Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 11: The "Fail" meme goes viral

Glad to see the NYT is now accurately reporting about our real enemy in Afghanistan - Pakistan:

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports to be made public Sunday.

The documents, to be made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaeda havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing. 

Pakistan is not our friend. Pakistan is a rouge nation - the enemy of the both the United States and of Globalization's Rising Core-  and they will have to be dealt with, sooner or later. When something goes thump in the night - see the recent almost attack in Time Square - we will have to face the fact that Pakistan is not merely home to a loose nit collection of non-state actors but is actually actively supporting terrorists that kill American troops and undermine our foreign policy goals in South Asia and around the world.

The U.S. has not dealt with a situation like Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. Because not since the Soviet Union collapsed have we been forced to deal with a nuclear armed, heavily militarized nation that was actively supporting notoriously anti-America elements around the world. Since 1989 the U.S. has faced small powers - Iraq, Panama, Serbia - who did not posses nuclear arms. Meanwhile,  we dreamed of hypothetical wars with potential super powers, China, Japan, a resurgent Russia, while we engaged a series of non-state actors during peace building and counter insurgency operations. But Pakistan is a different story. Handling Pakistan might wind up looking a lot like handling the Soviet Union - we'll have to go back to containment (not of "Islamism", etc, but of Pakistan) by building a security alliance with like minded - or at least like interested - nations such as India and Iran. Over time, we'll have to hope that Pakistan's internal contradictions will rip it apart without allowing their nukes to fall into the wrong hands.

The good news is that Pakistan is a poor nation with little industry. Unlike the Soviet Union, Pakistan is not capable of global or even regional "Pakistani block" nor are they capable of building up a military with global reach. What they are capable of is ruining our plans for Afghanistan and triggering a regional war with India. And that is why we must plan to fail in Afghanistan while building a strong strategic relationship with India.

The Eventual, Inevitable, Security Alliance in South/Central Asia and the M.E.

The Iranian-Indian-American Security alliance will someday be the most important in central Asia and the Middle East. The only question is whether it come about in the near future, or after a disastrous Israeli-Iranian war followed by a Pakistani attack on Iran, India and the U.S. Don't believe me? Read the news:

Iran’s deputy police chief accused Pakistan on Saturday of providing a haven for members of an armed rebel group that has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin suicide bombings last week in front of a mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan.

Chief Ahmadreza Radan also said the authorities had detained 40 people who were seeking to create a disturbance in the city after the bombings, the semiofficial ILNA news agency reported.

The arrests appeared to be part of a crackdown in the Sunni-dominated province of Sistan-Baluchistan, where the rebel group, Jundollah, has been operating.
Without naming Pakistan specifically, he issued a tough warning to “neighbors on the eastern borders” of Iran.

So Iran is being attack by insurgents based in Pakistan? Hmmm. I wonder if any other countries have that problem?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worries all the time about the possibility that an attack against the US could emanate from Pakistan and has called on Islamabad to take further, specific actions against militant networks.

Without entering into the details, she seemed to indicate in a BBC interview that the US wanted Pakistan to do more to tackle the Haqqani network, a branch of the Afghan

Taliban which operates in Pakistan and is widely suspected of having close ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.

During the interview at the US embassy compound in Islamabad, Mrs Clinton also said the state department was looking into the possibility of listing the Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation.

The violent and feared network operates along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and is seen as the main threat to US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

"We have designated a number of their leaders over the years as terrorists, and we're now looking at whether and how to describe the group and if it meets the legal criteria for naming it," she said.
 

Ok, let me get this straight; Iran is under attack, American troops are under attack in Afghanistan, the SECSTATE is worried that Pakistani based insurgents the ISI will attack America and yet....? We ramp up tensions with Iran? And this makes sense to people?

Lest we forget, India has also been attack by the world's second most dangerous rouge state (after the KFR):

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of overseeing the 2008 militant attacks on Mumbai, a report said Wednesday ahead of a major meeting between the rival nations.

Home Secretary G. K. Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper that the level of involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had become clear through recent questioning of David Headley, a suspect under arrest in the United States.

