All Entries Tagged With: "Iran"

Iranians Betrayed by Obama Administration

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 9:34 AM By: Kenneth R. Timmerman  Newsmax.com

More than 1.5 million protesters took to the streets of Tehran on Monday, marking the largest anti-regime demonstration Iran has seen since the final days of the shah in early 1979.

Seven people were killed by anti-riot police and roving bands of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supporters. Many of those supporters shielded their faces from surveillance videos that plainclothes police were shooting.

The protesters included some unlikely participants: 16 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers pledged to join the people’s movement, according to initial reports from Tehran. That signaled that the once-solid support of the guard corps for Ahmadinejad is beginning to crack.

The 16 officers were arrested after meeting secretly with top regular army officers on Monday night.

Many of the older men and women who took to the streets also demonstrated to bring down the shah 30 years ago, wrote Kaveh Mohseni, who publishes the French-language Web site, Iran-Resist.

Now, “people are waiting for international support,” Mohseni wrote.

That support wasn’t coming — at least not from President Barack Obama’s administration in Washington.

"It is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be. We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran," Obama said during the weekend.

He reiterated his long-held position that his administration wants to pursue a "tough, direct" dialogue with Tehran.

For many Iranians, Obama’s words were reminiscent of President Bill Clinton, who washed his hands when reporters asked him on July 9, 1999, whether the United States would come to the aid of Iranian students who were revolting in 18 cities across Iran.

America could do nothing, Clinton said — echoing almost exactly the taunt Ayatollah Khomeini had used repeatedly during the revolution.

The Obama administration’s quandary comes after it covertly threw its support behind the election campaign of former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Mousavi made his first appearance since the election at Monday’s rally.

Many in the crowd wore red scarves, a color favored by supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah.

In two messages in Persian, widely circulated through the Internet during the weekend, Pahlavi called for nationwide nonviolent resistance to the regime — the first time he has called for an open revolt since leaving Iran in 1979.

“I stand united with my fellow Iranians and call for the end of the Islamic Republic, or any other prefix in front of the name of my beloved Iran that indicates theocracy or any other form of disregard for democratic and human rights,” he said in one of the messages.

To some, this latest protest — and similar demonstrations in Shiraz, Kerman, Isfahan, Mashad, Tabriz, Rasht, and other major Iranian cities — shows that the regime finally has awakened Iran’s silent majority.

In Tabriz, there were reports that the city’s business district had shut down on Sunday as a sign of joining the anti-regime protests. Many of the protesters shouted, “Death to the dictator,” a slogan not heard in large crowds of demonstrators for decades.

“The protests are a natural expression of the frustration and insult that have been dealt by the regime,” said Roozbeh Farahanipour, a leader of the 1999 student revolt who now is the spokesman for the nationalist Marze por Gohar (Glorious Frontiers Party). “Iranians will tolerate a lot, as the last 30 years attest to, but being treated as stooges is where they draw the line.”

In Tehran on Monday, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that former President Mohammad Khatami traveled to Cairo during Obama’s trip there and met with a “senior administration official” to discuss the upcoming Iranian election.

Although Ahmadinejad controls the news agency, Iranian observers believed the report was accurate, because it is hard to openly slander such a public person as a former president even in Iran.

Newsmax asked spokesmen for Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to comment on the allegation but received no reply.

Earlier, there were reports that a senior administration official met with Mousavi’s campaign manager, Mehdi Khazali, in Dubai two weeks before the election to offer support.

In the days before the election, editors at the Voice of America’s Persian Service apologized to anti-regime Iranians they normally invite to their shows, saying they no longer could appear on the air because the editors were under orders to invite only guests who supported “reformist” candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi.

On Tuesday morning, the Guardians Council in Tehran announced it would engage in only a “limited recount” of individual ballot boxes whose results had been disputed by one of Ahmadinejad’s three opponents, erasing earlier hopes that they might annul the disputed election because of fraud.

Getting the Guardians to examine the election results at all took a great deal of pressure.

When Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei first announced Ahmadinejad’s victory, he defiantly called the election a “divine assessment” and certified the results immediately.

But pressure from within the ruling clerical elite gave him pause.

The next day, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani announced with great fanfare that he was traveling to Qom, 80 miles south of Tehran, to convene the Assembly of Experts, a council of 86 top clerics who have the authority to name the supreme leader, or depose him.

Rafsanjani chairs the Assembly of Experts and said he wanted them to examine Khamenei’s decision to certify the election, giving rise to rumors that he was hoping to depose Khamenei as leader.

Monday’s massive demonstration also suggests that the Iranian people have loosened the shackles of fear, Kaveh Mohseni said.

In a third message to Iranians, Reza Pahlavi called on the police and security forces to “never forget that these demonstrators confronting you in the streets are your brothers and sisters who are fighting for your rights.”

