Eye On Iran

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Diplomatic. There will be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street will come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags, most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments will express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this will be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.
The Europeans will be less hypocritical because their visceral anti-Americanism trumps rational calculation. We will have done them an enormous favor by sparing them the threat of Iranian nukes, but they will vilify us nonetheless.

These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.

[Rasputin]

Iran's president makes his first visit to Venezuela on Sunday, seeking to strengthen ties with a government that has become a leading defender of his nation's nuclear ambitions.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that he and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez are like "brothers" in a great global struggle, and Chavez promises to argue for Iran's nuclear program if he wins a rotating seat on the UN Security Council in a vote next month.

Chavez has said Venezuela "will stand together with Iran at all times and under any conditions," accusing the US of planning to invade Iran.

The two leaders are united by deep-seated opposition to Washington and to Iran's archenemy Israel, which Chavez accused of committing a new "Holocaust" in its bombardments in Lebanon.

In the past few days, Chavez has sought to drum up support for Iran at the Nonaligned Movement summit in Cuba.

"I ask for full support for the government and the people of Iran in developing their sovereign right to move forward with (nuclear) research," Chavez told fellow leaders at the summit in Havana on Thursday. "It's part of the formula of the future - nuclear energy. We aren't talking about atomic bombs."

Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed solely at generating electricity despite concerns among US and European governments that it could be trying to develop nuclear weapons. Chavez accuses Washington of using the nuclear issue as a pretext to justify an attack on a regime it opposes.

The United States, meanwhile, has been lobbying against Venezuela's bid for a Security Council seat, supporting Guatemala instead.

Together with Iran, Cuba and Syria, Chavez is seeking to form "a new world order" opposing traditional US dominance, said Venezuelan political analyst Alberto Garrido, who writes in a new book, "Las Guerras de Chavez" or "Chavez's Wars," about the Venezuelan leader's growing ties to the Middle East.

Garrido said the secret-ballot vote in the UN General Assembly in mid-October should measure which government has been more successful on the international stage: Venezuela or the United States.

"It will decide how anti-US the posture of countries in the UN is," Garrido said. "If the political situation has changed so much that the vote leans toward the radical position represented by Venezuela, it would be a warning for the United States."

Venezuela and Iran, both major oil-producing countries, have proposed pricing their oil in euros rather than US dollars, a move that Garrido said would likely disrupt the US economy by decreasing reliance on dollars. The US remains the No. 1 buyer of oil from Venezuela, despite increasing political tensions.

Meanwhile, Iran and Venezuela have signed a series of accords for their state oil companies to explore for and extract oil and natural gas here.

After initial talks Sunday in Caracas, Chavez and Ahmadinejad will visit an oil field on Monday for a ceremony marking the start of joint drilling. They also plan a tour to a joint-venture tractor-assembly factory on Monday.

[Rasputin]

The two presidents will conclude 20 commercial accords, including plans to set up a joint petrochemical company, produce surgical tools and help train Venezuelan iron foundry workers, said Jose Khan, Venezuela's basic industries minister.

The two countries have already signed more than 80 cooperation pledges since early last year, said Alcides Rondon, former deputy foreign minister for the Middle East.

Venezuela and Iran have agreed to set up a US $200 million investment fund and Iran has agreed to build 10,000 homes in Venezuela. The two governments plan to set up factories to produce bricks, cement and bicycles, and Chavez says they will even manufacture cars together.

After Ahmadinejad's two-day visit, both leaders will head to New York for the UN General Assembly.

[Rasputin]

View from America: The next catastrophe waiting

Last week, many in the chattering classes in the United States devoted their energy to the controversy about ABC's television film The Path to 9/11. Partisanship seems to dominate virtually every discussion these days. So it was no surprise that just as Republicans have sought to minimize the lack of attention paid to the terror threat by the Bush administration, so, too, have Democrats resisted the notion that the failures of the Clinton administration be highlighted, as the film did in some respects.

With so much attention devoted to wacko conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks available on the Internet, and with seemingly more respectable conversations conducted by our political elites devoted to assigning blame to their foes and absolving their friends, intelligent discussions of the issue have been largely crowded out by the din of nonsense.

