Panic! US No Longer Number One!

Less than 24 hours after I argued, "America should not be at the centre of our approach to the world. It is not a case of 'America leads, we follow'," I read these headlines in the British press:

"No more them and us, with a farewell to American supremacy", "Sun setting on the American century", "US influence to decline"

The occasion for these doom-laden announcements is the publication of the US National Intelligence Council report, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. Actually, the substance of the report was leaked months ago, but its formal presentation is the ideal accompaniment to the fretting of columnists such as Thomas Friedman and Paul Kennedy that "[Obama] is to run a country far less dominant, relatively, than at the time of Wilson, Truman and Kennedy".

Still, maybe we're overreacting. Maybe we can go to sleep assured that America is still protecting all of us. For this is the headline on the same report in the New York Times:

Global Forecast by American Intelligence Expects Al Qaeda’s Appeal to Falter

Panic! The Iran Bomb!

Geez, I go away for a few days and the world falls apart. First, Al-Qa'eda starts calling President-elect Obama a "house Negro".

That, however, is a close second in the Run-For-Your-Lives contest: Number One is the bomb that Iran is going to drop on us.

This lead paragraph from Thursday's New York Times:

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The reporters remind us, "Iran insists that it wants only to fuel reactors for nuclear power. But many Western nations, led by the United States, suspect that its real goal is to gain the ability to make nuclear weapons." "Experts" were trotted out to assure, "[The Iranians] are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option.” So....

For President-elect Barack Obama, the report underscores the magnitude of the problem that he will inherit Jan. 20: an Iranian nuclear program that has not only solved many technical problems of uranium enrichment, but that can also now credibly claim to possess enough material to make a weapon if negotiations with Europe and the United States break down.

Well, I have to admit that this revelation upset me a bit. It's going to be hard to enjoy the Tivoli Gardens and the National Museum when I'm watching the sky for nuclear annihilation. Even more upsetting, however, is the realisation --- on closer reading of the story --- that this report is closer to panic than analysis.

Two paragraphs after proclaiming the imminence of the bomb, the article drops in:

Several experts said that [amount of low-enriched uranium] was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

Hmm....that might be significant, especially if the reader can make the effort to link it to the minor details --- five paragraphs later:

American intelligence agencies have said Iran could make a bomb between 2009 and 2015. A national intelligence estimate made public late last year concluded that around the end of 2003, after long effort, Iran had halted work on an actual weapon.

A reader from Birmingham adds:

It's tiresome to see this continual alarmist reporting on what really are routine, benign matters. And what's particular crazy is the claim that Iran almost has enough low-enriched uranium to produce one bomb. Such a bomb would have to be tested. Then there would be uranium for zero bombs.

I hope people don't take such reporting seriously.

Me, too. Otherwise, I might confuse the Christmas lights here for signs of our imminent doom.

Machiavelli and Hillary Clinton

"Publius" from London writes:

Back in time when men were men, etc., etc., young Hillary Clinton put together a wonderful healthcare package which was just a bit complicated. Anyway, I recall that in the Senate hearings, a Republican senator really took her plan out to the woodshed. Having a senior moment, I just can't remember his name.

Anyway, as I love Machiavelli, I just wondered whether this self-same Republican senator was likely to get an appointment --- hands across the aisle and all that. If so, maybe he'll be the new National Security Adviser !

I find it hard to believe Hillary will be the new Secretary of State. I had her down for Health but [former Senator Tom] Daschle is the new guy there. Wonder what debt that has paid? I don't quite see what Hillary brings to the party. No doubt I will be enlightened.

Another Day, Another Debate, A Better Occupation?

Just emerged from a debate at the Copenhagen Business School with Dr Timothy Lynch, co-author of After Bush on "US Foreign Policy is Good for the World".

The two hours before more than 100 staff and students didn't change much in my position, and I think it's safe to say that it didn't shift Dr Lynch. It did highlight, however, both the efforts of the Bush Administration over the last eight years and the questions over what changes an Obama Administration might make.

I hope that it might have shaken up assumptions amongst at least a few in attendance, especially the thought that American power always has to be at the centre of our considerations about intervention and engagement. I say with particular respect to Dr Lynch's following comment about the US invasion of Iraq.

Dr Lynch admitted that the American intervention had not gone well. The problem, however, was not that it did too much but that it did too little. The US should have gone in with more troops and more force, planning for a prolonged occupation and turning Iraq for some time into a "51st state". Thus the lesson --- which I presume applies to Iran and Syria --- is not that the American Government should reflect on the Bushian regime change experiment but that it should try again in a bigger and better fashion.

I'm happy to be corrected if this paraphrase is wrong. As it stands, I find it a disturbingly eloquent critique of how future US foreign policy could be "good for the world".

