The inevitable followup to Clinton's own timeline walk down, which was the inevitable followup to her walk down on "crippling sanctions." Keep in mind that France is probably the most hard line P5+1 country on Iran, and feast your eyes on the "strong sticks" that Obama is bringing to bear on the mullahs:

A United Nations resolution on new sanctions against Iran may not be ready until June and if a vote on it fails, European states could take unilateral measures instead, French and Finnish ministers said on Sunday. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France remained determined to get UN backing for sanctions targeting Iran's nuclear program, but indicated that the support of Russia and China among the five permanent Security Council members was some way off... "Before June I hope, but who am I to hope or decide," he said, pointing out that France had originally hoped to get a UN sanctions package prepared in February, when it was chairing the Security Council

You know what's weird? A few weeks ago when it seemed like China was unmovable - and that military action was the only option - a rush of articles and statements came out saying the exact opposite. The AFP headlined with "Chances good for China to yield on Iran sanctions: experts," suggesting that Beijing wouldn't risk isolation over Iran. Reuters found their own experts to say the same thing. Then a month later British officials also said the exact same thing. But here we are and here China is still blocking any kind of robust restrictions regime, just like they've always done.

The WH is desperately trying to pretend that Obama's super-keen "strong sticks" profundity was something other than empty bluster. So maybe carve out a trade exemption for China so they'll symbolically affirm a broader hard line policy? Nope. How about unilateral action against Western companies that do business with Iran? Nope. It turns out that biting sanctions are politically impossible and roundabout sanctions are pragmatically unworkable. Even if Iran couldn't use states like Brazil to avoid restrictions - and they certainly can - the US can't even stop itself from funding sanctions-busting US firms. How are we going to enforce an international regime?

Meanwhile the Iranian nuclear program continues to roll ahead, soon to be protected by an upgraded air defense system. You can tell that we're nearing the point of no return. The Iran experts who used to insist that the mullahs had neither the political will nor the technical means for weaponization are now saying that Iran can be contained. Even Brzezinski agrees, and if anyone's good at reading the mullahs it's the guy who lost Iran to political Islam. Some experts have even explained - at length - why an Iranian bomb would be a great idea. Very sophisticated!

But not to worry, because their Iran expert friends think that China's about to get on board an effective sanctions regime. Any day now.

References and related after the jump...

This is the second time in as many weeks that the State Department has, for reasons that are largely unfathomable, unilaterally taken an anti-Iran option off the table. Two Wednesdays ago Clinton told Al-Arabiya that military action wasn't even a consideration, which had the predictable effect of emboldening the mullahs. Now comes this announcement, which basically tells Tehran they don't have anything to fear from sanctions. Wonderful.

Remember during the election, when Obama's surrogates wouldn't shut up about "strong sticks and strong carrots"? The original liberal tagline was actually "real sticks and real carrots" but apparently "strong" focused better than "real" so that's what we got. Dennis Ross was even dispatched to reassure Jewish voters that the era of "weak sticks and weak carrots" was over. Then after the election Clinton went to the Hill and - trying to reassure Congresspeople who were nervous about Obama's appeasement - she explicitly promised to mobilize "crippling" international sanctions if outreach failed.

Nope:

The United States said on Thursday it does not aim to impose crippling sanctions on Iran but rather to pressure the Iranian government to change course on its nuclear program while protecting ordinary people. "It is not our intent to have crippling sanctions that have... a significant impact on the Iranian people," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "Our actual intent is... to find ways to pressure the government while protecting the people."

On the plus side, this is more honest than the last few months' of spin. Obama doesn't have the means to establish a robust international sanctions regime, even if he wanted to. The Iranians knew that and bragged about it. The pretense of credible sticks was meant for American audiences, the better to buy Obama breathing room for ever more engagement. Just because previous efforts had drawn humiliating responses didn't mean the approach was misguided. It was just that Iran's "unsettled political situation" was getting in the way!

But that only takes you so far. Eventually you need new excuses for why a crippling sanctions regime has failed to materialize. Giving up on the whole idea - that's certainly one excuse.

The other option was to continue unblinkingly asserting that Iran was still open for talks, no matter how many previous deadlines they had brazenly ignored. Again - remember "Obama says he wants progress with Iran by year's end?" If 2009 ended without a deal - the President intoned - then sanctions would be used "to ensure that Iran understands we are serious." Believable!

References and related after the jump...

Which part of the new "positive, constructive U.S.-Syrian relationship" involves having the US Secretary of State getting publicly mocked by grinning totalitarian thugs?

President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a bilateral deal to remove travel visas and attended a Muslim ceremony in the Syrian capital... "We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding, so we signed the agreement to cancel the visas," Assad said. "I find it strange that they (Americans) talk about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other," he added. Ahmadinejad told a joint news conference: "Clinton said we should maintain a distance. I say there is no distance between Iran and Syria." He added: "We have the same goals, same interests and same enemies."

Interesting bit about enemies at the end. If Khamenei had recently and officially emphasized that the US was an enemy of Iran, that would be even more troubling than Assad's sneering jokes about bad translations.

In any case - very disappointing. Sure Assad rebuffed Obama's craven obsequiousness - six high-level delegations to Syria, promises to restore relations, waivers for aircraft parts, deals worth billions in cash, and so on. And sure he's exporting jihadism across the Middle East, financing among others the AQI cretins trying to reignite the insurgency. And sure his interference in Iraq got so severe that the Iraqis appealed directly to the UN. And sure he just threatened to saturation bomb Israeli civilians. And sure he's reestablishing Syria's stranglehold on Lebanon, having forced Hariri to capitulate.. And sure he's extending his strategy of building multiple, redundant nuclear sites.

But I really thought he'd come around this time.

Guess not.

References and related after the jump...

Hmmm...

Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range. The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.

Depressing theory: Israel only revealed the fleet because it doesn't intend to use it on Iran. If an attack was in the works, the existence of the drones wouldn't be confirmed until they were done dropping ordnance on Natanz. Israel's new urban warfare weapons were unveiled during Cast Lead, and not in a formal setting.

Possible counter-theory: the US and the EU3 need to credibly raise the specter of an Israeli attack to get China and Russia on board the sanctions train, and this is aimed in that direction.

Depressing counter-counter-theory: China's never going to assent to a genuine and robust sanctions regime. Minus military action, Iran's going nuclear.

Should that happen, Israel is working on a few other drone projects as well:

Israel is increasingly worried about the threat of a nuclear, missile-equipped Iran. So the Israeli military is working on "a high-fly­ing, long-endurance unmanned in­frared sensor" that can tell the difference between "nuclear war­heads amid doz­ens of decoys sent to confound na­tional missile defenses," Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome reports. "If implemented, the Israeli program will mark the first use of an unmanned platform for [n]uclear warhead hunting."

The problem, of course, is that only a single missile has to get through for the result to be nuclear genocide. How lucky do you feel? How lucky do you think Netanyahu feels? Barack put the point of no return somewhere around the first half of 2010, and that was in the context of Iran's last generation of long-range missiles.

Then the P5+1 couldn't meet because the Chinese were too busy. Then they met but couldn't come to a consensus. Then Iran showed off their new lines of even more powerful domestically-produced offensive missiles.

So probably not all that lucky.

References:
* Israel unveils new drone fleet that can reach Iran [AP]
* Israel Developing Nuke-Hunting Drone [Wired Danger Room]
* Israel Says Iran Close to Nuclear Capability [VOA]
* World powers fail to agree in meeting on Iran [JTA]
* Clenched With Two New Offensive Missile Lines [IIFSC]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Israel
* Israeli Technology
* Iran

It'll be interesting to watch the guy who proved so critical to Iranian nuclearization...

The poor management of the crisis with Iran has to be attributed largely to [ElBaradei]. The Egyptian diplomat is responsible for his organization's placatory approach toward the Iranian nuclear program. For almost a decade, starting in 1992, the agency inspectors did not notice that Iran had a secret nuclear program that violated its international commitments. Even when the agency had the information, in 2002... ElBaradei ignored it and made every possible effort to undermine its reliability. He intervened repeatedly to distort his inspectors' reports on Iran's nuclear sites, and he made sure that the IAEA's periodic reports about Iran would be camouflaged in diplomatic gibberish. Time and again they repeated the phrase that "no proof was found" that Iran's nuclear program had military aspects, even though they were blatantly obvious. ElBaradei was opposed to sanctioning Iran, not to mention military action, and repeatedly attempted to conduct a dialogue with Tehran in order to reach a compromise.

... take control of Tehran's most powerful Arab rival. From a certain perspective it almost seems like the basis for a kind of de facto anti-Western alliance:

Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, is awaited in Cairo as police warn his supporters not to mark the homecoming of a would-be electoral challenger to President Hosni Mubarak. ElBaradei, who is expected to fly home on Friday, has repeatedly called for democratic change in Egypt since stepping down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in November. On the eve of his return, he reaffirmed his determination to "do everything I can for Egypt to advance toward democracy and economic and social progress."

When he wasn't busy denying Iranian weaponization - here he is calling highly enriched Iranian uranium "of little significance" - he was perennially promising to "pin down" deals with the mullahs. When his summits fell through, as they inevitably did, he delayed Western responses by asserting that Iran was still considering offers. And in the twilight of his term - when it was clear that Iran was intent on weaponization and that negotiations were a cover - he continued deriding even non-military solutions because sanctions "really don't resolve issues." From "no problem" to "no solution" in just a few years.

Though you know who really does merit close IAEA scrutiny, per this tool? Israel. Because someone hatched a feverish tale that the IDF used uranium against Gazans, so of course that had to be probed. And not only are Israelis a bigger threat than North Korea - another country that got nukes under ElBaradei's watch - they're actually the number one threat in the Middle East. Not Iran, which is actively engaged in undermining the stability of the Egyptian government. Israel.

Should ElBaradei become President, those kinds of geopolitical delusions probably won't be a problem. The Middle East is a pretty forgiving region. You can afford to indulge in the occasional fantasy.

Speaking of the region, he's also pledging to open up Gaza. That's an extremely popular position domestically and it fits in addition to fitting the rest of his political inclinations would be an extremely popular campaign platform. Sure it would be an invaluable boost to Hamas, facilitating their contacts with Iran and giving them an endless supply of goods to siphon off for military purposes (think of all the medicine grenades!) But he's a humanitarian. You don't hate humanitarianism, do you?

Regardless. He's pretty popular in Egypt right now. He hopes - and I'm quoting - "to be an instrument for change." So this is probably going to become a thing.

References and related after the jump...

Old CW: the Middle East is "everybody vs. Israel." New CW, for at least some people at least for some of the time: the Middle East is "Israel and US-backed Arab states vs. Iran and its state and non-state proxies." Much less pithy, and - for a bunch of reasons - orders of magnitude less straightforward. We can start with the central problem, which is that no one knows whether it really is the new geopolitical situation. After that's resolved there are questions of how stable the redrawn map is, to what degree Sunni antisemitism influences their thinking, whether nation-state calculations pushing Arab countries into the Iranian orbit are outweighed by sectarian antipathy for Shiites, and so on.

Ergo tonight's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, on the Sunni/Shiite rift and its consequences. Last week was handed over to the intentions and capabilities of Israel's Iran-backed enemies. This week we'll do the other side of the divide. As always you can tune in live to ask questions via phone and chatroom, or just pick up the podcast afterward.

Rounding out the geopolitics stuff - Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq if we get to it - I'll also have a segment on the hit that the Mossad may or may not have carried out in Dubai. It's relevant because the vigor with which Dubai is conducting their investigation is tied to their suspicions of Hamas. It's also kind of awesome.

Harold Rhode - senior Hudson Institute advisor, former Middle East and Islamic World analyst in Rumsfeld's Defense Department, decades-long Pentagon specialist, etc - makes a brief appearance via phone. He gives his evaluation on the odds that Sunni/Shiite tensions might solidify some kind of Israeli/Sunni pact. Teaser: not great.

As always Dan Diker joins the show from Israel. He's got a broad overview on the topic - one of many on which he's counted an expert - plus a bunch of specific details. In fact here he is interviewing Bernard Lewis on "The Sunni-Shiite Split and the Iranian Threat" at the just-concluded Jerusalem Conference. Keep in mind that Lewis arguably the greatest Orientalist alive and look out for the line "there is a scenario for the end of time... [and] in the view of a certain section within the Iranian leadership... that time is now." Sweet dreams!

That and more in a few hours.

References:
* The Erstwhile Sunni/Shiite Rift [Omri Ceren Show]
* Israeli security officials convinced Mossad behind Dubai slaying [AP]
* Israel: No reason to think Mossad killed Hamas man [AP]
* The Sunni-Shiite Split and the Iranian Threat [JCPA]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Political Islam
* Arab and Muslim World

It makes sense. Twitter has become one of the few outlets Venezuelans have left for visually demonstrating the literally medieval barbarism that Chavez's thugs use to break protests - which they're doing with some regularity now. So like his slightly less clownish but equally execrable ilk in Tehran, he's looking to shut it down:

President Hugo Chavez has responded to the outpouring of messages -- many of which call for his resignation along with expanded freedom of the press -- by asking the National Assembly to start preparing legislation that would regulate the Internet. Similar to what we saw happening in Mexico this week, government officials in Venezuela are perceiving social networks such as Twitter (Twitter) to be a threat to the state. Chavez has apparently even gone as far as indicating that Twitter could be considered a "tool of terror," and National Assembly deputies were quick to leap to the charge of "eliminating terrorist threats posed by social networks."

Chavez has an interesting approach to national infrastructure. Where it's working well he's eager to regulate it into the ground. Where it's teetering on the brink of collapse - as is the case with, say, the country's entire power grid - he's a little more lackadaisical. You'd think all the capital he acquired from the last round of disastrous currency devaluation would have given him enough cash to keep things running. Although no reason to be frugal. He can always just nationalize the auto industry if things get particularly bad.

Of course a lot of that money is probably going into preparing for that war with Colombia that he keeps promising. Ergo his purchase of those 300 new tanks and armored vehicles. And those thousands of missiles. And those nearly 5,000 potential joint projects with the Russians. Probably more important than keeping the lights on.

Anyway, those are the perks of being comfortably ensconced in the Iranian orbit. Sure you need to demonize Israel and parrot Tehran's feverish conspiracy theories about US infiltration of Iran (as if this White House is running an offense against the mullahs). But that's not that hard. Plus you get the distinct sense that for Chavez this is as much pleasure as business.

It's the same as when he formally invited Castro to Caracas. A state visit won't really advance Venezuela's geopolitical standing, and US/Cuba rapprochement is a done deal the second Castro dies anyway. So there wasn't a good justification for the invitation. Chavez just kind of likes being a prick.

References and related after the jump...

Stan Shivell and I have been IM'ing back and forth about what Iran's February 11 saber rattling. is all about. It's the 31st anniversary of the Islamic takeover and both the government and the opposition will be out in force. But there's also this other element - and the Iranians do this periodically - where they attach some kind of mystical significance to a day and predict "surprises" and "demises" and so on. Probably as good a time as any to look at how a regional war between Israel and Iran might play out.

Ergo today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, going on the air at 6:30pm. As always you can tune in live via either the episode page or the main Omri Ceren Show page. Chat room available, phone lines open, etc. Segments in the queue: the calculations and capabilities of Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Egypt. This crap about Apaches will also come up. I've been trying to chase the story down a little bit and it turns out to be pointedly different than original press reports implied.

Dan Diker joins the show for three full segments today. We'll go over the specifics of recent Israeli/Syrian relations before moving into how the Syrian military would get dragged into a regional war. Even measured by the amount of game Diker usually brings to these discussions, there's just a ton of information in each section. Two specific things for which to keep an ear out: the significance of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal specifically in the context of peace talks and the degree to which Iran can impose its will on Damascus's behavior.

References:
* Clenched With A Weird Feb 11th Deadline For The "Demise Of Capitalism" And America [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* What Would A Middle East War Look Like? [One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show]
* Wonderful: Obama Blocking Apache Sales To Israel, "Dismayed" At Use During Cast Lead [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Syria
* Iran

At least Obama's sanctions plan for dealing with Iran - which seems to be Obama's only plan for dealing with Iran - doesn't hinge on Chinese cooperation. Because if it did then alienating China, in addition to risking a Cold War with an existing hostile nuclear power, would all but guarantee the creation of a second one. So as long as the White House never indicated that "it needed China's support if progress is to be made in curbing Iran's nuclear programme," this shouldn't be a big deal:

The American administration has been trying to undermine relations, the deputy head of Chinese Embassy in Israel said in a special interview with Ynet on the heels of the dispute that has unraveled between China and the United States. While the US is trying to garner Chinese support to impose sanctions on Iran, the Chinese official said that the recent tensions could harm political cooperation. Zhang Xiao'an... mentioned that in several occasions, China's ties with new American president usually don't start off so well, but gradually improve with time. She said that now, there is an opposite process - after Obama was elected last year, ties between China and the United States got off on the right foot, and ever since the recent developments have been deteriorating.

It appears that Obama rhetorically raised diplomatic expectations and then, discovering that many of his promises were naive and unworkable, failed to deliver. Unbelievable, I know.

In fairness US/Sino tensions were probably inevitable. Putting aside Taiwan, Tibet, human rights in general, our distrust of their largest-in-the-world dollar reserves, their distrust of our China-baiting economic populists, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, and the possibility that they're taking potshots at our satellites - China is modernizing its military, developing a blue water navy, and projecting power into all kinds of places that we're physically in. Eventually someone was going to bump into someone else - it was already happening - with the results being less than salutary for international stability.

And let's be honest. China was never going to go along with sanctions anyway. If that wasn't always obvious it should have been by last October, when Beijing boosted its ties with the mullahs despite international objections. China has two priorities: securing energy reserves to ensure economic vitality and preventing the international community from meddling in the internal affairs of human rights abusers. Both are at stake in Iran. They said as much last week, prompting Clinton to urge them to embrace - and these are quotes - a policy that would be "counterproductive" to the "needs" of their "growing economy." Shockingly they declined to do that.

The exact same thing happened with climate change.

Because this kind of rhetoric...

Iran and Syria plan to create a new world order, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday. "Iran and Syria have a joint mission to create a new world order on the basis of justice, humanity and belief in God," Ahmadinejad told visiting Syrian Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Abrash. Syria is Iran's main ally in the Middle East and both countries consider Israel to be their political arch-foe. "At the current juncture, the role of Iran and Syria is historic."

... and these kinds of moves...

