Two-page backgrounder on the goings-on in Iran, from a Jerusalem Post reporter who just returned. Herewith, a taste. Go read the whole thing.
The watching world well understands the young, pro-Western aspect of the ruthlessly countered post-election revolt in Iran. But what makes this outburst different, says The Jerusalem Post's Sabina Amidi, just returned from Teheran, is that many pro-Islamists have turned on the regime as well.
Way back in the days of the Shah, Sabina Amidi tells me down the phone in one of the few lighter moments of our conversation, it was easier for Iranians to get visas to Tel Aviv than to Mecca. So lots of Iranian Muslims came to visit the Jewish state.
"This friend of our family, a middle-aged woman, was telling me last week about how she'd come to Jerusalem in the mid-1970s, gone to the Western Wall, and seen all the Jews there praying to God and leaving messages between the stones," Amidi went on. "She felt left out. She also wanted to leave a message for God. So she told me she too went up to the Wall, and wrote a plea: that she would find a good husband. Six months later she met the love of her life, they've been deliriously happily married for more than 30 years, they have three children... and she - this very conservative Muslim lady - still talks excitedly about that trip to Israel, and about how God answered her prayers at the Western Wall."
And this lady too, Amidi continued, in serious mode now, this devout Muslim friend who lives in fealty to Islam and its laws, today shares the widespread sense of betrayal that so many Iranians feel with regard to the regime of the ayatollahs. She's not been out on the streets, risking her life to scream "Down with the dictator." But she's watched the brutally suppressed protests from her apartment window, and she hopes, sooner or later, that they'll have their effect.
THE AMERICAN-based Amidi is a courageous young reporter who flew to Teheran a few weeks ago to cover the presidential elections for The Jerusalem Post. She had anticipated a fascinating but thoroughly nonrevolutionary sequence of events - expecting that she would reconnect with friends and family there, report on an expertly manipulated exercise in mullah-style democracy, and leave the country much as she entered it: increasingly frustrated by the government's stifling of freedoms, but quietly seething rather than openly defiant.
Instead, by the time she got out of Teheran midway through last week, Iran was in turmoil, the regime had resorted to shooting its own people in the streets and branding its own former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi "a criminal" for daring to challenge it, and Amidi was understandably fearful that the fact of her writing for the Post was putting her own life in real danger.
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In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel. In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.
UNIFIL operates under Security Council Resolution 1701, passed following the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Operations in villages have been a point of contention between UNIFIL and Israel, which said over the past three years that the peacekeeping force was failing to prevent Hizbullah's military buildup in southern Lebanon since it refrained from entering villages. Hizbullah, the IDF believes, has deployed most of its forces and weaponry - including Katyusha rockets - inside homes in the villages. Until now, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have mostly operated in open areas.
According to information obtained by Israel, UNIFIL has also succeeded recently in thwarting attacks that were planned against its own personnel.
UNIFIL's increased activity comes amid concerns in Israel that Hizbullah will launch an attack along the northern border to avenge the assassination of the group's military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus last year. Hizbullah was behind a thwarted attempt earlier this year to attack the Israeli Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to foreign sources. The group has also tried using Palestinian proxies for attacks within Israel, without success.
While Hizbullah has amassed tens of thousands of Katyusha rockets since the 2006 war, it is having trouble recruiting new fighters and is short several hundred men. Before the Second Lebanon War, the assessment in Israel was that Hizbullah had some 6,000 fighters.
The group's current recruitment difficulties are believed to stem from its failure to keep its promises to rebuild homes in Lebanese villages damaged during the war in 2006. This disappointment with Hizbullah is also understood in the IDF as being responsible for the group's defeat in parliamentary elections in Lebanon earlier this month.
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#2
I expect Hizbollah and the Paleos to get their marching orders shortly to try and distract the media from the killing, torture, and suppression going on in Iran
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/27/2009 15:25 Comments ||
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MILLIONS of dollars in private wealth have begun flooding out of Iran after the mass demonstrations that have paralysed commercial life. Fears of new crippling sanctions are also thought to have fuelled the exodus.
