You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
International
Iran Asks U.S. Help to Keep Al Qaeda Fighters Out
2002-02-05
  • Iran sought help from arch-foe the United States to arrest al Qaeda fighters who may have fled to Iran from Afghanistan, in a conciliatory gesture to Washington after days of angry exchanges. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi strongly denied U.S. charges that Tehran had helped Taliban and al Qaeda Muslim militants to flee a U.S. military assault on neighboring Afghanistan. "We have smashed many rings involved in human smuggling and reinstated visas for Persian Gulf Arab states," he said. "We are also making a lot of arrests, among whom could be members of Taliban or al Qaeda. We will deal with them and hand them over to their respective countries."
    Oh ho! Light begins to glimmer, possibly at the end of the tunnel. No, wait. That's fire!

    Suspected genesis on this shift: Iran's been piddling along, with tension between the fundos, who are really in charge, and Khatami's moderates (You can tell they're moderates; they don't beat their wives, just a slap now and then to get their attention). Even though the fundos are the ones in charge, they've set up the rules so that they have to defer somewhat in public to the mods, because of some stoopid elections they managed to lose. The Fundos know what they're doing because they talk to God on a regular basis and know what He thinks even better than He does. (If you're a Mede or a Persian you probably don't take MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN to be a Bad Thing.)

    The mods have been sitting around scratching their heads over Bush's Axis of Evil remarks, saying "What the hell set him off?"

    The Fundos, meanwhile, have been funneling assorted Bad Guys from Afghanistan through Iran to the Middle East, since the Ends Justify the Means and You Can't Make an Omelette without Breaking Eggs. In the same vein, they've been shipping boatloads of arms to the Palestinians, firing up the Hezbollah in Lebanon, trying to replace Afghanistan's mullahs with ayatollahs, and dreaming about a surprise launch of the nuclear missiles they don't have yet on Israel and then on the USA. They just haven't bothered telling the mods about it, because What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You. Can it?

    Now the mods find themselves on the sharpened horns of a dilemma. Do they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the fundos and make faces at the Great Satan despite the evidence that the fundos have been doing just what the USA said they were doing? Or do they take this as the occasion to grab off a little more power from the religious loons? Khatami is probably, even as we speak, trying to figure how to get the egg on their faces, rather than all over the country, and still avoid both civil and external war. Somebody is Washington is very smart.
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

    00:00