Iran sees Latin American nations as partners in creating a new world order. Ahmadinejad recently told the visiting Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro: "We need to establish a new systemand take measures based on that system.... Many countries will join the new system." That Iran and Venezuela view nuclear power as part of an attempt at global hegemony was reinforced in a joint press conference this month between Maduor and his Iranian counterpart Manuchehr Mottaki: "Our experiences prompt us to generate nuclear fuel independently and even broaden the scope of our activities to meet the demands of other countries."

... always end well.

Meanwhile China says that the proper response to Iran's firm and seemingly final rejection of nuclear talks is more nuclear talks. Because maybe the mullahs are just kidding. Or maybe - per the faux sophistication Obama picked up from whichever experts are feeding him lines - maybe they're just really confused. They're not so confused that they can't deploy three new satellites as a cover for their ballistic missile program or launch a massive anti-dissident crackdown. But to figure out their negotiating stance after a decade-plus of nuclear talks - well they just haven't had enough time to think about it.

Is there going to be a clash between the West and Iranian's global coalition? Of course there will be. But it will happen on Iran's own nuclear timetable and, because of that, it will be particularly horrific. Future generations will rightly ask why the US and its allies allowed lunatics - lunatics who openly expressed their intentions - to acquire WMDs. And they'll be told that a loose coalition of duly-appointed diplomats, self-declared intellectuals, fully-accredited journalists, and intellectually dishonest liberals cooperated to knock the knees out of the last American President who had the opportunity and intention to stop Iranian nuclearization.

Then they'll go to college and learn that it all goes back to American settlers attacking the Indians or something.

References and related after the jump...

I'm finally back in One Jerusalem Radio's Los Angeles studios, which you'd think would enhance the technical side of tonight's broadcast. Unfortunately there's a gigantic storm tearing apart the city - editing out the thunderclaps from the prerecorded interview with Lee Smith was a singular pleasure - so the studio might well be blacked out. If we do have electricity the show will go live as planned at 6:30pm PST / 9:30pm EST. You can tune in live to call in, hang out in the chat room, or just listen.

Huge show today. Lee Smith shows up to talk about his new book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. About halfway through I ask him about why liberal foreign policy experts get to just imagine the Middle East as they'd want it to be rather than as the cluster of warring tribes that it actually is. The conversation before and after goes into the precise level of disaster that can be expected, given that the WH seems bent on indulging in exactly those kinds of pseudo-sophisticated fantasies.

Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel to talk about Israel's efforts in Haiti, making the case that Israel's global leadership on disaster relief - coupled with a public diplomacy push on Twitter and YouTube - can't help but bolster the Jewish State's image. I'll be making my usual point that antisemites are simply too antisemitic - and have too many media enablers - for public diplomacy to make much of a dent. I obviously think I'm on the right side of that debate but Dan has "data" and "arguments," so take from that what you will.

References:
* The Pseudo-Sophisticated Horse - Lee Smith, Dan Diker [Omri Ceren Show]
* The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith [Amazon]
* What Is the Arab World's Problem? [Lee Smith]
* ISRAEL: Sending soldiers of peace to Haiti [LAT]
* Israel builds a field hospital in Haiti. Anti-Zionists not fooled! [Gutmann / Telegraph]
* Haiti: An Israeli Public Relations Moment? [MediaLine]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy
* Foreign Policy Experts

I'm not sure if this list includes the 20+ mothers who were preemptively rounded up at the beginning of December - from the way it reads it seems to be about a totally different group - but in any case many of the mothers landed in the hospital on their way to being disappeared. Current status: unknown:

A rights group is demanding Iran release 33 mothers detained during their weekly memorial vigils for their children killed in the nation's ongoing violence. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says that nine of the jailed woman received emergency medical treatment after they were rounded up by security forces Saturday... The women are part of a "mourning mothers" gathering held by women whose children have been killed in unrest since disputed elections in June.

Meanwhile even Guardian columnists are declaring themselves less than sanguine about how the mullahs are trying protesters for being "Enemies Of God." No one's gone so far as to acknowledge the paper's years of dishonest pro-Iran defenses - nor are they inclined to talk about how conservatives have been slandered as warmongers for predicting exactly this - but at least there's a limit to the degree of theocratic fascism they'll defend. Maybe.

Now for my own part, I would have stopped spinning pseudo-sophisticated "Iran is moderate" pretexts back when Ahmadinejad offered "documented proof" that America was conspiring to block the return of the Messiah. But I can see how the international left and their ilk might have thought he was just being funny.

References:
* Mothers Arrested Before Opposition Rally in Iran [NYT]
* Iran rights group calls for release of 'mourning mothers' [AP]
* Iran's judiciary takes a military colour [Guardian]
* Clenched With Promises To Crush Pro-Reform "Enemies Of God" [IIFSC]
* Guardian: We're Not Sure that Hezbollah and Iran are Working Together [MR]
* Iran Has Proof US Blocking Return of Messiah or Something [Jawa]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Iran
* Arab and Muslim World
* Political Islam

Because, as the AP writeup takes zero time in pointing out, that's worked out so well in the recent past:

Yemen's president said he is ready to open a dialogue with al-Qaida fighters who lay down their weapons and renounce violence, despite U.S. pressure to crack down on the terror group. The United States has complained in the past that Yemen struck deals with al-Qaida fighters and freed them from prison after they promised not to engage in terrorism. Some later broke those promises and are now believed to be active in al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed that his government is "determined to stand up to the challenges" of al-Qaida and that his security forces will track down as many al-Qaida fighters as possible among those who refuse to stop violence. But he left the door open for negotiations. "Dialogue is the best way ... even with al-Qaida, if they set aside their weapons and return to reason," he said in an interview with Abu Dhabi TV aired late Saturday. "We are ready to reach (an) understanding with anyone who renounces violence and terrorism."

Simply as a technical matter, dialogue with an enemy who's committed to your annihilation is actually not the "best way." There's simply not that much to talk about. In fact, to the extent that the balance of power in Yemen is shifting towards AQ and away from the central government, wasting time in the hope of dialogue is likely to be a disaster.

Meanwhile AQ has established residence in Yemen because it sets them up for attacks on Saudi Arabia, a target that Iranian-funded Shiite jihadists have also been attacking with regularity and visible success. Saudi Arabia has responded with everything up to and including a formal naval blockade on northern Yemeni cities that - on top of everything else - further weakened the government.

Oh: and the entire civilian population is literally physically crippled by a massive drug epidemic. So even when they want to do something they can't get people into work. It's that bad. Of course it's been that bad for a while, and until recently the Obama administration was going to send a bunch of Gitmo jihadists into the country. Smart power.

As for renouncing violence and terrorism - and I hate to be the bearer of bad news - they don't really mean it. The 170 jihadists released in February certainly didn't mean it. That's why they did things like "break their promises" and returned to AQ's ranks.

References and related after the jump...

You can't really blame them for betting on the strong horse:

While the West is discussing sanctions against Iran, Turkey is discussing the establishment of a joint industrial area with Iran on their shared border the Iranian state news agency, Fars, reported on Friday. Iran's industry minister, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, met on Friday with Turkey's trade minister, Nahat Argon to discuss increasing economic activities between the two nations. Mehrabian said after the meeting that there was a lot of potential for joint economic activities between the two countries.

These aren't just bilateral moves either. The Turks are also boosting their ties with Syria. They've chosen a side and they're making and breaking alliances accordingly:

Two factors in particular seem to have led to Turkey's shift away from Israel and toward Syria. First, Turkey no longer needed Israeli assistance to pressure the Syrian government to change its policy of providing safe-haven to the terrorist Kurdish Worker's Organization (PKK). Second, in the past seven years, once secular Turkish politics have undergone a profound Islamist transformation. At the same time, the dynamic between the Turkish military and the state's civilian leadership has changed. No longer does the military have the upper hand. Today, the Turkish military can do little to impact the policies of the Islamist AKP, which promote solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments.

That also answers the brainteasers that were getting thrown around mid-2009, about whether Turkey can be politically moved in a secular direction. Turns out when a population keeps electing Islamists who promise to move away from the West, the country ends up moving away from the West. And I was really hoping they were just kidding about all that.

Meanwhile the State Department is trying to jumpstart Israeli-Syrian negotiations via Turkish mediation. Because apparently - at least to George Mitchell - the Turks seem like neutral and objective arbiters. George Mitchell, by the way - there's a guy who's really been building bridges between the US and Israel this week.

References and related after the jump...

Of course:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday the Obama administration remains open to negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, despite intransigence from Tehran... Clinton said it is clear that administration efforts to engage Iran in talks to restrain its nuclear program in 2009 fell short... Obama had said that if Iran did not respond positively to his overtures by the start of 2010 he would move toward tougher sanctions. Clinton said the administration is consulting with other nations about new sanctions, but she stressed that this does not mean the administration is abandoning its effort to start a dialogue with Iran. There is no hard-and-fast deadline for Iran to respond, she said.

I'm a little sad they're giving up on deadlines. Iranian laughter in the face of Obama's blustering - plus the inevitable US crumbling - made for some easy content. Though the WH probably didn't have a choice now that China, after years of evading existing sanctions, just said no to new UN sanctions. So Obama's oh-so-sophisticated charade - that there were ever any "genuine sticks" behind all of the "genuine carrots" - wasn't going to last much longer.

Of course the Iranians still sneeringly chortled in victory about how they agree with Clinton that sanctions are meaningless. They've been so emboldened by this WH's appeasement that they're now setting their own deadlines on negotiations, a nice little demonstration of just how brazen they've gotten:

Iran's foreign minister warned the West on Saturday that it had one month to accept Iran's counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own. The comments by the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, were broadcast on state television and presented as an "ultimatum" to the West just two days after Iran missed a deadline set by the United States and its allies to accept a deal that was brokered in October in Geneva.

They're also holding large-scale military exercises next month, right about the time that their "ultimatum" will be expiring. No worries though. This isn't anything that the WH's vaunted "targeted sanctions" - specifically designed to be watered down - can't fix right up. Smart power and all the rest.

References and related after the jump...

The Iranians can't even muster enough respect for Obama to let him send envoys to debase themselves in front of the mullahs. The administration wanted to dispatch Kerry to Tehran in the midst of the most recent crackdown, a move naturally seen as a shameless betrayal by the Iranian dissidents being beaten and shot and run over by basij cars. Nope.

Pathetic:

Iranian legislators on Sunday decided to not allow a visit from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), according to Iranian media. "Members of the Iranian parliament's Foreign Relations Committee (a subcommittee of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission) voiced opposition to the request after studying the issue," Hassan Ebrahimi, head of the committee, told the semi-official Fars News Agency. Several Iranian news outlets reported last week that Kerry had submitted an official request to visit Tehran in an emissary role... On Saturday, Iranian legislators stepped up the rhetoric against the news that Kerry was considering traveling to Tehran with the blessing of the White House.

At least we're not also trading top Iranian-backed Iraqi terrorists for British computer specialists who were brutally kidnapped while tracing exactly how Iran interferes in Iraqi affairs. The raid that captured the specialist involved the kidnap of four British body guards who were later executed - bound - with bullets to the head. Which is exactly how Khazali's gang murdered the American soldiers they had kidnapped in a separate raid:

So mind-bendingly insane is this that I thought Roggio might have been duped by his sources. Not so: Both the Guardian and now Jake Tapper have independently confirmed that it's true. Remember Qais Khazali?... He used to be an al-Sadr deputy, then broke away and hooked up with Iran to start his own little mini-Hezbollah. That group, the "League of the Righteous," ended up pulling off one of the most notorious, sophisticated anti-American operations of the Iraq war in Karbala. The toll: Five Americans murdered, four of them after they were kidnapped, bound, and shot in the head like animals. U.S. troops caught up to Khazali... Petraeus ... accused Iran's Quds Force -- the creme de la creme of the Revolutionary Guard, responsible for assisting Iranian proxy jihadis like Hezbollah in other countries -- of bankrolling the whole thing. And now, after three years in U.S. custody, he's free.

Obama wanted to send the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Tehran to - what? Explain how there's no hard feelings about the whole "brutalizing their people and executing our captured soldiers" thing? Insist that we're willing to look the other way if they'll pretend to think about maybe not laughing at our threats of toothless sanctions?

And they wouldn't even let us go through the motions of groveling to them.

Remember when conservatives ridiculed "smart power" as a faux sophisticated excuse for US obsequiousness? And the left said that conservatives were thoughtless warmongers and - in fact - Obama was going to restore America's dignity and respect? That's definitely the sense I'm getting from this gambit. Dignity. And. Respect.

References and related after the jump...

I'm about to start uploading the clips for this evening's very special holiday edition of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. In acknowledgment of the season we've scheduled even more optimism and cheer than usual, starting with a segment about the religiously-driven return of polygamy to the UK and Chechnya. Suffice to say that it's not because fundamentalist Methodists are sweeping across the region. From there things only get better with segments about the newest additions to Iran's arsenal, Hamas's Islamization of the Gaza Strip, and of course this nonsense. Per the usual routine you can tune in live to ask questions and participate in the chatroom, or you can grab the podcast afterward directly from the episode archive.

In between Dan Diker will join the show, this week to talk about how Egypt and Saudi Arabia are reacting to Iran's growing regional assertiveness. Small example of the pool balls bouncing off each other just on the issue of Egyptian/Israeli relations: Arab nationalism 101 is that you use Israel as a scapegoat to funnel internal dissent outward but in the Middle East the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now plant that enemy's proxy in Gaza right between Egypt and Israel, boosting the incentive for government-to-government cooperation even though Egyptians would turn against Mubarak if he publicly colluded Egypt's "Gazan brothers and sisters."

Now add in a weird dynamic where Israel and Egypt usually compete for functionally zero-sum US ties, except they're both so frustrated with the US stance on Iran that they might close the triangle and cooperate to undermine Iran - except the Obama administration would oppose that, putting them in a position where they're blocking rapprochement between two ostensible allies. Terrific.

I already linked to this April article yesterday in the context of Hamas as an outpost of political Islam but let me link it again as prep for today's Diker segment:

In the last week, Egypt has moved against Iran and its allies in the Arab world. Cairo arrested a Hizballah cell that was preparing terrorist operations on Egyptian soil, organized a campaign against Hamas weapons and money smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula, and stepped up efforts to displace Qatar -- an Iranian sympathizer -- as a mediator on Sudan, Lebanon, and other inter-Arab issues. It remains to be seen whether this policy shift will become a sustained part of a grand strategy to restore Egypt's leadership among Arab states or, instead, a more-defensive approach designed to parry previous humiliations from Iran's allies. It is apparent, however, that Cairo is sending a signal to Washington that the "nuclear file" is not the only -- or even the most urgent -- aspect of the Iranian threat.

The US went to Egypt and said "we're really committed to helping you out with this Israel thing," and the Egyptians responded by insisting that they pay attention to Iran. If for no other reason, you should tune in today to hear what happened when the Bush and Obama White Houses tried the same stunt with Saudi Arabia.

References:
* Obligatory Post About New Organ Harvesting Story That Provides "No Evidence" For Organ Harvesting Libel (UPDATED) [MR]
* Arab Countries In Iran's Middle East [Omri Ceren Show]
* Media Outlets Shocked To Find Hamas Imposing Islam, Digging Up Dead Christians Because They "Pollute The Earth" [MR]
* Egypt's Campaign against Iran Sends Washington a Signal [Washington Institute]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Egypt
* Saudi Arabia

I posted theses quotes about Hamas - one from Larijani and the other from Ahmadinejad - on Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched? yesterday. But they're worth reposting here so that maybe we can puzzle them out together. Because Sunnis and Shiites don't cooperate, and yet here are Sunnis and Shiites seemingly cooperating. Mindbending:

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Sunday defended his country's support for Hamas, during a high-profile visit to Cairo. Larijani told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Teheran is proud of its "moral" support for Hamas. He also denied that Iran is undermining Egypt's efforts to reconcile between Hamas and Fatah. The Iranian official called his meeting with Mubarak "constructive," and noted that Iran and Egypt shared a "positive vision on bilateral relations," according to Iranian Press TV.

And:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday reiterated his support for Hamas, during a visit by the Palestinian group's Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal, according to Iran's official news agency. "The government and the people of Iran will always stand by the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people," Ahmadinejad said during the meeting with Mashaal.

Larijani used similar language in February, saying "it's an honor to support Hamas." In March Iran confirmed that support by throwing a fundraising party for their Gaza proxies. In April month Egypt made clear that the two were linked, targeting Hamas as part of a broader anti-Iran regional push. And so on.

Of course there are 2007 papers outlining the full-blown Hamas/Iranian alliance, with Tehran's financial and military support transforming Gaza into a de facto Iranian statelet. Quite the opposite from being stymied by Sunni/Shiite tensions, Iran is positioning itself as the unique unifying force that transcends those tensions. Historical tensions do exist in the Muslim world. But they're the basis for Iran's pan-Islamist identity not a barrier to it:

Driven by its desire to achieve the status of a world Islamic power, Iran is now a uniting force between Sunni and Shi'ite radical groups. This new bloc of Iranian allies not only poses a threat to the West, it challenges the moderate states of the Middle East, who used to fear a "Shiite Crescent" spanning from Iran through Lebanon. Threats of a crescent are now replaced by a wider fear of Iran-sponsored radicalism that spans the region. Indeed, the influence of Iranian radicalism knows no boundaries, thanks to Tehran's increasingly pragmatic approach toward Sunni groups.

Liberal sophisticates who point to historical Sunni/Shiite dynamics as some kind of argument are - predictably - stalled at the beginning of a debate they think they're ending. Which doesn't stop the media from quoting them extensively. But at least it also makes them extra obnoxious!

References and related after the jump...

Iran's building next-generation centrifuges and has just formalized the construction of 10 new nuclear sites. Those 10 new facilities were supposed to lock in their "isolation" according to the White House. Instead Obama will push back the so-called drop dead date for a third or fourth time. I don't think anyone's under any illusions any more. This is what it is:

Obama has long proclaimed a Dec. 31 deadline for cooperation or retaliation of some unspecified kind. But Iran and, before it, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, has confidently counted on years of international dithering on enforcing printed sanctions. So naturally on ABC's "This Week" this week, George Stephanopoulos asked Obama adviser and ex-newspaper reporter David Axelrod about the approaching Obama deadline. Axelrod started to say something about talking but checked himself and spoke instead of "consequences." But, as often occurs in diplomatic-speak -- and politics-speak too, come to think of it -- it's what you don't say that's often more important than what you do utter. Axelrod declined to reiterate the Dec. 31 date.

Now you might think that Iran officially settled on confrontation months ago when Mottaki confirmed the "no" that had been coming from every Iranian lawmaker. Certainly his his followup - "we'll only accept the kind of swap where we don't have to really swap anything" - was seen as a diplomatic non-starter.