If a political scientist from Mars landed in South Asia and tried to study the situation he or she could be forgiven for quickly concluding that Pakistan was clearly a pariah state and that Iran, India and America must have an alliance to try to contain Pakistan. Of course he would be wrong, but he would not be illogical.  

The Coming Divsion of Labor: Israeli Levithan/Russian Sys Admin

Introduction

Russia appears to be tilting towards an "all clear" on the coming Israel-Arab strike on Iran:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday Iran was gaining the ability to build a nuclear bomb, remarks welcomed in Washington as a sign of growing international unity behind a tough line toward Tehran.

Medvedev's comments were the strongest criticism of Iran's nuclear program to emerge from the Kremlin under either Medvedev or his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

A major goal of U.S. President Barack Obama's "reset" of relations with Moscow has been winning Russian backing for a tougher international line toward Iran.

"It is obvious that Iran is moving closer to possessing the potential which in principle could be used for the creation of nuclear weapons," Medvedev told a meeting of Russia's ambassadors in Moscow.

Russia's Strategic Interests

Interesting. If Medvedev asked me, not only should Russia (from their perspective - not an American perspective) support an Israeli strike, they should also adopt a policy of intelligence sharing with Israel (WRT Iran's nukes and air defenses) and even offer to use Russian intelligence assets or special forces as needed to assist Israel. This is because a nuclear Iran is a bigger threat to Russia than to anyone else:

To top it all off, Iran, which already posses a missile that can hit Russia, had crowds in the street today shouting "Down with Russia!"

The day will come in the not-too-distant future, when Russia wants to throw its weight around in the Caucuses or central Asia and all of these answered prayers are going to haunt them. Until then, I hope the Poles and Czechs do their part to reduce global warming, I hope the protesters keep going until A-Jad either steps down or "gets Ceascued" and I hope Putin keeps getting everything he wants. 

Besides the obvious benefits of setting the Iranian program back a few years, I continue to suspect that Russian companies will be in a the cat-bird-seat, so-to-speak, when it comes to rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure in Iran:

Russia, Turkey and Pakistan want nothing more than an Iranian client state, stripped of all international connectivity and forced to conduct business through Russian/Turkish and Pakistani smugglers. These guys will be popping popcorn and laughing with glee as Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capacity - I'd not rule out Turkish, Pakistani and Russian complicity in such an attack, by the way - because it ensures an even weaker Iranian position and greater levels of dependency upon its patrons.

A Road to Damascus Tehran Conversion?

So there you have it. The world is lining up to support either an Israeli or American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The question now is not about the strike, per se, but instead its about whether or not a solid long-term shift in regional politics will emerge in the Middle East, post strike. The Arab countries are scared and the Israelis are talking about resuming peace talks, setting the stage for a regional deal.

I remain opposed to an American strike on Iran, in theory, but I'm always most strongly in favor of playing the hand we've been dealt. If planning to bomb Iran is Obama's way to plan to fail in Afghanistan, then so be it. Let's do it right - get the Arab's and Israelis to bury to hatchet, once and for all, and we'll have more than made up for the cost, both monetary and human, of destroying Iranian nuclear facilities.

Given these developments, I have moved from "opposed" to "agnostic but skeptical" when it comes to either an Israeli or American strike on Iran - so long as it's part of a larger strategy to disengage from Afghanistan and cement a permanent Arab-Israeli peace in the Middle East. Given my dithers between American or Israeli jets delivering the goods, I order my preference:

#1. Joint Arab-Israeli operation - with Saudi jets flying cover for Israel.

Baring notorious Arab-Israeli cooperation, I shift to my preference to:

#2. A multi-day American air campaign designed to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, Republican Guard and key nodes of civilian infrastructure, including power plants and communications grid. America can get things done that Israel can't, and if we're going to strike let's minimize their ability to make trouble in the region by doing whatever we can to cripple or even destroy the Iranian state.

#3. An Israeli strike. Ok, but less likely to be successful than an American strike.

#4. An American or Israeli preemptive nuclear strike. From a tactical perspective, it gets the job done even more effectively then option #2 and but, oh boy, we better really have out ducks in a row WRT regional strategy before we open that door.

