Iran Video & Text: Maziar Bahari on His 118 Days in Detention

The Latest from Iran (22 November): Abtahi Sentenced, Ahmadinejad Scrambles

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Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was detained for almost four months soon after the 12 June Presidential election on charges of passing information to foreign organisations, has gone public with his story this weekend. He has been interviewed on CNN and CBS, and he has written an article for Newsweek

Within and beyond Bahari's account, which includes a recollection of his staged "confession" on Iranian television,  is an important political tale. This is testimony to the emergence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the force within the Iranian regime, eclipsing other agencies like the Ministry of Intelligence and arguably leaders like President Ahmadinejad. Newsweek frames this as "an ever more fractured regime", but what if --- in the eyes of the IRGC --- the Revolutionary Guard is the "uniting force" before and 12 June?

The Newsweek article follows the CNN interview:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeg8iamawzI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WONlBpMxMHc&feature=channel[/youtube]

118 Days, 12 Hours, 54 Minutes

Evin Prison, June 21, 2009 (around 10 a.m.)

The interrogator sat me in a wooden chair. It had a writing arm, like the chair I'd had in primary school. He ordered me to look down, even though I was already blindfolded: "Never look up, Mr. Bahari. While you are here—and we don't know how long you're going to be here—never look up." All I could see from under the blindfold was the interrogator's black leather slippers. They worried me. He had settled in for a long session.

"Mr. Bahari, you're an agent of foreign intelligence organizations," he began. I had gotten a look at him when he and his men had dragged me out of bed and arrested me a few hours earlier. He was heavyset—I later learned that the guards called him "the big guy"—taller and wider than me, with a massive head. His skin was dark, like someone from southern Iran. He wore thick glasses. But I would know him now only by his voice, his breath, and the rosewater perfume used by men who piously do their ablutions several times a day before prayers, but rarely shower.

I could see Mr. Rosewater's slippers right in front of my foot. He was towering over me.

"Could you let me know which ones?" I mumbled.

"Speak louder!" he shouted. He bent toward me, his face an inch away from mine. I could feel his breath on my skin. "What did you say?"

"I was wondering if you could be kind enough to let me know which organizations," I repeated.

"CIA, MI6, Mossad, and NEWSWEEK." He listed the names one by one, in a low but assured voice.

I was struck by Mr. Rosewater's confidence. I did not know then exactly which branch of the fractured Iranian government he worked for. When I was arrested, hundreds of thousands of protesters had been filling the streets of Tehran for a week, outraged over the disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There had been violence. The club-wielding militias known as Basij had inflicted much of it on the marchers, women as well as men. But some of the protesters had fought back too. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, had decreed that the protests stop, but nobody at that point was sure they would. At least, nobody outside Evin Prison was sure. Mr. Rosewater was another matter.

I would later discover that I had been picked up by the intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Before the June election, this unit of the Guards was little known; whenever journalists and intellectuals ran afoul of the authorities they were usually questioned by the official Ministry of Intelligence. But the IRGC, which reports directly to Khamenei, had been growing dramatically more powerful. Many suspect that the Guards rigged the election. Certainly they led the crackdown that followed.

IRGC intel is now responsible for Iran's internal security, which means that its rampaging paranoias have suffused the regime. There remain players within the system who can make rational decisions about Iran's international interests; if there weren't, I would still be in jail. But the Guards are exacerbating the Islamic Republic's worst instincts, its insecurity and deep suspiciousness. As world powers try to engage Tehran to mitigate the threat of its nuclear program, it's critical that they understand this mindset and the role the IRGC now plays within the Iranian system. I learned all too much about both while in the Guards' hands.

Everything was an education inside Evin—from the questions Mr. Rosewater asked, to what answers made him beat me, to physical details.

Read rest of article....

The Latest from Iran (22 November): Abtahi Freed on Bail, Ahmadinejad Scrambles

NEW Iran: Maziar Bahari on His 118 Days in Detention
Video and English Text: Mousavi Interview with Kalemeh (21 November)
The Latest from Iran (21 November): Mousavi, Khomeini, and Ahmadinejad

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2125 GMT: Activists on Twitter are reporting the arrest of blogger/journalist Sasan Aghaei.

