The Latest from Iran (30 July): Stepping Up the Criticism

2135 GMT: Political Prison Experience. Reza Rafii-Forushan, an Iranian stringer for Time magazine, has written an open letter appealing against his "frame-up" by Iranian authorities and complaining about abuses in prison.

Rafii-Forushan was arrested on 27 June 2009 and held for 43 days in solitary confinement during his interrogation.

2130 GMT: Sanctions Watch. Arshama3's Blog lists the individuals, institutions, and companies subjected to new sanctions by the European Union.

1915 GMT: Going after Jannati. The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front has joined Mehdi Karroubi's attack on Ayatollah Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council (see separate entry), demanding that Jannati “clarify how and when he has secured...documents" that allegedly show a US-Saudi $50 billion plot for regime change. They question, "How can an individual that does not refrain from committing the biggest sins, be in charge of two positions that have justice as their first criterion?"

This, however, may be the most intriguing sentence: "Has he made these revelations with the authority of the relevant officials?” EA sources indicate that, because Jannati is seen as being close to the Supreme Leader, the criticism of him is an indirect challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei's authority.

NEW Iran Music Video Special: The Award-Winning “Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone”
NEW Iran’s Persecution of Rights: The Pursuit of Lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei (Shahryar)
Iran Document: Karroubi Strongly Criticises Head of Guardian Council (29 July)
Iran Analysis: Twisting & Turning to Prove the Leader is Supreme (Verde)
Iran: How “Ahmadinejad v. Paul the Octopus” Became a Global Showdown
The Latest from Iran (29 July): 22% Support?

1910 GMT: Containing the Cleric. It is being reported that Molana Abdolhamid, the Sunni Friday Prayer leader of Zahedan, has been barred from leaving country and his passport has been confiscated.

1830 GMT: Poster of the Day. Courtesy of the Iranian Government, "A Woman without Hijab is like a Chair with Three Legs".



1800 GMT: Client and Lawyer Watch. The Guardian of London has a lengthy profile of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to death for adultery (on the basis, the article claims, of a 3-2 decision amongst the judges), who has sent a message from inside Tabriz Prison.

Deep in the article is this sentence about Mohammad Mostafaei, Ashtiani's lawyer, who is hiding after authorities tried to detain him and arrested his wife and brother-in-law: "The Guardian has learned that Mostafaei is safe for the moment and plans to publish an open letter to Tehran's prosecutor."

1730 GMT: Larijani Watch. Today's claim of "strong Iran leader" by Ali Larijani comes in the pages of the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Stressing that Iran's motives in the Middle East, as it does not seek an empire, Larijani declared, "If the Zionist regime bullies Palestine we will stand against it, and if it decides to attack Lebanon Hezbollah will confront it."

As for uranium and sanctions, Larijani emphasised Iran's pursuit of peaceful nuclear capability: "When the US questions why Iran has nuclear and missile technology it is because [it is unhappy that] we have the ability to obtain such technologies.....Had we been producing fruit juice, mineral water, and tomato paste, it (the US) would never have raised an objection....They claim that Iran has nuclear weapons, but they never say [a word about] the Zionist regime, which is their friend [and] possesses nukes."

1645 GMT: Do Not Panic. Might be worth noting this reference from Mehr News to Ayatollah Emami Kashani's Tehran Friday Prayer: "He...called on people who have deposited their money in foreign banks to return their funds to Iran."

1620 GMT: Sanctions Watch. Back from a break to find a far-from-unexpected tweak in the sanctions tale. The Chinese Government has said that it does not approve of new sanctions imposed by the European Union while welcoming Tehran's offer to return to negotiations on uranium enrichment.

A Foreign Ministry statement declared, "China does not approve of the European Union's unilateral sanctions on Iran. We hope that all relevant parties can support a diplomatic solution and appropriately resolve the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations."

1300 GMT: Your Friday Prayer Update. Have to be honest, it's hard working up enthusiasm over Ayatollah Emami Kashani's Tehran Friday Prayer.

The cleric called for Iranian cohesion --- political, economic, and cultural --- in the face of sanctions. However, any white-hot rhetoric seemed to be cooled by the Iranian Government's indications this week that it would enter discussions, even with the "enemy", over its uranium enrichment programme. (Earlier on Friday, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said it was "out of the question for Iran to promise never to enrich uranium" but said the move for 20% enriched uranium could be suspended if talks were held.)

