome of the negotiations" in respect to the nuclear issue, "we recognize that they contributed to building international consensus." The fact that such statements are being made by officials of a country skeptical of sanctions speaks volumes.

And it was Obama's steadiness that brought this about. Contrast that with the clear indications from both Perry and Romney that they would encourage Israel to launch a military attack.

Lincoln Caplan reviews The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz:

The purpose of Miranda was to give every defendant the opportunity to protect himself in the criminal justice system, not just wealthy suspects with access to skilled lawyers who could help make a case that a confession was coerced and therefore involuntary. But the effect of Miranda was the opposite, Stuntz contended: The new rules gave suspects who could afford a skilled lawyer a “right to avoid police questioning altogether.” That was about one-fourth of criminal suspects. As for the other three-quarters, the warnings afforded few of them protection, because they didn’t understand what the warnings meant or, if they did, had no access to anyone who could enforce them. As long as the police could show they gave the warnings to the other three-quarters, they easily induced most suspects to waive their rights.

Meir Javendafar analyzes another blow to the Islamic Republic:

For Iran’s leaders, the margin of error for the economy is far smaller than for its foreign policy standing and influence. The recent news that China has scaled back its investment in Iran’s gas and oil sector should be particularly worrisome for Iran’s leaders — possibly worse even than events unfolding in Syria, because this directly impacts Iran’s economy, which gets majority of its income from its energy exports.

With majority of the world’s oil companies shunning Iran because of sanctions, China was one of the last countries which stood by Iran and its energy sector, which is in desperate need of investment and technological know-how. According to a study in a U.S. National Academy of Sciences publication in 2007, Iran could run out of oil for export by 2015. Lack of investment in the energy sector is one of the major reasons for this forecast.

by Patrick Appel

David Ansen reviews Circumstance, a new movie about a young Iranian lesbian couple:

The film, set in contemporary Tehran (though shot in Lebanon), will never be released in Iran, though you can be sure pirated DVDs will be a hot item on the black market. The Iranian-American writer and director, 36, who spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between the U.S. and the country of her parent's birth, knew even as she was writing it that making this movie would mean she could never return to Iran. Actually, that's not quite true, she explains with a laugh. "I can go back. I just can't leave."

Omid Memarian reports that some Iranian supporters of equality found the film lacking:

"The scene where the woman she loves [Atefeh] marries her brother, and she suffers for this is very real for me, as I experienced it in my own life,” Maryam, a lesbian told me from Iran under condition of anonymity. “But, overall, an Iranian lesbian would not enjoy watching this film, or find herself in it, though other viewers might find it interesting.  As a lesbian who is quite familiar with the lesbian lifestyle, I can say that instead of showing the hidden sides of the lesbian romance, this film is closer to a porn film, as it lacks depth and mostly shows the physical aspects of the relationship. Even the love-making scenes between the two girls seem to be more for making the film sexy than to discuss a social taboo." she said.

David Mattin interviews Iranian author and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi about her new book, The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny. One brother is a fierce monarchist, another a communist, and the youngest a devoted Muslim and follower of the ayatollah:

Each of these brothers follows a different ideology, and many Iranian families were split in this way. And as you see when you read the book, each brother finds a different fate. Of course, this isn't just the story of one family. In a microcosm, it's the story of the whole country.

Ebadi applies the moral of the story to the June 2009 protest:

My book shows that we must not allow ideology to become a prison that stops us from accepting anyone outside. Alongside ideology, you must also have liberal thinking. People must be free to choose a practical path. Fortunately, the Iranian people have reached political maturity. They now realise this.

A reader writes:

I currently live in Tehran and I thought you might find how the London riots are playing out here interesting. For the past few days, the regime has gleefully played scenes from the riots in London and has focused on the British police brutality on the State TV. Most of the scenes are basically the British police in full riot gear beating the living daylights out of any rioting youth they could get their hands on. This has been followed by commentary by the state TV on the class warfare and racial tensions that is supposedly inherent in the Western capitalist systems.

The message is basically, in the British/Western system, the rich can get away with destroying the world economy and they are even rewarded by massive bailouts while a 12 year old caught stealing candies during the riots will be thrown in jail for a long time.

Moreover, the commentators from the Islamic Republic regime are continuously pointing to Prime Minister Cameron's statement on how his government is looking at giving the police the power to shut down the SMS and Blackberry messaging systems in cases of emergency and control social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to prevent coordination between the rioters over and over again. This as well as the tough talk by Prime Minister Cameron on how the rioters are just "thugs" and they should be forcefully dealt with by the police has fully vindicated the actions of their own regime during the 2009 Iranian election protests in the minds of the Islamists in Iran.

And now the Iranian regime has cynically called for a UN investigation into the British treatment of its poor, minorities and youth. It has even summoned the British ambassador in Iran to explain the British government's violent response to the protests and there is talk of closing the British embassy due to its "poor" human rights record.

Overall, although not connected to each other, oddly enough, London riots and the British government's responses to it have had a very negative impact on Iran and its pro-democracy movement in so far as it has once again given the Islamist government another chance to point out the hypocrisy of the West in criticizing the harsh government response in Iran in 2009 and it has also allowed them to once again portray the Iranian pro-democracy protesters as stooges of Western imperialists.

Tony Karon thinks it's merely part of a strategy to shape Western policy:

The centerpiece of Israel's Iran strategy has been to cultivate the belief that if sanctions and other pressures fail to force Tehran to yield, Israel will feel compelled to go to take military action, even without U.S. backing. Israel said nothing at all before its 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, but scarcely a month has passed over the past three or four years without some new report calculated to create the impression that it was planning air strikes in Iran. The main line of criticism of Dagan in the Israeli camp did not challenge the content of what he said – that bombing Iran would be a catastrophic mistake, plunging Israel into a war it couldn't win but from there would be no exit; instead he was pilloried for giving the game away. 

Gary Sick concurs.