Iran's nuclear threat: New revelations or change in IAEA's leadership?

Has IAEA found new evidence or discovered undisclosed sites in Iran recently that's fueling its growing concern over Iran's nuclear program, or is it the change in IAEA's leadership that explains the different attitude? The renowned journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker on Nov 18, 2011:

"The shift in tone at the I.A.E.A. seems linked to a change at the top. The I.A.E.A.’s report had extra weight because the Agency has had a reputation for years as a reliable arbiter on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, who retired as the I.A.E.A.’s Director General two years ago, was viewed internationally, although not always in Washington, as an honest broker—a view that lead to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei’s replacement is Yukiya Amano of Japan. Late last year, a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Vienna, the site of the I.A.E.A. headquarters, described Amano as being “ready for prime time.” According to the cable, which was obtained by WikiLeaks, in a meeting in September, 2009, with Glyn Davies, the American permanent representative to the I.A.E.A., said, “Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the group of developing countries], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” The cable added that Amano’s “willingness to speak candidly with U.S. interlocutors on his strategy … bodes well for our future relationship.”"

See the full text here

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On the topic, see a recent interview of Mohammad Javad Larijani with MSNBC here (20.49m)

The whoo-scary Iranian terror plot

Watching the US corporate media coverage of this Iranian terror plot is like watching "Wag the Dog" movie again - except that the enemy plot in the movie had less holes and was more convincing than the one in the present episode.

The “very scary” Iranian Terror plot
Glenn Greenwald
http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/12/the_very_scary_iranian_terror_plot/singleton/
The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.

Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake
Justin Raimondo
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/10/11/iranian-terror-plot-fake-fake-fake/

News Media Hypes the “Iran Did It” Line, Ignores Holes in the Story
John Glaser
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/10/12/news-media-hypes-the-iran-did-it-line-ignores-holes-in-the-story/

On Critically Reading the Wikileaks

On Critically Reading the Wikileaks

Only a small proportion of the announced documents has been released so far by Wikileaks. As such, it is a bit early to conclusively suggest anything as to the value of these documents and their impact. While following the release, a few tentative thoughts came to mind that I want to share here in the interest of starting a constructive discussion. The examples I mention below are not from Wikileaks, but they are close to some of the released bits I have seen in news. The purpose here is not to analyze specific cables, but to elaborate a critical perspective for reading these leaks. (And, more broadly, for reading news on government- and corporate-owned media as well as non-corporate and user-generated forums like blogs and wikis.)

Rarely do diplomats speak out their minds in candid terms. The most sensitive information is almost always communicated in person, not over digital lines or mails. Therefore, one needs to think about not only what was said in these cables but also what was not said.

Even for communications over digital lines and mails, on important issues the US diplomats and other government officials usually use plain but coded language. The person sitting on the other end has to decipher the language and read between the lines. The dots can be hard to connect for an outsider, who may understand no more than just the apparent meaning of a leaked text. However, the added layers can be uncovered by placing such texts in the context of the politics and interests of the involved political players.

A person's perspective matters a lot for this reason. For example, a leak could suggest that, “Iran is a threat to regional stability and the Arab nations fear its nuclear capabilities.” Now, this message may mean one thing to a devout FOX News follower and another to the one critical of the American hegemonic ambitions and support to the status-quo regimes of the Middle East. Hence, the interpretation and value of such a statement depends on the perspective with which people judge it and how critically informed are those perspectives.

In my view, when Washington talks about ‘regional stability’, it first and foremost means the protection of the American and Israeli interests in the region. Iran is a ‘threat’ because it challenges those interests and supports the resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon, among other things.

Words like ‘Al-Qaeda’ and ‘terrorist groups’ may also be codes in these cables which could refer to different groups in different countries. In Yemen, for example, they could also refer to the Houthi rebels who are challenging the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh. Both Washington and Riyadh are against that and have provided heavy financial and military support to the regime against these rebels. In Egypt, such labels may also be used to refer to the Sunni opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been repeatedly cracked down by the US-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak. Similarly, the terms “moderate states” and “moderate Muslims” are also codes that often refer to those who are in favor of and are protecting the American and Israeli interests in the region (for more on this, see “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim”).

One also needs to distinguish the Arab rulers from the Arab masses. Many Arab rulers surely fear Iran, but the majority of their people support Iran’s stance on the nuclear issue and Iran's support to the resistances in Palestine and Lebanon. In a recent poll carried out by Zogby International and the University of Maryland in the summer of 2010, the people in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates were asked to name the countries that they thought were the greatest threat to their security. 88% replied Israel, 77% the US, and only 10% Iran.

At times, factual-sounding statements in diplomatic communications may in reality be policy statements. For example, a statement that, “Iran will further isolate itself if it continues to pursue nuclear ambitions,” could very well be a statement of what they would like to see in case Iran does not follow their wishes, not necessarily what the ground reality is, even from their own perspective. Because, again, the same Summer 2010 poll suggests that a “majority of the Arab public now see a nuclear-armed Iran as being better for the Middle East.”

The poll results, moreover, suggest an increasing support for Iran in the Middle East on a number of critical issues that also discredits the argument of some US scholars that ‘old feuds between Shia and Sunnis’ define the political attitudes of the region. Yet, 'sectarian divisions' and 'specter of a rising Shia crescent', both codes for what they would like to promote, is continually used by both the US and Israeli diplomats and their supported status-quo regimes of the Middle East with the hope of dividing up the masses and re-aligning their politics on sectarian lines (for more on this, see “Bahrain and Pakistan: The Shia Dilemmas”).

Without a critical interrogation, and with media spins, these codes and policy objectives may in fact perpetuate themselves through these leaks. No surprise if due to the media coverage of some of the latest leaks, the general public in the US got the impression that 'all Arabs are against the Iranians and see the Iranian nuclear program as a threat to their security' and that the fault lines in the Middle East politics lie within their ‘ethno-sectarian’ divisions. Both the Neocons and the Hawkish-Pragmatists in Washington are surely going to capitalize on such a gross misunderstanding. For one, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stated last Monday (Nov 29, 2010): "So if anyone reading the stories about these alleged cables thinks carefully, what they will conclude is that the concern about Iran is well-founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

Hence, in view of the above discussion, the leaked cables should not be taken at face value, even in instances where they may be authentic.

The Impact

Not many people will go through all the leaked documents. They will mostly hear what the mainstream media and political groups choose to focus on. The media spins and the politics of appropriation of these leaks, therefore, would make for an interesting discussion in coming days.

In Iran, for example, while quoting the leaks some have criticized the current government for its defiant stand on the nuclear issue which to them has resulted in Iran’s ‘increasing isolation’ in the international arena. While some others have expressed qualms about the veracity of these leaks in instances where they may suggest that direct US support was given to the post-election rioters (true or not, and whether they discredit any of the opposition's claims, that's another debate). President Ahmadinejad also has questioned the ‘legal value’ of the leaks.

What is troubling many governments is not necessarily the exposure of their 'ill-feelings' toward each other by Wikileaks. The governments already know these truths, and also that embassies and diplomats regularly do espionage for their respective governments. In the arena of international relations, interests and power largely drive politics, not feelings of good will. Mutual suspicion among states is often normal. Pak-US relations is one example (on the issues of the nuclear arsenal, ISI, and PPP/Zardari). Iran-Saudi relations is another (particularly on Iraq and Palestine-Lebanon).

The concern that many governments have with these leaks is that this politics is out in public and now more susceptible to media spins and the perceptions of their national and international masses. After the leaks, the thoughts and prejudices of people against other countries or their own governments may solidify (and in some instances, radically change), and it would become more difficult for these governments to put an all-friendly public face, or make pragmatic political shifts, or claim to support causes that they really don't (like the Saudi (non)support to the Palestinian cause. Also, the Saudi and other status-quo Middle Eastern regimes would not be happy if their geo-political interests appear too much in line with that of Israel).

Particularly for Washington, the leaks are not only an embarrassment in front of the world but they may also promote a further disillusion regarding Washington’s claim of championing democracy, freedom, and human rights. In this sense, the leaks are a direct attack on the propaganda machinery of its hegemonic ambitions. Hence, Washington might also charge Wikileaks with promoting "anti-Americanism", in addition to calling it "a crime", "risking lives of troops", "compromising national security", etc.

The Truth

Despite the huge uproar in the media, most of the fundamental strategic and policy related knowledge that has come out in the leaks so far was already known to the discerning observers; the leaks, surely, added further confirmation to it.

Among the things that the leaks confirm is that ‘Israel tried to plan the Gaza War with Egypt and PA’ (The Jerusalem Post, Nov 29, 2010). This suggests a) the Gaza massacre in 2008-9 was pre-meditated (we already knew it then, but now we have further support), and b) the Egyptian and the West Bank authorities knew about Israel's plan well ahead of time, even if, according to the leaks, the two (supposedly) did not say 'yes' to Israel. We do not know what was worked out in the later communications. Egypt and West Bank’s PA may have had logistical concerns but from looking at their policies during the massacre we know that their strategic interests were aligned with those of Israel. Egypt, for instance, refused to open its Rafah border to allow food and other daily supplies to the Gazans. For reading the leaks, this also suggests that the fragments of cables, even if they are authentic, can be very misleading if we do not scrutinize them with a critically informed perspective.

Wikileaks reports also "indicate that the US has mounted a secret effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani reactor since 2007..." (CSMonitor, Nov 29, 2010). Indeed, this was one of the key issues that embittered the relationship between Washington and Pakistan’s powerful military establishment in the last few years and perhaps explains some of the dramatic political changes and turmoil. Yet, this nuclear connection was persistently and emphatically dismissed by some journalists in the liberal elite circles of Pakistan who might still call it a “conspiracy theory”.

One should not discount the possibility of a good number of forged and fragmented documents intentionally released to Wikileaks by government apparatuses. That reason alone is enough to suggest that Wikileaks cannot be a measure of truth per se, but it is the perspective with which one judges its content, and since there can be multiple perspectives, the truth of these leaks will remain contested. Further, the accuracy of some documents in the leaks should not be taken as a verification of the rest of the documents. On the question of verification, Wikileaks website itself suggests that the "simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.”

Lastly, in any review of these leaks, one should also interrogate the sources used and the background and politics of the people working for Wikileaks. Because these considerations have a huge impact on what Wikileaks editors choose to release (and what they do not), their timing, and their targets. Perhaps, their politics and agenda will become clearer with the release of more leaked documents.



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For some bits on what has been released so far, check out the following report:

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis
David Leigh, The Guardian, Nov 28, 2010
Source

The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.

At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated "secret" – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership.

These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches, which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website, also reveal Washington's evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.