Western intelligence agencies have reported that prominent private businesses and wealthy families have moved tens of millions of dollars out of Iranian banks into overseas accounts. The Italian foreign intelligence service is said to have detected multiple transactions, each of up to $US10 million ($12.4 million), by Iran's big four banks on behalf of families seeking a safe haven.
Once the money is out of country, it may be a bit difficult to repatriate. Perhaps President Ahmadenijad ought to invest in some Lebanese forgeries... because it isn't likely a North Korean shipment will be able to dock any time soon.
Iran has already been hit by three rounds of financial sanctions from the United Nations over its nuclear program, which have limited its access to international finance and trade. In Britain, a spokesman for the Treasury hinted that more action could be taken, particularly in relation to Mojbata Khamenei, the son of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who runs his father's office.
Meanwhile, one of Iran's leading foreign investors, the Austrian oil and gas company OMV, said it would not invest any more in a big offshore gas project and warned that it would pull out if Iran demanded more cash. Helmut Langanger, OMV's Iran representative, said the political environment would have to improve before it put any more money into the South Pars field.
In the US a Republican congressman, Mark Kirk, said there was growing support for a bill he is sponsoring to strip US support from foreign companies supplying refined petroleum to Iran. Iran is a big oil producer but decades of financial isolation mean it must import petrol and other end products.
Reliance, the Indian company, provides a third of Iran's daily needs but also has a massive trade loan from the US.
Another bill that would exclude companies involved in the trade from doing business in the US was put on hold this year as a gesture from President Barack Obama to improve relations.
President Obama must not be pleased that President Ahmadenijad so firmly rejected the open hand of American friendship.
#1
Iran is a big oil producer but decades of financial isolation mean it must import petrol and other end products.
What mainly causes the petrol shortage is Iranian price controls. When petrol sells for about a quarter of what it costs to make, there's no incentive to produce.
The other is Iranian subsidies. The fuel, being cheaper than its neighbors' fuel, ends up smuggled to them. So the Iranian gov't put up rationing.
President Obama must not be pleased that President Ahmadenijad so firmly rejected the open hand of American friendship.
Somebody postulated here earlier that Obama's antics were calculated to impress the 'Islamic World yokels' plus Russia and China; that if Iran rebuffed them he could shrug and say "I tried".
I don't buy the latter part, but it'll end up being the excuse. Still, I'll bet he and his experts will not be pleased when it happens.
#2
...I have a question: Any other time, Dinnerjacket breaks wind and the price of oil goes up. This time, they're executing their own people in the street, and the Iranian government is more unstable than at any time since the Revolution, yet gas prices are going down. Why?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/27/2009 18:58 Comments ||
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#3
dead martyrs don't stop production. Dinnerjacket rattling sabers externally might. These Iranian patriots are expendable.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/27/2009 19:34 Comments ||
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#4
yet gas prices are going down. Why?
Not around here they're not, average is 2.50-2.60 and up about 15 cents
I personaly think it's the 4th holliday coming up, Gasoline always goes up right before a holliday.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/27/2009 21:47 Comments ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Turmoil continued in Iran on Thursday as a top cleric warned the Islamic Republic's rulers that their continued suppression of opposition protests could destabilize the government and defeated reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi said he was determined to continue fighting against "major" election rigging.
In the harshest criticism yet from an Iranian cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, said: "If Iranians cannot talk about their legitimate rights at peaceful gatherings and are instead suppressed, complexities will build up which could possibly uproot the foundations of the government, no matter how powerful."
Montazeri, once tipped as a possible successor to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also called for an "impartial" committee to be set up to resolve the worst crisis since the 1979 that ousted the U.S.-backed Shah.
Ahmadinejad to Obama
" Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously Bush used to say "
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Meanwhile President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on U.S. President Barack Obama to apologize for interfering in Iran's affairs as several members of parliament refused to attend a victory dinner party hosted by the incumbent.
