Afghanistan: Obama v. Petraeus (Part 379)

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At the start of the year we closely tracked the political battle between the White House and military commanders, notably General David Petraeus, over the deployment of additional US troops to Afghanistan. This was nominally resolved at the end of March by a "compromise" agreement (even though the military got almost all of the troop request) in which Obama announced a new strategy of military measures supporting non-military measures to build up the country.

The situation was not resolved, either inside Washington or in Afghanistan, and we are back in another cycle of reports, spin, and power moves over another escalation in the US military commitment. One curious absentee, however, is Petraeus, who has not been far from media-shy in the past. Tom Englehardt digs beneath the surface for the story:

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael "Mike" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a "deteriorating" war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. ("I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan... or sending a message that America is here for the duration.")

On the other hand, here's someone you haven't seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus.

He was, of course, George W. Bush's pick to lead the president's last-ditch effort in Iraq. He was the poster boy for Bush's military policies in his last two years. He was the highly praised architect and symbol of "the surge." He appeared repeatedly, his chest a mass of medals and ribbons, for heavily publicized, widely televised congressional testimony, complete with charts and graphs, that was meant, at least in part, for the American public. He was the man who, to use an image from that period which has recently resurfaced, managed to synchronize the American and Baghdad "clocks," pacifying for a time both the home and war fronts.

He never met a journalist, as far as we can tell, he didn't want to woo. (And he clearly won over the influential Tom Ricks, then of the Washington Post, who wrote The Gamble, a bestselling paean to him and his sub-commanders.) From the look of it, he's the most political general to come down the pike since, in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said his goodbyes to Congress after being cashiered by President Truman for insubordination -- for, in effect, wanting to run his own war and the foreign policy that went with it. It was Petraeus who brought Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) back from the crypt, overseeing the writing of a new Army counterinsurgency manual that would make it central to both the ongoing wars and what are already being referred to as the "next" ones.

Before he left office, Bush advanced his favorite general to the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the former president's Global War on Terror across the energy heartlands of the planet from Egypt to Pakistan. The command is, of course, especially focused on Bush's two full-scale wars: the Iraq War, now being pursued under Petraeus's former subordinate, General Ray Odierno, and the Afghan War, for which Petraeus seems to have personally handpicked a new commanding general, Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations, McChrystal had operated in Iraq and was also part of an Army promotion board headed by Petraeus that advanced the careers of officers committed to counterinsurgency. To install McChrystal in May, Obama abruptly sacked the then-Afghan war commander, General David McKiernan, in what was then considered, with some exaggeration, a new MacArthur moment.

On taking over, McChrystal, who had previously been a counterterrorism guy (and isn't about to give that up, either), swore fealty to counterinsurgency doctrine (that is, to Petraeus) by proclaiming that the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents, but to "protect the population." He also turned to a "team" of civilian experts, largely gathered from Washington think-tanks, a number of whom had been involved in planning out Petraeus's Iraq surge of 2007, to make an assessment of the state of the war and what needed to be done. Think of them as the Surgettes.

As in many official reassessments, the cast of characters essentially guaranteed the results before a single meeting was held. Based on past history and opinions, this team could only provide one Petraeus-approved answer to the war: more -- more troops, up to 40,000-45,000 of them, and other resources for an American counterinsurgency operation without end.

Hence, even if McChrystal's name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward's bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed "the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner." The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.

There is, wrote DeYoung a day later, now a "rupture" between the military "pushing for an early decision to send more troops" and civilian policymakers "increasingly doubtful of an escalating nation-building effort." Nancy Youssef of McClatchy News wrote about how "mixed signals" from Washington were causing "increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan"; a group of McClatchy reporters talked of military advocates of escalation feeling "frustration" over "White House dithering." David Sanger of the New York Times described "a split between an American military that says it needs more troops now and an American president clearly reluctant to leap into that abyss." "Impatient" is about the calmest word you'll see for the attitude of the military top command right now.