That left Emami Kashani's defiance with the line that the great Iranian nation would not need "outside help" to produce the necessary uranium for civilian purposes.

1255 GMT: Mahmoud's University Push. Hmm, I get the feeling that the dispute over control of Islamic Azad University, supposedly resolved by the Supreme Leader's intervention, could flare up again....

Speaking to a student organisation, President Ahmadinejad warned that "enemies" are trying to create space for their activities within Iran's universities.

1215 GMT: Conspiracy Theory Update. First it was President Ahmadinejad with warnings of an imminent American strike on two Arab countries allied with Tehran , then it was Ayatollah Jannati, the leader of the Guardian Council with revelations of the US-Saudi $50 billion "regime change" scheme, now it's the "nuclear-pig-blood cigarette plot".

Mohammad Reza Madani from the Society for Fighting Smoking said contraband Marlboros, part of the 20 billion cigarettes smuggled into Iran each year,  have been contaminated with pig hemoglobin and unspecified nuclear material.

Madani claimed Philip Morris International, which sells Marlboro outside the US, is "led by Zionists" and deliberately exports tainted cigarettes.

1055 GMT: Mousavi's 1988 Resignation Letter. Mr Verde stops by to discuss Mir Hossein Mousavi's letter of resignation as Prime Minister, reprinted yesterday on the website of former President Abolhassan Banisadr:

The letter in general accuses Ayatollah Khamenei, who was President in 1988, of meddling in affairs which are not directly his responsibility. This is similar to the accusations about his current activity as the Supreme Leader. It also shows the internal workings of the Islamic Republic to be chaotic and haphazard.

Point 2 of the letter talks about “external operations” and lists: a plane hijacking, a shooting in a Lebanese street, and discovery of explosives on Iranian hajj pilgrims. It says that these operations are disastrous for the country and could be repeated any moment.
The tone of the letter is suggesting that all of these are carried out by the Islamic Republic's officials and that Khamenei is involved in them, although it says that the Prime Minister [Mousavi] is in the dark about it.

These accusations are not coming from regime opponents or foreign governments. They are coming from the Islamic Republic's Prime Minister.

1. Mousavi is accusing Khamenei, as President, of being involved in terrorist activity overseas. This could be used to embarrass Khamenei further, placing the activity next to the actions of the Islamic Republic after Khamenei became Supreme Leader, e.g. Chain Murders, attacks on student dormitories, street killings, prison rapes, etc.

2. The letter suggests that the Islamic Republic was regularly involved in terrorist activity overseas, an allegation which could be damaging to the current regime .

Will Mousavi confirm this, deny this, or, as he had for 22 years since the letter was first leaked, ignore this?

What will Khamenei’s side do? Will they “leak” letters and information which would counter this letter? If they play the card of Ayatollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader, it would mean tha,t despite his best efforts, Kahmenei has again have been forced to hide behind Khomeini.

Although the current intra-regime arguments started with the dispute over the 2009 presidential elections, this episode has the potential to cause trouble well beyond that. One can't help get the feeling that events --- in this case but not only in this case --- may spiral out of control.

1040 GMT: EA's Hot Tips of Day. Based on information from sources:

1. Discussions earlier this month between Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, key member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli, and Secretary of Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei on action against the President --- which we covered on EA --- have been followed by several meetings between Larijani, Rezaei, and Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf.

2. The Supreme Leader's "I am the Rule of the Prophet" fatwa followed a visit to Qom, and specifically to Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi, by member of Ayatollah Khamenei's office. Makarem-Shirazi said he could not support a unilateral declaration by the Supreme Leader but he could accept a declaration framed as an answer to a question from a follower. The question and answer followed two or three days later.

0945 GMT: We've posted a separate entry on the music video, "Ayatollah, Leave Those Kids Alone!", which has just won an award in Britain, including an interview with the members of the Iranian band, Blurred Vision.

The Independent of London has also posted an interview with the band members.

0815 GMT: Talking Tough. Hojatoleslam Mojtaba Zolnour, the representative of the Supreme Leader in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, grabs the spotlight with the warning that there should be action against Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Zolnour said Tehran would "act correspondingly" if its ships were challenged. He added, "Sanctions will backfire and have grave consequences for [these countries]."