These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high-level concerns over Pakistan's growing instability, and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.

Among scores of disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:

• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear material for terrorists to build a bomb.

• Inappropriate remarks by Prince Andrew about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country.

• Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice-president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.

• How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally.

• Allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the relationship is so close that the country has become a "virtual mafia state".

• The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of "lavish gifts", lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italiango-between.

• Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan by US commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand. The dispatches reveal particular contempt for the failure to impose security around Sangin – the town which has claimed more British lives than any other in the country.

The US has particularly intimate dealings with Britain, and some of the dispatches from the London embassy in Grosvenor Square will make uncomfortable reading in Whitehall and Westminster. They range from political criticisms of David Cameron to requests for specific intelligence about individual MPs.

The cables contain specific allegations of corruption, as well as harsh criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from Caribbean islands to China and Russia. The material includes a reference to Putin as an "alpha-dog" and Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia", while Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.

The cables names Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups, and provide an extraordinarily detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida targets. One cable records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh said: "We'll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours."

Other revelations include a description of a near "environmental disaster" last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium, technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and a profile of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

Clinton led a frantic damage limitation exercise this weekend as Washington prepared foreign governments for the revelations, contacting leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, France and Afghanistan.

US ambassadors in other capitals were instructed to brief their hosts in advance of the release of unflattering pen-portraits or nakedly frank accounts of transactions with the US which they had thought would be kept quiet. Washington now faces a difficult task in convincing contacts around the world that any future conversations will remain confidential.

As the cables were published, the White House released a statement condemning their release. "Such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK. They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk. We have a very strong relationship with the US government. That will continue."

The US ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman, said: "We have briefed the UK government and other friends and allies around the world about the potential impact of these disclosures … I am confident that our uniquely productive relationship with the United Kingdom will remain close and strong, focused on promoting our shared objectives and values."

Sir Christopher Meyer, who was British ambassador to the US in the Blair years, thought the leaks would have little impact on diplomatic behaviour. "This won't restrain dips' [diplomats'] candour," he said. "But people will be looking at the security of electronic communications and archives. Paper would have been impossible to steal in these quantities."

The state department's legal adviser has written to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and his London lawyer, warning that the cables were obtained illegally and that the publication would place at risk "the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and co-operation between countries".

The electronic archive of embassy dispatches from around the world was allegedly downloaded by a US soldier earlier this year and passed to WikiLeaks. Assange made it available to the Guardian and four other news organisations: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities.

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.

The most controversial target was the UN leadership. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".

PJ Crowley, the state department spokesman in Washington, said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years."

The acting deputy spokesman for Ban Ki-moon, Farhan Haq, said the UN chief had no immediate comment. "We are aware of the reports."

The dispatches also shed light on older diplomatic issues. One cable, for example, reveals, that Nelson Mandela was "furious" when a top adviser stopped him meeting Margaret Thatcher shortly after his release from prison to explain why the ANC objected to her policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime.

"We understand Mandela was keen for a Thatcher meeting but that [appointments secretary Zwelakhe] Sisulu argued successfully against it," according to the cable. It continues: "Mandela has on several occasions expressed his eagerness for an early meeting with Thatcher to express the ANC's objections to her policy. We were consequently surprised when the meeting didn't materialise on his mid-April visit to London and suspected that ANC hardliners had nixed Mandela's plans."

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system.

They are classified at various levels up to "secret noforn" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn.

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

Last spring, 22-year-old intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was charged with leaking many of these cables, along with a gun-camera video of an Apache helicopter crew mistakenly killing two Reuters news agency employees in Baghdad in 2007, which was subsequently posted by WikiLeaks. Manning is facing a courtmartial.

In July and October WikiLeaks also published thousands of leaked military reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. These were made available for analysis beforehand to the Guardian, along with Der Spiegel and the New York Times.

A former hacker, Adrian Lamo, who reported Manning to the US authorities, said the soldier had told him in chat messages that the cables revealed "how the first world exploits the third, in detail".

He also said, according to Lamo, that Clinton "and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in searchable format to the public … Everywhere there's a US post … there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed".

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

He added: "We have been taking aggressive action in recent weeks and months to enhance the security of our systems and to prevent the leak of information."

Jundullah and the Washington Connection

See related posts here and here.



Is the Obama Administration Supporting Violent "Regime Change" in Iran?
by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Source

Excerpt:

"We were in Tehran on February 24 -- the day when Iranian authorities announced the capture of Abdol Malik Rigi, the head of Jundallah. Jundallah (the name in Arabic for "soldiers of God"; the group is also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran) is a Sunni Islamist group that claims to be fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran. Its activities are focused on Sistan-Baluchistan, which is the Islamic Republic's only Sunni-majority province. In recent years, the group has carried out a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Iran. These include a 2005 attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's motorcade in Sistan-Baluchistan (one of Ahmadinejad's bodyguards was killed); a 2006 attack on a bus in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 18 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC); the abduction and execution of 16 Iranian policemen in 2007; a car bomb attack on a security installation in Sistan-Baluchistan in 2008 that killed at least four people; a 2009 ambush in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 12 Iranian policeman; and a 2009 bomb attack on a mosque in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 25 people and injured 125.

Most recently, on October 18, 2009, Jundallah carried out a suicide bomb attack in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed 42 people, including several senior IRGC officers. We wrote on this attack at the time, as did Ben Katcher; we also published a guest post on the incident by Jasim Husain Ali.

Two days after his capture was announced, Rigi appeared on Iranian television, where he said, among other things, that Jundallah receives financial and military support from the United States; U.S. Government officials have denied such support on the record (though they have not denied any relationship with Jundallah). Some media reports claim that U.S. support for Jundallah is "indirect," in that the support is channeled through Pakistan and Gulf Arab states allied to the United States. Iranian officials have charged for several years that Jundallah receives support from the United States, as well as from Pakistan and Sunni Arab states allied to Washington.

Our impression in Tehran last week was that the idea the United States has some sort of ties to Jundallah and other groups considered "terrorists" by most Iranians seems to be widely accepted in Tehran as a "social fact," at least. We observed a genuine, deep, and strongly positive popular reaction to the news of Rigi's arrest that seemed to cut across class and political divides in Iranian society. When news of Rigi's capture broke, it was around midday in Tehran. We were at the University of Tehran's Faculty of World Studies, meeting with graduate students in a conference room that was equipped with a large-screen television. We were interrupted by an incoming flow of students and faculty, who apologized for the intrusion but explained that there was an urgent news story which they wanted to see on television. The television was turned on, and we watched the nationally broadcast press conference at which the Islamic Republic's Intelligence Minister recounted Rigi's arrest. As we went through subsequent meetings and conversations over the course of the afternoon, it seemed clear that the news of Rigi's arrest was a source of considerable popular satisfaction. That evening, in some residential neighborhoods, there were impromptu parties, with individuals distributing cake to their neighbors and other similar gestures of celebration. We were told that one of the senior IRGC officers killed in the Jundallah attack last October was a widely known and admired hero of the Iran-Iraq war.

Iranian officials are not the only sources claiming that U.S. intelligence is linked to groups carrying out terrorist operations inside the Islamic Republic. Some Western media reports -- citing former CIA case officers -- say that there are links between Jundallah and U.S. intelligence; for example, see this widely noted story published by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in July 2008. Some of these reports say that Jundallah is one of a number of ethnic separatist groups (including Arab, Azeri, Baluch, and Kurdish groups) receiving covert support from the United States, as part of a covert campaign authorized during the George W. Bush Administration to press Tehran over the nuclear issue and destabilize the Islamic Republic. (For a recent discussion of the issue by a retired CIA officer, see here.) As we ourselves have written, there is considerable evidence that President Obama inherited from his predecessor a number of overt programs for "democracy promotion" in Iran, as well as covert initiatives directed against Iranian interests.

Obama has done nothing to scale back or stop these programs -- a posture that has not gone unnoticed in Tehran. We understand that, last year, the Obama Administration reviewed whether Jundallah should be designated a foreign terrorist organization, but decided not to do so. Why was that? And, even though the Muhahedin-e Khalq (MEK) retains its designation as a foreign terrorist organization, the Obama Administration continues to push the Iraqi government not to consider a longstanding Iranian request that MEK cadres in Iraq -- who were granted special protective status by the George W. Bush Administration -- be deported to Iran. Why is the Obama Administration trying to protect members of a U.S. government-designated terrorist group?

Could it be that at least some elements of the Obama Administration believe that U.S. connections to groups like Jundallah and the MEK are potentially useful policy instruments vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic? Based on our conversations in Tehran, it seems clear that the perception of continuing U.S. involvement with and support for groups carrying out violent attacks inside Iran is having a corrosive effect on Iranian assessments of the Obama Administration's seriousness about strategic engagement with Iran and its ultimate intentions toward the Islamic Republic."

See the full text here.

Ahmadinejad meets Nasrallah and Assad in Syria: What is the significance?

Here is one perspective. See here if this video does not play.

Jundallah's Rigi's Confession Clip

See my comments here



US offered Rigi 'extensive aid' for Iran attacks
Feb 25, 2010, PressTV
Source

The captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, has confessed that the US administration had assured him of unlimited military aid and funding for waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The following is the detailed transcript of Rigi's confession, stated in Farsi, as broadcasted on Press TV.

"After Obama was elected, the Americans contacted us and they met me in Pakistan.They met us after clashes with my group around March 17 in (the southeastern city of) Zahedan, and he (the US operative) said that Americans had requested a meeting."

"I said we didn't have any time for a meeting and if we do help them they should promise to give us aid. They said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment, arms and machine guns. They also promised to give us a base along the border with Afghanistan next to Iran."

"They asked to meet me and we said where should we meet you and he said in Dubai. We sent someone to Dubai and we told a person to ask a place for myself in Afghanistan from the area near the operations and they complied that they would sort out the problem for us and they will find Mr. Rigi a base and guarantee his own security in Afghanistan or in any of the countries adjacent to Iran so that he can carry on his operations.

"They told me that in Kyrgyzstan they have a base called Manas near Bishkek, and that a high-ranking person was coming to meet me and that if such high-ranking people come to the United Arab Emirates, they may be observed by intelligence people but in a place like Bishkek this high-ranking American person could come and we could reach an agreement on making personal contacts. But after the last major operation we took part in, they said that they wanted to meet with us.

"The Americans said Iran was going its own way and they said our problem at the present is Iran… not al-Qaeda and not the Taliban, but the main problem is Iran. We don't have a military plan against Iran. Attacking Iran is very difficult for us (the US). The CIA is very particular about you and is prepared to do anything for you because our government has reached the conclusion that there was nothing Americans could do about Iran and only I could take care of the operations for them.

