Eye On Iran

[Rasputin]

All this talk of impending war and doom and gloom and the Pope's all-too-German statements and the President's threats and the Wahhabis' jihadists and the UN addresses and nuclear this and the nuclear that and Fidel's disease and Raul's unease at the podium and the NPT and the IAEA and the coup in Siam, all and all, have really got me down. I say let's take a break. What do you say?

***************************

I recently came across an Indo-European Etymological Database containing lots of interesting stuff about word origins. Eat your heart out Guive!

Browsing through the Proto-Celtic section, I found a number of words eerily similar to Persian. I had always thought that the country names Eye-ran and Eye-rland sounded so close, but comparing the red-faced, red-haired Irish to the olive-skinned, dark-haired Iranians, one fails to notice any other similarity between the two peoples.

Here are some of the words I found:

The Proto-Celtic word "kluka" meaning stone or rock, reminds me of the Persian "kolookh".

The word "kwrimi" meaning worm, is awfully close to "kerm".

"keltako" meaning war or battle, may be related to "sheltaagh".

The Proto-Celtic "cecht" meaning hard, is the same as "sakht" in Persian.

The word "clun" in Middle-Welsh meaning rectum, only has an "L" over our good old "koon".

The word "gwelo" meaning to eat, is akin to our own "geloo" or "galoo".

"flengo" in Proto-Celtic means to jump. Is "feleng raa bastan" related to this?

English Leech or Persian "zaaloo" is "gelu" in Proto-Celtic.

The Sanskrit database also includes lots of neat stuff. It is theorized that Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages. Beside the usual commonalities like Mother, Father, Brother, etc., here are some other words I found worthy of note:

The Sanskrit "dush" means bad, wrong, or difficult. The Persian word "dushman" uses this root. Also the Old Persian word "dushyara" meaning a bad year, has been transformed into "dushvaar" meaning difficult.

Sanskrit "valka" meaning bark or rind is the root of Persian "barg". The English word "bark" is also from the same origin.

The Sanskrit word "starih" meaning a cow that doesn't produce milk, is the root of the Persian "setarvan" and the English "sterile".

The Sanskrit "kapota" meaning pigeon, is the root of the Persian words "kabootar" and "kabood".

The Sanskrit word "gendh" meaning smell, is combined with "dush" to denote a bad odor or stench in the word "dush-gendh". New Persian has dropped the "dush" part and uses the word "gand" to mean bad or rotten.

The Sanskrit word "Pakshman" meaning eyelash is the root of the word "pashm" in Persian.

The Sanskrit stem "vaa" means to be annihilated or extinguished. The Persian verb "vaa raftan" may be from this origin.

The Sanskrit "vaac" meaning voice or sound is the root of "voice" in English. The Persian "aavaaz" is also from the same origin.

Beside "aab", the Sanskrit word "vaar" also means water. Persian "baaraan' and English "water" and Russian "voda" are all from the same root. By the way, "vodka" means little water in Russian.

Sanskrit "vidhava" gives us the Persian "biveh" and English "widow".

The Sanskrit word "svitna" is the root of both "sefeed" in Persian and "white" in English.

The word "kaash" in Sanskrit means to appear or become visible. I wonder if the Persian "ey kaash" is related to this?

"Nagna" in Sanskrit means naked. The Pahlavi word "brah-nag" which nowadays is pronounced "berahneh" is form the same root. "Brah" could be from the Sanskrit "bhraahj" meaning shining. The word "berahneh" could then mean shining naked.

***********************************

There are hundreds of other words, maybe thousands. But who has the time to go through all of them? Not me.

Ok, the break is over. Back to the headlines.

[Rasputin]

We were talking about the things we always talk about, and the whole of it had the effect of making us think about who we were, and about what it was going to mean to keep living in the world we had around us, and we knew it was a world that had a lot of love in it, but things got to a point sometimes when all we could do was sit and be brown together, Iranians and Mexicans, and be glad about that. It was a nice color, it was a lot nicer than anything that deserved bombs or pesticides, we knew that much for sure. We were all used to running around trying to make something out of life that elevated brownness, but it was a good feeling to see how full it was to sit and be who we were together, and it didn't need elevation because there was only one truth.

We didn't have to think of brown in contrast to white. It would be a nice color even if an Iranian and a Mexican were walking across a desert and came across each other. That was some of how we felt. We knew there were real deserts that had a sun that was probably too hot for us, but we could sit there in the restaurant and feel pretty certain that we were as sad as we ought to be and as hopeful as we ought to be, and we didn't worry about what we were going to do, because we felt like if we could stay sad and hopeful the way we ought to, then what we would do would take care of itself.

The trick was knowing how far we could go when we were all around each other like that. There was a way a person could let themselves go when they were around a group of people who did not hide from sadness, who could face it without needing to know what came next. At the same time, we knew we were each alone in it too. It was why it was nice just sitting there together, because anything that was being opened there among us was being closed at the same time. It wasn't being closed in a way that wouldn't be opened up again tomorrow, but tomorrow when it did, we'd know a little better that it carried its closedness in it. For now it was being closed by the way we could look around at each other and think, I don't know what it is about this brown skin, but I do know that it's not whatever it is that they see. And it was a feeling like there was already laughter. There was already laughter before any of us said a word, even before any of us came into the place and sat down. The whole thing was already funny. The place we were sitting in was already a little sacred, even before we came in, by being open to people with their sufferings coming in and sitting down.

We knew that we could do a lot with words too, which was why we wanted to be careful with them. We knew that the best words were the ones that came out of silence. It didn't have to be the silence of the moment necessarily, it could be each of our own silences that we'd walked around with, around college campuses and cities and quiet neighborhoods. We had a lot of respect for each other's silences. We knew that they came from some place real. And we knew that there would always be more in them than we could say, but the one thing that was certain and final was recognizing the silence in each other, and seeing it reflected in a brown skin, brown from the sun, which was a whole story of silence itself.

It was a story of how much could be done with just a man and a world itself. It did not have to be a man against a man. It went back to fields and farms we didn't know, we didn't know them but they weren't gone from us, they weren't gone from us here in the middle of the city. It was a city that had gotten a brownness to it by now, and we knew that we had a little bit of a home in that. Even a little bit of a home was a lot when it included people who could be sad with more hopefulness than was usually associated even with being glad.

Jose was the last to arrive. He came in and sat down, and there was just as much silence in the way we greeted him as there was in silence. There was just as much silence that he was walking into the room with. It wasn't a case of us telling him what we had been talking about, because he already knew how we felt about it.

"I had to drop my grandmother off at the bus station. She's going to Reno," he said. "I've dropped her off there a few times before, and each time I've seen the old people in her group waiting for the bus, it's looked like they're all saying 'There's just something lucky about me.' And then tonight I felt like I finally understood it. I felt like if I was able to reach old age, I would feel like there was something lucky about me too. I thought that if I reached my grandmother's age, I would take up gambling too."

