Iran

While American media has been keeping tabs on the Ukranian ship, containing Russian tanks enroute to Kenya (and allegedly ultimately destined for the Sudan), which was pirated, attracting the attention of the U.S. Navy, a South African newspaper (The Times) has an article on what’s occurring on a different pirated ship:

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.[…]

The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military. […]

The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.

What interesting cargo our friend Ahmadinejad seems to enjoy playing with…..

Seen at CNN:

The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.[…]

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

Surely I can’t be the only person speculating about joint American-Israeli operations against Iran being started up on Wednesday, 5 November, too late for it to impact the November elections, but before the Bush administration is removed from power.

If the Dems were truly dovish, they would start wrestling through a prohibition on the expenditure of any funds in preemptive, offensive action against Iran between 1 November and 20 January as part of each and every appropriations bill passed between now and the change in administrations.

If a legitimate need to go to war with Iran emerged, such a prohibition could be rescinded.  And, by setting those particular time limits, the administration would be obliged to weigh the political ramifications of any aggression (as opposed to the potential for a Lame Duck War).

I normally would not be comfortable suggesting that such restrictions be attempted against the Commander In Chief.  However…where are the WMD’s the invasion of Iraq was supposed to protect us from?

While it’s perhaps understandable that with the primary crunch time imminent, the herd of Presidential primary candidates might be focusing on the campaigns to the exclusion of awareness of other events…perhaps it’s unwise to not pay attention to at least the headlines of major newspapers.

For example, consider this bit of news, as told by the Political Tracker Blog at CNN:

At a dinner with reporters on Tuesday night, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted that he had neither read nor been briefed on the latest national intelligence estimate, which stated that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.[...]

That’s kind of a big oops, isn’t it? If foreign policy regarding Iran is one of the hot topics in the campaign, you’d probably want to stay on top of the issue.

(While that faux pas definitely tarnishes my impression of Huckabee, I still have to say that I dislike him least among GOP candidates.)

In fairness, I suppose that it should be pointed out that most of the hooplah surrounding the NIE doesn’t seem to note the less positive part of the disclosure. Quoting a Time article on the subject:

But while asserting that Iran may no longer have a weapons program, the new report also stresses that Iran is continuing to try to develop the technique to enrich uranium on a massive scale and that it could, theoretically, manufacture enough highly enriched uranium, or HEU, to build a bomb “during the 2010-15 time frame”. (Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes to use in energy production and does not intend to make any HEU; the NIE says it cannot assess Iran’s ultimate intentions.)

While it would seem that folks with hawkish stances towards Iran ought to be reigned in a bit, I’d say it’s still definitely appropriate to maintain a decent amount of diplomatic pressure on Iran on the subject of its nuclear aspirations.

For any of you who were wondering, a transcript of Ahmadinejad’s comments and Q&A can be found here.

After looking through it, I’m going to stand by my earlier assertion: Ahmadinejad is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Iran.

The New York Times has an interesting reality check to all of the current furor over Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York:

Political analysts [in Iran] say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up. [...]

That is not to say that Mr. Ahmadinejad is insignificant. He controls the mechanics of civil government, much the way a prime minister does in a state like Egypt, where the real power rests with the president. He manages the budget and has put like-minded people in positions around the country, from provincial governors to prosecutors.

In other words, Ahamadinejad is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Iran.  Quoting Zaphod’s Wikipedia entry:

He was briefly the President of the Galaxy (a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who’s really in charge, which is a role Zaphod was perfectly suited for).

 Vell, Ahmadinejad’s just this guy, you know?

By now, you’ve most likely heard the fuss over Iranian President Ahmadinejad having been invited to speak at Columbia University as part of his visit to New York to address the United Nations.  For example, while channel-surfing over my breakfast yogurt this morning, I was treated to a rather livid individual on NBC’s Today show who was furious at Columbia’s granting a forum to such a prominent holocaust-denier.