That makes for good shouting matches on the all-news cable stations, but like many Americans, my tolerance for the genre is limited. The painful truth about 9/11 is that outside of a few experts on the issue - such as scholar Daniel Pipes or journalist Steven Emerson - there were precious few writing and speaking about the danger of Islamic terrorism before September 11, 2001.

And these men were routinely ignored or derided by more influential figures in the media, academia and halls of power. If the FBI and CIA operatives failed to gain the attention of their political masters for an all-out commitment to resist the murderers before that date (a sore point for some viewers of the ABC film), it was because so few were prepared to speak out about the danger at that time.

Hence, the political support necessary for the drastic increase in intelligence and military resources devoted to the fight was simply lacking. If extraordinary measures such as federal forces' eavesdropping on suspected terrorists are still considered controversial by some today, even more limited measures aimed at rooting out terror front groups were unthinkable prior to 9/11.

AND THAT should lead us all directly to the present day issue of Iran. Just like al-Qaida, which, as many have observed, "hid in plain sight" from the view of the West, Iran's drive to produce nuclear weapons has been anything but a secret.
When not denying the Holocaust or threatening to destroy Israel, its loopy leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has openly bragged about the possibility. The Teheran regime even held a bizarre public ceremony back in April replete with costumed dancers to commemorate its latest step toward processing uranium in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

And Iran is not only working on a nuclear capability, it is also striving for the acquisition of missiles that will deliver such weapons not only to Israeli targets (the Iranians' presumed first target) but to Western capitals, too. As former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in speeches at several stops in Philadelphia last week, there is no comparison between the Iranian situation and that which confronted the West prior to the invasion of Iraq. Unlike then, "we're not guessing" about what they've got, "we know." The prospect of a regime run by Islamist fundamentalist Shi'ites gaining such a weapon and its ability to use it is one that ought to scare every sensible person in the West.

Some experts tell us that we must learn to live with a nuclear Iran. They have a point because unless the United States and its allies start acting as if this really matters, it's only a matter of time before Teheran succeeds in its quest.

[Rasputin]

But the problem with the notion that this prospect can be lived with lies in the difference between past nuclear threats and this one.

A nuclear Soviet Union was certainly a dangerous foe. But as Netanyahu pointed out, the Soviets would never do anything that endangered their own survival. Thus, whenever disputes between the Soviet Union and the West went to the brink, Moscow was generally as interested as Washington in edging away from the precipice.

But the notion that we can be just as confident about deterring the mullahs of Teheran is highly dubious. Unlike the masters of the "evil empire," Ahmadinejad and his religious mentors buy into a theology that prizes celestial martyrdom, not terrestrial conquest.

In addition to hoping to generate the return of a "12th Imam" - a Shi'ite messiah - some in his circle have already made plain that even if Iran were to suffer a nuclear response from Israel after a strike on the Jewish state, it would still "win" since more of them would be left, and those who died would be happy martyrs.

While such Dr. Strangelove scenarios seem to be more science fiction than realpolitik to us, to the Islamist mindset the prospect of the hedonist rewards of martyrdom is not the stuff of satire. It is real, and the prospect of it coming to pass is no longer theoretical.

WHAT CAN America do about it? There are no easy answers. A UN resolution on the issue (if indeed such a resolution can be passed) is a must, but anyone waiting for our allies to enact tough sanctions on Teheran and making them stick is kidding himself.

Relying on Israel to take out Iranian nuclear facilities as it did with Iraq in 1981 is also a nonstarter.

So at some point, whether in the last years of the George W. Bush administration or in the term of his successor, an American president is going to have to face his people with the distasteful proposition of either letting the lunatics go nuclear or taking drastic action that might include military force.

Unless the Iranians have a very unlikely change of heart, the United States - whether it is led by Republicans or a Democrat - will have to swallow hard and act to prevent an event that has the capability of making 9/11 look as insignificant in scale to us as the then-shocking 1915 sinking of the liner Lusitania by a German U-boat does now.
That president's ability to face up to that challenge will depend on how ready the American public and its leaders have made themselves for the prospect.