"One of the CIA officers said that it was too difficult for us to attack Iran militarily, but we plan to give aid and support to all anti-Iran groups that have the capability to wage war and create difficulty for the Iranian (Islamic) system. They reached the conclusion that your organization has the power to create difficulties for the Islamic Republic and they are prepared to give you training and/or any assistance that you would require, in terms of telecommunications security and procedures as well as other support, the Americans said they would be willing to provide it at an extensive level."

Iran's security forces arrested Rigi on Tuesday by bringing down his plane over the Iranian airspace, as he was onboard a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan.

On Militant-Extremists in Pakistan and their Supporters

Two news items. One about the Jamaat ud-Dawa which still appears to be functional for the establishment's strategic goals according to this report. The other is about Jundullah which is widely known to be supported by Washington. For comments on the first connection, see here. The publication of the first story in major news sources (like WaPo) with that headline to me also indicates the continuation of the pressure by the US on the Pakistani establishment and its security agencies, that the latter bring its policies in line with the wishes of Washington (For more on this, see here).

If, like the second story suggests, Jundallah's Rigi was indeed connected to the mainstream Baloch nationalist movement, then it is highly unlikely that the Pakistani security agencies would have nurtured and supported him. And, if they allowed him (and Judallah) to operate inside Pakistan, perhaps it was under pressure from the US. Washington, to my knowledge, also never demanded that Pakistan ban Jundullah - like Washington has in the case of Jamaat ud-Dawa and others - just for its symbolic value, if nothing more. But this theory still needs to explain Jundallah's connections with local militant-sectarian groups like Lashkar-e Jhangvi and SSP, when the latter two are known to receive continuous support and protection from the security agencies. I guess we may find some clues if we investigate the nationalist credentials of Jundallah, in the ideology that they propagate, the nature of their funding and support, and their activities so far. In case they are really not that connected to the mainstream Baloch nationalist insurgency, I think it's likely that both the foreign powers (including KSA) and the security establishment saw a utility in letting this group prosper.

Why then the establishment cooperated with Iran this time? That's a very important question and may perhaps be answered, in one way, through the resistance that the security establishment is trying to pose, at least so far, against the US pressures (as suggested by some analysts commenting on the mysterious and repeated arrest and release of Americans on the Pakistani soil and the recent calculated suicide attack that killed 3 American personnel in Dir, Pakistan). One also needs to take into consideration the continuous, intense pressure from Iran as the second report indicates.

Has the establishment surrendered to US pressures, yet? Some may argue that it has, and there is a recent policy shift indicating just that. I believe that in quite significant ways, yes, but not totally.

Pakistani militant group easily evades ban
By Asif Shahzad and Chris Brummitt, The Associated Press, February 23, 2010
Source (Alternative source)

LAHORE, Pakistan -- Long-haired jihadis toting automatic weapons patrolled a mosque last week as the cleric who heads the militant network blamed for the Mumbai attacks preached inside. The group's supporters collected funds in the courtyard and later marched through this eastern Pakistani city, calling for the death of those who insult Islam.

Pakistan announced a ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa - sealing the group's offices, freezing assets and rounding up leaders - amid international outrage after the 2008 siege of the Indian financial capital. But the group has scored a few wins in court against the government and is up and running again, exposing Islamabad's unwillingness to fully crack down on militants who target India, its longtime enemy.

The resurgence of the group could chill the first round of peace talks between Pakistan and India since the attacks.

India is insisting the negotiations Thursday focus on Pakistan's efforts to rein in groups such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa; Pakistan wants all issues, including the disputed territory of Kashmir, to be on the table.

The United States has urged the two nuclear-armed nations to resume dialogue despite Indian concerns about the Pakistan's crackdown on militants. Both nations mobilized troops to their shared border as tensions spiked following Mumbai. Another major attack by Pakistani militants on Indian soil would put New Delhi under intense domestic pressure to mount a military response.

India, the United States and the United Nations allege Jamaat is the front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which they charge carried out the attacks in December 2008 that killed 166 people in Mumbai. Seven militants identified as members of Lashkar by prosecutors are currently on trial in Pakistan charged with planning and carrying out the attacks. The sole surviving alleged gunman in the attacks, Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani with links to Lashkar, is on trial in India.

Lashkar was founded in the 1980s by Hafiz Saeed with the assistance of Pakistan's security agencies to wage war against India in the hopes of wresting the Indian portion of Kashmir away from New Delhi. The group claimed responsibility for numerous attacks there, but the government banned it in 2002 following pressure from the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saeed is now the leader of Jamaat, which claims to be focused only on charity work. It runs a large network of Islamic schools and clinics, and participates in disaster relief.

Members of Jamaat say there is no link between it and Lashkar. But even Rana Sanaullah Khan, who is the law minister in Punjab, said the two are simply different wings of the same group.

After the Mumbai siege, Saeed, a 60-year-old former Islamic studies lecturer, was placed under house arrest but was freed in June last year by the Lahore High Court, which said there was no evidence he was involved in any wrongdoing. In October, a court ruled there was no case against Saeed and found that the government had never formally prohibited Jamaat. The government has appealed to the Supreme Court.

Even before the court ruling, however, critics said Pakistan was not aggressively enforcing the ban.

Saeed has exploited the legal limbo and openly challenges the government's attempts to tamp down his group.

On the government's Kashmir Solidarity Day earlier this month, Saeed addressed supporters in Lahore who waved Lashkar flags and shouted "Here comes Lashkar to kill the Hindus."

"If America with the help of NATO and all its weapons could not maintain its occupation in Afghanistan, India too will not be able to hold on to Kashmir anymore," Saeed told the crowd.

Frustration at the impunity groups like Jamaat seem to enjoy angers some lawmakers.

"It is shocking to see how banned terrorist organizations are allowed to challenge the writ of the state," Sherry Rehman, a lawmaker with the ruling party, told parliament on Tuesday. "What is the point of our innocent civilians and soldiers dying in a borderless war against such terrorists, when armed, banned outfits can hold the whole nation hostage in the heart of Punjab's provincial capital?"

Security and government officials in Lahore offered several reasons for the lack of action against Saeed and his group. They said India had presented no evidence of his involvement in the Mumbai attacks; stressed he was not involved in any of the attacks by Islamist militants that have struck Pakistan over the last year, several of them in Lahore; and they said that closing the group's schools would deprive thousands of an education and health care.

But analysts said Pakistan had strategic reasons for not acting against Jamaat.

"Pakistan is keeping these groups as a gray area of its policy, and it will continue doing so long as there are no guaranteed steps from India," defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said, referring to moves to resolve the Kashmir dispute. "Pakistan does not see these groups as completely undesirable if there is no progress on its issues."

India has demanded Saeed be put on trial for the Mumbai attacks.

A government-appointed administrator is now in charge at the group's headquarters in Muridke, just outside Lahore. Spread over 75 acres, it has schools and a hospital that provide free services for nearby residents, stabling for horses and a swimming pool.

But the staff there are still from Jamaat, though Minister Khan said they are "not very devoted" members.

A spokesman for Jamaat scoffs at the idea that the government has frozen its assets, as Islamabad said it had done when the ban was announced.

"How can someone who doesn't contribute any money control the purse strings?" said Yahya Mujahid.

The guards posted outside the mosque on Friday were to protect against possible attack by Indian agents, said Mujahid.

A man collecting donations defended the right for the group to do so. "Do you see any harm? Is it wrong?" he asked. "These funds are for welfare in the name of Allah."

In other parts of the country, there has been some enforcement of the ban.

In Karachi, the country's largest city but never a stronghold of the group, it was evicted from its old offices in a residential block where a family now lives. Members say it is no longer allowed to hold large rallies and have had to close down three health clinics due to lack of funds.

---
Associated Press reporters Babar Dogar in Lahore and Ashraf Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.

-------------------------------------------------------

Rigi’s arrest a godsend for Pakistan
By Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn, Feb 24, 2010
Sources

ISLAMABAD: Arrest of Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi and his deputy Hamza during a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan marks a lucky break for Pakistan, which has been long accused by Iran of hosting the terror group’s ringleader, and offers an opportunity to ease the tense relations between Tehran and Islamabad.

Iran, despite repeated denials by Islamabad, always alleged that the group operated from Pakistan’s soil and that its leader Rigi was based there and carried Pakistan’s national identity card by the name of Saeed Ahmed, son of Ghulam Haider.

The militant leader had been educated at Karachi’s Binnori Town seminary, which was school to many of the Taliban leaders.

Rigi is believed to have camouflaged his nationalist movement in a sectarian colour to curry favour with Pakistani sectarian groups.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, who visited Pakistan in October following an attack on elite Revolutionary Guards in south-western Sistan-Balochistan province along Pakistan’s border, is said to have handed over proofs of Rigi’s travel to Pakistan.

“We have documents that show (Abdolmalek) Rigi travels readily to Pakistan ... we are here to ask Pakistan to hand over Rigi to Iran,” Mr Najjar had said in a statement.

Although, the attack on Revolutionary Guard incensed the Iranians and evoked the strongest reaction, bilateral relations between the two countries had been on the slide ever since the group was formed in 2002 stepped up cross-border raids out of their havens along Pakistan-Iran border targeting Iranian security personnel and civilians.

The Zahedan attack in 2007 on Revolutionary Guards was followed by emboldened attacks by the outlawed organisation, but unfortunately some of the operations that ensued involved the use of Pakistan’s soil, including the abduction of 21 Iranian drivers in 2007 from Chabahar, who were later freed by Pakistani forces.

It is also believed that the group brought 16 Iranian policemen kidnapped from southeastern Iran to Pakistan and killed them.

In view of enhanced Iranian concerns, Pakistan had offered Tehran with increased intelligence sharing and intensified border patrolling.

Pakistan had been insisting that Rigi was not in Pakistan and Jundallah operated in ‘triangle region’ between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran making it harder to act against the group.

The 1,000 km stretch between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan is a rough terrain making patrolling extremely difficult.

Extradition of Abdolmalek Rigi’s brother Abdolhamid Rigi by Pakistani authorities to Iran in June 2008 was the highlight of cooperation between the two countries on the contentious issue of Jundallah.

National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza, during her recent trip to Tehran, had disclosed at a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that a number of Jundallah militants were arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Iran.

US COOPERATION

Iran had always alleged that Jundallah was financed by the US government to destabilise their country.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in another report in July 2008 that US Congressional leaders had secretly agreed to former president Bush’s $400 million funding request, which gave the US a free hand in arming and funding Iranian terrorist groups such as Jundallah militants.

