2145 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An activist reports that Layla Tavasoli and Mohamad Naeimpour of the Freedom Movement of Iran have been released from Evin Prison.
2130 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Another sign of the “conservative” push for changes within the system. The brother of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, has told Khabar Online that the Expediency Council will seek to remove “ambiguities” in Iran’s election law. At the same time, Mohammad Rafsanjani denied that the Expediency Council will seek to remove the Guardian Council’s monitoring of elections.
1840 GMT: WaPo’ed (definition: “declaring an opposition movement dead without evidence and with dubious motives). Just a quick note to folks at The Washington Post: in the past 72 hours, you have distorted a piece by your own Iran correspondent to portray the demise of the Green movement on 22 Bahman and you have run an Associated Press report which declares from thin air:
1925 GMT: Now Presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi has reacted to yesterday’s Guardian Council verdict: “This government is not legitimate.I’ll continue fighting in any condition and with any means.”
So, of the leading opposition challengers, only Mir Hossein Mousavi has been silent today. We think we know the reason but will wait until the morning to see if our analysis is right.
1900 GMT: In the category of “Well, He Would Say That, Wouldn’t He?”, President Ahmadinejad is quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency: “This election was actually a referendum. The Iranian nation were the victors and the enemies, despite their … plots of a soft toppling of the system, failed and couldn’t reach their aims.”
The significance is not in Ahmadinejad’s words, but in their low-key presentation. Both in a national broadcast the night after the election and in a press conference the day after that, the President was loudly celebrating his win, even taunting the opposition as “dust”. Now, the day after the Guardian Council has re-affirmed his victory, his public appearance is limited to a brief statement repeating the “foreign threat” theme.
Interpretation? After his over-enthusiasm in the first 48 hours beyond the vote, Ahmadinejad has been reined in by other leaders. The President’s “victory” is looking decidedly Pyrrhic in the wider context of the Iranian system.
Days after their meetings with US officials, including President Obama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai went through individual examinations on NBC’s Meet the Press, hosted by David Gregory. We’ll have analysis on Monday.
DAVID GREGORY: First, the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan. I sat down with both leaders earlier this week after their White House meetings. Pakistan’s President Zardari, in office for the last eight months, is the widower of slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. I began by asking about the Taliban and whether he agrees with the Obama administration that the group represents an existential threat to his country.
MR. ASIF ALI ZARDARI: No, I consider the philosophy of Taliban as threat to the world, not just to Pakistan and your country, but I feel it’s a larger threat. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Exum (also known as Abu Muqawama) offered a good analysis earlier this week in The New Republic of what was right and what was wrong with Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Thomas Hegghammer at Jihadica followed up with a couple more useful observations. But events have once more overtaken strategy in the region. On Wednesday a US drone struck in the Orakzai Tribal Area, an area which had not previously been targetted- some fear that this widening of strikes will serve only to push those that the US is targetting into more populated areas deeper inside Pakistan.
Today, meanwhile, is the NATO summit in Strasbourg and Baden-Baden, where it looks likely that America’s European allies will resist calls to back any Afghan ’surge’. The UK has denied reports that it will send another 2000 troops to Afghanistan, with a senior official explaining that, “What the UK brings to the table is the civil side, the development side, not the military side”. Is the Obama Af-Pak strategy, just days old, already out of date?
Two days after the withdrawal of the nomination of Charles Freeman as head of the National Intelligence Council, primarily because of his views on the Middle East and specifically the Israel-Palestine situation, the unspeakable is being spoken:
In an analysis which would more than hold its own on the talkboards of The Guardian (featured thread: “More evidence that the extracontinental aliens who stole the Palestinians’ homeland are not the descendants of the ancient Hebrews”), Martin Peretz, the editor of The New Republic, proves beyond a shred of evidence that “Hamas is a Taliban State”:
The fact is that Hamas is a Taliban state, as one Israeli diplomat put it. This is almost an epiphany, a clarifying truth. Hamas operates against its Palestinian enemies like the Taliban does against its Afghani enemies. Imagine a Hamas squad enters a kindergarten in a kibbutz. Neither the Taliban nor Hamas strive for earthly aims. Armed with instruments of death, they each fight for a heavenly design. But on earth. Yes, what a heaven that would be. Death is their own blessed comrade.
Those who find this far too sensible an assessment are advised to read the challenging opinion piece by William Sieghart in The Times of London, “We Must Adjust Our Distorted Image of Hamas”:
2145 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. An activist reports that Layla Tavasoli and Mohamad Naeimpour of the Freedom Movement of Iran have been released from Evin Prison.
Two days after the withdrawal of the nomination of Charles Freeman as head of the National Intelligence Council, primarily because of his views on the Middle East and specifically the Israel-Palestine situation, the unspeakable is being spoken:
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