But what you don't understand is that Iran has actually been very secretly demonstrating a clear willingness to negotiate. Here's how it probably went down. First Iran decided to export their radical ideology and expand their sphere of influence by broadly and continuously supporting a Shiite insurgency in Yemen. Then we gave them a super-secret signal that we would look the other way by having a State Department Undersecretary announce at a conference that we don't think they're involved. Then Iran didn't do something that our experts retroactively decided they had been planning to do, which was a covert signal back from the mullahs that they were interested in negotiations.

Or maybe it happened differently. Maybe the signal was our continued inaction in response to Iran's bloody interference in Iraq. We didn't do anything. Then they invaded Iraqi territory. Then we still didn't do anything. Now they're staying on Iraqi territory. And that's a sign that they're open to low-level confidence building measures. Because why else would they grab territory except as a setup for making concessions during negotiations?

Prove is in quotes because, per the Berekeley professor who launched this hatefest, the decades-old incidents have nothing to do with the Swedish organ theft story. It's a medical ethics disaster - a bunch of messy consent issues and religious sensibilities are involved - but were Palestinians targeted? Scheper-Hughes again: "not by a long shot."

And yet she choose to give succor to mouth-breathing anti-Jewish bigots because - quote - "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered." I'm not sure why she didn't just come out and use the phrase "pound of flesh."

In any case we're officially off on another round of organ theft stories. Iranian Press TV has shifted their ongoing blockbuster coverage of the "international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs" from the most recent revelation - "Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs" - to Jews who steal Palestinian kids' organs.

Eventually that's going to get boring - these kinds of hateful highs only last so long - and so I'm interested what you guys think next "proven" blood libel will be. That there will be a next one is a given. That's how addicts behave when their buzz wears off. They'll go looking for new evidence of some new imagined Israeli atrocity. When they don't find anything genuine - on account of how it exists only in their feverish imagination - they'll lower their standards for what counts as proof and hold their hatefest anyway. Think of it as not being able to score the good stuff and settling for whatever's available.

I've put up a poll on what you think the next media-legitimized anti-Israel canard is going to be. Justify your vote under this post on the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page, or sound off if you think there's an option I didn't include.

Naturally you'll want to consider why some anti-Israel accusations get traction while other don't. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the tenability of the accusations themselves. Until this recent story broke, "Israeli organ theft" were so untenable that the Swedish reporter who published the original libel was in the process of recanting. But the canards were still in broad circulation. Meanwhile Hamas has been trying to get the world to take notice of Israel's plot to dump aphrodisiac gum on Gaza for a while. They seem pretty convinced it's happening. Thus far no journalist has rushed into that particular investigative breach.

There was a point during the campaign where American Jewish liberals, seemingly all at once, started parroting this weird talking point about how Bush failed on Iran and so people should vote for Obama. I was never able to totally untangle the logic - it was this kind of "Iran bad / Bush equal Iran / McCain equal Bush / QED" move - but I did understand that Obama was going to use his super-keen diplomatic ninja skills to increase pressure on the mullahs.

Now we have the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which is pretty much the absolute minimum we can do while still pretending to do anything. And we also have Obama blocking the legislation, which after passing the House was all set for quick Senate passage by the end of the year. Now if there was a certain amount of pressure being brought to bear on the mullahs, and then Obama decreased that pressure - is that the same as increasing pressure?

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, needs time to consider the bill... That means it's extremely unlikely the Senate will rush the legislation before year's end, as had been reported earlier especially considering other pressing matters. The go-slow approach takes some of the wind out of the version of the bill... It has become increasingly clear in recent days that the Obama administration wants to slow down the prospect of unilateral sanctions while it attempts to mass international support for multilateral measures aimed at forcing Iran to make its nuclear workings transparent...

What exists now is a situation in which many major Jewish groups -- including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Reform movement -- are pushing hard for bills that Obama and Kerry would prefer to work slowly and carefully. Only Americans for Peace Now is publicly aligned with the administration in counseling changes to the proposed sanctions.

The original reason for Obama's decision - per an interview Clinton gave to Al Jazeera last week - is that Bush was unilateral and so Obama isn't going to be unilateral. I'm not exaggerating. "There are many things we could go off and do unilaterally, as the prior administration certainly demonstrated. That's not our chosen path," Quote unquote.

In recent days the pretext has become a little more nuanced, and the new excuse is that US sanctions would undermine efforts to get Russia and China into a sanctions regime. Now that's not the most coherent argument - US legislation would only matter if it set a floor for multilateral sanctions, which this doesn't - but honestly why waste the time? It's much quicker to just repeat how Russia and China are never going to join us in an effective regime, prior US action or not.

The Chinese have become so brazen that they're now saying they can't engage in P5+1 talks until next year because - really - their schedule is just too full. An apocalyptic regime is about to get its hands on some of the planet's most destructive weapons, and the Chinese are washing their hair or folding their socks or whatever it is they've got booked:

An upcoming meeting by the P5+1 on trying to curb Iran's nuclear program has been postponed at China's behest, senior officials from three of the countries involved said Monday. One of the officials said China cited scheduling problems in asking for the deferral, and the six countries may instead talk by videoconference before the year's end. A US spokesman said that the meeting might take place next year. The official said China seemed to have genuine problems in attending the meeting in Brussels or outside the Copenhagen climate summit and did not appear to be seeking to delay it. Still, the development was a setback in efforts to present a unified front on Iran in the face of continued Iranian defiance on its nuclear program.

In fairness, no one could have predicted that the Chinese were serious in October and November when they said they wouldn't support sanctions in December. But at least we got them to back a "toughly worded" letter to Iran, something that Obama claimed as a huge diplomatic victory. Again: really.

Perfect. Just absolutely perfect:

South Korea's military said Friday it was investigating a hacking attack that netted secret defense plans with the United States and may have been carried out by North Korea. The suspected hacking occurred late last month when a South Korean officer failed to remove a USB device when he switched a military computer from a restricted-access intranet to the Internet, Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said. The USB device contained a summary of plans for military operations by South Korean and U.S. troops in case of war on the Korean peninsula.

Now the real question is whether "not disconnecting a USB drive" is dumber than the all but willful neglect that led to Iranian-backed terrorists grabbing realtime video feeds from our Predators. In that story - which broke yesterday - the Pentagon had long known that our downlinks could be cracked by anyone with off-the-shelf software. And by "long known" I mean "known since Bosnia" and by "off-the-shelf" I mean "$26." Which is exactly what happened:

"Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds... [This points] to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington's growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan." -- Gee, you think? Don't get me wrong; I'm no military genius or anything, but it seems to me that one particular task at the Pentagon should be to make sure that our enemies don't have real-time access to our Predator video feeds. We've used encrypted and frequency-hopping communications systems for decades now. No one thought to apply that technology to drone communications?

Hey, I don't mean to make a big deal about this. But it's not at all clear that we're winning right now. There's the vulnerability of modern society to asymmetric warfare, and then there's the stupidity of individuals, large bureaucracies, and individuals within large bureaucracies. They're both pretty bad. But it's really hard to do something about the warfare thing when the stupidity part keeps getting in the way.

And what the hell are war plans doing on a jump drive to begin with?

References:
* Hackers steal SKorean-US military secrets [AP]
* Great news: Iranian-backed terrorists hacked US drone video feeds [Hot Air]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Military News
* North Korea
* Iran

Iran provokes. The US responds with milquetoast banalities. Like clockwork:

The new medium-range missile tested by Iran is "not particularly different than what we've seen in the past," said Pentagon defense spokesman Geoff Morrell on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report. The report quoted Morrell as saying that US intelligence shows the missile - said to be capable of targeting parts of Israel - is not a sign of advanced military capabilities acquired by Teheran... "Such actions will increase the seriousness and resolve of the international community to hold Iran accountable for its continued defiance of its international obligations on its nuclear program," he said.

Really? Because according to the NYT the new missile is more accurate and can be launched faster than all of their previous missiles. Meir Javedanfar - writing an article titled "The plus side of an arms race with Iran" - also admits it's "a sign that Iran is making significant advances in its missile programme" and moving past its inaccurate Shahab-3's.

Now Iran is threatening to launch precision strikes against Tel Aviv's skyscrapers and against Israeli nuclear sites. In the former case Israel would have to respond with overwhelming force well beyond its conventional capabilities. In the latter case Israel would interpret the attack a non-conventional strike and respond accordingly. So in a very real way, the inaccuracy of Iran's missiles is all that prevents an inevitable Israeli/Iranian war from going nuclear.

Now just for completion's sake. Iran's got enough material to build a nuclear bomb. They've been developing nuclear warheads for years and the IAEA - for all that they've been hiding the fact - undeniably knows it. They've been developing nuclear triggers for years and the US - for all that the 2007 NIE authors misled Americans about it - has known it all along.

Oh. And they might building an H-Bomb:

Hamas is promising to get involved in an Israeli/Iranian war - an inevitable Israeli/Iranian war - by blanketing millions of Israeli civilians with rockets. That's not exactly surprising given that they're functionally a wing of the Iranian military, armed in precisely the way the international community promised would never happen if Israel evacuated Gaza and called off Cast Lead. Now they can destroy Israel's airport and they can knock down Tel Aviv's skyscrapers. Risks for peace!

And when Hamas does get involved you'll still see Israel get blamed for "drawing them into the conflict." So just in advance, let's all be clear that these lunatics are already sufficiently motivated to commit mass genocide:

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said that gaining control of the Gaza Strip was "just a step toward liberating all of Palestine." "This movement liberated the Gaza Strip with the help of the militant factions," said Haniyeh... "Brothers and sisters, we will not be satisfied with Gaza," he declared. "Hamas looks toward the whole of Palestine."... Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters thronged downtown Gaza City... Gaza was decked out in Islamic green, with Hamas flags fluttering from rooftops, lampposts and cars. Some parents dressed small children in combat fatigues and green Hamas headbands.

That follows similar statements from November and October and September and so on. But maybe they're just kidding about that, and a couple more Israeli concessions would empower whatever fictional "moderate camp" our foreign policy establishment has invented this week. Could be!

The Palestinian child abuse thing was a nice touch on the genocidal festivities, I thought. It was a little too routine for my taste - via Elder, here are 100,000 Hamas kids being brainwashed to kill Jews - but still a nice touch:

700 summer camps, for children and teenagers, operated this summer by terror organizations along the Gaza Strip - operating under the slogan - A "Victory for Gaza - The Glory of Jerusalem". The camps are operated by the Hamas in order to encourage the next generation of this organization.... 100 thousand children and teenagers participated in Hamas camps this year. The budget of these camps is estimated to be 2 Million Dollars. The youths were guided by 1,500 counselors that went through special training courses. A marketing campaign of the Al-Aqsa channel of the Hamas and a special internet site encouraged participation of children in these camps.

And I thought Gaza was awash in breaking poverty, bereft of even the resources to purchase basic necessities. Weird.

References and related after the jump...

It's that time of the week again. One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, 6:30pm PST, streamed live from Blog Talk Radio. Head over there after the show starts for a chance to ask questions in the chat room or get on the air. The podcast will be available immediately afterward, though of course it's much less fun.

This week's interview is with Noam Bedein, the founder and director of the Sderot Media Center. I've been pushing them on you guys for at least a couple years. The SMC is the only NGO doing consistent media work on the ground in Sderot, which is in turn the only city on the planet where civilians are constantly targeted by rocket barrages (so much much for Israel's vaunted military superiority, which is supposed to be the basis of "risks for peace").

So singular is the SMC, that they were the ones called upon to provide evidence and testimony to the Goldstone Commission about Hamas's war crimes. None of that made it into the UN resolution - and it was never going to, which is why the Israeli government rightly refused to cooperate with Goldstone's kangaroo court - but it's good that an NGO was there to make sure that Goldstone couldn't claim official ignorance. Noam will update listeners on the situation in the Negev, where schoolchildren are again under Palestinian rocket fire, and talk about his organization's role in bringing that to public attention.

As always Dan Diker joins in at the beginning of the show, if only to make sure that there's some expert saying something. Major topics: the Israeli/UK rift - which as of this morning required the British Prime Minister to clarify that UK policy recognizes that Israelis are people too - and Iran's global proliferation network. There's also a segment on the myth of linkage that I'd really like to get to - we'll see if we have time.

Money line from the UK segment, bearing in mind that it takes a lot to get Diker using strong language about anything, let alone about diplomacy itself: today Britain is "leading the charge to uproot and delegitimze the Jewish State." That's a week after Sweden tried to divide the ancient capital of the Jewish people. Bold!

References:
* Noam Bedein - Sderot In An Era Of Hamas War Crimes [Omri Ceren Show]
* Noam Bedein, the founder and director of the Sderot Media Center. [MR]
* Brown: Livni welcome in UK any time [JPost]
* Obama: We Must Achieve Peace By Forcing Israel To Give Up Jerusalem And Open Its Borders [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Cast Lead
* Britain

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show continues in its new later poll-tested time slot, kicking off at 6:30pm PST and running for an hour. You can listen live - which allows you to call in, get on the air, and participate in the chat room - from the TOCS page on Blog Talk Radio. No big interviews or gimmicks today - although, looking ahead, there are a slew of interviews piling up on the other side of the New Year - which is probably good since there's a ton of stuff going on in the Middle East this week.

More than one person in the last 24 hours has described Israel's current diplomatic position as "the worst situation since 1967," which I actually think might be an understatement. Israel hasn't had this much tension with the United States since 1956, and the legitimacy of the Jewish State hasn't been under this much pressure since the birth of the state.

Both segments with Diker today are handed over to that topic, from what why the EU did it to why Israel couldn't stop it to what it means for the peace process. It's a much fuller geopolitical appraisal than, say, the sputtering outrage I was able to muster in posts and segments last week - although there still is something to be said for the basic moral outrage of having the EU sanction Jordan's ethnic cleansing of the Old City in the name of human rights.

In between that: Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon and what it means for Iran's global expansion (background), the status of Netanyahu's vaunted settlement freeze, how Europe's "humanitarian" spinelessness in the face of political Islam swamps this Swiss minaret gambit, and a bunch more.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* The Anti-Israel Diplomatic Endgame? [Omri Ceren Show]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]
* TOCS - 6:30pm PST - Diker On Iranian Expansionism, Sweden's Attack On Jerusalem, Etc. [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Islam In Europe
* European Antisemitism

So much for that vaunted UN ceasefire:

Lebanon's new government Wednesday endorsed Hezbollah's right to keep its weapons, the latest sign that the Iran-backed group has no intention of meeting a United Nations resolution calling for it to disarm. Lebanon's government is a shaky coalition of Western-backed factions and the militant group Hezbollah, which has virtual veto power over the government. The group is believed to have thousands of rockets and missiles hidden in basements and bunkers throughout Shiite Muslim areas of the tiny country. The government decision came as the Lebanese army opened fire at four Israel Air Force warplanes that were flying above southern Lebanon, a Lebanese news agency reported. According to the report, the jets were forced to leave Lebanese airspace and return to Israel as a result of the anti-aircraft fire.

Shocking that a Lebanese unity government which includes Hezbollah would be pro-Hezbollah. Israel's reaction is the logical one: if you want them, you own them. Any future attack by Hezbollah will, per Barak, be interpreted as an attack by Lebanon. I'm not sure why he thinks that's credible.

Whether Hezbollah is considered a part of Lebanon will be - as it always is - a function of what's best for Hezbollah and worst for Israel. If there's a ceasefire in place and the US needs excuses for engagement then the State Department describes Hezbollah unity agreements as "positive and necessary steps." If Hezbollah has just started a hot war and Israeli jets are destroying their facilities throughout the country then suddenly State Department officials insist that Lebanon bears no responsibility and should be insulated. It's a rigged game but it's not exactly a subtle game.

And there will be another war. Hezbollah isn't bringing in hundreds of tons of Katyushas and long-range rockets and shells and bullets from Iran and Syria to let them rust. Those weapons are also coming in - thanks to Hezbollah's global fundraising network - via the United States. Hezbollah's pretty open about how they'll be used:

Although the organisation denied last week that the weapons were intended for its use, senior commanders have done little to disguise the scale of rearmament. "Sure, we are rearming, we have even said that we have far more rockets and missiles than we did in 2006," said a Hezbollah commander, speaking on condition of anonymity... "We had to blow up or leave some of our bunkers and fighting positions, but we still have plenty of capabilities in the south. We expect the Israelis to come soon, if not this winter, then they will wait until spring, when the ground isn't too soft for their tanks."

Unblinkingly contradictory anti-Israel diplomacy won't be the only deja vu part of the next war. The enlarged contingent of UN peacekeepers - which has been threatening military action against Israel since day 1 and long ago started busting Israeli intel assets - will again and predictably serve as human shields for Hezbollah soldiers.

And of course ditto for civilians:

Based on polling feedback from you - suitably normalized, ala global warming science, by throwing out responses we didn't like - One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show returns from Thanksgiving with a new time slot and a new duration. We'll kick off today's show at 6:30pm PST, allowing families in homes across America to crowd around their computer, to dial in with questions, and to participate in the chat room.

Per your other suggestions, there will be more concentrated ranting by me and less careful analysis by guests. Dan Diker will drop in to contribute expert insights on Middle East geopolitics - today he talks Iran/Sryia/Lebanon and Israeli diplomacy - but the rest of the show will be handed over to a bevy of domestic and international news. That wasn't the first direction we thought of taking the program, but vox populi and so on.

Today's agenda: this Jerusalem broadside from Sweden, Obama's "present" vote on Afghanistan, the left's politicization of science, Iran's most recent fist clenching, and more. As always your questions, concerns, and feedback are solicited and greatly appreciated. Unless you're the lone reader who voted to move the show "to a non-Wednesday time slot, which I recognize will not happen but about which I nonetheless feel very strongly." In which case we'd like to talk to you over here for a second. It'll just take a second.

See you in a few hours!

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* Leaked Global Warming Docs: "Publicity Machine" Used To Manipulate Journalists And Intimidate Scientists [MR]
* Assault On Jerusalem [Blog Talk Radio]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Israel Coverage
* American Politics

First, some odds and ends from last week. I should have posted a formal message after the Martin Sherman show, which was arguably the best TOCS yet and is available for download. I didn't get to it so let's take care of the formalities here. Prof. Sherman's a former Shamir adviser, a military intelligence specialist, a widely-cited academic, and - unarguably - among the most careful scholars on the Israeli right. If you make a point of coming at US and Israeli issues from the conservative side of the spectrum - and Google Analytics says you do - you'll have a tough time finding a more exacting account of regional and global geopolitics.

