Iran is readying for war?

The recent speech by Ali Khamenei [mentioned today only in one other place] seems reason for serious concern about Iran's reaction to the embargo.  Khamenei is suggesting that they are in the last days, when the twelfth Imam is supposed to return and usher in the Final Judgment.  The speech seems to be an attempt to prepare the Iranian people for war.
This kind of vision about the times was clearly implied in the language of Ruhollah Khomeini when he was calling for a movement against the Shah in 1979.  And Khomeini himself was sometimes spoken of (especially by his students) as "the Imam", a term that in that context vaguely implied that he was the long awaited Mahdi/12th Imam.  The ambiguity was deliberate.
Khamenei's  speech is a sign of a serious attempt to muster the Iranian people for a sacrificial war comparable to that  Iran was forced to fight the army of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.  So it is reason to worry.  Iran is being seriously boxed in, and so the regime could take measures that could lead the country and the region into war.  
What I wonder is how this rhetoric can sell in today's Iran.  Khameini well knows how unpopular he and his clerical administration is.  He is not crazy, and this administration is  much more savvy than we sometimes take them to be.
We can all regard the many signs of instability and hatred in the world, of which this is one, as reason to hope that the world leaders will demonstrate restraint and wisdom.

An intriguing letter of congratulations from Iran

Below is a statement I received today broadly distributed from Dr. ... , a former official of the the Iranian government under the "progressive" Prime Minister Muhammad Khatami.  Dr. ...  is notable for his efforts to create relations between Muslim and Christian theologians through an institute which he founded and directs in Tehran.  He is also notable for his involvement in the demonstrations against the government of Iran during the 2009 demonstrations, and for the abuse he clearly suffered when he was imprisoned for it.  He went into prison a portly short man and came out many months later evidently 100 pounds lighter.  The time spent in custody and the lost weight clearly discounted the statements of loyalty he made when he was finally released.  Before his ordeal he paid a visit to Washington University in St Louis as well as to Covenant Seminary, whose faculty had visited him in Tehran some months before, so he has friends here who have followed his career and taken note of the abuse he has evidently suffered at the hands of his own government, dominated as it is by a kabal of less progressive Shiite theologians.

Now he is resurfacing as the head of his Institute and making a statement of great interest because it seems to depart from the usual rhetoric of the Islamic Republic.  Here, in his statement of congratulations to Christians in their time of celebration, is a condemnation of dictatorship and even a call for the Islamic regimes of the world to allow non-Muslims to practice their faiths.

The Institute ... is honored to compliment New Year to you and your colleagues. Coincidence of New Year and birthday of Christ shows that religion is the most powerful factor in human life, which has been abused either it is able to solve huge problems of humanity. so that we invite all religions to note common subjects and make dialogue about them, to solve man's problems also to achieve the spirituality. The biggest event of world in the last year, was fall of dictators in Muslim's countries.  Spirit of the struggle against dictatorship was Islam-willing and once again it confirmed the importance of religion in human life. we, in our turn, request of new leaders and authorities in Islamic countries to accept actual share of other religions and their faithfuls, grant them their full rights of citizenship so that all religions will be able to expand intellectuality and theism in the world, to replace peace instead of current violence.  Accept good wishes of my colleagues and me, in the Institute … for New Year. [signed] ... [from] Iran- Tehran

Dr ... is proposing that the "new leaders and authorities in Islamic countries accept ... other religions and their faithfuls [followings], [and] grant them their full rights of citizenship ...."  This plea for tolerance of other religious groups can hardly be other than a challenge to his own government, which famously cannot bear dissent or unauthorized religious practice.  Buried in his congratulations to those of us in the Western world -- I'm sure it went out to his whole address list -- is a  veiled critique of his own political context, one that, as he says, has "abused" religion.  I hope he can be safe in such a place; Der ...  knows by experience how painful it can be to those who embarrass a dictatorial regime.    

Another gas field discovered in Iran

The Iranians have discovered another large gas field -- they claim 1.4 trillion cubic meters of reserves -- in their Caspian Sea waters.  They already have the largest combination of oil and gas reserves in the world.  The significance of their discovery will lie in what they can make of it.

In any case, the discovery underlies the special difficulties the western world, especially the United States, of course, has in dealing with the Iranian government.  Even though roguish in policy it claims sovereignty over one of the most richly endowed territories on the earth.
Here is the TehranTimes report:

Iran envisages $50b investment to explore oil, gas fields in Caspian Sea 
Iranian oil ministry has envisaged investing up to $50 billion to explore oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea, the Mehr news agency quoted a member of parliament as saying on Friday. “In a recent meeting with the oil minister, he elaborately explained on plans to explore oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea,” Ali-Asghar Yousefnejad stated. Iran announced on December 11 it has discovered a large gas field in the Caspian Sea with at least 50 trillion cubic feet (some 1.4 trillion cubic meters) of reserves.
 The field, in waters 700 meters deep, lies wholly within Iran’s territorial waters, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi explained.  He added excluding this new discovery Iran has 11 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves in the Caspian Sea. 

[For more, click on the title above.]

Iranian Plot or another Lackawanna Misfire?

The behavior of the Iranians has been so bizarre over the years that scarcely anything that that regime did would surprise, but there is reason to wonder about this new claim that they had hatched a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the United States.  The central figure in this plot turns out to be “more a stumbling opportunist than a calculating killer” [NYTimes today; click on the title for a link].