It was the words we had been waiting for, and we silently thanked him for saying them, and we silently thanked ourselves for being the place where he would say them. And we began the thing that we had come for in the first place, which was a kind of consoling and a kind of affirming, a consoling and affirming towards him and towards ourselves, and a kind of laughing and a kind of crying, and a kind of loving of brown skin, a kind of loving that a brown-skinned man would say such a thing, that he would walk right in and sit down and say it with questions in his eyes and statements in his heart, knowing that the brown-skinned people he was sitting with had the same questions and statements inside them, and we were happy that part of what it meant to be us was somebody walking right in and beginning with poetry like that, beginning with poetry because he already knew it was a poem, he already knew it back when he was driving his grandmother to the bus station. And we knew that the other part of it was that we knew what he meant about old age, but we felt like something would stay living, whether we reached an age where we felt lucky enough to go to Reno or not, our effort to stay who we were would stay living, and it would stay living with as much shine as our brown skin had in the sun.

[Rasputin]

We're Not Going To Iran

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone. He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

For Iran, A Policy Of Patience

If you think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said some crazy things, none comes close to this: "If the worst came to worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground. . ." That was Mao Zedong in 1957. If you find the idea of an Iranian nuclear program unsettling, put yourself in the shoes of policymakers in 1964, the year that China tested a nuclear bomb.

At the time, China was probably the most aggressive country in the world. As historian Francis J. Gavin recounts, Mao's regime had fought a bloody war against the United States in Korea and almost entered another one over Taiwan. It had attacked India in 1962 and threatened several other Asian countries, such as Indonesia. It was supporting North Vietnam and the Viet Cong insurgency in the South. It actively aided violent revolutionary groups around the world, including in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mao's gruesome callousness toward human life extended to his own people. "Half of China may well have to die," he declared as he launched the Great Leap Forward. (He didn't quite succeed, but for a while the "Guinness World Records" book listed him as history's greatest mass murderer, for having caused the deaths of 26.3 million people.) Compared with all this, Iran today looks positively normal.

Of course it is not normal, and Ahmadinejad is not a normal leader. Iran is ruled by a repressive clique that has armed Hezbollah, destabilized Lebanon and Iraq, and defied and deceived international nuclear inspectors. Ahmadinejad has made a series of grotesque comments. But if we convince ourselves that Iran is an existential threat, one that must be stopped immediately and at all costs, we will fail. If we turn this into a game of chicken, we will lose.

Right now, Iran is riding high. Oil revenue is rolling in, amounting to about $55 billion last year. Its neighbors are severely weakened. Iraq is in chaos; Afghanistan and Pakistan are preoccupied with a resurgent Taliban; the Lebanese government is under great strain; the Persian Gulf states are scared. Most important, the United States is tied down, its influence and political capital in the region at an all-time low.

Ahmadinejad is using this moment to press his advantage. He has outflanked Arab regimes on the issue of Israel and Palestine, speaking in more confrontational terms than they dare (for fear of Washington). He knows that the Sunni Arab governments don't like him, so he has gone directly to their people. It's working.

Ahmadinejad is also turning Iran's nuclear program into a matter of Third World pride. Taking advantage of the global atmosphere of anti-Americanism, he is claiming that the United States is determined to prevent a developing country from moving ahead technologically. Again, it's working. Fully 118 countries signed on to Iran's cause at the recent nonaligned summit.

Instead of getting scared and spooked, America should view Tehran with a healthy dose of calm and confidence. Iran's fortunes will wane. Oil prices might head downward; Iraq could become less of a burden one way or the other; Arab regimes will get more assertive in responding to the rise of Iranian power. Washington could take the initiative on Lebanon and Palestine, which would vastly improve the political atmosphere.

The Bush administration must also develop a set of creative options short of military strikes -- which would only delay, not end, Iran's nuclear program -- in case Iran does not agree to stop reprocessing. Other countries will not go along with many of the toughest economic sanctions -- and it's not clear they would work anyway. One measure that would sting would be a widespread travel ban on Iran's officials. (That would be the end of the diplomats' conference circuit, not to mention trips to Dubai for money laundering.) Iran is unlikely to agree to become dependent on imported nuclear fuel. The second-best alternative might be a permanent inspections system in Iran, ensuring that its civilian program is not weaponized.

Watching Ahmadinejad at a private meeting last week, I was struck by how little he conformed to the picture of a madman. He was smug, even arrogant, sometimes offensive, but always calm and intelligent. If we're going to outsmart him, we need clever, compelling arguments of our own. Instead we have tended to threaten, bully and intimidate. No wonder he's winning the public diplomacy.

One way to change the game is to play to our strengths. Iran's hard-liners don't want good relations with the United States. Iranians have been taught for a generation now that Washington hates them, doesn't want relations with their country and tries to isolate them in the world. What if President Bush publicly offered to open an embassy in Tehran and begin student exchanges with young Iranians? In a country that is yearning for contact with the outside world, it might put the mullahs on the defensive.

In 1964, many people argued for a preemptive strike against China. Wiser heads prevailed. But even President John F. Kennedy had worried that from the moment China went nuclear "it would dominate South East Asia." In fact, far from dominating it, China's bomb scared Southeast Asia into a closer association with the United States. Today, Chinese influence in the region is great and growing -- but that's because of its economic heft, not its nukes. Iran is ruled by a failed regime that cannot modernize the country and is instead seeking a cheap path to influence. It didn't work for the communists in Russia or China and, if we keep our cool, it won't work for the mullahs in Tehran.

[Rasputin]

True two-face

United Nations general assembly came and went while different parts of the world are suffering from violence, poverty and injustice imposed on them mostly by the corrupted systems that falsely represent the people in those regions. The major issue which was brought in the focus of the world in this event, was the problem that world is facing as a result of irresponsible behaviors of Islamic regime in our country, Iran.

After wasting so many months through endless negotiations between EU and U.S from one side and Islamic regime of Iran from the other side, and after passing of the deadlines determined by international community, world is yet to see a solution to this matter. Iranian people who are suffering under extreme brutalities of Islamic theocratic regime and paralyzed by deep corruption of the system, have chosen to wait and see how international community deal with these self appointed representatives of god on earth. Numerous attempts to confront the Islamic regime's atrocities by Iranian people in order to bring much needed change to the country failed to produce any substantial result because, Islamic regime viciously suppressed any inauspicious move by people with full force.

