Interesting

Asia Times article from 2006.

When the invitation to attend a human-rights workshop in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates came, it was a complete surprise for Nilofar, an attractive Iranian woman in her early 30s who works for an international organization in Tehran and claims to be apolitical. 

[...]

In class, the Serbian instructors organized role-playing games in which the participants would assume the personas of characters such an Iranian woman or a Shi’ite cleric. Throughout these exercises in empathy and psychology, stress was laid on the importance of ridiculing the political elite as an effective tool of demythologizing them in the eyes of the people.

“They taught us what methods they used in Serbia to bring down Milosevic,” Nilofar said. “They taught us some of them so we could choose the best one to bring down the regime, but they didn’t mention directly bringing down the regime – they just taught us what they had done in their own country.”

Cyrus Safdari, an independent Iranian analyst, said: “As I gather, the idea was to fund and train activists to be agents provocateurs along the lines of the Otpor movement in Serbia. Their job was to utilize various techniques, such as anti-government graffiti etc, to embolden the student movement and provoke a general government crackdown, which could then be used as a pretext to ‘spark’ a mass uprising in Iran that appeared to be spontaneous and indigenous.”

[...]

Safdari added that the inspiration for the workshops such as the one in Dubai may find provenance in one of the right-wing Washington think-tanks that has a proven track record of providing inspiration for Bush administration policy initiatives in the Middle East.

As for the funding, he believes that it may come “only indirectly from the US government … I’m not sure if that meant the project belonged to some ‘political entrepreneurs’ acting independently of the US government, or if these are just standard measures intended to create plausible deniability”.

Hmmm. This could explain Paul Wolfowitz’ commentary, as well as other neocon “support” of the protesters.

What we think we know, and what we choose to ignore

Pre-election polling in Iran showed Ahmajinedad with a healthy lead in nearly every demographic (university students and wealthy being the only exception). Choosing to ignore this sort of information to bolster what we may wish to be so is foolish.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad’s support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents’ reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians — including most Ahmadinejad supporters — said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran’s supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly “politically correct” responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

In other news

Contrary to what many Westerners think, it appears Iranians have a sense of humor.

But the certificate turned out to be an obvious forgery, which was littered with misspellings.

The scandal has made the former minister a national laughing stock, with a fake resignation letter being passed round purporting to be from him, but full of misprints and crossings-out.

Same song, different verse

Like the boy who cried wolf, the Bush administration continues it’s push toward war with Iran. This sounds all too familiar.

U.S. military officials on Sunday accused the highest levels of the Iranian leadership of arming Shiite militants in Iraq with sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs that have killed more than 170 American forces.

[...]

Three senior military officials who explained the display said the “machining process” used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been traced to Iran.

[...]

The U.S. officials glossed over armaments having reached the other major Shiite militia organization, the Badr Brigade. It is the military wing of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders also have close ties to the U.S.

Many key government figures and members of the Shiite political establishment have deep ties to Iran, having spent decades there in exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule. The Badr Brigade was formed and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The U.S. officials said there was no evidence of Iranian-made EFPs having fallen into the hands of Sunni insurgents who operate mainly in Anbar province in the west of Iraq, Baghdad and regions surrounding the capital.

“We know more than we can show,” said one of the senior officials, when pressed for tangible evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran.

Uh huh. We’re just supposed to trust you. Sorry boys, that dog just don’t hunt any more.

On Edit: profmarcus over at And yes, I do take it personally comments on Juan Cole’s answer to the gullibility of the New York Times over this story.

thank god for juan cole and may he/she/it save us from a war with iran that seems to be just around the corner…

NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges
Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around
Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal

This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias.

This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.–and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers.

More at link.

Edit #2 (4:00 pm)- Catching up on my blog reading after getting the house cleaned. Desert Beacon does an excellent slice and dice on this.

Cost of War and Escalation

CNN does a piece related to the Cost of War counter to the right.

