UPDATE 9 MARCH: I’m setting off in a few hours. Iran updates will be lighter than usual until Saturday, but we will keep our eyes on events and try and keep you posted. And, of course, our readers — thanks to all of you for advice for this trip — can be relied upon to provide information and comment.
have been invited to speak next Wednesday at “Iran at a Crossroads“, a hearing organised by the National Iranian American Council at the US Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. The event, sponsored by US Senators and including statements from US Congressman, is expected to draw an audience of legislators, government officials, and journalists, as well as the general public.
The event will be live-streamed from 9 a.m. local time(1400 GMT) at NIACInsight.
1500 GMT: But Mahmoud, What If No One’s Home? Here’s a better story than the Khatami rumour….
On Monday President Ahmadinejad was totally disrespected when Afghan President Hamid Karzai who told Mahmoud to stay home (US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was suddenly in town, and Americans and Iranians at the same time in Kabul just wouldn’t do). So Iranian state media carried the story that Ahmadinejad’s office had not said “Monday” but “this week”. The meeting with Karzai would now be on Wednesday.
Which would be fine except Karzai’s people are reportedly saying that the Afghan President will be in Pakistan on Wednesday.
So what’s up? Is it a three-way get-together in Islamabad or will Ahmadinejad’s office have to clarify “not this week, next week”.
1445 GMT: Khatami Watch. Yes, we have read the rumours that former President Mohammad Khatami has been barred from leaving Iran. The source is Fars News, so status remains at rumour or disinformation — Khatami’s camp have denied the report.
1220 GMT: The excellent analyst Marc Lynch has just made the immediate point, “All the Iraqi lists appear to be claiming victory. I’d wait for official results, which will be a while.” His comment comes a few hours after a CNN correspondent pondered, “Each TV station corresponding to each political bloc saying that they are the winners…hmmm….”
This is the real politics of Iraq, a day after the headlines of bombings and “democracy”. With no party in the position to establish a national majority and indeed, outside Kurdistan, even a regional dominance, the negotiations, coercions, and manipulations take over, even before the preliminary results are announced on Thursday.
In Kurdistan, there is an intriguing contest between the Kurdistan List — made up of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Kurdish Prime Minister Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Iraq President Jalal Talabani — and the Gorran Party, established to break the stranglehold of the KDP and PUK on Kurdish politics. An activist says that Gorran narrowly won in the city of Suleymaniyah and lost in province of the same name; however, Gorran is claiming fraud in the provincial vote. Another activist says that Gorran has also secured seats in Diyala, Mosul, and Salahaddin; however, the Kurdistan List has triumphed by a 2:1 margin in Erbil.
As early voting begins in Sunday’s national elections, Iraq has been beset by bombings: the toll from three suicide attacks in Baquba on Wednesday is now 33 dead and 42 injured, and a suicide bomber has killed three and injured 15 today at a Baghdad polling station.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that it has gotten hold of an American intelligence document detailing undue Iranian influence in Iraq and in the Iraqi elections. The document says that Ahmad Chalabi and Ali al-Lami, influential members of the ‘Jusice and Accountability Committee’ in charge of purging Baathists from public life, met repeatedly with Iranian officials last fall. Among those they met were Qasim Sulaimani, head of the special forces Jerusalem (Quds) Brigade and the Iranian foreign minister. US Commanding General in Iraq, Ray Odierno, charged that Iran was behind the campaign to disqualify over 500 alleged Baathists from running in Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary, and this document seems to lend some credence to the allegation.
With national elections in Iraq on Sunday and Juan Cole writing, “The greatest danger of these [latest] political maneuverings is that they may reignite guerrilla and militia violence in Iraq, and possibly impede the scheduled withdrawal of the US military,” Newsweek’s Twitter team makes everything simple:
In 6 words, tell us your thoughts on the state of democracy in Iraq. Reply @Newsweek, or email your entry to sixwords@newsweek.com
Pajhwok News Agency reports that on Tuesday, the Afghanistan senate deplored the foreign airstrikes that killed 21 innocent civilians in the province of Daikundi on Sunday, and demanded that NATO avoid any repetition of this sort of error.
But some senators went farther, demanding that NATO or US military men responsible for the deaths be executed. Senator Hamidullah Tokhi of Uruzgan complained to Pajhwok that the foreign forces had killed civilians in such incidents time and again, and kept apologizing but then repeating the fatal mistake: “Anyone killing an ordinary Afghan should be executed in public.”
Lawmaker Fatima Aziz of Qunduz concurred, observing, “We saw foreign troops time and again that they killed innocent people, something unbearable for the already war-weary Afghans.”
We’ve been trying to get our heads around the significance of Saturday’s announcement that one of Iraq’s largest Sunni political parties is going to boycott the forthcoming national elections. The New York Times plays down the story. Juan Cole also thinks that the effect on the election will not be devastating, but he considers the longer-term maneouvres and probable benefits to the leading Shi’a factions:
The Los Angeles Times reports that the National Dialogue Front, a secular party led by Salih Mutlak, is calling for a boycott of the March 7 parliamentary elections in Iraq. The NDF has 11 seats in parliament, but Mutlak and another prominent party member were among over 500 candidates (out of over 6000) for parliament disqualified as too close to the prohibited Baath Party. Many of those excluded from running had openly criticized the provision in the Iraqi constitution that bans members of the Baath Party from public life. The purge of Mutlak has been widely condemned in Iraq as unfair, since he left the party in the late 1970s.
Of course, snap reaction from the US of this week’s events in Iran was unlikely to catch the depth of the developments and the prospects for the future. The disturbing while gleeful response of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett was to be expected. (And, yes, I use “disturbing” without reservation: have a look at their “analysis” to see how they try to wipe away the post-election detentions, trials, and abuses.) Unsurprisingly, some Bush-era advocates of US power, having embraced the Green movement for “regime change”, backtracked when the Government did not fall on Thursday — Charles Krauthammer pronounced, “The regime has succeeded today, and unless there is some later demonstration of the power of the opposition, it could be a turning point in this process and the one that the regime will celebrate.”
However, what is most disturbing is how an analyst like Marc Lynch, normally quite good about Middle Eastern affairs, could issue this declaration after a superficial review of 22 Bahman and the Green movement, “I fully believe that the Iranian regime is more unpopular and less legitimate than ever before — but just don’t see it as especially vulnerable at the moment.” It is disturbing not because Lynch is duplicitous; to the contrary, he carries enough weight of expertise and of honesty in his approach for his analysis to race around the Washington network of political columnists as the final wisdom on the subject.
UPDATE 9 MARCH: I’m setting off in a few hours. Iran updates will be lighter than usual until Saturday, but we will keep our eyes on events and try and keep you posted. And, of course, our readers — thanks to all of you for advice for this trip — can be relied upon to provide information and comment.
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