In this process, clerical rulers have committed any possible atrocities in their ability against Iranians to stop them while most of the civilized world watched with ignorance and most of western media overlooked inhumane behavior of Islamic regime towards its people. Ruling mullahs who had invoked the tactic of trickery and deception form their initial moments in Iran, have been able to silence or destroy any opposition to their barbaric rule in the name of Allah. After revelations about their hidden operations in pursuit of nuclear weapons, Islamic regime has been trying to use the same methods in order to dodge the reactions of international community to their malicious activities through 'divide and conquer' to cause delay in reaching a final decision through endless negotiations.

These days, most of western media which have always failed to offer a true picture of the Islamic regime which has the worst record in human rights and continuously denied the most basic freedoms to the society, are trying to make a Islamic Robinhood from president of Islamic Republic regime in Iran. In the meantime, some of old American politicians with a record in organizing Islamic movements like Taleban which turned Afghanistan into a disaster zone, go even further and call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an important person in the world politics!

Apparently, these people are unaware that no decision can be made and nothing can be implemented in Iran without approval of Khamenei who is 'chosen' as the Islamic revolution leader by Islamic Guardian Council from within the regime. It is unclear how a person who is not allowed to decide about the simplest things without approval of Khamenei can become such an important figure in world politics.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who once wanted to turn all the squares in capital city of Tehran into tombs for martyrs and assigned millions of dollars to construction of a highway for reappearance of 'imam zaman' (a Shiite messiah) is the same person who claimed that he sensed a heavenly aura covered him when he was speaking in UN last time. Ahmadinejad is a symbol of political suffocation of Iranian society under tyranny of ruling mullahs. He represents misery for Iranian people and after Khatami, he has become the new mask for Islamic regime that mullah Khamenei is hiding behind it and dragging Iran towards ultimate disaster.

This son of a blacksmith who became president of Islamic regime with support of mullah Khamenei and under extreme repressive conditions against any true voice of opposition, has left all the problems of Iranian people to be solved by 'imam zaman' while very anxiously trying to solve the issues in Palestine and Lebanon! The Islamic regime which has been proudly supporting and supplying Hezbollah and Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and cash every year, has turned Middle East issues into a bargaining chip while hooking corrupt leaders of Syria on free or under price crude oil in order to have a stronger hand in there.

Escalation of situation to a full fledge war in the Middle East in last month by Hezbollah's unprovoked operations and subsequent generous flow of cash from Islamic Republic of Iran to pay for war damages on Lebanese people through Hezbollah, leaves no doubt in the minds of many about the role of Islamic regime in this issue. Based on some reports, Hezbollah offered $12,000 per person to cover for war damages while an Iranian retiree receives a few hundreds and dollars per month and the price for basic food items are comparable with Europe and U.S.

Politics of double talk and deception by ruling mullahs in Iran has been the corner stone of Islamic regime's establishment. They deceived Iranian people into current mess by one day saying one thing and another day something else for the past twenty eight years. This has been not because of their uncertainty about their own governing plans and politics but something intentional to cover their true purpose which is just to serve the interests of their own and their associates. Looking at the dept and magnitude of corruption in Iran under Islamic regime makes this matter more comprehensible that why Iran's economy is trailing many nations like Indonesia and South Korea which were far behind Iran during late 1970's.

My intention here is not to discuss economy of Iran but to explain why it is impossible to trust any word that comes out of Islamic regime's officials. Iranian people have paid dearly for trusting any of the elements in Islamic Republic regime from beginning till now. Electing Khatami as president about 10 years ago was the last desperate attempt by Iranian people to show mullahs that there is a serious need for change. Khatami who had gained trust of many Iranians in his political campaign by speaking openly about real issues in the country, failed to accomplish anything other than some superficial reforms in the social affairs while imprisonment and killing of people with opposing views continued and reached a new level.

Although Khatami did not do anything positive for Iranians, he managed to become a Islamic Republic stamp on the foot of many large contracts with European companies in order to secure Islamic regime's position as a legitimate representative of Iranian people in the world. Boycott of presidential election by big majority of Iranian people in 2005 forced Islamic regime one more time to use their magic tricks and pull Ahmadinejad out of ballot box while voters were no where to be seen in most polling stations all over the country.

Ahmadinejad, who was not even known by majority of Iranians, represents true face of Islamic regime. When he speaks about wiping out Israel of the map, he means it but the issue is not really about Israel. The issue is that Islamic regime which is unjustly representing Iranian people, has no respect for many of the values recognized by the world community and Ahmadinejad is a true representation of those views which is fully supported by majority within the Islamic government.

Americans like Europeans are after a solution to remove the threat of Islamic regime from their society while protecting their own interests in Iran and in the region. History of the past 28 years has shown that neither will commit themselves to protect Iranian people against tyranny of mullahs and neither will hesitate to do anything against Islamic regime's capabilities in order to protect themselves. Iranian people need to act fast before catastrophe arrives.

[Rasputin]

Doing business, Iranian style

If there is one thing about Tehran I haven't missed is the way business used to be conducted in the city on a daily basis. Like its confusing street addresses and its, shall we say, eclectic architecture, business etiquette was murky, haphazard and frustrating.

Take bargaining for instance. One had to be an expert in nuanced body language and cockeyed psychology plus an endurance athlete to get through it. All those intricate labyrinthine rituals would have surely provided fascinating material for anthropological and comparative ethnic studies but left the average Tehrani exhausted after a hard day of shopping.

I remember my father negotiating prices with fruit vendors. After looking over the merchandize like an inspector followed by several minutes of opening chitchat, the vendor would, with a flourish of his bone handled knife, cut a sliver of the watermelon or peach or cantaloupe and make an offering of it. My father would then munch some, appraising the texture and flavour with all the aplomb of a wine taster, his expression never ecstatic lest the vendor be emboldened in his bargaining position.

After several firm head shakes and friendly pushing and shoving and coquettishly walking away and being called back, the parties would finally settle down to fine tuning of their differences with a vigor worthy of international protocol negotiators. Half an hour later we may or may not walk away with a watermelon under our arms.

While all that was going on I was usually standing a few feet away pretending the guy waving his hands and nodding his head and issuing final ultimatums was in no way related to me. The fact was I could never bargain. I was too shy or maybe just thought my time too valuable to spend it cajoling perfect strangers.

Just imagine, even if you spend an average of one hour a week bargaining, over an adult life time of say 50 years, the average person would spend 240 hours, a full 10 days, playing head games with fruit vendors and fabric sellers and bakers and butchers. Thank you, but no thank you. The fixed price market system in North America suits me just fine. And if I want to save money, I just make sure to watch out for sales or clip coupons on the weekends.

Judging by my infrequent encounter with Iranian businesses here in Vancouver not much has changed in the way Iranians do business with each other. When dealing with Iranian businesses you must first throw away all that you have learned about business etiquette in North America. You mustn't ask too many questions lest you offend the other party. You must certainly not ask about the exact cost, time of delivery or condition your merchandize will arrive in.

