The Latest from Iran (26 March): Break Time

1935 GMT: We Will, We Will Rescue You. It's Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi taking Tehran's Friday Prayers, and he's a man with a mission:

We should focus our efforts on freeing Americans from under the yoke of the two ruling parties in the United States. We want to save the West and spread morality in the world. We should concentrate our efforts on the international revolution and rescuing nations from the rule of arrogant powers.

Seddiqi also criticised President Obama for supporting Iran's "civil rights activists".

(So Seddiqi is denouncing the US Government's intervention in another country's affairs but calling on the Iranian Government to...intervene in another country's affair. Well, that seems logically consistent.)

Iran: “We are Going to Make the Future Better”
UPDATED Iran Appeal: Japan’s Deportation of Jamal Saberi
UPDATED Iran: The Controversy over Neda’s “Fiance”
The Latest from Iran (25 March): Lying Low

1930 GMT: Opening Communications. The United Nations' communications agency, the International Telecommunication Union, has called on Iran on Friday to end jamming of foreign satellite broadcasts.


The statement follows a similar announcement by the European Union earlier this week.

1920 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch.  A story to treat with caution, but interesting if true: Rah-e-Sabz is claiming, from a source close to Hashemi Rafsanjani, that the former President has said that people should continue their protests to insist that their demands are met. Rafsanjani allegedly pointed to the end of the Nowruz holidays on 12 Farvardin (next Thursday, 1 April) as an occasion for public demonstrations.

1320 GMT: Nowruz Visits. Mostafa Tajzadeh, former Deputy of Minister of Interior and senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, has used his temporary release to visit families of political prisoners who were not freed for the holidays. Amongst those seen by Tajzadeh and his wife were the families of Mohammad Nourizad, the filmmaker and former editor-in-chief of Kayhan, Davood Soleimani, member of Islamic Iran Participation Front, journalist Emadeddin Baghi.

1145 GMT: Iran Nukes No, Pakistan Nukes OK. How far will the US go to keep economic pressure on Tehran? This from Asia Times Online:

In 2008, after several years of negotiations, nuclear-armed India and the United States signed a civilian nuclear deal that in essence allowed India access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel from other countries even though it is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Pakistan, which like its neighbor India has a nuclear arsenal and is not a signatory to the NPT, has long been rankled by India's deal, wanting one of its own with the US. This topic featured high on the agenda of a top-level Pakistani delegation that held talks in Washington this week with senior US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Washington, with some reservations, has been receptive to Pakistan's wishes, especially as Islamabad has emerged as a key strategic partner in the efforts to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion, and in dealing with al-Qaeda and militancy in general in the region.

There will be a price: the US, according to analysts who spoke to Asia Times Online, wants Pakistan to walk away from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

Last year, Islamabad and Tehran finalized a US$7.5 billion deal to transfer gas 2,775 kilometers from fields in Iran to terminals in Pakistan, and this month they signed an operational agreement on the project, despite US opposition.

The US, as it seeks to isolate Iran and impose sanctions on it over Tehran's nuclear program, is a vocal critic of the pipeline project, which was initially to have included a third leg going to India. India dropped its participation in the project, ostensibly over pricing disagreements; there is widespread belief that it did so to secure the nuclear deal with the US.

1040 GMT: The Bunker-Busting Bomb Iran Story. This is one that won't go away: Abdul-Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of Al Arabiya TV, writes in Asharq al-Awsat, "The perplexing question: Will a war be launched on Iran if the economic sanctions fail?"

The evidence is the revelation of the move of bunker-piercing bombs to a US base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Office. I can only repeat what I have posted in comments as this issue has percolated. This move would have been made irrespective of the current crisis with Iran: it is part of a "force projection" plan by the US military in the region, with a view not only to asserting an image of superiority vis-a-vis Iran but also in cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

0935 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Mitra Aali, a graduate student at Sharif University was detained by the Ministry of Intelligence on 10 March and her whereabouts are now unknown.

RAHANA also reports on other political prisoners, including Behrooz Javid Tehrani, who are being held in solitary confinement and inhumane conditions at Evin Prison.

Aali, detained on two previous occasions since the June election, had been asked by the Ministry to come in for a "follow-up" and to receive her confiscated possessions.

0925 GMT: Remembering. A new video tells the story of Ramin Ramezani, who was killed during the 15 June demonstrations.

0750 GMT: Parliament v. President. Continued fighting over the Ahmadinejad subsidy reduction plan --- former Minister of Health Massoud Pezeshkian has said the President "has no excuse" and "must follow laws", a claim echoed by reformist MP Majid Nasirpour. Reformist Mostafa Kavakebian insists the decision about the usefulness of subsidy cuts is with the Majlis not Ahmadinejad.

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. Is this a sign of the President trying to tighten his control over Iran's energy industry? Rah-e-Sabz claims that Minister of Oil Massoud Mirkazemi has been replaced as head of the Government's "oil group" by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

0710 GMT: With a week left in Iran's Nowruz holidays, political news continues to be slow.

On the international front, the Obama Administration seems to be moving away from its toughest proposed sanctions amidst renewed "5+1" talks on Iran's nuclear programme. Still, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has launched another warning about Tehran's military threat. Gates asserted that Iran's unmanned aerial vehicles --- "drones" --- could cause problems for the US in theatres like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American pressure is still caught up in a complex international game, however. Russia continues with a dual approach, offering signals that it might support some further sanctions while reassuring Iran that the Bushehr nuclear plant will go on-line in 2010.