---
Asia Times Online reports that, "The circumstances surrounding Rigi's arrest are unclear. Iranian officials claim he was flying in a small plane from Pakistan to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates when Iranian authorities forced the plane to land in Iran. Baloch tribes in the Taftan area of Balochistan in Pakistan say Rigi was arrested inside Pakistan and then handed over to the Iranians. All that Iranian state television showed was a handcuffed Rigi being escorted by four masked commandos off a small aircraft."

On the Hypocritical and Agenda-Driven Western Media Coverage of the Iranian Presidential Election of 2009

Excerpts from

Chutzpah, Inc.: "The Brave People of Iran" (versus the Disappeared People of Palestine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Etc.)
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, MRzine, Feb 20, 2010
Source

"It is almost a commonplace, at least for the real -- as opposed to the cruise-missile -- left, that the flow of information, opinion, and moral indignation in the United States adapts well to the demands of state policy. If the state is hostile to Iran, even openly trying to engage in "regime change," and if it is supportive of the state of Israel, no matter what crimes Israel may commit, and if it doesn't like the populist president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and supports his overthrow and a follow-up "demonstration election" by the local elite, the media and many intellectuals will follow the state agenda, even if they must indulge in mental somersaults. In the case of Iran, the Israeli state and its U.S. supporters are also eager for regime change, so the somersaults on the Iran menace are wilder yet, with large injections of chutzpah.

This chutzpah is in full bloom in a full-page ad in the February 7 New York Times and February 9 International Herald Tribune addressed to Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Dimitry Medvedev, Gordon Brown, and Angela Merkel: "How Long Can We Stand Idly By and Watch the Scandal in Iran Unfold?"¹ The ad was sponsored by "The Elie Wiesel Foundation For Humanity," and signed by 44 Nobel Prize laureates, 42 of them men and a substantial fraction Jewish. The ad attacks Iran's "cruel and oppressive regime" for its "shameless war against its own people" and its "irresponsible and senseless nuclear ambitions [that] threaten the entire world," and calls upon Washington, Paris, Moscow, London, and Berlin, the UN Security Council, and "important NGOs" to impose "harsher sanctions" on Iran, and adopt "concrete measures . . . to protect this new nation of dissidents. . . ." "They must know that we are on their side," the ad implores. "All of us who care must offer our full support and solidarity to the brave people of Iran."

This open letter is a shameless and demagogic call for foreign intervention in Iran, for destabilization and subversion, and, above all, for war -- although three of the signers (including Wiesel) are past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize² -- and the text could have been written by the Foreign Office of the state of Israel. Indeed, Wiesel himself is an unabashed protagonist for Israel, having long proclaimed his unwillingness to make a public criticism of that country ("I never attack, never criticize Israel when I am not in Israel"³), so that we can rest assured that his "Foundation for Humanity" will never proclaim its solidarity with any humans living under the Israeli boot. The Wiesel Foundation did not sponsor a full-page ad in the New York Times to protest Israel's shameless and criminal onslaught against the Gaza Palestinians in early 2009, which in just three weeks killed some 340 children, a greater number than the aggregate of protester deaths in post-election Iran.⁴ Nor will it sponsor an ad that criticizes the irresponsible buildup of nuclear weapons that Israel has accomplished outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that pose a much clearer threat to the world than that posed by the still nuclear-weapon-free Iran, which is under steady threat of attack by Israel and by a U.S. leadership that says "all options" remain on the table...."

...

"The late June 2009 Chatham House analysis, which cast doubts on Iran's official election result and thus helped to delegitimize the Iranian government in the eyes of the great Western metropolitan centers, was quoted frequently in the Western media, and its authors were sometimes used as expert sources. But the original September 2009 survey of Iranian opinion by PIPA-WPO was virtually ignored by the Western media; and PIPA's subsequent analysis of no fewer than 12 different opinion surveys, released on February 3, remained unreported anywhere in the establishment media through February 17.²⁵ We believe that this differential treatment follows from the now well-established party-line in the West that has demonized Iran's leaders and that processes and manages news-interest and news-flow accordingly. The Western media and intellectuals gravitated to Chatham House's analysis while ignoring PIPA's for the simple reason that Chatham House (like so many other commentators) served up the requisite damning view of the official result -- and PIPA did not. Hence, the newsworthiness of the "stolen election" line, and the lack of attention paid to serious empirical challenges to it."

...

"By now, the standard claims about Iran's "stolen election" have been repeated so many times by the establishment Western media, as well as by those on the left who took the bait, that almost everybody is hooked on it and unable to wiggle free. ²⁹ Undoubtedly, many foreign activists sincerely believe that they are supporting democracy inside Iran, and large numbers of Iranian dissidents truly are struggling for a more open and decent society and political order. But if Iran's 2009 official election result is valid, and if there is strong majority support among Iran's citizens for the structure and general character of its Islamic Republic,³⁰ then these foreign activists, including the collection of Nobel laureates gathered around Wiesel, and those on the left who like to invoke "solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement," clearly are not aligned with majority opinion inside Iran. We are not quite sure what to call this toxic mix of opposing the majority will of a foreign country's citizens and doing so in the name of "democracy," while feeding into the regime-change program of the United States and Israel. But strong currents of Orientalism as well as imperialism are clearly running through it.

The huge attention given to Iran's 2009 election and its aftermath,³¹ and the indignation vented over its "stolen" character, can only be explained by the convergence between this focus and the long-term U.S.-Israeli hostility towards Iran -- their demonization of the leaders of the Islamic Republic, and their steady efforts to destabilize Iran and force it to change in a manner to their liking. It is also of interest that less democratic elections in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the August and October 2009 "demonstration elections" in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan, and even the coup in Honduras in late June and the subsequent terror-laced "demonstration election" there in late November were treated in the West with nowhere near the same level of attention or indignation. The focus on Iran is thus a remarkable case of channeled benevolence, but one that, from the standpoint of genuine peace and democracy-promotion objectives, we believe to be seriously mis-channeled."

Noam Chomsky on Obama's Middle East Policy

Last week, the Imperial College Political Philosophy Society, in association with Palestine societies at UCL, SOAS, Goldsmiths, LSE, Imperial and Kings, organized a lecture by MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky: Iran, Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework. from ICU Political Philosophy Society on Vimeo.

A few points here and there may require further probing but overall this was a very insightful analysis.

Professor Chomsky's point about studying various civil/human rights movements closely is crucial. For example, the political dynamics and dedication level of the US support for Israel are quite different from that for the apartheid South Africa. Would the same tactics that were successful in South Africa work in the case of Palestine-US-Israel? Would the 'advocacy process' follow a similar course in this case, as Chomsky seems to suggest?

A further challenge for our movements (of people of conscience) is to come up with action plans - not just "proposals" as Chomsky rightly points out - involving practical strategies and tactics that are in line with our principles and sound political analysis.

***

So far the Obama administration has shown no meaningful signs of any major change to the old grand plan of a "new middle east" (as Condy Rice famously stated), other than slight modifications in the tactics. Suspending the expansion of settlements and recognizing the two-state solution that the current administration is asking of Israel were already part of Bush’s “Road Map for Peace”. Neither of them actually enforced these demands on Israel.

Against the Bush administration’s “hard power” however the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has put forward the idea of “smart power”, combining diplomacy and “iron fist”. What that probably means for Muslim countries is the ‘Good Muslim vs. Bad Muslim’ game. The good Muslims are those compliant to the US-Israeli imperial ambitions. The Bad Muslims are those who resist that and therefore must be disciplined.

The status quo regimes of the Middle East - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan - are presented as the “moderate” Muslims. While those - within the status quo states and from outside - opposing their corruption and the hegemonic ambitions of US-Israel are labeled as the Bad Muslims. And it is demanded from the latter (those resisting) to ‘reform’ and become ‘good Muslims’. After the inauguration, Obama went to the West Bank, not Gaza, and then to Egypt, where he delivered his now popular Cairo speech. Both are telling indicators.

Consider the following two sentences from the end of that speech: “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition.” What?! During the inquisition?! Muslims were slaughtered, forced to convert or exile under the Inquisitorial Regime. Is that what Mr. Obama is suggesting that Muslims do today against the oppression of their own dictatorial regimes and from outside? Perhaps it was a blunder on the part of Obama’s speech writer.

But in practical terms, this is exactly what the current administration is asking of the Palestinian people: Keep suffering. Rhetorical gestures of conciliation-s by the new administration aside, the US and Israel are more or less continuing the same policy of turning Gaza into a virtual prison and dividing the West Bank into small quarantines through the Security Wall, with Israel having effective control over water, communication, and security matters of both areas.

What lies ahead? A further military and political marginalization of legitimate resistance movements in Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere. Israel will haggle on the price for ‘peace’ by creating stalemates of one kind or another and thereby finding more time for its expansionist ambitions. Further military actions against those who do not comply, within the occupied territories and outside, are also probable.

On problems with the two-state solution see http://gazaawareness.blogspot.com/

How did Saddam get Chemical and Biological Weapons?

How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them
by Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot, Sunday Herald, September 8, 2002
Source

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.

Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.

The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.

Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs.'

Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.

It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.

According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'.

Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.

Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.'

He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.

The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons program.

Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.

'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.'

Phil Wilayto - Opposing War Against Iran

Key Facts to Keep in Mind While Opposing War against Iran
by Phil Wilayto, Monthly Review, September 30, 2009
Source

"After an unfortunate year-long ebb, the anti-war movement in the U.S. is again beginning to show signs of life. This October there will be many local and regional protests against the U.S-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most will also address the expanding war in Pakistan and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

While some of these protests also will demand no war against Iran, there seems to be less enthusiasm for addressing this issue. The barrage of media attacks, charges, and misinformation has taken its toll. The controversy around the Iranian presidential elections and their aftermath have also played a role. Taken together, these factors have to a certain extent disarmed the anti-war movement, even as the possibility of a new war grows ever more serious."

For full text:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wilayto300909.html

Also, below see a previous article by the same author on the controversy over the Iranian election and its implications for the anti-war movement in the US. The focus in this piece is largely on the political-economic aspects. Power and ideological factors that play vital role in the Iranian politics are not sufficiently considered. Further, the legitimacy of waging "humanitarian wars" against sovereign states is not questioned thoroughly. The article is still a must-read for all concerned.

How Should We React to the Events in Iran? - Phil Wilayto
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/wilayto080709.html

'Most Iranians express acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election' - World Public Opinion

"Most Iranians express acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election. Eighty-one percent say they consider Ahmadinejad to be Iran's legitimate president, and 62 percent say they have a lot of confidence in the declared election results, while 21 percent say they have some confidence. Just 13 percent say they do not have much confidence or no confidence in the results. In general, eight in 10 (81%) say they are satisfied with the process by which authorities are elected, but only half that number (40%) say they are very satisfied.