At the beginning doing business resembles a rendezvous with a lover, fraught with all the trepidations, tender gestures and kind suggestions. Once a few years ago at an Iranian notary public recommended by a friend, after the proprietor, an elderly gentleman with a sour puss, had typed and sealed the invitation I was to send to my mother in Iran for her tourist visa application, I asked the man for his fee. He of course responded with the customary "it's not worthy of you." I was tempted to walk out just to see how far the old man would go to collect his fee.

Of course Iranians do business for the same reason as people the world over, to make money, and all that initial touchy feely stuff may end up in acrimony and bitterness of a love affair gone sour. That's what happened in my dealing with a local television station a few years ago. I had called to put in a casting notice for a short film. The proprietor of the one man operation was tripping over himself pouring out niceties mile a minute. The casting notice was to be slotted in the public broadcast segment of the one hour twice weekly show (he has since expanded his operation to a mini media empire). But after the first broadcast the notice was nowhere to be seen.

I contacted the station and inquired in my halting polite Farsi why the notice was not included in the subsequent broadcasts. Sounding outraged at my gall, the station proprietor told me off rather curtly and hung up. When I called him back perplexed at his sudden about face, it turned out that the first broadcast was a courtesy one and any subsequent broadcasts were billable. Had he conducted himself in a professional manner and laid out the proposition in plain business language from the outset I would have gladly shoulder the cost. Instead he played king bountiful turned ruthless business man. That was the end of our beautiful but brief acquaintance.

This past week I contacted an Iranian currency transfer shop to send a modest amount of money to Iran. The gentleman I spoke to on the phone was kind and courteous and made me feel like a dear family member. Since I don't often get the chance to make it to the city centre where most such businesses are located, I made arrangement to go on Saturday. The kind uncle informed me that to be on the safe side I should be at his office between 10:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. But when I got there around 11:30 the office was closed. I killed time for half an hour but to no avail.

Back in my apartment cursing myself for not having called ahead of time, I contacted the man. He apologized profusely; some business had taken him away from the office. He promised that he would inform his contact in Iran to proceed with the transfer of funds even though he didn't actually have my cheque in his hand. That was mighty big of him, and he made sure I realized it.

The next day I was to go to a restaurant in the same mini mall where the currency shop was located and leave the check in trust until Monday when the shop proprietor would collect it himself. Since I was giving him a cheque he then proceeded to ask me for my driver's license number and expiry date but also a host of other questions with the skill of a police informer. By the end of the conversation he had gathered a complete dossier on me. The only I thing I knew about him was his first name, Habib, a most ironic name had the transaction not turned out as smooth as it did.

Well, I went to the restaurant in the blighted min mall the next day but, you guessed it, it was closed. Again, I killed time loitering in front of the shop until the owner of the next door business, a kind elderly woman with a sweet Irish accent, having observed my aimless pacing and occasional angry cursing, informed me that on Sundays the restaurant may or may not be open, depending on the owner's mood and fancy.

This time I decided to play it smart. I would call the mysterious Godot, I mean Habib, on the spot and demand an alternative like getting his sorry rear end to his office and collect the damn cheque from me personally. Of course the silver tongued operator, never short of ideas, had something else in mind. Why not give the cheque to the proprietor of a bike shop also in the mini mall. They in turn would pass it to him on Monday morning. As it turned out, the bike shop owner and his sassy wife with the flirty eyes had actually never met Mr. Habib (if that was in fact his name) but had heard of him and assured me that his business was in fact legitimate.

So I took a leap of faith and handed them the cheque violating every rule of sensible business conduct in the book. Frankly I didn't care anymore; I would have given the cheque to the tattooed kid with pierced nipples loitering in the mall collecting pop cans and making cracks about terrorist camel jockeys going back to where they came from. I just wanted the whole thing over and done with.

By Monday morning the business was transacted and the parties were all happy but I was left exhausted. I never did meet Mr. Habib. He might have been a figment of my imagination. He may be the real "Deep Throat" for all I know, just a disembodied voice telling Woodward in that garage to follow the money all those years ago, resurfacing now to pull my strings to drop cheques here and there. Until next time.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Iranian-born singer's message: Make music, not war.


An Iranian-born singer who immigrated to the US as a young man of 20 and went on to become a successful entrepreneur turned artist has embarked on a whirlwind peace tour aiming to promote "love, peace and harmony" through music.

Fred Nassiri, 64, arrived in Jerusalem late Wednesday from Egypt for the recording of his new CD, Love Sees No Color, which is being sung in 12 languages together with children from 12 different countries including Egypt, Israel, Russia, Germany, Spain, China, India and the United States.

"The world today needs peace more than ever before," Nassiri said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. "Music is a powerful force to heal psychological wounds and bring peace and harmony."

The Las Vegas-based Nassiri, who built his fortune in California and then Nevada as a fashion magnate and one of the US's largest wholesalers of designer labels to mass merchandisers, said he returned to his childhood pastime of singing in mid-life ("I was a late-bloomer") in an attempt to make his contribution to world peace.

"Music is my mission and my message is love," he said. "The music... is intended to transcend all ages, genders, races and religions to help create a harmonized, peaceful world."

The unusual businessman turned singer concurred that his first-ever trip to the conflict-ridden Middle East was the greatest challenge for the lofty aims he hopes to promote.

"My message is that it is most important to come to the Middle East because the conflict is here," he said.

Nassiri, who has pointedly skipped his native Iran on his apolitical world tour, said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "has no right" to say that Israel should be wiped off the map.

"We do not have that authority; only God has that authority," Nassiri said. "I hope my message will change the president of Iran's mind. We cannot just kill each other."

The singer and peace advocate has not visited the Islamic Republic in nearly 25 years.

The chorus of the song, which he composed, reads in English, "Love sees no color no race no religion/We are the same as the rays from the sun/Love sees no color no race no religion/Only through love can we live as one."

The recording of the song in Israel will take place Thursday in Jerusalem's Tower of David Museum with a mixed choir of 100 Jewish and Arab children singing in Hebrew.

The proceeds from the sale of the CD, which will go on sale November 14, would be donated to charities around the world, he said.

[Rasputin]

Rattling the Cage: The big con about Iran

Despite all the skepticism, the US and Israel do have a military option in Iran: preemptive nuclear annihilation.

The US and Israel, or the US by itself, or maybe even Israel by itself, can destroy Iran and its 69 million people, probably in a matter of hours or even less, and then nobody in the world will have to worry about those crazy maniacs getting the bomb. Things would be sort of weird afterward, it's hard to say what the consequences might be, but the Iranian threat would be behind us.

