Beyond Roxana Saberi: Javed Iqbal Jailed in US for Al-Manar News Broadcasts

This week Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani citizen and US resident, was jailed for six years for carrying the broadcasts of al-Manar, the television channel affiliated with the Lebanese political movement Hezbollah.

Iqbal, through his New York-based company HDTV Ltd, broadcast al-Manar for several months between 2005 and 2006 to paying customers. For prosecutors, this made him "Hezbollah's man in New York City". A second defendant connected with HDTV Ltd, Saleh Elahwal, has pled guilty and awaits sentencing.

Al-Manar is an established broadcaster in the Middle East, and its footage has been used by other outlets such as Fox and CNN. (I have been interviewed for their English-language programmes and follow their news output closely.) However, US authorities added al-Manar to its list of terrorist organisations in 2004, warning that that anyone who "solicits funds or other things of value for al-Manar" would be prosecuted. Other countries, including France and Canada, also imposed a ban, although the channel is easily accessed via the Internet.

Apart from a brief article by Adam Liptak in The New York Times in October 2007, there has been no attention to the case in the US.

Living the Bubble Life in Miami

The “great” American signer Jimmy Buffett wrote and sang of Margaritaville, a place where oblivion was the default position. Why Mr. Buffett is often referred to as “great” defeats me, but as he has a recording contract and I do not, I’d better leave this question alone. Indeed, I'll consider his oblivion.

Some nights ago, I was sitting at Sundowners, a bar/restaurant in Key Largo in Florida. I was the designated driver, hence no margaritas for me, but the setting was perfect, the food ambrosia, and even the plain iced water was nirvana. I watched, mesmerized, as the sun dipped into the ocean. It was good to know that, at my venerable age, I could still see a distance of 93 million miles.

My wife and I had been visiting our eldest daughter, who works for the Miami City Ballet. She was raised to think independently, but she has taken the idea too far: we did not tell her to have such thoughts 5,000 miles away from us. Nor did we expect that she would embrace a “bubble existence” in this city.

Still, her decision meant we could attend a performance at the interestingly named and fabulously comfortable Arsht Centre. I have witnessed my fair share of ballets over the years but would make no claim to being a connoisseur. However, my wife is. In her view, MCB can rival any ballet company in the world.

What astonished me was the audience. Maybe they weren’t as sophisticated as those attending Covent Garden or La Scala. Maybe there was spontaneous applause after an extraordinary solo or duet, when the piece had not ended. But the Miami audience dressed to kill. Men in jackets and ties, women in beautiful cocktail gowns, children dressed so smartly. I felt a little embarrassed as I was in slacks and a (very smart) T shirt. In my 30 years of visits to Miam, the dress code has always been casual or ‘down’. What has happened here?

Our visit coincided with Spring Week, which now seems to last a month. Coming back to the hotel on our first night, four young ladies sat in the Lounge, each one more beautiful than the other. I asked my wife whether I might have a chance of getting a date with one of them if I was forty years younger, fifty pounds lighter, and sixty times as funny. It took her no time to reply, “Not so much.”

At this time, Miami Beach is more replete with pulchritude than normal. Pretty girls and good-looking boys abound. The attraction is sunshine, the beach, and each other but, perhaps, subliminally, they seek the bubble existence after the rigours of college.

So there has been little conversation about the economy or Obama’s European trip. However, the decision by the Iowa state legislature to lift the ban on same-sex marriage attracted much attention. Not to be outdone in publicity, the Vermont Governor vetoed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, setting the stage for an override vote in the legislature. Thus, these two states will be the centre of attraction for Miami Beach’s substantial gay community, gearing up for the Gay Pride Parade.

CNN, too, seem to have caught the bubble mood. After the Obamas’ tour of Europe, I expected some close analysis, but last night, a deadly serious Wolf Blitzer introduced a section on Michelle Obama. Was this related to her duties as First Lady, or FLOTUS, as they like to call her here? Not really. The piece was devoted to Mrs Obama’s wardrobe and the way she covered her upper arms.