Buyer's Remorse, the Afghan War, and the President

In the midst of all this, between Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal is, it seems, a missing man. The most photogenic general in our recent history, the man who created the doctrine and oversees the war, the man who is now shaping the U.S. Army (and its future plans and career patterns), is somehow, at this crucial moment, out of the Washington spotlight. This last week General Petraeus was, in fact, in England, giving a speech and writing an article for the (London) Times laying out his basic "protect the population" version of counterinsurgency and praising our British allies by quoting one of their great imperial plunderers. ("If Cecil Rhodes was correct in his wonderful observation that 'being an Englishman is the greatest prize in the lottery of life,' and I'm inclined to think that he was, then the second greatest prize in the lottery of life must be to be a friend of an Englishman, and based on that, the more than 230,000 men and women in uniform who work with your country's finest day by day are very lucky indeed, as am I.")

Only at mid-week, with Washington aboil, did he arrive in the capital for a counterinsurgency conference at the National Press Club and quietly "endorse" "General McChrystal's assessment." Whatever the look of things, however, it's unlikely that Petraeus is actually on the sidelines at this moment of heightened tension. He is undoubtedly still The Man.

So much is, of course, happening just beyond the sightlines of those of us who are mere citizens of this country, which is why inference and guesswork are, unfortunately, the order of the day. Read any account in a major newspaper right now and it's guaranteed to be chock-a-block full of senior officials and top military officers who are never "authorized to speak," but nonetheless yak away from behind a scrim of anonymity. Petraeus may or may not be one of them, but the odds are reasonable that this is still a Petraeus Moment.

If so, Obama has only himself to blame. He took up Afghanistan ("the right war") in the presidential campaign as proof that, despite wanting to end the war in Iraq, he was tough. (Why is it that a Democratic candidate needs a war or threat of war to trash-talk about in order to prove his "strength," when doing so is obviously a sign of weakness?)

Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.

As it happens, this was never Obama's "war of necessity." It was always Petraeus's. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus's progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn't cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn't deliver -- a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.

It's a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, "it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal." No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous "defense analyst" quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering "buyer's remorse for this war... They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock."

Admittedly, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51% of Americans are against sending in more troops. (Who knows how they would react to a president who went on TV to announce that he had genuinely reconsidered?) Official Washington is another matter. For General Petraeus, who claims to have no political ambitions but is periodically mentioned as the Eisenhower of 2012, how potentially peachy to launch your campaign against the president who lost you the war.

A Petraeus Moment?

In the present context, the media language being used to describe this military-civilian conflict of wills -- frustration, impatience, split, rupture, ire -- may fall short of capturing the import of a moment which has been brewing, institutionally speaking, for a long time. There have been increasing numbers of generals' "revolts" of various sorts in our recent past. Of course, George W. Bush was insistent on turning planning over to his generals (though only when he liked them), something Barack Obama criticized him for during the election campaign. ("The job of the commander in chief is to listen to the best counsel available and to listen even to people you don't agree with and then ultimately you make the final decision and you take responsibility for those actions.")

Now, it looks as if we are about to have a civilian-military encounter of the first order in which Obama will indeed need to take responsibility for difficult actions (or the lack thereof). If a genuine clash heats up, expect more discussion of "MacArthur moments," but this will not be Truman versus MacArthur redux, and not just because Petraeus seems to be a subtler political player than MacArthur ever was.

Over the nearly six decades that separate us from Truman's great moment, the Pentagon has become a far more overwhelming institution. In Afghanistan, as in Washington, it has swallowed up much of what once was intelligence, as it is swallowing up much of what once was diplomacy. It is linked to one of the two businesses, the Pentagon-subsidized weapons industry, which has proven an American success story even in the worst of economic times (the other remains Hollywood). It now holds a far different position in a society that seems to feed on war.