If a "failure of imagination" was one of the prime causes of the lack of prevention of 9/11, as the federal commission appointed to probe the issue ascertained, then let there be no doubt that a similar inability to imagine the consequences of a nuclear Iran will be far more serious.

So rather than worrying about whether George W. Bush or Bill Clinton - along with their respective wise men and flunkies - is more to blame for 9/11, it would behoove us all to think about the next catastrophe waiting down the road. Now is exactly the time to start imagining it.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The ' Philippines plot and huge catch' was clear indication that planes could be used as weapons, but what was done? Nothing! Ramzi was one of the planners of the first World Trade Center attack and a number of other attacks, including Operation Bojinka. Soon after the 1993 attack, the FBI, on April 21, 1993 made him the 436th person added to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Yousef rented a Ryder van and on February 26, 1993, loaded it with explosives. Four cardboard boxes were packed into the back of the van, each containing a mixture of paper bags, newspapers, urea and nitric acid. Next to them were placed three red metal cylinders of compressed hydrogen, and four large containers of nitro-glycerine were loaded into the centre of the van, with Atlas Rockmaster blasting caps connected to each.

In 1994 Yousef reportedly travelled to South-East Asia and attempted to bomb the Israeli embassy in Bangkok with a device similar to the one he used in New York. En route to delivering the device the truck carrying the bomb collided with a motorcyclist, causing either Yousef or a co-conspirator to flee immediately, leaving the bomb behind. In December 1994, Yousef boarded a Philippine Airlines Flight 434 in Manila headed to Cebu; he pretended to be an Italian man named Armaldo Forlani. Midway through the flight "he disappeared into the toilet, took off his shoes to get the batteries and assembled his bomb which he tucked into the life vest under his seat. The plane flew on to Cebu where Yousef got off before the final leg of the flight to Tokyo, Japan . Haruki Ikegami, a 24-year-old businessman, took Yousef's old seat. Two hours later, the device exploded, killing Ikegami. The blast blew a hole in the floor and severed the cables that controlled the plane's flaps. The jet's steering was crippled but the captain made an emergency landing in southern Japan, saving 272 passengers and 20 crew. Using the same design as the bombs intended for Bojinka, Yousef planned to conceal the devices inside toy cars and plant them on United and Northwest flights out of Bangkok . Yousef monitored the effects of his "test", then increased the amount of explosives in his devices and began preparing at least a dozen bombs. But just before Bojinka Plot was due to be launched, a fire started in Yousef's Manila flat and police uncovered his plot.

NYT ran an article implying that the London plot was too imbecilic and quite in infancy and a lot is made out of it. The political points that NYT makes can be discounted by one plain fact: the bottles of explosives, like nitro-glycerin, that were to be utilized by the London bombers were from the plot that Ramzi and Khalid Shiekh had written back in 1995 in Philippines on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 that nearly went down. One thing the mass tragedy of 911 has made us realize is to avoid the utilization of previous perfected techniques. Now lessons learnt from Oplan Bojinka, prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, are being employed by the anti-terror forces. In pre-911 scenario, it was the terrorists who had the upper hand when they used the lessons for the September 11 attacks.

The ability to stop the London bombers in their tracks is the biggest success of the war on terror. The small bottles supposing to contain contact lenses liquid were used in 434's attack to smuggle the explosive aboard; knowing the fact well, the London bombers were checked mated. When is the right moment to grab the culprits? Should one let them have the run till they perfect the job? The other problem is that the terrorists' plots and tragedies that have been avoided since 911, as a result of global crackdown, are not quantifiable. Some are kept secret so as to keep the possibility open for future catches; others, when caught in the stage of preparation, are ridiculed as blown out of proportion. Terrorism and the present war against it is a thankless job. I find it difficult to digest when people make excuses for the valiant Nasarullah, even he acknowledged that he screwed up big time otherwise 'The Economist' had delivered the war to him on a platter.

The tragedy is that any 'curtailment of rights' without a huge toll on human life would not have been politically sellable. The increased security would not have seen the light of the day even if the plot was discovered in infancy! Should we only open our eyes when the biggest of tragedies strike? Otherwise we would go into a Rip van winkle sleep led by pied pipers. Human rights compromises and the huge funding required to raise the security to the levels as it is now would just not be politically marketable. Today, 5 years plus since 911, it is sad to see that many do not appreciate how much of the future attacks on innocents have been avoided. In Iraq, the way innocent civilians are being killed everyday to establish the reign of terror is mind- boggling. Give them a free hand, walk away from them and they will drown Iraq in its own blood.

