Israel and Gaza: Tzipi Livni "For Israeli Soldiers, I Will Go to Europe"

On Monday, the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appeared on CNN's Amanpour guest. Livni defended the Gaza War Operation Cast Lead because it "regained deterrence" to Israel and stated that the blockade on Gaza will continue as long as there is no official representative of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip:  "Gates are open to Gazans when it comes to humanitarian needs".

Speaking about the arrest warrant issued for her by a British court because of Gaza, Livni said that she is willing to travel to any part of Europe as a "test case" for IDF soldiers to travel and see the free values of the free world.

AMANPOUR: Tonight, on the one-year anniversary of the end of the war in Gaza, we look at the troubled Middle East peace process, which President Obama has also made a center point of his foreign policy.

And from Jerusalem, we have an exclusive interview with Tzipi Livni, head of the Israeli opposition party Kadima. She had served as foreign minister during the previous Israeli administration throughout the Gaza war.

Ms. Livni, thank you for joining us from Jerusalem.

TZIPI LIVNI, FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER, ISRAEL: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, it's a year since the Gaza war. There's still a huge amount of controversy over it. What about lifting the Israeli blockade on Gaza? How come that hasn't happened one year later?

LIVNI: The idea of the military operation was in order to stop terror. And there is no dispute today, especially not in Israel, that the operation in Gaza regained deterrence. And Israeli civilians that couldn't live in the places which are close to Gaza Strip can live and have peaceful life.

AMANPOUR: So does that mean that the blockade will stay on?

LIVNI: The blockade on Gaza -- yes. But it's important to say that, when it comes to humanitarian needs, the gates are open.

AMANPOUR: Obviously, there's some humanitarian aid getting in, but there's, for instance, construction materials, all sorts of things that it needs to stand on its feet are not getting in. But I want to ask you, should Israel now, a year later, negotiate a full cease-fire with Hamas in exchange for lifting the blockade?

LIVNI: No, I don't think so. Basically, Hamas doesn't represent the national aspiration of the Palestinians. I believe that Israel needs to re-launch negotiations with Fatah, with the legitimate Palestinian government, with those who represent the legitimate aspiration of the Palestinians for a state of their own.

Hamas represents extreme religious ideology. Religious conflicts are unsolvable. And in this region, when the division is between extremists and moderates, we need to act in a dual strategy, on one hand, to act against terror, not to give legitimacy directly or indirectly with Hamas, to Hamas, and to continue the dialogue with the moderates, with the pragmatic leadership of the Palestinians.

AMANPOUR: You know the Palestinians say that a complete halt to settlement activity is -- is vital. You know the president, Barack Obama, and this U.S. administration started by saying that a condition would be a complete halt to Israeli settlement activity. What do you make of the fact that the U.S. President Obama made that his initial condition? Now it's no longer a condition.

LIVNI: Listen, it's not for me -- you know, to make opinions on this. But just to give you an example about the situation that we had about a year ago, we had negotiations with the Palestinians. We built trust. They understood that the Israeli government -- anyway, the former Israeli government -- wanted to achieve peace, and we are willing to make the concessions which are needed in order to do so.

And we believed that this is -- this is the same -- or this is what the Palestinians are standing, also, in order to end the conflict.

AMANPOUR: Do you think it could be done in two years?

LIVNI: So talking about...

AMANPOUR: If it starts, do you think negotiations can end in two years?

LIVNI: Less than that. Oh, yes.

AMANPOUR: Like Mitchell said?

LIVNI: Oh, yes. I think that -- I don't want to -- to refer to timeline. I mean, I negotiated with the Palestinians for nine months. And we had some achievement in this negotiation.

[15:20:00]

So it's not a -- not a matter of time. It's a matter of an understanding of by both sides, by both leaders, that time works against those who believe in two states for two peoples, that we cannot afford a situation in which the conflict transfers from -- or being transferred from a national conflict to a religious one, that we cannot afford to give excuses for radical elements in the region to recruit or to have more support in different part of this -- of this region.

So I believe that this needs to be started now, and the question of timeline is less important, as long as the two leaders -- two leaderships understand that time is of the essence.

AMANPOUR: OK.

LIVNI: There is no need to -- you know, to waste more time or to have a dialogue for a dialogue. It's time for decisions.

AMANPOUR: Let's go back to the Gaza war a year ago and the fallout from that. You've said the blockade will continue. As you know, the Goldstone report has said that Israel used disproportionate force and has called for an inquiry and has called for Israel to -- to -- to sort of hold accountable those who were responsible. Why is it that Israel will not hold a public inquiry? And do you think that it should?

LIVNI: Basically, I cannot accept any comparison between Israeli soldiers and these terrorists. I mean, there is no -- and this is something that Goldstone made in his report.

During the operation in Gaza -- and, as you mentioned, I was a decision-maker there -- and we took all the necessary steps in order to avoid civilian casualties, even though it's not easy when this is highly populated place, when terrorists hiding among civilians.

