Israel might talk with Lebanon by reviving 1949 armistice commission - Haaretz - Israel News

Israel might talk with Lebanon by reviving 1949 armistice commission - Haaretz - Israel News

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US Hints of Containment Strategy On Iran

On Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes old statements from the fridge.

In an interview with the BBC, she casts doubt over the Islamic Republic readiness to respond to Washington's offer of engagement.

We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do, even now, despite our absolute condemnation of what they've done in the election and since. But I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now.

Last March Clinton told her UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the sidelines of the Egypt-hosted international conference on rebuilding Gaza that the US “was doubtful Iran would respond" to calls for an international dialogue.

On the other hand, while Clinton acknowledges that "the nuclear clock is ticking", her old-new statements on US's willingness to erect a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East if Iran continues its nuclear program, were read as another sign the Obama administration is preparing for the reality of an Iranian bomb.

Clinton had to elaborate later at a news conference that the administration was not abandoning current U.S. policy, which involves a combination of diplomatic outreach and sanctions to press Iran to give up a nuclear-weapons program.

However her statements are rather new nor personal.

During April's presidential hopefuls debate between Clinton and then Sen. Barack Obama, she said the following:

(The US) should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel.

In addition, some senior figures in the Obama administration have suggested that the United States might have to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, writes Paul Richter of the LA Times.

Defense Undersecretary Ashton B. Carter wrote before joining the administration that if diplomacy failed, the fallback was a policy of "containment and punishment."

Gary Samore, the chief of nonproliferation at the National Security Council, wrote before Obama was elected that Iran would probably act like other nuclear-armed states and was not likely to give terrorists the bomb.

A report released Last February by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy raised the idea of extended deterrence as a possible counter to an Iranian threat. Dennis Ross, a former Washington Institute fellow and now the Obama administration’s special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, signed the report.

Earlier in September 2008, Ross wrote the following in a report published by the Center for a New American Security.

Maybe, even if we engage the Iranians, we will find that however we do so and whatever we try, the engagement simply does not work. We will need to hedge bets and set the stage for alternative policies either designed to prevent Iran from going nuclear or to blunt the impact if they do.

The traces of the idea of a containment "nuclear umbrella" and what it implies of US readiness to live with a contained Iranian bomb, however, goes beyond statements and thoughts floated by people prior to joining the administration. In fact Haaretz Aluf Ben in December 2008 broke the news that the Obama administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran. According to the same source, the nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system.

The merits of the above deterrence strategy were hard tested yesterday. Israel and the United States scrapped on Thursday tests of the Arrow anti-missile system, under development by the two countries, due to last-minute technical problems.

In April, Israel reported successfully testing the system at home, intercepting and destroying a ballistic missile similar to Iran's Shahab-3, which can reach its soil.

While "Khammenejad" Splits Opposition Stands Firm

A Hot Air post explores a Khamenei-Ahmadinejad split. While Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered his protege president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to dismiss the choice of son’s father-in-law, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai for top deputy, Ahmadinejad insists on keeping Mashai in place.

In the Mean time Iran's opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi seems to be laying down the foundations of a civil disobedience campaign.

Revolutionary Guard Leading Iran?

From CBS.

Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard, has become the spine of a "military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system," according to an expert interviewed by The New York Times.

Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert who recently co-authored a study on the Guard for the RAND Corporation, argues that the military wing has greatly extended its power in Iranian politics and society amid the chaos following the contested June 12 presidential elections.

The Times article says the Guard is much more than a division of Iran's military — it has control over the country's missiles and at least some control over the nuclear program, but it also generates huge wealth through business enterprises ranging from laser-eye surgery to black market trading.

And the Guard is a great benefactor of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (a former member himself), who opposition leaders claim stole the election through massive, organized fraud.

Since he took office, according to The Times report, the Guard has won some 750 government contracts — none of which are subject to oversight by Iran's Parliament.

The Guard's fast-growing tentacles, which touch every aspect of Iranian life, combined with its lead role in the post-election crackdown on opposition voices, "has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup," according to the paper.

Obama's Iran Dilema

While Washington juggles two Iran timetables, spinning protesters in the streets and spinning centrifuges in nuclear plants, President Barack Obama is faced with the urgency to decide on the best way to defuse the Mullah's bomb.
Gerald F. Seib offers some answers in a good piece in WSJ.