The interview topics ranged from the Middle East peace process to Israeli/Indian relations to Israeli public diplomacy, touching down for specifics and anecdotes in between. The segments I played on the show dealt largely with public diplomacy, which Sherman outlined as Israel's single most significant strategic failing. That plus the rest of last week's show - news, commentary, and the usual brilliance of Dan Diker - can be found on the podcast. The full Sherman interview - which has all the highlights from the show plus 20 more minutes of in-depth Q+A - will be on the One Jerusalem audio page. Obviously you should avail yourself of both.

Now the part about changing up the show. We've been getting feedback from listeners, some quite laudatory some containing note of frustration. TOCS will definitely be changing up after Thanksgiving, though we're still deciding how. Nothing drastic - it'll still be mostly me sounding off, it'll still have interventions of sanity and analysis from Diker, there will still be a weekly interview more often than not, etc. But expect some combination of a new format, a new time slot, and a new show length.

The actual form the combination will take - still an open question. I've embedded a poll so you can sound off about what changes you'd most appreciate. The goal is to get people involved in the live broadcasts instead of channeling all of you to the podcast. Chat room participation has been sedentary and call volume has been positively anemic, creating a situation where we're in Month 2 and I have yet to hang up on a listener. Obviously this will not do.

Feel free to share why on the Facebook page. But remember: ultimately you have to be the change you want to become. Or something.

References:
* Martin Sherman - The Anti-Jihad Imperative [The Omri Ceren Show]
* One Jerusalem - Audio [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Public Diplomacy Coverage
* World News Coverage

At least now we know what unblinking pretexts Obama's getting from his Iran advisers. They need to explain why all their nuanced Tehranology - which always ends with some new inscrutable justification for pro-Iran gestures - has merely emboldened Khamenei into confidently coming out as a hardline thug. It can't be that liberal foreign policy experts have spent the last few decades disingenuously denying that the Iranian political echelon is controlled by apocalyptic hardliners.

It's not that they produced paper after paper in the 90's predicting - incorrectly - that "moderates" would be electorally empowered if Albright made apologies and Clinton offered back channel concessions. It's not that they spent the Bush years howling - untenably - that offering a Grand Bargain would enable "conservative pragmatists" to "get Khamenei's ear." And it's certainly not that they made up tales - suspiciously - of Iranian wiggle room on nukes while lunatics were being installed as negotiators.

Sure it all looks exactly that way. And sure a genuinely nuanced analysis of Iranian ideology explains why it looks that way, since Khamenei's commitment to pan-Islamism would stymie state-level negotiations even if he wasn't the ultra-hardliner that he is.

But what you don't understand is that there are all these factions. And they're fighting with one another. And - even though it might appear like one side keeps winning, indicating either that there's no internal struggle or that it doesn't matter - you need to ignore that in the same way you ignore decades of failed diplomatic outreach. Just a few more weeks of sophistication and all this carefully calibrated groveling will yield a modus vivendi. You'll see!

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday an unsettled political situation in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers... "But it is going to take time, and part of the challenge that we face is that neither North Korea nor Iran seem to be settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues," he told Reuters in an interview at the White House.

Which is weird, because it certainly looks like the regime came to a quick decision. Here's how the talks have been going post-Qom, pegged either to the dateline or - where the lede was explicit - to when specific statements were made:

The elegant thing about Turkey's slide from the West is how starkly it juxtaposes liberal pseudo-sophistication with conservative warnings. On one side you have Obama's ephemeral charisma, where Turkey was the first Muslim country he visited as part of his global Presidential apology tour. At a minimum that should have made Ankara more rather than less inclined to lean toward the US and NATO.

On the other side you have the hard geopolitical realities being created by Obama's supine foreign policy, where a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran is pushing back US allies and installing proxies across Asia and South America. If Obama's critics are right then the prospect of regional Shiite hegemony will force states to accommodate the Islamic Republic, cut whatever deals they can, and try to exist within the Iranian orbit.

Interesting debate:

Relations between Turkey and Iran appear to be getting closer and those ties are raising concerns among some of Turkey's Western allies... Turkish President Abdullah Gul said... his country is keen to bolster relations with neighboring Iran. Increasing closeness between Turkish leaders and Iran, and Turkey's quest for better ties in the broader Muslim world, have fueled concerns in the West that this key U.S. ally is... is turning its back on the West to embrace Islamist regimes to the East - a vast region that extends from the Middle East to the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Obama's obsequious engagement can't even provide diplomatic wiggle room, where both sides would put on a show of agreement for public consumption:

The growing number of disagreements over global and regional affairs between Turkey and the United States signals a "bumpy road" to Washington, D.C., for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in early December. The deterioration in ties between the two allies was obvious during Philip Gordon's trip to Ankara last week. At a press conference held here, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs hinted that "there were more points of disagreement than of agreement with Turkey."

This is after Turkey banned Israel from US/NATO air exercises as a way of nixing the drills completely, the immediate and predictable withdrawal of the US and Italy being a feature rather than a bug. If they had just been targeting Israel they wouldn't have followed up two days later with joint Turkish-Syrian military maneuvers. That stunt, plus the 10 Turkish ministers they sent to Damascus in the context of a formal cooperation deal, goes deeper than a Turkish/Israeli temporary spat.

Today's TOCS episode goes on the air a little less than an hour, with highlights from my interview with Prof. Barry Rubin, analysis from Dan Diker, and the weekly roundup of US, Israeli, and international news. To hear the show live - and to submit questions via the chat room or get on the air through the phone lines - head over to the show's Blog Talk Radio page at 2pm PST.

The call with Diker covered (1) the increasingly pointed tensions between Obama and our NATO allies over Iranian nuclearization and (2) the so-called Fayyad peace plan, where Prime Minister Fayyad wants to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. To give you an idea of the kind of game Diker brings to the latter debate, here's Sunday's CSM article on the plan:

Fayyad's plan was recently analyzed in depth by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), a right-of-center think tank. Dan Diker, the JCPA's senior foreign analyst, says that the plan is potentially dangerous because it doesn't call for working in tandem with Israel on issues that the Jewish state sees as essential to its security... "For Israel to be 12 kilometers [7 miles] away from a Palestinian state that is 3,000 feet above sea level, which is looking down on Ben Gurion airport with most of Israel's infrastructure? After the rockets from Gaza, people are saying, 'Yikes, this is a dangerous proposal,'" Diker says... Fayyad, who clearly does his homework, already has Diker's report from the JCPA printed out in his office in Ramallah.

As always, make sure you grab the full Barry Rubin interview from the One Jerusalem audio page after the show. Prof. Rubin sat down for 35 minutes of questions, only a dozen or so of which made it into the highlight cut.

Topics that you'll get only in the full interview: the decades-long campaign of anti-American mass murder and torture waged by Iran's proxies in Lebanon, the pitfalls of security assistance to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon, and how Obama's engagement-centric diplomacy pushes moderate countries into the Iranian orbit. There's also an extended bit about the Obama Effect. It turns out that The One's personal popularity doesn't exactly change the calculations of our allies and enemies. Which isn't to say that Middle East writers like Hendrik Hertzberg are cutting their Obama hagiography out of whole cloth. But, in the final analysis, they're probably not winning any prizes for rigorous and levelheaded social scientific analysis either.

References:
* RubinReports [Official Site]
* Dan Diker Home Page [FreedomOutpost]
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Interview: How Salam Fayyad plans to save the Palestinian dream | csmonitor.com
* New Middle East Events Prove it: Obama Right About Most Everything - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine [Reason]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Diplomacy
* Lebanon and Hezbollah

Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for the fourth installment of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. I wrapped up the interview with Norman Podhoretz this morning and will play you some highlights on the air, split about 66/33 between Podhoretz's new book Why Are Jews Liberals? and his previous work World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. There just wasn't enough depressing material packed into the discussion of how American Jews are unshakably, myopically, religiously committed to an anti-Israel Democratic Party and an antisemitic liberal community, so we meandered between the two books. Nothing like the prospect of an apocalyptic nuclear war triggered by a downward deterrence spiral to darken the mood.

As always, to hear TOCS live you have to click over to the Blog Talk Radio show page while the programs is on between 2pm and 2:45pm. Once there you'll be able to stream the show, call in to get on the air, and - starting tomorrow - participate with other listeners in the chat room (more on that below). After the show ends you can download it as a podcast, plus we'll post the full 30 minute interview - the highlights plus what got cut for time - on the One Jerualem audio page.

Above and beyond the interview, two new features are debuting tomorrow on their way to becoming regular TOCS features:

(1) Dan Diker will be calling in from Israel for weekly discussions on two or three geopolitical issues of the day. In between being the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs and a foreign policy anaalyst at The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dan gets asked with not infrequent consistency to unpack Israeli thinking on CNN, BBC, ABC, FOX, al Hurra, and Arabic al Jazeera. I'd say he's forgotten more about Israeli sentiment and strategy than most people know, but I haven't seen any evidence he forgets stuff. Tomorrow's topics: Turkey's swing away from the West and what Israeli leaders are saying about the P5+1 deal behind closed doors.

(2) I'm going to open up the chatroom on the show page, allowing you guys to complain about the segments in realtime. Anyone who's tuned in - which is to say, anyone who's streaming live from show page - will be able to log in and participate. I obviously won't be able to monitor the discussion so I'm going to have to trust the listeners to be on their best behavior. When that doesn't work I'll have to think of something else, like a script that randomly bans one third of the room whenever someone uses the words "Hope" or "Change." I've got a good feeling about this.

References:
* Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz [Amazon]
* World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (Vintage) [Amazon]
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship [MR]
* Collective Nutroots Wisdom: Lieberman Blocking Public Option So Israel Can Attack Iran Or Something [MR]
* Norman Podhoretz - Why Jews Are Liberals [TOCS]
* One Jerualem Audio [Official Site]

Previously:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Jewish Politics
* Arab and Muslim World

As part of my determined and ongoing campaign to dilute the Mere Rhetoric brand - strongly linked as it is now to an ethos of online anonymity and amatuer ranting - I'm co-sponsoring a real-life expert event with Dore Gold on Monday Nov. 2nd at the Skirball. The official co-sponsor list: Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, One Jerusalem, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Mere Rhetoric Media, which is a fake entity I just made up to cover MR's "dyanmic and growing stable of political and academic blogs, social media assets, and multimedia offerings" (see? branding!).

More importantly: Dore Gold on Iran. Skirball. November 2nd. I've pasted the full flier, which is nicely laid out and includes some more logistical information, after the jump. Click on it to download a full-sized copy.

You can also click through to the CJHS writeup or just RSVP preemtively because it's Dore Gold and he'll be talking about Iran on the week where the IAEA will be declaring "so we looked into that Qom site that we gave Iran weeks to clean out, and it turns out it was empty - nothing to worry about!" CJHS put on a Skirball event with Norman Podhoretz about a month ago that sold out and had an overflow line stretching almost out the door. So if you're going to attend - and you should, given how what Gold said in August is happening now and what he'll be saying next week will be happening in December - it behooves you to RSVP sooner rather than later.

Partial blurb:

One of Israel's greatest living foreign policy experts, Ambassador Gold will be speaking about his new book The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West and about the threats posed by a resurgent Iran arming itself with weapons of mass destruction... The Rise of Nuclear Iran systematically lays out the elements of Iran's weaponization program: highly enriched nuclear material, long-range ballistic missiles, and nuclear-capable warheads. The revelation of the Qom enrichment facility and Iran's subsequent missile tests have confirmed all of Gold's warnings, making his book required reading for anyone who seeks to understand Tehran's current and future plans. Now Ambassador Gold will lay out a bleak case against the West's "sticks and carrots" engagement policy and highlight the consequences of its likely failure: a "nuclear umbrella" for global terrorists, a Middle East dominated by Shiite hegemony, a Western hemisphere subject to Iranian threats, and a ever-present genocidal shadow over the Jewish State.

RSVP: Click.

The full interview with Dr. Ledeen is now available on the One Jerusalem audio page. It's more than double the length of the highlight clips I played as part of Wednesday's show. If you haven't heard the Wednesday show, by the by, you should hit the widget on the MR sidebar or hop directly to the Blog Talk Radio page. There are still no people calling in but other than that I've almost entirely managed to make the equipment not be broke.

The full interview gets into a lot more detail about the scope of the Iranian threat and about internal Iranian political dynamics. At one point there's a kind of an indirect crash course on the Iranian hierarchy, which will be useful if you're participating in one of those "who's getting arrested today" fantasy leagues that have been springing up. There's also a series of musings on exactly what species of stupid must be swaying our historically-stunted diplomatic community. "What would they have to believe to think that" is always an interesting question, though it'd be a lot more entertaining if it wasn't for their Memento-like approach to Iranian engagement wasn't pushing the Middle East into nonconventional war.

Two final teaser quotes to sweeten the pot on the full interview: (1) Dr. Ledeen answers the question "where do you see the next 6 months going inside of Iran" and (2) there's an extended discussion about Tehran palace intrigue that culminates in the line "people very close to them are betraying them." Genuine inside baseball stuff.

In the meantime you obviously should grab Ledeen's new book Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West. If there was any sense in the world it'd be required reading in the White House. Instead Obama and his staff are engrossed in a book about how the White House needs to be wary of Pentagon wartime advice. What could go wrong?

References:
* AUDIO EXCLUSIVE :: Michael Ledeen, Author of 'Iran & The War Against the West' -- Full Interview! [One Jerusalem]
* Michael Ledeen - Iran's Accomplices To Evil [The Omri Ceren Show]
* Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]
* Reading "Lessons in Disaster" in the White House [Politico]

Previously:
* Khamenei Seizes Control Of Iranian Republican Guard Militias, Installs Son As Head Thug
* HuffPo: Conservatives "Insist The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion Are Real"
* The Omri Ceren Show - Wednesday At 2pm PST - Michael Ledeen On His New Book "Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West"

If I was the Israeli government and I knew I'd be attacking Iran in 2 months, I'd be doing everything possible now to preemptively expand the IDF's operational freedom in Gaza and South Lebanon. Once the attack happens there's no red line the other side won't cross so the less assets they have the better. In Gaza that might involve getting Shalit the hell out of Hamas's hands no matter what the price. In South Lebanon it would involve eliminating senior Hezbollah operatives.

I haven't written about the Shalit swap, half because I've been crunched for time and half because I've always hated blogging about prisoner exchanges. Protests aside, I kind of think it's going to happen. Hamas needs their prisoner release for the Palestinian elections and Israel's Cabinet seems willing to pay for Shalit. But the strategic picture in Gaza is a sideshow compared to Lebanon.

Speaking of which...

At least two people were killed in an explosion in a building in a small Lebanese village near the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, sources said on Monday evening. The building is reportedly the home of senior Hizbullah official Abd al-Nasser Issa. Security forces in Lebanon reported that both Issa and his son were killed in the explosion. Three other people were reportedly killed in the blast. Hizbullah denied any casualties, saying that only one person was wounded.

Hezbollah has been warning their operatives to watch out for assassinations, but this actually doesn't look like an Israeli hit. It looks like Issa was using his house as a weapons depot and natural selection took its course. Something to keep in mind the next time Human Rights Watch or the UN mouth off about how there's no evidence Hezbollah uses human shields.

These war criminals are eventually going to end up sharing formal control over Lebanon, Netanyahu's "if you want them you own them" warnings notwithstanding. And because our liberal foreign policy community needs a reminder now and again, that means Iran.

So Israel will be dealing with an Iranian controlled army in the service of a Lebanese government entity storing missiles in civilian bunkers and firing them at Israeli skyscrapers - and the Israelis will still get blamed.

References and previously after the jump...

As promised, here are last week's Council winners. The top post was from Soccer Dad, who pointed out a week ago what Netanyahu was slamming the table about yesterday:

The media likes to boast that they are the "first rough draft of history." Part of that claim is that they are disinterested parties just reporting the facts as they are. Rafael Broch of Just Journalism had an excellent op-ed in Ha'aretz demonstrating the falseness of that claim... And so every Israeli self-defense is subject to a filter, which suggests that each such action might well be a violation worthy of condemnation if not punishment. Consider the other side of the coin. On Friday Israel released twenty female security prisoners in exhange for a video of captured soldier, Gilad Schalit. Schalit has been held for three years and not allowed any visits by the Red Cross. How did the Associated Press orient its story? On the plight of the prisoners!

Also on the subject of media mendacity, the runner up non-Council post was from Jammie Wearing Fool on CBS's attempt to discredit conservative blogs. CBS's demonstrably and embarrassingly failed attempt to discredit conservative blogs. We've now reached a point where the media rushes to defend Obama against "spurious" charges without actually checking whether those charges are spurious. You have to click on the links guys.

Back to Council posts, the runner up post was from Joshuapundit on the sham negotiations in Geneva:

We're not going to discuss 'sanctions', or anything like that with Iran, but we'd like to talk to them one on one about whatever's on their mind if that works out. But of course, we're not insisting or anything like that. We'd really, really like the Iranians to let the IAEA take a peek at their hidden nuclear facility near Qom, (as if the IAEA is going to be able to find its behind with both hands)but we don't insist on it. And we're certainly not going to try to get Iran to comply even by mentioning the prospect of sanctions against them, let alone force. And nothing harsh like any deadlines. Whenever things are all tidied up and it's convenient, El Baradi and the boys will drop by - if that's OK.

On a largely unrelated note, has anyone noticed the Kafkaesque turn domestic law enforcement has taken? The top non-Council post is about the age of opaque law enforcement we've apparently entered. Closer to home, the FTC is defending their new anti-blogger regulations specifically by promising they'll only selectively enforce them. I have yet to go to law school - and while we're on that topic, if you'd be so kind - but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to work that way.

References and previously after the jump...

Per the blurb on the official group page, each week the members of the Watchers' Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Not so per that blurb, I am perennially, hopelessly behind on posting Council submissions. Here's last week's full roundup, and I'll post the winners tomorrow. That should allow me to beat this week's submissions by at least a few hours. As always you should go to the full nomination page to get the non-council submissions, some of which are strikingly good.

Joshuapundit has a breakdown of just how stupid you'd have to be to believe that the Geneva talks with Iran are anything but a foot dragging exercise for Iran. Following the Colossus Of Rhodey, though, the answer apparently is exactly as stupid as a journalist. It seems that some of our sophisticated betters have taken to unblinkingly asking "if Israel can have nukes why can't Iran?"

The Colossus Of Rhodey has a pushback of course, but I kind of think it's a pearls before willfully myopic treif kind of situation. When people are making arguments that Israelis should prefer being credibly demonized to being wildly demonized - see my post on Goldstone's daughter - I don't think what they're doing is arguing as much as emoting. The Glittering Eye's staged back and forth on global warming is also to the point here, although Soccer Dad's unpacking of Israel coverage implies that there's a lot more than just stupidity underneath the media's errors.