AMANPOUR: Ms. Livni? Why is it that Israel has not held and has not made any move to hold a public inquiry, a public investigation into these allegations? Even your own ex-justice minister, Barak, is saying that there should be such a probe of some sort. Why not?

LIVNI: There are -- there are different views on this in Israel, and I think that there is now a process of decision-making in the current Israeli government whether to take this or not.

But since I was there during the operation and I know what was done and the -- well, it's the military, and it's not public inquiry, but they checked all the different cases that also Goldstone referred to. And it's important for me to say whether there's going to be or not going to be an inquiry. The morality of the Israeli soldiers, for me, it's not in question.

Since I'm not going to accept all these comparisons between Israeli soldiers and terror, I think that this is part of the answer that Israel needs to give publicly.

LIVNI: But as I said before, there is now the internal discussion on this, in Israel, and the only question for me is whether this kind of an inquiry can give the support and can defend Israeli soldiers when they leave the state of Israel and visiting other places.

AMANPOUR: Well, I was going to ask you -- let -- let -- let me ask you, because there was an arrest warrant potentially out for yourself. Israeli leaders, even Defense Minister Barak have been likened to war criminals. There's a controversy going on in Turkey right now. Are you worried that, if you leave Israel and come to London or other such places in Europe, that you could be arrested?

LIVNI: Well, yes, this -- it's not -- it's not my worry on a personal basis. In a way, I would like this to have, in a way, maybe even a test -- a test case, because I'm willing to speak up and to -- to speak about the military operation in Gaza Strip to explain that Israel left Gaza Strip, we dismantled all the settlements, we took our forces out, Israel was targeted, we showed restraint, and at the end of the day, we needed to act against terror, and are willing to say so, including any court in London or elsewhere. But...

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: So you're saying you're willing to be arrested as a test case?

LIVNI: For me, this is not a question. I mean, yes, the answer is yes. I am -- I know that the decisions that we made were crucial to give an answer to Israeli civilians that couldn't live in the south part of Israel and later or even also in different parts of Israel. It was part of my responsibility, and this was the right answer. And I'm willing to spend for (ph) these reasons and to explain this to -- to the world and to any court.

But part of our responsibility is also to give -- or to defend the Israeli soldiers and officials that worked according to our decisions in the government. And if an inquiry helps them, this is fine, so I can support an inquiry, as long as this helps them.

It's not about me.

[15:25:00]

It's about the Israeli soldiers, because I want them to leave Israel and to feel free to visit different parts of the world according, you know, to -- like any -- like any other citizen of the free world and any other soldier...

AMANPOUR: OK.

LIVNI: ... and fight for the values of the free world in different parts of the world.

AMANPOUR: On that note, Tzipi Livni, head of the Kadima Party in Israel, thank you so much for joining us.

LIVNI: Thank you. Thank you.

The Latest from Iran (13 January): Speculations and Realities

2125 GMT: More Fun with the MKO. I guess one "Dumbest Strategy of Day" Award isn't enough. Following Euro MP Struan Stevenson's cheerful advocacy of an alliance with the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, the political wing of the Mujahedin-e-Khaq "terrorist" group (MKO), Allan Gerson, a lawyer who has worked for the State and Justice Departments, drops by The Huffington Post to assure:

As a practical matter de-designation of the [Mujahedin-e-Khalq] as a terrorist entity will only enhance Washington's desired outcome of a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. It would strengthen America's hand in bringing a faltering regime to the negotiating table by letting Tehran know in no uncertain terms that we have taken off the kid-gloves.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that the Tehran regime, which has been trying to rally opinion by claiming a US-MKO plot to overthrow the Government, will be absolutely traumatised and have no close what to do if Washington follows Gerson's recommendation.

(Oh, so sorry, I took Gerson at face value as an objective if pretty dim commentator. He is in fact co-counsel representing the MKO in the case to take it off the US Government's terrorist list.)

2055 GMT: Former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani have written messages of condolence to the family of President Professor Ali-Mohammadi.

2030 GMT: Battling with the Clerics. A series of skirmishes between Government and clerics today. Ayatollah Sadeghi Tehrani, taking offence at remarks by Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, has declared that the retention of the former First Vice-President and current Presidential Chief of Staff in any official position is “haram” (religiously forbidden).

And Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani, a persistent post-cleric of the Government but relatively quiet in recent weeks, has re-emerged to declare that the principle of velayat-e-faqih (ultimate clerical authority) is not a principle of Islam and denying it is not a sin.