Today's Friday Prayers in Iran

Below is the latest video of an Iranian opposition gathering during today's Friday prayer led by Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for the first time in eight weeks.
Rafsanjani stressed the fact that People is the source of legitimacy, saying that the Iranians lost their confidence in the regime. He maintained the opposition's position that doubt has been created about the election results" AP Reported.

One of Iran's top clerics criticized hard-liners at the main Islamic prayers Friday, saying the clerical leadership must clear up doubts over the disputed presidential election and should release opposition supporters arrested in the postelection crackdown.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who sits on two powerful clerical ruling bodies, made the comments during his sermon before tens of thousands of opposition supporters, with opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi sitting in the front row.

The opposition packed the prayer hall to make a show of strength at the weekly Islamic prayers, which broadcast live on radio and are one of Iran's most important and symbolic political platforms. It was Rafsanjani's first time delivering the sermon since the June 12 election. In recent weeks, hard-line clerics have been using the sermon to tell Iranians to fall in line behind Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and accept the election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rafsanjani urged unity and appeared to blame hard-liners for disrupting unity by not listening to the controversy over the election, which was declared a victory for Ahmadinejad but which Mousavi claims to have won.

"Doubt has been created (about the election results)," Rafsanjani said. "There are two currents. One doesn't have any doubt and is moving ahead with their job. And there are a large portion of the wise people who say they have doubts. We need to take action to remove this doubt."

He said the turmoil following the elections "was a bitter period ... all were the losers." He criticized hard-liners for the crackdown on postelection protests, saying they should show sympathy for those arrested.

"Sympathy must be offered to those who suffered from the events that occurred and reconcile them with the ruling system. This is achievable. We need to placate them," he told the worshippers in the Tehran University prayer hall.

"It's not necessary ... to keep individuals in jail. Let them join their families. We should not let enemies criticize or laugh at us ... for keeping our people in jail," he said.

Mousavi and his supports say Ahmadinejad's victory was fraudulent, and hundreds of thousands marched in the streets in the weeks after the election in support of him. But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sits at the top of Iran's clerical leadership, declared the results valid and ordered a stop to protests. Police, elite Republican Guards and Basiji militiamen launched a fierce crackdown on protesters in which hundreds were arrested and at least 20 killed — though human rights groups say the figure could be several times that official toll.

The opposition has managed to hold only one significant protest since — on July 9. But they are hoping their mass turnout at Friday's prayers will prove their staying power.

Tens of thousands — mostly pro-opposition but also some government backers — packed the prayer hall and shouted competing slogans. Hard-liners made traditional chants of "death to America," while opposition supporters countered with "death to Russia" — a reference to government's ties to Moscow. Many pro-reform worshippers wore green headbands or wristbands or had green prayer rugs — the opposition movement's color.

At the same time, thousands more opposition backers were heading toward Tehran University for a planned rally outside the campus after the prayers, raising fears of a confrontation with security forces or with hard-line militiamen, witnesses said.

Near the university gates, police fired tear gas at Mousavi supporters as they headed for the prayers, witnesses said. They spoke on condition of anonymity fearing government retaliation.

Two pro-reform Web sites reported that a prominent women's rights activist, Shadi Sadr, was beaten by plainclothes militiamen and taken away as she headed toward Tehran University. Sadr was forcible pushed into a car and taken to an unknown location, Mousavi's Web site http://www.mowjcamp.com and a women's activists site http://www.meydaan.com said.

Senior cleric says leaders of Iran are unfit to rule

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, one of Iran’s most senior clerics, called the country’s rulers “usurpers and transgressors” for their treatment of opposition protesters in recent weeks, Robert F. Worth reported for NY Times.
The decree did not mention by name Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was clearly aimed at the clerical leadership.

One of Iran’s most senior clerics issued an unusual decree on Saturday calling the country’s rulers “usurpers and transgressors” for their treatment of opposition protesters in recent weeks, in the strongest condemnation by a religious figure since the contested presidential election a month ago.

The decree by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident who has often criticized Iran’s ruling clerics, did not mention by name Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was clearly aimed at the clerical leadership.