More than 100 MPs, including parliament speaker Ali Larijani, were notably absent at Ahmadinejad's inauguration ceremony. "Apart from 70 members of the (Islamic) revolution faction, which backs Ahmadinejad, only 30 other principalists (conservatives) turned up," the reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said, adding that 290 boycotted the event. "Ali Larijani and his deputies were not there," conservative MP Javad Arianmanesh was quoted as saying of the Wednesday evening event.
In comments about Obama's recent statement in which he said he was "appalled and outraged" by Iran's post-election crackdown, Ahmadinejad likened the president to his predecessor George W. Bush and demanded an apology. "Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things ... our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously Bush used to say," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about ... I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said.
World leaders voiced increasing alarm over the situation in Iran and G8 foreign ministers headed into three days of talks seeking a united stance condemning Iran's crackdown on the opposition.
In the latest diplomatic snub, the United States said it would no longer issue invitations for Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 Independence Day parties at U.S. embassies, following the violent suppression of protests. "No wienies for meanies!" Mousavi presses on
" I am pressured to abandon my demand for the vote annulment ... a major rigging has happened ... I am prepared to prove that those behind the rigging are responsible for the bloodshed ... Continuation of legal and calm protests will guarantee achieving our goals "
Mir Hossein Mousavi
Defeated Mousavi, meanwhile, maintained that he had won the June 12 election and said the nation had the right to protest over the "rigged" vote. "I am pressured to abandon my demand for the vote annulment ... a major rigging has happened ... I am prepared to prove that those behind the rigging are responsible for the bloodshed ... Continuation of legal and calm protests will guarantee achieving our goals," he said. "I insist on the nation's constitutional right to protest against the election result and its aftermath...I strongly criticize the closure of the Kalameh-ye Sabz daily and arrest of those who worked there...The illegal confrontation with the media opens the way for foreign interference," he said in a statement.
Mousavi was the managing-director of the Kalameh-ye Sabz daily, which was closed earlier this week. "Such illegal behaviors (closure of the newspaper) unfortunately will lead society to get information from foreign media," said Mousavi.
Pressure on the opposition
Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist parliament speaker who came a distant fourth in the vote, cancelled a planned mourning ceremony as he was unable to find a site but plans to hold it next week, his party website said. His decision came after a large force of riot police and Islamist Basij militiamen stopped a crowd of several hundred people trying to assemble outside parliament on Wedesday, according to a witness. Another witness reported seeing police charge at passers-by, who dispersed into nearby streets, with some reports of shots being heard.
Iran's interior ministry banned all gatherings by opposition groups, which have staged massive protests in Tehran over what they say were rigged results of the election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
At least 17 people have been killed in the post-election violence, state media reports say, but the foreign media is banned from the streets under tight new restrictions imposed in the aftermath of the election, making it difficult to confirm official reports.
Despite the restrictions of the foreign media, images of police brutality have spread worldwide via amateur video over the Internet.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
We can hope that continued unrest will uproot the current Iran government. Meanwhile it would be helpful if BO and administration supported the protesters in the street er, er community organizers in the street both openly and covertly.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez threw his support behind Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and said he believed America's spy agency, the CIA, was behind clashes that have rocked the Islamic Republic for almost two weeks.
Although ties between Venezuela and the United States seemed to be warming as they planned to reinstate their ambassadors almost nine months after Chavez expelled the U.S. envoy Patrick Duddy, Chavez, however, still blamed the U.S. and the "imperial hand" for the worst unrest in Iran since the 1979 revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed Shah.
" People are in the streets, some are dead, they have snipers, and behind this is the CIA, the imperial hand of European countries and the United States "
President Hugo Chavez
"People are in the streets, some are dead, they have snipers, and behind this is the CIA, the imperial hand of European countries and the United States," he said at a gathering of Latin American leftist leaders.
He said he suspected the U.S. and European central agencies for having a role in the post-elections clashes as he said their "imperial hand" was behind the protests that have left at least 17 people dead.
The Venezuelan president also announced his support for Ahmadinejad and said the Iranian premier "won the elections legally, we are absolutely sure we know quite a lot about Iranian politics."