Fereshteh Ghazi prefers to concentrate on the threat inside Iran. She offers a summary article of the just-concluded Iranian Year 1388 as year for Evin Prison and interrogators.

Afghanistan: Why the Poppies Trouble the Marjah "Victory" (Foust)

A month after the hype of the "victory" of the US offensive for the town of Marjah in Helmand Provice, reality is proving troublesome. Th Associated Press has the counter-hype, "The Taliban have begun to fight back, launching a campaign of assassination and intimidation to frighten people from supporting the U.S. and its Afghan allies," while Asia Times Online reports that on 7 March, "Afghan President Hamid Karzai faced an angry reception from people" when he visited the southern town of Marjah following a major military assault against the Taliban.

Getting behind these headlines, Joshua Foust posts about the political and economic situation on Registan.net:

Afghanistan: Return of the Militias?

Two weeks ago, I wrote in the New York Times:

Good government will matter little, though, if the local economy is in a shambles. Marja’s agricultural base relies primarily on opium, and any new counternarcotics policies will wreak havoc; arresting or killing the drug traffickers will ultimately be the same as attacking local farmers. The timing of the offensive could not be more damaging: opium is planted in the winter and harvested in the spring, which means those who planted last year cannot recoup their investment.


In Helmand, opium is the only way farmers can acquire credit: they take out small loans, called salaam, from narcotics smugglers or Taliban officials, often in units of poppy seed, and pay back that loan in opium paste after harvest. If they cannot harvest their opium, they are in danger of defaulting on their loan — a very dangerous proposition.

Western aid groups distributed wheat seeds last fall, but there was little follow-up and it seems few farmers used them. This year, the aid workers should be prepared to pay farmers compensation for any opium crops they are unable to harvest as a result of the fighting, and the Western coalition should help the groups develop a microcredit system.

Behold:

The swift American-led military offensive that drove the Taliban from power in this southern Afghan farm belt came at an inopportune time for the area’s poppy farmers. That’s created a quandary for Marjah’s new, U.S.-backed leaders and for the American military as they try to transform this sweltering river valley, whose biggest cash crop is opium poppy, into a tranquil breadbasket.

“The helicopters are landing in my field,” the weathered farmer told Fennell as they sat in the dirt outside the Marines’ newest forward operating base in Marjah. “You have to stop landing there. Next time, the Taliban will put an IED in the field,” an improvised explosive device, the military’s term for a homemade bomb.

Unfortunately, the Marines are refusing to compensate farmers for any damage they cause to their poppy fields. This is counterproductive—as the farmer himself strongly hinted, there remain strong ties to the Taliban in the area (more on that below): the Taliban, in fact, rescued Marjeh from predatory government officials some time ago and had set up a relatively stable set of economic and judicial institutions. If the Marines are going to destroy those, and there are many reasons why they should, they have to immediately provide alternatives or risk brutalizing the very people they need to win over.

Unfortunately, the Marines in Marjah seem determined to stamp out opium—a far cry from the clear thinking that accompanied their first deployment to Helmand in 2008, when they vowed to resolutely ignore the opium and focus on more important things (seriously: focusing on opium instead of almost anything else badly misses the point).

There’s no time to waste. In that same NYT article, I wrote:

Last, progress on these other fronts will do nothing if the Taliban return, which means a significant number of troops must stay for at least a year. Gen. David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, has said that Marja was merely an “initial salvo” in an 18-month campaign to also retake neighboring Kandahar Province, the birthplace of the Taliban. Kandahar is Afghanistan’s second-largest city, so it is reasonable to assume that many troops will be pulled out of Marja for that campaign…

At a minimum, at least two battalions should stay in Marja permanently, to undergird the new government. They shouldn’t build a new base outside the town for this, or “commute” to the area from strongholds in Helmand like Camp Leatherneck. They should live right inside the town, providing security and guidance from within. You can’t have a “population-centric” counterinsurgency unless you take care of the people.

There are reports emerging from Marjeh that the Taliban is alreadyreasserting itself. While the military ferries Haji Zahir, the new “governor,” to and fro in a helicopter—quite the vote of confidence, considering Marjeh is an area of only a few dozen miles on a side—the Taliban have already begun posting night letters, and beating and even beheading people who cooperate too closely with the U.S. Even so, the barriers to the new government succeeding are basic enough to make me question whether ISAF was lying about having a government in a box ready to go.

“How may of us are from Marjah?” U.S. Marine Col. Randy Newman asked the two-dozen men taking part in the meeting. “None. The Taliban are from Marjah. They have earned some amount of trust of the people. The people trusted the Taliban justice. If we continue in this manner, we will not earn their trust.”

During Sunday’s meeting, the U.S. Army adviser working with Afghan forces told Zahir that the security forces were being constrained because there was no judicial system in place to jail suspected Taliban insurgents turned in by local residents.

We need to sit down and have a very strong discussion about how we’re going to deal with Afghan justice for these men we know are hurting people,” said Matt, who’s advising Afghan police in one section of Marjah. They look at me and smile because they know they’re going to be released within 24 to 48 hours.

“The people of southern Marjah are not going to be confident in our ability to bring security until we can permanently take those men off the battlefield,” he said. “That’s where we earn the population’s trust.”

Again: we destroyed a functioning government and replaced it with borderline-chaos. If the Marines cannot get this under control very quickly, it will turn against them in a very bloody way.