Posted on the Web site of Mohsen Kadivar, a dissident cleric and former student of Ayatollah Montazeri, the ruling said the recent arrests and shootings of protesters were proof that Iran’s leaders are unqualified to rule the community of Muslims.

“In my estimate this is the strongest criticism ever of the supreme leader,” said Rasool Nafisi, a United States-based academic and Iran expert. “Although it doesn’t mention Ayatollah Khamenei by name, it is clear he is referring to him.”

It is unlikely that the decree, or fatwa, will have any immediate effect in Iran, where opposition figures have already made their positions clear. Some prominent clerics, including Ayatollah Montazeri, have joined political figures in criticizing the government crackdown on street protests in recent weeks, and have said that they believed the election was rigged.

But mostly they have done so in cautious terms. None have made sweeping attacks on the government’s credentials like the one issued Saturday.

“It will have a much stronger effect if other senior clerics, who have also felt the danger, join Montazeri and issue these kinds of statements,” said one political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “But it will not become mainstream as long as only an individual cleric uses such strong terms.”

Although Ayatollah Montazeri has long been known as a critic of the government, his opinions have weight because of his seniority in Iran’s religious establishment, and because he was a key proponent of wilayat faqih, or rule by clerics — the theoretical underpinning of Iran’s theocracy.

Ayatollah Montazeri, 87, was a leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and was once designated the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But he fell out with Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 over the execution of a large group of prisoners and other policies he deemed unjust.

The ruling came as news agencies reported that Iran’s foreign minister announced that the government was preparing a new package of “political, security and international” issues to put to the West. The minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said at a news conference that “the package can be a good basis for talks with the West,” Reuters reported.

Mr. Mottaki’s statement was Iran’s first response to comments on Wednesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Italy, where he said the major powers would give Iran until September to accept negotiations over its nuclear program or face tougher sanctions. President Obama echoed that warning on Friday.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto.

The New Democrats: An intellectual history of the Green Wave.

Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, offers in this piece in The New Republic a brilliant insight at the change of the Iranian regime modus operandi brought in by Khomeini. This change puts "sharia" second to the interests of the regime and revolves around a new the concept of "maslaha".

What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism--a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century.

Shiism, like most religions, is no stranger to heated schisms. Shia and Sunnis split over the question of whether Muhammad had designated his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor (Shia believed he had). Some Shia, called Alawites, believe the only divinely designated successor was Ali, while another group, Zaydis, believe there were four imams. A large, intellectually vibrant third group is known as the Ismailis because it believes the line of imams ended with the seventh, Ismail. And the largest Shia sect is called the Ithna Ashari--or the Twelvers. Dominant in Iran, they believe in twelve imams and posit that the last imam went into hiding some 1,100 years ago. His return, bloody and vengeful, will mark the redemptive dawn of the age of justice.

It is within this branch that a further split took place beginning in the late nineteenth century--the moment when the Iranian elite began to confront the challenge of modernity. Ideas like rationalism, individualism, constitutionalism, rule of law, equality, democracy, secularism, privacy, and separation of powers began to find currency in Iran's political discourse. By 1905, these ideas, prevalent primarily among the intelligentsia, led to the Constitutional Revolution--the first of its kind in the Muslim world. The Shia clergy were faced with a historic challenge not unlike what the Catholic Church experienced with the advent of the Renaissance. How two rival ayatollahs reacted to that challenge would divide Iranian Shiism--and lay the groundwork for what is taking place today.

Over the years, many scholars, both in Iran and the West, have argued over the years that Shiism shares less with Islam than with pre-Islamic Persian ideas. They point to the fact that, while Iran became Muslim in the seventh century, it refused to accept Arabic as its language. Islam won the battle, these historians argue, but pre-Islamic ways and values won the war by surviving in a Shia veneer. As an example, they cite the Zoroastrian belief in messianic eschatology. The messianic role of the twelfth imam, they say, is essentially a Muslim version of the same Zoroastrian idea. Shiism, according to this view, is really a thinly disguised form of Iranian nationalism. And this helps explain why so much of Iran's political debate has over the years played out in the realm of theology.