The United States has a huge system of surveillance that costs billions of dollars, but for all they do – and they have to be good at what they do – they have been unable to claim many major discoveries.  Not to denigrate this history, because most of us agree that such a system is necessary in this complex world.  But the man they have accused of plotting to kill a Saudi diplomat?  If today’s paper is to be believed, this man can hardly be up to the task that he is accused of.  This guy has “left a string of failed businesses and angry creditors in his wake, and an embittered ex-wife who sought a protective order against him. … [he is] perennially disheveled, …and hopelessly disorganized.”

It is hard not to think back to the accusations against the so-called Lackawanna Six, who were shadowed for over a year because they had once been involved in a training camp in Afghanistan; as it happened no evidence of seditious activity was ever found against them.  They were however accused when one of them flew to Yemen and announced in a telegram to his friends that he was getting married.  To the intelligence community the word “wedding” in the telegram meant he was about to commit a suicide attack.  After a national alert the government quietly dropped all charges:  It turned out he did get married after all.  Suicide?  Well, it depends on what you think about marriage [!].

So now we have a 56 year old loser to accuse of a complex potentially heinous crime.  Lets hope it turns out better this time.  


Addenda on what others say:

How strong is the case against Iran plot suspect?
Jeffrey Toobin 10/14/11
==========
Wagging the Dog with Iran’s Maxwell Smart
by Juan Cole 10/13/2011 
================

*Unanswered questions over the alleged Iranian assassination plot*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/12/unanswered-questions-iranian-ass
assination-plot?newsfeed=true
================
*Iran 'plot' raises unanswered questions*

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15280746

A tribute to Ehsan Yarshater

A great tribute to Ehsan Yarshater has appeared in the New York Times today. It is refreshing to see that a popular news source would celebrate the life-absorbing project of a serious and dedicated scholar. Patricia Cohen, the author, has recognized not only the significance of Yarshater’s project – to produce a comprehensive Encyclopedia of Iran – but also the example that he provides of what a life of scholarly commitment consists of. I have never met Yarshater but I have been aware of his work, and have already been mining the Encyclopedia for nuggets available nowhere else. It is worth remembering that for Yarshater “Iran” can include a wide swath of territory, depending on the time, as Persians have had an influence on affairs in virtually all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Ganges and from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean. This is truly a grand project.
In some university settings professors are obliged to think primarily about getting published early and often in order to gain tenure, a practice that tends to force the grand projects into a distant future. Yarshater has demonstrated that a major enterprise like his, spanning many years, can bring forth a distinctive scholarly resource that will be appreciated for decades. Thanks to the work of Ms. Cohen we are reminded that a few great visionaries in the scholarly world still exist. RLC

New York Times August 12, 2011
A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran
By PATRICIA COHEN
Ralph Ellison wrote for 40 years without finishing his novel “Juneteenth.” Antoni Gaudí labored 43 years on the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona, but construction continues today. And in the annals of grand quixotica, Ehsan Yarshater also deserves a prominent chapter.
At 53, he embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. At 75, he started looking for a successor. He didn’t find one so he kept going himself. Now he’s 91. He’s up to “K.”
“My mission is to finish the encyclopedia,” he said recently from his office at Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies. He knows he won’t be able to do it personally, especially since the task keeps expanding as progress is made. There are topics to be added and entries to be updated. So Mr. Yarshater has tried to make sure the work will continue by establishing a private foundation with a $12 million endowment and finally choosing three scholars to replace him as general editor.
The sheer ambition of Mr. Yarshater’s vision is daunting. With money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia.
“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, which briefly summarizes existing knowledge, Mr. Yarshater’s work, Encyclopedia Iranica, is producing original scholarship. “Most of the articles require research,” said Mr. Banuazizi, because they are topics no one has studied in much depth.
Mr. Yarshater has raised the bar further. “Our aim is that for each subject,” he said, “we should find the best person in the entire world.” With that in mind, he has been searching two and a half years for an expert to write about Sirjan and Rafsanjan, townships in the south of Iran.
Mr. Yarshater has not been back to Iran in 32 years, ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and established an Islamic republic in 1979. “The encyclopedia’s impartiality does not please the current Persian government,” Mr. Yarshater said in a low, breathy voice. A troublesome tremor that started in his hand several years ago has moved to his knees and vocal cords, slowing him down and compelling him to use an assistant. But otherwise he feels healthy. “My immune system is excellent,” he boasted.
For years Mr. Yarshater’s routine was to work late into the night, coming home only when his wife walked down the hallway from their apartment to the Iranian center to fetch him. “I don’t know many wives who would tolerate that,” he said appreciatively. (She died in 1999; the couple had no children.)
“I’ve seen him work 12 hours without a break,” said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, who has known Mr. Yarshater for more than 40 years. He remembers a visit when Mr. Yarshater stayed up until 3 a.m. editing. Three hours later, he was in the shower, getting ready to return to work.
Mr. Yarshater expects others to have equal enthusiasm for the task. It took him 17 years to choose his replacements, rejecting one potential successor when he concluded that the man was “too concerned about the number of holidays he could take and the number of hours he would work.”
Now Mr. Yarshater works only until 9 p.m., staying long after his colleagues have turned off their lights. When he returns home, he indulges in his latest hobby: learning Russian.
The 1,480 contributors from around the world who, so far, have composed 6,500 entries are familiar with Mr. Yarshater’s relentlessness. “By hook or by crook, he gets you to do what he wants you to do,” Mr. Karimi-Hakkak said. (Eight hundred entries out of alphabetical order are posted in an online version.)
. . .
[For a link to the source article click on the title above.]