1940 GMT: Karroubi's Latest Letter. Mehdi Karroubi has written to Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie and Habib-allah Askaroladi, the secretary general of the conservative Mo'talefe party, posting the letter on his Tagheer website.

The letter is a renewal of Karroubi's campaign for the truth on reports of abuse of detainees, responding to the attempts of Mohseni-Ejeie and Askaroladi to cast doubt on his claims and motives. He repeats his earlier account of meetings with the three-member judiciary panel that was appointed to consider the charges. In particular, he states that, while he raised the case of Saeedeh Pouraghai but warned that it might be false. (The claims that Pouraghai had been raped and killed by security forces are now discounted. Some believe the case was "manufactured" by the regime so it would discredit the opposition when the falsehood emerged.)

Karroubi also challenges Askaroladi's claims that the Green movement is financed by millions of dollars from the US Government and demands that Mousavi and Karroubi "must be dealt with".

1740 GMT: The Visits Begin. Former President Mohammad Khatami has visited Mohammad Ali Abtahi in his home.

1625 GMT: Rumour of Day "Mortazavi in Evin Prison". Norooz claims that Saeed Mortazavi, who was Tehran's Prosecutor General in the early part of the post-election crisis, has been spotted in prison garb at Evin Prison. The website claims that Mortazavi has not been seen in public in two months and raises the possibility that he will disappear via "suicide", just like Kahrizak prison doctor Ramin Pourandarjan. (Norooz also sees parallels with the case of Said Emami, the intelligence operative and deputy minister found dead in his cell a decade ago. He was blamed for a series of murders after his death.)

1610 GMT: Abtahi Freed. The picture of former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi provides happy confirmation of his release on bail after 160 days in detention (see 0735 and1405 GMT).



Abtahi has also posted on his blog. He says he will soon return to updating the blog on a daily basis. He hopes for the freedom of his fellow inmates, especially Abdollah Ramezanzadeh and Mohsen Safai-Farahani, to whom he bade a tearful farewell this morning.

1525 GMT: Economic Pressure. Following up our initial item this morning on the pressures on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (0735 GMT), Presidential candidate and secretary of the Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezaei , has criticised the President's proposed legislation on subsidies and taxes. “As a result of the new law, the effect of the global economy on the domestic economy will be more than before,” Rezaei wrote to Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani.

Rezaei suggested the formation of an independent council of financial experts to study the impact of the bill on the lives of Iranians.

1520 GMT: Today's University Protests. There has been chatter throughout the day of clashes between students and security at Khaje Nasir University, and a short video has been posted of the demonstration at Tehran University.

1505 GMT: More Tehran Signals on the Nuke Deal. Ali Ashar Soltanieh, Iran's Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has reiterated his comments (see 0955 GMT) about Iran's desire to negotiate an enrichment deal, provided it keeps uranium within the country. “We are ready for talks with a positive approach, but the main issue is a guarantee for the timely supply of fuel for Iran's medical needs." Soltanieh referred to Iran's grievances with France and Russia over delays and failures to fulfil previous contracts: “Considering Iran's lack of confidence towards the West regarding the past nuclear activities, we need to have these guarantees."

1405 GMT: Abtahi Update. Former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who was sentenced to a six-year prison term yesterday (see 0735 GMT), has been released on a bail of 700 million tomans (about $700,000) while the sentence is appealed.

1035 GMT: The Election was Most Fair. Really. Fars News offers acres of space to Ali Zakani, a member of the six-member Parliamentary committee that "investigated" the Presidential election, to defend the outcome and the committee's proceedings.

Zakani details meetings with Presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohsen Rezaei and with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. All of this is to establish that the election was fair and to indicate that any "fraud" is on the part of those challenging President Ahmadinejad's legitimacy.

