Video: Obama is a Dirty Old Man (or Maybe Not)

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Since we launched Enduring America last November, we've had Obama the Muslim, Obama as Hitler, Obama as Stalin, and even Obama the Antichrist, but somehow the 44th President of the US has been able to slip away unscathed.

Last weekend, however, Obama seemed to have been busted. As he stood with other national leaders at the G8 Summit in Italy, it appeared that he was taking far more interest in the backside of a 16-year-old delegate, Mayara Tavares, in Brazil's youth group.



But, doggone it, it appears that Barack may be off the hook once more. Far from being a Dirty Old Man, it seems he was a Polite, Courteous Chief Exective, helping another lady step down. Instead, it's Mr Carla Bruni, a.k.a. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who may want to be watching both his headlines and his domestic situation:

Beyond the Election: Talking Turkey to Iran?

The Latest from Iran (14 July): Ripples on the Surface

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Colette Mazzucelli, who has written for Enduring America and our partner website Libertas, has a challenging article (co-written with Sebnam Udum) in Atlantic Community on the next steps regarding Tehran in the international community: "UN Security Council members and Germany must turn to Turkey to successfully negotiate with Iran."

Why the West Should Talk Turkey with Iran

As Presidents Obama and Medvedev met in Moscow to agree in reductions on their strategic nuclear arsenal, events inside Iran continued to evolve. An increasing segment of the Iranian population worries about the disappearance of "semi-democracy" in favor of totalitarian rule. Influential clerics have indicated their lack of support for the results of the June 12 elections, which led to a second term for the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the weeks after the election, cell phone images and Twitter accounts of a brutal government crackdown on the reform movement were uploaded to the Internet. Billions of people around the world continue to witness a regime, and the authority of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, losing the legitimacy established with the Islamic Revolution three decades ago.

It is too soon to know the ultimate outcome of these events, which may take years to play out in domestic politics. The transatlantic allies must remain proactive in nuclear diplomacy within the P5+1. There must be a readiness to engage Iran with a unified negotiating line should the leadership in Tehran decide to respond to the package on the table. President Obama is prudent to expect a signal from the Iranians by September as to their interest, or lack thereof, for serious engagement. Iran shows no sign of halting its nuclear aspirations as time passes.

Even though the ball is now in Iran's court, the transatlantic allies should not play a waiting game. There is much work to do particularly in the bilateral talks US diplomats conduct with Russia and China. The Obama Administration's seriousness about non-proliferation with the Russians demonstrates leadership by the power of example. E3 diplomacy with Russian and Chinese counterparts must also aim to unify negotiating positions vis-à-vis Iran. This is complicated during an election year for the Germans, who have significant economic relations with Iran. The accent must be on a package that highlights Iran's inherent right to a civilian nuclear program with a nuclear-fuel-cycle capability of its own under intensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) control and verification.

There is another player to which the transatlantic allies must now increasingly turn in the overall relationship with Iran after the events of June 12: Turkey. The absence of conflict between Iran and Turkey is due to the rough strategic balance between the two countries despite mutual threat perceptions from their respective political regimes. Turkey is concerned about Iran's missile and nuclear programs. The Turkish leadership defines threat as a combination of motivations and capabilities, which is why maintaining good neighborly relations with Tehran is important for Ankara.

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Israel: Livni Challenges Prime Minister Netanyahu's 100 Days

In Israel, the Netanyahu Government has concluded its first 100 days with the claim that it has "broad national consensus" for its concept of a two-state solution. Some, however, are still to be convinced.

Tzipi Livni, the head of the opposition Kadima Party, laid out the challenge:

The prime minister still does not really believe that this is the right path for Israel but he understands that this is the right thing to say… Netanyahu doesn't really believe that two states, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, even a demilitarized one, is an Israeli interest… But the prime minister was surprised to encounter the outside world and placed Israel, to my great sorrow, in the position of the party that is rejecting peace and then he understood that at this stage he needs to utter the words "two states".

Speaking to Army Radio, Livni called Netanyahu’s new-found support for a two-state solution  “the height of hypocrisy”:

Everything this government does is superficial… When the public looks at Bibi, it understands that he is playing with words, that there is no process here… This is a government that is trying to survive, that zigzags, that is not dealing with the financial crisis.