Joining him was his mother, who spoke to the security forces “as a mother and as an Iranian” to encourage them “not to use violence against their brothers and sisters.”

Iranian political activists have long criticized Reza Pahlavi for his inaction, and U.S. government analysts say they doubt that he has many supporters inside Iran.

But the protests inside Iran go way beyond one person, one faction, or one party. They have become a national grass-roots movement, a budding revolt that could soon reach a tipping point. And a regime change could spark reform in other areas.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer said, “Our only hope of changing the nuclear issue with Iran is not in the negotiations. It would be in the change of regime.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Welcome back Carter/Obama/Carter, etc. It’s so confusing.

(c) 2009 Ann Coulter 6/10/9 (title courtesy of site admin, ray holt)

Well, I’m glad that’s over! Now that our silver-tongued president has gone to Cairo to soothe Muslims’ hurt feelings, they love us again! Muslims in Pakistan expressed their appreciation for President Barack Obama’s speech by bombing a fancy hotel in Peshawar this week.

Operating on the liberal premise that what Arabs really respect is weakness, Obama listed, incorrectly, Muslims’ historical contributions to mankind, such as algebra (actually that was the ancient Babylonians), the compass (that was the Chinese), pens (the Chinese again) and medical discoveries (huh?).

But why be picky? All these inventions came in mighty handy on Sept. 11, 2001! Thanks, Muslims!!

Obama bravely told the Cairo audience that 9/11 was a very nasty thing for Muslims to do to us, but on the other hand, they are victims of colonization.

Except we didn’t colonize them. The French and the British did. So why are Arabs flying planes into our buildings and not the Arc de Triomphe? (And gosh, haven’t the Arabs done a lot with the Middle East since the French and the British left!)

In another sharks-to-kittens comparison, Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life."

So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don’t have enough female firefighters here in America.

Delusionally, Obama bragged about his multiculti worldview, saying, "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal." In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, women "choose" to cover their heads on pain of losing them.

Obama rolled out the crucial liberal talking point against America’s invasion of Iraq, saying Iraq was a "war of convenience," while Afghanistan was a "war of necessity." Liberals cling to this nonsense doggerel as a shield against their hypocrisy on Iraq. Either both wars were wars of necessity or both wars were wars of choice.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan — nor any country — attacked us on 9/11. Both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as many other Muslim countries, were sheltering those associated with the terrorists who did attack us on 9/11 — and who hoped to attack us again.

The truth is, all wars are wars of choice, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Gulf War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. OK, maybe the war on teen obesity is a war of convenience, but that’s the only one I can think of.

The modern Democrat Party chooses — really chooses, not like Saudi women "choosing" to wear hijabs — to fight no wars. But the Democrats couldn’t say that immediately after 9/11, so they pretended to support the war in Afghanistan and then had to spend the next 7 1/2 years trying to come up with a distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq.

Maybe next they can tell us why fighting Hitler — who never invaded the U.S. and had no plans to do so — was a "necessity" in a way that fighting Saddam wasn’t. (Obama on Hitler: "Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale." Whereas Saddam Hussein was just messing with the Kuwaitis, Kurds and Shiites.)

Meanwhile, Muslims throughout the Middle East are yearning for their own Saddam Husseins to be taken out by U.S. invaders so they can be liberated, too. (Then we’ll see how many women — outside of an American college campus — "choose" to wear hijabs.) The war-of-choice/war-of-necessity point must be as mystifying to a Muslim audience as a discussion of gay marriage.

Arabs aren’t afraid of us; they’re afraid of Iran. But our aspiring Jimmy Carter had no tough words for Iran. To the contrary, in Cairo, Obama endorsed Iran’s quest for nuclear "power," while attacking — brace yourself — America for helping remove Iranian loon Mohammad Mossadegh.

The CIA’s taking out Mossadegh was probably the greatest thing that agency ever did. This was back in 1953, before it became a collection of lawyers and paper-pushers.

Mossadegh was as crazy as a March hare (which is really saying something when your competition is Moammar Gadhafi, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein). He gave interviews lying in bed in pink pajamas. He wept, he fainted, and he set his nation on a path of permanent impoverishment by "nationalizing" the oil wells, where they sat idle after the British companies that knew how to operate them pulled out.

But he was earthy and hated the British, so left-wing academics adored Mossadegh. The New York Times compared him to Thomas Jefferson.

True, Mossadegh had been "elected" by the Iranian parliament — but only in the chaos following the assassination of the sitting prime minister.

In short order, the shah dismissed this clown, but Mossadegh refused to step down, so the CIA forcibly removed him and allowed the shah’s choice to assume the office. This "coup," as liberal academics term it, was approved by liberals’ favorite Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, and supported by such ponderous liberal blowhards as John Foster Dulles.

For Obama to be apologizing for one of the CIA’s greatest accomplishments isn’t just crazy, it’s Ramsey Clark crazy.