The destruction of hinterland of terrorist nests and orphaned headquarters of terrorist networks are considered no big achievements. I wrote nearly four years ago that the biggest benefit of this whole exercise is that war has moved to areas where it belongs – the areas that were hosts to thousands of these deranged people. The ruthless mutilation of their own kin highlights the politics of corpses they enjoy. Policy of 'Containment' of their eagerness to annihilate in the name of Allah is the prime stratagem in this war of terror. Sown within the radical leadership are seeds of implosion and self-destruction; they are rendered futile due to the hypocrisy of slogans that masquerades egocentricity and narcissism of purpose. Their double-faced strategy de-legitimizes even the valid concerns they raise.

All the moral equivalence drawn for causes of this terror cells are pitiable pretexts. The list of demands since the last few decades has kept changing. OBL's initial objective was the destruction of the House of Saud. Once he was cold-shouldered on this demand by the Americans, they become his number one enemies. Demand for Palestinian freedom was an afterthought, to expand recognition on the Arab street and discover a new cause. This is the most abused slogan that attracts a lot of sympathy. No one really wants them to be free, but as an issue, this has been kept alive for the last 60 years by all totalitarians and tyrants. From 1979 to 1990, he had a unique distinction and a distinguished career as a collaborator of the US to dismantle their arch nemesis, USSR, as Palestinians continued to live under the worst occupation and conditions when he was the ally of US and fighting the bigger evil; Palestinians then did not even have the self-governance they have now. After the Afghan Jihad, he should realize that if he had a dream to free Saudia from Sauds, US had a dream to wipe USSR out through proxies like him; he was a tool of a superpower objective. His successful Jihad in Afghanistan was fuelled by these very 'infidels' for their own objectives and they achieved their intentions without any fail. He ended up living in a deep cave with huge prize money on his head like Saddam. Those with better firepower and better instruments of strategy made him a declared criminal that he can't walk gratis even in his own land.

The changing goalposts of demands can be seen in Iraq and Lebanon. In Iraq , if they fail to find the infidels they go through their own ranks in wrath. Sunni (Zarqawi) mission against Shiite (Sadr) is an example of how radicals race to the bottom to annihilate and rear war of terror that consumes an Iraqi against an Iraqi. In Lebanon (Nasarullah) Shiites waged a war against 'infidel Jews' to secure freedom for Sunnis (Hamas) in Palestine. Was it really about Palestinian freedom or about his master's wellbeing in Tehran? Today, Lebanon debacle is an abandoned page, the reason being that the Sunni hinterland saw through the machinations of Iranian masters in the battleground of Southern Lebanon. The clash of civilizations that everyone was worried about did not materialize because the disunity amongst the clans and sectarian violence ensured self- crippling more than achievement of any respecting sovereignty or self-determination. The Shiite and the people of Lebanon are the biggest victims and no one is held accusable for war without a purpose or goal. When vandals run statecraft, this is the end result; national cause gets murky and is wiped out.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Iranian Journalist Provides Insider's View from Tehran

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was in the headlines several times this week, after Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that he is open to what he described as "new conditions" to resolve the nuclear standoff with the West. His statement came just days after Iran said that it may be willing to suspend enrichment.

Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari -- who is Newsweek magazine's Iranian correspondent -- said Iranians were relieved at the small sign of hope that the standoff could be resolved. "People are just happy that there won't be a war, that the country will not be attacked...like Iraq was invaded," Bahari told NOW's Maria Hinojosa in a web-exclusive audio interview from his home in Tehran.

Bahari said the main concern for Iran's future lies not in its nuclear standoff or relationship with the West but in the survival of its economy. "I'm mostly worried about what's happening inside the country, that the government is just intoxicated on oil money, and people are just apathetic at the moment," Bahari said.