It's one thing for the leaders of a country to say that war should be left to the generals when suddenly embroiled in conflict, quite another when that country is eternally in a state of war. In such a case, if you turn crucial war decisions over to the military, you functionally turn foreign policy over to them as well. All of this is made more complicated, because the cast of "civilians" theoretically pitted against the military right now includes Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the "war czar" when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals? Depending on what Obama does, the answer to that question may not be fully, or even largely, clarified this time around. He may quietly give way, or they may, or compromises may be reached behind the scenes. After all, careers and political futures are at stake.

But consider us warned. This is a question that is not likely to go away and that may determine what this country becomes.

We know what a MacArthur moment was; we may find out soon enough what a Petraeus moment is.

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2100 GMT: Back to Compromise? After a day of tough signals, this paragraph on Press TV's website from President Ahmadinejad return-from-US press conference in Tehran jumps out: ""By his change of rhetoric, Obama has signaled a strong commitment in the presence of the General Assembly. If the American government is seriously pursuing the path of change, Obama's speech can be considered a start."

2045 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi's website Kalemeh is down, and Mehdi Karroubi's Tagheer is still suspended 72 hours after announcing it was going off-line for construction.

1830 GMT: Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi Giving Up Key Position? Tabnak offers the intriguing report that Ayatollah Yazdi, a firm supporter of President Ahmadinejad, is resigning from the Secretariat of the Assembly of Experts.Yazdi will retain his membership of the Assembly and his Vice Chair post, but his withdrawal from the Executive diminishes a key challenger to Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Yazdi was absent from the recent Assembly of Experts meeting.

1545 GMT: An Economic Victory for the Republican Guard. An Iranian consortium in which the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps is reputed to be a major actor has bought a 51 percent stake in the State telecommunications firm in the biggest privatisation in Iran's history.

1445 GMT: Another Ministerial Fraud? After the criticism of the Ministers of Interior and Science for dubious doctoral degrees from British universities, now it is the Minister of Transport Hamid Behbahani who faces allegations of false credentials. An article in the French daily newspaper Libération, claims Behbahani plagiarised parts of a work of the Professor Christophe Claramunt, his Chinese colleagues, and the Canadian academic Gerry Forbes for a 2006 publication in a Lithuanian journal.

1440 GMT: Your Latest Proof of the "Velvet Revolution". A Revolutionary Guard offical has said that the television signals of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting were jammed during the election campaign. Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali claimed that "enemies of the country" had tried to jam the transmission during a Presidential campaign debate.

1200 GMT: Report that student activists Ali Rafai and Mohsen Jafari have been released from detention.

1045 GMT: The New York Times Gets the Story Wrong...Big-Time. EA's Mr Smith picks up on this morning's article by , NewDavid Sanger and William Broad, which opens:

The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks”, according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday.

The story asserts that, while "Iranian officials have...said the facility near Qom is for peaceful purposes, they have not explained why it was located inside a heavily guarded base of the Revolutionary Guards".

Mr Smith notes:

This is incorrect. In remarks yesterday to Iranian Television, [Iran's top nuclear offcial Ali Akhbar] Salehi said that they felt like they needed to build a plant for uranium enrichment with maximum security to avoid 'stopping the production of enriched uranium for peaceful purposes'. I think everyone agrees that Natanz [Iran's first enrichment plant] isn't that secure, built as it is in open air. Therefore you would have to think that Iran is getting pushed in going underground with its nuclear plants because of the never-ending military threats, mostly from Israel but also, incessantly, from the US.

So I wonder what would have happened if the hawks in Tel Aviv and DC had actually kept quiet rather than waving the military scarecrow all the time.

The US can say whatever it wants, but the heart of the matter is that, unless the IAEA proves that Iran has been feeding uranium into these plants, there is no violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now, we can discuss ad libitum what the real aims of Iran are, as Sick has valiantly done, but everyone is, so far, putting intentions on trial, rather than actual, hard evidence on violations by Iran. True, Iran has been lying and is not reliable in its disclosures. But does this amount to legal violation? It doesn't appear so...