The roots of Iran's current divide to a great extent lie at the turn of the century, when the country's ayatollahs essentially split into two camps on questions of religion and politics. The first was led by Ayatollah Na'ini, an advocate of what is called the "Quietist" school of Shiism--today best exemplified in the character and behavior of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq. According to Na'ini, true "Islamic government" could only be established when the twelfth imam returned. Such a government would be the government of God on earth: Its words, deeds, laws, and courts would be absolute and could tolerate no errors. But humans, Na'ini said, were fallible and thus ill-fitted to the sacred task of establishing God's government. As the pious await the return of the infallible twelfth imam, they must in the interim search for the best form of government. And the form most befitting this period, Na'ini argued, was constitutional democracy. The role of ayatollahs under this arrangement would be to "advise" the rulers and ensure that laws inimical to sharia were not implemented. But it would not be to rule the country themselves.

Opposing Na'ini was an ayatollah named Nuri. He dismissed democracy and the rule of law as inferior alternatives to the divine, eternal, atemporal, nonerrant wisdom embodied in the Koran and sharia. As Ayatollah Khomeini would declare more than once, his own ideas were nothing but an incarnation of Nuri's arguments. But for the moment, at least, those ideas were on the defensive. It would be decades before they would reemerge to dominate Iranian politics.

Na'ini's paradigm, and the idea that Shiism must reinvent itself, continued to beget newer and more radical interpretations. During the Reza Shah period (1925-1941), as the clergy came under direct pressure from a forced secularism modeled on Ataturk's Turkey, a number of ideas critical of traditional Shiism began to take shape. Iranian reformers at the time called for a more rational, less rigid Shiism, and an end to the self-mutilation that takes place annually in honor of the third imam's martyrdom. They went so far as to advocate abolishing the dominant role of the clergy. Even in the conservative city of Qom, reformist ideas about Shiism found popularity in a magazine published by the son of a cleric. Ayatollah Khomeini's first book was a response to these arguments, calling them sacrilege and asking the pious to cleanse the nation of such heretical ideas.

The 1940s in Iran were a period of rising political aspirations. Marxist ideas began to dominate the intellectual discourse, while democratic ideas began to permeate middle-class life. Faced with these new challenges, Shiism again tried to reinvent itself in ways that made it intellectually competitive. Mehdi Bazargan, at the time a professor of engineering--and destined to become the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic--tried to use the laws of thermodynamics to prove the existence of God. Another activist, based in the city of Mashhad, founded a group called the Movement of God-Worshipping Socialists, arguing that, long before Marx, Muhammad had been a proletarian revolutionary. In the smithy of this city's rapidly changing intellectual landscape, two young men were educated. One was named Ali Khamenei, and the other was named Ali Shariati.

Today, Khamenei is the intransigent and embattled Supreme Leader. And Shariati, who some have called the Luther of Shiism, would become his faith's most influential reformer. His eclectic use of Marx, Freud, Sartre, and Fanon, and his attempt to combine them with elements of Shia faith, allowed him to create an ideology appealing to the intelligentsia and the Iranian middle class. It was part fashionable piety (the way Kabbalah is the spiritual fad of Hollywood) and part facile radicalism. From Fanon, he borrowed the idea of the redemptive power of violence, and from Marx, he learned about the evils of alienation. He called for a Shiism bereft of the clergy, accusing them of offering a reactionary and deeply neutered rendition of Islam. What he lacked in theoretical rigor and intellectual depth he more than made up for with the power of his oratory. To many in the current generation of reformists, he is known simply as "the teacher." He provided the possibility of a new reading of Shiism--one as compatible with Marx's idea of praxis as with Muhammad's notion of piety.

But, as soon became evident, Shariati's ultimate goal was less the reform of Shiism than using it as an instrument for social change. Many of today's reformists, though inspired by his ideas, have not adopted this "instrumental" disposition toward their religion. Ironically, however, one person who did come to share Shariati's "instrumental" attitude toward Islam was Ayatollah Khomeini. And this is an area where the traditions of Na'ini and Nuri--that is, reform and absolutism--would combine to legitimize despotism.

Before coming to power, Khomeini argued that the most important duty, indeed the raison d'etre of an Islamic government, was to implement fully the tenets of sharia. But once in power and faced with the complexities of modern Iranian society, he subtly changed the very foundation of his theory. He introduced the concept of maslaha--interests of the regime--and declared, much to the consternation of nearly every other ayatollah, that these interests, as determined by him or his successor, would supersede even the fundamentals of Islam. In other words, the state was everything--and sharia was nothing but its legitimizing narrative, a narrative that could be suspended at the will of the leader.