 

Iran, Israel, the Gulf States and a New Big Bang: Considering Vertical and Horizontal Scenarios

"For by wise council, you shall make your war" -- Proverbs 24:6 

Introduction

The term "the big  bang" was first used by Tom Barnett in his Pentagon's New Map piece in Esquire and was further explained in his book of the same name. A quick rundown: a "big bang" is vertical scenario - for example, the war in Iraq - which sets off a series of horizontal changes in political realities of a given region. In the original article, Barnett was arguing that invading Iraq was a way to lay a big bang on the calcified political institutions of the Sunni Arab world. Barnett's core argument is that the U.S. can have a positive impact on the world when we construct horizontal strategies to deal with vertical shocks (even if we create those vertical shock ourselves) and that Iraq could have been/maybe still is an opportunity for the U.S. to redefine our relationship with both key Middle Eastern states and the rising new core of globalization, including India and China.

Today a new "big bang" waits in the wings, this time to be led by the Middle East's regional Leviathan - Israel - and this later day big bang offers a chance for the United States, if we seize the opportunity, to redefine the politics of the Middle East for the next century.


The Coming Vertical Scenario in the Mid East: The Iranian-Israeli War

I've been pretty critical of a potential American/Israel - for all intents and purposes there is little difference in this case - strike on Iran.

But Joe Liberman rarely calls me for advice about foreign policy - too bad, because we'd agree on a lot (but not Iran) - and he currently has more influence than I do:

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman says there is a broad consensus in Congress that military force can be used if necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Lieberman cites a recent set of sanctions passed by Congress against Iran as a potential deterrent. But he insists that the goal of keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power will be accomplished "through diplomatic and economic sanctions if we possibly can, through military actions if we must."

Liberman's comments, in a vacuum, might be disregarded were it not for a growing international cacophony calling for Israel to DO SOMETHING!:

"I think it's a cost-benefit analysis," Mr. al-Otaiba said. "I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion … there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what."

"If you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?,' my answer is still the same: 'We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.' I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E."
 

When a prominent Arab leader is publicly calling for a strike - implicitly endorsing an Israeli strike against a Muslim nation, well, that sound you hear is Israeli jets revving their engines. This news, taken along with news that the Saudis are willing to look the other way while Israel uses their airspace - maybe even their territory - well, that sound you hear are Saudi F-15s gearing up to cover Israel on their way in:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.  

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defense sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defense systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defenses will return to full alert.

D-Day -1: Considering the Vertical Dimension


Before those jets take off, however, it's important to consider the long term implication of an Iranian-Israeli war. Of particular importance we should consider the chances that such a strike would be successful and what the costs of even a successful strike might be.


Fortunately, we don't have to engage in wild speculation when it comes to an Israeli strike on Iran, because the Center for Strategic and International Studies has published a fairly comprehensive study on the issue.

First, let's take a look at the route:

At the time this report was written the CSIS determined that all three possible routes - southern, central and northern carried with them substantial political risk. Recent developments have eliminated many political risks. For example, although Israel's recent raid on the Turkish flotilla has virtually ruled out the northern route, the Gulf States are now clearly on board and I firmly believe the Obama administration - and by extension Iraq - have or will soon green light the operation, so the southern skies are clear for a strike anytime the mood strikes the IDF. Interestingly, the CSIS report lists the southern route as also having the lowest operational risk, which only supports my belief that what we see publicly WRT Middle East politics is so much theater and all the interested parties decided to hit the Shiite Devil many years ago.

The report goes on to suggest that an air-to-ground strike would push the Israeli air force to its limits and would require the deployment of the bulk of Israel's air asset, about 90 fighters, including all of their most advanced F-16i and F-15is and all four of their KC-135 tankers. It's not hard to imagine that Israel would be reluctant to commit all of their air assets to this one strike, no matter how big of a threat they considered Iran.

On the other hand, the report suggests that Israel could use up to 30 Jericho III ballistic missiles which would do an equivalent amount of damage to Iran's nuclear program, setting it back perhaps several years.

When taken together; Israel's aircraft, ground based ballistic missiles and submarine based cruise missiles; combined with the Arab world seemingly announcing "clear skies" for an Israeli strike, all the pieces are in place for a vertical scenario. According the CSIS report, the best case scenario pushes Iran's nuclear program back several years.