NEW Iran Analysis: Nuclear Myths, Rogue Elements, and Professor Ali-Mohammadi’s Murder
NEW Iran Special: Interpreting the Death of Professor Ali-Mohammadi
NEW Latest Iran Video: The Leverett Line on Killing of Professor Ali-Mohammadi (13 January)
Latest Iran Video: How State Media Frames Killing of “Nuclear” Professor (12 January)
Iran: How Far Do The Green Movements Go?
Iran & Social Media: Dispelling Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (Parsons)
The Latest from Iran (12 January): The Killing of the Professor

Look also for some repercussions from the Government's arrest of Mohammad Taghi Khalaji (see 1745 GMT). He is the father of prominent Mehdi Khalaji, who is based at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Expect WINEP and their allies in the Washington network of "think tanks" to get vocal --- indeed, WINEP has put out a special alert and Danielle Pletka, a Bush-era proponent of US power now at the American Enterprise Institute, has already jumped in, "Iran’s Nazi-Fascism and How You Can Help Fight It". (John Hannah, former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, has now joined the chorus.)

2015 GMT: The Scholars and Mousavi. 54 Iranian university professors, scholars, and expatriate intellectuals have written an open letter to express firm support for Mir Hossein Mousavi’s "5-proposal" statement, issued on 1 January, as “a step toward the consistency of the Green Movement” with "a minimum political platform with specific demands upon the government”. The signatories specifically praised “the four sections related to free elections and the preconditions for having free elections, including the release of all political prisoners, free and independent press and media, and the emphasis on the rights of forming political parties and holding gatherings”.

Interestingly, the 54 openly referred to the unstated test of the proposals, the removal of the President: “Mousavi while giving the priority to the democratic movement of the people of Iran proved that for advancing the demands of this movement is ready to negotiate with the ruling powers. His indirect position regarding the “legal” removal of Ahmadinejad through the parliament is a signature of these democratic tendencies.”

1745 GMT: BBC Persian reports that Mohammad Taghi Khalaji, a cleric close to the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, has been arrested.

1735 GMT: Trotting Out the Lines on Ali-Mohammadi. Al Jazeera English's "Inside Story", covering the Ali-Mohammadi killing, has just started. Another appearance for Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi (see separate video), who declares --- without presenting evidence --- that "the evidence points to the Israelis" and diverts into a declaration of American support for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO).

Nothing new there, but an interesting twist with the other guest, Siavush Randjbar-Daemi of the University of London. Ranjdbar-Daemi, who has very good sources on Ali-Mohammadi, is able to set out that the Tehran physicist has no connection with Iran's nuclear programme. He also brings out Ali-Mohammadi's support of Mir Hossein Mousavi.

This brings out the quote of the day from Marandi: "The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization did not say that he had absolutely nothing to do with them; they said that he did not work for them." Which somehow proves that Ali-Mohammadi was indeed involved in the nuclear programme.

Oh, sorry, this is the Quote of the Day: "The fact that someone voted for Mr Mousavi does not mean he is a Mousavi supporter. Most of my colleagues who voted for Mr Mousavi no longer support him today. That issue is long gone."

1730 GMT: Ali-Mohammadi's Last Lecture. An absolutely reliable EA source has confirmed that the audio file of Professor Ali-Mohammadi's statement at Tehran University last week (see 1450 GMT) is genuine.

1555 GMT: Dumbest Strategy of Day "Let's Promote MKO". A great day at The Washington Times: having scooped the Dumbest Exploitation of the Ali-Mohammadi Case award with "War with Iran Nears" (see 1045 GMT), they give space to a member of the European Parliament, Struan Stevenson, to call for support of the People's Mujahideen of Iran, the political wing of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq armed resistance (see 1005 GMT).

Stevenson seems oblivious to the notion that almost none of the groups in the Iranian opposition want to work with the PMOI/MEK or that taking the organisation off the US Government's terrorist list would feed the Iranian regime propaganda line that Washington is backing a group which has sought regime change --- often with violence --- for more than a generation. Indeed, he seems oblivious to any consideration of realpolitik as he concludes, "This is intervening in Iran's internal affairs in favor of the mullahs - and now realpolitik dictates this has to be changed."

1545 GMT: Don't Look Here, Look Over There! Another of President Ahmadinejad's "Let's Talk About the World but Not About Iran" televised speeches....

West trying to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia:""All their planning is aimed at this goal. Human rights, fighting nuclear weapons and terrorism are all a big lie....With the pretext of September 11 they started the fire of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and today in Yemen."

Israel will be vanquished: "The supporters of Zionists should know that the Zionist regime is on the way down to collapse and no one can save it. The Iranian nation will cut from the arm any hand that has been extended to it with the aim (of committing) a crime."

And Saudi Arabia should get on the right side (against Israel) and not on the wrong side (in Yemen): "We were expecting that Saudi Arabian officials act like a mentor and make peace between brothers, not that they themselves enter the war and use bombs ... and machineguns against Muslims. If only a small part of the weapons of Saudi Arabia were used in favor of Gaza and against the Zionist regime, today there would be no sign of the Zionist regime in the region."

1450 GMT: Ali-Mohammadi Recording? An Iranian activist has posted claimed audio of a statement by Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi at Tehran University last week.