Some day when people talk when The One's celebrity jumped the shark, the Nobel announcement should figure prominently. But before that happened there was that risible CNN fact check of the SNL skit that caused so many eyerolls. Turns out that spectacle wasn't limited to CNN. Bookworm Room caught it as a media-wide phenomenon. The Liberal Moment distilled to its pathetic Great Leader essence: silly debates and revelatory overreactions about whether Hope and Change is merely great or the greatest. That and, per The Provocateur, corruption big and small.

When we finally get through this Moment, by the by, Rhymes With Right has a reminder that we'll have to deal with the left's disenfranchisment of our troops. See Right Truth on what they and our intelligence services have been doing on counter terrorism.

Finally, freedom of speech in an age of Muslim sensitivity: The Razor's take on Kurt Westergaard's appearance at Yale is not a particularly flattering account of our hallowed academic halls. Westergaard isn't the only old school small-l liberal who's recently come in for ugly harassment on the Yale campus, incidentally. If someone lives in New Haven and wants to collect a couple fliers for me, please hit me up by email. There's a black and white faucet logo I'd like to talk to you about.

References and previously after the jump...

We're settling into our regular time slot this week, going live at 2pm on Wednesday and running the full 45 minutes. You'll be able to help yourself to the podcast any time afterward either through the widget to the left or through the One Jerusalem frontpage. But to hear the show live you have to be on The Omri Ceren Show's Blog Talk Radio page. The widgets only serve archived shows. The only way to listen live is via the Blog Talk Radio page. Once you're following along from there you can call in, get on the air, and provide grist for the ever-churning mill that is One Jerusalem Radio.

My interview this week is with Michael Ledeen, conservative foreign policy expert and best-selling author, discussing his new book Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West. The book goes on sale bright and early tomorrow morning but you can preorder it either from Amazon or from less traditional but more discounted web storefronts like Overstock.com. As usual I'll play interview highlights tomorrow on the show and then make the full exclusive interview available on the One Jerusalem audio page.

There's an entire slow-moving Book Notes-style interview to be done with Ledeen about how his deep "no despised regime can last" sensibilities map onto his previous work on Machiavelli. My hunch: straightforwardly. But this week's interview focused less on theory and more on the immediately terrifying issues in Accomplice to Evil - the West's shameful sellout of Iranian reformers, the genuinely fragile nature of the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime, and the few - but compelling - options for dealing peacefully with Iranian nuclearization. "We don't have to bomb Iran" is the explicit optimistic upshot, "unless we continue abandoning the struggle for freedom" is the less sanguine warning.

Also on the show Wednesday: the Goldstone Report is undermining moderate Palestinians, the Obama administration's discovery that the Taliban aren't our enemies, Nobel Peace Prize lol's, and whatever happens between now and then. Tune in!

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* One Jerusalem [Official Site]
* One Jerusalem Audio Page [One Jerusalem]
* Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]
* Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely And Important Today As Five Centuries Ago by Michael Ledeen [Amazon]

Previously:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* The Omri Ceren Show At 11am PST Today - Dore Gold On The Rise Of Nuclear Iran
* The Omri Ceren Show Debuts Monday At 11am PST With Dore Gold Interview, Vitriol

I guess I was wrong during yesterday's TOCS news segment when I said that Geneva would give Iran time to limp across the nuclear finish line. They're actually sprinting ahead:

Iran plans to install a more advanced type of centrifuge at its newly revealed uranium enrichment site, an Iranian newspaper reported Tuesday, a development certain to add to international concerns about the country's nuclear work. Iranian scientists have carried out research and development in recent months for the new generation of more efficient centrifuges, and most of the machines' components are made domestically, said the head of Iran's nuclear agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, according to the Kayhan daily newspaper.... Iran insists its enrichment work is only meant for use in generating power.

The size and nature of the Qom facility put to rest even the pretense that they might be telling the truth only wanting to generate power. But it's nice to see they're still willing to unblinkingly trot out the line. Saves people the trouble of unpacking new lies.

On sanctions, here's that NYT story about how we couldn't implement a robust sanctions regime even if we got Russia or China on board. Luckily we can get neither Russia nor China on board so that's not an issue.

Not that Obama seems particularly interested in trying. First there was that September deadline that he set and that the Iranians made a huge show of totally and completely blowing off. It promptly and mysteriously vanished, only to be replaced by a new December deadline.

Then there was that hardline announcement that Iran had two weeks to let inspectors into Qom. Guess how it went:

The One laid down the two-week deadline yesterday at around 3 p.m. ET; this dispatch from The Hill was posted at 2:23 this afternoon. The big "ultimatum" didn't last 24 hours: "A State Department spokesperson on Friday signaled the president's mandate that Iran has two weeks to permit inspections of its recently unveiled uranium refinement plant was not "written in stone." "I don't think that there's a hard-and-fast deadline," State Department Spokesperson Ian C. Kelley said during Friday's press briefing, after a reporter asked what the consequences of Iran's inaction might be."

As for our broader strategy - I can't blockquote this entire Fox News blog post so I'll just send you there directly. Title: "US Won't Push for Sanctions in Nuke Talks With Iran, Open to Direct Negotiations, Denial of Access to Covert Enrichment Facility Not a Deal-Breaker."

Meanwhile our State Department has taken to granting emergency visas to Iranian regime toadies "with unusual speed." Just to be nice, ya know?

References and previously after the jump...

Thirty minutes till the very first episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. You should be able to listen to it either here or at One Jerusalem via the Blog Talk Radio widget. If it's not streaming correctly then you can head over to the main TOCS page where it'll definitely be working. You might want to take a stroll over there anyway since there's all kinds of information about calling in and sharing the show.

I wrapped up the interview with Ambassador Gold this morning and I'll be playing highlights from that plus whatever news segments we have time for. The full 25 minute interview will be made available after the show exclusively on the One Jerusalem audio page. The highlights I'll be playing focus mainly on the Ambassador's new book Rise Of Nuclear Iran and how it relates to - and predicted - the last few weeks of Iran-related news. The full interview also includes comments on Obama's Middle East diplomacy and about a couple other domestic and geopolitical controversies. Definitely something to check out.

In the meantime we're unwrapping the plastic here at the palatial One Jerusalem studios and we'll be on the air shortly. If you want to try to get on the air the number is 347-857-2022. We're only going 30 minutes today - 15 less than what we'll be doing during our regular Wednesday time slot - but I'll still try to fir a few folks in.

References:
* One Jerusalem
* The Omri Ceren Show [Blog Talk Radio]
* Rise Of Nuclear Iran by Dore Gold [Amazon]

Previously:
* One Jerusalem Conference Call With Dore Gold: The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West [Video]
* Mere Rhetoric Updates - Site Changes And News
* The Omri Ceren Show Debuts Monday At 11am PST With Dore Gold Interview, Vitriol

Per the last post, the debut episode of The Omri Ceren Show - hereinafter labeled TOCS in a desperate attempt not to sound clownish - will air tomorrow at 11am. This opportunity is courtesy the newly-minted One Jerusalem Radio, where the thinking apparently goes "our dignified high-level podcasts with noted politicians, scholars, and authors go like gangbusters - just think how popular an anger-filled hour of sarcasm and bile courtesy of an unknown blogger will be!" See also: trust, misplaced.

Tomorrow's interview is going to be with Ambassador Dore Gold, who'll be discussing among other things his new book The Rise Of Nuclear Iran. Gold's recent work got him tagged - by as erudite and careful a leftist mind as Max Blumenthal no less - as a member of the Party Of Death. Apparently the suggestion that Iran has a weapons program comprised of secret enrichment facilities, long-range ballistic missiles, and nuclear-capable warheads constitutes "a gigantic vaudeville of doom, despair, and destruction." So hopefully I'll get to ask the Ambassador why he hates life.

Around 10:30am I'll push a post live with a widget that looks very much like this thing, except it'll hopefully have a working link instead of the "undefined" tag showing now:

I'll also give you information on how to call in, light up the switchboard, and get on the air with questions. I can't imagine any of this will actually work so you should probably count on accessing the show from the main TOCS page on Blog Talk Radio. It has tools for streaming, information on calling in, and lots of social media buttons for sharing and participating.

I'm hoping that after a couple episodes a community of affirmation will coalesce around the show, very much like a group therapy session except with an extra heaping helping of warmth and comfort. Because isn't making a human connection what we're all really here for anyway?

References:
* Mere Rhetoric Updates - Site Changes And News [MR]
* Pastor Hagee's party of death (with Lieberman and Dore Gold) [Blumenthal]
* Reports: Obama Knew About Secret Iran Facility During Transition, Experts Pushed Engagement Anyway With Pro-Iran Pretexts [MR]
* Iran: Surprise, We've Got Working Ballistic Missiles [Video] [MR]
* Intel Shows Iran Fitting Missiles With Nuclear-capable Warheads [National Terror Alert]

Previously:
* Video: Israeli Missile Defense Group Emphasizes Need, Technological Feasibility Of Anti-Missile Systems
* One Jerusalem Conference Call With Dore Gold: The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West [Video]
* One Jerusalem Conference Call: Ambassador Dore Gold On How Current Limited Negotiations Are A Slippery Slope To Losing Jerusalem

It'd be easy to think of this as high comedy from the usual band of celebrity tyrant clowns who so fascinate our liberal foreign policy establishment, not least of which because it's high comedy from the usual band of celebrity tyrant clowns who so fascinate our liberal foreign policy establishment:

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called on Monday for a new global definition of terrorism. Meeting a day after the end of a summit of African and South American leaders in Venezuela, the two men signed a declaration urging a global conference be held to sketch out new terms defining terrorism. Neither spoke publicly about the document, which rejects "attempts to link the legitimate struggle of the people for liberty and self-determination" with terrorism, according to a Venezuelan government website.

Next up: a redefinition of "Holocaust" that excludes genocides where the murderers were merely seeking Lebensraum. Subtle these tools are not. Not that they have to be: we've now reached a point in global geopolitics where Chavez is the one urging his fellow cretins to help the President of the United States, ostensibly the leader of the free world. Explicitly:

Meanwhile, Stone's new buddy gushed about Barack Obama, short one Communist buddy since Van Jones departed in the dark of night over the weekend. Maybe the two can pal around and have a beer at the White House: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy who once called George W. Bush "the devil," said on Monday he hoped to be able to work more closely with President Barack Obama..."I have no reason to call him (Obama) the devil, and I hope that I am right," Chavez told reporters in Venice. "With Obama we can talk, we are almost from the same generation, one can't deny that Obama is different (from Bush). He's intelligent, he has good intentions and we have to help him."

In fairness, Chavez and Obama do have a few overlapping perspectives. It's not just big things like reinstalling Zelaya or engaging Iran. It's the little things, the everyday things, the things at the level of sensibility. Like their mutual vaguely reflexive need to trash former President Bush in front of international forums. Those are the kind of shared eccentricities that really bring two people together.

Not in the way that Chavez is being "brought together" with African countries in an "anti-imperial" alliance. Or the way he's being "brought together" with Iran to create what Costa Rica's former US ambassador calls "a menace to the Western Hemisphere." Or the way he's being "brought together" with Qaddafi to build up a new world order. Those are much more robust alliance, built on shared anti-Western interests.

But it's still kind of heartwarming.

References and previously after jump...

Within a few minutes of the Iran nuke revelation Mark Knoller had a "senior US official" spinning it as some kind of "victory." It wasn't the most credible spin ever offered by an administration - and making it into an unblinking party line didn't help - but it wasn't "Honduras is a coup" deplorable or anything like that. It's undeniably dumb - Iran not only forced Obama to tip his hand but did it in a way that strengthened their negotiating position - but at least it was kind of sort of in the ballpark:

Paul Ingram, executive director of the British-American Security Information Council in London, an independent research and advocacy organization, said the timing of Iran's revelation -- in between United Nations General Assembly sessions and and the key meeting between Iran and key Western powers -- is deliberate on Iran's part. "It is not at all surprising that Iran would want this news to come out now," Ingram said. "It strengthens their hand." The fact that Iran has proactively informed the world helps Iran diplomatically in conducting nuclear negotiations, Ingram said, adding that to characterize this second facility as a covert operation is misleading. The Iranians have yet to start production at Qom and are revealing it before that happens.

So "US victory" isn't really a tenable argument. But it's what you're supposed to do and it's what they did. So points for that.

As it turns out, though, spinning diplomatic setbacks as victories doesn't only mean you're being inane. In this White House it also means you're off message:

Reid: "Thank you Mr. President, you just mentioned sanctions that have bite, what kinds of sanction, and I know you can't get into details but what kind of sanctions at all would have bite with Iran, do you really think that any kind of sanctions would have any effect on somebody like Ahmadinejad, secondly some of your advisers today said that this announcement was a victory, do you consider it a victory and if so why didn't you announce it earlier since you have known since you were President elect?." Obama flustered by the question: "I'm not interested in victory, I'm interested in solving the problem"

That's quite the nuance-infused take on the international scene, and it's certainly justified when countries can come together for mutual benefit. International relations obviously doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Except - weirdly - when it is a zero sum game. Like when one country wants to build a nuclear bomb and another country wants them not to, that's a situation where you'll have a winner and a loser. Best case scenario for pretending otherwise: you look moronic. Worst case scenario: the other side actually believes you and hardens their posture accordingly.

I guess the actual worst case is that Obama's not pretending. But that's just silly. Video via Gateway Pundit:

This is more or less the same stunt he pulled when he couldn't make up his mind on "victory in Afghanistan." So at least he's consistently inconsistent.

References and previously after the jump...

The stuff about the transition comes from what Knoller's reporting, and in retrospect it makes sense. If the NIE estimated that there were 10-15 hidden facilities - and they did - presumably they had explicit game on at least a few of them. Nice of Obama to trot out surrogate after surrogate to threaten Israel against taking out the facilities, always under the pretense that he had things under control. Speaking of which, how did Iran get wind that their cover was blown?

As for Russia, they still see Iran as critical to their economic health, so don't expect much from Moscow. Earlier this week, they sounded fatalistic about new sanctions, and some wondered if Obama hadn't worked out some quid pro quo based on the shift on missile defense in eastern Europe. Instead, it looks as though Obama may have shared this intel with Russia, which is probably how Iran found out about it.

Since this post is supposed to be about engagement and the faux sophisticates who fabricate pretexts for it, here are the Sept. 8 and Sept. 19 LA Times editorials urging "conversations" with Iran. In between the paper published a third pro-engagement Opinion, this one about how Iran was ever-so-close to moderation.

The drip drip drip consistency of the engagement push might cause some people to suspect that a loose group of pro-Iran journalists, intellectuals, and politicians were manipulating the news cycle. But the alternative - that the LA Times is filled with morons who didn't get the "no one really believes engagement will work any more" memo - shouldn't be totally dismissed.

Taking a step back: I was always kind of fond of the left's anodyne Bush-era assurances about how Iran could never get their centrifuges running. There were all kinds of reasons: contamination of the equipment, impurity of the uranium, the misalignment of the moons of Saturn, etc. It was the specificity coupled with the bluster in the context of the mindblowing stupidity that was always so delightful.

This current crop of Iran apologists is just unimaginative.

Why not? Iran already got precisely the right read on Western resolve when we let them blow off that September deadline. What's this going to do? Give the impression of appeasement?

The consequences of letting the September deadline pass without demonstrating a decisive response is clearly not understood in Western capitals. Iran will carefully calibrate its next moves on the basis of how it believes the U.S. and its allies will act in the weeks ahead. Up until now, President Obama's efforts to reach out to the Iranian leadership with carefully-crafted public messages and private letters have elicited the opposite response of what he intended... What might have been seen in Washington as a magnanimous gesture was perceived in Tehran as a sign of reduced Western resolve.

And so this morning - somehow knowing that their cover was blown - the mullahs went ahead and let slip a second previously undisclosed nuke facility. This one's not big enough to be helpful with energy generation. But if you were intent on, say, building a nuclear bomb - if that was your intention then it's quite useful.

This is the first facility out of the 10-15 secret ones that the 2007 NIE said Iran probably had. It's the third one they've been caught lying about. So in response we've issued a strong statement about how we're going to give them until December to explain themselves. Because maybe this whole thing is just a giant misunderstanding!

Obama called "disturbing information" -- a secret uranium enrichment facility Western intelligence agencies have discovered near Qom, 97 miles southwest of Tehran. Calling the news "a challenge made to the entire international community," President Sarkozy said that "if by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken." Brown said the "level of deception by the Iranian government and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments will shock and anger the whole international community and it will harden our resolve...We will not let this matter rest.

So disturbed was Obama, per Tapper, that he began to experience "great and increasing doubts about the strictly peaceful nature" of Iran's nuke program. You know, they might actually be up to something!

References and previously after the jump...

Even the left now admits that Iran and Venezuela are cooperating to sow global instability, with Venezuelan oil going to Iran and Iranian missiles coming to Venezuela. But at least Chavez is also building nuclear facilities with Russia's help. At least there's that:

Hugo Chavez wants to join the nuclear energy club and is looking to Russia for help in getting started. The Venezuelan leader is already dismissing critics' concerns over his nuclear ambitions, offering assurances his aims are peaceful and that Venezuela will simply be following in the footsteps of other South American nations using nuclear energy.

Yet his project remains in its planning stages and still faces a host of practical hurdles, likely requiring billions of dollars, as well as technology and expertise that Venezuela lacks. Russia has offered to help bridge that gap, and Chavez has announced that the two countries have created an atomic energy commission.

Of course a simple bilateral relationship - even one built on mutual nuclear capabilities - is too small time for these cretins. They're determined to have their own full-blown Iran-Venezuela-Hezbollah terror axis:

Two related items that should give the Obama administration pause as it seeks ways to engage Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and other countries in Venezuela's sphere of influence (Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador primarily). The first is the new Memorandum of Understanding signed between the militaries of Venezuela and Iran. According to the official FARS News Agency, Iran's defense minister, in a visit to Caracas, "underlined Tehran's all-out efforts to help Venezuela promote its defense capabilities and bolster its power of deterrence through bilateral Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) on military cooperation." Chávez, for his part, stated that "The Bolivarian and the Islamic Revolutions have a lot in common and these commonalities have consolidated the two countries' bonds."...

At the same time, 17 people were arrested in the small Caribbean island (and Dutch territory) of Curacao on charges of transporting several tons of cocaine and sending some of the money to Hezbollah. "We have been able to establish that this group has relations with international criminal organizations that have connections with the Hezbollah," prosecutor Ludmila Vicento said.