D-Day +1: Considering Horizontal Dimensions

It's worth considering, however, that even the best case scenario acknowledges that Iran will be able to rebuild, probably will, and will do so outside the confines of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, from which they will certainly withdraw. So even if the vertical shock - the strike itself - works like a charm, the world will still have to gird itself for the eventual Shiite bomb, as well as fallout - literal and figurative - from the strike itself.

When it comes to literal fallout, CSIS report is pretty pessimistic about the radiation related deaths. From  page 90 of the report:

• Highest level of environmental damage is caused by a strike on the Reactor, Spent Fuel Storage and the Reprocessing Plants.
• Actinides and Fission products are highly radioactive elements resulting from the fission process in the Reactor. Iodine-131, Stontium-90, Cesium-137 and Plutonium-239, have all been identified as the most damaging to human health.
• Attacking the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would release contamination in the form of radionuclides into the air.
• Most definitely Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.
• Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.

The above quotes and map help illustrate the difference between a vertical and horizontal scenario.Thousands of deaths. As the map I posted above demonstrates, prevailing winds could easily carry contaminates over hundreds or even thousands of square miles, including over the territory of gulf states currently cheer leading for the strike. So even a perfect strike is going to set off political turmoil throughout the region, including in Afghanistan, where the Iranians are likely to take the gloves off - so -to-speak- when it comes to arming and training insurgents to kill American troops. Make no mistake, the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the ground in central Asia will pay a tremendous price to support Israel's grand strategy - a price so high as to virtually guarantee an American withdraw.

What Kind of Day Had it Been?

In a perfect world, Israel wouldn't be considering a strike on Iran. In a perfect world, or even one that makes a bit more sense then the one we live, the U.S. would have normalized with Iran shortly after 9/11 and leveraged that relationship to buttress out other regional goals, including stabilizing Afghanistan and undermining Saddam Hussein. In even a marginally more rational world, the U.S. would have sent representatives to Tehran - say Kissinger, Bush 41, James Baker and Bill Clinton - to make peace with Iran as we ramped up for the invasion of Iraq. In that world, Hussein might have taken the very generous exile offer that was on the table before him in 2003 and gone away quietly, lest he fall before the coming American/Iranian onslaught.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world with a government controlled by failed lawyers (successful lawyers can't afford a career in government) where few Americans know the differences between Shiites and Sunnis, Arabs and Persians or even Iraq and Iran. In this world, the control of U.S. domestic and foreign policy has always been at least marginally influenced by radical Christianists (not to be confused with actual Christians) and faux patriots who were always on the verge of slightly deranged policy choices detached from reality. In this world, we look for the least bad American policy choice and understand that formulating a sustainable "grand strategy" is beyond the ability of any American government that can get elected.

Given the reality and limitations we face, we must deal with situation at hand. It's likely that Israel will attack Iran and, for better or worse, the U.S. will get sucked into the melee. Stopping Israel at this point probably forces Obama to pay an untenable political price - domestically - and further add to his international reputation as a later day Hamlet - a man who has allowed the native hue of his resolution to be sicklied over by the pale cast of thought. By wasting so much time and diplomatic leverage pressing for sanctions on Iran Obama backed himself into this corner, but here we are, and now the time has come to deal with coming vertical shock by coming up with a horizontal scenario that not only makes best of an ugly situation, but actually set up both the United States and the world for positive developments.

D-Day+2: A Horizontal Scenario for 2010

If we accept that Israel will strike, and that she will strike with the implicit or explicit support of both the U.S. and the Arab world, then it is vital that the U.S., Israel, the Arab world, and the world at large get something out of the strike. Because no matter what Israel does Iran will get the bomb, but a post-strike Iran is going to be even more paranoid, less connected and less transparent than the Iran we deal with today, and they'll be nursing a serious national trauma in the form of thousands of casualties from the strike.  So we don't get a non-nuclear Iran out of the deal, but here is a list of things we ought to get:

#1. Rapprochement  between Israel and Saudi Arabia. This must be the sine qua non of American support for any military action. I would even support the U.S. moving a squadron of F-22s to Iraq and making it very clear that any Israeli or Saudi jet that overflies is being shot down unless we see these two countries bury their respective hatchets.  Because whatever differences Israel and Saudi Arabia claim to have, its become pretty clear that in the real world their respective national strategies rarely diverge and increasingly we're seeing a convergence - which is terrific - but we can no longer let two of our strongest allies pretend to hate each other strictly for domestic political reasons. So if Israel and Saudi Arabia agree to recognize one another and begin a diplomatic relationship, the U.S. should agree to underwrite whatever they're planning WRT to Iran.