Among the 87 percent of respondents who say they voted in the June presidential election, 55 percent say they voted for Ahmadinejad. Only 14 percent say they voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, and 26 percent refused to answer. Asked how they would vote if the election were held again, overall 49 percent say they would vote for Ahmadinejad, 8 percent for Mousavi, 13 percent say they would not vote, and 26 percent would not answer."

From

World Public Opinion, September 18, 2009
Source

"This study was designed, managed, and analyzed by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland."

"A total of 1,003 interviews were completed; the interview refusal rate was 52 percent."

"... the fact that one in four respondents refused to answer the question about who they voted for in the presidential election suggests that some people may have felt uncomfortable answering and thus the findings need to be viewed with caution and not as a clear indication of how people voted. Some questions for which we have trendline data also show a bit less readiness to take controversial positions in the current poll."

Phil Wilayto: Anti-War Movement - How Should We React to the Events in Iran?

Quite useful insights, although at some points the piece seems to over-emphasize the economic rifts at the expense of power and ideological factors. But the piece makes it quite obvious that what we are witnessing is not a "culture war", as suggested by some commentators recently, particularly Juan Cole on June 14. In a later post (June 18, 2009), however, Cole tones down his thesis by stating "The reformers and the hard liners are not stable groupings. The core of each is competing for the allegiance of the general Iranian public. If the reformers can convince most Iranians of the justice of their cause, they will swing behind the opposition. If the hard liners can convince the public...then the reformists will be crushed."

The tension between the progressive impulse for "humanitarian intervention" and the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other nations also remains unresolved in this piece.

-----

An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement: How Should We React to the Events in Iran?
by Phil Wilayto, The Monthly Review Zine, Aug 07, 2009
Source

The "Iranian people" have not spoken.

What's happening in Iran today is a developing conflict between two forces that each represent millions of people. There are good people on both sides and the issues are complicated. So before U.S. progressives decide to weigh in, supporting one side and condemning the other, let's take a little closer look.

Who Won the Election?

On June 12, 2009, nearly 40 million Iranians, some 85 percent of the electorate, cast votes for one of four presidential candidates. The following day, the government announced that the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won 62.63 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off with his leading rival, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was said to have received 33.75 percent of the vote (CNN, June 13, 2009).

"Before the vote count ended, Moussavi [sic] issued a sharply worded letter urging the counting to stop because of 'blatant violations' and lashed out at what he indicated was an unfair process" (CNN, June 13, 2009).

Mousavi denounced the results as a fraud and hundreds of thousands of his supporters poured into the streets of Tehran and other major cities to protest the election results.

Was the election fair, or was it rigged?

In the West, we have been conditioned to think of President Ahmadinejad as a kind of crackpot dictator who is now the target of an angry and aroused citizenry. Mousavi supporters are projected as "the Iranian people," while Ahmadinejad is seen as being supported by little more than the military, the Revolutionary Guards, and the volunteer Basij organization.

This is a misconception, one result of the fact that few Western observers of Iran are interested in the issue of class.

Of Iran's nearly 71 million people, about 40 percent live in the countryside. For the most part, these are lower-income Iranians. Add to them the urban poor and working class, and you have about two-thirds of the population -- the section that economically has benefited the most from the 1979 Revolution.

Ahmadinejad himself comes from the rural poor -- a blacksmith's son and the fourth of seven children, born in the village of Arādān near Garmsar, about 40 miles southeast of Tehran. His family moved to Tehran when he was one year old. Before becoming president, he was the mayor of Tehran, with his main base of support in southern Tehran, the much poorer part of the capital. Despite economic difficulties due in large part to the sharp drop in world oil prices, Ahmadinejad has retained this class support through his promotion of services and subsidies to the poor -- programs which depend on the continued state ownership and control of the oil and gas industries.

So, just from the demographics, it seems reasonable that Ahmadinejad could have won two-thirds of the vote.

That view is supported by a major voter survey, funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, conducted three weeks before the election by an organization called Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion. TFT isn't exactly a leftist group: its advisory board includes Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain; Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas Keen, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission; and former Senate Majority Leader William H. Frist.

Here's what the survey report's authors, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, had to say about the election, in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post just after the election:

Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

But in Iran, two-thirds of the population is under the age of 35, and Mousavi carried the youth vote, right?

Again, from Ballen and Doherty:

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. (emphasis added)

So people voted their wallets, not their age or ethnicity -- and there are a lot more poor people in Iran than there are those from the middle class.

But the voters use paper ballots, which are counted by hand. How could 40 million ballots be counted in a matter of hours?

First of all, the results were announced the day after the election (CNN, June 13, 2009), not after a few hours, as had been widely reported.

Secondly, there are 60,000 voting stations in Iran. That works out to an average of less than 700 votes per station. Counting that many ballots would take hours, not days. Each station then reported its votes electronically to the Interior Ministry, which added them up and announced the results. So it's perfectly possible that the votes were counted locally and those results compiled centrally and then announced on Saturday, June 13.

Is that how quickly election results are normally announced? No, it usually takes about three days, not one. However (and I haven't seen this reported anywhere in the Western media), this was the first year in which the local tallies were electronically relayed to the center, which could well explain why the national total was available so quickly.¹

But couldn't the votes have been deliberately miscounted, either at the local polling stations or at the Interior Ministry?

By law, each candidate is allowed to have observers at the local polling stations, to watch over the voting and the counting of ballots. As for compiling the local returns at the Interior Ministry, an Iranian-American friend who was in Iran at the time of the election told me:

Over 200,000 young and college students and graduates (almost all pro-Mousavi) took part in the computerized data entry and data transfers. To claim -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- that a grand theft or a massive fraud had taken place, it implies that most or all of these people must have been active players in this mega conspiracy.

It also should be remembered that the "reformist" candidate, Mohammad Khatami, won the presidential election in 1997 when the Interior Ministry was controlled by "conservatives," and that Ahmadinejad, a "hardliner," won in 2005 when that ministry was controlled by "reformists."

What about reports that some voting stations reported more votes than registered voters?

First of all, Iran doesn't register voters. Voting eligibility is determined by one's birth certificate. And because voters aren't required to vote at their local polling station, there might well be more votes recorded than eligible voters at any one station. That's not proof of fraud.

How about the fact that some of the candidates lost in their own home districts? Wouldn't they at least be able to count on a "favorite son" vote?

It's true that Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri, didn't even win the majority of that voting sector. But here's what Ballen and Doherty had to say about that:

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.

So did the vote break down between progressive "pro-democracy" forces and backward, uneducated traditionalists?

The vote broke down between the educated middle class and the poor and working class. On the other hand, the voting survey referred to above found that "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." (By the way, those responses don't sound typical of a people afraid of questioning their government.)

So it's not like all the "democrats" are lined up on one side of the struggle, and all the "hardliners" on the other. It's class prejudice to think that working people are not capable of figuring out their own interests and that bread-and-butter issues might be more important to them than to the better-off middle class.

Mousavi has called for new elections. If it has nothing to hide, why won't the government agree, to settle the dispute once and for all?

On June 19, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced that specific complaints by the three losing candidates would be fully reviewed and the ballots of disputed boxes recounted. The Guardian Council, the 12-member religious body that oversees elections, announced it would conduct a partial recount of the votes, despite the fact that the deadline for complaints had already passed. Council spokesman Abbasali Khadkhodaei had already said it had received 646 complaints from the three candidates. On June 20, it was announced that a randomly selected 10 percent of the ballots would be recounted. And the Interior Ministry has posted the box-by-box and precinct-by-precinct tallies on its Web site.

But Mousavi continues to demand a whole new election.

Who Started the Violence?

In some ways, the June 12 presidential election was unique for Iran. In the past, some Iranians who oppose the government, both in Iran and in diaspora enclaves like Los Angeles, have urged voters to boycott the elections, hoping to deny the government legitimacy. In the last presidential election, in 2005, the turnout was 62 percent -- substantial (the U.S. turnout in 2008 was 61 percent), but not overwhelming.

This year, for the first time, the Iranian government organized televised debates, which seem to have had a big effect on the public. This is from BBC News on June 10: "The campaign at first appeared to be relatively dull, our correspondent says, but there has been an amazing surge of enthusiasm since the first of several TV debates."

The debates weren't just lively, they were downright confrontational -- at times even nasty. And the campaign crowds grew: "Huge crowds have been out on the streets, as the rival candidates held their last election rallies. . . . The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says the crowds gathering in the capital in support of rival candidates sound more like boisterous football crowds than election campaigners" (BBC, June 10, 2009).

At that time, the government had a hands-off approach to the large crowds of rival supporters squaring off in the streets:

"For at least 10 days before the elections, the streets of Tehran were the scene of mass rallies by supporters of Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, and the government tolerated them," reports Rostam Pourzal, who was there. "The rallies were really inconveniencing the public in a big way, by arraying against each other at very strategic intersections and public squares in Tehran. They were very peaceful, very nonviolent, but a public nuisance, and the security forces just stood around in small numbers and watched."

Both Ahmadinejad's and Mousavi's rallies were large, but Mousavi and his supporters were confident of victory. Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university chancellor, publicly declared that the only way Ahmadinejad could win would be through fraud.

So when the Interior Ministry announced the next day that Ahmadinejad had won by a landslide, Mousavi's supporters poured out into the streets, outraged over what they charged was a stolen election.

While it's now unquestioned wisdom to talk about how the Iranian government ruthlessly repressed peaceful demonstrators, Western media at first reported that it actually was the protesters who initiated the violence. Lots of violence.

This is from the New York Times on June 13, 2009, the day the protests began (emphasis and an endnote added);

"Death to the coup d'état!" chanted a surging crowd of several thousand protesters, many of whom wore Mr. Moussavi's signature bright green campaign colors, as they marched in central Tehran on Saturday afternoon. "Death to the dictator!"²

Farther down the street, clusters of young men hurled rocks at a phalanx of riot police officers, and the police used their batons to beat back protesters. . . . As night settled in, the streets in northern Tehran that recently had been the scene of pre-election euphoria were lit by the flames of trash fires and blocked by tipped trash bins and at least one charred bus. Young men ran through the streets throwing paving stones at shop windows, and the police pursued them.

Interestingly, that story also reported that "... the working-class areas of southern Tehran where Mr. Ahmadinejad is popular were largely quiet, despite rumors of wild victory celebrations."