Chavez has also purchased himself some brand new tanks. His military and terror financing has drained Venezuela's coffers to the point where they can't even keep the lights on any more. Maybe this is something Obama can talk with them about.

References and previously after the jump...

About time. The UAE has been the gaping hole in the Iran sanctions net for years:

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean weapons to Iran, marking the first time a nation has acted on UN sanctions to stop the communist state's proliferation, a diplomat said Friday... A diplomat, speaking to AFP in New York on condition of anonymity, said UAE government officials had informed the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, which is responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang. "It is an issue that is being processed by the committee," said the source, who declined further comment on details on the weapons.

I was going to end with the MR post from last April about how Obama prevented our cutting-edge missile defense from getting deployed lest it "provoke" the North Koreans. But instead here's a post from last Tuesday about how Obama's diplomatic push toward Pyongyang is paying off.

Do you think the informal club of celebrity tyrants who so fascinate our liberal foreign policy community actually laugh out loud when they talk about Obama?

With regime change off the table, and President Obama dishing out "mutual respect" faster than the rulers of Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang or Caracas can spit their contempt right back in his face, tyrants are becoming ever more weirdly trendy. They are globalized, in our face, on the Web, on television--and as New York braces for the September opening of the United Nations General Assembly, some of them, with considerable ceremony, are coming to town.

The most flamboyant among them enter a VIP orbit, in which they may be officially reviled, but also eagerly sought after. Recall the banquet hosted by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last September at the midtown Manhattan Grand Hyatt for 1,000 or so of his closest friends. Or remember the gushing accounts two years ago of the invitations sent out, as Time magazine described it, on "creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy," to a select 50 or so American opinion-makers to sup with Ahmadinejad at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York. Whatever the protesters shouted outside the security cordon, it has become an accepted part of New York's fall season that Ahmadinejad and his retinue arrive for a hoopla of motorcades, talk shows, press conferences and banquets.

It's easy to forget that Ahmadinejad was endlessly fascinating to the left, right up until his "no gays in Iran" stunt made it declasse to defend him. Before that happened foreign policy experts were actually flirting with painting him - apocalyptic lunatic though he is - as a relative moderate:

There have been rumors swirling for the past week that the IAEA is keeping an explosive Iran report in a drawer. Israel apparently got wind of it and went so ballistic that the US and Europe had to pick it up and push ElBaradei:

"What we and all the allies are pressing for is for the full case to be laid out, in public," one senior Obama administration official said last week, speaking anonymously because he was discussing intelligence data... But agency officials say that Mohamed ElBaradei, the departing director general, resisted a public airing, fearing that such a presentation would make the agency appear biased toward the West in the effort to impose what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently called "crippling" sanctions. Dr. ElBaradei, who has argued for allowing Iran to maintain a token capacity to produce uranium under strict inspection, has said that the evidence does not create an airtight case against Iran.

Yeah, ElBaradei would never want to appear biased. That's why he refers to the "Arab world" as "we", calls the WMD-producing Syrians his "brothers," engages in personal boycotts of media organizations that are insufficiently hostile to Israel, won't acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, regurgitates untenable pro-engagement talking points on Iran, and goes out of his way to undermine the West's military options against the mullahs. Because he doesn't want to appear biased.

On the plus side, the IAEA pinky-swears they're not hiding any report, that Iran is slowing down their nuke development, and that there's no "evidence in the agency's files that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability":

The U.N. nuclear watchdog on Friday hit back at reports that it had hidden information about Iran's disputed atomic programme, in a rare public comment on the agency's sensitive inspections work... The IAEA has no evidence showing undeniably that Iran has a bomb agenda, a diplomat close to the IAEA said earlier this week. The diplomat said ElBaradei had been loath to publish information that could be used for political ends and make the agency look biased against Iran... His successor, Japan's veteran IAEA envoy Yukiya Amano, has said he has not seen any evidence in the agency's files that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Meanwhile there are undiscovered tribes in the Amazon without access to electricity who have "seen evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons." At this rate the UN's vaunted nuclear watchdog will be very last organization on the planet to discover that those lunatics really do have a nuke program. Or at least the last one to admit it.

References and previously after the jump...

Via the Guardian, here's one perspective on what Obama's got planned for the opening. Let's call it - and I'm just choosing a random moniker here - the "official White House spin":

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials. Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme... In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."... Obama has pencilled in the announcement of his breakthrough for either a meeting of world leaders at the UN general assembly in New York in the week beginning 23 September or the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.

And here's a different perspective that we might call - again for no particular reason - "what's actually going on:"

Several sources have informed One Jerusalem that the Obama Administration is planning to significantly step up the pressure on Israel by announcing a comprehensive plan for Israel and the Palestinians at the opening of the United Nations General in September. Picture this: The anti-Israel nations of the world surrounding President Obama as he demands that Israel give up sovereignty over Jerusalem, abandon settlements, and recognize a terrorist state on the West Bank. If this happens, Israel will be isolated from the rest of world in a very dramatic manner.

If Obama is actually holding Israel hostage on Iran it would be breathtakingly mendacious. It wouldn't be unexpected - British officials were leaking exactly this trade as far back as July, with Clinton playing the bad cop and saying that "Israel may lose Arab support on Iran" - but it would still be out and out blackmail.

Now consider that this "give up your territory of face nuclear extinction" bargain is the least anti-Israel of whatever Obama's got cooked up for the UN opening. Almost difficult to understand why only 4% of Israelis think he's is pro-Israel.

Which is weird because the functionally interchangeable cluster of pro-Obama liberal groups - J-Street, MJ Rosenberg's IPF, the NJDC, etc - have indicated that you'd have to be a total wingnut idiot not to realize that The One is a huge fan of the Jewish State.

References:
* Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks [Guardian]
* ALERT :: OBAMA PLANNING ISRAEL AMBUSH AT OPENING OF UN ASSEMBLY! [One Jerusalem]
* World may back Iran op as part of deal [JPost]
* Clinton: 'Israel may lose Arab support on Iran' [JPost]
* Poll: 4 percent of Jewish Israelis see Obama as pro-Israel [JTA]

Previously:
* Obama's Anti-Israel Diplomacy Spectacularly Fails To Win Even A Single Arab Or Muslim Concessions
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"
* Obama State Dept To Israel: You'll Open Your Borders To Who We Say You'll Open Your Borders To

Last week it was Rafsanjani, who had to pledge allegiance to Khamenei in front of the powerful Expediency Council and repudiate "law breakers." This week it's Hajjarian, arguably the closest thing Iran has ever had to a genuine reformist, brought out to denounce everything he's ever stood for. Pure Orwell:

Saeed Hajjarian was a die-hard hero of Iran's reform movement, campaigning to reduce the power of the Islamic clerics even after being shot in the head in an assassination attempt that left him partially paralyzed. On Tuesday, he was brought into a courtroom propped up by men who put him in the front row of defendants in Iran's biggest political trial in decades, where he proceeded to renounce his entire career as a reformist.

His speech slurred and nearly unintelligible from the 2000 attack, Hajjarian had a statement read proclaiming that Iran's supreme leader represents the rule of God on Earth and asking for forgiveness for his "incorrect" ideas... A procession of the biggest names in the reform movement has taken the stand during the past month, some looking thin and tired, all dressed in blue pajama-like prison uniforms and slippers. They have confessed to taking part in what the government says was a plot backed by foreign enemies to overthrow Iran's clerical leadership in a "velvet revolution."

"Thin and tired" is an understatement. Unremitting solitary confinement, imprisonment in literal tombs, regular beatings, and ritualized rape have left some of Iran's top reformers looking like this. Even TIME - one of the outlets more rather than less prone to publishing pro-engagement talking points as news - is considering the possibility that maybe possibly the IRG is in charge.

The drip drip drip of coerced confessions is developing into something of a pattern:

Iranian authorities put on trial Sunday a group of demonstrators who said they were directed by campaign officials of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to destroy public property in the chaotic aftermath of the June 12 election. The arrested demonstrators made their statements, which could become part of a case against Mousavi if he is arrested, in the third session of a mass trial of politicians, journalists and academics. There has been widespread criticism of the confessions, which many government opponents say are coerced.

Actual Associated Press headline from the middle of this month: "Waiting on Iran: West seeking signs of Tehran's global direction after turmoil." Seriously. Because they could go either way!

References and previously after the jump...

This morning's One Jerusalem conference call was with Amb. Dore Gold, who's on a media blitz for his just-published book The Rise Of Nuclear Iran. Also on the call: Avi Green (Tel Chai Nation), Jerry Gordon (IsraPundit), and Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit). The audio will be up on their frontpage in a couple hours but in the meantime there's a Fox and Friends video of Gold discussing the book below, also via One Jerusalem.

Basic points from the book and the call: (1) Engagement has already been tried and won't work, (2) Iran will keep their nukes off-limits during negotiations anyway, (3) the mullahs are very deliberately running out the clock, and (4) they already has enough nuclear material to build the Bomb plus the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver it.

Not that they'd need to, since some of their tests show they're preparing for a shore-based EMP attack.

Where the book gets particularly detailed is on the grinding diplomatic and military dynamics of a post-nuclear Iran: an Iranian "nuclear umbrella" to terrorists like Hezbollah and Hamas that detonates the War on Terror, Iranian hegemony over the Middle East that puts stability at the whim of the IRG, and increasing Iranian interference in Latin America at the cost of US influence.

The book is systematic, it has documents that have rarely seen the light of day, and it's as on-point to the next few months as any dead tree publication can be. Grab the audio from One Jerusalem and then buy it.

References and previously after the jump...

Before you try to line up this insanity with the old Inquisition garbage on destroying the sinner's body to save the soul - that's not what's happening here. This isn't a theocratic justification for torture, which would almost be too clean and honest for these cretins. That's the kind of spectacle that, for better or worse, you still have to own.

This even goes beyond old-fashioned brazen totalitarian denial, though there's some of that ala the regime's brazen "prison rapes, what prison rapes" party line. What's added here is sneering anti-clerical populism, where a "salt-of-the-earth" Ahmadinejad thug mocks an ostensibly decadent cleric for breaking under weeks of torture. Charming:

A close aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist critic of the president, appeared so gaunt during his televised confession this month because he himself had decided to take off some weight. "It's natural that when someone has become fat, in prison he understands that his fatness harmed his body and spirit," said Ali Akbar Javanfekr."So maybe Mr. Abtahi took advantage of this opportunity to lose weight."

Observers were stunned when Abtahi, who served as a vice president for former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, publicly confessed to conspiring against Ahmadinejad. It wasn't just that his words appeared to be copied verbatim from Iran's hardline press. But the 51-year-old looked terrible... The mid-ranking cleric appeared gaunt, withdrawn and without his turban.

Here's the pre and post, via the LAT and courtesy Iranian news agencies. The reports say that he spent weeks under interrogation and in solitary confinement, which in Evin means you're locked up in a tomb-like box, taken out occasionally for beatings, and - even if you're male - regularly raped.

Remember when Iran got a slot on the UN Human Rights Council's Durban steering committee, the better to plan a conference that demonized Israel for human rights abuses? There are literally billions of people, to say nothing of a decent swath of the US foreign policy commitunity, who think that the appointment was perfectly reasonable. But at least when our foreign policy experts explain their reasoning it has an air of nuance.

On the plus side, maybe this is something Obama can ask the mullahs about if they ever deign to let him personally try to appease them.

References:
* Mohammad Ali Abtahi [Babyon And Beyond]
* Figures: Iranian Prison Guards Rape Female Prisoners Before Execution "Lest They Go To Paradise" [MR]
* Clenched Against The Male Prisoners They're Raping [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* Iran Elected To UN Human Rights Council, Appointed To Plan Anti-Racism Conference. Hey, Why Not? [MR]

Previously:
* Clinton: Iran Protests Are An "Internal Matter"
* Media Slightly Exaggerating Ahmadinejad's Acceptance Of Israel, Willingness To Give Up Nukes
* United Nations: Iran's Murder Of Peaceful Protesters Raises "Troubling Questions"

Pressure on Israel to give up the Golan, reinvigorated US-Syrian diplomatic ties despite Assad's continued interference with the Hariri tribunal, and a generous offer by Obama to look the other way while Damascus continues to develop WMDs - smart power is very smart:

Iran's supreme leader called his country's alliance with Syria a symbol of resistance in the Middle East on Wednesday, seeking to reinforce a key relationship as Tehran fends off continued criticism over its response to post-election unrest. Visiting Syrian President Bashar Assad exemplified that resistance by criticizing foreign countries for provoking the massive protests that followed Iran's disputed June presidential election. His comments will likely disappoint the Obama administration, which has stepped up diplomatic efforts to pull Syria away from Iran. "I've come here today to personally convey my warm congratulations to you and the Iranian nation," Assad was quoted.

Not only has Obama "stepped up efforts" to suck up to Syria: he's gone so far as to repeatedly trot out surrogates to announce that his oh-so-sophisticated strategy was paying dividends. Turns out not so much.

Iranian press spun Assad's visit as a veritably divine signal that regional actors need to open up a "resistance front" because Israel and the US have become "weak." Terrific:

In a telephone conversation, the Iranian and Syrian Presidents have stated Israel and its allies are getting "weaker" and instead the tide is turning in favor of regional Muslim nations, the Presidential office said in a press report on Friday. According to Mehr News Agency, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "the enemies of regional peace are losing the ground but the formidable alliance of friendly countries like Iran and Syria are getting more powerful." The Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad also insisted that regional developments "are turning in favor of Muslim countries and to the detriment of the Zionist regime and its allies."

No worries though - I'm sure that our renewed promise to deliver Israel and the security team we're sending to Damascus will cause Assad to like us the bestest.

References and previously after the jump...

First Ahmadinejad's tirade from last week, a neat little example of the anti-British conspiracy theories that make up the fabric of daily life in Iran:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that enemy states will be "slapped in the face" if they do not cease interfering in Iran's internal affairs. "The Iranian nation has for 30 years endured the actions of enemy states with magnanimity, but if you do not desist from your interference, it [Iran] will slap you in the face so hard that you will not be able to find your way back home... Ahmadinejad pointed to British interference in Iran's post-election unrest, saying, "Some of this country's officials thought that by launching a Persian-language channel they will be able to reach their objectives in the Islamic Republic, but they underestimated the Iranian nation's love for the rule of its just jurisprudent [Ayatollah Khamenei]."

And now a news petulant fit, this time directed at the US's Farsi language efforts:

Iranian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Sunday for a bill creating a $20 million fund intended in part to expose human rights violations by the United States, the ILNA news agency reported... The U.S. Senate passed a bill in July that would allocate $30 million for technologies to allow the U.S. government's Farsi-language satellite and radio stations to bypass Iranian government efforts to jam their broadcasts. An additional $20 million would be set aside for developing Web sites and other technologies that will improve Iranian access to censored information. An additional $5 million is authorized for documenting information about human rights in Iran.

"We must respond in kind to America's injustice and tyranny and the interference of this country against Iran," Boroujerdi said, according to Press TV. The lawmakers need to vote again on the bill within six months in order to finalize it.

The WaPo goes on to muse that maybe - maybe - this might be a sign that Obama's outreach isn't going to work because of lingering "distrust." Which is weird because just a few weeks ago the WaPo was channeling Scowcroft and Brzezinski on the point that The One's charming charmfulness had gotten rid of anti-Americanism.

It is interesting that there are foreign policy experts who ritualistically intone that Iran's paranoia over foreign interference is "unfortunately" justified and foreign policy experts who insist that we have to embrace public diplomacy and those are often the same foreign policy experts. Not there's anything wrong in theory with trying to win Arab and Muslim hearts and minds. It's only when State's institutional imperatives for success run up against the reality that there's a deep ideological conflict between the West and large swaths of the Islamic world - only then do we get our diplomats going on obsequious apology tours and our foreign media outlets broadcasting antisemitic cant.

Which also wouldn't matter, except that's all the time.

References and previously after the jump...

That was fast:

An Iranian official has denied he said Tehran was ready for talks with the West on its nuclear programme based on mutual respect and without conditions. State television had earlier reported that Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the UN's nuclear watchdog, had announced its willingness to negotiate. "There have been no comments or interviews with TV networks on nuclear talks or conditions," he later said. Iran has been given until September to end its uranium enrichment programme. Otherwise it faces tougher sanctions. The West suspects Iran is secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists its programme is solely peaceful.

On the upside, now we're in for a month of eyeroll-inducing Tehranology from our oh-so-sophisticated foreign policy community. I can't wait to learn what kind of subtle signal Khamenei was trying to send to Obama by having Soltanieh announce Iran's willingness to negotiate without preconditions and then immediately backtrack.

It can't be that someone got their signals crossed. It's obviously got to be that Khamenei was sending a note in a bottle about how there's an internal power struggle between him and the IRG, and so Obama should urgently reach out to Khamenei to isolate the IRG. Obviously.

For the record, even Clinton all but admits that engagement with Iran isn't going to work. It's clever of the administration to hold back the largely futile sanctions Obama's supposedly holding over the Islamic Republic - the better to ensure they don't visibly fail before negotiations state - but I think the Iranians cracked that secret a while ago.

Maybe another obsequiousness letter to the mullahs will work!

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Iran denies nuclear talks offer [BBC]
* Official: Iran Ready for Nuclear Talks With West [Fox News]
* Khamenei Seizes Control Of Iranian Republican Guard Militias, Installs Son As Head Thug [MR]
* Great News: Obama And House Dems Blocking National, International Sanctions On Iran [MR]
* Clinton: Just A Head's Up, But Engagement With Iran Probably Won't Work [MR]
* Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran By January (Plus: New EU Sanctions Somewhat Underwhelming, Still Better Than What Obama Will Do) [MR]
* EXCLUSIVE: U.S. contacted Iran's ayatollah before election [Washington Times]

Previously:
* Obama WH: When We Confirmed Ahmadinejad's Legitimacy Yesterday, We Didn't Mean To Do That
* Perfect: Iran Creates Propaganda Gold Out Of Hillary's Empty "We Empowered The Protesters" Bragging [Video]
* Iran PressTV Blows The Lid Off Anti-Obama Birther Conspiracy Theories. Turns Out: Jews.

When the post-election protests broke out the WH went out of its way to obsequiously suck up to the mullahs, taking the risk of deflating the dissidents, until public outrage forced them to withdraw their hot dogs and lemonade offers. Then Gibbs confirmed Ahmadinejad's legitimacy on the eve of the inauguration, potentially tipping the decision calculus of protesters, until public outcry forced him to issue noncommittal "the Iranian people will decide" talking points. The goal all along has been to avoid the perception of meddling by never taking a stand when it mattered, among other things on the gamble that the regime would survive and Obama would want to engage it.