0835 GMT: This is More Like It. A day after Iran's nuclear negotiator offered Iran's willingness to consider International Atomic Energy Agency access to the second enrichment facility, its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, puts on a show of defiance: "I categorically reject that there have been any concealment or any deception."

As we predicted, Soltaniyeh rests Iran's legal case on the second plant on the claim that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty did not force revelation of the facility's construction, only its imminent capacity for enrichment: "It is a pity that none of these three leaders have legal advisers to inform them that according to comprehensive safeguards we are only obliged to inform six months before we put nuclear material [into the plant]."

The ambassador adds the flourish that it is Washington, Paris, and London who are the nuclear rule-breakers:

Those three countries in fact have violated for the last 40 years NPT articles. The United Kingdom has [a] secret program of [Trident] nuclear submarines...[costing more than £30 billion.... France is also working on the nuclear weapon programs continuously. Americans are working hard on the nuclear weapon posture review. These are all deceptions and concealment.

0825 GMT: Two new pieces on the Iran nuclear programme. Ali Yenidunya takes a look at Israel's intervention (rhetorical so far) while Gary Sick assesses how the "secret plant" story shapes US strategy and tactics in talks with Tehran.

0655 GMT: Acting Tough. In a move about as surprising as the Pope's endorsement of Catholicism, Iran has announced that it has test-fired two short-range missiles in a missile exercise called "Great Prophet IV". And there will be more launches as the exercise is planned to last several days.

The signal to the "West" --- We Won't Be Pushed Around --- will poke US and UK media into headlines of how this demonstrates Tehran's threat in the context of the furour over the second enrichment plant.

0615 GMT: And a Deal on the International Front? US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved quickly to welcome the comment of Iran's lead official on the nuclear programme, Ali Akhbar Salehi, that Iran would permit visits by the International Atomic Energy Agency, under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to its second enrichment plant (a "defensive facility"). Clinton said:

It is always welcome when Iran makes a decision to comply with the international rules and regulations, and particularly with respect to the IAEA. We are very hopeful that, in preparing for the meeting on October 1, Iran comes and shares with all of us what they are willing to do and give us a timetable on which they are willing to proceed

Hmm.... Salehi's remark appears to have been a holding statement while the Ahmadinejad Government considers its next move, and Clinton's welcome --- unsurprisingly --- fits into a US strategy to back Tehran into a corner of acceptance. The Los Angeles Times reports this morning:

The U.S. and its allies plan to demand that Iran provide "unfettered access" to scientists and information regarding an underground uranium enrichment plant suspected of being part of a secret nuclear weapons program, an Obama administration official said Saturday. A deadline for the access has not yet been determined, but Iran probably would have to comply within weeks.

0600 GMT: Relatively little breaking in Iran this morning, as we look for further signals that there is a compromise plan, led by or involving Hashemi Rafsanjani, making its way through the Iranian system.

What little has come out points more to the continued fencing between opposing camps. Reports are circulating of more official complaints against Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, while Mehdi Karroubi's Etemade Melli party website has published information about the abuse and rape of another detainee.

The most interesting claim is that Sardar Khorshidi, the father of President Ahmadinejad's son-in-law and a decorated commander during the Iran-Iraq War, has said he personally witnessed vote-rigging in the June election. He also points to the fragility of the regime: ""If each protester had a stick on Qods Day, the Army wouldn't have withsood them."

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1835 GMT: Report that Azar Mansouri, deputy head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been arrested after an interview with Norooz.

1735 GMT: Is Iran's "Secret Nuclear Plant" Legal? The quick soundbite for Time from its interview with President Ahmadinejad is ""This does not mean we must inform Mr. Obama's administration of every facility that we have."

However, Ahmadinejad may have a point, one which is relevant to the current case. Iran notified the IAEA on Monday that it was constructing a new pilot enrichment plant. If Tehran has not put nuclear material into this facility, Iran is in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's Comprehensive Full Scope Safeguards Agreement, which requires it to a six-month notification period before nuclear material is put in the facility. (Iran withdrew from the more Subsidiary Agreement 3.1, which requires more detailed and timely notification, after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.