0955 GMT: The Government Wants a Nuclear Deal. Can't be a clearer signal than this:

Iran's ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog [International Atomic Energy Agency] says over 200 hospitals in the country urgently need higher-enriched uranium. As a timely reminder that obtaining higher-enriched uranium is a matter of great urgency for Iran, Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh said that the fuel is required for the Tehran nuclear reactor, which is designed to produce radioisotopes used by Iranian hospitals for medical treatment.

He warned that if Iran's proposal to purchase the fuel from abroad falls through, the country would have no choice but to enrich uranium to the required level of 20 percent...."We need the fuel because more than 200 hospitals depend on it."

o935 GMT: A Clerical Putsch? We held off on noting this story, but as a sharp-eyed EA reader has raised it.... Rooz Online summarises reports circulating in Iran:

Following the escalation of protests by Iran’s senior ayatollahs against the regime, some members of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association (the most important organization of clerics affiliated with the regime) are planning to present a new list of “grand ayatollahs” under the supervision of Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati and Mesbah Yazdi....

According to rumors, the new list of grand ayatollahs will include people such as Jafar Sobhani, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, Khoshvaght, and a number of other ayatollahs approved by the regime. Credible reports indicate that prominent grand ayatollahs such as Montazeri and [Bayat] Zanjani will not have a place on the list....[Nor will] Dastgheib.

I still think the key word in the story is "rumors". The significance of the article is that it shows the concern of the regime and its supporters over the ongoing (and possibly escalating) resistance from Qom. A radical change to the list of Grand Ayatollahs, especially when it is clearly based on political rather than religious considerations, is likely to stoke that resistance.

0740 GMT: A depressing end to Saturday for the opposition movement, as Mowj-e-Sabz claimed that former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi has been sentenced to six years in prison. Abtahi, as one of the highest-profile detainees, was seen by the Government as a potential asset for propaganda. His televised "confession" was one of the low-lights of the first Tehran trial, and the regime even tried (briefly) to have Abtahi blog from prison to offset criticisms about the conditions of detainees.

Now it appears that the Government has given up on that use of Abtahi, and it has also decided that the advantage lies in keeping him in jail rather than extending a hand to the reformists through his release.

0735 GMT: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has always cut a confident, even cocky figure. And when challenged, he fights back.

So it's no surprise that the President would "go big" with a tour covering five days in five countries: Brazil, Venezuela, and Bolivia in South America and Senega land Gambia in Africa. He can finally project himself as a world leader, having been shut out by almost every head of state in the first three months after the disputed election. He can play on the assured support of Venezuela for Iran's nuclear programme and foreign policy. He can present Iran's expanding influence with the African leg of the trip. And no doubt there will be more than a few words on oil and natural gas, as well as the signing of commercial agreements.

Don't let this fool you, however. Ahmadinejad's travels are also a deliberate distraction from the homefront. For all the questions over the future course of the opposition, for all the "busted flush" of the National Unity Plan, the President has not been able to nail down a secure position.

The photographs of Ahmadinejad's visit to Tabriz are more than symbolic. Whether or not most Iranians support the Green movement, they are not turning out in the 63% claimed by the President in the June vote. The conservative/principlist politicians are rumbling again in Parliament, especially over Ahmadinejad's economic proposals, and the clerics in Qom are discussing and planning.

The President returns from his journey at the end of November. At that point, it will be just over a week to the demonstrations of 16 Azar (7 December).

"Let America Be America": An Exit Strategy for Afghanistan

Afghanistan: The Great Lock ‘n Load Swindle
Afghanistan: Karzai’s Victory over the US

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Another Sunday, another set of articles and punditry setting out the US can "win" the conflict in Afghanistan. The latest spin is that of the US military supporting a series of local militias throughout the country to defeat the Taliban: this, I presume, is more a signal of Washington's careful distancing from the perceived weakness of the Karzai Government to sell a troop escalation. The New York Times packages the spin as a report by Dexter Filkins, while David Ignatius openly backs the initiative in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, "Afghan Tribes to the Rescue?"