Other than that, though, there is no military option in Iran. If we didn't learn this from the Americans' ongoing experience in Iraq, we should have learned it from Israel's recent experience in Lebanon.

Many people think it's possible to wipe out Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least cripple them, from the air. But did Israel manage to wipe out or cripple Hizbullah's weapons from the air? Incidentally, Iran is about 150 times the size of Lebanon. And Hizbullah's underground military bunkers were built by the Iranians; imagine what they've built for themselves at home.

But I don't want to misrepresent the case for an air attack on Iran's nuclear works; those in favor allow that it might well require commandos and maybe small infantry units to ferret out the nukes and make sure they're destroyed.

When I hear this, I think of American soldiers roaming around Iraq looking futilely for weapons of mass destruction, then I remember that Iran is four times bigger than Iraq, with more than twice the population, and a military that dwarfs what Iraq had when the US invaded in 2003.

I think, also, of how small units of Israeli infantry went into south Lebanon at the start of this summer's war, and how everyone soon realized that those soldiers wouldn't be enough - which happened at about the same time everyone realized the Air Force wouldn't be enough, either - and that instead, a massive ground invasion would be necessary.

And all that was just for tiny little Hizbullah and south Lebanon. How many troops and how big a war effort would be needed to take on Iran?

No one knows. How long would the soldiers have to stay in Iran before the nuclear threat were removed, if it could be removed? How would Iran fight back? Would it fire missiles at Israel? Would it use chemical and biological weapons? How far beyond Iran would the war spread? How many soldiers and civilians would die?

Again, nobody knows. And on the basis of what we've seen in Iraq and Lebanon, nobody can even make a decent guess, least of all the calm, confident generals and politicians who are so good at promising "victory."

But I think people know by now that before a country goes to war, it has to be prepared to weather the worst possibilities, not just the most blissful ones. I don't think anybody will believe the same sort of pie-in-the-sky predictions about fighting war in Iran that they believed about fighting one in Iraq and in Lebanon. And I suspect the non-believers include George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert, no matter what they say publicly.

I FIGURE they know that trying to take out Iran's nuclear facilities by conventional means requires a huge military commitment and huge risks with no guarantee of success. It means being prepared for a much bigger war than the US has been fighting in Iraq for the last 3-1/2 years, and counting.

America won't do it. No way on earth. With the US so hopelessly out of its depth in Iraq, the American people will as soon let Bush start a war in Iran as they'd let him bring back the draft, which would be necessary to fight such a war. So forget it. America might be up for a quick little in-and-out operation, something like it did in Granada or Panama, but that's not a military option with the likes of Iran.

And what is Israel going to do? It would be nice to have maps and satellite photos of a big, vulnerable Iranian nuclear reactor sitting out there on the ground in plain sight, so a few jets could fly over, bomb it to hell and fly back in time for dinner, just like they did in Iraq in 1981. But that isn't an option this time, either. Iran's nuclear facilities, wherever they all might be, are spread out, underground, thickly defended - and the element of surprise is long gone.

So with no quick, painless solution available, is Israel willing to start the kind of war necessary to even have a chance of getting rid of Iran's nuclear potential - to start the kind of war America clearly won't?

No, Israel isn't willing. For a war of choice, this is too big and dangerous, and that's what it would be - a war of choice. Israelis may have convinced themselves that Iran will nuke us once they get the chance, but while this is a possibility - a remote one, I think - it is by no means an inevitability, and to treat it as such is hysterical, which is what Israelis, inevitably, have become over Iran.

I'm not saying Iran, especially a nuclear Iran, is nothing to worry about. Iran is plenty to worry about, but as for what to do about Iran, how to stop it from getting nuclear weapons, neither the US nor Israel nor anyone else has a conventional military way to go about it.

There are all sorts of diplomatic pressures that can be applied to Iran and its arms suppliers, but if Iran gets the bomb, which I think is likely, we are going to have to learn to live with it like we lived with Stalin and Mao having the bomb. They weren't any less fanatical than the Iranians, and when it comes to genocide and conquest, the Iranians talk about it, but Stalin and Mao did it. So there's good reason for worry, but not for hysteria.

Still, like I said at the beginning, there is an option for preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons by nuking it first. Now I know some of you reading this are thinking: "Yeah!" And I know you're not kidding, you really mean it.

But I'm sorry, even if it sounds unfair to you, preemptive nuclear annihilation is only a theoretical option, not a real, live one. A country, even the US or Israel, can't just snuff another country because of what it thinks that country might do to it in the future. Some of you may be asking: "Why not?" I'd explain, but it would probably make you angry. That's just the way it is - no mushroom clouds for Iran. All you can do is dream.

[Rasputin]

Eye on Iran: The fourth option

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has long been recognized as the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. It has funded, trained and armed several terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The discovery of Iran's extensive and clandestine uranium enrichment has only added to the international apprehension.

The US has had economic sanctions against Iran for 26 years. It has been a failure. Only Israel and Uzbekistan joined the US in the sanction. But even if other countries were to join, there is little evidence that would change Iran's direction. The suffering that sanctions bring is almost entirely imposed on the Iranian people. The regime will continue to function and will even use the sanctions to oppress the people. It will tighten its economic control even more and the rewards that it bestows on its followers become irresistible. That is what Saddam did that during the years that Iraq was under economic sanctions.

The EU has had a policy of "Constructive Dialogue" with Iran for many years. That too has been a total failure. The EU has made several offers for more advanced nuclear reactors and expanded trade packages. They also guaranteed nuclear fuel delivery at the market rate, which would be 1/3 of what it would cost Iran to make. All these offers have met with Iran's steadfast refusal to halt its uranium enrichment. This leaves little doubt about its real intentions for uranium enrichment.

Using the current methods of carrot by the EU and stick by the US, the West will never be successful in getting the IRI to be less of a menace internationally. These policies have failed because in both cases the unspoken assumption has been that IRI has the best interest of Iranians in mind. The US and the EU are democracies and the democratically elected governments need to be sensitive to the needs and wants of the governed or they won't stay in power. They have instinctively, but erroneously attributed similar motives to IRI. But the IRI is a totalitarian system and such a regime would collapse as soon as it starts caring about its citizens. This simple fact is the key to success in dealing with the IRI.

The West needs allies in dealing with the mullahs' regime. The natural allies are the Iranian people themselves. Iranians have been the biggest victims of the regime. Most Iranians do not support the Islamic regime and want to have good relations with the West. This is the Achilles' heel of the regime. The mullahs know it too. In 2002 when the government's own pollsters asked Iranians if they wanted to have normal relations restored with the US, 74% said yes. But instead of a policy change it got the pollsters arrested. They were sentenced to eight years in prison for "propagating against the Islamic Republic" and "selling intelligence to foreigners". This is a frightened regime that is desperate to hide the depths of its unpopularity.