Then there's this report from the Associated Press, also on June 13:

Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police in the heart of Iran's capital Saturday, pelting them with rocks and setting fires in the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. . . . The brazen and angry confrontations -- including stunning scenes of masked rioters tangling with black-clad police -- pushed the self-styled reformist movement closer to a possible moment of truth: Whether to continue defying Iran's powerful security forces or, as they often have before, retreat into quiet dismay and frustration over losing more ground to the Islamic establishment. (emphasis added)

That report continued with barely disguised glee at the aggressiveness of the protesters:

But for at least one day, the tone and tactics were more combative than at any time since authorities put down student-led protests in 1999. Young men hurled stones and bottles at anti-riot units and mocked Ahmadinejad as an illegitimate leader. . . . Thousands of protesters -- mostly young men -- roamed through Tehran looking for a fight with police and setting trash bins and tires ablaze. Pillars of black smoke rose among the mustard-colored apartment blocks and office buildings in central Tehran. In one side road, an empty bus was engulfed in flames. Police fought back with clubs, including mobile squads on motorcycles swinging truncheons. (emphasis added)

The Iranian police's conduct has been criticized, as it should be. However, one may ask: would other governments have handled similar protests better? For instance, the U.S. government, whose police forces in recent years have killed Sean Bell and Oscar Grant, who were certainly not "looking for a fight with police"?

CNN, also on June 13, had this description of the street battles:

In the aftermath of the vote, street protesters and riot police engaged in running battles, with stones thrown, garbage cans set on fire and people shouting 'death to the dictatorship.' . . . Later in the evening, an agitated and angry crowd emerged in Tehran's Moseni Square, with people breaking into shops, starting fires and tearing down signs. (emphasis added)

Then, on June 16, there were the first official confirmations of protest-related deaths. This is from the Associated Press:

Iran state radio reported Tuesday [June 16 - P.W.] that clashes in the Iranian capital the previous day left seven people dead during an 'unauthorized gathering' at a mass rally over alleged election fraud -- the first official confirmation of deaths linked to the wave of protests and street battles after the elections. The report said the deaths occurred after protesters 'tried to attack a military location.' It gave no further details, but it was a clear reference to crowds who came under gunfire Monday after trying to storm a compound for volunteer militia linked to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard. . . . The deaths Monday occurred on the edge of Tehran's Azadi Square. An Associated Press photographer saw gunmen, standing on a roof, opening fire on a group of demonstrators who tried to storm the militia compound. (emphasis added)

While many U.S. activists talk about the attack on student dormitories by members of the Basij, few bring up the protester attack on the Basij compound the following day. Here's how the Associated Press on June 19 described both incidents:

So far, the Basij has refrained from widespread attacks on demonstrators. But witnesses say the militiamen took part in a police raid on Tehran University dormitories on Sunday night after students hurled stones, bricks and firebombs at police -- one of the few violent episodes during this week's rallies. Basij members used axes, sticks and daggers to ransack student rooms and smash computers and furniture, wounding many students, according to witnesses.

A day later, students attacked a compound used by the Basij and tried to set it on fire. Gunmen on the roof fired on the crowd and killed seven people, according to state media. (emphasis added)

Remember, these aren't anonymous Twitter reports or photos from someone's cell phone. These descriptions come from some of the most establishment of U.S. corporate media, before their reporters were banned from covering the street clashes.

However, the media coverage changed noticeably after June 19, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution stating it

supports all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law; condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the Government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cellphones; and affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.

The unsually contentious representatives passed the resolution by a vote of 405 to 1. The Senate quickly followed suit.

Neither resolution, of course, mentioned any violence by protesters.

Having been properly politically oriented to portray the protesters only as victims of government repression, the AP and other corporate media largely stopped reporting on protester violence.

Also on June 19, Ayatollah Khamenei announced that unpermitted demonstrations would no longer be allowed, as they had been in the week following the elections.

Asked for his response, President Barack Obama told CBS News:

I'm very concerned, based on some of the tenor and tone of the statements that have been made, that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching. And how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard will, I think, send a pretty clear signal to the international community about what Iran is -- and is not.

The next day, June 20, somebody signaled again that not all the anti-government forces were committed to peaceful methods. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that a bomb had been set off near the shrine of Iran's revolutionary icon, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, just south of Tehran, killing one person and wounding two. Iran's English-language satellite channel Press TV reported that the bomber was the sole fatality, but that three other people were wounded.

That day, Mousavi supporters staged an unpermitted demonstration in Tehran. This is from a CNN report on June 21:

Thousands of defiant protesters swept again Saturday into the streets of the Iranian capital, where they clashed with police armed with batons, tear gas and water cannons. . . . At midnight, a stretch of a main avenue near Revolution Square was littered with rocks, street signs and burned tires and trash, witnesses said. Windows were shattered and hundreds of uniformed riot police lined the streets.

Official reports put the number of dead at 10, bringing the total number of protester deaths, according to the government, to 17 -- seven shot June 15 while storming the Basij office and 10 killed during the June 20 protests. (I'm not sure if this latter number includes 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death was videotaped and broadcast around the world. She was reportedly shot by an unknown assailant as she got out of her car, headed for a nearby protest.)

Many others were injured, a fact that the government wasn't trying to hide. Acting Police Chief Brigadier Gen. Ahmad-Reza Radan told Iran's semi-official Fars news agency that "Families of those killed or injured in the events since June 12 have filed 2,000 complaints so far." Also, Press TV quoted Iran's deputy police commander as asserting that 400 police personnel had been wounded in the opposition rallies. And "there were reports that members of the volunteer Basijs were raiding homes in wealthy neighborhoods" (CNN, June 21, 2009).

Anyone who truly cares about Iran and its people has to feel sick at heart over these developments. But if the Iranian government were not so justifiably worried about a "velvet revolution" being fomented by outside forces, would it be responding in the way it is to the protests? We don't know -- but for sure, it hasn't been given much of a choice.

In Washington, President Obama issued a written statement saying, "The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. . . . We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people."

Actually, some of the world has been doing much more than simply watching.

Who's Interfering?

On June 18, six days after the election, the British government froze $1.6 billion of Iranian money in the UK, under the guise of international sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. France's President Nicolas Sarkozy called the elections a fraud. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a recount of the votes under the international auspices.

But in terms of interference, it's the U.S. that's been way out in front.

This is from a June 25 story in USA Today: "The Obama administration is moving forward with plans to fund groups that support Iranian dissidents, records and interviews show, continuing a program that became controversial when it was expanded by President [George W.] Bush."

That story, published 13 days after the Iranian elections, explains that the U.S. Agency for International Development, which reports to the U.S. secretary of state, had for the last year been soliciting applications for $20 million in grants to "promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in Iran."

Pretty clearly, that's internal interference. After all, imagine how Americans would have reacted if Iran had allocated millions of dollars to "promote democracy" in Florida after George W. Bush stole the 2000 presidential election?

But U.S. interference in Iran is nothing new. To his credit, President Obama admitted in his June 4 Cairo speech that the CIA was behind the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mossedegh. That coup, the agency's first, reinstalled Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah, the U.S. puppet who for the next 26 years ruled Iran with an iron hand, setting the stage for the 1979 Revolution.

Dr. Mossadegh's crime was that he led the nationalization of Iranian oil, which had been under British control since the early 20th century. What Obama didn't mention in his Cairo speech was that, as a result of the CIA coup, U.S. and British oil companies each received 40 percent control of Iran's oil, with the other 20 percent divided up among other European companies. The 1979 revolution returned those Iranian resources back to the Iranian people -- a development that, in my opinion, is the real reason for official U.S. hostility toward Iran.

Then there were 30 years of U.S. sanctions; three sets of U.N. sanctions pushed by the U.S.; U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in his eight-year war with Iran; the 1988 downing by a U.S. warship of a civilian Iranian airbus, resulting in the deaths of nearly 300 men, women and children; and an ongoing and coordinated campaign of demonizaton of Iran and its government.

And much more.

On May 22, 2007, ABC News reported that

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, [according to] current and former officials in the intelligence community. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter for the New Yorker magazine who first broke the story about the Abu Graib prison in Iraq, later reported that the Democrat-controlled Congress had approved up to $400 million to fund this CIA destabilization campaign.

The "nonlethal" aspect of the presidential finding means that CIA agents aren't authorized to use deadly force while carrying out secret operations against Iran. But they don't have to. They use proxies.

The ABC report quoted above states "the United States has supported and encouraged an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, that has conducted deadly raids inside Iran from bases on the rugged Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan 'tri-border region.'"

In his New Yorker articles, Hersh reported that U.S. Special Operations military personnel are on the ground in Iran, attempting to foment armed anti-government rebellions among the Baluchi ethnic minority. Jundallah is one of the Baluchi groups to which Hersh was referring.

Then there's the MEK, an Iranian anti-government, politico-military organization that's classifed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group, but which is allowed to conduct cross-border operations against Iran from bases in Iraq.

So, let's think. With large and violent anti-government protests following the June 12 election, is it possible that this vast array of U.S. government efforts -- all of which are dedicated to promoting the overthrow or at least the undermining of the Iranian government -- wouldn't have been cranked into high gear to try and influence events in some way? Wouldn't it try to steer street protests into violent uprisings? Wouldn't it be easy to promote "propaganda, disinformation" through anonymous means like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter?

That's not to say that the protests were initiated by outside forces. In my opinion, they represent emerging divisions in Iranian society that are the result of long-standing internal grievances, some legitimate, some not, based largely on class differences that were never resolved by the 1979 Revolution.

But it would be incredibly naive to think that outside forces weren't now involved in some way. Which is why it would be good not to put too much stock in anonymous bloggers, YouTube videos, or Tweets.

How else has the U.S. intervened?

It's well known that, to coordinate their protests, Iranian organizers have been using the latest in electronic communication tools. One of these, the social networking Twitter service, had been planning a regular upgrade, just a few days after the protests began. When the U.S. State Department realized that that would have cut off at least a day's service in Iran, it contacted the California-based company and urged it to postpone the upgrade. "We highlighted to them that this was an important form of communication," said a State Department official. Twitter executives agreed to postpone the upgrade, noting the role of its service as an "important communication tool in Iran" (Reuters, June 16, 2009).

A few days later, Google, the world's largest search engine, also based in California, unveiled a Farsi translation service. "Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa -- increasing everyone's access to information," said Google's principal scientist, Franz Och.

At the same time, Facebook, the world's largest Internet social networking service, also based in California, launched a Farsi version of its site. "Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath," said Facebook engineer Eric Kwan (AFP, June 20, 2009).

Speaking of interference, let's not overlook Dennis B. Ross, Obama's point man on Iran.

A fellow at the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ross supported the advocacy efforts of the Project for the New American Century, which played a key role advocating invading Iraq in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also has promoted aggressive Mideast policies in his writings and congressional testimony, and teamed up with scholars from organizations like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to craft policy approaches toward Tehran's nuclear program and other issues in the region.