0610 GMT: Watching Karroubi (and the Reaction to Karroubi). We're keeping eyes open for the reaction to Mehdi Karroubi's open letter to Ayatollah Jannati, head of the Guardian Council (posted in a separate entry). To call this a "criticism" is a major understatement: Karroubi is effectively accusing one of Iran's leading political and religious figures of being --- at the least --- an accomplice to election fraud and Government repression.

0600 GMT: We start today with a focus on human rights, specifically the regime's attempt to limit or even prevent the defence of them. Josh Shahryar offers a feature on the Government's pursuit of lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei, who is missing as his wife and brother-in-law sit in prison.

Mostafaei's colleague Shadi Sadr, who was forced into exile by the regime, has written to the Iranian Bar Association:

It appears that the legal-security system, while forced to stop carrying out the stoning sentence [against Mostafaei's client Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani], is hell bent on taking revenge on Mr Mostafaei by some trumped-up charges. Since they were unable to find him, they have arrested his wife and brother-in-law....

This is not the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran that the family of a civil activist have been taken hostage. The policy of oppression of activists by pressurising their family members by different forms, from threatening them to extracting "confessions" by torture, has been used brutally in the past few years. In one of the recent cases, the husband of Mrs Shirin Ebadi, a member of the Bar Association of Iran, human rights activist and Nobel Laureate, was forced to speak against her on camera after several days of incarceration....

As a lawyer, a member of the Central Court lawyers, also as a client and defendant, I urge you, who lead this oldest civil law society in Iran, not to remain silent on state kidnap and retaliation....If we do not act against this policy, whose victims today are Shirin Ebadi and Mohammad Mostafaie, it will attack every single one of us tomorrow.

Iran: How "Ahmadinejad v. Paul the Octopus" Became a Global Showdown

It was only a sentence in a very, very long speech.

After a rather slow start --- "if one really makes a big success of it, the middle age will be the period in which what was achieved in youth would be consolidated" --- President Ahmadinejad's talk at the closing ceremony of the Iranian Youth Festival in Tehran last Friday was full of juicy soundbites.

There was the denunciation of a US-led plot "to carry out a military invasion of one or two countries in the Middle East, which are our friends, with the help of...disgraced Israelis". There was the portrayal of a deceitful Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offering support by "perform[ing] at a US show". There was the declaration, "The Iranian nation will crush hundreds of America's propagandist plays with its will and unity."

Little wonder, then, that this sentence initially slipped by with little notice: "Recently in the World Championship [football's World Cup] you saw that those who proclaim to have reached the peaks of history wanted to manipulate people's minds through superstition, an octopus, fortune-telling and such things."

Enter the magic of the German newspaper Bild. On Monday, their intrepid reporters turned Ahmadinejad's aside into the Main Event: "He incites against Israel, against the US and the West in general --- but now the crazy Iranian dictator is going after Paul the Octopus!...For Ahmadinejad, Paul is a symbol of the propaganda and superstitions of the West."

Paul the Octopus, for those who have been away from Planet Earth this summer, was the unexpected star of the 2010 World Cup, picking the winner in all of Germany's matches (including, at great risk to his life, Spain's defeat of the Germans in the semi-final) and then calling the Spanish victory over Holland in the final. He had also allegedly intervened in Iranian politics, calling an ultimate win for opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi over the Supreme Leader.

Forget minor events like Ayatollah Khamenei's "I am the Rule of the Prophet" fatwa or the manoeuvres against the Iranian President. Paul v. Mahmoud was the story, sometimes the only story --- once you looked past mythical or real nuclear weapons, of course --- on Iran.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Daily Telegraph of London, which has a penchant for Wacky Ahmadinejad stories (see their superlative "Mahmoud is a Jew" effort), proclaimed, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world." (There was no mention of Bild for its investigative coup.) And by Wednesday, British tabloids such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, as well as the broadsheet The Guardian, were reprinting the story with minor changes in wording (although The Guardian deserves a bonus point for the headline, "West Spreads Evil Tentacles into Iran").

Time magazine picked up the tale --- "[Paul] just calls it like it is — or will be". Rory Fitzgerald at The Huffington Post attempted satire by penning Paul's response: "He...said that he had never before seen such a lack of a sense of humor in a human being, despite the fact that he lives in Germany." Fox News posted the item in its "Science and Technology" section. IsraelPolitik, "The Political Blog of the State of Israel", jumped in, "If Paul the Octopus is on Ahmadinejad’s 'hitlist', no one is safe."

