30 posts tagged “iran”

If it is a serious concern to the IAEA, it must be serious (via Reuters)...

Iran's alleged research into nuclear warheads remains a matter of serious concern and Tehran should provide more information on its missile-related activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also said, in its latest report on Iran, that Tehran was holding back information on high-explosives testing relating to its nuclear program.

<sarcasm>  I guess we need direct negotiation with no preconditions...  because talking with Iran has been so productive and has many results.  Why would we think they wouldn't keep dicking around with the international community?  Seriously?  </sarcasm>

This post makes a good point about Chamberlain in 1938.  The author posts about a Chris Matthews' interview with Kevin James.

MATTHEWS: You don't know what you're talking about. Your problem, Kevin, is, you don't know what you're talking about.

And the problem is, you don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Neville Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in '38. That's what he did wrong, not talking to somebody.

And maybe he has a point.  It is one thing to talk to your enemy, but it is another to give him something.  But what I think is not being spoken here is the true underlying text of Iraq.

If we leave Iraq and if we talk about making Iran/Syria take responsibility for the situation over there -- that is in fact a de facto appeasement, a land give in essence.  With the Iranians trying to subvert our strides in Iraq, they are making the case for not working with us.  And if we leave Iraq, with no real support, we are essentially giving the Iranians a puppet state. 

That is worse than out in the open appeasement.  It is essentially a under the table land deal.  By handing responsibility over to the Iranians -- we are basically holding up a middle finger to Iraq while giving the keys to Iran and saying we don't want to deal with this anymore.

You have to see that by letting Iran and Syria be the ones that create stability in the region, you have to figure their stability is different from what we want.  Their stability would entail a puppet regime running Iraq with them pulling the strings.  That is something we definitely don't want.

In 1938, I am sure the Czechoslovakians felt the deal was fair and just as other powers toyed with what was theirs.  Imagine what the Iraqis must feel with the political rhetoric being thrown around here.

Michael Rubin, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, regarding Mike Huckabee's assertion that Iran shouldn't have been in the Axis of Evil:

I think he’s woefully naïve. First of all, he’s just plain got his facts wrong. I’ve been critical of President Bush and his Iran policy a good deal, but when Mike Huckabee says that everything went downhill after the Axis of Evil speech, that’s simply incorrect. First of all, the National Intelligence Estimate that just came out, whatever its merits, has confirmed that Iran was working on a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Now we can get into the whole issues of sequencing and enrichment later, but the fact of the matter is this is the height of the reformist period. At the time the Europeans and Madeleine Albright as well were apologizing to Iran, offering olive branches to Iran and so forth, Iran was taking that goodwill, and pumping it into their military nuclear weapons program. Now when George Bush talked about the Axis of Evil speech, some people say oh, that was too much in their face and so forth. But the fact of the matter is, that was, in a way, economic warfare, non-violent warfare, because what it did was it’s that speech that convinced the European companies that maybe it wasn’t worth their while to be investing in Iranian factories and Iranian plants. And the reason the Iranian nuclear program slowed down may very well be because George Bush upped the rhetoric.

Maybe Huckabee's solution to Iran is to have Chuck Norris pay them a visit?  Because other than that -- I don't think he gets it.

Interesting commentary by Tom Friedman.  Although I don't support Obama -- I thought this line was apropos:

...he needs to dial down his inner Jimmy Carter a bit when it comes to talking to Iran, and dial up a bit more inner Dick Cheney.

Too bad the Democrats just don't get it.  But then again, the anti-war left doesn't want them to get any of that...

A rock and a hard place.  That is what the situation is like in Pakistan at the moment.

John Hinderaker at Powerline has a pretty good assessment:

The United States and Great Britain have both condemned Musharraf's actions. The situation is very bad: either Musharraf is correct in assessing the danger posed by Islamic extremists, in which case Pakistan is in worse straits than I had realized, or he is using the extremists as a pretext to prolong his own quasi-dictatorial rule. Both alternatives are grim; the truth is perhaps a combination of the two.