1440 GMT: So We're NOT Deporting Iranians? Word in from the National Iranian American Council that the author of a proposed US law (which is idiotic on the whole, let alone in parts) has at least dropped a measure that could have sent Iranians in the US packing:

Congressman Gresham Barrett's (R-SC) office has confirmed to NIAC that he will drop language aimed at deporting non-immigrant Iranians from the U.S. when he reintroduces the Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP) Act today....

When the STEP Act was first introduced in 2003, it contained provisions that would have mandated the deportation of all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas, and tourist visas from the United States within 60 days....

Though the elimination of the deportation provisions constitutes a significant victory for the Iranian-American community, the bill remains problematic. It would make it illegal for Iranians to travel to the United States, though some exceptions may be made for medical emergencies and political or religious asylum after "extensive federal screening."

1335 GMT: Students on Ali-Mohammadi. Students of the Physics Department of Tehran University have issued a statement condemning the assassination of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi and expressing their condolences to his family. The students claim that Ali-Mohammadi was outspoken in recent months in support of the Green Movement and university protests. They add that Ali-Mohammadi was not involved in Iran's nuclear programme.

1305 GMT: A Sit-In Success? An Iranian website is claiming that students at Razi University in Kermanshah, after sit-in protests and boycotts of final examinations, have succeeded in getting release of their classmates from detention.

1215 GMT: Motahari presses ahead. The campaign of Ali Motahari, high-profile member of Parliament and brother-in-law of Ali Larijani, against the Ahmadinejad is now being waged on a daily basis. Today Motahari wrote an open letter to the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani. Opposing the appointment of Saeed Mortazavi as a Presidential aide, Motahari has asked Larijani to investigate the role of Mortazavi, formerly Tehran's Prosecutor General, in post-election detainee abuses.

Ali Shakrokhi, the head of the Juridical Commission of Parliament, has added a twist by suggesting that Ahmadinejad could sue Motahari over allegations that the President is responsible for post-election crisis.

1155 GMT: Stay the Course. The regime is not giving up on its quest to portray Professor Ali-Mohammadi's murder as a foreign plot. To the contrary, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani declared today:

We had received information a few days before the incident that intelligence services of the Zionist regime intend to carry out terrorist acts in Tehran in cooperation with the CIA....After the failure of all its hostile policies, it currently resorts to the physical elimination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Larijani even got personal with a verbal assault on President Obama:

Such filthy actions are easy to carry out but such adventurism will do you no good....You have practically promoted acts of terrorism....This black spot will be recorded in the dossier of US crimes against the Iranian nation.

1045 GMT: Dumbest Exploitation of the Ali-Mohammadi Case. The editorial staff of The Washington Times know what it all means: "War with Iran Nears":

The coming conflict will not be an overnight air strike followed by bellicose language, like the Israeli attack on the Syrian nuclear site in September 2007. Disrupting Iran's nuclear program will require Israel to undertake a sustained campaign. Iran will launch reprisal attacks through its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, encourage Syria to respond, foment chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan and potentially order terror attacks on Western targets.

1005 GMT: Strange But True. On the same day that Iranian state media was claiming Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO), backed by the US Government, may have killed Professor Ali-Mohammadi, the political wing of the organisation --- the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) --- was appearing in a Washington court to get itself removed from the US Government's list of terrorist organisations.

The PMOI lawyer claimed, "The organization has foresworn violence. We walk the walk. There have been no terrorist acts by PMOI for eight years." He had no success, however. US Government lawyers declared that Washington would not negotiate with "an organization that for at least 30 years has been involved in terrorism, violence, assassination, et cetera" and that "classified material" made clear that the group should still be listed.

1000 GMT: In a separate entry, EA's Mr Smith uses excellent sources and knowledges to consider the political significance of the murder of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi.

0910 GMT: The Mothers of Mourning. Persian2English offers a vital addition to our report last night of the freeing of those Mothers of Mourning who were detained during their Saturday protest: they were released on bail, so criminal charges are still pending.

0900 GMT: The Ali-Mohammadi Case. The "Iran Royal Society", who --- according to Iranian state media --- had claimed responsibility for the killing of Professor Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, have denied any involvement.

The Los Angeles Times has a full report on the murder and on Mohammadi, and The Washington Post adds useful information.

And The Guardian of London offers an interesting editorial comment:

As the regime in Tehran loses its last vestige of legitimacy with its own people, it is important that international sanctions do not restore to the Iranian leadership its role as defender of the faith. The US must not play into the hands of an Iranian president keen to cast domestic opponents as foreign agents. The temptation in Washington is to think that it can influence events in Iran. It has in the past, but rarely, if ever, for the better.

0845 GMT: Overnight news continues to be dominated by the murder of Tehran University physicist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. We have a special feature considering the politics and propaganda around the case, and we also have a video of Flynt Leverett using the episode to set out his line on the US pursuit of regime change and support of "terrorism".

Beyond the furour, there is a useful, first-hand reminder of the conflict in a letter from Tehran claiming, "The Regime is Over".

