The Latest from Iran (7 November): Regrouping

NEW Iran: Question for the Regime "What's Your Next Punch?"
NEW Latest Iran Video: More from 13 Aban
Iran’s New 13 Aban: An Eyewitness Account “I Have Never Seen as Much Violence”
Iran: Josh Shahryar on the Significance of 13 Aban
Iran Video: The Tribute to 13 Aban’s Protesters
The Latest from Iran (6 November): The Day After The Day After

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2240 GMT: Confirmation that Ebrahim Amini, of the Etemade Melli party and a close relative of Mehdi Karroubi, has also been released from detention.

2150 GMT: Dr. Ali Tajernia, former MP and senior member of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been released after 140 days in detention.

2145 GMT: Human Rights Activists in Iran has a Farsi-language update on detainees, including the transfer of 95 people arrested on 13 Aban from detention centres to Evin Prison.

2140 GMT: After the arrest of two students of Khaje Nasir University in Tehran, classmates went on hunger strike in front of the cafeteria and chanted, “Allahu Akhbar [God is Great]".

2130 GMT: Confirming indications we had received from EA sources in recent weeks, the Supreme Leader has reinstated Ezatullah Zarghami as head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting for five years.

Zarghami had been considered vulnerable because of regime dissatisfaction with IRIB's output before and after the Presidential election, but a suitable replacement could not be arranged. Khamenei indicated this with a call for Zarghami to "take advantage of successful or unsuccessful experiences of the past five years to help this medium reach a better quality".

2125 GMT: Iran's Internal Nuclear Dispute. Press TV's website is now featuring the anti-talks line taken by high-profile MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi (see 0845 GMT).



1648 GMT: Back-Channel US-Iran Talks? An EA reader has picked up what may be a significant unnoticed story in the nuclear negotiations. Peykeiran claims that President Ahmadinejad's close advisor and chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, has secretly met Hooshang Amirahmadi, a US-based academic and the President of the American Iranian Council, in a villa in Gilan Province in northern Iran.

It is unclear why Amirahmadi is representing the Obama Administration and, if so, what message he could be conveying about the discussions on uranium enrichment. If true, however, the meeting would be a clear sign of a split between Ahmadinejad and high-profile conservatives/principlists calling for the deal to be abandoned.

1640 GMT: On the Los Angeles Times' blog "Babylon & Beyond", Borzou Daragahi has highlighted, "Defying supreme leader, reformist Khatami continues to question election" (see 1200, 1400, & 1418 GMT). It will be interesting to see if the Times prints this in Sunday's newspaper, maintaining a focus on Iran after 13 Aban.

One interesting note: Jamaran, where Khatami's remarks first appeared, is owned by the family of the late Ayatollah Khomeini.

1620 GMT: Farhad Pouladi, the Iranian reporter for Agence France Presse detained on 13 Aban, has been freed.

1418 GMT: More on Khatami's Statement (see 1200 GMT). The former President has declared, “Senior authorities should accept that there is a crisis in the country" and allow all views to be expressed freely. He added, "We should find out who are ignoring the law for their own benefit, and those are the ones that should not be at centre of power."

Khatami continued his challenge to the Government as a defence of the true nature of the Islamic Republic:

If we truly return to the rule of law and those who are the guardians of the law don’t interpret the law based on their own personal views and don’t ignore the constitution,...[then the constitution will be the most important reference point. that can create unity in our society despite all the different views

We are still standing firm on our positions....In the Islamic Republic just as we defend Islam we are also defending people’s rights and votes. Those who are ignoring people’s votes and are willing to change them, are strangers to the Revolution and the Islamic Republic.

1408 GMT: And Now the Big News. We wrote earlier this morning that the regime seemed adrift and uncertain in how to respond to 13 Aban, but "tonight the President could try to change all the calculations above with an address to the nation".

Well, he won't because Ahmadinejad's speech tonight is postponed. This may be explained by the sudden announcement that the President is going to Turkey tomorrow (to discuss a re-arranged enrichment deal? --- see 0935 GMT), but pending a major breakthrough on that front, I'm going to read this as confirmation that the Government is a bit more than lost at the moment. This is the second postponement of the speech since Thursday's rallies.