Iranian Intrigue: Interpreting The Derakhshan Arrest

This analysis comes from an Enduring America reader and specialist observer of Iranian affairs:

According to Jahan News, which is close to Iran's Intelligence community, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian journalist who has been described as the father of Persian blogging has been arrested in Tehran.  Hossein returned to Iran about three weeks ago and in his most recent post on Twitter, published 27 days ago, he said he was "hanging out in Tehran, frustrated by slow Internet connection, but generally impressed," adding that he "LOVES living in Tehran again" (his emphasis).  Moreover, a quick look at his weblog reveals that he believed that if arrested it would be through violating "the rule of law" by going to Israel.  However he felt reassured that he would not go to jail for more than three months- since he was coming back to the arms of his forefathers for no other reason but to be at their service.

According to what the Jahan article says are "credible sources," Hossein has apparently admitted to spying for Israel, a charge that if pursued, is perhaps more serious than he expected.  Jahan news talks about Hossein's participation in a number of conferences in Israel. It says that Haaretz news paper described him as a friend of Israel.  It then quotes Jerusalem Post and Haaretz as saying that Hossein had described Israel as a model of democracy, and that the Israeli and Turkish system of governance, and participation of religion in government was a good model for Iran.

However, there has been surprise that, according to rumours, Hossein simply handed his laptop over to officials upon return to Iran.  Among the blogging community there has been questions raised whether he has actually even been arrested and his family has refused to comment on the whole affair. Moreover, a spokesman for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations, told NPR that he had no information about the incident. Hossein has posted nothing on his Farsi blog or Facebook site since October 30, i.e. 20 days' silence. Earlier in October he was posting every few days.

It is open knowledge that Hossein visited Israel on two separate occasions.  During his June 2006 visit he stated that he went to Israel as a personal attempt to start a dialogue between Iranian and Israeli people.  However after his second trip there, he suddenly changed his opinion and started becoming vehemently anti- Israeli in his blog. He also became a strong supporter of President Ahmadinejad and came out justifying the arrests of scholars Ramin Jahanbeglou, Hale Esfandiari and businessman Ali Shakeri and condemned Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji. In a slightly ironic twist, he wrote a controversial article in which he asserted that Jahanbegloo's own "confession" was authentic - indeed even "the possibility of it being imposed on him by his interrogators" was, according to his logic, "ruled out".  He also accused Jahanbegloo of indirectly "helping the Bush administration in its plans for regime change in Iran through fomenting internal unrest and instability."

It is true Derakhashan began to make fairly regular vitriolic remarks on his blogs and alienating almost everyone who works on Iran, regardless of ideology.  Prior to his return to Iran, he also started attacking Ayatollah Rafsanjani in his blog. There have been suggestions that he fell foul of a power struggle within Iran.  However. it gets even more interesting when right-of-the centre conservative news websites like Parsineh also report that, according to the "rumours", Derakhashan was due to work for Press TV and collaborate with President Ahmahdenijad's government endorsed newspaper.

Some Iranian specialists speculate that Derakhshan's arrest will result in increased scrutiny of the many organizations he has had links with, including Radio Farda, Radio Zamaneh, Rooz Online and VOA.  One specialist stated the arrest would result in "a new genre of conspiracy and soft-regime change literature which will overwhelm the Iranian political milieu in the near future."  Another stated it would not be a surprise if he gave a long confession, with endless names informing the Iranian masses of years of brewing velvet revolution, anti-IRI activism, working as agents of World Zionism and other similar juicy stuff.  If Iran wants to stir up anti-Western hysteria (e.g. the PressTV item today) in order to sabotage any possible reconciliation with the US, this might be a way to do it.

Following this line, the IRNA has just posted the first of what is called in the Iranian political vocabulary "Tak-nevisi", which is a "single-liner serialised confessions".  The text refers to a man called Hossein D, which I can only presume is Hossein Derakhshan.  A very rough translation has some worrying quotes: "As of three years ago, many of my friends who were involved in the reformist press as writers and journalists were encouraged to leave the country, and write against the Velyate Faqih, the Hidden Imam, and lack of freedom in Iran, and were deceived by financial incentives...Now, they live under the worst financial conditions." According to Hossein D. many of these "misled people use tranquilising drugs, and some of them have attempted suicide once or twice... Westerners kept asking us to always write against a few things: Velayate Faqih, belief in the Hidden Imam, and fundamentalists. And if people do not write what the Westerners want, they try to blackmail them by threatening that if do you do not write what we want we will publish the evidence that we have against you. Some of my friends live in very bad financial and psychological conditions and may even wish their own death all the time."

Definitely a situation to be watched.