You might wonder then why do Iranians put up with their government and not elect better leaders. As reported in the Western media, Iran has the usual organs of democracies such as an elected president and congress.

But what is almost never mentioned in the media is that the Iranian people are not allowed to freely elect their presidents or congressmen. Only candidates that are from the ruling circle and proven to be loyal to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can run in Iranian elections. They have even codified the pre-vetting process. A committee selected by the Supreme Leader has to approve every candidate for every national election. In the last presidential election over 1000 candidates were rejected and only allowed 4 to run.

Furthermore, the president has no actual powers and can be dismissed by the Supreme Leader at anytime. The same is true for members of congress. Iran has a Potemkin government. It is entirely for show. The power legally and practically belongs to the Supreme Leader and no change to the system is allowed without his approval. So people cannot vote their leaders in or out of office. The actual leaders are the unelected Supreme Leader and his appointees and even the for-show government is pre-selected by the Supreme Leader.

A government that knows it has majority support does not act the way the IRI has been acting from its very inception. IRI treats Iranians as the enemy, not citizens. They have executed over 150,000 political prisoners. They try their opponents in Revolutionary Courts where the accused have no rights. The judge and the prosecutor are often the same and the prisoners are tortured until they confess. They are executed for charges such as "Fighting the Will of God" or "Spreading Corruption on Earth". The regime's assassins have killed hundreds of Iranian dissidents including many exiles in Europe.

The rulers of Iran have closed most information outlets from the citizens. Access to the Internet is limited and thousands of political websites are blocked by the government. Ownership of satellite dishes is illegal. Hundreds of newspapers and magazines have been shut down. Journalists and bloggers are imprisoned, tortured and killed.

Canadian Journalist Zahra Kazemi was photographing a demonstration by the families of political prisoners outside Tehran's Evin prison. She was arrested, brutally raped and tortured. She died from her injuries 19 days later. IRI refused to return her body to her son who lives in Canada. A former staff physician in Iran's Defense Ministry who escaped Iran recently stated that he examined Kazemi in the hospital, four days after her arrest. He said Kazemi showed obvious signs of brutal torture and rape. This is the fate of many dissidents in Iran. Her case was reported in the Western media because she was a journalist and a Canadian citizen.

During the cold war, Soviet bloc dissidents such as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn received a lot of attention and support from the West. Lech Walesa was a well-known name in the West. He received the Noble Peace Prize and addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. Walesa was a shipyard worker whose first demand was an independent union.

Mansour Ossanlou is a bus driver in Iran. He wants an independent union for the bus drivers. In May he was imprisoned and savagely beaten (They tried to cut his tongue off.). The bus workers had a strike in protest, but over 3000 government-paid thugs attacked the demonstrators and over 500 of the workers were imprisoned. Unlike Walesa's, Ossanlou's detention has received minimal media attention in the West.

Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned leader of the African National Congress (ANC), was a highly respected figure in the West for his opposition to Apartheid. But you have probably not heard about Manouchehr Mohammadi, the secretary general of the National Association of Iranian Students. He is still in prison for his role in student protests of 1999. He was tortured and held in solitary confinement in a 3.5'x6' cell after he went on a hunger strike. He is dedicated to non-violent resistance. His sister and father went to the Ministry of Information, but instead of getting help, they were arrested. On July 31, his brother, Akbar Mohammadi, a student leader, died in prison after his hunger strike. Unlike Mandela, Mohammadi's cause is not celebrated in the world media.

[Rasputin]

The diplomatic efforts over the past few years to get IRI to limit its nuclear ambition has had the negative effect of giving them a world stage instead of isolating them. For many years the human rights record of Iran was intentionally ignored so as to not detract from Europe's so- called "Constructive Dialogue" which has proven to be a total failure. US and Europe should vigorously and relentlessly ask for an end to human rights violations. That is the soft underbelly of the regime - not the nuclear enrichment.

Many times, the Iranian people have shown their courage in opposing the Islamic regime, but they lack an important element for their success. Hope. It is hard enough to risk one's life and liberty as well as risking the family's well-being, but without hope it is almost too much to ask. People need hope in order to continue risking their lives. Iranians have seen over and over again when a person speaks or writes contrary to the regime's wishes, he is imprisoned and tortured or killed. There have been no consequences to Iranian regime's abuses. The Iranian dissidents feel totally ignored, isolated and forgotten by the world. The regime does not feel isolated. It is time to reverse the situation.

The following are a few suggestions on how to bring attention to IRI's treatment of its own people.

Iran's regime is an outlaw government. It has openly and continually broken multiple international laws by supporting international terrorism. It should be ostracized and isolated internationally. European governments should recall their ambassadors from Tehran and reduce the status of their embassies to interest sections. They should demand the same from the Islamic Republic. There is also a good case for expelling Iran out of the UN. It has broken several of its rules; the most recent one was to call for the destruction of Israel, a UN member country.

Many high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic cannot travel to European countries because of their roles in the assassinations of dissidents. But the ban should be universal and also apply to people they kill inside Iran. Saeed Mortazavi, Tehran's notorious prosecutor, has been implicated in torture and death of several dissident prisoners. This June he led the Iranian delegation to the opening session of UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. (Ponder for a moment the sick irony of that.) Canada's request for his arrest and extradition for the murder of Zahra Kazemi was unsuccessful.

The Iranian regime is an organized criminal entity and should be treated as such. All members of an organized crime entity should be prosecuted for the group's crimes. Iran's leaders should not be allowed to travel freely around the world. There should be a legal framework created to arrest and prosecute them if they ever leave Iran.

Under Apartheid, South Africa was not allowed to participate in the Olympics and the World Cup for 28 years. Iran is under a gender and religious apartheid regime that is far more vicious. At the very least Iranian sports teams should be banned from the international competitions.

Iran imports many of its tools for censorship and repression from abroad. Iran now uses SmartFilter, US-made software, to censor websites. Iran has also been using imported jamming equipment to prevent people from hearing and seeing radio and television broadcasts from abroad. Every effort should be made to prevent the Iranian regime from receiving such technologies and equipment for censorship.

Finally, there should be more attention paid to Iran's courageous and suffering dissidents. Unfortunately there are many faux reformers who want to tinker with the Islamic Republic system without fundamentally changing it. We do not pay enough attention to dissidents who are genuine believers in a liberal democracy.

Totalitarian systems are more robust than most people realize. They have only collapsed in one of two ways. The first method is what happened to German Nazis and Cambodian Khmer Rouge, military defeat by foreign countries. The other time collapse is when they attempt reforms like the Soviet Union and its bloc. All totalitarian systems are terrorist states. They only stay in power by terrorizing their people. Without terror their collapse is certain.