If nothing else, Ross has longevity. During the Carter administration, he worked at the Pentagon under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and noted neocon Paul Wolfowitz. Under Reagan, he served as director of Near East and South Asian affairs in the National Security Council. Under George H.W. Bush, he was the State Department's Director of Policy Planning. During the Clinton years, he was special Middle East coordinator. Now, in the Obama administration, he's special adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, which includes Iran. (Goes to show that, when it comes to the Middle East, there's not much daylight between the Democrats and Republicans.)

On June 15, Obama officials announced that Ross would be moving to the White House "with what appears to be an expanded portfolio" (Washington Post, June 16, 2009).

What are Iranians outside Iran saying about the protests and the government's response?

I'm a board member of the Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), an organization started in 2005 by Iranian expatriates with chapters in the U.S. and Europe. And I can tell you that there is a broad range of positions in that network, from fierce supporters of Mousavi to others much more suspicious about who might be behind the protests and where they might be leading.

But in trying to keep up with the myriad of Iranian-American and Iranian-European commentators, it's clear that the media is overlooking Iranian voices attempting to offer a more critical view of the protest movement, in favor of those who offer unqualified support.

Take, for example, Roya Hakakian, a poet and the author of Journey from the Land of No, an account of growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran. Hakakian was interviewed July 2 on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program to offer an "Iranian-American perspective" on the current crisis. She was introduced as a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (which, according to SourceWatch.org, is partially funded by the U.S. State Department Human Rights and Democracy Fund.)

The show's host, Terry Gross, neglected to point out that Hakakian also is a "term member" at the Council on Foreign Relations. Term members are "promising young leaders" recruited to "interact with seasoned foreign-policy experts."

Hakakian comes from a very narrow layer of Iranian society, one she attempts to present as representative of the country as a whole. In an interview on the Iranian-oriented Web site ParsTimes, she reflected on the Iran she knew before emigrating in 1984: "I left behind a modern society with a strong secular tradition: parties, miniskirts, jazz and blues bands, foreign film festivals. . . . We followed the West closely, especially America -- so closely that arriving here in 1985 was no shock to me."

OK, that layer is part of Iran. It's the part that Western journalists feel most comfortable interviewing. But while traveling around Iran with a group of peace activists in 2007, visiting five cites and touring 1,350 miles of countryside, I saw other layers of society: construction workers building homes in 100-degree heat along the highway to Yazd; goat herders who shared their tea with us high in the Zagros mountains; the city of Qom with its 100,000 theology students; a young college co-ed in Shiraz who preferred the traditional full-length chador; retail clerks, cab drivers, hotel staffers, restaurant waiters, street sweepers, nursing home attendants, street vendors.

Aren't they all Iranians too? Or don't they count? Educated, Western-oriented, middle-class youth protesting in the streets of Tehran are part of Iranian society, but they are not representative of that society as whole.

Moreover, some of these "pro-democracy" commentators making the talk show rounds are actually bought-and-paid intellectual mercenaries promoted by neoconservative institutions in the U.S.

For example, there's Azar Nafisi, frequently inteviewed about her views on the election and its aftermath.

Dr. Nafisi, a native Iranian,is the author of the best-selling book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which paints an entirely negative picture of post-revolutionary Iranian society. I won't go into a whole critique of the book here (the better part of a chapter is devoted to it in my book, In Defense of Iran), but it's important and illustrative to know who Dr. Nafisi is -- and who finances her efforts.

Dr. Nafisi is a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Founded in 1943, SAIS has long been a bastion of Cold War thinking. From 1994 to 2001, its dean was none other than Paul Wolfowitz, President George W. Bush's neocon deputy secretary of defense and a major architect of the second Gulf War.

In her acknowledgements for Reading Lolita, Nafisi credits the Smith Richardson Foundation for its "generous grant" that "provided me with the opportunity to work on this book as well as pursue my projects at SAIS."

Smith Ricahrdson is one of the 15 or so major right-wing foundations in the U.S. and one that has a special focus of demonizing Iran. From 1998 to 2004, according to its annual reports, the foundation gave Nafisi six grants totalling $675,500.

In 1996, Nafisi also recieved $25,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation "to support a series of workshops in Tehran, Iran, under the direction of Dr. Azar Nafisi" (Bradley annual report, 1996). That "series of workshops" was the private book discussion club that formed the basis of Reading Lolita.

Milwaukee-based Bradley is the premier right-wing foundation in the U.S. It's the outfit that funded the notoriously racist book The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, as well as the early welfare "reform" programs in Milwaukee, the pilot school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland, and the overturn of state affirmative action programs in Texas and California. What's interesting is that Dr. Nafisi, living in Tehran, even knew about Bradley.

In their interviews, both Nafisi and Hakakian misrepresent their own narrow layer as the real revolutionaries of 1979, who overthrew the Shah only to have their heroic victory highjacked by reactionary religious fanatics. And they insist that the anti-government protesters of today's Iran represent a resurgence of that same revolutionary movement.

Nonsense. The vast majority of the many millions of people who made the Iranian Revolution were working class, religious, and traditional -- and who saw the Western-oriented middle class as an offensive symbol of the Western oppression of their country, supportive of the hated, U.S.-installed Shah.

Iran-bashing organizations

Then there are the hard-line organizations, foremost of which is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Founded in 1953, AIPAC now claims 100,000 members and is, according to the New York Times, "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel." On its Web site, the organization takes credit for "passing more than a dozen bills and resolutions condemning and imposing tough sanctions on Iran."

(A cautionary word here: AIPAC is often described as the richest and most powerful lobby in the U.S. That may be true, but it doesn't call the shots on US. policy in the Middle East. That function is reserved for the oil companies, whose most powerful executives are almost all white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The fact that AIPAC's goals happen to coincide with those of the oil companies only means that the companies can save a few dollars on lobbying costs. The day that Israel ceases to be useful to these corporate giants is the day the U.S. government abandons Israel. The tail does not wag the dog.)

Another influential organization often quoted in the corporate media as an expert source is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to its Web site, WINEP was founded in 1985 by "a small group of visionary Americans committed to advancing U.S. interests in the Middle East."

Principal among those "visionaries" were Executive Director Martin Indyk, AIPAC's former deputy director of research, and President Barbi Weinberg, a former AIPAC vice president and founder of Citizens Organized PAC, a pro-Israel political action committee. Weinberg's husband, Lawrence Weinberg, is AIPAC's chairman of the board emeritus.

WINEP's board of advisors include former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger,Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger and, before he died, Alexander Haig, as well as former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle -- all thoroughly right-wing politicians committed to U.S. domination of the Middle East (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1991).

Is the Iranian Government the Enemy?

We're not dealing here with Venezuela, Cuba, or Bolivia. The Iranian government doesn't empower the country's working class. But it doesn't ruthlessly exploit it either. It's not a fascist dictatorship. Rather, it's an authoritarian government that holds a paternalistic but sympathetic view toward the working class and the poor.

It administers a mixed economy in which important sectors, like oil and gas, are owned and controlled by the state. What would be profits in a purely capitalist economy are instead used to fund the majority of the state budget. This is the source of the government's ability to provide an array of social services for the poor. Not handouts, but a guarantee of medical care, regardless of ability to pay. Free education up to and including the university level. Rural electrification. Subsidies for food, housing, gas, public transportation, airline seats, movies, arts, books, fertilizers, vacations, and sex change operations. (That's right. Iran has the highest number of sex changes operations of any country except Thailand. Subsidized by the government.)

There are those, such as Azar Nafisi and Roya Hakakian, who maintain that the protests are driven by women fighting against the politics of a misogynist government.

Yes, there are restrictions on women in Iran. All women must adhere to the Islamic dress code, called the hejab. It's not the "veil," as Hakakian falsely described in her NPR interview. And it's not the full chador, or burka, like in Afghanistan. At a minimum, it's a scarf, jacket, and trousers or skirt, in any colors. Or, if a woman prefers -- and many do, especially outside the larger cities -- the full-length chador, in black or colors. (This I know firsthand from our journey through Iran.)

At the same time, it's also true that the social status and economic opportunities for Iranian women have much improved as a result of the Revolution and far surpass those in almost every other Middle Eastern society. In Saudi Arabia, the U.S.'s closest ally in the region after Israel, women can't run for public office or can't even vote. They're not allowed to drive or even leave their homes without their husband or a male relative. They're barred from many types of jobs.

But in Iran, women leave their homes, alone, any hour of the day or night. They're truck drivers and film directors, retail clerks and race car drivers, university professors, business executives, and star athletes. They make up 30 percent of doctors and 60 to 70 percent of all college students. And they belong to all classes, they are urban and rural, and no one woman or group of women can claim to speak for all of them.

Women in Iran enjoy access to all forms of contraception. Iran was the first country in the Middle East to have a state-run condom factory. It was the first Muslim country to promote male sterilization as a form of birth control. It's the only country in the region where couples have to go to family planning classes before they can marry. As a result, the average birth rate is now two children per woman, down from seven shortly after the Revolution. And the average age of marriage for women has risen from 18 in 1966 to 23.7 in 2007(Country Profile, Library of Congress).

Want more? Unlike in the U.S., working women in Iran are entitled to 90 days maternity leave -- at two-thirds pay -- with the right to return to their previous jobs. All business enterprises above a certain size are required to have on-site day care. Working women with children under the age of two get a paid, half-hour nursing break every three hours.

So it's small wonder that working-class women tend to support the government, while it's the more secular and affluent middle class that is the major source of anti-government resentment.

What's at Stake in the Present Crisis?

A lot.

The Obama administration is still saying it wants to "engage" Iran in discussions over Iran's nuclear program. And President Obama told the BBC June 2 that Iran may have some right to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes, so long as it isn't trying to develop nuclear weapons. A month earlier, in Prague, he said his administration would "support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections" if Iran can prove it isn't developing nuclear weapons (Associated Press, June 3, 2009).

As a signer of the U.N.'s principal non-proliferation treaty, Iran has every right to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes, since it's pledged not to pursue nuclear weapons. And there's no evidence that it is trying to develop such weapons -- not from U.S. intelligence agencies nor from the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a fact repeated July 3 by the IAEA's incoming director, Yukiya Amano (Reuters, July 3, 2009).

On the other hand, Obama also says he'll seek stiffer international sanctions against Iran if it doesn't respond positively -- and quickly -- to his offer to talk. "Although I don't want to put artificial time tables on that process," he said, "we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we've actually seen a serious process move forward" (Associated Press, June 3, 2009).

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel will respect Obama's attempt to negotiate with Iran. During his May 18 meeting with President Obama, Netanyahu "made a commitment that Israel would not attack Iran at least until the end of the year. . ." (Jerusalem Post, May 19, 2009).