Iran has also accused Western powers, including the CIA, of having a hand in the protests and the nation's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has refused to calls for a vote recount.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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[ADN Kronos] One of the most powerful clerics in Iran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, has called for "ruthless and savage" punishment - implying the death penalty - for leaders of the protests that have erupted since the presidential election on 12 June. Khatami is very close to the re-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At a sermon broadcast nationally on Friday at Tehran University, Khatami said, "I want the judiciary to...punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson.
"Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state... should be convicted as a 'mohareb' [one who wages war against god]...They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely."
Under Iran's Islamic law, punishment for people convicted of being a 'mohareb' is execution.
Khatami considers Ahmadinejad the official winner of the disputed presidential election on 12 June.
Official election results gave a landslide victory to Ahmadinejad but supporters of the defeated candidates including Mir Hossein Mousavi have disputed the result and taken to the streets of Tehran and other cities in the thousands.
It is the most dramatic upheaval seen in the country in more than 30 years since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
The two reformist candidates demanded an annulment of the election.
But Iran's top legislative body or Guardian Council said on Friday there would be no annulment of the election results because they found no evidence of fraud.
"After ten days of examination, we did not see any major irregularities," Abbasali Kadkhodai, a council spokesman, told Iran's official news agency IRNA.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Well of course he would. He himself is a savage.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Police disperses a crowd of nearly 200 people who stormed the Iranian Embassy in Stockholm on Friday, a report says.
According to the AP report, a smaller group of the protestors, believed to have been Iranian expatriates, broke away from the crowd and forced their way into the Embassy.
"A few managed to climb through broken windows into the building," police spokesman Ulf Hoglund said, adding that one of the Embassy staff was injured inside the building.
Fifty police officers and an ambulance were dispatched to the Embassy building in the Lidinge archipelago island outside the city. Hoglund said police had evicted the demonstrators from the building and arrested one person.
Organizers of the demonstration said a few of the protesters were injured in clashes with the Embassy's security officers.
Police said the situation was under control, however, demonstrators continued to block the entrance, preventing Embassy personnel from leaving.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Since violence is the only language the Supreme Thug understands I consider this a good thing. Shutting down their embassies with protesters is a great way to demonstrate the ire of the world.
#2
There will be a protest this evening in Cincinnati. Formerly temporary daughter and her family will be joining the fun (ftd's father is Iranian, and the children have both Iranian and American passports). The participants were asked to dress in black for morning, with green ribbons.
And then July 4th another tea party. Fountain Square is a busy place this year.
[Iran Press TV Latest] The Guardian Council, Iran's election watchdog, forms a "special commission" to prepare a report on the disputed presidential election.
In an interview with Press TV on Thursday, Guardian Council Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei said in addition to a five-day extension for filing complaints, the Council had formed a "special commission" to "secure the additional confidence of the complaining candidates and their supporters."
He added that the commission was composed of six "outstanding political, social and religious figures" and the representatives of the two defeated candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi who persist with their complaints and demand a re-run.
A third candidate, Mohsen Rezaei, has withdrawn his complaint.
Members of the special commission include former foreign minister and current foreign affairs adviser to the Leader Ali Akbar Velayati, former Majlis speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Shahid Beheshti University Goudarz Eftekhar-Jahromi, Chief Prosecutor Qurban-Ali Dorri-Nadjafabadi, Majlis deputy Mohammad Hassan Abutorabi, and the Leader's representative at the Martyrs Foundation Mohammad-Hassan Rahimian.
The commission will supervise the recounting of about 10 percent of the ballot boxes to be "chosen at random," which Kadkhodaei may be broadcast live.
Kadkhodaei said candidates had 24 hours to name their representatives.
He added that the Guardian Council had called on all political and religious figures to send in any "ambiguities, questions or documented issues for consideration" and that the Council had contacted a number of social and political figures in this regard.
Iran became the scene of opposition rallies last week after the announcement of the results of the 10th presidential election, which declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner with nearly two-thirds of the votes.