Iranian government thugs beat a famous woman scholar, who collapsed of heart attack

Haleh Sahabi's death was not accidental but deliberate, by a regime that has been reduced to showing its true character. The story of her death as she mourns the death of her father is told by Hamed Dabashi, Al Jazeera, June 3, 2011.

Haleh Sahabi: Our Antigone in Tehran: Haleh Sahabi defied human law to defend moral, divine law; her life writing a heroic legend of the future. AlJazeera [6/3/11]
Haleh Sahabi, 54, was a distinguished Quranic hermeneutician, a religious comparatist, a women's rights scholar, and a committed activist to the cause of her people's civil liberties. Haleh Sahabi was sentenced to a two-year prison term after she had joined a rally in front of the Iranian parliament in the aftermath of the contested presidential election of 2009.

While serving her term in jail, Haleh Sahabi was informed of her father's impending death. He was the prominent Iranian dissident Ezzatollah Sahabi (1930-2011), a revered democracy activist, known and admired for his mild manner, open-minded generosity of spirit, a liberal demeanor, and a commitment to non-violent activism on a religious-nationalist platform for over half a century.

Haleh Sahabi was briefly allowed out of prison to be present for the final days of her father's life. Ezzatollah died, at the age of 81 on May 31, 2011. Millions of Iranians in and out of their homeland were saddened by his death, deeply grateful for his moderate and caring positions, even those who did not agree with him.

His funeral began on the following day, June 1, under tight security control, and - according to a number of reliable eyewitness accounts- including those of Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and Ahmad Sadr Haj Seyyed Javadi, an aging opposition politician - a band of organised plainclothes security forces began to disrupt the funeral, ridiculing and humiliating the attendants, and moved to snatch the body of the deceased from those who were carrying it for a proper burial.

Haleh Sahabi, leading the funeral, tried to prevent the disruption, while holding on to a picture of her father. The picture was violently taken away from her by a security agent and she was hit on her side. She fell to the ground in the scuffle and soon after died of a cardiac arrest.

The International campaign for Human Rights in Iran holds the plainclothes security forces responsible for Haleh Sahabi's death, and has called for an official investigation. "The shameful actions of government thugs in this incident reveal a deep contempt for traditions that belong to all Iranians, and they have resulted in a tragedy," said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesperson for the campaign. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, has declared Haleh Sahabi's death,"intentional murder".

[Click on the title for the whole article]

The Arab Contagion in Iran

Anymore it is no surprise to hear that the Iranian government has brutalized its own people; it's only where it has taken place this time that surprises -- or rather among whom. The Arabs of Khuzestan, a minority with historically little influence on public affairs, have been demonstrating for more rights. The contagion has spread even to this group of Arabs. And again Shirin Ebadi is risking her well being by revealing, again, how brutal the Ahmadinejad regime can be.

Here is what Radio Free Europe says:

April 19, 2011
Iran's Nobel Laureate Ebadi Warns Of Unrest Among Ethnic Arabs In Iran
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has warned the United Nations of the possible spread of unrest in Iran's Khuzestan Province, home to most of the country's ethnic Arab minority.

Ebadi sent a letter to UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay in which she describes a deadly crackdown by Iranian security forces last week on a peaceful protest in Khuzestan's capital, Ahvaz.

The April 15 protest, which some dubbed "Ahvaz Day of Rage," was aimed at protesting what participants say is discrimination and injustice against ethnic Arabs, who make up about 3 percent of Iran's population.

The event was reportedly planned with the help of social media sites, including Facebook, by political groups and young people both inside and outside the country who are said to have been inspired by popular uprisings in Arab countries.

Iranian officials have praised street demonstrations across the Arab world as an "Islamic awakening" but themselves have used force against Iranian protesters who have taken to the streets to demonstrate for democracy and human rights.

Deaths, Injuries, And Arrests

Force was also Iranian authorities' response to the April 15 protest in Ahvaz.

In her letter, Ebadi says that at least 12 people were killed in the clashes, 20 others were injured, and dozens were arrested.

Human rights activists told RFE/RL they have received reports that there were more than 150 arrests, including a number of intellectuals, artists, and women's rights activists. They said the province has been turned into "a military base" by security forces who have warned activists not to speak to the media.

[For the rest, click on the title above.]
===========
To the above Sami wrote the following:
I was impressed with how Shirin Ebadi has, at great risk to her own
person, recently spoken out on the Iranian government's oppression
toward ethnic minorities. Prior to this, I had been under the mistaken
assumption that Ebadi was inclined to avoid adopting any position on
especially sensitive topics such as this, which the Iranian government
probably characterizes as falling under the rubric of ‘national
security’. Maybe even she, as courageous and outspoken as she is, had
to be extremely careful about the statements she made on certain
issues. I developed this opinion after attending an event in April 2007
at Saint Louis University, where Ms. Ebadi was invited to speak. In her
(translated) speech, she was very critical of the Iranian government’s
restrictive domestic policies towards women, but at the same time she
was also defensive of her country's foreign policy, particularly its
ambitions to develop an independent nuclear energy capacity and
maintain its role as a major power within the region.