To some extent, of course, Livni's position stems from domestic political calculations. The more ground that the Netanyahu Government gives because pressure from the Obama Administration, the better placed Livni will be within the context of a Washington-led settlement. If progress is slow, which is what the Obama Administration is also expecting, the Kadima leader's challenge will be even more important for the US. So Livni, having lost to Netanyahu in March, may already be plotting her domestic and international revenge.

Afghanistan: The Irresistible Illusion of an Unobtainable Victory

Rory Stewart, who served as a British Government official in Iraq and Afghanistan, has written eloquently of the difficulties of intervention. However, his latest article, in The London Review of Books, is exceptional. It is a lengthy examination both of the impulse to expand the current political and military approach and of the difficulties, if not futility, of doing so: "After seven years of refinement, the policy seems so buoyed by illusions, caulked in ambiguous language and encrusted with moral claims, analogies and political theories that it can seem futile to present an alternative."

The Irresistible Illusion

We are accustomed to seeing Afghans through bars, or smeared windows, or the sight of a rifle: turbaned men carrying rockets, praying in unison, or lying in pools of blood; boys squabbling in an empty swimming-pool; women in burn wards, or begging in burqas. Kabul is a South Asian city of millions. Bollywood music blares out in its crowded spice markets and flower gardens, but it seems that images conveying colour and humour are reserved for Rajasthan.

Barack Obama, in a recent speech, set out our fears. The Afghan government is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people. The economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency . . . If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban – or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged – that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can . . . For the Afghan people, a return to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralysed economy, and the denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people – especially women and girls. The return in force of al-Qaida terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence.

When we are not presented with a dystopian vision, we are encouraged to be implausibly optimistic. ‘There can be only one winner: democracy and a strong Afghan state,’ Gordon Brown predicted in his most recent speech on the subject. Obama and Brown rely on a hypnotising policy language which can – and perhaps will – be applied as easily to Somalia or Yemen as Afghanistan. It misleads us in several respects simultaneously: minimising differences between cultures, exaggerating our fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power, and confusing our goals. All these attitudes are aspects of a single worldview and create an almost irresistible illusion.

It conjures nightmares of ‘failed states’ and ‘global extremism’, offers the remedies of ‘state-building’ and ‘counter-insurgency’, and promises a final dream of ‘legitimate, accountable governance’. The path is broad enough to include Scandinavian humanitarians and American special forces; general enough to be applied to Botswana as easily as to Afghanistan; sinuous and sophisticated enough to draw in policymakers; suggestive enough of crude moral imperatives to attract the Daily Mail; and almost too abstract to be defined or refuted. It papers over the weakness of the international community: our lack of knowledge, power and legitimacy. It conceals the conflicts between our interests: between giving aid to Afghans and killing terrorists. It assumes that Afghanistan is predictable. It is a language that exploits tautologies and negations to suggest inexorable solutions. It makes our policy seem a moral obligation, makes failure unacceptable, and alternatives inconceivable. It does this so well that a more moderate, minimalist approach becomes almost impossible to articulate. Afghanistan, however, is the graveyard of predictions. None of the experts in 1988 predicted that the Russian-backed President Najibullah would survive for two and a half years after the Soviet withdrawal. And no one predicted at the beginning of 1994 that the famous commanders of the jihad, Hekmatyar and Masud, then fighting a civil war in the centre of Kabul, could be swept aside by an unknown group of madrassah students called the Taliban. Or that the Taliban would, in a few months, conquer 90 per cent of the country, eliminate much corruption, restore security on the roads and host al-Qaida.

It is tempting to assume that economic growth will not make Afghanistan into Obama’s terrorist haven or Brown’s strong democracy but rather into something more like its wealthier neighbours. Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan were at various points under the same Muslim empires. There are Persian, Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik populations in Afghanistan, and the Afghan Pushtun are only arbitrarily divided by the Durand Line from their Pakistani kinsmen. The economies are linked and millions of Afghans have studied and worked in Iran or Pakistan. There are more reasons for Afghanistan to develop into a country like one of its neighbours than for it to collapse into Somalian civil war or solidify into Malaysian democracy. But Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan present a bewildering variety of states: an Islamist theocracy, a surreal mock-tribal autocracy, a repressive secular dictatorship, a country trembling on the edge of civil war, a military dictatorship cum democracy. And it will be many years before Afghanistan’s economy or its institutions draw level with those of its neighbours.