Before I am accused of mockery or cynicism, I happen to think that a society that is willing to take on awkward topics like same sex marriage, abortion and even creationism has to be applauded. As Aaron Sorkin wrote, “America is an experiment in advanced citizenship.” The political debates in UK seem sterile and passive by comparison. Nevertheless, I am relieved the talking heads on Newsnight are not getting involved in Mrs. Obama's wardrobe.

Miami Beach may lack realism but it certainly has life. I regret that my daughter has chosen to live here, rather than stay in UK. For the sake of an extra hour or so in an aircraft, I might have preferred that she had moved to Portland or San Francisco. However, when one is young and the world still resembles an oyster, when total reality has yet to hit, when annual sunshine --- give or take a hurricane or two --- is the staple diet, maybe the bubble that is Miami Beach is not so bad.

Video: Hillary Clinton in Baghdad

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton maintained a positive, stay-the-course line on her trip to Iraq, despite the bombings on the eve of her arrival that killed more than 150 people:

[The attacks] do not reflect any diversion from the security progress that has been made. The reaction from the Iraqi people and the Iraqi leaders was firm and united in rejecting that violence and refusing to allow it to set Iraqi against Iraqi, which is obviously one of its intended goals.

Clinton also pitched the wider Obama agenda, using a CNN interview (the interviewer's question was clearly set up by Hillary's staff in advance so the Secretary of State could knock it out of the park) that American success in Iraq can serve as a model for US intervention in Afghanistan:

Scott Lucas in The Guardian: Obama Administration's Battle over Iran and Israel

Since I wrote this for The Guardian, there have been further developments, notably Israel's stepped-up campaign to bump Washington into a hard-line Iran-first policy. The efforts have been more political than military, notably Tel Aviv's threat that it will not enter meaningful negotiations over Palestine unless the US commits to further pressure upon Tehran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck back yesterday, telling Israel to back off on the threat. That indicates that the Obama line of engagement is still prevailing within the Administration, as does the silence of Petraeus and Mullen over the last two weeks.

Forgive the somewhat dramatic headline, which led to a lot of irrelevant comments. The issue is not whether the US backs an Israeli airstrike but whether it suspends the gradual but clear move towards discussions with Iran.

To bomb, or not to bomb, Iran

Just over a month ago, President Barack Obama broke a 30-year embargo on US relations with Iran: he offered goodwill not only to "Iranians" but to the country's government. Speaking on the occasion of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, he said:

"I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek. It's a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce. It's a future where the old divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbours and the wider world can live in greater security and greater peace."

It's no surprise that this message, given a generation of tension between Washington and Tehran, has been challenged in the US. What's more interesting is that the greatest threat to Obama's engagement comes not from media sceptics from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal or the foundations now packed with refugees from the Bush administration or even the Middle Eastern institutes putting a priority on Israeli security. No, Obama's most daunting opponents are within his own administration.

Less than two weeks after the Nowruz address, General David Petraeus, the head of the US military command overseeing Iran and the Persian Gulf, offered a far different portrayal of Iran to a Senate committee:

Iranian activities and policies constitute the major state-based threat to regional stability. … Iran is assessed by many to be continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, which would destabilise the region and likely spur a regional arms race.

The next day Petraeus's boss, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, visited the offices of the Wall Street Journal, which has taken a consistent editorial line against dialogue with the Iranian government. Far from supporting his president, Mullen told the newspaper: "I think we've got a problem now. ... I think the Iranians are on a path to building nuclear weapons." Not even past enemies were as menacing: "Even in the darkest days of the cold war we talked to the Soviets. … [But now] we don't have a lot of time."

What's going on here? There are clear political goals behind Obama's approach of dialogue rather than confrontation. The hope is that Iran will not challenge the US approach to Middle Easten issues, in particular Israel-Palestine and Israel-Syria talks, through its connections with Hamas and Hezbollah. An easing of political tensions in turn may remove the motive for Tehran to reverse its suspension of research and development for a nuclear weapons – as opposed to civilian nuclear energy – programme.