Talk Left has a nice comment to rebut the fury of the gag-Ahmadinejad crowd:

It gives the public an opportunity to hear him and, if Columbia is doing its job, ask him questions that enables him to attempt to explain his nation’s supporting terror in Iraq and maybe elsewhere and why he denies the Holocaust. Indeed, if he attempts to answer questions, he will harm his own cause because he can’t rationally answer some questions.

I agree.  Apparently attendees at Columbia’s shindig will have the opportunity to ask Ahmadinejad questions, and the entire event, including the Q&A session, will be carried live on the Voice of America, in addition to (presumably) other outlets.

While I’m in an office today, and I suspect that I won’t be able to catch the live broadcast, I presume that there will be replays either on C-SPAN or via YouTube this evening, and I will definitely try to track one down.

The idea that an unpopular view can not only be expressed, but also challenged in an equivalent public forum, is one of the most important manifestations of the freedom of speech.   And, if the forum presents an opportunity for a few more folks to be swayed over to the side of thinking that Ahmadinejad is a nut…well, so much the better.

From the Guardian:

Mr Ahmadinejad’s decree forced all state-owned and private banks to slash borrowing rates to 12%. Inflation is officially 15% but is generally believed to be much higher. State banks had been offering rates of 14%, while those in the private sector ranged from 17% to 28%.[...]

Another economist, Saeed Leylaz, claimed the move was a reward to powerful groups who had supported Mr Ahmadinejad. “I believe the president knows the consequence of this decision but he doesn’t care about the future.”

Let’s see, Iran is 3-8 years away from having the bomb, according to the IAEA…and it’s president doesn’t care about the future. That’s going to drive some discomfort among American hawks.

Although, perhaps domestic unrest in Iran might be a simpler explanation for Ahmadinejad’s move.

The New York Times is running an OpEd on Iran written by a couple of former Bush administration officials, as censored by the CIA and the administration.

The piece accompanying the oped is troubling:

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

The authors go on to point out that all of the redacted material has already been reported in the public eye and none of it is classified. However, the White House apparently doesn’t want former members of the administration being publicly critical.

The closing paragraph of the explanatory article is one that I wholeheartedly agree with:

National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles.

You know, I can completely understand that it’s human nature to find ways to block unflattering material about yourself or your organization from being released. However, I’d think that a healthier response is to permit critical pieces to be released (again, assuming no national security secrets are being compromised) and to quickly issue a rebuttal.

If the administration is being misrepresented by criticism, the American public deserves to hear both the criticism and the administration’s response. “Trust us, we’re the government” is not an acceptable stance.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Iran’s hard-line president urged students Tuesday to push for a purge of liberal and secular university teachers, another sign of his determination to strengthen Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

With his call echoing the rhetoric of the nation’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad appears determined to remake Iran by reviving the fundamentalist goals pursued under the republic’s late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Iran still has strong moderate factions, and since taking office a year ago Ahmadinejad has moved to replace pragmatic veterans in the government and diplomatic corps with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners. His administration also has launched crackdowns on independent journalists, Web sites and bloggers.

I suppose it would be inappropriate to speculate if Ahmadinejad has been taking lessons from Karl Rove.

Midtopia is pointing to a story about predictions made recently:

Yisrayl Hawkins, well known Bible scholar and author, reports that the Bible predicts the exact date and the location that nuclear war will begin. Hawkins states that the current crisis in the Middle East will go nuclear on September 12, 2006 in the area around the Euphrates River. Calling upon his 50 years of biblical research, Hawkins correlates numerous Bible prophecies with world events to support his claim.

Sean Aqui seems to want to use this as an excuse to postpone a little house painting, something that resonates with me as I look forward to spending a 4-day weekend doing home maintenance tasks including staining a deck. However, aside from quoting the Biblical verse pointing out that no man knows the hour of the Return, I have to ask - if the world is really about to come to an end, wouldn’t it be nice to knock off a few tasks on the to-do list first, so that you won’t feel guilty about having left so many things undone?