But such systems only attempt reforms when they experience a crisis of confidence in the leadership. We need to seriously undermine the confidence of the Iranian regime. These measures will help make it harder for them to continue their reign of terror. In the end we want the Iranians to rid themselves of the dictators but we should be willing to give them a helping hand. By allying ourselves with the Iranian dissident democrats we can avoid the costly and perilous military action that might result from the inevitable failure of our current policies. So forget about carrots and sticks.

[Rasputin]

Tangling with Teheran

The call comes in the middle of the night, rousing the prime minister from his sleep with horrifying news: a Mossad spy in Teheran has just reported that the embattled clerical regime, fearing that a popular revolt is close to toppling it from power, is about to launch a nuclear holocaust on the Jewish state. In moments, the prime minister is whisked into a helicopter on his way to an urgent meeting of the country's security chiefs in the "bunker" of the Defense Ministry, faced with the terrible prospect of absolute cataclysm.

What is Israel to do?

This scenario is not far off - neither in the spy thriller The Chosen Oneby Shabtai Shoval, in which it is depicted as taking place in 2009, nor in reality, where an increasingly radical Iran marches toward "the point of no return" on the road to nuclear weapons capability while simultaneously suppressing popular dissent inside the Islamic Republic.

Shoval, a hi-tech executive who used to devise such nightmare scenarios for IDF Intelligence to help prevent them from coming true, wrote the novel in the hopes that it would bring the looming danger to the forefront of public consciousness.

Now, as a series of weak international attempts to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions proves ineffective and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad grows increasingly belligerent in his threats against Israel, the plot of The Chosen Onereads less like fiction and more like a plausible reality.

In either world, Israel's situation is precarious. Without an express declaration of intent by Iran to attack the Jewish state, Israel is bound to keep its promise not to introduce nuclear weapons to the region. Israel's second-strike capability proves meaningless, as even a single nuclear-tipped missile landing on central Israel can cause hundreds of thousands of casualties and bring about the effective collapse of the state.

Hoping that the United Nations or the United States will somehow save the day carries unacceptable risks (annihilation) and low rewards (loss of Israeli deterrent vis- -vis other enemies). With nuclear war at stake, any move that Israel can take becomes the ultimate gamble.

A world gone MAD

If there is one person in Israel who is unmoved by the thought of a Herzliya-turned-Hiroshima it is Reuven Pedatzur. The Tel Aviv University political science professor believes a nuclear Iran is no more dangerous to Israel than Pakistan is to India, or Russia was to the United States in the 1950s and '60s. The Cold War-era paradigm of Mutual Assured Destruction - MAD - is as solid today as it was when Kennedy and Khrushchev were testing it in Cuba, Pedatzur feels.

"Look, this is not a new discussion," he says. "The whole back-and-forth has already taken place between the United States and Russia... The idea was not to defend against your enemy's missiles, but to threaten a response sufficiently great that the enemy would never choose to attack with his missiles."

For more than 50 years, MAD has kept nuclear powers sane. "No leader with nuclear weapons, who understands the implications for his nation, has acted irrationally," Pedatzur notes.

MAD breaks down, however, in the case of an irrational regime. So the real question is whether Iran is just such a regime - whether, that is, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are so committed to their apocalyptic Islamic ideology (see box) that they would risk the ruin of their own people to destroy Israel.

"If they are," Pedatzur admits, "then all Israelis had better find some safer place to move to."

By any account, the Iranian threat is extreme. It follows that Israel's response to that threat may very well be extreme also - even including the possibility of extreme avoidance. One option is to defuse a nuclear arms race by simply pulling out of it.

Critics of Israel's nuclear program - of any nuclear program, really - warn that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by one state is likely to encourage other states to acquire them as well. (See media comments last week from Cairo about the possibility of Egypt developing a nuclear program.) So, the logic goes, Iran might not feel the need to develop nuclear weapons if Israel were to give up its nuclear option (see box) and submit, together with the rest of the Middle East, to United Nations inspections.

Of course, the safety of such a strategy depends completely on the ability of Israel's sworn enemies to resist the temptation to cheat.

"For Israel to surrender its nuclear deterrent would be to gamble on the intrinsic goodness of its enemies," says the author Shoval. "That's romantic, that's poetry. It's not anything connected to reality."

It also places a huge amount of faith in a UN that has already failed to even detect nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, Pakistan and Iran, much less halt their progress or deter their development.

Israel could take a much less drastic step and still retain its undeclared nuclear weapons, by relying on the United States to carry out a preemptive strike on Iran. But that's a long shot, too, even though Iran potentially poses an enormous threat to America.

"After having gone to war in Iraq on the false premise that its mad dictator had weapons of mass destruction, America cannot now go to war with Iran - even though it is much clearer that its mad dictatorship really is pursuing weapons of mass destruction," bemoans Shoval.

In fact, Washington-based sources told The Jerusalem Postsome in the capital are privately eager to see the Iranian threat advance to the point that Israel has no choice but to carry out a preemptive strike, sparing the United States the responsibility for doing so.

It is hard to believe, also, that a Zionist state permeated by the "never again" ethos of Masada and Auschwitz would put its very existence in the hands of others.

As former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk told the Australian Broadcasting Company this past March: "To imagine that the Jewish state, whose leaders have sworn that the Jewish Commonwealth will never be destroyed again, will sit back and hope that somebody else will take care of an existential threat is simply not facing the reality of their situation."

One if by land, two if by sea

For those unsettled by the risks of a defensive posture, an Israeli preemptive strike is not a bad idea.

In "The Imperative to Use Force Against Iranian Nuclearization," a paper he wrote last December, Efraim Inbar of Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies makes the case that Israel can only deter Teheran if the threat of severe Israeli military action is credible.

"A clear ultimatum that includes an unequivocal threat to use force might be enough to convince the Iranians to freeze their nuclear program and wait for better times to complete it," he writes.

It has been stated many times that an Israeli air strike on Iran would be much more complicated than the successful bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 - not least of all because Iran has scattered its facilities across dozens of sites to prevent a repeat of Operation Opera. As Inbar notes, however, such a mission would merely be difficult, not impossible.

[Rasputin]

"Many experts exaggerate the difficulties in dealing a severe military blow to the Iranian nuclear program," he writes. "While it is probably true that intelligence services cannot provide military planners with an exact and comprehensive picture of the locations of all Iranian nuclear installations, what we know seems to be enough to allow the destruction of a large part of the country's nuclear program. [And] partial destruction would be enough to cripple Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb in the near future."

Much of the pessimism over preemption in the case of Iran is predicated on the incompatibility of the Osirak model: an aerial assault by F-16 fighter bombers. While the extended-range F-16Is that Israel recently acquired are capable of reaching Iran, they would need to refuel during flight in order to return home again. More problematic, they would need to violate the strict no-fly zones over Iraq - meaning at least tacit approval from the United States, which would not be able to plausibly deny its involvement in Israel's massive strike on the Islamic Republic.

