Archive for the 'Iran' Category

Meanwhile

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months ago
in Afghanistan, International, Iran, Middle East, USA and War
. 16 Comments

George W. Bush - or whomever is actually running the shop - is a rather busy lame duck. As well as the credit crunch, there’s there are all manner of foreign policy challenges which at any other time would be making headlines.

Number 1 cab off the rank is North Korea, who seem to be planning to fire up their nuclear infrastructure again. The Arms Control Wonk seems to think it’s because they’re peeved they haven’t been taken off the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Meanwhile, the US-led, NATO-labelled occupation of Afghanistan is sailing into rather interesting times. The pursuit of militants near - and possibly over - the Afghanistan-Pakistan border isn’t exactly thrilling the Pakistani government or the army. So much so, in fact, that they’ve started firing on NATO (which I assume means American) helicopters.

Whomever wins the US Presidency in November is going to have a pretty full slate.

UPDATE: I can has good grammar when I wantz… :)

Persepolis

Published
by
Darlene
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Film, TV, Video etc, Iran and Religion
. 6 Comments

There are moments in the film Persepolis when the animation makes you gasp at its ability to tell you so much in such apparently simple images.  Three notable instances of such illustrations are the young Marjane Satrapi morphing into the character we know so well from Munch’s The Scream, two snake-like female “guardians of the revolution” accosting Satrapi because of the way she’s dressed, and a young soldier slowly being blown to bits.  According to the movie (and one of the graphic novels it’s based on), such young men were given a plastic key that had been painted gold prior to going into battle as a symbol that soon they’d be entering the kingdom of heaven. 

Persepolis is about a precocious girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  It’s also about her travails in exile when her educated and liberal parents decide she needs to get out.  It’s an extraordinary achievement that manages to be funny, perceptive, shattering and educative about Iran and the West. 

Hillary to obliterate Iran, if not Obama

Published
by
Kim
7 months, 1 week ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Foreign Elections, Iran and USA
. 96 Comments

Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania by 10 points, enough to keep her increasingly destructive campaign alive.

What’s making me really angry is this sort of thing:

Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be. And I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society, because at whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel we would be able to totally obliterate them.

In her attempt to “muscle up” and prove her “experience” compared to Obama’s, she’s strayed very far into the bellicose posture usually found among the further reaches of GOP wingnut-dom or the Neocon thinktank and noise machine empire. Continue reading ‘Hillary to obliterate Iran, if not Obama’

More Iran sanctions

Published
by
Robert Merkel
9 months ago
in International, Iran, Middle East, Nuclear and War
. 30 Comments

In the wake of a new IAEA report on Iran, the UN Security Council has voted to impose more sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program, restricting the import of more dual-use technologies, and placing additional travel restrictions on people involved in the program.

If you want to read the IAEA report, it’s available here, though it’s pretty incomprehensible. A more accessible summary is provided by Andy Grotto at Arms Control Wonk: in essence, the Iranians have provided plausible explanations for some of the things they did during the 1990s and early 2000s, but they’ve simply denied the most, um, explosive allegations floating around.

Continue reading ‘More Iran sanctions’

“The last refuge of communication”

Published
by
Darlene
10 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Feminism and Iran
. 3 Comments

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Maryam Hosseinkhah

In Deborah Siegel’s book about conflicts within the feminist movement - or at least within the American feminist movement - Sisterhood Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, the author suggests that young feminists are largely conducting their battles on the Internet these days. Thus, blogs like feministing.com provide a forum for debates about whether “the new forms of public sexual expression…represent progress or regression”, among other issues. While discussions on feminist blogs created in democratic nations can get heated and abusive (usually due to comments being made by those who view feminism as a monolithic and totally negative force), it’s worth noting that the Iranian blogger, journalist, and women’s rights activist, Maryam Hosseinkhah, actually spent time in prison for her writings. According to Amnesty International’s website, “She was reportedly accused of “spreading lies” and “propaganda against the system” in connection with articles posted on websites she edits, but she has not yet been formally charged.” Ms Hosseinkhah was released earlier this month, however, the threat of having one’s blog filtered, or of even ending up in prison, remains a constant threat in Iran. According to an item written last year by Omid Mermarian, an Iranian journalist, blogger and women’s rights activist:
Continue reading ‘“The last refuge of communication”’

Nelson beats the drums of war against Iran

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
1 year, 1 month ago
in Iran and Middle East
. 59 Comments

Lately I’ve been having alarming episodes of déjà vu. As the drums of war beat louder for Iran, public utterances regarding the evil doings of Iran become increasingly common. One of the stranger ones is the idea that Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan.