While denouncing U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran, she questioned why
her country was considered a state-sponsor of terrorism when it was
U.S.-backed states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan which had supported
the Taliban while Iran had fiercely opposed them in the 1990s. The
convenience of this overly simplistic argument made me wonder whether
she was trying to balance her criticism of the Iranian government’s
internal policies by defending its international positions or if she
really did have a different interpretation than most of us have of
Iran's support for militant proxies like Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah
in Lebanon, and the Mahdi Army in Iraq. This seemed a bit odd (to me,
anyway).

When it was time for the audience to submit written questions, I'd
hoped to ask a fairly simple question about her stance on the
persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Iran (apart from
women's rights in general). From the enthusiasm of the audience in
attendance (many members of the local Iranian community, along with
professors and students from SLU and other local colleges), I could
tell there were probably more questions than she could possibly answer
that day but I was also somewhat disappointed by the quality of the
questions that were asked. The focus seemed to be on the person and not
so much on the issues that she had come to talk about. Could it be that
the more serious questions had been deliberately avoided? Or maybe this
particular audience was not interested in the 'boring' stuff I wanted
to hear.

Anyway, I'm glad to learn that I was wrong to have based my assessment
of Ebadi on what I didn't hear that afternoon. As in the past, she's
now acting as the moral conscience of the Iranian nation to make
Iranians and others around the world aware of how minorities are being
repressed in Khuzestan. The issue of women's rights is not a slight
one, and it needs to be forcefully addressed from within by able and
articulate Iranians like Ebadi. However, the perpetration of state
violence against ethnic and religious minorities (Arabs, Kurds,
Baluchis, Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims among others) constitute a more
immediate violation of fundamental human rights that demands to be
condemned by all. It's truly inspiring to see Shirin Ebadi use her
international prominence to take a stand for the rights of all
Iranians. I must say it is also quite reassuring to have a question
(finally) answered in this way.

Moderate comments for this blog:
http://www.blogger.com/comment-pending.g?blogID=8473844

Posted by Sami to Vital Concerns for the World at 7:56 PM
====

One source: "It's over" in Iran. Is it over for good?

Stephen Kinzer of Global Post reports [5/17/2010] that the mood in Iran is that the popular revolt against the government has lost steam and may be "over" as one person told him. Click on the title above for the original article, but here are some of the things that people told him when he went to Iran:

“All the interesting people I know are in jail,”

“I am very reluctant to put you in touch with people,” ...

“I am not worried about you at all; it is people who visit you that may be put in jeopardy. I am not being paranoid, it is just that the place has become very unpredictable. I cannot figure out the logic of who they pick up and why.”

“We don't like the government, but we cannot change it,” ... “They punish us when we protest. People are afraid.”

“Thirty-five percent of Iranians like this government and Ahmadinejad, ... “Twenty-five percent are against. The rest don't care."

“We can't do anything,” ... “If we do something, the police come and put us in jail. It is very tight here.”

“There are so many limitations on us — on our dress, our relations with boyfriends, our chances to have fun together,” ... . “We want to take off our head scarves, but it's not possible. All we can do is live and stay quiet.”

“I voted, but I don't believe my vote was counted,” ... “Many who voted last time won't vote next time. I'm one of them.”

“Intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought nothing but death and suffering,” ... “We don't want that. Above all, we want to preserve peace in our country. We would rather live under a regime we don't like than one that is placed in power by foreigners.”

“What worries us is Pakistan,” ... “We don't have anything like the Taliban or Al Qaeda in Iran. Crazy fanatics are not going to take power here, but in Pakistan it could happen any day. We can't understand why the Americans allowed Pakistan to become a nuclear power but are so upset about Iran.”

“Nobody can prevent us from having democracy in our country,” .... “It is our wish and our right. But it will take time. You cannot change a very strong government in a few months.”

These statements reflect the diverse views of people Kinzer met by chance, but they reveal some of the sentiments in place now after a year of demonstrations and brutal government crackdowns. As Kinzer notes, government brutality pays, as it has for generations past. That of course says nothing about the human yearnings for something more, something more authentically just. So the world waits . . .

Some of us perversely insist that it will indeed come. . . .

Slackman on Montazeri's challenge to the Iranian government

NYTimes Michael Slackman’s article on Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri indicates again how conflicted, and contradictory the actual practice of administration in Iran has turned out to be. He was one of the original promoters of the concept of “Velayat-e Faqih,” the juristic guardianship, the concept that underlies Iran’s current theocracy, and was, in fact, at one time the teacher of the current leading “faqih,” Ali Khameini – now addressed as “ayatollah” although he never earned such a high level of scholarly achievement. Slackman says that Ayatollah Montazeri has argued for years that even in a religious state legitimacy comes from the people.

“The government will not achieve legitimacy without the support of the people, and as the necessary and obligatory condition for the legitimacy of the ruler is his popularity and the people’s satisfaction with him,”

Once the designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini until he began to criticize Khomeini’s practice in 1988, he is now a respected voice of opposition to the current regime. “He criticizes this regime purely from a religious point of view, and this is very hurtful. The regime wants to say, ‘If I am not democratic enough that doesn’t matter, I am Islamic.’ He says it is not an Islamic government.” (Mehdi Khalaji).