And if you think peace between Arabs and Israelis is a lot to ask....

#2. Israel, Saudi Arabia and India get permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council. For too long, the U.N. Security Council has been a the group that won WWII, and sooner or later the UNSC will have to grow, and this is as good a time as any.  Each of the three countries I've selected is important in both their respective regions and in terms of the global economy. All three are also relatively stable in terms of both their governments and their borders, and all three have a serious interest in the stability of both the global economy and international security. In short, all three are perfect candidates for the first round of new admits to the UNSC since 1945 (not counting the ROC/PRC switch and the Soviet Union/Russia switch).

Given their nuclear status, population and increasingly prominent diplomatic and economic position in the world, its high time India joined China on the UNSC anyway.  For the U.S. India is a largely selfish pickup, because bombing Iran probably means giving up on Afghanistan this round, which means we're going to have to use India to counterbalance Pakistan and as a base for deploying drones and Spec Ops forces to kill ISI assets (let us call things by their proper names: Taliban, Al Qeada = ISI asssets) in the region. Sponsoring them for UNSC membership is just our way of saying "you guys were right about Pakistan, we're sorry, let's be friends". 

This whole mess has been at least partially driven by Israel's - not entirely unjustified - belief that the whole world is out to get them and that too many countries in the world today might be more or less indifferent to A-Jad following through on his promise to "wipe Israel off the map (the actual quote was probably a mis translation, but I digress). UNSC membership, when combined with a daring raid on Iran nuclear facilities and rapprochement with the House of Saud finally gives Israel the global respect and sense of stability they've been clambering for since 1948. They'll soon discover that with great power comes great responsibility, and also along with their new relationship with Saudi Arabia they'll have to deal with some lingering issues WRT both Gaza and West Bank, but resolving those issue is both inevitable and desirable if Israel is to develop global economic power commensurate with their regional military prowess.

Finally, Saudi Arabia may seem like an odd choice. They are neither the largest nor the most progressive Muslim nation, nor are they all that integrated into global economy - oil exports notwithstanding - and they certainly leave much to be desired when it comes to human rights. In the scenario at hand, however, the Saudi's are willing to stick their necks out, both to recognize Israel and to strike Iran, and they deserve something for that effort. Also, the strike on Iran, assuming it goes down as described in the CSIS report, will kill thousands of Muslims in Iran and maybe other countries in the region, so sponsoring the nation that houses Mecca for membership on the body that can veto U.N. action should go a long way to make clear that our beef is not with Islam. As a bonus, just as UNSC membership will elevate Israel and force them to deal with internal contradictions, UNSC membership will give a little push to a lot of the changes underway in Saudi society.

In order to make this plan happen, it would have to be a package. I'm not sure how a state gets a permanent seat on the UNSC, but I'd imagine a unanimous vote of all 5 current permanent members ought to be enough. While the 5 member may find reasons to object to any of the 3 new members individually, forcing them in as a package deal makes it difficult for anybody to object. France and the U.K. would be fairly easy to convince to go along with whatever the U.S. suggests, and Russia has a long-standing relationship with India and a developing relationship with Israel they would want to buttress. China will protest to India's ascension to permanent status, but recent history suggests that China rarely wants to be the odd man out on the UNSC, so once the three European (counting U.S. as "European") powers plus Russia are on board, China should come along.     