There has been little evidence that Iran is supplying arms to the Taliban. It is possible that Iranian arms are ending up in Taliban hands similar to the way US weapons find their way to insurgent groups. It is a self-evident truths with little critical examination arising from the maxim that the enemy of my enemy if my friend. This thinking ignores the religious and political divides of the region. Which wouldn’t be the first time for US Middle Eastern policy.

With the sad death of an Australian solider in Afghanistan, Brendan Nelson decided he too should get in on drumming up support for a strike on Iran. The evidence is, well bugger all as Nelson admits. Given reports that Australia has “expressed interest” in an attack on Iran, Nelson’s comments aren’t that surprising and simply are an echo of current Bush Administration talking points.
Continue reading ‘Nelson beats the drums of war against Iran’

This is going to end well

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
1 year, 3 months ago
in Iran, Middle East, USA and War
. 74 Comments

Crazy president No 1 with plans to extend sphere of influence in the Middle East:

Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and the United States is rallying friends and allies to isolate Iran’s regime to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late

Crazy president No 2 with plans to extend sphere of influence in the Middle East:

They know that any action against the Iranian nation would be faced with a proper response

Dangerous provocative act by crazy president No 1’s armed forces:

The Iranian embassy in Baghdad says U.S. troops have freed seven Iranians hours after detaining them at a hotel in the Iraqi capital

An embassy official said the men were handed over to Iraqi authorities early Wednesday morning.

American troops raided Baghdad’s Sheraton hotel late Tuesday and seized the Iranians. Video footage also showed soldiers leaving the hotel with what appeared to be luggage and a laptop computer bag

Of course, crazy president No 2 has already had a go at dangerous provocation.

This is going to end well.

Note: The numerical designations of the crazy presidents is arbitrary. This is not to be taken as an indication of rank presidential craziness as, to be frank, they both seem equally insane.

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Leaving Iraq The Middle East

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, History, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, USA and War
. 43 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Gwynne Dyer’s The Mess They Made: The Middle East after Iraq:

As Gwynne Dyer argues in The Mess They Made, the Middle East is about to change fundamentally, and everything is now up for grabs: regimes, ethnic pecking-orders within states, even national borders themselves are liable to change without notice. Five years from now there could be an Islamic Republic of Arabia, an independent Kurdistan, a Muslim cold war between Sunnis and Shias, almost anything you care to imagine.

Dyer’s book is important because it’s one of the few books on the topic I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) to really make the effort to place the current conflicts in their long term historical perspective, and to speculate on a future beyond the immediate political and strategic context (although he nevertheless documents the now familiar litany of disasters that has characterised the Iraq War). He does, however, extrapolate from that context to a conclusion which I think is becoming inescapable - much as the Democrats, either through lack of courage or political calculation, might be prepared to maintain US forces in Iraq until the 2008 election, it’s almost certain that the “implosion of public support” for the war will see troops leave when a new President, of either party, is sworn in. Dyer adds his voice to those scholars and analysts who’ve seen the US war in Iraq as a monument to its decline, not a sign of its growing power. Further, he argues that it’s likely that the US will walk away from the Middle East in toto, and he suggests that may not be an undesirable outcome.