He has for years challenged the abuses of power in Iran. Even in the time of Khomeini, “He mocked Ayatollah Khomeini’s decision to issue a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” saying, “People in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people.” It was in January, 1988, that Montazeri's objections to a wave of executions of political prisoners and his recoomendations to the leadership that Iran should export the revolution by example, not by violence. For that he was forced to leave government.

He has not, however, ceased to criticize the government, and now his criticisms of the Khameini regime have become exceedingly dangerous to it. A recent statement:

“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate.”

He says that the Islamic Republic of Iran is neither Islamic, nor a republic, and the supreme leader has lost his legitimacy.

Dangerous words for a regime now believed guilty of stealing an election and then brutally crushing the thousands of citizens who objected to it.

Idealism vs reality in Central Asian transport arrangements

Deirdre Tynan reports on Eurasia Insight that the Central Asian route of supply for the American war project in Afghanistan isn't working as planned. Welcome to the real world of Central Asia. What's most interesting in the article is the statement that the best route of supply is through Iran. Yes, that much has been true all along. Iran is the best route of access into Afghanistan (along with Pakistan) but because the Iranian government (lets not say the Iranians) is so obnoxious. RLC [Click on the title for a link to the source.]

Eurasia Insight:
CENTRAL ASIA: NORTHERN SUPPLY NETWORK FOR AFGHANISTAN HITS SNAGS
Deirdre Tynan: 7/23/09

The Northern Distribution Network, an American-assembled logistical pipeline designed to ease and expand the flow of supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan, is off to a lackluster start.

The land routes for the delivery of non-military goods from Europe to Afghanistan via Central Asia provided just over 250 containers between June 5 and July 14. That total is far short of the number originally envisioned by military planners. During a Senate hearing in March, Gen. Duncan McNabb, the head of TRANSCOM, the military's transport wing, predicted that the NDN would transport "hundreds of containers" per day.

...

In June and July, according to publicly available data, only seven containers a day on average were arriving in Afghanistan via the NDN. A commercial source, speaking on condition of anonymity, characterized the performance as "ridiculous." Railway experts have also questioned whether the Uzbek rail route, which crosses the Afghan border at Termez-Hairaton, is capable of handling the amount of traffic envisioned by the US military and its allies.

David Brice, an international rail consultant who made recommendations on upgrading the capacity of Hairatan two years ago, said the depot remains under-equipped to deal with a large volume of traffic. "There will certainly be a capacity problem in the Termez-Hairatan section, which two years ago was handling its full capacity of three or four trains daily without the US traffic," Brice said.

... . "The ideal route for this traffic would be deep sea via Bandar Abbas and the new Iranian rail line being built from Sangan to Herat. It’s a massive problem, though, due to the current political tension between the United States and Iran."

... Given the complexities of overland operations, an air-transit deal for arms and military equipment, struck by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow in early July, appears to be an important breakthrough. However, America's partners in the region say similar arrangements with the United States have not been negotiated.

Daniyar Mukataev, a spokesman for the Kazakh Ministry of Transport and Communications said, "There are no agreements or talks between Kazakhstan and the United States on the transit of military cargoes through the territory of Kazakhstan. ...

Some regional observers suggest the United States may have underestimated the complexities, both political and logistical, of establishing the NDN. "We have to realize that this network implies crossing of the borders of several states and every transit country is looking out for its own material interests," said Andrei Grozin, the director of the Central Asia Department at the CIS Institute in Moscow.

....Central Asian leaders publicly express concern about the security threats originating from Afghanistan, but, although they don't say so openly, the NDN is also seen as a lucrative opportunity, Grozin said. "The United States understands that for solving its geopolitical and other problems, it has to pay," he added.

But many experts are asking: is Washington overpaying? Several indicators would seem to suggest that the Pentagon's tendency to throw money at the problem is not producing desired results. Not only is the rail network not delivering as expected, financially speaking it's shaping up as something of a boondoggle.

Russian and Uzbek companies are reorganizing their structures to take maximum advantage of the Pentagon's commercial approach to the NDN. In a move designed to get the network up and running quickly, defense officials eased tender rules to allow for lucrative contracts to be granted with no competitive oversight. That has seemed to stimulate a feeding frenzy among regional transport entities.

...

Editor's Note: Deirdre Tynan is a freelance journalist who specializes in Central Asian affairs.

Iran's Embarrassing Abuse of Its Own: Mullah Abtahi

Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal today provides “before and after” pictures of Muhammad Ali Abtahi that seem to reveal how much weight Abtahi has lost in prison. Abtahi holds the rank of Khojat ul Islam, second only to the rank of Ayatullah, and was a Vice President of Iran under former President of Iran Mohammad Khatami. Since being out of office Abtahi himself has been a familiar figure, as he blogged about affairs in Iran. As he is well connected his stories of conversations among the religious elite in Iran provide a glimpse of what that secluded world is like.