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The Latest from Iran (11 July): Drawing Breath

LATEST Video: The 18 Tir Protests (9 July)
NEW Iran: Rebellion of the Clerics? Not So Fast
Iran Video: Mr Ahmadinejad and His Wonderful, Brightly-Coloured Charts
The Latest from Iran (10 July): What Next?

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1800 GMT: Mehdi Karroubi's letter to the head of the Iranian judiciary, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, has been published on a Facebook page of Mohammad Khatami: "All protesting the election results agree with the original system, but its defenders have confiscated the electoral process."

1455 GMT: The mysterious of the "Basiji" audio tape (0825 and 1130 GMT): A very helpful reader has listened to four hours of the tapes and offers the following: "Each [of the four] segments is about an hour and on different aspect of protests and how to understand and neutralize it. The audio seems to be from the Revolutionary Guard who criticize the Basiji for ineffectiveness and lack of training. The 4th segment in the audio is creepy and openly talks about why ppeople are talking about a coup, psychological operations, ideology, etc."

Another reader adds, "This seems leaked audio from immediately after 1999 raids [on the 18 Tir] demonstrations. Still, given ranking figures supposedly in recordings, worth examining." The first reader, however, points us to a document, "Mechanisms for Suppression of Mobilization", which seems to correspond to aspect of the audio discussion.

(Again, our gratitude to both sources for assistance above and beyond the call of duty.)

1445 GMT: Citing a "security source", Lara Setrakian of ABC News (US) says that President Ahmadinejad's national broadcast on Tuesday was hindered by blackouts, caused by deliberate power surges from protestors' use of electrical appliances.

1430 GMT: Ayatollah Montazeri, the one-time successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, has issued another fatwa condemning the violence used against protestors. Any Government sanctioning such violence is "un-Islamic".

1230 GMT: Al Arabiya is reporting that Tehran's police chief has declared half of the city a "crisis zone".

1130 GMT: Correction. Our latest information is that the leaked audio of Basiji conversation (0825 GMT) is analysis and training in security methods.

1025 GMT: Election Past, Engagement Present. In the first clear sign that the post-election conflict is pushing the regime towards discussions with the "West" on Iran's nuclear programme and other matters of concern, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has told a news conference that Iran will present a package of "political, security, and international issues" for consideration: ""The package can be a good basis for talks with the West. The package will contain Iran's stances on political, security and international issues."

0935 GMT: The Silence is Broken. Mehdi Karroubi has issued a strong statement this morning, calling on the head of the Iranian judiciary, Ayatollah Shahroudi, to release detained protesters: "Constitutionalism and sovereignty of the people are opposed to tyranny."

0825 GMT: A lot of chatter this morning about a leaked audio, allegedly of Basiji discussing plans to raid university dormitories.

0800 GMT: More on the arrest of Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh (see yesterday's updates). The important link: Tajbakhsh was one of four US citizens detained in 2007 by the Iranian Government, the most prominent of whom was Haleh Esfiandiari. He was released after four months.

So the Iranian regime is still pursuing --- for public consumption, from their suspicions, or both --- the idea of a "velvet revolution" backed by US groups and possibly the American government.

0715 GMT: A reader tips us off to a development which we missed yesterday: according to the German news service Deutsche Welle, the 27-nation European Union has suspended all visas or visa extensions for Iranian diplomats and their families.

0630 GMT: A very quiet start to the day, with no breaking news.

The question we raised yesterday, "What next?", after the 18 Tir protests on Thursday, still hangs in the air. The only visible protests were small gatherings of the families of detainees in several locations in Tehran. Not a public word from figures such as Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Khatami. Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani maintaining a mysterious silence. And the regime took a breather as well: beyond Ayatollah Kashani's relatively low-key address at Tehran prayers, the headline pronouncement was "a 50,000-strong special constable-like force called 'honorary police officers' to provide assistance to police support units".

There was one statement of note. Ayatollah Hashim Hashim-Zadeh Hareesi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, declared that people had started to distrust the system because of the election process. The government needed to restore people’s trust to prevent more serious problems. In itself, that statement could complement, rather than challenge, Ayatollah Kashani's request to the Iranian Parliament to review the electoral law and the Guardian Council's promise of a report on the election.

Press TV takes a look outside, "Obama ends G8 with warning to Iran". BBC English, whose coverage of Iran has almost collapsed, also devotes its limited attention to the G8 summit. CNN briefly refers to the arrest of academic Kian Tajbakhsh, primarily because he has American citizenship.