Khomeini muddled the Na'ini and Nuri traditions in another way as well: Aware that people wanted democracy in 1979, he pretended to be in the Na'ini camp. He even promised that he wouldn't allow a single cleric to hold a position of executive authority. After taking office, however, he would use an iron fist to implement the Nuri vision.

Iranians rightly felt stung by this development. But reformers in the Na'ini tradition did not give up. Betrayed by Khomeini, they became as interested in political strategy as in theological innovation. Saeed Hajjarian, once a mastermind of the regime's intelligence agency, turned into an Andropov-style reformer. He argued that a frontal assault on the country's bastions of power was impractical. Instead, he called for his allies to mobilize the masses and use them as bargaining chips with Iran's rulers--a strategy by which he thought reformers could gradually chip away at the absolute power of the clerics. Other reformers, foremost among them Akbar Ganji, dismissed Hajjarian's strategy as unworkable. The only way out of the current morass, Ganji said, was to use the invincible power of peaceful civil disobedience.

Then there were the ideas of Iranian intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush. Around 1990, he published a seminal series of articles questioning the epistemological foundations of Khomeini's concept of velayat-e-faqih, the guardianship of the jurist. Soroush argued that any cognition of sacred text is ultimately no more than a mere mortal's cognition--and thus, contingent and relative, not absolute. Privileging one person's reading of these texts over others, he said, was an arbitrary political decision with no theological validity. Not surprisingly, Soroush's essays created an uproar in Iran. Apologists for the regime attacked him for channeling "Zionist" ideas, while many in the reform movement began to apply the same decidedly democratic principles to other arenas. The essays were also the beginning of Soroush's own odyssey, which took him from being an ally--if not a theorist--of the regime to being one of its most intractable and influential critics.

In recent years, many Shia intellectuals have traveled the same path as Soroush. Hitherto sacred topics--the life of the prophet, the nature of his mission, the meaning of the Koran, the place of metaphor in sacred texts, and, most importantly, the role of women--have been hotly debated. Those who voted for Khatami in 1997; the student movement of 1999; the recent struggle of the bus drivers' union for the rights of its workers; the relentlessly defiant but peaceful women's movement, particularly the attempt to solicit one million signatures in favor of reforming discriminatory laws; and, now, the green uprising of 2009--all owe something to the tradition that Na'ini established more than 100 years ago.

This tradition has not always found itself on the side of the angels: For instance, many Na'ini disciples, worried about the creeping influence of communism, supported the Shah against Mossadegh in 1953. Moreover, like any diffuse intellectual tradition, it has spawned its share of destructive ideas and has sometimes been co-opted by its opponents. But it has also achieved something very valuable: It has kept alive the hope, through heady times and dark ones, that a different Shiism, and therefore a different Iran, was possible. Just as Shiism has been a thinly disguised manifestation of Iranian nationalism, the reform movement has been, from Na'ini to Mousavi, a thinly pious veneer for a country's relentless quest for democracy.

Khamenei's son takes control of Iran's anti-protest militia

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor for the Guardian, reports on Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader son and his alleged role in the crackdown against the protesters in Iran.

The son of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has taken control of the militia being used to crush the protest movement, according to a senior Iranian source.

The source, a politician with strong connections to the security apparatus, said that the leading role being played by Mojtaba Khamenei had dismayed many of the country's senior clerics, conservative politicians and Revolutionary Guard generals.

But these conservatives are reluctant to challenge the Khameneis openly out of fear that any conflict would destabilise the Islamic Republic and weaken Iran in the region. Instead they will use their positions in the organs of state to make it hard for the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to govern.

"This game has not finished. The game has only just started," the source said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his own position in Iran.

He said Mojtaba had played a leading role in orchestrating Ahmadinejad's disputed election victory on 12 June and had led the backlash against protests through direct control of street militias, known as basiji.

The official death toll from that backlash is less than 20 but, according to a Tehran doctor who has given his account to the Guardian, the actual number is much higher – 38 in the first week at his hospital alone. He said the basiji covered up the deaths and pressured doctors not to talk.