It is impossible to say, at this point, how events will play out, but my instinct is to be sympathetic to Musharraf. It is important to distinguish between permanent and provisional enemies of democracy. The struggle against Islamic extremism is analogous in some ways to the cold war. In a number of countries in Latin America and elsewhere in the third world, authoritarian governments limited their citizens' rights to varying degrees and carried out more or less ruthless campaigns against Communist insurgencies. In all cases, they were bitterly attacked by the Left and by "world opinion" in general.

But Communism, like radical Islam, is a permanent enemy of democracy. The handful of countries that remain Communist--Cuba and North Korea may be the last survivors--are islands of primitive despotism. All around the world, on the other hand, authoritarian anti-Communist governments have yielded to democracies, in many cases highly prosperous ones.

I am inclined to believe that Musharraf does intend to bring modernity, including a viable democracy, to Pakistan. If the current measures enable the government to fight the extremists more effectively--a big "if"--the sacrifices they entail will be worthwhile. We can be sure that if the Taliban and similar groups succeed in seizing power in Pakistan, the consequences will be infinitely worse and far more prolonged.

One more thought: Pakistan has nuclear weapons. If the situation there is as grave as Musharraf says, the United States may be confronted, in a few years, by the prospect of al Qaeda and its allies actually possessing the weapons which they have so long sought. Is there a single person who seriously believes that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are the people we want dealing with such a crisis?

It is hard to support somebody who is declaring a state of emergency and limiting rights... and it is hard not to support somebody who wants to take out the growing Taliban movement occurring in Pakistan.  This is the gray area called the war on terrorism.

But if Pakistan becomes the Taliban Afghanistan of old and there are nuclear weapons involved...  sigh...  I wonder how India will react?  I wonder how the Iranians get involved?  I wonder what Clinton or Obama would do?

This could turn into one unstable region.  And I will have to say that this is occurring independently of the U.S. / Iraq situation.

Our outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan only becomes more and more important now!

A must read about Iran.  It was an interview conducted by Hugh Hewitt of Michael Ledeen regarding his new book, The Iranian Time Bomb.

This exchange caught my eye:

HH: ...I’m going to be talking about this book a lot over the next few weeks, because I think people need to read it, beginning with the idea we’ve got to remember who Khomeini was, that the revolution wasn’t because the Shah was too oppressive, but because the Shah was too liberal. Give people a walk back as to where Khomeini came from and what he stood for, Michael Ledeen. 

ML: Well, he hated the Shah because he saw the Shah as the agent of Western feminism, really, in a way, because what got Khomeini more excited than anything else was the very thought that women could teach boys in school, that women could participate in government, that women were increasingly having equal rights, that they didn’t have to cover up their heads, and so forth. And that just drove him crazy, and they were among his first targets when he took over in 1979. He threw the women out of the boys’ schools, he banned them from high office, and he required this humiliating costume that they all have to wear.

Here is the other one:

HH: I was coming to the Zarqawi connection, because although he is a Sunni extremist who would think that every Shia is Takfir, and especially the Iranian Khomeinists, nevertheless he, too, accepted assistance from, and well-documented in this book. Is that widely recognized or acceded to, Michael Ledeen, in the people who study Iran specifically? 

ML: No, because most people buy into the meme that Sunnis and Shiites can’t work together. It’s one of the great myths of our time. So even though the Revolutionary Guards were…the super-Shiite Revolutionary Guards were created by the super-Sunni al Fatah, which came right out of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, they think it’s impossible to find Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah working together. And so nobody can believe that Zarqawi was operating out of Tehran, even though a year before 2001, the German and Italian governments had evidence showing that Zarqawi was operating a European-wide terrorist network from Tehran, and they have hundreds of intercepts that…and this is public evidence at public trials in both Germany and Italy.

And one more:

HH: ...A key observation, Michael Ledeen, they are not nationalists, but theocrats. You write, “To ask them to think like a nation state is like trying to use negotiations to convince the Pope that he should think of himself as the grand duke of Vatican City rather than the Vicar of Christ on Earth.” You quote Khomeini extensively on this. This was just…I guess I knew this, but I really didn’t. It’s not a nation state. 

