1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Update. Lawyer Massoud Aghaee was freed last night on bail. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109018)
1710 GMT: The Iranian Parliament has launched its 4th enquiry into the Kahrizak Prison abuses. (http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/feb/20/1244)
1655 GMT: Economic Projections. Key member of Parliament Ahmad Tavakoli has warned of possible zero growth or contraction in the economy in 2010-11. (http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=13758)
1645 GMT: Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi has declared that officials should serve the people and that if the people do not appear in public anymore, there will be great difficulties. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109009)
1640 GMT: Conservative Watch. Mohsen Rezaei, Presidential candidate and Secretary of the Expediency Coucil, has called on the Council to “apply corrections” to electoral laws. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109015)
1630 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Council, has declared at a Council meetint that “exclusion, elimination, and insulting” of figures in the Iranian system is a poison to domestic affairs and should be stopped.
Rafsanjani, reaffirming his position, declared that 22 Bahman invited Iranians to unity, following the Supreme Leader.
(http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109080)
1620 GMT: Afternoon Economy Watch. Bus drivers have gathered in front of the Social Security building in Tehran to protest against working conditions. (http://www.peykeiran.com/Content.aspx?ID=13750)
Iranian Labor News Agency warns that factories in many industrial sectors face closure. (http://www.ilna.ir/fullStory.aspx?ID=109010)
At least 1500 jobs have been lost in recent shutdowns. (http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/feb/19/1237)
Alireza Mahjoub, the head of a workers’ syndicate, has said the promise of 50 percent increase in oil prices in next year’s budget is “bizarre and inaccurate”. (http://www.ilna.ir/fullStory.aspx?ID=109089)
1120 GMT: This Month’s Twitter-Bash. This is almost as predictable as British weather: every few weeks, someone in the “thinking” press patches together faulty assumptions, a mis-understanding of social media, an Iran anecdote, and an “analyst” to claim that he/she has discovered: Twitter Had Nothing to Do With Post-Elections Events in Iran Whatsoever.
This month’s 15-second fame of Twitter-bashing is enjoyed by Mary Fitzgerald of The Irish Times. She is not as obnoxious or arrogant as Will Heaven, but the piece plumbs the same shallow waters of “analysis” that does no justice to social media or, more importantly, to those in Iran. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0220/1224264860222.html)
1045 GMT: The Flag Flap (cont.). Well, I guess the issue of the magically changing colour of the Iranian flag — from red/white/green to red/white/blue — isn’t just a joke any longer.
At least not for the President’s office: it has issued a statement that “light reflection twisted the colour” of the flag at Ahmadinejad’s press conference this week. (http://bit.ly/crcDMW)
0905 GMT: Moscow’s Two-Faced Missiles. Russia, meanwhile, plays its own game with Iran. Having given Israel one message by holding up immediate delivery of S-300 missiles to Tehran, Moscow balanced with reassurance to Iran on Friday. Press TV quotes Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, “There is a contract to supply these systems to Iran, and we will fulfill it … Delays (with deliveries) are linked to technical problems with adjusting these systems.”
Iran has just sent a letter to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeating its request for fuel to run a research reactor in Tehran that produces nuclear isotopes for medical purposes, according to U.S. and European officials.
They are readi
ng the letter as Iran’s latest, and perhaps final, rejection of an offer the United States and five other countries made last October to provide the fuel by taking low-enriched uranium out of Iran and enriching it for use in the research reactor…..
“We understand that Iran has recently sent a letter to the IAEA that simply repeats its request from last year for assistance to acquire fuel – a request the IAEA has responded appropriately to with its offer last October,” National Security Council spokesman Michael Hammer said.
“We see nothing new, and it would appear to reiterate Iran’s rejection of the IAEA’s proposal. Coupled with the IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, this reinforces why our concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions are deepening.”
In other words, diplomatic stalemate. Tehran will continue to put forth its request for uranium through purchase or a swap inside Iran, while “the West” will insist on a swap in a third country. This could drag on for some time: both sides are getting public-relations value out of their positions.
First Things First. We may have underestimated the significance of yesterday’s discussions between Iran and the “5+1″ power when we wrote (1640 GMT), “The Iranians have achieved their primary objective, which is to avoid an immediate condemnation and the threat of sanctions from a “breakdown” of today’s discussions.”
The biggest signal of a breakthrough at the talks was not the declaration, from all sides, that Iran would invite the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the second enrichment facility at Qom “in the next couple of weeks” (1715 GMT). That was always the likely Iranian concession to “the West”: contrary to the exaggerations in the US and British media, Qom is not that significant a plant, serving at this point as potential back-up to the main enrichment site at Natanz. So Tehran can accept inspections, provided its sovereignty is also maintained in an agreement, with the assurance that there’s nothing illegal to be seen at the second facility. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Keith Olbermann: “Thank you, Sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11. For that attack, Sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best you were guilty of malfeasance and eternally-lasting stupidity. At worst, Sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent.”
I am refraining from an analysis of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s comments on national security yesterday, primarily because I hope that his speech — which should be treated at most as self-justification — will just go away. This is hope rather than expectation, however. Despite Dan Drezner’s comment that President Obama has “adversaries more boneheaded than himself”, Cheney’s words will be treated as Tablets from the Mount by his supporters in the broadcast and print media.
So, as a pre-emptive strike against the upholding of Cheney’s views as the thoughtful alternative in US homeland security and foreign policy, here are video commentaries from Lawrence O’Donnell and Keith Olbermann, followed by a thorough exposure of the former Vice President’s distortions and deceptions by McClatchy News Service’s Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay:
For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel’s recent devastating 22-day military operation.
Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly. Read the rest of this entry »
The U.S. Marines are considering requesting two battalions and a combat aviation unit in Taliban-controlled southern Afghanistan, which would be the largest proposed expansion of U.S. troops in the volatile region, two senior Marine commanders. Read the rest of this entry »
I think it’s safe to say that the star of the Bush Farewell Tour is Muntazar al-Zaidi — sitting in a prison cell somewhere in Iraq — rather than the President.
In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.
A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage.
In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, people calling for an immediate American withdrawal removed their footwear and placed the shoes and sandals at the end of long poles, waving them high in the air. And in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, people threw their shoes at a passing American convoy.
1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Update. Lawyer Massoud Aghaee was freed last night on bail. (http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=109018)
First Things First. We may have underestimated the significance of yesterday’s discussions between Iran and the “5+1″ power 
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.
Really. 
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