Conclusion 

In a perfect world, this wouldn't be an issue. In a perfect world, the U.S. and Israel would both realize the realpolitik advantages of an alliance with Iran and count on deterrence to keep their nuclear weapons in check. But we don't live in a perfect world, so we have to make do with the hand we've been dealt. As Israel and the Arab countries beat the drum for the ultimate vertical solution to Iran's nuclear program, it falls on the U.S. to demand a horizontal strategy that forever changes the politics of both the Middle East and South Asia.  
 

 

 

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

I don't regret my vote.

Yet.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama is racking up a record fit to be mocked by both Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. If Obama has decided that he will be a failed foreign policy president with a domestic "win" on his record - ala LBJ - well, so be it, but the least he could do would be to adopt a "first do no harm" approach to foreign policy by essentially doing nothing at all. Instead, Obama is actually making things worse.

On Iran 

Congratulations, 18+ months of begging cajoling diplomacy have earned a sanctions regime that is set up to become just as big a joke as the current sanctions regime which has been in place for many years.

Well, at least this new sanctions regime will stop Iran from acquiring modern anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, right?

Nope.

Conflicting statements from Russian officials on whether or not it will scrap the pending S-300 surface-to-air missile system sale to Iran because of new United Nations sanctions over Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. First, an “industry source” said the S-300 deal was off. Now, Russia’s Foreign Ministry says the sale is still on. Israel has stated publicly that the sale of S-300s to Iran is a red line that would prompt an Israeli military attack.

So, let's review. Obama has:

Not stopped Iran from getting the bomb.

Not stopped Iran from getting advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles.

And probably not stopped Israel from wanting to attack Iran.

Great, mister president, that was an awesome use of 18 months and god knows how many face-to-face pathetic groveling sessions meetings with world leaders who have more important things to do.

But hey, at least Obama didn't alienate any allies in the process or anything:

Now, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose its fourth round of sanctions on Iran with a vote slated for Wednesday, Tehran is demonstrating remarkable resilience, insulating some of its most crucial industries from U.S.-backed financial restrictions and building a formidable diplomatic network that should help it withstand some of the pressure from the West.

Iranian leaders are meeting politicians in world capitals from Tokyo to Brussels. They are also signing game-changing energy deals, increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even gaining seats on international bodies.

Iran's ability to navigate such a perilous diplomatic course, analysts say, reflects both Iranian savvy and U.S. shortcomings as up-and-coming global players attempt to challenge U.S. supremacy, and look to Iran as a useful instrument.
"We are very proud of our diplomacy, although we are mainly benefiting from mistakes made by the United States and its allies," said Kazem Jalali, a key member of the Iranian parliament's commission on national security and foreign policy. "We are using all our resources to exploit these weaknesses."

Ok, screw them anyway. It's not like the U.S. is committed to any sort of ongoing military operation where we might need allies or anything.

Except Afghanistan.

And Iraq.

And North Korea.. 

On Afghanistan

The COIN strategy appears to be faltering:

Government assassinations are nothing new as a Taliban tactic, but now the Taliban are taking aim at officials who are much more low-level, who often do not have the sort of bodyguards or other protection that top leaders do. Some of the victims have only the slimmest connections to the authorities. The most egregious example came Wednesday in Helmand Province, where according to Afghan officials the insurgents executed a 7-year-old boy as an informant.

Man, if we can't even protect friendly village and local leaders, what the hell are we still doing in Afghanistan?

Now, to be fair, Afghanistan is very complex situation and the Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan before Barack Obama was even a senator. Still, Obama's plan to fail in Afghanistan remains overly Afghan centric, and at least some of that diplomatic energy wasted on those absolutely pointless Iran sanctions could have been used to find more partners to either help in Afghanistan or at least contain the worst exports from Pakistan's tribal regions.

A Set of Strategically Tone Deaf Priorities 

I've written that Obama has a nasty tendency to ask questions to which he should already know the answer. So far, his whole foreign policy has been based on asking for things that he should have known he was never going to get. For example, while he was considering how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, he was also haranguing China's president Hu about economic growth ManBearPig global warming rather than asking Hu to cooperate with U.S. efforts on Afghanistan. Because the Chinese are already nibbling around the edges of both peace building and investment in Afghanistan there was far more room for agreement on that issue as opposed to hoping they would sign on for "binding" limits on CO2 emissions.