Owing to his involvement in the demonstrations against the regime he has been detained in an Iranian prison for nearly two months. He is now the poster boy for the regime’s claim that the election on June 12 was not rigged. His statement in court claims that the ring leaders of the opposition had been planning their activities for years Of course the regime’s claim that this is Abtahi’s personal statement is spurious. Who would suppose that after many weeks in prison and a loss of about a fifth of his weight Abtahi would come to this view on his own? Yes, he has lost more than 40 pounds. He is short and weighed at least 200 pounds when he visited us here in St Louis a couple years ago (a guest of Covenant Seminary, during which time he paid a visit to Washington University), so a loss of that much weight in so few days comes to about two or three pounds a day for over 20 days. Whatever they are doing to him includes starvation. Have a look at Fassihi’s photos and his report:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925705086800229.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

To conceal the truth Iran brutalizes and humiliates the family of its most famous victim

The actual results of the election in Iran is no longer the point in the struggle between the opposition and the government, owing to the behavior of the government. The response of the government has been [a] to deny any need for a serious recount [instead it offers to recount only a few of the precincts, and even then selectively], [b] to bully the public into submission, and [c] to claim that the whole affair was created by outsiders. Total denial.

Repressive regimes flaunt their lunacy. To make sure the Iranian government embarrassed its own claims to legitimacy it publicly dismantled all semblance of concern for its own citizenry by the way it treated the family of Neda Soltan. Neda's offense was to allow herself to be murdered by Iran's paramilitary Basij in front of the cameras of her friends -- and so to become the world-renown emblem of Iranian repression. The family was then forced to suffer further owing to Neda's "offense". Here is The Guardian's report on how the Iranian government treated Neda's family:


Neda Soltan's family 'forced out of home' by Iranian authorities

> The family were banned from mourning and funeral services were cancelled. "The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world."

> In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building. But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out.

> Since then, neighbors have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.

> A neighbor said her own family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, were were "in the area harassing people since Soltan's death." "We are trembling," another neighbor said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve."

> Another man said "Neda's family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here," he said. "The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That's ridiculous – if that's true why don't they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government."

> A shop keeper who knew her said, "She was a kind, innocent girl. She treated me well and I appreciated her behaviour. I was surprised when I found out that she was killed by the riot police. ... She has been sacrificed for the government's vote-rigging in the presidential election."

> The police did not hand the body back to her family. They buried it without the family knowing it.

> The government now accuses protesters of being the killers of Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia.

> Also, a pro-government newspaper has blamed the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring "thugs" to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.

[Click on the title for a link to the whole article.]

1953: What American’s don’t know and Iranians can’t forget.

Most Americans are proud of their “free press” and their history of great humanitarian achievements, but they are surprisingly ignorant of their own history – at least of the sordid activities of their government, some of them successfully veiled from their own “free press.” As a result, like every other people the Americans have a selective memory of the past. Currently there seems to be a return to stories of World War II, which is recalled as the last “good war” in which Americans participated. What we forget – or in fact, for most Americans, we never knew ‒ are some of the unseemly ventures of our government in other countries. One of those unseemly ventures was what the CIA did in 1953 in Iran: they overturned a duly elected government led by a very popular Prime Minister, Muhammed Mussadegh, by paying goons to create an appearance of public disorder so that Muhammad Reza Shah could be installed as an American client.

In fact, most of us had no idea; the act only became known many years later – at least to Americans; the Iranians came to know it very quickly, and were soon deeply resentful of it. [The tale is well told in Stephen Kinzer’s book, All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.] This affair has loomed in the Iranian public imagination ever since. It was a major factor in the massive revolt against the Shah in 1978 that eventually brought Khomeini to power. The Iranian people supposed that the Americans were behind the abuses – beatings, executions, intimidations, especially by the secret service agency known as SAVAK ‒ that became increasingly common in the 1970s. And the supposition was right, for indeed the Americans had trained SAVAK and funded the Iranian military that kept the Shah in power.

That memory, the sense that America messes with Iran’s internal affairs, is still alive. This is the reason why the Obama administration dares not take sides in the current struggle in Iran, for merely by expressing support for the opposition it will delegitimize it, turn it into ‒ again ‒ a seeming attempt of the American government to overturn a “duly elected” administration. Or at least “duly elected” as the Iranian administration wants everyone to believe but that many now doubt, judging from the demonstrations of outrage in at least the Iranian cities. And now the country’s highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, admits that the "votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of people eligible to cast ballots in those areas." [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/06/iran-independent-study-indicates-irregularities-in-election-results.html].

The government would like nothing better than to pin the opposition on American meddling. And accordingly the opposition most urgently desires to avoid any evidence of contamination by American support.

So the dance by all sides – Khameinei and the Iranian administration, the Mousavi-led opposition, the Americans, even the Europeans ‒ has been carefully calibrated in terms of that grotesque unseemly event of the past. As always, the past poisons the present, in this case a past that most Americans never knew and virtually all Iranians will never forget.

Private news on the Iranian regime's butchery of its own people

My colleague at Washington University in St Louis, Fatemeh Keshavarz, sends out periodical notes on the situation in Iran: WINDOW_ON_IRAN@ARTSCI.WUSTL.EDU. Her latest post, as of this morning, reveals how desperate the situation there is. On it a medical student describes "chaos" in the emergency room in the hospital where he works. Many people were brought in with wounds. Nine died. "Employees were crying till dawn". "The government moved dead bodies on backs of trucks before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded."

Fatemeh says that many people believe the bizarre suicide bombing at the tomb of Khomeini was staged by the government to discredit the opposition. "An unconfirmed report said the bombing was reported on the National TV minutes before it actually happened."