By Wednesday afternoon, there were so many reprints or minor variations of the tale --- all without noting the original Ahmadinejad sentence, all without crediting Bild --- that The Los Angeles Times (which credited The Daily Telegraph) was publishing a round-up.

Is there a moral here? Probably not. It's just a tale of how the world works, when the fatwa of a Supreme Leader --- a Supreme Leader who may be in political trouble --- just can't match up to the scenario of Bad Guy Politician v. Eight-Legged Psychic.

And you don't even need Paul --- or Mahmoud for that matter --- to tell you that.

[Thanks to Borzou Daragahi for sending me a full copy of Ahmadinejad's speech]

The Latest from Iran (28 July): A Presidential Target?

2040 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Author and journalist Yahya Samadi has been arrested in Sanandaj in Kurdistan.

2030 GMT: International Front Update. The US has offered a cautious welcome to Iran's approach for resumed discussions on uranium enrichment (see 1630 GMT). State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley said, "We obviously are fully prepared to follow up with Iran on specifics regarding our initial proposal involving the Tehran research reactor....[We are interested in] trying to fully understand the nature of Iran's nuclear program. We hope to have the same kind of meeting coming up in the coming weeks that we had last October."

NEW Iran Analysis: The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad
Latest Iran Video: Ahmadinejad on Afghanistan, Sanctions, & the US (26 July)
Iran Document: Mousavi on Governing and Mis-Governing, Now and in the 1980s (26 July)
Iran Analysis: Interpreting Khamenei’s “Re-Appearing” Fatwa (Verde)
The Latest from Iran (27 July): Regime Wavering?

2007 GMT: Today's All-is-Well Alert. The President of Islamic Azad University, (IAU) Abdollah Jasbi, has declared, "In its fourth decade [of its existence, i.e., 2020]…the Islamic Azad University will become the greatest and most respected university in the world and competing with renowned universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and MIT has been placed on its agenda."

There is no quote from Jasbi on the recent attempt by pro-Ahmadinejad forces to take control of the University, including moves that could have removed Jasbi from his post.

2004 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. HRANA carries a report from political prisoner Saeed Masouri on conditions in Rajai-Shahr Prison.

2000 GMT: The Oil Squeeze. Deutsche Welle --- following earlier reports that Iran has received only three shipments of gasoline this month, rather than the normal 11-13, claims that the country is facing serious shortages.

1630 GMT: International Front. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says Iran, in a message sent on Sunday, has given an assurance that it will stop enriching uranium to 20 percent purity if other countries agree to a fuel swap.

Crucially, however, it is not clear if Iran has accepted that the uranium swap can take place outside its borders.

1615 GMT: MediaWatch --- One Non-Story, One Nearly-New Story. It's always interesting to see which tales break through into the "mainstream" media outside Iran.

One hot story may actually be a jumped-up urban myth. The Bild tabolid in Germany, not always known for scrupulous adherence to facts, put out the claim on Monday that President Ahmadinejad had denounced Paul the Psychic Octopus as a tool of Western imperialism. More than 48 hours later, the story --- almost always without referencing Bild as the source --- is now embedded in outlets from The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian of London to Time magazine to the Los Angeles Times.

Then there are Ahmadinejad's babies. Months ago, the President proposed a payment of about $1000 for every new child, with subsequent support payments until the boy or girl reached 18. That announcement escaped notice outside Iran. However, when Ahmadinejad restated the idea Tuesday, it was transformed into the news that he had "inaugurated a new policy" by the Associated Press, becoming the Number 1 Iran story in places like The New York Times.

1610 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Radio Zamaneh has more on the reported move of 10 political prisoners, including student activist Abdollah Momeni, journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoui, and Ahmad Karimi, to solitary confinement (see 0840 GMT). The report claims that the 10 are being punished for protesting against the ill treatment of detainees and their families by guards.

1210 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An appellate court has upheld the 9 1/2-year sentence of student and women’s rights activist Bahareh Hedayat. Hedayat will also serve two years that had been suspended from a 2006 arrest.

Mostafa Kazzazi, the publisher of the banned Seda-ye Edalat (Voice of Justice), has been sentenced to 11 months in jail for propaganda against the establishment, defaming the Islamic republic, and encouraging people to act against security.