UPDATED Iran & Twitter 101: Getting The Facts Right --- A Response to Will Heaven

UPDATE 8 January: Will Heaven will not give up --- he has made another attempt, informed only by anecdote, distortion, and speculation, to justify his campaign for silence on Twitter about #IranElection.

I will break my own vow of silence (see comments below), regarding any discussion of and thus further publicity for the thoughtless and indefensible in Mr Heaven's "analysis", to say this:

@WillHeaven: You insult those of us who use #Twitter wisely and, hopefully, effectively. You insult @persiankiwi, & you insult the people of #Iran. If you have any decency, stop.

(P.S. Maybe you can be of use writing about #uksnow.)

---

Josh Shahryar writes:

Waking up every day and being a journalist is a very conflicting job. Sometimes, you read the work of other journalists who’ve written responsibly and with full knowledge of the subject matter and you feel proud of who you are. Other times, people write things that make you want to just sit there and mourn the fact that he or she belongs to the same profession as you.

Last week, in the online edition of Britain's Daily Telegraph, Will Heaven critiqued the people who have been active on Twitter for the cause of Iran --- some now for almost 200 days --- under the headline, “Iran and Twitter: the fatal folly of the online revolutionaries”.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr Heaven has freedom of speech on his side. But every now and then, I take the liberty to use the same right to point out where fellow journalists for filling the internet with assertions that misrepresent the truth and "analysis" that blatantly insults not only our intelligence but also our characters. I think Will Heaven fits that bill quite neatly.

I am simply going to reply to Mr Heaven's paragraphs one by one in order. I have not changed any of his words, and I will address him directly.

HEAVEN: As young men and women took to the streets of Tehran on Sunday to confront the Revolutionary Guard, another very different protest sprang to life all over the world. This one didn't face tear-gas or gunfire. And its participants didn't risk prison, torture or death. It took place on 2009's most trendy website: Twitter.com.

Well, now, how about the risk of having your family imprisoned, tortured or killed? Did you know that dozens of social media activists have families in Iran and dozens more have received e-mails from the Iranian government telling them to stop or else their families would face serious harm? Did you know that Fereshteh Ghazi (@iranbaan), another activist who writes about prisoners, has family in Iran? Did you know that Isa Saharkhiz, the father of the most active of the Twitterati, Mehdi Saharkhiz (@onlymehdi), is in prison and being tried in connection with the protests?

I think everyone would agree that even if these people aren’t personally facing imprisonment, torture and death, they might deserve a moment of recognition for persisting in their reporting when their families facing the same peril. If you don't choose to join recognition of them, at least pause and include these facts before you wag your finger at their supposed security.

For Twitter enthusiasts, this has been a bumper year. With a new online tool at their chubby fingertips, they've helped to change the world. Or at least, that's what they think: the so-called Iranian Twitter Revolution recently won a Webby award for being "one of the top 10 internet moments of the decade".”

Chubby fingertips? Nice use of the stereotype that portrays all geeks as being overweight. This here is just a direct and far from original insult. I’m not sure how you manage to call yourself a journalist and use such degrading language to get your fictitious points across.

As for the Iranian "Twitter Revolution", that is a creation of the mainstream media who are ignorant of what is going on inside and outside Iran.

If the protests in Iran are turning into a revolution, social networking websites had very little to do with it. The reason why the site are getting kudos is because they helped people bypass the failure of the mainstream media to cover the events in Iran and get informed about what was really happening on the streets of Tehran as well as shore up outside support for the cause.

Get this straight; it was the failure to provide timely and accurate news regarding the events in Iran that forced the citizens of the world to step up and help educate people about the courage and perseverance of the Iranian people and the brutality and inhumanity of the Iranian government. You can whine all you want, but you, if you are representing a responsible "traditional" media vs. a supposedly tangential and irresponsible social media, have failed. And the fact that you failed does not give you the right to attempt and devalue the work of others.

Let me tell you why I find that deeply troubling. There has been no revolution in Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held on to power after a rigged election. Meanwhile, protests continue to be violently suppressed by government forces and unregulated militias, with human rights groups saying that at least 400 demonstrators have been killed since June. Dozens of those arrested remain unaccounted for, and many of those set free tell of rape and vicious beatings in Iran's most notorious prisons.

So don't tell me that Twitter and other online networks have improved the situation in Iran. It's deluded to think that "hashtags", "Tweets" and "Twibbons" have threatened the regime for a second. If all the internet could muster in a decade was smug armchair activists and pontificating techies, we may as well all log off in the New Year.

Again, Twitter has not improved the situation in Iran; it has improved the flow of news about that situation to the outside world. It has helped mobilize activists outside Iran, protesting across the world, to pressure the international community into taking action against the Iranian government.

If you had followed the news or understood what you have read, you would have known about the 25 July protests where thousands of people gathered in more than 100 cities around the globe in support of the Iranian people’s struggle for human rights. There have been dozens of protests in dozens of other cities since then; I attended one just a week ago. These protests have served to both inform the public and to pressure governments to deal with Iran’s repression of its citizens more harshly then they might have otherwise would have.