It was a supine and disgraceful policy. It would never have been convincing because Iran and its leaders are true believers in conspiracy theories about omnipresent Western manipulation. Even if it had been convincing it would have been futile because engagement won't work. But at least it was a consistent supine, disgraceful, unconvincing, and ultimately futile policy.

And now this crap:

"We did not want to get between the legitimate protests and demonstrations of the Iranian people and the leadership," Clinton said in an interview with CNN broadcast on Sunday. "And we knew that if we stepped in too soon, too hard... the leadership would try to use us to unify the country against the protestors." "Now, behind the scenes, we were doing a lot," Clinton said. "We were doing a lot to really empower the protestors without getting in the way. And we're continuing to speak out and support the opposition."

I only caught the interview because Iranian Tweeters are going ballistic about it. Apparently Iran state media is plastering it all over the airwaves. No wonder Iranian MPs just doubled down on Western "meddling."

This gem recently appeared as a brand new YouTube video on an account with this bio: "Sign the petition to try the corrupted Iranian opposition leaders (Rafsanjani, Khatami, Mousavi and Karroubi). While some responsible of the attempt of 'velvet revolution' against Iran are facing trials and admitting cooperation with foreign powers, intelligence agencies and terrorist groups, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, makes her own confessions." If this is what they're pushing into the English-speaking world, imagine what's being produced for domestic consumption.

I've removed the final frames from this propaganda. The clip originally ended with a pictures of Mousavi, Khatami, and Rafsanjani underneath text calling to "FREE IRAN from the Reformist/Moderate mafias," plus the url of the anti-dissident petition. It also had a menu with links to a range of other filth, including a video implying Neda was killed by "secularists."

Perfect:

Actually the State Department had little to nothing to do with Twitter staying open. The Twitter CEOs were more than smart enough to figure out that a "highly visible global event" was an opportunity they didn't want to screw up. As for giving Iranian dissidents financial or logistical support: Obama zeroed that out of the 2010 budget.

And yet Clinton's comments still forced Larijani - who once had come perilously close to opposing the election - to respond by siding with the regime against "Western powers."

Somehow the Obama administration has managed to garner all the negatives of boosting Iranian pro-democracy dissidents without actually doing anything to boost Iranian pro-democracy dissidents. Smart power!

References and previously after the jump...

For the record, I don't think this is one of the many "Jewish Lobby" conspiracy theories that Chas Freeman has fed to Iranian media. And I'm reasonably sure I'm right about that too:

The Israeli government has allegedly used its influence in American politics to strengthen the rumors about US President Barack Obama's birthplace. On Monday, well-known investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's entrenched alliance with the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), various neoconservative groups and fundamentalist Christian organizations had made it "very easy for him to bring this whole canard back" about allegations that Obama has been born in Kenya rather than the United States...

The claimants to the contrary, called 'birthers', are lead by California attorney Orly Taitz who has filed in the federal court Kenyan papers, which certify that Obama is Kenyan-born. The Washington-based journalist said that "just after this fake birth certificate came out, she [Taitz] pops up in Tel Aviv two days later." "She is originally from Moldova, very closely tied to Likud, Netanyahu and also Foreign Minister (Avigdor Lieberman) who is also a native of Moldova," he told Russia Today.

Madsen is also the guy who blew the lid off the secret Jewish plot to colonize Iraq. Which was a real bummer, because we were this close. Regardless, I'm sure that this is something Obama can clear up when he talks with the oh-so-rational state actors behind Iran's oh-so-rational state media.

What do you think the odds are that this gets picked up by Sullivan? I'm thinking: pretty decent:

It's jawdropping that Sullivan would claim that "neocons" and "AIPAC" would want the revolution to fail. One American clearly seeks the failure of the revolution, but that's his own fantasy-boyfriend Barack Obama. And Sullivan can't say that his would-be boyfriend is in the wrong, so he puts Barack Obama's words into the mouths of his enemies -- "neocons" (by which he means Jews) and AIPAC (by which he means Jews).

How about Roger Cohen? Ditto.

References:
* Netanyahu behind Obama birth rumors: Report [Iran PressTV]
* Freeman On Iranian TV: "I Shouldn't Have Been Surprised" Obama Threw Me Under The Bus (Oh, And Israel Won't Survive) [MR]
* Israel hopes to colonize parts of Iraq as 'Greater Israel' [Madsen]
* Andrew Sullivan and Khamanei Agree: Jew-Controlled Media Spreads Lies [Ace]
* Roger Cohen Digs Himself Deeper [Forward]

Previously:
* The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House
* Iran Anti-Holocaust Conference - Pervasiveness as Legitimation
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition

And it's only been a week since she realized that North Korean engagement was also a waste of time? At this rate the WH will soon run out of intransigent thugs it can brazenly pretend are ripe for dialogue. If it wasn't for Russia, China, most of Latin America, and all of the Middle East except Israel, I'd almost be a little concerned:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the United States has no illusions that Iran will accept overtures to return to negotiations about its nuclear program and will not wait much longer for Tehran to respond. Both Clinton and national security adviser James Jones said in interviews aired Sunday that Washington has little choice but to deal with the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, regardless of U.S. feelings about charges he was re-elected in a fraudulent election and sympathy for the thousands who have protested the outcome.

Of course if Obama had followed Europe's lead and come out early in favor of the protesters - as opposed to gambling on the sustainability of the IRG's military coup - the US might have a little more wiggle room now. Ditto if he hadn't imperiously told Israel to lighten up on the Islamic regime. In fact, Washington might have much more than "little choice" if Obama had done anything except shield the regime since he took office. But spilled milk, huh?

At least sanctions have no chance of working now that Iran is ready to go nuclear on a whim:

Unless Iran responds positively to President Obama's offer of talks on its nuclear program by next month, it could face what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls "crippling sanctions."... But a number of Iran analysts are skeptical that new sanctions will break the stalemate... Effective sanctions, say Administration officials, require participation by Iran's key trading partners. That's a problem, since neither Russia nor China is convinced that there's an imminent danger of Iran producing nuclear weapons. Coalition of the willing-style sanctions of the sort envisaged by the congressional legislation may have limited impact because they're unlikely to be implemented by neighbors such as Turkey and Iraq. And the use of naval power to enforce a blockade could easily provoke a war that the U.S. military is eager to avoid. But even if "crippling sanctions" were somehow imposed, Tehran still might not back down.

Which is weird, because I was assured that Obama's "strong carrots and strong sticks" approach - focus groups, it turns out, love buzzwords like "strong" - was the super-sophisticated solution that was going to keep the mullahs from getting the Bomb.

References and previously after the jump...

The crucial and delicate early days of post-election rioting, when dissidents had to calculate whether it was worth flooding into the streets: the Obama administration maintains that Iranian diplomats are still welcome at July 4 celebrations. That doesn't take the wind out of protesters' sails and the regime crackdown begins in earnest. In the middle of that State reverses its position.

The crucial and delicate hours leading up to Ahmadinejad's inauguration, when dissidents again had to make calculations about relative odds of success vs. relative risk: the Obama administration declares that Ahmadinejad is "the elected leader" of Iran in response to a question about his legitimacy. Whether that had any influence on protesters can't really be measured, but in any case critical mass obviously failed to form.

Now guess what:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Wednesday said he had misspoken in calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's elected leader and that Washington will let the Iranian people decide whether Iran's election was fair. "Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that's not for me to pass judgment on," Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One. "He's been inaugurated. That's a fact. Whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that, and we'll let them decide about that."

I'm not saying the WH is intentionally abandoning pro-democracy activists at exactly the worst moments and then backtracking to save domestic face. Seriously. Foreign policy can be guided by moral imperatives or hardheaded realism or both. When you try to use only hardheaded realism but you also happen to be flat wrong about the world - well, these things will just kind of happen.

Although if the point is to gamble on the probability of regime instability and adjust accordingly, it's hard to understand why the WH moves toward the protesters exactly when the regime seems most in control. Another few examples and people might begin to suspect that the WH was signaling to the mullahs that anti-regime statements were meaningless boilerplate designed for public consumption.

References:
* Awesome: State Publicly Reassures Iranian Diplomats They're Still Invited To July 4th Parties [MR]
* White House: Ahmadinejad Is "The Elected Leader" Of Iran [Video] [MR]
* White House reverses statement on Iran election [Reuters]

Previously:
* Huge Relief: Obama's Awesomely Awesome Charm Means Anti-Americanism Isn't A Problem Any More
* Clinton To Arab States: Don't Bother Worrying About Iranian Nukes, We've Got Your Back
* Obama To Israel: Stop Growing Domestically And Stop Trying To Defend Yourself From Iran

This in response to a question about Ahmadinejad's "legitimacy," effortlessly linking the two in a way that an administration less committed to appeasement would struggle over. The video is below via Hot Air via Breitbart, but don't miss the timing of this cravenness: on the eve of Ahmadinejad's inauguration, during the few hours when Iranian dissidents are literally sitting on their couches deciding whether it's worth risking their lives:

Iranian opposition groups have called for a new round of street demonstrations Wednesday to coincide with the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term. The country's reform movement says it plans to demonstrate outside parliament in Tehran, to protest the swearing-in of Mr. Ahmadinejad. A massive security presence is expected outside parliament and in other areas of the capital during the inauguration ceremony.

Given how Obama once compared Iranian nukes to our own stockpile, I suppose we should be grateful that Gibbs didn't go the extra step. "Ahmadinejad is as much the legitimately elected President of Iran as President Obama is the legitimately elected President of the United States, and the President hopes the two of them can sit down and bond over their shared electedness." Although I guess that would get in the way of the MSM meme which insists that Bush is Ahmadinejad.

Anyway, here's Gibbs:

Don't worry. Once Obama's obsequiousness convinces Iran to give up their nuclear program, people will hardly remember this stain on the US's historical legacy. Unless Iran's serious about not negotiating, in which case this administration would come off as veritably Chamberlainesque. Except Chamberlain didn't have his own example as a warning.

References and previously after the jump...

I didn't get around to this tidbit when it came up after the mass "youth" protests on Bastille Day. But since the IRG will undoubtedly be brutalizing protesters during Wednesday's inauguration - itself a fait accompli now that Khamenei's given his seal of approval - might as well take care of it now:

Iran on Thursday summoned the French ambassador to Tehran to protest what it alleged was police brutality against demonstrators in France, ahead of the 14 July Bastille Day celebrations, the official IRNA news agency reports. The deputy director for Western Europe at Iran's Foreign Ministry told the French ambassador, Bernard Poletti: "The Islamic Republic condemns the widespread suppression of those who protest against President [Nicolas] Sarkozy's policies [and] the unacceptable human rights situation in France, which it always claims to defend." According to French police, 13 police officers were wounded and 317 cars were burned in street violence on Tuesday night, the eve of the national holiday, reports AFP.

The last credible count of detained or murdered Iranian protesters was well into the thousands. That number will only climb now that security forces have begun dumping the Iranian soldier 'killed in custody' broken bodies of murdered prisoners on families:

A young Iranian soldier, arrested late last week for allegedly stealing weapons for opposition groups, was killed in custody and his body returned to his family on Saturday, sources in Teheran said. The sources said the bodies of several dissidents, arrested in the course of anti-regime protests in Iran in recent weeks and evidently killed in detention, had also been returned to their families in the past few days.

Several of the bodies bore signs of beatings, the sources said. "In Mashhad, I know of three young soldiers who were arrested two days ago," one source said. On Saturday, "one of their bodies was turned over to family members and loved ones. When I called his family to give my condolences, his sister said he looked like he had been beaten to death when her father received the body."

Can you believe they specifically called out the ambassador for France's "unacceptable human rights situation?" Bold.

References:
* Iran summons French ambassador over Bastille Day protests [IRNA]
* Hey, Anyone Up For More Rioting In France? [MR]
* Clenched By Khamenei, In An Official Endorsement Of Ahmadinejad's Rigged Win [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* Iranian soldier 'killed in custody' [JPost]

Previously:
* The "No Spyware For Dictators" Anti-Nokia, Anti-Iran Protest In Downtown LA [Gallery]
* Russia To Obama: No, Of Course We're Not Going To Help Out On Iran
* Figures: Iranian Prison Guards Rape Female Prisoners Before Execution "Lest They Go To Paradise"

As of this morning: Iran is holding three American civilians, Saudi Arabia says that they won't make any gestures toward Israel, Syria is insisting on a series of non-starters as preconditions for talks, the oh-so-moderate Fatah party is about to harden their party line to match Obama's anti-Israel stance, and Hamas is threatening to boycott Palestinian unity talks because of whatever today's pretext is.

At least the US didn't spend the week pressuring Israel in an attempt to curry favor with the Arab and Muslim world:

The US demand for an Israeli settlement freeze remains unchanged, Mideast envoy George Mitchell told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his Ramallah headquarters on Monday evening, according to Palestinian official Saaeb Erekat, who took part in the talks. "Mitchell told Abbas that contrary to what has been said in the mass media there is no agreement with the Israeli side on anything," Erekat told reporters. Another Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge Mitchell's comments to Palestinian leaders, said the US envoy reported that while there had been some progress in his talks with the Israelis on the issue, gaps remain.

Good. Because creating unreasonable expectations on one side and historically unprecedented distrust on the other is the way to move negotiations forward. Smart power!

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Iran confirms detaining three US hikers [JPost]
* Saudi FM: No gestures toward Israel [JPost]
* Assad: Golan issue non-negotiable [YNet]
* 'Fatah conference to harden party line' [JPost]
* Obama's Anti-Israel Posture Undermining The Peace Process, Hardening Palestinian Demands [MR]
* Hamas threatens to boycott Cairo talks [JPost]
* 'US settlement-halt demand unchanged' [JPost]

Previously:
* Former Peace Process Diplomats To Obama: Renewed Peace Process Guaranteed To Fail
* Obama Alienates The Israeli Left: "He Has Spoken About Us But Not To Us"
* NYT: Israel Is Kind Of Undermining Obama's Diplomacy, Isn't It?

A more cynical blogger might be tempted to characterize this policy barrage - being delivered to Israel by not one, not two, not three, but four different senior White House envoys - as "suffocation:"

The Obama administration is dispatching four of its most senior foreign policy and security figures to Israel this coming week with the same message on two open questions causing friction between the close allies: Don't do it. Taking a firmer line with Israel than the Bush administration, President Barack Obama is urging Israel to stop all settlement construction in the West Bank or risk closing off the most promising avenues for peace negotiations. Washington also wants Israel to shelve any plan for a military strike to sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing that Obama's offer of engagement and talks with Iran deserves time to bear fruit.

I like how Clinton is trying to offer up assurances about Iran at the exact same time that the White House is brazenly ignoring past US agreements on settlements. That should be persuasive.

Alan Dershowitz said that if I voted for McCain we'd never have a pro-Israel liberal in the White House. He was right.

References:
* US: Parade of officials to caution Israel [AP]
* Clinton says Israel should be patient on Iran [AP]

Previously:
* Reader Poll: Which Israeli City Will Obama Try To Ban Jews From Next?
* Awesome: Obama Now Wrecking Israel's Economy Too
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship?

Israel slammed her for the de facto acceptance of an Iranian Bomb...

A key minister in the Israeli government criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons. Dan Meridor, Israel's minister for secret services, told Army Radio that the comments imply a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran. "I heard, unenthusiastically, the Americans' statement that they will defend their allies in the event that Iran arms itself with an atomic bomb, as if they have already reconciled with this possibility, and this is a mistake," Meridor told Army Radio. "Now, we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this."

... but that ship already sailed when Obama floated extending our nuclear shield over Israel. And it kind of made sense that he would do that, even if it was a de facto admission that he's going to let Iran go nuclear. The combination that frightens the Jewish State more than anything else is global diplomatic aggression coupled with regional military threats. So when Israel sees an Iranian Bomb being built with Russian diplomatic, financial, and technical support, they get jittery. And when Israel gets jittery everybody gets jittery.

But the opposite is true in the context of the Arab world. When Arab states get jittery about a Russian/Iranian alliance they unite with each other and look towards the United States for help. None of them are going to destabilize the region by attacking Iran.

What they have been doing is finding common anti-Iran ground with Israel, forging the kind of low-level informal ties that eventually lead to regional talks. Egypt, driven in no small part by Iranian interference in the form of multiple Hezbollah plots on their soil, has allowed Israel to send warships through the Suez Canal in preparation for an attack on Iran. There was even a rumor that Saudi Arabia, fearing encroaching Shiite hegemony, would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets using their airspace for a raid on Iran.

So a certain amount of Arab worry has become the key to Israeli self-defense against Iran. And yet it seems like Clinton is going out of her way to calm their fears, even at the cost of weakening the US's hand against the mullahs. Hey, you don't think...

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Israel slams Clinton statement on nuclear Iran [Ha'aretz]
* Obama: Since We All Know That Engagement With Iran Won't Work, How About A US Nuclear Umbrella For Israel? [MR]
* Iran's prints are all over alleged Egypt terror ring [Ha'aretz]
* Egypt's top enemy [Ha'aretz]
* Did Israel coordinate warships in Suez with Egypt? [Ha'aretz]
* Defense official: Israel readying for attack on Iran [Ha'aretz]
* Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran [Times Online]

Previously:
* Gates: Israeli Attack On Iran's Nukes Will Cause Iran To Pursue Nukes, Detonate US-Israeli Relations
* Purdue Nuclear Strategy Expert: Bomb Iran Now
* Israeli Military Intel: Iran "Halfway" Toward Nuclear Weapon (Plus: Syria, Hezbollah, And Hamas All The Way Toward Every Other Kind Of Weapon)

Or in the rest of the Middle East either.

Which is weird because I was told - with no small amount of worshipful ululation - that Obama was responsible both for the Lebanon election results (Guardian article, cached Kos recommended diary) and for the protests in Iran. This is the same kind of post hoc logic that children use when they blow out birthday candles and then their wish comes true. Like magic!

Except in children naive slack-jawed credulity is charming. Less so in internationally read newspaper columns and global public diplomacy initiatives.

Regarding Iran, I don't know why Obama wouldn't take credit for the protests if that was his goal. Maybe he's just really modest. I also don't know why his pro-regime outreach would result in anti-regime protests, especially under the assumption that he's a popular figure on the Muslim street. Maybe he's just really tricky.

Ditto for Lebanon, since Obama indicated he'd be willing to engage Hezbollah if they won. So Hezbollah voters who were overwhelmed by the Cairo speech and wanted to build a relationship with the US... umm, didn't have to change their votes at all.