You can take everything said above about China and replace China with India and its just as true.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to take a schizo-frantic approach to distinguishing between friends and enemies in the region. We bomb our "friends" while they support our enemies and while we continue to ramp up the tension with possible allies (see: Iran).

Then the KFR provokes and we are left dumbstruck, because Obama has been arguing with China and Russia about Iran (oh China, will you please poke your largest energy supplier with a large stick so we can stop a feit accompli in Iran's acquisition of a nuclear capacity?) rather than negotiating an end to the world's single greatest criminal enterprise - a country that actually has nuclear weapons and has shown no compunction what-so-ever about exporting to other rouge states.

Conclusion:Mad-Man Diplomacy, Dangerous Nations and Obama's Only Term

The problems that president Obama have are exasperated by several factors. He's backed himself into several rhetorical holes, on Iran and Afghanistan, for example, and so it will be hard for him to walk these situations back. Afghanistan will, unfortunately, end the same way Vietnam did, but with drones playing the role of off-shore balancer. Pakistan will be getting their backyard playground back and they will return to planning for their regularly scheduled war with India. Iran will go nuclear, and if they become angry/frightened enough they will shoot, just like other countries in the region have at moments of high tension.

And Obama will be returning to Chicago in 2013, despondent over his wasted potential. He won't be alone in his disappointment,  but he made his choices.   

With this in mind, the next president should adhere to a variant of Richard Nixon's Mad-Man Theory,except instead of trying to convince the world the U.S. would attack anybody at any time he or she should set out to convince the powers that be that the U.S. might normalize or break relations with various countries at any time. Specifically, the next president should find as many excuses to insinuate that he's prepared to break relations with Pakistan as possible. In a similar vein, he should be prepared to insinuate - and then follow through immediately - with normalization with Iran. Right now Russia Turkey and Pakistan enjoy all the fruits of both our strategic limitations and Iran's situation as an international pariah. Russia, Turkey and Pakistan want nothing more than an Iranian client state, stripped of all international connectivity and forced to conduct business through Russian/Turkish and Pakistani smugglers. These guys will be popping popcorn and laughing with glee as Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capacity - I'd not rule out Turkish, Pakistani and Russian complicity in such an attack, by the way - because it ensures an even weaker Iran position and greater levels of dependency upon its patrons.

But think of the alternative. Imagine a world where Turkey, Russia and Pakistan watch in horror as James Baker, Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton step off a plane in Tehran and shake hands with A-Jad and his merry men. Yes, the Iranian leader (ship) is a thugocracy, but so was Mao and that didn't stop Nixon from securing a relationship with China, for similar strategic reasons. And the only thing that happened when Nixon went to China was that the Russians rushed to negotiate a series of arms control treaties, because they didn't want to be outbid by the Chinese. Oh, and a few things changes in China after that as well, or so I've heard.

Now, its important to realize that Iran is highly unlikely to negotiate away their nuclear stockpile, and we shouldn't ask that of them. It will be a lot more fun watching Russia and Pakistan figure out how to live with a nuclear Iran, and Turkey wants an excuse to get the bomb anyway, so we might as well embrace the future. Normalization between Iran and the U.S. will happen. It can happen now or it can happen after the next 9/11 or Mumbai when the the world comes together to dissolve Pakistan. Let's get proactive and maybe, just maybe, we can prevent the next 9/11.

In any case, the next president should make it a goal to come into office with as few international promises as possible. Leave global warming completely off the table and whatever you do don't wade into the morass that is Gaza and the West Bank. Stick to throwing strategic elbows - so to speak- by slapping down useless and dangerous allies like Pakistan and suddenly getting chummy with formerly blood enemies like Iran. And the day after the trip to Tehran, call China and let them know you'd love to talk to Kim. Tell him it will be two party talks. See if the possibility of the U.S. throwing the chess board into the air and openly negotiating with the KFR doesn't make China decide to hasten Kim's exit from this mortal coil (handle Iran first because negotiating with the KFR will bear no fruit, rack up a win before you go for something truly crazy).