"Mojtaba is the commander of this coup d'etat. The basiji are operating on Mojtaba's orders, but his name is always hidden in all of this. The government never mentions him," the Iranian politician said. "Everyone is angry about this. The maraji [Iran's most senior ayatollahs] and the clerics are angry, the conservatives are very angry and strongly critical of Mojtaba. This situation cannot continue with so many people on the top against it."

Very little is known about Mojtaba Khamenei. He is the supreme leader's second son, reportedly being groomed to succeed his father. Such a dynastic succession would be very hard under present circumstances as the leader is supposed to be chosen by a clerical assembly of experts on the basis of the candidate's religious standing. Mojtaba wears clerical robes but by no means has the theological status to rise to the top job. A major upheaval in the clerical establishment would be required to arrange it.

Within Iran, Mojtaba is widely believed to control huge financial assets. There are claims on Iranian dissident websites that the current anti-British campaign in Tehran is motivated in part by Britain's announcement on 18 June that it had frozen nearly £1bn in Iranian assets, in accordance with UN and EU sanctions. The frozen funds included a lot of Mojtaba's money, it is claimed.

Mojtaba's name does not appear on the Treasury's list of targets of those sanctions, but one British official said the supreme leader's son may operate through state-run enterprises that are listed. "I'd be amazed if some of the money wasn't his," the official said.

The Iranian politician who spoke to the Guardian said the supreme leader had long been leaking support among the religious hierarchy on which his powerbase was once built and had now virtually lost it altogether. Among the roughly 20 maraji ("sources of emulation", from whose ranks the supreme leader is supposed to be chosen), he said Khamenei could only rely on the support of a handful.

He said that an axis of lay conservatives in important positions would also try to hinder Ahmadinejad's efforts to wield power. That axis includes Ali Larijani, the parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the Tehran mayor, and Mohsen Rezai, one of the defeated presidential candidates and the secretary of the expediency council, which mediates disputes between the clerical and lay state institutions. They would be supported by the opposition's most powerful backer behind the scenes, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the expediency council and the assembly of experts.

The Iranian source also claimed there were splits in another pillar of the Islamic Republic, the Revolutionary Guard. The overall commander, General Ali Jafari, and the Tehran province commander, General Ali Fazli, were opposed to Mojtaba's power grab.

He said the hardline statements issued in the Revolutionary Guard's name, threatening a "decisive confrontation" with protesters, were the work of the political and public relations departments, which are under the direct control of Ahmadinejad, and did not represent a united position. That is a controversial claim. Most analyses have presented the Revolutionary Guard as monolithic and entirely behind the regime.

For revolutionary stalwarts uneasy over the direction of the regime, open rebellion was unthinkable, the politician said. "For them, the red line is the stability of the country," he said. "They will continue softly."

He said this hidden internecine struggle would last a considerable period and the outcome was far from clear. The only certainty was that the Khameneis and Ahmadinejad had not yet won. "They control things on the surface," he said. "But Iranians are not sheep."

Bush Deserves More Credit on Iran

In a very well written piece in WSJ, John Hannah discusses the claims that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach, unlike his predecessor's approach, emboldened Iranians to rise up against their regime, demanding it repair relations with America and the world.

Hannah, who served on former Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff from 2001-2009, suggests that the recent event in Iran underscores the fact the President Bush got some important things concerning Iran right.

Defying their regime once more, Iranians have renewed their protests in the streets of Tehran. Last month, when the protests began, the New York Times ran a story hinting that Iran's demonstrators may have been inspired by an "Obama factor." The article suggested that President Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach, unlike his predecessor's approach, emboldened Iranians to rise up against their regime, demanding it repair relations with America and the world.

The Times reporter drew a stark contrast between the presidency of George W. Bush and that of Mr. Obama. According to the article, "Iran's regime was able to coalesce support by uniting the country against a common enemy: President Bush, who called Iran a pillar of the 'axis of evil.'" Alarmed by Mr. Bush's hostility, Iranians "swallowed their criticism of [their] hard-line regime and united against the common enemy."

Setting aside the article's claims about an "Obama effect," its characterization of the Bush years is unfair and misleading. As someone who served in Mr. Bush's White House, I can attest that the administration's Iran policy was far from perfect. The Islamic Republic's ongoing nuclear program is proof enough of the policy's serious shortcomings. Yet, in light of recent events, it seems apparent that Mr. Bush got some important things concerning Iran right.