Bahari argues that Ahmadinejad and President Bush have more in common than most people would think. "I think they're very similar people. They're both very provincial politicians," he said. Bahari believes both Bush and Ahmadinejad lack a broad world vision of the world, including a solid knowledge of historical events. "I don't think that your president really has a much better perception of the world and what's going on in the world either," he said of Bush.

Bahari also drew several similarities between the U.S. and Iran. When asked if his phone was tapped, Bahari said it was a distinct possibility, but added that he believed American government officials listen in on conversations more than Iranians do.

"What I'm hearing from my friends in the U.S. is that, especially the Muslims, that they say that all their conversations are tapped, and they are always asked to go to the FBI offices, for no good reason," Bahari said.

He believes the two countries are strong faith-based cultures and "maybe Iran and America are the two most religious countries in the world," Bahari said.

The U.S. is pushing forward for a new U.N. Security Council resolution to put economic sanctions on Iran. European countries, as well as China and Russia, favor more talks with Iran before moving ahead with sanctions, despite the passing of the Security Council's Aug. 31 deadline for Iran to freeze work on developing enrichment technology.

Iran, which holds nine percent of the worlds oil reserves, says it needs uranium enrichment to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that would generate electricity. Enrichment can also create material for atomic bombs and the U.S. and other countries suspect that is Tehran's real goal.

Meanwhile, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has protested to the U.S. government over a report on Iran's nuclear program, calling it "misleading".

About Maziar Bahari

Bahari was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied communications at Concordia University in Montreal before making his first film "The Voyage of the Saint Louis" about the fatal voyage of more than 900 German Jewish refugees in 1939. Bahari has since worked as a filmmaker and journalist.

Since the beginning of the Iraqi war, Bahari has reported from Iraq and produced several documentaries about the conflict. He is Newsweek magazine's Iran correspondent.

[Rasputin]

Last week, many in the chattering classes in the United States devoted their energy to the controversy about ABC's television film The Path to 9/11. Partisanship seems to dominate virtually every discussion these days. So it was no surprise that just as Republicans have sought to minimize the lack of attention paid to the terror threat by the Bush administration, so, too, have Democrats resisted the notion that the failures of the Clinton administration be highlighted, as the film did in some respects.

With so much attention devoted to wacko conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks available on the Internet, and with seemingly more respectable conversations conducted by our political elites devoted to assigning blame to their foes and absolving their friends, intelligent discussions of the issue have been largely crowded out by the din of nonsense.

That makes for good shouting matches on the all-news cable stations, but like many Americans, my tolerance for the genre is limited. The painful truth about 9/11 is that outside of a few experts on the issue - such as scholar Daniel Pipes or journalist Steven Emerson - there were precious few writing and speaking about the danger of Islamic terrorism before September 11, 2001.

And these men were routinely ignored or derided by more influential figures in the media, academia and halls of power. If the FBI and CIA operatives failed to gain the attention of their political masters for an all-out commitment to resist the murderers before that date (a sore point for some viewers of the ABC film), it was because so few were prepared to speak out about the danger at that time.

Hence, the political support necessary for the drastic increase in intelligence and military resources devoted to the fight was simply lacking. If extraordinary measures such as federal forces' eavesdropping on suspected terrorists are still considered controversial by some today, even more limited measures aimed at rooting out terror front groups were unthinkable prior to 9/11.

AND THAT should lead us all directly to the present day issue of Iran. Just like al-Qaida, which, as many have observed, "hid in plain sight" from the view of the West, Iran's drive to produce nuclear weapons has been anything but a secret.
When not denying the Holocaust or threatening to destroy Israel, its loopy leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has openly bragged about the possibility. The Teheran regime even held a bizarre public ceremony back in April replete with costumed dancers to commemorate its latest step toward processing uranium in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

And Iran is not only working on a nuclear capability, it is also striving for the acquisition of missiles that will deliver such weapons not only to Israeli targets (the Iranians' presumed first target) but to Western capitals, too. As former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in speeches at several stops in Philadelphia last week, there is no comparison between the Iranian situation and that which confronted the West prior to the invasion of Iraq. Unlike then, "we're not guessing" about what they've got, "we know." The prospect of a regime run by Islamist fundamentalist Shi'ites gaining such a weapon and its ability to use it is one that ought to scare every sensible person in the West.