Continue reading ‘Leaving Iraq The Middle East’

Satanic verses indeed

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, International and Iran
. 38 Comments

I haven’t seen a better encapsulation of the context of the renewed threats against Salman Rushdie than this one from Lisa Appignanesi:

The decision of Iran’s foreign ministry to enter the fray by denouncing both Rushdie (”a hated apostate”) and his award (”an orchestrated act of aggression directed against Islamic societies”) is a repeat of the mistake which began with Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa on 14 February 1989. That killing review chose utterly to misunderstand the place fiction occupies in the west and subjected it to a fundamentalist jurisdiction which essentially recognises only one book and one truth. The journalists, writers and academics who languish in Iran’s prisons - no less than the translators and publishers of Rushdie’s novel who were murdered or attacked, from Norway to Japan - are a mark of the intolerance of any form of dissent which the fatwa represented.

Intimidation and silencing of the free expression of views and the creative freedom of writers is wrong no matter what the motivation. That phenomenon, of course, is much wider than Salman Rushdie, and writers face intimidation, official censure, prison, censorship, exile, violence and even death in many countries across the world. Anyone interested in supporting freedom of expression and informing themselves about the dimensions of the problem, which cuts across civilisations and religions, might consider visiting Pen International.

Iran links post

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Culture, Foreign policy, Iran and War
. 9 Comments

As is the way of the news and political cycles, hysteria about Iran has died down. Maybe this is an apposite moment to consider some perspectives which are actually informed by what goes on in Iran and what underlies the American and international responses, as opposed to geo-strategic and politically motivated tub thumping. I’ve come across three interesting articles on the intertubes in the past few days which I thought worth a link.

Niusha Boghrati looks at Ahminajed’s fading popularity.

War and Piece blogger and foreign affairs correspondent Laura Rozen sees the American posture in Iran being driven by the same illusions that characterised the neocon Iraq adventure, in conflict with a realist perspective embodied by Condi Rice.

And the pick of the bunch, for me, is this excellent review essay by Marla Braverman in Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation which looks at a couple of recent books on middle class youth cultural resistance to the theocratic regime. But it’s not as straightforward as it might seem.

Continue reading ‘Iran links post’

The Straight Talk Song Express

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Iran, Politics, USA and War
. 5 Comments

John McCain has been taking questions from supporters. His campaign team should advise him not to.

Continue reading ‘The Straight Talk Song Express’

Elect yourself another people

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Iran, Iraq, Politics and War
. 12 Comments

It’s always a very bad look for the right when they’re reduced, as they were when the American people failed to rally round impeachment of Clinton and were condemned by GOP pols and pundits as morally bankrupt, to suggesting that their fabbo leadership has been let down by a fickle populace. Paul’s already riffed off Janet Albrechtsen’s latest rant, calling her on her crud about Latham’s forestry policy. Paul Kelly, the ideologue par excellence of the punditarian ideologues, appears to have caught the same bug. It’s our fault if the terrsts win:

These are that the enemy is not the generic evil of terrorism. The enemy is Islamist terrorism as represented by al-Qa’ida and its non-state networks. This is not primarily a military threat but a global ideological and political threat that constitutes a crisis within a civilisation. This threat is long term and will demand from the West a response of hard and soft power including diplomacy, force, intelligence, law enforcement and economics; but, above all, it will demand an internal consensus on the nature of the threat that, at present, is missing from the democracies.

If anyone can make sense of that gibberish, perhaps they could also explain why none of the “justifications” for Iraq ever survive contact with reality these days, or even approach coherence.

Continue reading ‘Elect yourself another people’

Iran’s nuclear program “goes industrial” - or not?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 7 months ago
in Foreign policy, Iran, Middle East and Nuclear
. 25 Comments

Prepare for all manner of frothing at the mouth from wingnuts about Iran’s “industrial scale” enrichment program.

Just as a quick primer: like many elements, there are multiple types - isotopes - of uranium. From a chemistry perspective, they all behave identically. However, they weigh slightly different amounts, and of the two that occur naturally (uranium-235 and uranium-238) only the less common uranium-235 can be used directly in a nuclear weapon (uranium-238 can be made into plutonium in a nuclear reactor, though). Enrichment is the process of separating out the uranium-235 for one of two purposes - to make a mix of roughly 5% U-235 and 95% U-238 for use in a nuclear power reactor, or a mix of roughly 90% U-235 and 10% U-238 to make a nuclear bomb. Depending on the sophistication of the design, somewhere between 20 and 60 kilograms of this mix would be required for a bomb.