First, some facts. Mr. Bush delivered his infamous "axis of evil" speech in January 2002. On several occasions thereafter he followed up with statements harshly attacking the legitimacy of the Iranian regime. He repeatedly distinguished between the people of Iran and their "unelected rulers."

Did Mr. Bush's confrontational posture really lead Iranians to rally behind the regime? Hardly. In November 2002 and again in June 2003, student-led protests rocked Tehran and other Iranian cities, as the New York Times itself acknowledged at the time. In both cases, demonstrators' demands included sweeping democratic reforms. During the 2002 clashes (which dragged on for weeks), the Times reported that protesters had been "boldly critical of the government, including the supreme religious leader [Ali Khamenei], who is normally beyond criticism." The protestors called for the "secularization of the religious system" -- an end to clerical rule.

Similarly, in June 2003, protesters rapidly focused on the need for fundamental change. A manifesto signed by hundreds of intellectuals and clerics declared that Ayatollah Khamenei's claims to absolute power were "a clear heresy towards God and a clear affront to human dignity." The BBC reported that chants of "Death to Khamenei" were heard at the rallies. More than 4,000 people were arrested before the demonstrations were suppressed.

The reality is that large-scale anti-regime protests erupted on multiple occasions throughout Mr. Bush's first term -- the very moment when his Iran policy was most aggressive. The suggestion that Iranians "swallowed their criticism" of the Islamic regime in an anti-American response to Mr. Bush's tough stance is simply not borne out by the facts.

The current crisis in Iran undermines another conventional wisdom about Mr. Bush's Iran policy. Many believe that his policy was grounded in ideology rather than realism. But Mr. Bush's assessment of Iran has so far proven much more accurate than Mr. Obama's. In his eagerness to draw Iran's rulers into negotiations, Mr. Obama has gone to great lengths to signal his acceptance of the Islamic Republic's legitimacy and permanence. In stark contrast, Mr. Bush always understood that large swaths of Iranian society do not consider their regime to be legitimate. They detest it and yearn for freedom and democracy. Mr. Bush knew that regime change was not the crazed fantasy of a small cabal of American neoconservatives. It was the deepest desire of tens of millions of Iranians.

Iran's recent turmoil also sheds light on Mr. Bush's conviction about pressuring the Iranian regime. Critics warned that Mr. Bush's attempt to isolate Iran diplomatically, sanction it economically, and threaten it militarily would trigger a nationalist backlash against Washington. But Mr. Bush believed that such efforts were essential. They would alert the Iranian people, as well as Iran's elites, to the disastrous consequences of the Islamic Republic's policies.

Today, Iran's burgeoning opposition is clearly angered by the country's dismal economy, ashamed of its status as an international pariah, and alarmed by the growing danger of military conflict. Opposition members will not accept the regime's efforts to scapegoat the U.S. Instead, their fury has been directed inward at the brutality, economic mismanagement, and outrageous behavior of the Islamic regime.

As Mr. Obama reassesses his Iran policy in the wake of the Iranian protests, he could do worse than to incorporate at least a few pointers from Mr. Bush's playbook. That would mean an adjusted Iran strategy that sees the Iranian people as allies of the Free World, not the Islamic Republic. It would also mean spending less time trying to reassure Iran's despotic rulers of the U.S.'s benign intentions. Mr. Obama should instead spend more time on using his enormous international popularity to further mobilize the world against Iran's tyrants.

Iranian TV propaganda

Below is a newly posted video on YouTube (with English subtitles) shows what appears to be a series of interviews on Iranian television with people who say they were inspired by the Voice of America and the BBC to take part in the demonstrations. The interview subjects say the protesters damaged property and threw stones — despite appeals from Basij militia members.



The images below, published by IRNA itself, reveal another dimention of Iranian autorities' propaganda.
These are images from the recent Guardians Council TV broadcast session where they 'recounted' some ballot boxes and found out that indeed Ahmadinejad's votes were higher than previously counted.
As you could see from picture 1 and 2 the ballots that are being recounted are fresh, crisp, unfolded sheets, while people typically had to fold these sheets before they can slip them into the ballot boxe.
In picture number 3 you could easily notice that the handwriting on so many of the sheets which are votes for 'Ahmadinejad' are the same handwriting.