So the case to prosecute Iran under the Non-Proliferation Treaty is not clear-cut. Of course, the US can and will rely upon the U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease all enrichment. Whether other countries (China, Russia) take the same line remains to be seen.

1730 GMT: President Ahmadinejad may have backed out of an encounter with the New York media, but he did give a one-on-one video interview to Time magazine. We've posted in a separate entry.

1700 GMT: President Ahmadinejad has replaced his New York press conference with an interview with Press TV.

1500 GMT: We've just posted Chris Emery's shrewd analysis of the politics of the US revelation of the "secret nuclear plant" and the Obama statement: "This high-profile initiative by Obama was designed to get movement on engagement."

1425 GMT: Amidst the continuing chatter on the Obama statement --- no additional information, just the theme of "He was Really Tough" --- news services drop in this interesting twist "Ahmadinejad cancels his 5 pm EST (2100 GMT) speech in NYC [New York City]".

1245 GMT: The Obama Line. The President has just made his statement on the Iran "secret nuclear plant". The message? This demonstrates Iran's "continuing unwillingness" to meets its "international obligations" on development of nuclear capability. This showed the "urgency" of resolution at talks with Iran on 1 October in Geneva.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed this up by saying "everything must be put on the table", and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proclaimed this "the most urgent problem" of today.

This feels more and more like a scripted play. The "West" has known for some time that Iran was constructing a second uranium enrichment plant but had not announced this to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tehran figured out that the US had learned of the plant and was preparing a big setpiece, ahead of the 1 October talks, to reveal the Iranian duplicity. So Iran went to the IAEA on Monday to put its plans above-board. This, however, was  not going to deflect the US-UK-France scheme to put Iran on the defensive in advance of the first direct discussions between Washington and Tehran.

1220 GMT: By the way, there was a Friday Prayer address today. After the drama of recent weeks, this one, by hard-line Government supporter and head of the Guardian Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, went almost unnoticed.

Nothing much new here. Jannati talks about triumph over "the enemy" through the political, military, and regional power of Iran and invokes the Holy Defense of the 1980-1988 war against Iraq. Like the Supreme Leader, he portrayed the demonstrations of Qods Day and Eid-ul-Fitr as Iranian support for the world's oppressed, and he condemned the tragedy of the assassination of the Kurdestan member of the Assembly of Experts.

1210 GMT: And Here's You Obama Administration  Line. A "senior Administration source" uses one of the reliable channels (i.e. will put out the message as presented, will not look behind or beyond it), ABC's Jake Tapper: "[Obama] to express 'great and increasing doubts about the strictly peaceful nature' of Iran's nuclear program"

1200 GMT: NBC's Ann Curry nails the politics on the "secret nuclear plant" story, and she only needs 1 Tweet to do it: "Remember the US and Iran about to negotiate. The West has an interest in increasing the pressure now."

1145 GMT: The Iran State Line. Press TV, in an article posted this morning, does not address the "secret nuclear plant" story but refers to French and British allegations of an Iranian nuclear progamme, made during the exchanges at the United Nations this week, as "totally baseless and untrue". The Iranian UN mission added that remarks by French President Nicolas Sarkozy were a "futile attempt aimed to cover up [French] non-compliance with its international disarmament obligations".

1050 GMT: So the story of Iran's "secret nuclear plant" (which isn't secret, since Tehran informed the International Atomic Agency of the construction of the uranium enrichment facility on Monday) is going to dominate the news cycle, as every US and many international outlets rush lemming-like to the tale and President Obama makes a statement at 1230 GMT.

If only someone takes a step back to note this comment from CNN's Fareed Zakaria, made after President Ahmadinejad's UN speech: "Ahmadinejad has been on a campaign over the last few weeks to change the subject. His great fear was that he would come to New York and the subject would be the Iranian regime and his massive repression of the Iranian democracy movement, the street protests, all the allegations being made by Iranians of what is happening in Iran --- rape, torture, abuse. What he wanted to do was to talk about anything but that."

