by David Steven | Jun 24, 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, North America
In Washington, Iran isn’t about Mousavi, Khamenei or Neda, it’s about Obama. It’s a pincer movement. The establishment media behaves as if there’s some Geneva Convention stating that all international crises must have the American president in the starring role.
The right, meanwhile, see a golden opportunity to prove that a cuckoo has inveigled its way into the White House – and a Muslim-loving cuckoo at that. Take Andy McCarthy, a commentator at the National Review, who believes that as “a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.”
It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah’s “unjust” repression – on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable “assault,” though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover.
Now, both sides have a smoking gun. Obama, the Washington Times tells us, has been writing love letters to the Supreme Leader himself, pleading for better relations, nuclear negotiations and an Iranian takeover of Kansas (I made the last bit up).
On Twitter, the paper’s national security reporter, Eli Lake, appears to have wet himself in excitement (as well as using the opportunity to suck up to his editor big time). She, Barbara Slavin, is putting “more Iran heat than Persian narcos” (eh?) with her bold exposé, he tweets.
Big news, eh? Except that we knew that a letter from Obama to Khamenei was being written in January. And that it was being sent in March. So why the surprise now? Because, whatever else is at stake, the most important thing we can do now is keep the spotlight on the demonstrators fuel another solipsistic partisan Washington squabble.
Update: Reagan managed this with more style, it must be said. His missive to the Iranians, at the outset of the Iran contra scandal, was a bible with a handwritten verse inside. Oliver North took a key shaped cake made by an Israeli baker.
Update the second: To be fair to Slavins, she has an email exchange with National Review’s K-Lo where she makes a great deal of sense.
Slavin: Apart from my paper, most journalists still write about Iran as though it is a theocracy. What we have been seeing is the raw exercise of force on the part of the government and people power in the streets. The clerics have had very little to do with it.
Lopez: What has been most surprising to you about the White House response to the election protests there?
Slavin: I haven’t been surprised by the White House response.
Lopez: Are there any lessons from history Obama ought to heed?
Slavin: I think Obama has learned from the mistakes of past U.S. administrations in dealing with Iran and has put the emphasis where it should be, on the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people. The U.S. has no embassy in Iran and few levers it can pull to impact events there. Aggressive action through the military or more sanctions will probably wind up helping the government, unfortunately.
by Alex Evans | Jun 24, 2009 | Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
In today’s NY Times, Roger Cohen observes that “Iran’s 1979 revolution took full year to gestate”, and suggests that “the volatility ushered in by the June 12 ballot-box putsch of Iran’s New Right is certain to endure over the coming year”. He argues that the Islamic Republic has been weakened in five key ways as follows:
- The supreme leader’s post — the apex of the structure conceived by the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — has been undermined. The keystone of the arch is now loose. Khamenei, far from an arbiter with a Prophet-like authority, has looked more like a ruthless infighter. His word has been defied. At night, from rooftops, I’ve even heard people call for his death. The unthinkable has occurred.
- The hypocritical but effective contract that bound society has been broken. The regime never had active support from more than 20 percent of the population. But acquiescence was secured by using only highly targeted repression (leaving the majority free to go about its business), and by giving people a vote for the president every four years. That’s over. Repression will be broad and ferocious in the coming months. The acquiescent have already become the angry. You can’t turn Iran into Burma: The resistance of a society this varied and savvy will be fierce.
- A faction loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fiercely nationalistic and mystically religious, has made a power grab so bold that fissures in the establishment have become canyons. Members of this faction include Hassan Taeb, the leader of the Basiji militia; Saeed Jalili, the head of the National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the reclusive but influential son of the supreme leader. They have their way for now, but the cost to Iran has been immense, and the rearguard action led by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a father of the revolution, and Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, will be intense.
- Iran’s international rhetoric, effective in Ahmadinejad’s first term, will be far less so now. Every time he talks of justice and ethics, his two favorite words, video will roll of Neda Agha Soltan’s murder and the regime’s truncheon-wielding goons at work. The president may prove too much of a liability to preserve.
- At the very peak of its post-revolution population boom, the regime has lost a whole new generation — and particularly the women of that generation — by failing to adapt. Thirty years from the revolution, the core question of this election was: Must Iran stand apart from the forces of economic and political globalization in order to preserve its Islamic theocracy? Or is it confident enough of its Islamic identity, and its now firmly established independence from America, to trash the nest-of-spies vitriol and an ultimately self-defeating isolation? The answer has been devastating.
by Charlie Edwards | Jun 23, 2009 | Global system, UK
Like you I am eagerly awaiting HMG’s national security strategy update set for this Thursday and next week’s IPPR report on national security.* Both publications have been making their way round Whitehall in the last few weeks – both are excellent pieces of work. But I’m a concerned. In a ‘gem’ of a comment piece today Philip Stephens suggests that:
‘Safeguarding national security may be the first duty of government, but it seems the least said the better before the general election…’ ‘When it comes to defence, we are greeted with a conspiracy of silence…’
This is true up to a point (a General Election hasn’t yet been formally called – so once the firing gun is sounded it’s every security soundbite for themselves) but there is something else – I don’t think the two reports are actually going to catalyse the debate on national security parties should be having. By the looks of it we’re only going to discuss one aspect: defence. For example:
The IPPR report enunciates the multiple challenges – from a fast-shifting geopolitical landscape and widespread state failure to nuclear proliferation and jihadi terrorism – that should be preoccupying political leaders. It looks beyond conventional external threats to the risks flowing from climate change, energy shortages and domestic radicalism. Britain will not have much use here for fast jets and nuclear submarines.
Well quite.
Is it really sensible to focus solely on defence? It’s an obvious line of attack for think tanks – and where Lords Ashdown and Robertson feel most comfortable – but I would suggest there are more important issues that need to be discussed in this fast-shifting geopolitical landscape. And lest we forget two of the three main political parties have already gone on record committing to a strategic defence review if they are in Government (I’d suggest the Labour manifesto will also include a promise of one too).
Finally I can’t believe that Britain’s European woes will be solved by simply strengthening the European arm of NATO – after all as Stephens says himself:
Strong relations with Washington will depend increasingly on what Europe, rather than simply Britain, brings to the security table.
This issue is where we need to pitch the debate on national security – it is utterly pointless to talk about platforms (carriers, tanks, planes) if there is no sense of strategic direction, no reasoning behind why we favour closer (or distant) European cooperation, or what the special relationship actually means in practice. Britain’s role needs to be better articulated – until then we will lurch from one policy issue to the next… and that’s not going to help anyone.
*Updated
Update Two: Here’s a good example from the Spectator of how the defence debate is going to go in the next few days – a set of complex issues, relationships and decisions boiled down to an overly simplistic, and crass argument:
This country faces a moment of decision: we either properly fund and equip our armed forces or we retreat from our role on the world stage. If the Conservative party believes that this country should be more than just a peace-keeping nation, then it will have to be prepared to increase defence spending.
Update 3: From The Times today: The Army can’t soldier on without more men Very observant, but somewhat out of step with news that Army chiefs have drawn up emergency plans to cope with an unprecedented recruitment surge following the collapse of Britain’s jobs market.
by Alex Evans | Jun 23, 2009 | Influence and networks, Middle East and North Africa
…with the basiji, it turns out:
Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.
Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between the Finnish and German companies, supplied the system to Iran through its Intelligent Solutions business, which was sold in March 2009 to Perusa Partners Fund 1LP, a German investment firm. The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic.