Contact Fatemeh to see her whole report. [I believe she wants her reports to be distributed, so would be glad to have your name on her mailing list. There is soon to be a blog also.]

An interview with Trend

The situation in Iran now seems beyond repair. I here reproduce an interchange I had with Tatyana Konyayeva, a Correspondent with TREND News Agency in Baku, only becuase so far it doesn't seem to be unduly out of date.

Q: Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, the chairman of the Votes Security Organization founded by presidential candidate Mir Hosseyn Musavi, stated that there is a need to establish the Justice Search Committee in order to conduct fair and transparent elections. How do you think, such a committee will affect the transparency of the future elections?

A: I know nothing about the committee so nothing I could say would reveal anything significant. The one impression I have, as you also must have, is that the Iranian administration wants the legitimacy of having won an election without actually having allowed a true election to take place. The administration's behavior reveals that they cannot bear to have the public reject them openly, so they are using violent means to contain the obvious outrage that permeates the society. They want to seem legitimate in "democratic" terms without being willing to subject themselves to an open electoral process. So I presume they would manipulate whatever agency was assigned to oversee the process. Through a private source I know that the announcement of the winner of the election was made before the vote counters had finished counting the votes in at least one place [from one of the vote counters].

>
Q: The Guardian Council announced the re-count of the ballots at some polling stations. In your opinion, whether the re-count of the ballots will guarantee the transparency of the elections, or nevertheless, the new presidential elections should be arranged?

A: What I said above reveals my opinion: this administration has been generally losing its legitimacy over time. Certain elements in the population are evidently in support of Ahmadenijad. But behind the whole system is a religious pretense that has undermined the general respect of the population for authentic religious faith. The religious "experts" in power have become excessively rich under this system and their abuses now resemble those of the super-rich westernized class allied with the shah in the 1970s, against which the Islamic revolution took place. They pretend to be good Muslims and to allow authentic belief but in fact they brutalize those who reject their faith and want to convert to another faith [for example, Christianity]. As you know, they even try to control ayatullahs who criticize them.

Modern Iran has a history of long periods of stability punctuated by massive public uprisings [early 1900s; 1970s], and if this regime does not relent it will eventually have to deal with a huge public explosion like that of 1978-1979. What should be very disconcerting to many of the mullahs is that among those who are now outraged are some of their own children and grandchildren.

A gas deal between Iran and Pakistan

According to AFP Iran and Pakistan have announced that they are about to sign an agreement to export gas to Pakistan. India was once to be part of the deal but they withdrew from talks about the deal last year. The report says, “The 900-kilometre (560-mile) pipeline is being built between Asalooyeh in southern Iran and Iranshahr near the border with Pakistan and will carry the gas from Iran's South Pars field.” It says that only 250 kilometers of pipeline was still to be constructed. The infrastructural mechanisms for integrating south Asia and Central Asia is proceeding apace, with large implications. Pakistan’s need for gas will soon be desperate. It will pass through Baluchistan, making a zone of dissidence that is already vital because of its own gas reserves all the most vitally important to the country of Pakistan.

Egregious criminality of the Iranian government

Today, 60 Minutes aired an interview with an Iranian who was imprisoned and tortured in Iran because he was photographed in a demonstration and his picture was placed on the cover of the Economist Magazine. Ahmad Batebi was one of what is believed to be thousands who are held in Iranian prisons for political reasons. Not only that, they torture their prisoners. And they make the process of execution as painful and prolonged as possible.
Batebi reports that when he was in prison they beat him on the feet and back with a cable and beat him on the testicles. When he fainted they slashed his skin and rubbed salt into his wounds.

Other forms of torture that were mentioned by 60 Minutes:
• Hanging by pulling the victims up slowly so their necks would not be broken but would be awake as they strangled to death.
• Partly burying people in the ground before they are stoned by rocks that are not too big so that the victim will die slowly.
The point seems in some cases to be to force confessions and in other cases to terrorize the populace from displaying any dissent.

Wherever such brutal practices take place they deserve the highest condemnation of the world. The claim to be acting on God's behalf, as the Iranian state avers, adds to the egregiousness of their criminality.

Stratfor's article on Iran's concerns about the Taliban

Stratfor has produced a good statement on the problems created by the US attempts to negotiate with “moderate Taliban.” I note, in the statements I have seen by Karzai, that he does not call the people he wants to deal with “moderate Taliban”; he refers to them as authentic Afghans who have some problems with the present situation and are for their own local reasons allied with the Taliban. They can be won over, he says. I’m not sure what real “moderate Taliban” will actually look like; it seems to be a term Americans have invented.

But, as Stratfor points out, the Iranians are not pleased by any overtures to the Taliban. The Iranians and the Taliban / Al Qaeda are more serious enemies than many Americans understand: Allied with the Taliban are Sunni Islamist organizations that believe it is their religious duty to kill Shias, and they have attacked an killed many in Pakistan in recent years. As Stratfor points out, the Taliban killed several Iranian diplomats and a journalist as well as many Hazara Shia in a romp through Mazar-e- Sharif in 1998.