Some experts tell us that we must learn to live with a nuclear Iran. They have a point because unless the United States and its allies start acting as if this really matters, it's only a matter of time before Teheran succeeds in its quest.

[Rasputin]

But the problem with the notion that this prospect can be lived with lies in the difference between past nuclear threats and this one.

A nuclear Soviet Union was certainly a dangerous foe. But as Netanyahu pointed out, the Soviets would never do anything that endangered their own survival. Thus, whenever disputes between the Soviet Union and the West went to the brink, Moscow was generally as interested as Washington in edging away from the precipice.

But the notion that we can be just as confident about deterring the mullahs of Teheran is highly dubious. Unlike the masters of the "evil empire," Ahmadinejad and his religious mentors buy into a theology that prizes celestial martyrdom, not terrestrial conquest.

In addition to hoping to generate the return of a "12th Imam" - a Shi'ite messiah - some in his circle have already made plain that even if Iran were to suffer a nuclear response from Israel after a strike on the Jewish state, it would still "win" since more of them would be left, and those who died would be happy martyrs.

While such Dr. Strangelove scenarios seem to be more science fiction than realpolitik to us, to the Islamist mindset the prospect of the hedonist rewards of martyrdom is not the stuff of satire. It is real, and the prospect of it coming to pass is no longer theoretical.

WHAT CAN America do about it? There are no easy answers. A UN resolution on the issue (if indeed such a resolution can be passed) is a must, but anyone waiting for our allies to enact tough sanctions on Teheran and making them stick is kidding himself.

Relying on Israel to take out Iranian nuclear facilities as it did with Iraq in 1981 is also a nonstarter.

So at some point, whether in the last years of the George W. Bush administration or in the term of his successor, an American president is going to have to face his people with the distasteful proposition of either letting the lunatics go nuclear or taking drastic action that might include military force.

Unless the Iranians have a very unlikely change of heart, the United States - whether it is led by Republicans or a Democrat - will have to swallow hard and act to prevent an event that has the capability of making 9/11 look as insignificant in scale to us as the then-shocking 1915 sinking of the liner Lusitania by a German U-boat does now.
That president's ability to face up to that challenge will depend on how ready the American public and its leaders have made themselves for the prospect.

If a "failure of imagination" was one of the prime causes of the lack of prevention of 9/11, as the federal commission appointed to probe the issue ascertained, then let there be no doubt that a similar inability to imagine the consequences of a nuclear Iran will be far more serious.

So rather than worrying about whether George W. Bush or Bill Clinton - along with their respective wise men and flunkies - is more to blame for 9/11, it would behoove us all to think about the next catastrophe waiting down the road. Now is exactly the time to start imagining it.

[Rasputin]

Iran's growing regional influence

Iran is now a regional superpower, and ever since the Islamic revolution in 1978-9, we in the West have consistently misunderstood it.


Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989

On 9 January 1979, a couple of weeks before his triumphant return to Iran, I interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini at his base in exile outside Paris.

In the interview, Khomeini sketched out Iran's entire future: the eradication of the monarchy, universal suffrage and the ban on "corrupt" Western influences.

And he outlined his attitude to Western countries like Britain and the US.

"We intend to reject a relationship which makes us dependent on other countries," he said.

"We have bitter memories of the British, because they ensured that Reza Shah (the last Shah's father) came to power, and for half a century we have been under the domination of this man and his son."

Heightened position

For almost 30 years, the West has concentrated on the religious, fundamentalist aspect of Iran's Islamic Republic.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US has swept Iran's local rival off the chessboard


We have forgotten that Khomeini's revolution was also a declaration of independence from British and American control.

Now, thanks to several different factors, Iran has suddenly reached a new level of power and influence.

The sky-rocketing price of oil has put a lot of money into its pocket.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the US has swept Iran's local rival off the chessboard, and free elections in Iraq have brought the Shia majority to power.

UNCOVERING IRAN


Click here to listen to John Simpson on Radio 4's: Iran and Her Neighbours

Iraq, weakened by the immense violence which has followed Saddam's overthrow, now regards Shia Iran as the dominant partner in the relationship.