I watched President Bush’s speech last night. He was not his usual smirking self. In fact, he seemed a bit on auto pilot. That’s why it might have been easy to miss some key parts of the speech. Three things really jumped out at me. The “green light” American and Iraqi soldiers would be given to clear neighborhoods, the new carrier group on its way to the gulf, and sending Patriot missiles to the region (he doesn’t say to whom, but I would assume it’s Israel as they are located perfectly to launch missiles on Iran). There will be no diplomacy with Iran and Syria, just more sabre rattling. I take it back, it doesn’t look like sabre rattling. The US is going after Iran (in Iraq at least). Today US troops stormed the Iranian consulate in Kurdistan (northern Iraq) and seized six staff members (BBC). Does Bush really want WWIII?

I don’t feel this escalation – if you can really call a return to the number of troops we had in Iraq LAST year an escalation – will do any good and will, in fact, just make more U.S. targets for the insurgents (Sunni or Shiite). I am also pretty concerned that Bush seems to single out Sunni and Al Qaeda but seems to gloss over the Shiite response, basically inferring that if the Sunni hadn’t done what they had done, the Shiite wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. Note the linking of Shia to Iran in the statement below.

They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam — the Golden Mosque of Samarra — in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq’s Shia population to retaliate. Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

Juan Cole has a different take.

George Bush sends GIs to his private fantasyland.
. . . And the main problem is not “al-Qaeda,” which is small and probably not that important, and anyway is not really Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. They are just Salafi jihadis who appropriated the name. When their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed, it didn’t cause the insurgency to miss a beat. Conclusion: “al-Qaeda” is not central to the struggle. Izzat Ibrahim Duri and the Baath Party are probably the center of gravity of the resistance.

Bush admitted that the Sunni guerrilla destruction of the Askariyah (Golden Dome) shrine at Samarra set off an orgy of sectarian reprisals. But he does not seem to have actually absorbed the lesson here. The guerrillas did not have to hold territory in order to carry out that bombing. They just had to be able to sneak into a poorly guarded old building that Bush did not even know about and blow it up.

And is an increase of merely 21,000 troops sufficient to “clear and hold?” Even the neocons are skeptical. From Gideon Rachman’s blog at Financial Times comes this:

One of the more damning remarks on troop levels comes from Max Boot, a neo-conservative and a specialist on military history:

“Will 21,500 extra troops make a big difference? Based on classic counterinsurgency calculations (one soldier or policeman per 40 or 50 civilians), pacifying Baghdad, a city of 6 million people, requires a force of some 150,000. The beefed-up U.S. force in Baghdad still will be less than 40,000 strong.”

I heard Randi Rhodes talking about this 40-1 ratio on her radio show, explaining that it is accepted military strategy.

It looks like Bush has pretty much put it all on Maliki, but doesn’t tell us or him what the consequences will be of not meeting the “benchmarks” we have set. Do we pack up and leave? Stay? Take over the Maliki government? And what exactly ARE those benchmarks? Nothing new. They are the same benchmarks that were already set and have not been met. — Oh, but this time we really mean it, and this time Maliki will be able to do it…nevermind what we had to say about him a couple of months ago (Slate)

I got an email from Harry Reid today saying that he opposes an increase in troops and asking me to sign his petition. Since I already signed John Edwards’ petition yesterday, I will hold off. Bush won’t listen to me anyway and I have no power to stop him. Congress, on the other hand, is not without some tricks up their collective sleeve. Will Congress do anything to stop Bush? Your guess is as good as mine.

Can you see the similarities?

Oh my gosh. I just read this article today which because of its age will soon disappear behind the NYT’s firewall. Therefore, I am going to reprint in its entirety. The similarities between Bush and Ahmadinejad are striking, don’t you think? (Emphasis mine)

December 21, 2006
Iran President Facing Revival of Students’ Ire
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, Dec. 20 — As protests broke out last week at a prestigious university here, cutting short a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Babak Zamanian could only watch from afar. He was on crutches, having been clubbed by supporters of the president and had his foot run over by a motorcycle during a less publicized student demonstration a few days earlier.

But the significance of the confrontation was easy to grasp, even from a distance, said Mr. Zamanian, a leader of a student political group.

The student movement, which planned the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy from the same university, Amir Kabir, is reawakening from its recent slumber and may even be spearheading a widespread resistance against Mr. Ahmadinejad. This time the catalysts were academic and personal freedom.