This would not have been possible if social networking websites had not connected people and informed them about what was going on inside Iran since, frankly, I see the mainstream media's primary interest in Iran as the nuclear energy program.

Your ignorance does not change the facts on the ground.

Here's the other thing "social media experts" will forget to tell you: dictatorships across the world now use their own tools to hunt down online protesters. In Iran, for instance, the government controls the internet with a nationalised communications company. Using a state-of-the-art method called "Deep Packet Inspection", data packages sent between protesters are now automatically broken down, checked for keywords, and reconstructed within milliseconds. Every Tweet and Facebook message, in other words, is firmly on the regime's radar.

As a result, the crackdown in Iran has been easier than ever before. Once the Revolutionary Guard intercept a suspect message, they are able to pinpoint the location of a guilty protester using their computer's IP address. Then it's just a question of knocking on doors – and confiscating laptops and PCs for hard evidence.
Sadly, when this happens, those outside Iran cannot always absolve themselves of responsibility. If you're an internet user in Britain who communicates with an Iranian protester online, or encourages them to send anti-regime messages over the internet, you could be putting their life in danger.

Here’s a bit of education in anti-filtering software. There’s a software called Tor –-- similar to Freegate --- that allows people to connect to the internet without fear of Deep Pocket Inspection tools. You can figure out that someone is using Tor with DPI, but you can never find out what they’re sending. Our "chubby-fingered" friends were intelligent and passionate enough to get that into Iranian hands as early as June. And that’s not all. Net activists have already created several new anti-DPI softwares that have already reached Iranians and are being skillfully used by a select few to get information out. With these, the government can’t even figure out if someone is using anti-filtering software or is connected straight up.

If this had not occurred, you would not get all the videos, pictures and information readily available within minutes of protests in Iran.

Just because you do not know about these things does not mean they do not exist or they do not work.

And contrary to what you claim, no one actually has to encourage Iranians to communicate information about their country to the outside world. They do it themselves. They feel a need to help the world understand what is going on in their country and not have to read fear-mongering articles on the mainstream media about how Iran is going to bomb Israel and there would be World War III and such. What the techies have done is help them access the software that allows them to do it without fear of getting arrested.

There's nothing wrong with spreading awareness outside Iran, but it's horribly naive to think that supporting illegal activity in a foreign country has no ethical dimension. It's equally foolish, of course, to kid yourself that you're on the front line.
For the Iranian authorities, the detective work often doesn't have to be remotely hi-tech. As Evgeny Morozov recently noted, it is now possible to calculate a person's sexual orientation by analysing who their Facebook friends are. Sure, it's a quirky news story in Britain, but terrifying for gay people living in countries such as Iran, where homosexuality is outlawed.

Illegal activity? What illegal activity? Iranians are granted the right to take to streets and peacefully protest by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just because the government is overstepping Iranian law does not mean you have to go out of your way to accommodate their will to hammer home your fallacious arguments. As for your assertion that helping Iranians spread the word about the situation is wrong, well, maybe you should know that freedom of expression is a universal human right. No country’s laws can infringe upon that. None.

I’m not sure you know that Facebook and Twitter are officially banned in Iran right now. People in Iran who are using the two applications have created accounts specifically to disseminate news and information, not for dating. Even if the government finds those accounts, it will not be able to trace them back to their owners because of new software.

Perhaps Barack Obama was one of the first world leaders to realise that social media have their limits. In March, on the feast of Nowruz (the Farsi New Year), he posted an online video in which he addressed the Iranian people and their leaders directly.

It signaled the launch of "YouTube diplomacy", one commentator gushed. But, like the Twitter Revolution, it has achieved very little – Iran remains determined to become a nuclear power, and America is still described by the regime as "the Great Satan".

The jab at YouTube diplomacy is another creation of those in the media who know little about what is going on during protests on the streets in daylight, even with video evidence at hand, but who are more than ready to scare the hell out of everyone by proclaiming that Iran will get the ability to make a nuclear bomb soon. Your own retreat into that nuclear shelter, under cover of the ludicrous and unfounded accusations about the movement inside as well as outside Iran, is only an addition to that evasion.

So what can we do? Well, perhaps that’s a question for 2010, because the internet, combined with “offline” networks, probably can encourage openness in dictatorships. But before we work out how, let’s first drop the self-congratulation.

What can you do? You can actually report after researching the subject you are about to write on. You can find sources inside Iran to get some real news out. And you can stop hurling insults like poisoned candy.

Finally, we don’t need to self-congratulate ourselves. The media does it for us quite neatly. I will point you to just one article about the Twitter Revolution published a few days ago in one of Sweden’s largest tabloid newspapers, Expressen:

Today Mousavi's Facebook page [a page run by activists from outside Iran] is a more secure source of news than Al-Jazeera and the BBC, while micro-blogs and websites like the dailyniteowl.com and rahesabz.net [both websites that use direct information from tweets and Facebook] offer sympathizers as well as media consumers, fast, reliable news [about Iran] that traditional newsrooms cannot provide.