Very reassuring.

Then, on July 5, Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News that the U.S. wouldn't try and prevent Israel from attacking Iran. "Israel can determine for itself as a sovereign nation what is in its best interest," Biden said. "If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursued now, that is their sovereign right to do that. That is not our choice."

Green light.

So this is an increasingly dangerous situation. On July 4, the Times of India reported that, in June, for the first time in four years, an Israeli submarine had crossed through the Suez Canal as a part of a military training exercise. "The move is believed to have been made as a warning to Iran of the Jewish state's capabilities and to show that Israel and Egypt are cooperating against a shared threat." The article stated that Israel has three submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads. "By using the Suez, an Israeli submarine could reach the Persian Gulf off Iran in a matter of days," the article stated.

On July 5, the (UK) Sunday Times reported that "The head of Mossad, Israel's overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear sites. . . . The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear site at Natanz in the centre of the country and other locations for four years."

The same day, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Air Force "plans to participate in aerial exercises in the US and Europe in the coming months with the aim of training its pilots for long-range flights." The newspaper's online version reported that F-16C fighter jets would be sent to participate in exercises at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, while "several of the IAF's C-130 Hercules transport aircraft will participate in the Rodeo 2009 competition at the McChord Air Force Base in Washington state." The paper noted that, last summer, "more than 100 IAF jets flew over Greece in what was viewed as a test-run for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities."

Aside from war, what else is at stake? Iran could descend into civil war. It could, under outside pressure, be dismembered, like the West did to the former Yugoslavia.

So yes, this is a dangerous situation. And a bad time to be adding to the tensions by attempting to further isolate Iran's government, which happens to be the only entity capable of defending the Iranian people -- all Iranian people -- from a military attack.

But there's even more at stake in Iran's internal struggle -- the very future of Iran itself.

Which Way for Iran?

The current division in Iranian society isn't just about elections or demands to loosen social restrictions. It's also about the economy -- who owns it, who controls it, who benefits from it.

A big issue in Iran -- virtually never discussed in the U.S. media -- is how to interpret Article 44 of the country's constitution. That article states that the economy must consist of three sectors: state-owned, cooperative, and private and that "all large-scale and mother industries" are to be entirely owned by the state.

This includes the oil and gas industries, which provide the government with the majority of its revenue. This is what enables the government, in partnership with the large charity foundations, to fund the vast social safety net that allows the country's poor to live much better lives than they did under the U.S.-installed Shah. It's why overall poverty has been slashed to one-eighth today of what it was under the Shah (see Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, "Revolution and Redistribution in Iran: Poverty and Inequality 25 Years Later").

In 2004, Article 44 was amended to allow for some privatization. Just how much, and how swiftly that process should proceed, is a fundamental dividing line in Iranian politics. Mousavi, a tea merchant's son who became an architect and prime minister, had promised to speed up the privatization process. When he first announced he would run for the presidency, he called for moving away from an "alms-based" economy (Press TV, March 19, 2009), an obvious reference to Ahmadinejad's policies of providing services and benefits to the poor.

Then there's Mousavi's powerful backer, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"One of Iran's wealthiest and most powerful men, a former right-hand man to the father of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr. Rafsanjani was an outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the campaign and a supporter of the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi" (New York Times, June 21, 2009).

Rafsanjani is a businessman who, according to the Times article quoted above, supports "privatizing parts of the economy." Forbes magazine includes him in its list of the world's richest people. He's also an outspoken critic of the social programs associated with Ahmadinejad, deriding them in terms very similar to U.S. neocons. And he's a former president who lost his bid to regain that office in the 2005 election, which was won by Ahmadinejad.

Does Rafsanjani identify with or seek to speak for the poor? Does Mousavi?

What kind of Iran are the Mousavi forces really hoping to create? And why is Washington -- whose preference for "democracy" is trumped every time by its insatiable appetite for raw materials, cheap labor, new markets, and endless profits -- so sympathetic to the "reform" movements in Iran and in every other country whose people have nationalized their own resources?

In addition to their different class bases and approaches to the economy, Ahmadinejad presents an uncompromising front against the West, and especially against the U.S. government. This is a source of great national pride, and has won Ahmadinejad the admiration of both Shia and Sunni Muslims across the Middle East -- as well as the enmity of their pro-U.S., internally repressive governments.

How Should the U.S. Anti-war Movement React?

First of all, it's interesting that U.S. peace activists feel they have to react -- to events in Iran.

On July 5, there were bloody clashes in the capital city between government forces and anti-government protesters. The next day, "soldiers opened fire on a crowd marching towards the airport, killing at least two. . . . Hospitals admitted many more people with gunshot wounds and staff told reporters there was an increasing number of victims shot by the military during the nightly curfew" (Guardian, July 6, 2009).

No, that wasn't in Tehran -- it was in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, in Central America. On June 28, the military staged a coup against populist President Manuel Zelaya, shooting up his house and carrying him off into exile.

By the way, class was also the issue there -- but this time, it was the workers who were protesting: "The impoverished coffee-exporter of 7 million people has become dangerously polarised between the poor and working class, who tend to support Zelaya for his social programmes, and the middle class and institutions such as congress, the Catholic church and the military who consider him a dangerous radical who wanted to perpetuate himself in power" (Guardian, July 6, 2009).

This May, the government of Sri Lanka brutally crushed a 25-year-old insurgency by guerrilla organizations fighting on behalf of the minority Tamils, who charge discrimination and ill treatment at the hands of the island's Sinhalese majority. The International Committee of the Red Cross called the scene of the final fighting "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe." Some 7,000 civilians were reported to have died since late January (Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 2009).

In Somalia, thousands of people have died in fighting between insurgents and a government that only survives because of the millions of dollars being pumped in by the U.N. and Western governments. U.S. warships off the coast have actually bombed Somali villages, under the pretext of fighting "Islamic extremists."

Speaking of Africa, the U.S. is rapidly extending its military presence across the continent, setting up an African Command -- AFRICOM -- structure to train militaries so it can later influence them, just as it has in Latin America, through Fort Benning's School of the Americas.

But these aren't the burning issues facing the U.S. anti-war movement, are they? No, the overriding issue now is Iran.

Why? Of course, we're more aware of it, since we've been getting nothing but a 24/7 barrage about an allegedly rigged election, brave and peaceful protesters, and brutal repression.

I find this interesting, because I've spent the last three years trying to get U.S. peace activists interested in Iran.

In July 2007, I organized a five-person People's Peace Delegation to Iran, which toured the country for 11 days. Combined with two years of research, that project was the basis for the book In Defense of Iran. Since the trip, I've made more than 30 presentations to peace, community, religious, and university audiences, trying to put the various charges against Iran into a historical, political, and cultural context. Is Iran trying to develop the Bomb? Does it support terrorism? Do its leaders really want to destroy Israel? What's the real status of Iranian women?

After doing all this outreach -- and working with many dedicated activists on the same issue -- I was deeply disappointed this spring to see that, of the four major coalitions organizing Iraq War anniversary protests, only the smallest, the National Assembly, raised Iran in its general outreach leaflet.

But here we are today, and Iran is front and center on the movement's crowded agenda.

OK, so we're concerned. Now, what should we do?

There's at least been some discussion of how respect for the principle of self-determination applies to the situation in Iran.

Of course, it's not true that progressives never interfere in the internal affairs of other countries -- even progressives who live in the United States. We protested against the apartheid regime of South Africa. We defend the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia against pro-U.S. reactionaries masquerading as pro-democracy movements.

But the situation in Iran isn't the same thing. It's far more complex. The split in the electorate wasn't a simple clash between good guys and bad guys.

The protesters represent a sizable minority of the population -- overwhelmingly young, urban, educated and somewhat oriented to Western culture. They seem idealistic, the women wear make-up, their protest signs are lettered in English, they're using Twitter and Facebook, demanding more Western-style civil and social freedoms. It's easy to see why Western activists relate to them -- especially white, middle-class activists.

On another level, with or without its consent or even knowledge, this movement is being promoted by pro-privatization forces, particularly those associated with billionaire and free-market advocate Rafsanjani.

Meanwhile, the "pro-democracy" movement as a whole is being looked at by Western powers as the potential start of a "velvet revolution" that could overthrow or at least severely undermine the government led by President Ahmadinejad and backed by the Ayatollah Khamenei, who are seen as obstacles to U.S. domination of the region because of their opposition to U.S. expansionist aims, their support for the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples and the anti-occupation Hamas and Hezbollah forces, and their increasingly close ties with leftist governments in Latin America.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the protesters are all reactionaries or dupes, or that they don't have any legitimate grievances, or that we need to offer a blanket endorsement for everything the Iranian government is now doing internally.

But it does mean that those who are calling for support for the pro-Mousavi protesters aren't even doing favor to young urban Iranians who want more democratic rights if they obscure the pro-privatization goals of Mousavi's powerful backers -- the antithesis of democracy.

And they aren't just opposing the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- they're also opposing millions of working-class Iranians who are trying to defend the social programs that have greatly improved their standard of living, programs that depend on the state ownership of the oil and gas industries.

You can't divorce a "human rights" issue from its political context. The pro-protest resolutions and open letters to the Iranian government now circulating in the U.S. and UK peace movements can become a factor in further isolating Iran, which will lead to more sanctions and the increased possibility of a military attack by the U.S. or Israel.

The political struggle taking place in Iran today is not like the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, in which outside progressives correctly intervened. It's unfolding within a country whose government is opposed to U.S. imperialism and so is targeted by it. The protesters represent one important section of the Iranian people -- but it's one section, not the whole country, and certainly not the majority. It's a largely middle-class movement backed by the richest pro-"free market" forces in Iran, who themselves are far less concerned about "democracy" than promoting the full privatization of the economy.

At the same time, there is widespread support, even among Ahmadinejad supporters, for greater personal freedoms. So these are complex issues -- ones that only the Iranian people have the right to decide.

Given all these contradictions, it's not correct for non-Iranians to pick sides -- particularly those of us who live in the very country that is both targeting the Iranian government and cheering on the anti-government movement.

Our responsibility is to strongly reiterate and demonstrate our opposition to any military attacks, sanctions, or any outside interference in the internal affairs of Iran -- including by the peace movement.

If we are successful in reaching that goal, the Iranian people will prove perfectly capable of working out their own destiny for themselves.

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1 This information is from Rostam Pourzal, former president of the U.S. chapter of the Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), who was in Tehran before, during and just after the election.

2 In Farsi, "Death to. . ." is closer to "Down with. . ." than an actual call for someone's death -- something to remember when you hear the slogans "Death to America" or "Death to Israel."