1400 GMT: Regrouping Indeed. Former President Khatami is not just reasserting himself with statements questioning the election and the legitimacy of the Government (see 1200 GMT). He also met Mehdi Karroubi last night in his home.

Nominally, Khatami expressed sorrow and comforted Karroubi about the violence during the 13 Aban rallies, as did Abdollah Nouri, the interior minister in Khatami’s administration, and Bagher Golpaygani , son of the late Grand Ayatollah Golpaygani. But who is to say that other topics were not discussed?

1350 GMT: This is Important, but Why? I'm not sure what to make of this news yet, but Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani has traveled to Najaf in Iraq to meet Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and other Shi'a clerics.

No clue yet as to topic of discussions. Earlier in the crisis, Sistani and his son had been in talks with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iranian clerics who have been critical of the Ahmadinejad Government. So is Larijani seeking support from Sistani and Iraq-based Ayatollahs to bolster the Government? Or the Supreme Leader? Or the position of the Supreme Leader against Ahmadinejad?

1340 GMT: Iranian activist "PersianBanoo" is updating with latest news on arrests from the 13 Aban protests.

1200 GMT: Khatami Rises. We have noted this week that the former President Mohammad Khatami has been relatively quiet, limiting himself to a general statement yesterday when he visited Karroubi  advisor Morteza Alviri.

Well, Khatami is back with a flourish today, declaring that the biggest "crime" of the current regime is its detachment from the values of the Revolution. And, despite warnings from the Supreme Leader, Khatami has renewed his criticism of the Presidential election.

1150 GMT: The Effect of Subsidy Cuts. Borzou Daragahi reports, from a source in Tehran, that bread prices in the capital have more than doubled.

0950 GMT: We've split off our first update today as a separate analysis, "Question for the Regime: What's Your Next Punch?"

0935 GMT: Is the Nuclear Deal On? High-profile MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi may be declaring the enrichment deal dead (see 0845 GMT), but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammad El Baradei, is claiming that a compromise may have been found. He told Bloomberg News that Turkey could replace France as the third country involved, shaping the Iranium uranium enriched by Russia into metal plates.

So, is El Baradei just putting out desperate ideas to save the deal or, given that Press TV is featuring his comments, is there a section of the Iranian Government that is still committed to discussions?

0930 GMT: Really, Only 109? Azizollah Rajabzadeh, the head of Tehran police, has said, "Police arrested 109 people who created disorder and disturbed public order and security on the sideline of the rally on Wednesday. Some 62 of the detainees were jailed and the rest were released."

Of course, that number does not include those detained outside Tehran, but it's still a distance from the 400+ reported by Iranian human rights groups. So, presuming that Rajabzadeh has kept the number low, does that indicate: 1) the regime does not want to admit to the scale of the detentions, which would point to the real size of the rallies? 2) the regime is trying to show it was not that repressive, cutting against the image of the "velvet fist" it has been displaying? 3) nobody within the Government is in control of how to handle the outcome of 13 Aban?

0855 GMT: A "Correct" Press TV. We noted that, late on the night of 13 Aban and early the following day, someone at Press TV was putting out stories highlighting the opposition protests rather than those for the Government.

No more. This morning, Press TV's website has a story, "Iran Frees Three Detained Foreigners". We had that news yesterday; what is more significant is the framing of the article: "On Wednesday tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets as part of an annual event to mark the storming of the American embassy in Tehran more than three decades ago."

So that's where the "foreigners" were arrested? Well, it must be, since Press TV --- in contrast to its earlier coverage --- dares not mention the Green rallies that were taking place elsewhere in the capital and throughout Iran.

0845 GMT: Is the Nuclear Deal Off? Iranian Students News Agency is featuring a comment by the head of Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, “Iran is not to give any of its 1200 kilograms fuel to the other party to receive 20 percent (enriched) fuel and whether gradually or at once, this will not be done and is called off.” Boroujerdi insisted that Iran must and would find another way to get uranium, "Mr [Ali Asghar] Soltanieh [Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency] is in talks to find an approach for the issue.”