So the Iranians are displeased by the news that Obama might make contact with “moderate Taliban”. At the same time the Saudis are delighted because for one thing their Wahhabi religious ideology is similar to the Taliban and anyway many Saudis have supported the Taliban for years, and for another thing the Saudis are frightened of the Iranians. Iran is a much bigger country and is just across the Persian Gulf. Moreover, the Saudis have a good sized Shia population that happens to be astride most of the Saudi oil fields. And the Shia in Arabia have been restive recently.

All this is a mere overview of affairs in this part of the world: layers of adversaries supported by other layers of adversaries, etc., each with its particular grudges. Another reason for worry is the ignorance of such subtleties that those in the West have who will make policy decisions. It has not been long since various notable politicians, Senators and Congressmen, were accusing Iran of supporting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Little did they know . . . .

China and Iran: $3.2 billion natural gas deal

LA Times is reporting this deal as if it were a surprise. It has been in the works for years. But it is important, not because it shows how ineffective economic sanctions are (what LATimes makes of the deal), but because it shows how many ways infrastructural investments are tying Eurasia more tightly together, much of it centering on China. Iran's saber-rattling to the west is pomposity and hubris; its deals with China, India and Pakistan to the east are investments for the future.

For those of us interested in Central Eurasia, this deal is yet one more sign of how strategic Central Asia is becoming. For those of us who would like to assess trends for the future in Eurasia infrastructural developments are a pretty good index of trends that are likely to hold up for a long time. RLC
[click on the title above for a link to the source article.]


Iran signs $3.2-billion natural gas deal with China

By Borzou Daragahi March 15, 2009
Reporting from Beirut –

Iran announced a $3.2-billion natural gas deal with China on Saturday, a move that underscored the difficulty of using economic sanctions to pressure Tehran to bow to Washington's demands on its nuclear program.

Iranian state television quoted a senior government official as saying the deal with a Chinese consortium, announced two days after the Obama administration renewed U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic, would eventually include an unnamed European country as a partner.

Under the three-year deal, China will help develop the South Pars field, a sprawling cavity beneath the Persian Gulf seabed that is part of what geologists describe as the world's largest natural gas reservoir.

Washington has routinely renewed embargoes on doing industrial-scale business with Iran since the 1990s, even barring foreign companies that do more than $10 million a year of business with the Islamic Republic from operating in the U.S.

Under Washington's pressure, the French energy giant Total has quietly scaled back plans to develop Iranian gas fields. But many companies still do business with Iran, especially from the rapidly expanding Asian economic and political powerhouses of India and China and in countries with few commercial ties to the U.S., such as Russia.

Iran says it supplies China with 14% of its oil and recently announced that it was signing a $1.3-billion deal for two methanol plants with the Danish firm Haldor Topsoe and a $260-million deal for a tire factory with Italy's Maire Tecnimont.

On Thursday, the Obama administration extended U.S. sanctions for another year, a move Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed as "childish." President Obama has called for talks with Tehran as a way of resolving a years-long dispute over the nature of Iran's nuclear energy program and its support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups opposed to Israel.

Some European officials, frustrated after years of attempts at dialogue with Iran, say that Obama must work harder to coordinate his policies with Moscow and Beijing.

"The big challenge will be to get the Russians and Chinese on board for tougher actions and sanctions once [the Americans] try to engage and fail," said a Western diplomat in Tehran, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Advocates of sanctions say they keep Tehran's ambitions in check and its leadership isolated by denying Iran revenue and technical expertise.

But Iranian officials say sanctions hurt mostly ordinary people while convincing all Iranians of the need to forgo Western partners in favor of cultivating their own technological advances. That includes Iran's controversial drive to master the enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb.

daragahi@latimes.com


Los Angeles Times

A better future for women in Iran?

Like all the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia Iran is a caldron of conflicting forces. These populations are young, almost half of them under the age of twenty. Among them there is a high and rising incidence of drug use and addiction. There are more evidences of despair and hopelessness in their fiction (someone recently returned tells me); more signs of repression against rights of conscience.
It's hard to characterize a country. That's why we watch technical and demographic trends: Modern means of communication and transport, natural resources being put to use, population trends -- these can be sources of change.
But we can never anticipate how things will change. Today's NYTimes article on women pressing for their rights in Iran (with a confusing photograph about women demonstrating against the Israeli attack on Gaza) belongs in the list of trends -- important as they may be -- that can be read in different ways. Whatever they are, the influence of modern education, television, telephones, etc. have a lot to do with making them happen.

The New York Times February 13, 2009

Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Rights
By NAZILA FATHI

. . . Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years.

And it is not just women from the wealthy, Westernized elites. The family court building in Vanak Square here is filled with women, like Ms. Qassemi, who are not privileged. Women from lower classes and even the religious are among those marching up and down the stairs to fight for divorces and custody of their children.

Increasing educational levels and the information revolution have contributed to creating a generation of women determined to gain more control over their lives, rights advocates say.

Confronted with new cultural and legal restrictions after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some young women turned to higher education as a way to get away from home, postpone marriage and earn social respect, advocates say. . . .

Today, more than 60 percent of university students are women, compared with just over 30 percent in 1982, . . .

Even for those women for whom college is not an option, the Internet and satellite television have opened windows into the lives of women in the West. “Satellite has shown an alternative way of being,” said Syma Sayah, a feminist involved in social work in Tehran. “Women see that it is possible to be treated equally with men.”

Another sign of changing attitudes is the increasing popularity of books, movies and documentaries that explore sex discrimination, rights advocates say.
[Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company]

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