That is just one out of hundreds of articles that have been published about the worldwide effort to help get the reality on Iran’s streets to people around the globe through social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and through microblogs.

I understand your frustration at having to keep up with citizen reporting. But that does not give you the right to so flagrantly distort facts and insult a mass of people that have devoted their own time without any monetary compensation to helping their brothers and sisters in Iran.

Next time, if you’re going to write on this subject, please, inform yourself about the many terms you used and try to show the real picture.

Advice to US & Britain: How Not to Approach Yemen

Amidst the escalation of the "War on Terror" at home and abroad not only in the aftermath of the failed attempt at an explosion on a US-bound airliner but also in President Obama's escalation in Afghanistan (see his 2 December speech, which mentions Yemen), the small country on the Arabian Peninsula has become the next projected theatre for American and British intervention. Rami Khouri, one of the sharpest observers and analysts of Middle Eastern affairs, offers a caution:

When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared a few days ago that the United Kingdom and the United States would soon convene a special summit on “stabilizing” Yemen in order to reduce the threat of terrorismemanating from there, I cried in my heart for Yemen. My fears were exacerbated when I read the following day that the US’ top military commander in the region had visited Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to offer support, and pledged more financial and military assistance to defeat the growing presence of Al-Qaeda’s operation in the Arabian Peninsula that is domiciled in Yemen.

The idea that Yemen has suddenly become a “terror problem” country and that the US and UK can lead it to greener pastures is symptomatic of the collective policy failures that have seen the world today suffer so widely from problems of political violence and terrorism. Conferences in London and shipments of American arms and money will not solve the problem. The Anglo-Americans clearly lack the ability or will to come to terms with the full dimensions of terrorism and its genesis. A starting point in that direction would be to grasp that terrorism traumatizes and harms four primary actors.

The first is the terrorist himself. Most terrorists are reasonably smart and educated young men who have become crazy due to the circumstances of their lives and their societies’ political, economic and social conditions, including interactions with foreign armies.

The second is the society that breeds terrorists, including many in the Middle East. The disequilibria, disparities and distortions that plague those societies ultimately generate a handful of crazed men who become terrorists. Terrorists do not emerge from a vacuum. They emerge from terrorized societies.

The third target of terrorism comprises those innocent civilians who are attacked by terrorists, whether in Arab hotels, Pakistani markets, New York City skyscrapers, or London buses. The attacked societies are terrorized and traumatized by the criminality that assaults them, and they usually have no idea why they were attacked or what to do in response. They are truly the innocent victims who pay the highest price.

The fourth madness that often haunts the world of terrorism is the response of governments whose countries or citizens have been subjected to terror attacks. Terrorized, then crazed with anger and driven to seek revenge, governments in turn unleash their own immense military and police power to fight the terrorists and bring them to justice. This approach only rarely succeeds, and more often intensifies the first two problems above: local traditional societies around the developing world that are at the receiving end of Western powers’ might eventually become crazed, distorted, ravaged lands full of tyranny, corruption, instability, abuse of power, and violence, and those traumatized societies in turn eventually breed more of their own criminal terrorists who attack at home and abroad.

If we do not address these four dimensions of terrorism and its traumas, we will never resolve the problem.

Medieval Arabs used to say that “In Yemen, there is wisdom.” There is also much wisdom to be gleaned from Yemen today -- in particular by Anglo-American and other leaders who should understand more honestly how and why a country like Yemen comes to play a role in the global terrorism world. This starts with an integrated, honest analysis of the above four victims of terrorism, rather than by isolating only one of them -- Yemeni society -- and using the wrong tools to address it.

The network of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen is structurally linked with and organically emerges from the experience of militants, resistance fighters, terrorists and others who trained and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq --- sometimes fighting with Anglo-American assistance against a common foe, but sometimes fighting against the Anglo-Americans who were seen as foreign occupiers. This network has been building up in Yemen since the mid-1990s, but in fact Yemen’s instability and its emergence as a terrorists’ base goes much further back.

The British with their colonial history in the southern part of Yemen, along with other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, bear some historical responsibility for how things have turned out in our region in the past century. The wrecks that often masquerade as Arab modern states are fragile in many cases because they emerged from colonial rule (mostly French and British) in wildly unsustainable conditions, due to the double constraints of European colonialism and post-colonial policies: The combination of national boundaries that were highly artificial and thus created structurally unstable states, and then the advent of local rulers who were put in place by the retreating colonial powers, often lacked any serious indigenous legitimacy, and ultimately developed into, or gave way to, today‘s security states.

For the British now to convene a global summit to fix Yemen is akin to Tiger Woods offering an executive course in marriage fidelity. It is not a serious proposition. Fighting the modern scourge of political terrorism with the kind of intellectual terrorism that Gordon Brown offers will not work. If this is a joke, it is not funny. If this is serious, we are all in much deeper trouble than any of us could ever have imagined.