Because they behave essentially identically in chemical reactions, the main way to separate them is to take advantage of the slight difference in mass, and the standard method of doing so is to atomise the stuff (by making it into a gas) and spinning it in a centrifuge, a little like panning for gold. Iran has been trying to master this very difficult task for some time now, and the guts of their current announcement is that they now have 1,000 of their centrifuge designs going at once, and plan to go to 2 or 3000 soon.

So does this mean that Iran will be making nuclear weapons any time soon? Continue reading ‘Iran’s nuclear program “goes industrial” - or not?’

How dare those Limeys not give us more martyrs?

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 7 months ago
in Ethics and Iran
. 150 Comments

This is the frothing, eye-bulging reaction from some of the screeching warmonkeys pounding their keyboards in the US to the peaceful resolution of the British sailors’ hostage situation in Iran. Michelle Malkin, who has described the British personnel as “cringeworthy”, links approvingly to Townhall.com, where Dean Barnett commences the outrage:

A few weeks ago, 15 British seamen and marines, soldiers of the Royal Navy, found themselves in a similar quandary. Belligerent Iranians had surrounded them and threatened them with both words and actions. Just as the passengers on Flight 93 had a choice, so too did the British seamen who ultimately spent a couple of weeks as hostages of the Iranian regime. Why did these soldiers, the products of military training and representatives of Her Majesty’s flag, make the decision to surrender themselves? Because, according to their Captain at a Friday press conference, “Fighting back was simply not an option.?

What a strange and dismal trip it has been for the Western world, going from “Let’s Roll? to “Fighting Back Was Not An Option? in scarcely more than five years. One can only hope that when the history of our era is written, the former will turn out to be the immortal quote, not the latter.

Why yes, how absolutely awful for outnumbered military personnel who know their country is not at war with another country taking them into custody, to not open fire when that is explicitly against their own country’s Rules Of Engagement (ROE) and they know that it’s only their own lives at stake. A situation more exactly like the passengers on Flight 93 could hardly be imagined, could it?

Sticking to the ROE during and after capture, including conciliatory gestures, to keep a volatile situation down to a diplomatic incident rather than becoming an unplanned military venture is for sissies, obviously.

It gets worse in the comments: Continue reading ‘How dare those Limeys not give us more martyrs?’

Provocation

Published
by
suz
1 year, 7 months ago
in Iran, Iraq, Middle East, USA and War
. 56 Comments

I can’t be the only one who thought ‘Sarajevo’ when I first heard of the capture of British sailors by Iran. It had ‘casus belli’ written all over it. But that’s not how things have turned out … so far.

It’s hard to work out the truth about the capture and subsequent release of the sailors. It’s widely assumed in the west that they were manipulated into making their televised apologies while in captivity. Now the Iranians say their retrospective accounts of what happened in Iran have been dictated to them by their military superiors.

It’s no surprise to learn that the US offered to take military action on behalf of Britain in response to the capture - if it had been US sailors, there’d probably be an all-out war now.

That the British wanted the Americans to stay out of it and asked for GWB not to inflame things is notable. No doubt Blair realises that there is no heart in Britain for a war with Iran - as there is no heart for the war in Iraq.

Why then, within a day of the sailors’ release, does Blair make a provocative statement about Iran? Six British soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the past week. Commenting on the death rate, Blair said:

Now it is far too early to say the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists who were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident.

“But the general picture, as I said before, is that there are elements, at least, of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in Iraq…

Maybe this is a statement of appeasement towards the Americans, like throwing a bone to a dog. Or maybe Blair is right there with the Americans, chowing down on that Iran-war bone too?

Noam Chomsky has written about Iran in the context of the sharp disconnect between foreign policy as it is pursued by the elite in power in the USA and the wishes of the majority of the population. It’s increasingly clear - if it ever weren’t clear - that what we citizens of western democracies think and want is irrelevant to what our ‘leaders’ are doing in the middle east. It’s impossible to tell what’s gone on behind the scenes in this latest incident and it’s impossible to tell what might eventuate between the US and Iran in the coming weeks.