Finally, after eight years of ineffectual government by the moderate reformist President Mohammed Khatami, Iran suddenly has an loud, idiosyncratic, fundamentalist president who cannot be ignored.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone back to Ayatollah Khomeini's principles, and he wants to establish Iran's independence further by turning Iran into a nuclear power.

Relations with Israel

The US and Israel are seriously worried.


If President Ahmadinejad wants to attack Israel, there are simpler ways than building a nuclear bomb


President Ahmadinejad insists that Iran is simply setting up a civil nuclear power industry, and that the US has no right to stop it.

But the American-based scholar Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival, believes he plans to go further: "He really wants to be one screwdriver short of a nuclear weapon," he said.

Israel's justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, is certain that Iran plans to build a nuclear bomb.

"They are fighting against the free world," he says, "and I'm warning not only Israel but all Europe and all democratic countries. Otherwise it could be too late."

But, if President Ahmadinejad wants to attack Israel, there are simpler ways than building a nuclear bomb.

Iran's close ally, the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, armed and trained by Iran, launched a highly successful brief war against Israel.

A guerrilla movement, well supplied with low-tech weapons, out-fought and outmanoeuvred a big conventional army using tanks, planes and artillery.

Modern alliances

By encouraging and arming Hezbollah, Iran has managed to create an anti-American front between Shia and Sunni Muslims in many parts of the Middle East.

Instead of the old Sunni-Shia hostility, there is a new unity.

Nowadays, you can see pictures of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in shops and streets and houses from Cairo to Amman to Jerusalem.

According to Prince Hassan of Jordan: "The populism of Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah is an alternative to civil society in the Middle East.

"By recruiting the poor and disenfranchised, they are closer to people's needs than governments are. Which is why they have this enormous following."

Pro-Western governments in the Middle East may not like it, but there is nothing they can do.

American influence in the area is visibly declining.

Their own positions are distinctly weaker.

President Ahmadinejad has put Iran at the forefront of all these changes.

For him, it is all part of the same process that Ayatollah Khomeini started, 27 years ago, when he overthrew the American- and British-imposed Shah.

[Rasputin]

Let there be light

Many peoples all around the world are, and have been, living tragedies. Emancipated and free peoples make up a very small number compared to those who live sorrowful lives. One of the peoples who live tragic lives, is the Iranian people. It's no surprise for the Iranians as they have been doing this for all their history.

Iranians have recently, ie in their modern history, been taught to be proud of a very distant past when they had supposedly been living much more dignified lives. That is just a manipulative sham as Iranians, as a people, have never been either free or truly proud or dignified. They have only been bigger or smaller tyrants with sometimes more and sometimes less success in their ambitious conquests.

That's got little to do with the state of Iranians as a whole. Average Iranians have often been enslaved by various individuals for their own personal purposes, and nothing more, and this enslavement sometimes led t magnificent victories for Iranian rulers. So what? What did the Iranian people gain from that? There hasn't been anything concrete ever, and no proof of such a thing. But losses? Plenty, and there is no better evidence than just looking at what is going on in Iran, and with the Iranians in general.

These are subjects that have very often been discussed and analysed. My pondering has been about the logic, or reasons, behind this tragedy for the Iranians for such a long time. Why haven't Iranians ever got a dignified community in which there would be respect for the individual rights and freedoms. Let me give a few examples that probably deserve a little bit of thought. A bunch of Arabs came to Iran, conquered the land, and forced the Iranians to convert to Islam. So they did.

Later on a Turkic Sufi warlord, Ismail Safavi, gathered a bunch of followers, took over what had remained of the historic Iran and forced them to convert to Shiism. So they did. Later a Mazandarani army officer, Reza Khan, decided to force his rule over Iran, declaring the previous Dynasty over and starting a new one, the so-called Pahlavi dynasty (rich imagination) and declare Iran the land of Aryans (being inspired by the latest fashion in northern Europe regarding the superior race). And\ Iranians, as always, by their tacit acceptance went along. The most recent idea has been put in place by Khomeini, to have the Shia Iran back, this time changing the title from king to Rahbar. And Iranians, as usual, went along.

All this is not to exaggerate the vulnerability of Iranians for new ideas and new faces. This is a common characteristic for most other peoples as well. So there is little to be ashamed of. It's the fact anyway.