Yet there are also military benefits from a US-Iran rapprochement. As Obama's envoy Richard Holbrooke has made clear, a partnership with Tehran could ease the American burden in Afghanistan, especially as the troop surge is being implemented. Better relations could assist with the political transition in Iraq as the US draws down its overt military presence. Eventually, an Iranian renunciation of nuclear weapons would finally remove a significant strategic question mark in the region.

In part, the calculation of Petraeus and Mullen is that Iran cannot be trusted in these areas. For years, US commanders in Iraq have alleged that Iran has been backing the insurgency, and Petraeus has also claimed that Tehran has supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. In his testimony to the Senate committee, the general expanded this into a grand nefarious Iranian scheme:

Iran employs surrogates and violent proxies to weaken competitor states, perpetuate conflict with Israel, gain regional influence and obstruct the Middle East peace process. Iran also uses some of these groups to train and equip militants in direct conflict with US forces. Syria, Iran's key ally, facilitates the Iranian regime's reach into the Levant and the Arab world by serving as the key link in an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance and allows extremists (albeit in smaller numbers than in the past) to operate in Damascus and to facilitate travel into Iraq.

Still, in their public opposition to Obama's Iran policy, the military commanders are playing one card before all others: Israel.

Petraeus's threat to the congressmen was far from subtle: "The Israeli government may ultimately see itself so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take pre-emptive military action to derail or delay it." Mullen told the Wall Street Journal: "There is a leadership in Israel that is not going to tolerate" a nuclear Iran. This was a "life or death" matter in which "the operative word is 'existential'".

Are they bluffing? If so, it's a bluff that has been coordinated with Tel Aviv. Last summer, Israel asked for but did not get George Bush's support for an airstrike on Iran. It took only six weeks for the Israelis to revive the topic with the new Obama administration: the commander of the Israeli armed forces, General Gabi Ashkenazi, visited Washington with the message "that an Israeli military strike was a 'serious' option".

While Ashkenazi was told by Obama's political advisers to put his fighter planes away, the story of Israeli military plans continues to be circulated. Only last weekend, Sheera Frenkel of The Times was fed the story: "The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government."

High-level Obama officials are fighting back. Aware that a frontal assault on the popular Petraeus would be politically dangerous, they have tried to curb the "Israel will strike" campaign. Vice-president Joe Biden told CNN that new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "would be ill-advised to do that". Perhaps more importantly, secretary of defence Robert Gates said last week that an Israeli attack would have "dangerous consequences". Reading that signal, Israeli President Shimon Peres backed away from earlier tough talk and assured: "All the talk about a possible attack by Israel on Iran is not true. The solution in Iran is not military."

So, for this moment, Petraeus and Mullen appear to have been checked. However, they and their military allies, such as General Raymond Odierno in Iraq, have been persistent in challenging Obama over strategy from Kabul to Baghdad to Jerusalem. It is their manoeuvring, rather than Tehran's jailing of an Iranian-American journalist like Roxana Saberi or even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speeches at UN conferences, that is Barack Obama's greatest foe.

More Twitter Diplomacy

The State Department yesterday announced that it had sent a nine-member delegation of senior representatives from major technology companies- including Google, AT&T, Twitter and Automattic/Wordpress- to Iraq to (quoting CNN), "provide conceptual input as well as ideas on how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building."

Back in January we made a couple of posts about State's use of Twitter. Scott was critical of then-Under Secretary of State Colleen Graffey's discussing buying a Mac while the Israeli incursion into Gaza was at its peak. One of the other criticisms of Graffey's twittering was that she was only going to reach those privileged enough to have regular internet access, and that this wasn't likely to include a huge number of, for example, Iraqis. Monday's announcement appears to mark a move from State simply twittering, to State helping others twitter. I'd like to think that the State Department has realised that its new blog and video updates are missing a huge swathe of their intended audience due to a lack of internet access. But this seems to me more like an attempt to put US companies at the forefront of any internet goldrush in the Arabic-speaking world.