Boroujerdi's burying of the Vienna deal for Russia to enrich Iran's uranium follows his speech introducing Friday Prayers, in which he denounced protesters for mouthing the words of the Voice of America.

Israel & Iran: Just One Little Question to Danny Ayalon

Israel & Iran: Lebanon Searches the “Hezbollah Arms” Ship

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On Friday, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Sky News that Israel was "not bluffing in its threats to to attack Iran:

The one who's bluffing is Iran, which is trying to play with cards they don't have. All the bravado that we see and the testing and the very dangerous and harsh rhetoric is hiding a lot of weaknesses.

If Iranian behavior and conduct continues as they have exhibited so far, it is obvious that their intentions are only to buy time and procrastinate.

Just one question: if Teheran is bluffing over its nuclear programme, then what exactly is Tel Aviv attacking?

Video & Transcript: President Obama Weekly Address on the Fort Hood Killings

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I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes today about the tragedy that took place at Ft. Hood. This past Thursday, on a clear Texas afternoon, an Army psychiatrist walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, and began shooting his fellow soldiers.

It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America. It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.

The SRP is where our men and women in uniform go before getting deployed. It’s where they get their teeth checked and their medical records updated and make sure everything is in order before getting shipped out. It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation, lost their lives in a crime against our nation.

Soldiers stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world called and emailed loved ones at Ft. Hood, all expressing the same stunned reaction: I’m supposed to be the one in harm’s way, not you.

Thursday’s shooting was one of the most devastating ever committed on an American military base. And yet, even as we saw the worst of human nature on full display, we also saw the best of America. We saw soldiers and civilians alike rushing to aid fallen comrades; tearing off bullet-riddled clothes to treat the injured; using blouses as tourniquets; taking down the shooter even as they bore wounds themselves.

We saw soldiers bringing to bear on our own soil the skills they had been trained to use abroad; skills that been honed through years of determined effort for one purpose and one purpose only: to protect and defend the United States of America.

We saw the valor, selflessness, and unity of purpose that make our servicemen and women the finest fighting force on Earth; that make the United States military the best the world has ever known; and that make all of us proud to be Americans.

On Friday, I met with FBI Director Mueller, Defense Secretary Gates, and representatives of the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what led to this terrible crime. And I’ll continue to be in close contact with them as new information comes in.

We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing. But what we do know is that our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Ft. Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy. And our thoughts are with all the Americans who wear – or who’ve worn – the proud uniform of the United States of America; our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen, and the military families who love and support them.

In tribute to those who fell at Ft. Hood, I’ve ordered flags flying over the White House, and other federal buildings to be lowered to half-staff from now until Veterans Day next Wednesday. Veterans Day is our chance to honor those Americans who’ve served on battlefields from Lexington to Antietam, Normandy to Manila, Inchon to Khe Sanh, Ramadi to Kandahar.

They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to country that has been tested and proved worthy. What they share is the same unflinching courage, unblinking compassion, and uncommon camaraderie that the soldiers and civilians of Ft. Hood showed America and showed the world.

These are the men and women we honor today. These are the men and women we’ll honor on Veterans Day. And these are the men and women we shall honor every day, in times of war and times of peace, so long as our nation endures.

The US in Afghanistan: "The Long War" Still Waits for a Strategy

Understanding “Mr Obama’s Wars”: Five Essential Analyses on Afghanistan and Pakistan

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Throughout our coverage of the US intervention in Afghanistan this year, there is a recurrent theme. As I wrote for an essay for The New Americanist, published as a separate entry in September:

In such a war [as that in Afghanistan and Pakistan], the strategic ends of not only a military "victory” for US forces but political, economic, and social resolution for the populaces in those countries are peripheral; the ongoing battle is an end in itself. “War” and “national security” take over, rationalised by a permanent fear.