There has been one seriously distinct people who have not been so eager to new ideas and new faces. We can compare the Iranians to them, the Jews. Who has suffered more? Definitely the Jews. Who suffers more now? Well, that's up to debate. Jews have been, arguably, the single most resilient people to have stubbornly shrugged off new ideas and faces. The result has been continuous attempts to annihilate them. Why all these attempts have failed?

The easy answer, convenient to the Jews, would be to say that God has saved his chosen people from annihilation. And the true, fact-based, reason behind their survival is that Jews have been so widely spread all over the Christian and Muslim world that no single ruler has ever been able to conquer all those lands to be able to wipe them out. Iranians haven't converted to Judaism, because no tough guy ever asked them to do so. They would probably have converted to Judaism if Arabs, were Jewish and used the sword to utter their words.

So, being stubborn with your own ideas and faces, as is the case for the Jews, isn't such a great idea either. You risk losing your land, your life, or probably both. But if you're easy-going and swing wherever the toughest man in town calls to, then you're much safer, but nonetheless with an ever-lasting diminished dignity and prosperity.

Are we going to have this forever and keep on turning a blind eye to various guys, ideas, factions and groups to force their own will upon us? This seems a bit too dramatic, as me and most readers among Iranians live outside Iran, but we still have hopes for our Iranian heritage. But maybe there is a better way than either living and surviving, without dignity and prosperity (Iranian example), or facing persecution and sporadic mass murder (Jewish example).

This alternative way can be called the ideology of respecting other people's rights and distinct values, or the ideology of enlightenment. There would always be enemies of this ideology too who would be willing to do a lot to harm the believers in freedom and the enlightenment, but the advantage of believing in the freedom of man is that it's much easier both to spread and to understand than various ambiguous customs and traditions that religions or ethnicities are based upon. And it being not forced (unlike Iraq) there would also be no resentments among the adepts. And that makes up a strong following-base.

And Britain and America (especially America) have been proud examples of free countries where citizens live with dignity, hopes and prosperity in freedom, which Iranians have never had. But neither Brits nor the Americans got this without costs. They fought their inner enemies, by continuously standing up to would-be tyrants, and they successfully defended their values from outside foes too. And it has been quite costly. But definitely worth it. Living a single year in freedom and dignity is worth fighting for decades or centuries. Unfortunately Iranians haven't yet developed the right conditions (probably socially and culturally) to dare to demand to have their rights respected.

[Rasputin]

Iranian Leader Defends Controversial Stands

In a feisty session with leading foreign policy experts, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly stuck to his hard-line positions on issues including Iran's nuclear program and a need for further study to confirm the Holocaust.

On the controversy over his earlier questioning of the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad said he was not rendering "final judgment" but asked why such prominence was given to one "small portion" of the 62 million people killed in World War II.

"Why not allow impartial groups to study" the matter, he said in a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. "We need evidence."

On the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iranian leader said the solution is for Palestinian refugees to return and then to hold a referendum on the future of Israel and the Palestinian territories. He said the Palestinians had nothing to do with World War II and should not be forced to live outside their homeland. "In Palestine there are people who came around the world and established a state where other people lived," he said, asking the nationality of the father of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Ahmadinejad maintained that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and called for the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction. But he repeatedly insisted that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for its energy program, which gained support from 118 countries at the Non-Aligned Movement conference last week in Havana. "The United States does not speak for the whole world," he said, adding that only Washington and two or three European nations are concerned.

He proposed that the United States shut down its nuclear fuel system and that Iran in five years would send its fuel at a 50 percent discount.

On Iraq, Ahmadinejad charged that the Bush administration has lost its way and is uncertain what to do next. He said Iran has greater freedoms than the United States, pointing to the number of candidates who ran against him last year. He called Iran "a unique democracy, a pure one," noting that the U.S. presidency is always held by one of two parties.

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser in the administrations of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, called Ahmadinejad a "master of counterpunch, deception and circumlocution."

Martin S. Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said denying the Holocaust and Israel's legitimacy appeared to be a part of a broader worldview that, if unchanged, would lead Iran and the Middle East to a "bad end."