0900 GMT: Ahmadinejad's Useful US Idiots. I was going to write the following analysis for Saturday, but events prompt me to offer a preview:

Ahmadinejad was on verge of major mis-step by playing New York trip as sign that all now resolved at home. 'West', however, played into his hands by raising Iran (and Ahmadinejad) to iconic threat on nuke issue. And Netanyahu gives kiss of death to opposition by praising their supposed aim of regime change. So the President gets to do his aggressive defend-Iran thing, getting more legitimacy out of West than he has many of his own people.

Five minutes after jotting this down, I read the Administration's latest strategic masterpiece in The New York Times, courtesy of David Sanger (who seems to have no recognition that he is a messenger-boy);

President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France will accuse Iran Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying it has hidden the covert operation for years from international weapons inspectors, according to senior administration officials.

Well done, guys. Instead of keeping your mouths shut and letting Ahmadinejad return to political complications at home, you've given him the ideal platform to pose as defender of Iranian sovereignty. And watch how your PR stick, wielded just before talks with Iran on 1 October, is turned into a stick by the President, his allies, and his supportive State media to bash "foreign-directed" reformists and the Green movement at home.

Idiots.

0650 GMT: Catching up, indeed. Even though the EA roadtrip was less than 72 hours, there appears to be a month's worth of incidents to consider. Forget the Ahmadinejad sideshow in New York; the events in and around the Assembly of Experts offer a plethora of possibilities. We've attempted an analysis,
"Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Multi-Sided Chess Match", this morning.

Of course, state media features Ayatollah Khamenei's address to the Assembly of Experts, but it also keeps playing up President Ahmadinejad's defiance of the "West", from his warning against sanctions to his explanation that "Down with the US" refers to the "ugly behavior" of the American Government.

The Latest from Iran (10 September): Who Fits Where?

NEW Iran Analysis: Retrenching Before Friday’s Prayers
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The Latest from Iran (9 September): The Stakes Are Raised


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1955 GMT: The Youth and Student Section of Mehdi Karroubi's reformist Etemade Melli party have condemned the acts of the judiciary and security forces with the arrest of Mousavi’s and Karoubi’s advisors. The section declared that these actions in the run-up to Qods Day (18 Sept.) not only will fail to cause fear in people but will encourage them to attend the epic demonstration on that day.

1815 GMT: There is a bit of a buzz about a letter from the noted political philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush to the Supreme Leader, proclaiming that Iranians will celebrate the "decline of religious despotism".

1740 GMT: The reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front has expressed support for Mir Hossein Mousavi’s “Green Path of Hope” as a manifesto for the liberation of Iranians from the "defective cycle of tyranny".

1735 GMT: Still don't believe there is a foreign-directed effort at "velvet revolution" in Iran? Well here, courtesy of Raja News, is the super-duper, multi-colour chart (with arrows) to prove it.

1730 GMT: Norooz, which was down earlier today because of an "Internal Server Error", is back online.

1440 GMT: An EA correspondent clarifies our 1415 GMT entry on newssites linked to Mehdi Karroubi: "Saham News is back to posting new items, while tagheer.ir is a site that was set up some 7-8 months ago during Khatami's President candidacy."

1425 GMT: Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has said that if Mehdi Karroubi cannot establish his claims of detainee abuse, he should be tried on criminal charges. The source is significant because Bahonar had been a vocal foe of the President during the debate over the Cabinet.

1415 GMT: There are reports that staff of Mehdi Karroubi have set up an alternative website to replace the suspended Saham News/Etemade Melli party site. The alternative, tagheer.ir, has similar content and approach to that of Saham News.

At the same time, it appears that the Norooz site, a key source for recent news is down because of "Internal Server Error". Before it went down, the site was disputing the Government's denial of its list of 72 people killed in post-election conflict and reporting that the memorial for the late Ayatollah Taleghani, which the Government had tried to block, had been held at the family home.