Seda-ye Edalat was shut down in July 2009 for "insulting" Ayatollah Khomeini.

1145 GMT: Today's Conspiracy Theory. Back from an academic break to find that Iranian leaders are holding a competition for Biggest, Baddest Threat of the Day.

As good as President Ahmadinejad is in this sport, he only gets the runner-up spot for his declaration in Assalouyeh in southern Iran on Wednesday. His assertion that "Iran's efforts to proceed with giant national oil, gas and petroleum projects by [Iranian] experts have cut the dependence bonds with other economic powers and multinational companies" may be morale-boosting --- if somewhat oblivious to current realities --- but does not really fit in category of Threat.

Your winner? Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, is the runaway champion with this tale:

I have acquired documents showing that the Americans paid one billion dollars to leaders of sedition through Saudi individuals who are currently the US agents in regional countries. These Saudis, who spoke on behalf of the US, told the opposition figures that if you can overthrow the Islamic establishment, we would pay another 50 billion dollars.

The opposition leaders staged riots with the help of the US and they were confident that the Islamic Revolution will fall with the assistance of the US because it is a soft war which causes people to break away from the Islamic system.

We look forward to seeing those documents and perhaps also the made-for-TV movie for IRIB 1.

0840 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Rah-e-Sabz reports that Abdollah Momeni and other political prisoners are being moved out of Evin Prison's Ward 350 into solitary confinement. Earlier, it was reported that phones in the ward had been cut off this week.

0835 GMT: Moving Out. A reader folllows up our item on the Cultural Heritage Organization protest at transfer of offices outside Tehran: according to Jam-e-Jam, 40% of civil servants should be leaving the capital within the next month.

0740 GMT: We begin this morning with an analysis of tensions within the Iranian system, "The Hardliners Take on Ahmadinejad".

Meanwhile....

Tough Guy Larijani

Partly for his campaign to establish his leadership credentials, partly to challenge Mir Hossein Mousavi's latest statement, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has continued to throw rhetoric at the US. Speaking in Kermanshah on Tuesday, he said:

The United States still seeks to break the Iranian nation's will. The more sanctions they issue against us, the stronger the Iranian nation's will becomes....US President Barack Obama cannot stretch his hands to the Iranian nation while the US Congress adopts moves against Iran....This imposed war [with Iraq from 1980-1988] was not Iraq's war with Iran, but it was a war of most big powers which support Iraq.

The Heritage Protest

The employees of the Cultural Heritage Organization have protested at Tehran's Mehrabad airport, objecting to their transfer to offices outside the capital.

The transfer order is part of the Ahmadinejad Government's plan to reduce the population in Tehran. The 700 employees of the CHO are amongst the first government employees to receive notices.

Fars News has recently published the name of 114 public companies who have been ordered to move from Tehran.

Iran Follow-Up: Dealing with the Media's "War, War, War" Drumbeat (Lynch)

UPDATE 0815 GMT: Matt Duss also has posted an effective challenge to the cries of those promoting a military option against Iran.



---
On Friday, we took apart the overblown, thinly-sourced "report" by Joe Klein in Time Magazine of preparations for a military strike on Iran. This, of course, won't stop those agitating for bombing: the latest egregious example is the preaching, posing as analysis, of former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht in The Weekly Standard.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch exposes the campaign and highlights its. (I would only add that this is not just a case of a weak argument. It is also one of manufactured "information". There is little if any evidence that the Obama Administration has modified its point-blank warning to West Jerusalem against a military adventure.)

UPDATED Iran Analysis: When “War Chatter” Poses as Journalism (Step Up, Time Magazine)

....Why the latest round of commentary about an attack on Iran? It isn't because there are new arguments out there. Gerecht's long Weekly Standard piece is typical of the genre, and could have been written any time in the last decade (and in the case of the Weekly Standard has been, repeatedly): we must bomb Iran because there are no other policy options which guarantee success; the risks of an attack are exaggerated; the benefits of an attack are great; and Iranians and Arabs secretly want us to do it. Nor have the rebuttals changed: other policy options are available, which at least slow down Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapon even if they do not provide the kind of epistemic certainty which hawks crave; the risks of an attack are many and real; the benefits of an attack are likely to be less than advertised; and it is exceedingly doubtful that Arabs or Iranians will in fact rally to support an Israeli or American attack. These arguments are now as familiar as wallpaper, from the arguments over Iraq from the 1990s-2003 through the long years of arguments about Iran.

