The Iran Crisis (Day 14): What To Watch For Today

The Latest from Iran (25 June): The Sounds of Silence

NEW Iran: A Tale of Two Twitterers
NEW Iran: A List of Those Killed and Detained (12-23 June)
NEW Iran: An Iranian Blogger on “The Beginning of the End”
The Latest from Iran (24 June): Afternoon Violence
Latest Video: Resistance and Violence (24 June)

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At the request of our readers, we're starting this feature as a quick guide to the day's event. For rolling updates through the day, go to The Latest from Iran.

After yesterday afternoon’s surge in tension and uncertainty, particularly at the rally in front of the Iranian Parliament, a strange, almost eerie quiet in news and chatter. There is little coming in from sources and Twitter.

CNN’s website, which went on Red Alert over reports of beatings of protesters, particular in a dramatic phone call (see Latest Video) from an eyewitness to its studio and its correspondent’s general assertion of Iranian paramilitary Basiji “acting like animals”, has fallen back with a peripheral statement from Iran’s Ambassador to Mexico and the official Iran line of the Supreme Leader’s call for tolerance. (It should be noted, however, that CNN TV — back in its vacuum of news — is running heavily with criticism of the Iranian regime from its reporters, Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi, author Azadeh Moaveni, and Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.)

Press TV, after suddenly breaking its blackout to give attention to the general political situation (though not to the specific demonstration at the Parliament). The BBC (English service) isn’t even sure that anything took place yesterday: their website headline uses cautionary quote marks, “Protesters ‘in new Iran clashes’”.

The lull in information leaves questions on both the public and private fronts. Publicly, there are conflicting reports over whether this afternoon’s demonstration (4:30 p.m. local time; 1200 GMT) proceeds; there is a claim that Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi has “cancelled” the memorial to those who have died in post-election violence.

Privately, there is a suspension of news on the manoeuvres within the Government and between the Government and the opposition. There is no follow-up to last night’s intriguing report of a meeting between a key official, the head of the National Security Council, with former President Rafsanjani and candidates Mousavi and Rezaei.

UPDATED Cases of (Non)-Engagement: From Iran and Saberi to North Korea and Ling-Lee

UPDATE: Pointed illustrations already of the limited options, if any, that the US Government has. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's warning that the US could return North Korea to its list of states sponsoring terrorism, made only hours before the sentencing of Ling and Lee, is already looking irrelevant. Leaks to the New York Times that the US may "interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology" have been overtaken.


An opinion piece by The Christian Science Monitor by Allan Richarz sadly highlights the difficult situation. Richarz blusters with artificial linkages between the Saberi and Ling-Lee cases ("little more than manufactured crises designed to wrest concessions"), irrelevancies (his warning, "if the US reciprocates Tehran's gesture by releasing the three Iranian detainees held in Iraq, it will only be a matter of time before another hapless Westerner is put on trial" is a fantasy --- Iran never made
that connection in the Saberi case), and table-thumping ("the US and the West must adopt a hard line"). All of this is to cover the harsh lack of specific measures behind Richarz's general invocation, "The West must swiftly and effectively level retaliatory political and economic sanctions on the offending state."

The news that the Central Court of North Korea has jailed American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee for 12 years for illegal crossing of the Korean border prompts a "compare and contrast" with the case of Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist freed but then released earlier this year by Tehran.

The Saberi case, while tense, was ultimately easier to resolve because there were channels of communication between the US and Iran. The general Obama approach of "engagement" both bolstered and gave further impetus to the campaign first to mitigate Saberi's sentence and then to allow her to leave Iran. Had Tehran persisted with its detention, the wider possibility of a US-Iranian rapprochement might have collapsed.

Unfortunately, that foundation of engagement is not present in the Ling-Lee case. North Korea has already raised the ante of confrontation with its recent nuclear and missile tests. The jailing of the journalists now raises the price for discussion: which incentives have to be tabled to get both the release of the two women and Pyongyang's agreement to re-open talks on its nuclear future?

Of course, the case can be read as a red line drawn away from the nuclear dimension. Investigating the plight of North Koreans defecting or attempting to leave the country will not be tolerated; Pyongyang's internal affairs and treatment of its population is not subject to external scrutiny.

The point is that --- whatever North Korea's motives --- the possibilities for a humanitarian resolution are far more limited, if they exist at all, than they were in the case of Iran. That in turn is a far-from-incidental commentary on the reality as well as the rhetoric of Obama's unclenched fist.

Updates on the case can be followed via the Liberate Laura website.