ML: No, no it’s not. Khomeini has the great line, which is anybody…I’m not here to fight for Iran, I’m here to advance Islam. And anybody who is in it for Iran is a pagan. That’s pretty strong language.  

HH: It is. It’s also an insight into what we’re up against, because it’s not going to respond to the typical carrots and sticks that nation states do.

ML: No, so when a Rafsanjani or an Ahmadinejad says we’re going to bomb Israel as soon as we get atomic bombs, and even if the Israelis respond in kind, so what? Suppose they wipe us all out? We would have killed half the Jews, and there’ll still be more than a billion Muslims.

So when rational individuals in the West argue that for logical reasons Iran will not attack and would not use the bomb, when you read this and understand the religious zealous nature of the rulers of Iran, you have to worry about people and a culture that doesn't care about nation states, but more about the status of radical Islam.  When it is a numbers game and borders don't matter, you have to wonder -- would they detonate an atomic bomb in order to wipe out a good chunk of the Jewish state and accept casualties of a retaliation?  One of the reasons I think this is plausible was something Michael Ledeen points out in the interview: "...people say well, why would they [al Qaeda with regard to the Golden Mosque in Iraq] kill their own people, and I say look at Iran. They kill their own people everyday. Every day."

So if you think for a second that they would not sacrifice their own people, think again...  they execute their own people everyday...  in the name of god.  They are not seeking to look good in the eyes of the world, just an entity that they believe is above the world.

And to say that Shiites and Sunnis are incapable of working with each other is one of the greatest lies out of this whole war on terrorism.  In the end the United States and Western civilization are the common enemies of radical Islam...

Seriously, how can anybody defend Iran?  I mean come on....

The Iranians are now criticizing Canada for human-rights violations.  Canada!?  Are you kidding me?

In a bid to discredit Canada at the United Nations, Iran is equipping world diplomats with a 70-page booklet on Canada's alleged human rights violations.

Written by Iran "in the name of God," the document asserts that the Canadian government denies its people food, clean water and the right to work.

"Routine unlawful strip and beatings by Canadian police has been a matter of concern for international community," notes the booklet, entitled Report on Human Rights Situation in Canada, adding that "the practice of police is alarming simply because ... it is functioning as if there is no need to have judges."

Gut check, bleeding sarcasm, and rhetorical question:  If I had to make a choice, would I want to live in Iran or Canada? 

Ummm...  duh!

And this was published today at UN Watch.

Mr. President, we meet to address urgent human rights situations.  There are so many. But if we look to the highest authorities of the UN, one country stands out:  the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security. But the illicit nuclear program of President Ahmadinejad potentially threatens these rights for millions, near and far. That's why the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII against threats to the peace, held Iran to be in breach, and imposed sanctions.

The Iranian leader speaks at the UN about "human dignity and justice." Yet the UN itself -- GA Resolution 61/176 -- found that Iran treats its own people with neither dignity nor justice. It called on Iran:

• to end its use of torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment;
• to end its execution of minors, and its violence and discrimination against women;
• to end its discrimination against minorities, including Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis, Sunni Muslims, and the Baha'i.

Mr. President, Iran's policy of racism was on world display when it hosted the Tehran conference denying the Nazi Holocaust. The GA responded with a condemnation of Holocaust denial, which Iran alone refused to support.

And it goes on.  And on.  And on.  So to believe anything that comes out of Iran is just a farce.  And if you do believe their propaganda?  Well, may the farce be with you.

Ed Morrissey's commentary is dead on:

If Ahmadinejad is as bad as Bollinger says, then why invite him? What purpose does it serve to supply a "petty and cruel dictator" with a megaphone? Rational people would advise the exact opposite -- to shun and isolate petty and cruel dictators, who certainly have plenty of other outlets for their rantings.

No one will learn anything from Ahmadinejad's visit today that they didn't know before. He's an uneducated buffoon who serves as a convenient mouthpiece for the Iranian theocrats who hold the real power in Iran. Unfortunately, Columbia has given the beffoon more prestige for his rambling and disjointed discourse. They have bestowed academic legitimacy to Holocaust denial, as well as to rabid anti-Semitism. Will Bollinger next invite the Imperial Wizard of the KKK to speak as an honored guest at Columbia, and will a rude introduction be seen as enough to justify the appearance?