Obama also said that it was unfair that "some countries have weapons that others do not" and proclaimed that "any nation — including Iran — should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Wait — how about us? If a fanatical holocaust denier with messianic delusions can have nuclear power, can’t the U.S. at least build one nuclear power plant every 30 years?

I’m sure Iran’s compliance will be policed as well as North Korea’s was. Clinton struck a much-heralded "peace deal" with North Korea in 1994, giving them $4 billion to construct nuclear facilities and 500,000 tons of fuel oil in return for a promise that they wouldn’t build nuclear weapons. The ink wasn’t dry before the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes.

But back to Iran, what precisely do Iranians need nuclear power for, again? They’re not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse. Iran is a primitive nation in the middle of a desert that happens to sit on top of a large percentage of the world’s oil and gas reserves. That’s not enough oil and gas to run household fans?

Obama’s "I’m OK, You’re OK" speech would be hilarious, if it weren’t so terrifying.

Iranian Nuclear Program Waiting for Obama

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov)

The Iranian Six has again failed to come to terms on new UN sanctions against Iran. The question was discussed at the political director level of the foreign ministries of France, Germany, Britain, China, Russia, and the United States. As usual, the United States and its European allies wanted to expand sanctions and make Tehran halt its uranium enrichment, whereas Russia and China were against further sanctions. The sides decided to continue consultations.

Strange as it seems, this result was predetermined by the UN Security Council’s recent resolution (1835) on Iran, which imposed no new sanctions.

On the one hand, the resolution calls on Iran to "comply fully and without delay with its obligations" under the past resolutions and cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), but on the other, it reaffirms the need for a "dual-track approach to the nuclear issue," and its "commitment within this framework to an early negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue…"

It is clear that the resolution’s "dual-track approach" does not make sense in terms of the ultimatum to stop uranium enrichment "without delay" and return to the negotiating table. The Six are not likely to reach a compromise position although the United States and its European allies (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) have every reason to ask Russia and China: how long does it make sense to pressure Iran when there is no response? Iran does not listen to mandates, or even ultimatums.

There is little reason to listen. Today, the Six are drafting the sixth UN Security Council resolution on Iran in only two years. In July 2006 the Security Council adopted Resolution 1696, urging Iran to stop nuclear enrichment and return to the negotiating table. This document provided for sanctions against Iran if it failed to do so.

Since then, the situation has consistently repeated itself, and resolutions differ from each other only in minor details. Resolution 1696 was followed by resolutions 1737, 1747, 1803, and finally, 1835, but sanctions were imposed only by Resolution 1737. The others simply threaten Iran with tougher sanctions if it fails to halt uranium enrichment.

Nevertheless, this meeting of the Six had some intrigue linked with Barrack Obama’s election as U.S. president. He promised to open the door to direct talks between America and Iran. Now many wonder how he will build U.S. relations with Iran.

Obama prefers not to reveal his cards, but he has defined his position clearly: Iran should not be allowed to become a nuclear power. However, there are still more than two months before Obama’s inauguration, and President George W. Bush is not likely to soften his stance with Iran.

Literally within a couple of days of Obama’s impressive victory, the United States toughened economic sanctions against Iran. The U.S. Treasury Department prohibited banks with U.S. licenses from making transit payments, which the Iranian government and banks were allowed to conduct under certain terms. Washington’s action closed Iran’s last loophole into the U.S. financial system. Tehran did not take it well.

Finally, Bush signed a decree extending Executive Order 12170 freezing Iranian government assets held in the United States under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which was adopted by President Jimmy Carter almost thirty years ago, on November 14, 1979, shortly after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The Treasury Department was instructed to bloc all Iranian government assets in the United States, in all American banks and their foreign affiliates. Bush explained his decision by, among other things, the lack of normalized relations with Iran.

Under different circumstances, this decision might have gone unnoticed. But the devil is in the details. Bush met with Obama before signing the decree, and it is likely, they discussed the Iranian problem, including the general configuration of bilateral relations. Specifically they likely discussed the Executive Order’s cancellation at the appropriate time. It seems obvious that Bush would not have decided to extend it, knowing that Obama would cancel it after his inauguration.

Incidentally, various analysts are giving Obama almost diametrically opposite recommendations on Iran. Some insist on the five principles, which provide for the toughest policy on Iran, while others recommend that he should soften U.S. stance.

A report of a group of 20 prominent scientists and diplomats will be published on November 18. But it was revealed on Thursday (when the Six met) that these analysts do not believe in the effectiveness of military or economic threats against Iran. They see no advantages in an armed action against Iran which would accomplish little, and urge the start of high-level diplomatic talks with Iran.

What concept will Obama choose? In December, the IAEA director general will issue one more report on the Iranian nuclear program. The UN Security Council will adopt the next resolution on Iran based largely on the report. Will it maintain sanctions against Iran in terms of a U.S. interpretation? The answer to this question will indicate Obama’s decision.

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