Which is why, when asked in the Newsweek interview, “Can anything get you ready to be a war president?”, Obama could reduce “strategic issues” to an 18-word question:

I think that it certainly helps to know the broader strategic issues involved. I think that’s more important than understanding the tactics involved….The president has to make a decision: will the application of military force in this circumstance meet the broader national-security goals of the United States?

This week Spencer Ackerman published an outstanding and troubling article picking up on this lack of a US strategy in Afghanistan: "The truth is that an inability or unwillingness to define the ends of the Afghanistan conflict has been the rule in Washington for the last eight years":

Everything about the ballroom of the St Regis Hotel indicates Washington courtliness. The entranceway is filled with glittering chandeliers and polished marble, giving way to high ceilinged majesty. Located steps away from the White House, the hotel signals power, control and spectacle. So it was the natural venue for Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to unveil in August the dozen-member team he assembled to reverse the flagging civilian assistance efforts for the troubled region, at the moment this summer when the city began, for the first time, to question the wisdom of the war.

Holbrooke choreographed the event with his characteristic attention to atmospherics. It was moderated by John Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff who ran Barack Obama’s presidential transition. Holbrooke was flanked by his team, which represented every significant US agency and department and even the British government. The dozens of journalists in the room might not have appreciated the policy details – about contesting Pakistani Taliban short-wave radio communications; microcredit programmes for Afghan agriculture; and supporting the forthcoming Afghan elections – but Holbrooke, who has decades of experience with the elite press, evidently gambled that the more their eyes glazed over, the more they would be likely to write that the Obama administration had gathered together an impressive and united civilian team to match the military effort.

And then Holbrooke stepped on his own script. Asked how he would know when he had achieved the ultimate endpoint of the entire enterprise he’d assembled hundreds of people at the St Regis to discuss, Holbrooke replied that it was like the famously vague test enunciated by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart for determining when an artwork was pornographic. “We’ll know it when we see it,” he said. There was little chance of the event’s elaborate stagecraft being remembered after that.

********************************

The foreign-policy community in Washington is an entity powered by euphemism. As much as the fraternity of experts and analysts wishes to congratulate itself for its deep thinking and farsightedness, debate occurs within rigid boundaries that exist to make policymakers believe they can unlock every intractable problem of geopolitical management. Like all good boundaries, these both protect and corral: they insulate the members of the foreign policy establishment against embarrassment when disasters emerge, provided that no one admits a situation is indeed helpless.

Holbrooke’s awkward admission at the St Regis may have pierced this illusion of control, but the truth is that an inability or unwillingness to define the ends of the Afghanistan conflict has been the rule in Washington for the last eight years. There has never been a debate about when the United States will meet its goals in the region it entered after the September 11 attacks, just as there has never been a clarification of those goals. The Iraq war provided everyone with an alibi.

The Bush administration viewed Afghanistan as a nation-building sinkhole that distracted from the war it wanted to fight. Accordingly, the military prioritised Iraq, and so no talented officer had any incentive to innovate in Afghanistan. The Democratic Party, all the way up to Barack Obama, insisted that Afghanistan was the truly necessary war, and turned it into a cudgel to be used against the Iraq war. American Journalists made careers in Iraq and barely asked for embeds in Afghanistan; their editors ticked the box by running an annual short feature, usually about how Afghanistan was the “forgotten war”. There was no critical thought from anyone about arresting Afghanistan’s deterioration, and half-true clichés about a “Graveyard of Empires” accumulated. That was the brittle architecture underlying the national consensus about Afghanistan. Without the supporting wall of Iraq, it has now collapsed.

Out of its wreckage, Obama will make two critical decisions in the coming weeks: whether a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is suitable for the country’s woes; and whether a second troop increase in the span of a year is required to wage it. Obama’s advisers, military and civilian, are locked in a debate over how to provide an alternative to Holbrooke’s admission. Some, like Vice President Joseph Biden, contend that the complexities of counterinsurgency are both insurmountable and unmoored from the stated goal of removing al Qa’eda as a security threat. Others, like Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, contend that the United States has already spent eight years attacking al Qa’eda and senior Taliban leaders without regard for the conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the militants exploit to retain support.