1345 GMT: Amnesty International says it has reports that Caspian Makan, the fiancé of Neda Agha Soltan, who was shot and killed by Basiji militia on 20 June, has been released from detention.

1330 GMT: Report that Zohreh Ashtiani, a reporter with Saham News, the Etemade Melli party's website, was arrested and her house searched. A later report says she was released after 12 hours of questioning.

0940 GMT: Just back from an interview with BBC World Service Radio on President Obama's speech on health care (the audio is now up for the next 24 hours). Not much breaking in Iran.

And, confirming our  0800 GMT post, it appears that Iran, apart from The Bomb, will stay off the agenda for most international media. A CNN anchor has just posted their editorial call: "Iraq blast/Afghanistan/India stampede/Mex hijacking/Turkey flood/Taiwan Cabinet/world cup". Yep, the US match with Trinidad & Tobago beats out any consideration of the Government crackdown. (No, the CNN website never did mention the arrest of key Mousavi and Karroubi advisors like Alireza Beheshti.)

0815 GMT: Josh Shahryar has posted "The Green Brief" for Wednesday, including the essential correction that he gave us (0655 GMT) on yesterday's statement about those breaking the law by the head of judiciary, Sadegh Larijani.

0800 GMT: The New York Times, which had been doing quite well of late with Iran coverage, decides to indulge in peripheral hysteria this morning. Michael Slackman, Nazila Fathi, and Robert Worth, each of whom has some knowledge of Iran as something more than Islam and bombs, give way for David Sanger, who knows what was told to him by the most recent "Western diplomat" or Administration official. So today, it's another recycling of the superficial and misleading claim, "U.S. Says Iran Has Ability to Expedite a Nuclear Bomb".

(Superficial because "ability to expedite a nuclear bomb" is vaguery bordering on linguistic nonsense. Misleading even in the caveats in the article: "a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon" is shorthand for Iran either does not yet have or has not pursued the capability to convert low-yield uranium into highly-enriched uranium in practice, rather than theory. Thus, "the new intelligence information collected by the Obama administration finds no convincing evidence that design work has resumed."

All swept away because someone told Sanger something on his way to the office to file a story: "In interviews over the past two months, intelligence and military officials, and members of the Obama administration, have said they are convinced that Iran has made significant progress on uranium enrichment, especially over the past year.")

Perhaps Sanger might write, for his next not-exactly-an-exclusive, "Ohmygod, Iran and Venezuela are Going to Kill Us All!"

0655 GMT: With a slow morning for breaking news (which is tempting fate, since we said the same thing yesterday and then faced a torrent of afternoon development), we have posted an analysis, "Retrenching before Friday Prayers". And we've taken time to give a breaking story, featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, the respect it deserves: "EA Exclusive: Iran and Venezuela are Going to Kill Us All".

There is, however, one significant development or, rather, a  correction of a development. We updated yesterday on the interview of the head of Iran's judiciary, "Has Larijani Jumped Behind Ahmadinejad?", because we read his condemnation of those "outside the law" as  a reference to the opposition. Indeed we posted in our last update, The New York Times, drawing from Fars News Agency, was highlighting Larijani's phrase “great costs to the Islamic system”.

Josh Shahryar has had a close look, however, at the interview as it appeared on Radio Zamaneh. Read on its own, it is unclear who is being targeted by this passage:

Some had tried to call the elections fraudulent and attempted to stray outside "the circle of legality". [Larijani] said that law-breaking had become rampant and it had been observed in the aftermath of the elections how such actions had inflicted a great cost on the Islamic regime. He said that these violators shouldn't think that they're not being watched and the Judiciary should pursue the perpetrators of any such law-breaking legally.

However, the ambiguity evaporates when the previous paragraph is added: "Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani today said that what had happened in the detention centers had inflicted a huge blow on the standing of the regime. He said that the Judiciary would pursue these violations carefully and vigorously."