I suspect that the real reason for the new flood of commentary calling for attacks on Iran is simply that hawks hope to pocket their winnings from the long argument over sanctions, such as they are, and now push to the next stage in the confrontation they've long demanded. Hopefully, this pressure will not gain immediate traction. Congress can proudly demonstrate their sanctions-passingness, so the artificial Washington timeline should recede for a while. The Pentagon is now working closely with Israel, it's said, in order to reassure them and prevent their making a unilateral strike, which should hopefully push back another artificial clock. That should buy some time for the administration's strategy to unfold, for better or for worse. An attack on Iran would still be a disaster, unnecessary and counterproductive, and the White House knows that, and it's exceedingly unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. But the real risk is that the public discourse about an attack on Iran normalizes the idea and makes it seem plausible, if not inevitable, and that the administration talks itself into a political corner. That shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Read full article....

UPDATED Iran Analysis: When "War Chatter" Poses as Journalism (Step Up, Time Magazine)

UPDATE 1945 GMT: Gosh, couldn't have predicted this. With Western "analysts" playing up the it-could-be-war line, Iranian authorities are responding with we-will-repel-you. Revolutionary Guard Deputy Commander General Hossein Salami said, "The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps is ready to confront arrogance on both national and global levels....[Missiles] are being produced locally and without any limitations and are ready to strike regional targets with any quantity and quality."

I generally try these days to avoid slaps at US pundits because --- however ill-informed or ill-judged the commentary --- the effort is a diversion from the important issues.

Unfortunately, there are times when superficial, speculative ponderings are puffed-up as important revelations, and there are times when those supposed revelations can do political harm as well as causing unnecessary agitation. And on those occasions, a take-down is needed to get a bit of balance and to damp down the media hysteria.

Today Joe Klein of Time is pushing a piece, "An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table". The title says it all --- Reader, Reader, Come to Me, I Will Enlighten You on Dangerous Times! --- and unfortunately it has worked with even normally-shrewd outlets such as the influential Daily Dish blog.

Unfortunately because when you peel away the onion skins of Klein's claims posing as evidence, there is no onion, let alone a likely war, left.

Here are the sources for Klein's supposed discovery: "a recently retired U.S. official" offering his personal opinion ("I began to think...."), "an Israeli military source", and....that's it. There is not one US Government official at any level, let alone a level which would have access to such sensitive discussions.

Klein tries to cover this by stretching a quote from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons". You'll note that this quote doesn't actually translate into "military action" and, if you check both the interview and the context, you'll find that Gates was pushing the US-led sanctions regime against Tehran.

Then there's this beauty of a piece of straw making a haystack: "Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region."

Leave aside that "other intelligence sources" does not necessarily mean "US Government" --- Klein immediately skips to a quote from his Israeli official. Militaries make contingency plans all the time for operations. You see, that's what you do in the military: you don't sit without any provisions for land, naval, and air operations since, you know, there's something called "preparedness" if a conflict does arise.

Klein takes refuge in the one public event that has been unsettling in recent weeks,  when "United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favored a military strike against Iran despite the economic and military consequences to his country". There has been the question as to whether al-Otaiba realised he was "on the record"; more importantly, there's the larger question of whether al-Otaiba is speaking for his Government, let alone any other Arab state, let alone the United States.

So what's the big deal about one jacked-up, macho, doom-laden column? Why not let it fade into cyber-oblivion?

Well, the problem is that, in Washington circles, Joe Klein is a loud voice --- hey, did you know he was the Anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors about the Clintons? --- and others respond to the call even when the voice is saying very little that is productive. So this column might get played up as a smoke signal of what is really happening.

And even though this is not what is really happening, the beat-beat-beat of war talk will be picked up by Tehran, which will echo it as proof of Western perfidy in its attempt to maintain some vestige of internal legitimacy. If the Iranian people are scared of "them", the logic runs, then they may not interrogate why they are disillusioned with the Government.

So let's call this column now. It is not empty, even if it is near-empty of evidence. It is filled with political exaggeration which can cause nothing but trouble: Joe Klein's attention-seeking comes at the expense not of calm consideration. It also comes at the expense of recognition of the Iranian people and their concerns.