There certainly wasn't any massive shift in Lebanese public opinion. For all of the MSM's talk of a "stunning setback," Hezbollah actually picked up a seat. Some setback. I'm sure "setback" is how it would've been described if Bush was in office too. The line "the US-backed March 14th Alliance, closely linked to Mr. Bush's Middle East democratization efforts, lost ground to Hezbollah" would never have come up.

Anyway now there are numbers on this moronic fantasy:

President Barack Obama's much-heralded speech last month in Egypt did little to change America's image in the Muslim world, a survey released Thursday shows. Muslim people were not so easily moved by Obama's speech June 4, according to interviews conducted by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project. "This analysis suggests that the speech had little measurable impact on views of the U.S. or Obama himself," the Pew researchers said.

Luckily the French and the Germans love us again. They don't love us enough to actually change any of their policies in a way Obama would like them to. But now presumably they feel a tinge of guilt about the whole thing.

The "Obama Effect" myth is more than just typical nutroots Obama worship. The administration actually believes this crap. They're using it as a basis for foreign policy decision making, with exactly the results you'd expect:

Mr. Obama will have to acknowledge the "foreignness" of foreign lands. His breezy self-assurance has been put on notice. The Obama administration believed its own rhetoric that the pro-Western March 14 coalition in Lebanon had ridden Mr. Obama's coattails to an electoral victory. (It had given every indication that it expected similar vindication in Iran.) But the claim about Lebanon was hollow and reflected little understanding of the forces at play in Lebanon's politics. That contest was settled by Lebanese rules, and by the push and pull of Saudi and Syrian and Iranian interests in Lebanon.

I can't totally begrudge the left their celebratory hosanas. If the Lebanon vote had gone the other way the righty blogosphere would've been awash with headlines like "Lebanon Responds To Obama's Open Hand By Electing Iran's Genocidal Proxies." And for their part the nutroots and their pseudo-sophisticated enablers would've unable to contain their condescension for simpletons who expected "one speech to reverse a decade of mistrust."

Of course pointing out that there was no effect is already one step less logically ambitious than insisting on a correlation. Which, by my count, makes the left's celebrations of a Cairo Speech Obama Effect doubly idiotic.

References and previously after the jump...

Russia refuses to link START reductions to Iran:

Russia will not agree to tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program in exchange for a new nuclear arms cuts deal with Washington... Last week... Obama's nuclear adviser suggested that progress on a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms pact could help persuade Moscow to be more cooperative on Iran. "There are no reasons to link these issues or count on Russia being more cooperative in toughening sanctions against Iran if there is progress in talks with the United States on further cuts in strategic offensive weapons," the source said.

They won't link missile shield reductions to Iran either:

Medvedev has said he's willing to discuss the proposed US missile shield with Washington. But he added that any deal linking those talks with negotiations regarding Iran would not be productive. Russian President Dimitry Medvedev's comments came in response to a New York Times report that US President Barack Obama had written a secret letter to his Russian counterpart offering to halt the planned missile shield, which would be located mainly in Poland and the Czech Republic, in return for Moscow's help in stopping Iran from developing long-range nuclear weapons.

And they're very publicly building up their own nuclear arsenal. All of which has a lot to do with how they're making a geopolitical gamble for Central Asia and they've bet on Ahmadinejad:

I'm beginning to think that maybe I've been a little too harsh about State's spectacularly disastrous public diplomacy efforts. Apparently Obama's been able to boost our image around the world after all.

You can be sure of that because Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski say so. And who would know more about anti-American blowback than those two geopolitical success stories?

Obama's first priority was boosting America's standing in a world angered by the Bush administration's arrogance and unilateralism. Obama rightly saw this as a major national security threat, and he used his charisma to change that image in a hurry. And to a large extent, Obama has succeeded. "We have taken off the table reflexive anti-Americanism as a reason not to deal with us," says Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. "We're not shimmying in the end zone. But we are a long way from where we began."

Obama's success in defusing anti-Americanism wins plaudits from Brent Scowcroft... "Obama had to tackle the mood first, and I think he has done a brilliant job," he says. "The change around the world is dramatic." Similar praise comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser for Democrat Jimmy Carter. But Brzezinski adds the caveat that changing America's image is the easy part.

Amazing that the people who've been advocating supine Presidential apology tours insist that Obama's supine Presidential apology tours worked.

But maybe they're right. In fact here's a video of the five Iranian Quds members that Obama freed from Iraq singing praises onto The One. If Iran is pleased with his spinelessness just imagine how the rest of the world feels!

This was broadcast far and wide by Iranian Press TV, exactly the kind of outlet that Middle East media specialists insist we need to cultivate. So there's that.

References and previously after the jump...

Hamas is back to firing rockets at Israeli civilians and unleashing RPG missiles and mortar shells at Israeli troops. I wonder if there's anything they're concerned about. Hmm...

The power struggle in Iran sparked by the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is weakening the country's ability to back Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Iraqi militants. The main coordinator of support to these groups has been Iran's Revolutionary Guards, whose Basij militia played a role in suppressing demonstrations against last month's election results. With the country still divided over the election, the Guards will focus on keeping their patron Ahmadinejad in office, said Jeremy Binnie, an analyst at Jane's Defence Weekly in London. "Their head guys would presumably at this stage be more worried about domestic opposition than they would be about regional scheming," Binnie said.

Hamas leaders have also tightened their grip on Gaza. They've been steadily gaining in popularity for months and they don't have to worry about domestic upkeep any more, courtesy of Obama's billion dollar Gaza stimulus. Anything that the stimulus doesn't cover is undoubtedly made up for by the suitcases of cash their "diplomats" bring back from their regular jaunts outside the Gaza Strip.

So they've had time to pursue more mundane tasks like systematically purging political opponents, routinely engaging in round after round of public executions.

They've also stepped up their control of day to day life in the Strip. They've opened up a Hamas-affiliated bank. They've demanded that all weddings be coordinated with the police. They've even cut PA salaries to pay for Korans, which I think is nice given how they've been promising for years to make sharia a source of legislation. This way people can know in advance which specific micro-fascist decrees the government is likely to pass.

So while Hamas is probably a little concerned about Iran taking its eye off the genocidal anti-Israel ball, they're not exactly teetering on the edge of collapse. Which is a problem for the peace process given the "they're intransigent genocidal fanatics" thing.

I wonder if that's the message that Carter delivered to Obama. Or that Malley discussed with Obama. I hope so because I've been told it's very important to be reality-based when formulating policy.

References and previously after the jump...

The vast majority of this article by Ha'aretz military affairs correspondent Amir Oren deals with how Israel contributes to US intelligence and US military readiness. But then at the end there's this:

Brun heads the Dado Center for military thinking in Glilot. He is known to take part in American war games that focus on "hybrid threats" posed by semi-guerilla and semi-military groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Brun lectures on the lessons learned by the IDF in Lebanon and Gaza within the context of the West's struggle with countries like Iran, Syria, and Iraq... The weakness in Israeli-American relations stems from the rift at the top. Without prior planning by the military bodies, diplomatic coordination will be of no benefit, not even the partial, limited coordination that we saw during the 1991 war. But the Israeli prime minister's bickering with the U.S. president over the nonsense surrounding the settlements is harming the IDF's capability in dealing with its most vital missions.

Bad for IDF, obviously. But not exactly great for the US either. Israeli technology has been used to kill al-Zarqawi and to escalate the Afghan drone war that's now beginning to pay dividends.

No worries. I'm sure this will all be worth it when Obama's pressure on Isreal brings peace to the Middle East.

References:
* Amir Oren / Netanyahu-Obama spat harming IDF capability on Iran [Ha'aretz]
* Reload this Page Israeli technologies used to kill al-Zarqawi [Israel Forum]
* Israeli Drones Over Afghanistan [Danger Room]

Previously:
* The WH's Eight-Step Plan For Detonating The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama Complains: It's A Media-Fueled "Misperception" That I'm Trying To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship
* Obama: Israel Must "Engage In Serious Self-Reflection"

This is getting kind of tired isn't it?

A senior US defense official has told The Jerusalem Post that an Israeli strike on Iran could be profoundly destabilizing and would affect US interests. Israel needed to take its relationship with America into account in contemplating any such attack, he warned... In his interview with the Post at the Pentagon, the senior US defense official also suggested that Syria might be ready to "fundamentally" reorient its position toward the United States, which would include restarting talks with Israel, at a time when Hamas and Hizbullah have been put "on the defensive" by Obama administration policies and events in Iran.

Those events, said the official, who insisted on anonymity, hadn't been seen to affect Iran's timeline on developing nuclear weapons. What was clear, he indicated, was the negative effect an Israeli strike would have. "A unilateral third-party attack on Iran's nuclear program could have profoundly destabilizing consequences, and it wouldn't just affect the general level of stability in the region. It would affect Israel's security and it would affect our interests, and the safety of our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere," the official said, when asked if the US expected Israel to inform it of any decision to strike Iran. "It's a pretty big deal, and given the closeness of our relationship with Israel, I think we would hope that they would take those strategic calculations into account."

At least when the administration trotted out surrogates like Brzezinski and Gates and Biden to threaten Israel, they did it in terms of raw power politics: Obama is determined to have talks with Iran and if Israel screws that up by defending itself there's going to be hell to pay. It's an unseemly way to treat an ally in pursuit of a fundamentally naive and morally unjustifiable policy - but it's not dishonest. Conservatives insisted that Obama was selling out Israel for a plan that would never work and the election proved the administration was misguided - but still, the argument wasn't dishonest.

Now that it's become undeniable that conservatives were right, Obama's anti-Israel team needs a new set of excuses for keeping Israel on a leash. So now it's "Syria might be willing to reorient itself," which is false. And it's "Hamas is on the defensive," which is also the opposite of true. And it's "Iran will attack our forces in Iraq," which is already happening.

An obnoxious, dishonest regression from the administration's earlier vacuous realpolitik. Change!

Not that any of this matters. Another couple months and there won't be a US-Israel relationship to shred, which will free up Netanyahu to act in Israel's self-interest. Of course Israel will unblinkingly be blamed for detonating the alliance anyway. But only someone like Roger Cohen would be willing to write about a break in relations one week and then pretend that Israeli self-defense caused a rift the next.

I'm pretty FP blogger David Rothkopf just came to the same conclusion, which is what caused him to tell liberal foreign policy specialists to "be careful what [they] wish for." Sure it feels good to come out of an 8 year exile in think tanks and departments to slap around Israel for a while. But maybe someone should consider the consequences of putting a nuclear-armed erstwhile ally in a do-or-die position.

References and previously after the jump...

This caused quite a stir in the Hot Air headlines and Elder will eventually cross 25,000 pageviews for his post. And the story is predictably disgusting even before you learn that Khomeini mandated prison rapes to prevent "undefiled" female virgins from getting an automatic pass to heaven:

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks. He has also detailed aspects of his earlier service in the force, including his enforced participation in the rape of young Iranian girls prior to their execution...

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."... "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

But it's the exact opposite of news. Make sure you catch the part about the sweets:

Sediqeh Sadeqpour, a political activist, was arrested and severely tortured. She was released from jail when her legs became paralyzed, but later rearrested and again savagely tortured. Her eyes were gouged out and she was killed in Shiraz on November 4, 1985, when her throat was cut. She was 20 years old.

Mina Mohammadian was executed on February 29, 1987, on political charges. She was held in solitary confinement for eleven months prior to her execution. During that period, she went through forty interrogation sessions, during which she was subjected to the most horrendous tortures. She was repeatedly raped by the regime's Guards. She was 22 at the time of her execution.

Women political prisoners are kept in so-called "residential units" (cement cages, 50 cm square), with their heads cramped down onto their knees, for months at a time. They are beaten regularly, up to 50 times a day. Another common torture of women political prisoners, besides systematic flogging, is suspension for hours from the ceiling by the hands, or upside down, by the feet. In some cases, the torture leads first to paralysis, then to the woman's death. Nahid Shahrokhi-Mahalati, a 22-year-old teacher, was suspended from the ceiling for a prolonged period. She died under torture...

According to a "religious" decree [from Khomeini], virgin women prisoners must as a rule be raped before their execution, "lest they go to Paradise." Therefore, the night before execution, a Guard rapes the condemned woman. After her execution, the religious judge at the prison writes out a marriage certificate and sends it to the victim's family, along with a box of sweets. In a written confession in January 1990, Sarmast Akhlaq Tabandeh, a senior Guards Corps interrogator, recounted one such casein Shiraz prison: "Flora Owrangi, an acquaintance of one of my friends was one such victim. The night before her execution, the resident mullah in the prison conducted a lottery among the members of the firing squads and prison officials to determine who would rape her. She was then forcibly injected with anesthesia ampoules, after which she was raped. The next day, after she was executed, the mullah in charge wrote a marriage certificate and the Guard who raped her took that along with a box of sweets to her parents.".

This is a regime with a system of legal sexual slavery, where the mullahs get certificates for "temporary marriages" so they can openly rape prepubescent girls as they travel around the country. That institutionalized rape is taking place in dark torture chambers is a no-brainer. Of course it's happening and of course it's grounded in Khomeinist theology. That's who these people are and that's what they do.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Telegraph has a story (cached copy) about "the pivotal role that feminist and queer movements... have played in" attacking Israel. Priorities.

References:
* Iranian regime savages hit rock bottom [Hot Air]
* Iranians rape virgin girls before executing them [Elder of Ziyon]
* 'I wed Iranian girls before execution' [JPost]
* Women Islam & Equality
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Iran Has Legal Slavery And Rape Of Prepubescent Girls. They Call It "Temporary Marriage". [MR]

Previously:
* Photographs To Help Explain Why There Are No Homosexuals In Iran [Content Warning: Graphic Photos] (Updated: Video Added)
* Israel, Muslim World Approaching International Woman's Day From Different Angles
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Iran Cracking Down On Women's Rights Activists (Plus: American Feminists Mysteriously Unconcerned)

Last night inside the Nokia Theatre: fashionable representatives of LA's glitterati, enjoying the ESPY awards. Outside the Theatre: determined members of LA's Persian community, insisting that Nokia answer for contributing to Iran's fascist panoptic regime. A quick reminder about the scope of the Finnish telecom giant's craven collaboration with Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and their ilk:

In confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts. The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company.

As guests waited at the crosswalk opposite the Nokia, protesters would ask them to put on a green ribbon in support of Iranian dissidents. Very few of our well-heeled moral betters donned the symbol - LA being something less than an epicenter for genuine pro-freedom sentiment - but those who did got loud cheers from the 50+ person crowd.

Meanwhile there were staffers tasked with organizing visuals, coordinating with the press, and even supplying everyone with water. The youngest attendee was a baby in a stroller getting tended to by siblings. The oldest was an elderly woman in a wheelchair holding up an anti-Ahmadinejad banner. This was a broad, well-organized community event.

I left out photos of the little kids because children at rallies are creepy. Much more seriously, I also had to exclude many of the middle-aged protesters because they still have family back in Iran. The final result is a gallery of 40 pictures filled mostly with college students, recent grads, and official event staff. Small versions of the first 20 photos are embedded above and below, and everything else is in the slideshow at the end. Click through on anything to get full 800px versions.

Relatedly, it's now confirmed science that Middle Eastern protest babes are not geographically confined to Central Asia and the Near East. Good Lord.

Fascists:

A scary anecdote from Iran. A trusted colleague - who is married to an Iranian-American and would thus prefer to stay anonymous - has told me of a very disturbing episode that happened to her friend, another Iranian-American, as she was flying to Iran last week. On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said "no", the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends... it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what's going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely - they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

They're also not above attacking overseas sites when those sites try to undermine that intelligence gathering.

The Iranians have a habit both of tracking online activity and of being hypersensitive to content. On the tech side, our toothless export regime - we can't even stop HP from selling them printers - has done little to prevent them from importing robust surveillance technology. Nokia confessed to selling them equipment that probably allows super-scary Deep Packet Inspection, though they insist that it's not that that complex (good to know!)

On the content side, the bastards simply lock you up when they find you. Half a year ago they arrested an Iranian peace activist blogger for being an Israeli spy. They promptly got him to "confess":

An Iranian blogger who visited Israel at least twice in the past three years, and who was twice interviewed... about his efforts to "humanize" Israel for Iranians and vice-versa, has reportedly been arrested in Teheran and admitted to spying for Israel. According to a report in Jahan News, which is close to Iran's intelligence community, quoted by the Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar, the blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, returned to Iran about three weeks ago, having previously been based in Canada. "Prior to his return," Javedanfar writes on his middleeastanalyst.com Web site, Derakhshan had "started attacking [former Iranian president] Ayatollah [Hashemi] Rafsanjani in his blog. It is possible that he fell foul of a power struggle within Iran."

They're also not above disappearing the friends of dissidents. Maybe this is something Obama can talk to them about.

Although probably not, right? (h/t: MR reader KO)

References and previously after the jump...

Via MEMRI via Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?

Parviz Davoudi, deputy to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stated that Iran currently has over 12,000 centrifuges in operation, and that the Zionist regime has no answer to the Iranian Sajil-2 missile. Davoudi added that Iran has a presence in the West, in America and in Latin America, and that undermining its regime would destabilize the region and the entire world.

It's OK though, because a few months ago Gates said Iran was nowhere close to getting a bomb and Clinton expressed herself skeptical about Iranian nuclear strides:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday expressed skepticism about Iranian claims of new advances in its uranium enrichment program. But she said the claims underscore the need for Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and return to negotiations on its nuclear program. The Iranian claims of major advances in its nuclear program came only a day after the Obama administration said it was ready to reverse previous U.S. policy and directly engage Iran over the issue. But in a talk with reporters, Clinton declined to call the Iranian statements a rebuff to the U.S. overture and also expressed some skepticism that Tehran has actually made enrichment gains.

Since there's no way they've made that much progress in the intervening months, they're probably just making this up.

References:
* Ahmadinejad's Deputy: We Have 12,000 Centrifuges in Operation [MEMRIBlog]
* Clenched With 12,000 Operating Centrifuges [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* Gates: Iran 'not close' to nuclear weapon [YNet]
* Clinton Skeptical About Claimed Iranian Nuclear Strides [VOA News]

Previously:
* Purdue Nuclear Strategy Expert: Bomb Iran Now
* Gates: Israeli Attack On Iran's Nukes Will Cause Iran To Pursue Nukes, Detonate US-Israeli Relations
* Israeli Military Intel: Iran "Halfway" Toward Nuclear Weapon (Plus: Syria, Hezbollah, And Hamas All The Way Toward Every Other Kind Of Weapon)