In a guest column for Juan Cole's website, William Polk, a former member of the State Department and professor at the University of Chicago, puts forth an alternative: political and economic steps linked to a measured withdrawal of US troops:

In its war in Afghanistan, the United States has come to a crossroads. President Obama will be forced to choose one of four ways ahead. The choices are cruel, expensive and dangerous for our country; so we must be sure that he chooses the least painful, least expensive and safest of the possible choices.

The first possible choice is to keep on doing what we are now doing. That is, fighting the insurgency with about 60,000 American troops and 68,197 mercenaries at a cost of roughly $2,000 a day per person. That is, we now actually have a total complement of over 120,000 people on the public payroll at an overall cost, of roughly $100 billion a year. We can project a loss of a few hundred American soldiers a year and several thousand wounded. Our senior commander in the Central Command, General David Petraeus, tells us that we cannot win that war.

The second possible road ahead would involve adding substantial numbers of new troops. In General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine, the accepted ratio of soldiers to natives is 20 to 25 per thousand natives.1 Afghanistan today is a country of about 33 million. Even if we discount the population to the target group of Pashtuns, we will must deal with 15 or so million people. So when he and General Stanley McChrystal ask for 40,000, it can only be a first installment. Soon -- as the generals did in Vietnam – they will have to ask for another increment and then another, moving toward the supposedly winning number of 600,000 to 1.3 million. That is just the soldiers. Each soldier is now matched by a supporter, rather like medieval armies had flocks of camp followers, so those numbers will roughly double. Thus, over ten years, a figure often cited, or 40 years, which some of the leading neoconservatives have suggested, would pretty soon, as they say in Congress, involve “talking about real money.” In addition to the Congressionally-allocated outlay, the overall cost to our economy has not yet been summed up, but by analogy to the Iraq war, it will probably amount to upwards of $6 trillion.

Then there are the casualties: we have so far lost about a thousand -- or a quarter as many as in Iraq. Casualties we can count, but the number of seriously wounded keeps growing because many of the effects of exposure to modern weapons do not show up until later. We have no reliable figures yet on Afghanistan. In Iraq at least 100,000 of the one and a half million soldiers who served there suffered severe psychological damage and about 300,000 have reported post-traumatic stress disorder and a similar number have suffered brain injuries. Crassly put, these “walking wounded” will not only be unable fully to contribute to American society but will be a burden on it for many years to come. It has been estimated that dealing with a brain-injured soldier over his remaining life will cost about $5 million. Cancer, from exposure to depleted uranium is, only now coming into full effect. All in all, it is sobering to calculate that 40 percent of the soldiers who served in the 1991 Gulf war – which lasted only a hundred hours – are receiving disability payments. Inevitably, more “boots on the ground” will lead to more beds in hospitals.

General McChrystal has told us that we must have large numbers of additional troops to hold the territory we “clear.” He echoes what the Russian commanders told the Politburo: in a report on November 13, 1986, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev commented that the Russians attempted the same strategy but admitted that it failed. “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan,” he said, “that has not been occupied by one of or soldiers at some time or another. Nevertheless, much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize . . . Without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time.”

The Russian army fought a bloody, brutal campaign, using every trick or tool of counterinsurgency ever identified. The Russians killed a million Afghanis and turned about 5 million into refugees, but after a decade during which they lost 15,000 soldiers and virtually bankrupted the Soviet Union, they gave up and left. General McChrystal says it may take him a decade or more to “win.” But what “winning” means is unclear.

Third, we could marginally increase our troop strength. That is, adding only between 10,000 and 30,000 troops and a comparable number of mercenaries. Not the full complement that General McChrystal has now demanded. This road, according to Petraeus, McChrystal and their acolytes would lead to “mission failure.”

Not meeting the generals’ demands also brings forward the danger to the Obama administration of being charged with putting our soldiers at risk “with one hand tied behind their backs,” a phrase from the acrimonious aftermath of the Vietnam war which even General James Jones, President Obama’s director of the National Security Council, has recently repeated. The potential ugly campaign, against which even Henry Kissinger has warned us, could pose risks to our political culture and even to our legal structure: some military men are already talking about their restiveness in obeying civilian government. “You kind of get used to it after years of service” one Army general said at a convention in Washington last month. Forgetting the constitution, he continued, “We tend to live with it.” Maybe they will or maybe anger will be channeled into a further extension of the military into politics, intelligence and diplomacy.