Fortunately, Israel has capabilities other than its aerial ones. Even before the newest, long-range Dolphin-class submarines arrive from Germany in the next few years, the three Dolphins already in operation with the Israel Navy are able to launch nuclear-tipped Popeye Turbo cruise missiles, according to foreign reports.

Since the distance from Israel to Iran is far greater by sea than it is by air, Israel would need submarine bases at the end of the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean in order for the Dolphins to pull within range of their targets. As luck would have it, Israel has just such bases - according to foreign reports - in the Dahlak Archipelago, off the coast of Eritrea; and off the coast of either India, with which Israel has a flowering military alliance, or Sri Lanka, whose ties with Israel have grown quietly over the past several years. It was off the coast of Sri Lanka that Israel successfully tested - again, according to foreign reports - a submarinelaunched cruise missile in 2000.

The third Israeli nuclear option, and the one that is least talked about, is the easiest one to deliver: the Jericho missile. In development for more than 40 years, its latest variant is believed by foreign analysts to possess a range well beyond Iran. By some estimates, Israel has several hundred of the Jerichos in protected bunkers and ready for launch, with at least 50 of them carrying nuclear warheads.

"Putting aside the moral questions surrounding such a strike," says Shoval, "there is a significant possibility that doing this would destroy Israel economically, because of the international sanctions that would in all likelihood be placed on us. Israel could actually be cast out of the community of nations."

That's why some would prefer to see Israel's silent warriors in action. Special forces, operating covertly, could conceivably sabotage a few of Iran's key nuclear facilities. After the storied rescue raid on Entebbe in 1976, the assassination of Abu Jihad in Tunis in 1988, and considering reports of Israeli covert operations in Iraq during the first Gulf War, that's not the stuff of fantasy.

"There is a capability to act quietly," confirms Amiram Levine, who participated in the Entebbe raid and went on to command Sayeret Matkal, the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit. "It is definitely possible. Contrary to what some say, Iran is not beyond our reach... I've seen things more complicated than this."

Levine also served as deputy director of the Mossad in the late 1990s, but before that he was tasked with designing and overseeing the planned assassination of Saddam Hussein in November 1992.

Dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities is a complicated issue, to be sure. Asked whether it is within Israel's power to score a victory on this front like in earlier cases, Levine says, "Everything is possible. But the question is whether it's worthwhile."

An operation that would only partially destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, delaying its weapons capability, could be the best compromise for Israel, Levine adds.

"Let's say we could take certain steps that would delay the development by five or 10 years. I think we should do them," he says, "because in the meantime, there can be changes in Iran. In our time, brutal wars achieve very little. It's preferable today to work quietly and to help the regime leave."

So long Ahmadinejad

Actively pursuing regime change in Iran is not only preferable, "it is the only possible solution," advises Raymond Tanter, of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee. Tanter, a former researcher at the vaunted Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who has held various positions in the White House and the Pentagon, believes America and the West are missing a tremendous opportunity by failing to support the groups that provide the strongest opposition to the Iranian regime.

"Why is it that Iran has several proxies against Israel and the West, in the form of Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, but the US has no proxies against Iran?" he asks rhetorically.

There are dozens of dissidents and would-be reformers who are trying to overthrow the "mullahcracy" in Teheran. Some are Marxists and Socialists, but many are sincerely devoted to democracy. Among them is Aryo B. Pirouznia, head of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, who advocates a secular, democratic, decentralized government and a free market economy for Iran - and a peaceful posture vis- -vis Israel.

"I can understand the Israeli point of view. This regime is dangerous with a nuclear bomb, it really is," says Pirouznia, who fled from Iran to France and then to the United States during the Islamic Revolution. At the same time, he notes that most Iranians do not share the anti-Semitic fervor of their president.

"This generation has not really bought into the regime's propaganda against the Jews," Pirouznia says, adding, "There are 14 million people in the capital. But whenever the regime wants to have a rally against Israel, they have to bus people in."

That's just one sign, he says, that "this is a regime that has reached its limit. It is dead ideologically. Now, everything the clerics try to keep out is a click away on the Internet. Satellite TV is killing these guys."

"The regime, no matter what it says, is very shaky," claims Assad Homayoun, who served in the Iranian Embassy in Washington for 12 years until the Revolution, and now works to support the Iranian pro-secular, pro-democracy dissident movement through the Azadegan Foundation.

"The people are very unhappy because the regime has brought only unemployment, inflation, drug addiction, torture and repression. They have destroyed Iran's economy. People also understand that the regime is taking Iran to the brink of destruction, that it wants nuclear weapons just so it can consolidate its power."

As tightly controlled as Iran's media are - the government dictates television and radio coverage and filters Internet content to its liking - it is difficult to gauge just how deep the anti-regime sentiment runs inside the Islamic Republic. But Homayoun's thousands of contacts in Iran give him hope that a popular uprising truly is achievable.
"I strongly believe that we can change Iran for the better," he says. "Iran changed within a few days after the shah. Maybe it will change in a few days again.

"Don't underestimate the people of Iran," Homayoun insists. "They are ready to rise."

Even if they are ready, though, it could take a long time for the people of Iran to rise. Kenneth Timmerman, director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, believes an organized campaign of non-violent conflict could topple the government - but the optimistic activist estimates that it could take several hundred million dollars and up to 18 months. By that time, Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the mullahs could already be in control of nuclear warheads.

"The question Israel has to ask," says Louis Rene Beres, chairman of Project Daniel, which submitted a report to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon on the strategic threat from Iran, "is whether the fallout of any action it could take would be greater than any of the dangers of not acting. And what can compare with the cost of doing nothing?"

Prologue: Arnon's final mission

Are all these options crazy? Should Israel reject them, there would remain an alternative that is crazier still: ensuring that the ayatollahs stay in power.

In The Chosen One, Arnon, the commander of the special forces team invading Iran, has two missions.

The first is to enlist the anti-regime rebels in Israel's attempt to undermine Iran's nuclear program; the second, if that mission fails, is to stop the coup.

"Because if the coup succeeds," Shoval explains, "and the ayatollahs know that the rebels will reach their bunker within hours, we're done for. I mean, as long as the current regime does not feel that its back is to the wall, they probably won't use their nukes. But if it does feel that its back is to the wall... There's not a single psychologist in the world who can tell you with certainty that they wouldn't choose to die as 'martyrs' who destroyed the Zionists."

As topsy turvy as it seems, it's just another of the myriad possible outcomes of a nuclear showdown between Israel and Iran - although the true resolution of this conflict may yet turn out to be even stranger than fiction.

[Rasputin]