Iran: "What is This Opposition?" Right Answers to Wrong Questions

EA's Josh Shahryar offers this analysis, also published in The Huffington Post:

On Wednesday in The New York Times, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett attempted perhaps the most stinging dismissal of the importance of the ongoing opposition protests in Iran.

Bloggers and other foreign policy experts refuted many of the Leveretts' specific points, especially their overestimation of government-sponsored protests and underestimation of opposition demonstrations. [EA's immediate reaction is in Wednesday's updates.] I have covered the numbers on my blog, but a very good second opinion is offered by Daniel Drezner in ForeignPolicy.com.

Drezner and Kevin Sullivan of Real Clear Politics set a wider challenge, however, when they argue that, beyond the Leveretts' distortions, there are "good" analytical questions.

Those questions need a response, not necessarily because they are "good", but because if they are not addressed, the Leveretts may get away with a blatant attempt at skewing facts to hammer in their argument that President Barack Obama should forget about the possibility of regime change in Iran.

This is how the Leveretts set out their three queries:

Those who talk so confidently about an "opposition" in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran? In the case of the 1979 revolutionaries, the answers to these questions were clear. They wanted to oust the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to replace it with an Islamic republic. Everyone knew who led the revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who despite living in exile in Paris could mobilize huge crowds in Iran simply by sending cassette tapes into the country. While supporters disagreed about the revolution's long-term agenda, Khomeini's ideas were well known from his writings and public statements. After the shah's departure, Khomeini returned to Iran with a draft constitution for the new political order in hand. As a result, the basic structure of the Islamic Republic was set up remarkably quickly.

Let's see what ancient China has to offer before I add my assessment. Back in the olden days, this man traveled hundreds of miles to meet a Taoist sage somewhere in China. After the necessary greetings, he said, "I have come a long way to ask you something. What is the answer to the ultimate question in the universe?" The sage smiled and barked, "Well, that is not what you should be asking. You should ask: is there an answer to the ultimate question in the universe?"

In this parable, the first question posed by the Leveretts is fair: what does this opposition want?

Well, certainly not what Mir Hossein Mousavi wants. Even if we ignore the protesters' repeated calls for the freedom of detainees and other chants that call for help from Imam Hossein against tyranny, I think "Down with the Dictator" --- heard for the last six months, heard loudly and clearly --- is a slogan that embodies the demands. President Ahmadinejad Must Go.

In recent months, however, protesters have also widely started chanting against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri was filled with noise denouncing the Supreme Leader. Ashura's protests days later were condemned by the regime for committing the same offense.

Certainly, Mousavi is still bargaining with the government. However, people on the street aren't ready to chicken out of their demands, even in the face of gunfire. If the government hadn't forcefully stopped them from presenting their demands through the media, you would have already seen that clearly.

The second question of the Leveretts is one the Taoist sage would have barked at: Who leads it?

The two questioners attempt to fool us into believing that their enquiry is fair by paralleling it with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Revolutions need leaders and the current protesters don't have one --- quod erat demonstrandum, this is not a revolution.

The first assumption is not true, however: it is not a prerequisite for revolutions to have leaders. Consider the February Revolution of 1917 that overthrew Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Academics are generally in agreement that it was without what we today consider a definite and centralized leadership. Almost a century later, if you envisage scattered activists working together to bring people out to protest, then Iran has no shortage of those. Mousavi, often considered the de-facto "leader" of the current protesters -- didn't even sanction or support protests that were joined by hundreds of thousands in Ashura.

The third question of the Leveretts made me smirk because it has no immediate relevance: through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

Well, I wish I knew. But just because the protesters' demands have not been met yet, does not mean that we need to figure how they are going to achieve them. That is their task, a quest for which they've been coming out onto the streets of Iran, chanting as loud as they can, getting arrested, and spilling blood for the past six months to show their commitment to achieving those demands.

Who knows what might overthrow the regime? Maybe the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Artesh) will finally step in. Maybe millions will turn up and storm Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's house and the parliament. Maybe the violence will get so rampant that the leaders of Iran will simply board a plane to Moscow and flee. This we don't know.

But we do know that simply because they have not met their goals yet, does not mean they won't in the future. The Leveretts' attempt to parallel this movement with the Revolution of 1979 tries to force us into believing that we need to know how, but we really don't.

When the change happens, we will know. Until then, all we can do is support the opposition because they're not just fighting for political rights, but for their human rights. If President Obama believes the Leveretts and discounts the power of the Green Movement, he risks making enemies of the open and secular Iran of the future, just like Jimmy Carter did when he discounted the Revolution of 1979. (Not to mention the fact that he would be guilty of legitimizing an illegitimate regime.)

The Leveretts' piece made me really grateful to an old professor of mine, Dr. Rick Schubert, bless him. Dr. Schubert gave me a D in Philosophy 101, but he taught me what now has become my Golden Rule: questions are equally as important as the answer to them, so be careful before you ask. Maybe the Leveretts should attend one of his classes.