But there is another debate layered on top of that one, both inside the administration and across the Washington foreign-policy community in general. That debate is about the meaning of the Afghanistan war and the scope of American commitment to it. But it is also about what lessons to draw from the Iraq war, and whether they can be exported to Afghanistan.

All of the ideological attention in Washington previously committed to Iraq is now flooding into Afghanistan – or at least to the simulacrum of Afghanistan that exists in Washington. That still-congealing ideology forms the prism through which Obama’s ultimate decisions will be viewed. What was once a relatively simple (though operationally complex) mission to avenge the September 11 attacks has since been overtaken by theories about how to establish lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If those theories are correct, the United States may endure a period of bloody hardship but reap the benefits of radically diminishing the threat of al Qa’eda. If not, it will court disaster.

Read rest of article....

Iran: Question for the Regime "What's Your Next Punch?"

Latest Iran Video: More from 13 Aban
Iran’s New 13 Aban: An Eyewitness Account “I Have Never Seen as Much Violence”
Iran: Josh Shahryar on the Significance of 13 Aban
Iran Video: The Tribute to 13 Aban’s Protesters
The Latest from Iran (7 November): Regrouping

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Almost 36 hours after the 13 Aban demonstrations, all is relatively quiet on the surface in Iran. In different ways, both sides threw big punches on Wednesday, and both may be re-assessing before deciding on the next punch.

On 13 Aban, the regime's attempted knockout was to beat and detain. We are now getting a fuller picture of the violence of the security forces, and more than 400 Iranians were taken to detention centers and prisons. Yet we also know that the demonstrations continued late into the night. And the opposition's communications are still running, albeit having to cope with restrictions and disruptions: both the Mousavi website Kalemeh has re-established itself, and the Karroubi website Tagheer was back up after an outage on Friday.

So what is a Government to do? Friday's clue to a response, albeit a hesitant and (it appears) uncertain one, was the Friday Prayer of Ahmed Khatami. Significantly, his normal big rhetorical stick was accompanied this time by the carrot of leniency and "freedom" if protesters repented. That offer was matched during the day by the again hesitant and confused signals from the Tehran Prosecutor's office. While still unable or unwilling to give the number of people detained on Wednesday, Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi declared that "many" had been released and, in particular, noted foreigners who had been freed.

At the same time, the regime was announcing a set of trials, starting today and continuing to Monday. of high-profile reformists detained since the election. So, if there is a coherent strategy, it appears to revolve about splitting the Green movement by giving partial amnesty to those who give up the cause and coming down hard on the "leaders".

The difficulties only need a milli-second to emerge. Have a look at the discussion amongst our readers, some of whom are inside Iran, across various threads. It is fascinating and will give you more information than any mainstream analysis. The debate amongst the "rank-and-file" is not whether to give up, accepting a quieter and less fraught life, but what methods to adopt: civil disobedience or a show of force against the regime's oppressions? In such conditions, the signal of Khatami that some may be forgiven is a whistle in a growing opposition wind.

And there are the leaders. Rafsanjani has now retreated from public views to consider his tactics. Mousavi may indeed be bottled up --- for how long, time will tell. Khatami is cautious. But Karroubi? My growing sense is that he feels he has nothing to lose. And a cleric with charisma and nothing to lose poses a problem that no Government threat can easily remove.

So step up, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tonight the President could try to change all the calculations above with an address to the nation after 9 p.m. The limited previews, however, give no indication that he will not make a direct response to the events of the last 72 hours. Instead, he will try to take the nation's eyes to the "nuclear question" and offer the vision of information technology. Caught up in a different battle, this one with Parliament over his subsidy reform proposals, he may try reassurances and make demands on the economy.

All of which makes sense but still would be an attempt to work around rather than deal with the challenge. For, if there is a takeaway line from 13 Aban, it is this:

The opposition --- whatever the threats, whatever the inducements --- will not go away.