For the first time that I know of in recent American history, the uniformed military have created what amounts to a pressure group of their own. Generals Petraeus and McChrystal are the leaders but, by influencing or controlling promotions panels, they have fostered the advancement of middle grade and junior officers who agree with them. Some have been brought into a group called “the Colonels’ council.” And numbers of retired senior officers have joined not only in what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” but have become the opinion-makers on foreign policy in the media. Private soldiers and non-commissioned officers have, at the same time, become a major component of the private armies of such groups as Xe (formerly Blackwater) and form an active part of the constituency of the right wing of the Republican Party.

In the dangerous months and years ahead, if this road is taken, we are apt to hear echoes – particularly in the next presidential election --of the post Vietnam rhetoric that the civilians sold out the military. In short, while this option sounds moderate and “business-like” I believe that it is the worst option for President Obama and, more importantly, for the nation.

Or, fourth, we could Get out.

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Middle East Analysis: A Restoration of Relations between Turkey and Israel?

Middle East Inside Line: An Israeli Truce with Hamas?
Turkey’s Erdogan to Israel: “Syria Will Never Come to Table without Me!”
Turkey’s Concern over the First European Union President

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On Sunday, Israel's Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer --- the only Cabinet member to attend  Turkey’s Republic Day reception --- is flying to Ankara to secure an $183 million commercial deal. Before his departure, he said: "Turkey has a very special place in my heart and special relationship with Israel. As a democratic Muslim country, Turkey has the ability to bridge the gaps between us and our neighbors and help promote normalization and coexistence in the region."

Meanwhile, Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul issued an ultimatum to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Elbit Systems to fulfill the long-delayed supply of 10 unmanned aerial vehicles to the Turkish military within the next 50 days. He warned, "If this letter does not bear fruit either, the tender may be canceled. But there is no cancellation at the moment."

So the immediate deal is commercial links and an easing of Israel's military restrictions on Turkey. However, Ben-Eliezer may have another issue on the agenda.  Is Israel prepared to propose Turkey's mediation between Damascus and Tel Aviv in return for a normalization of relationsrestoring the position from before the Gaza War? Ben-Eliezer said, "I hope my economic and political talks will make it possible to get the important relations between Israel and its Turkish strategic partner back on track. Turkey has special ties with Israel, and as a regional and democratic-Muslim power."
And if so, is this the end of French adventurism in the Middle East or merely a tactical manoeuvre to decrease the tension between Ankara and Tel Aviv? Given that talks between Syria and Israel have been stuck due to the "no pre-condition" pre-condition and given that Turkey has been following a "zero-problem" policy with its neighbours, how sustainable is Ankara's "honesty" towards Tel Aviv?

Middle East Inside Line: An Israeli Truce with Hamas?

Palestine: Abbas Claims Secret Israeli Talks with Hamas

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Hamas declared on Saturday that all groups in Gaza have reached consensus to halt rocket attacks upon Israel.

"We have agreed with the factions that nobody carries out any action involving rockets for now," said Hamas' interior minister Fathi Hammad. He stated that the aims of the agreement were to avoid another Israeli military operation and to enable people to rebuild after January's Israeli invasion.

Haaretz's Amos Harel writes that there is an implicit truce between Israel and Hamas, as the latter are aware that rockets have not caused severe damage to the "enemy" and the Israeli offensive broke the power of Hamas. The Palestinian Authority is claiming secret meetings leading to a truce between Hamas and Israel; the Gazan group denies the accusation.

Harel argues that the real tension for Israel is now in the north, as Hezbollah which has accumulated a tremendous arsenal since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. It was reported on Saturday thatthe Lebanese army opened fire on an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle, and the Lebanese military chief said he would heighten border security.