Agreed.

UPDATE:  Morrissey has another post that is just as good.

Ask anybody of any political persuasion about whether going into Afghanistan was the right thing to do after 9/11 and I think you will only find a small number of folks that disagreed with the action.  So why is this?  Hint:  That was a rhetorical question.

There was logic in the move to take on the Taliban.  Everybody agreed with the logic even though the outcome is still in question.

In 1979, Iran took 63 U.S. hostages in an ordeal that lasted 444 days.  Now logic would dictate that this regime was (and still is) an enemy of the United States.  I can fully understand after the hostage situation that the U.S. would do everything in its power to help topple this regime.  Now I am speculating, but my guess is that most folks in the early 1980s were not keen on Iran.

Now lets look at history with the help of the Washington Post.

When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.

By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies.

Imagine Reagan thinking about what we had to deal with in Iran, this burgeoning radical Islamic theocracy, and the possibility of Iran taking over Iraq?  A possible domino effect?  And then imagine a mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia and a Shiite dominated Iraq-Iran state.  The fears of Washington was a Middle East that could be in all out war because of the potential powder keg that was the Iran-Iraq war.

Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys." 

And considering the oil embargo a decade earlier and the hostage situation, I fully understand our government's move.

"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."

To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.

The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

So our government ended up turning a "blind eye" to European nations and American corporations (through third parties) supplying weapons and chemical precursors to Saddam.

Obviously, this decision was the wrong one.  But I understand the logic of the situation and the context of time.  And we are paying now for the decisions of the past (both Republican and Democratic administrations).  Iran never took over Iraq, a desired outcome of our government; however, we ended up propping up a monster that eventually invaded Kuwait.

What would history be like if we never helped out Iraq?  Would it really be any different from the reality of today?  I can only speculate.  Saddam, obviously had chemical weapons before we helped him.  He was a customer of European nations and the Soviet Union.  We now know Saddam had other plans when he was acquiring more weapons from Western nations (that of invading Kuwait).

Considering what we know today of Saddam, his quench for power and land in the Middle East probably wouldn't have stopped if we never helped him out in trying to push back an Iranian force from southern Iraq or if we never turned a blind eye to arms shipments.

The problem with doing things in this world is that we can never know at the time whether or not the future outcome will be what was originally desired.  Or even if the outcome was in the ballpark of original desires.  But America has and still is trying to right our wrongs.  (Note the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which we signed)

Maybe in the end we have made a whole new string of problems or maybe the outcome will be a stable Middle East, only time will tell.  But history through the ages is about second guessing decisions and making up what if scenarios.

So to wrap up this diatribe, I want to parallel the consensus logic of going into Afghanistan and the past logic of helping Saddam against Iran.

Just like the move against the Taliban, most agreed with the logic, but only time will tell if we made the right move.  The bottom line, is history has told us that helping Saddam was probably a wrong one, but the logic of the time/era made sense. 

So will Afghanistan turn into what we desire in the future?  Only time will tell...

The point is this... decisions we all make in our life and the logic we use are with information we have at the time of the decision.  In some cases, they are lesser of two evils (gray area) and in other cases they are clear cut (black and white).  But one thing this world has taught us is that the former is usually something we have to wrestle with most of the time...

This is just another example of how the Cold War is over and the new threat, although smaller, could present problems to our naval forces.

The U.S. Navy has determined that Iran has amassed a fleet of fast patrol boats in the 43-kilometer straits. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for strategic programs, leads the effort.

At this point, officials said, IRGC has deployed more than 1,000 FPBs in and around the straits. The vessels, armed with cruise missiles, mines, torpedoes and rocket-propelled grenades, are up to 23 meters in long and can reach a speed of 100 kilometers per hour.

"This marks the implementation of Iran's swarm program, where dozens of armed speed boats attack much larger naval vessels from all sides," an official said.

Can you imagine a carrier fleet being attacked by hundreds of these patrol boats?  I hope that the Pentagon has worked on how to counter these threats.