“It is not that simple to break up a president’s speech,” said Alireza Siassirad, a former student political organizer, explaining that an event of that magnitude takes meticulous planning. “I think what happened at Amir Kabir is a very important and a dangerous sign. Students are definitely becoming active again.”

The protest, punctuated by shouts of “Death to the dictator,” was the first widely publicized outcry against Mr. Ahmadinejad, one that was reflected Friday in local elections, where voters turned out in droves to vote for his opponents.

The students’ complaints largely mirrored public frustrations over the president’s crackdown on civil liberties, his blundering economic policies and his harsh oratory against the West, which they fear will isolate the country.

But the students had an additional and potent source of outrage: the president’s campaign to purge the universities of all vestiges of the reform movement of his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.

Last summer the newly installed head of the university, Alireza Rahai, ordered the demolition of the office of the Islamic Association, which had been the core of student political activities on campus since 1963 and had matured into a moderate, pro-reform group.

Since then, students say, more than 100 liberal professors have been forced into retirement and many popular figures have been demoted. At least 70 students were suspended for political activities, and two were jailed. Some 30 students were given warnings, and a prominent Ph.D. candidate, Matin Meshkin, was barred from finishing his studies.

The students also complain about overcrowded and crumbling dormitories and proscriptions against women wearing makeup or bright colors, rules that were relaxed when Mr. Khatami came to power in 1997.

Amir Kabir University of Technology, a major polytechnic institute, has been a hotbed of student activism since before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution of 1979. Drawing on networks at universities around the country through an office that links their Islamic associations, students can organize large protests on a moment’s notice. There are also student guilds, which are independent, and more than 2,000 student publications.

Mr. Zamanian, the head of public relations of the Islamic Association at Amir Kabir, said that while the situation had not been ideal in the Khatami years, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s antireformist campaign had led students to value their previous freedoms.

They were permitted to hold meetings and invite opposition figures to speak, he said, and could freely publish their journals. Now, he said, their papers are forbidden to print anything but reports from official news agencies.

The students also complain about the president’s failure to deliver economic growth and jobs. At last week’s protest, which coincided with a now infamous Holocaust conference held by the Foreign Ministry, students chanted, “Forget the Holocaust — do something for us.”

A student who identified himself only as Ahmad, for fear of retribution, said: “A nuclear program is our right, but we fear that it will bring more damage than good.”

Another student said: “It is so hard and costly to come to this university, but I don’t see a bright future. Even if you are lucky enough to get a job, the pay would not be enough for you to pay your rent.”

Mr. Zamanian said that the protest had not been planned ahead of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit, but that students were further enraged when they saw supporters of the president being bused in.

Although the auditorium was almost filled with the president’s supporters by the time any students were let in, the protesters forced their way inside, chanted, “Death to the dictator,” and held banners calling him a “fascist president.” They also held up posters of the president with his picture upside down and set fire to three of them. Many of the students are now in hiding.

At one point, the head of a moderate student guild complained to Mr. Ahmadinejad that students were being expelled for political activities and given three stars next to their names in university records, barring them from re-entering. The president responded by ridiculing him, joking that the three stars made them sergeants in the army.

The president was eventually forced to cut his speech short and leave. But angry students stormed his car, kicking it and chanting slogans. His convoy of four cars collided several times as they tried to leave in a rush. Eventually the students were dispersed.

An entry on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Web log, posted Wednesday, played down the scale and significance of the protest, writing that the president had a “good feeling when he saw a small group amid the dominant majority insulting him without any fear.”

A few days after the protest, former Amir Kabir students affiliated with the Islamic associations’ coordinating office wrote a letter to Mr. Ahmadinejad. In it, they turned down what they said was his invitation to share their problems with him, because they believed that he wanted to use the occasion to bolster his candidates in the local elections.

The students also wrote that the president had insulted their intelligence by talking to them in the same language he uses in remote villages on his provincial trips. [I always think that Bush talks to us like he thinks we are five years old.]

“You should know that what happened at Polytechnic University was the voice of universities and the real voice of the people,” they wrote. Tehran Polytechnic was the university’s name before the revolution.

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