At least 20 people were killed and many others injured when some protests turned violent. Tehran blames 'saboteurs' for the deaths of the Iranian protesters.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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[Khaleej Times] An Iranian doctor who claims he tried to save Neda Agha Soltan as the young Iranian protester bled to death on the streets of Tehran said Thursday that she was shot by a member of Iran's pro-government Basij militia.
Video images of 26-year-old Soltan, with blood pouring from her mouth and nose as a few Iranian men struggled to save her, have became a powerful symbol of the protests taking place over Iran's disputed presidential election.
Dr. Arash Hejazi told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he was one of those men who tried to save her.
Hejazi, who is currently studying in England, said he was briefly visiting friends in Tehran when he heard the protest Soltan was taking part in and went to see it.
Suddenly, he said, police began to fire tear gas and race forward on motorcycles.
"We heard a gunshot. Neda was standing one meter (yard) away from me. I turned back and I saw blood gushing out of Neda's chest," he said. "We ran to her and lay her on the ground. I saw the bullet wound just below the neck."
Hejazi said he tried to stop the bleeding, but she soon died.
The protesters first thought the gunshot had come from a nearby rooftop, but later spotted an armed member of Iran's Basij militia on a motorcycle, and stopped and disarmed him, the doctor said.
The man shouted "I didn't want to kill her," but the furious protesters confiscated his identity card and took photographs of him before letting him go, Hejazi said.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Saad Hariri was poised to be designated Lebanon's new prime minister after his March 14 party, which along with its allies holds the majority in parliament, picked him for the post on Friday, a day after Hariri held rare talks with his rival, leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah.
"We have chosen as our candidate for the premiership the head of the Future Movement, Saad Hariri," party official and MP Samir el-Jisr told reporters after holding consultations with President Michel Suleiman.
Suleiman is expected to officially designate Hariri on Saturday.
The other parties that are part of Hariri's alliance are expected to voice their support for his nomination as premier during consultations due to be wrapped up on Saturday.
Hezbollah will continue cooperating with an "open mind" in the discussions on naming a new premier, the head of the group's parliamentary bloc Mohamed Raad said.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Watch your six, Hariri, as well as all the other positions on the clock, based upon history.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/27/2009 13:11 Comments ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] American President Barack Obama on Friday praised the bravery of Iranians who protested against a disputed election in the face of "outrageous" violence, while Iran's electoral watchdog said it found no major violations and described the vote as the "healthiest" since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Hours after foreign ministers of the Group of Eight leading powers called on Iran to immediately put an end to post-election violence and urged Tehran to resolve the crisis "soon," Obama held a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel where they shared "one voice" against violence in Iran.
" I don't take Mr Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran "
President Obama
Obama admitted Iran's crackdown on demonstrators had dented his hopes for direct talks with Tehran, but said international multilateral nuclear talks would go on.
"There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks," Obama said after talks at the White House with Merkel.
"I think we're going to have to see how that plays itself out in the days and weeks ahead," said Obama.
In another stiffening of tone on Iran, Obama also sharply dismissed demands for an apology from President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad over his previous comments on Tehran's suppression of political dissent.
"I don't take Mr Ahmadinejad's statements seriously about apologies, particularly given the fact that the United States has gone out of its way not to interfere with the election process in Iran," said Obama.
Merkel bemoaned the "horrifying scenes" that she had seen from Iran. "We will not forget those," she said, and vowed to do everything to find out the number and identities of victims of the government crackdown.
"In this day and age of the 21st century, Iran cannot count on the world community turning a blind eye to this," she said.
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/27/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel. In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Turmoil continued in Iran on Thursday as a top cleric warned the Islamic Republic's rulers that their continued suppression of opposition protests could destabilize the government and defeated reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi said he was determined to continue fighting against "major" election rigging. 
[Al Arabiya Latest] Saad Hariri was poised to be designated Lebanon's new prime minister after his March 14 party, which along with its allies holds the majority in parliament, picked him for the post on Friday, a day after Hariri held rare talks with his rival, leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah. 