America's fundamental strategic issue right now is stagnation and predictability. When GWB was president he tried to remind people that the U.S. can occasionally bob and weave with the best of them (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom) but his decisions have left his successor tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. To make America again relevant is to make America again unpredictable, make us again Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation.

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 3

Mobile Blogging from here.

"I've seen the future, and it is murder."

--- Lenord Cohen

Is this story just another piece of idiot journalism from the NYT, or what?

I read this piece and I'm filled with a sense of both dejavu and a deep and unabiding sense of fear and loathing.

Suppose Obama is, indeed, planning to fail in Afghanistan. After he begins the pullout, then what? Does he go before the American people and just embrace defeat? After reading this article, reading Obama's nuclear posture review and seeing his circle jerk - er, "Nuclear Security Conference" - last week I'm wondering if there isn't an incredibly dumb yet surprsingly cohesive strategy in the whole thing: Barack Obama is going to win reelection by bombing Iran.

Sounds crazy, right?

But consider that perhaps things have not really gotten much better in Afghanistan. Consider that Obama has basically acquiesced to ISI/Taliban control of everything outside of Kabul. Consider that Obama then will be branded as mister "cut and run" by his opponent in 2012. Consider that Rambo is telling Obama that he's going to have to "triangulate" by getting tough on something and Iran is an easy target.

The more I think about it, the more sense bombing Iran probably makes to the increasingly vainglorious and strategicly tone- deaf crew we have running the policy shop at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave right now. The target package is fairly straight forward, and with a combination if cruise missile and B2 strike, coupled with a lingering campaign conducted via drones, a war against Iran must look like quit a splendid little war that we are certain to win- or at least end- in a really short time horizon.

Of course by losing Afghanistan and bombing Iran Obama will have completely erased all strategic rationale for his presidency. We will be no better off than if McCain/Palin had won and Obama's entire first/last term will have been a complete waist.

And the American people won't fall for it. Iran will squeeze whatever assets we have left in Afghanistan and Iraq and they'll do everything they can to escalate the adiministration into some kind of naval confrontation in the Gulf. It'll become clear pretty quickly that the attack achieved nothing and will probably hasten Iran's desire for a quick shoot just to prove that they still have a nuclear capacity.

And then Romney is going to have one hell of a mess on his hands January 21st, 2013.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Obama's Middle East Endgame: Part IV - The Iran/Iraq Dynamic

In 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, the given reason was to stop Iraq from developing NBC (nuclear-chemical-biological) weapons.

Since Iraq has stabilized I've been wondering how long it will be before the U.S. takes a very different view of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, do mainly to Iran's nuclear program and Iraq's need to deter their historical enemy in Persia - which was the same reason Hussein sought nukes in the 1980s.

So today, as Iraq and Iran once again play their dangerous game, I imagine there are people inside both the Iraqi defense ministry and the American D.O.D. who are considering way to deter Iranian aggression against Iraq. And because Iran is a de facto nuclear power at this point, the options for deterring them are few:

1. Iraq could develop a notorious, indigenous, crash nuclear weapons program.
2. Iraq could embrace nuclear power for civilian use and follow the German/Japanese model of becoming a de facto nuclear power.
3. The U.S. can make an explicit security guarantee which places Iraq within a region wide, NATO style security agreement.
4. Iraq could pursue less kinetic means of fighting against the Iranians. For example, Iraqi government officials and clerics could express their moral outrage at every act of violence the Iranian regime perpetrates against its own people, or perhaps encourage Kurdish rabble rousing among the Iranian Kurdish population.

My guess is that over the short term options 2, 3 and 4 will be utilized by Iraq/the U.S. against Iran. Option 3 is a U.S. centric option but option 4 is an Iraqi centric option, because an Iraqi Shiite Muslim has the moral authority to speak out on behalf of the Iranian people that an American government official does not.   

Obama's Middle East Endgame: Part III - Getting to Moscow through Tehran

Yesterday I caught John Limbert n CSPAN's BookTV talking about his new book: Negotiating With Iran: Wrestling With the Ghosts of History.

Limbert has a Ph.D. from Harvard, has served in the State Department and is currently a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. When someone in the audience asked him about Iran and Russia, his answer sounded oddly familiar to anyone who reads this blog.

He said that Russia has two great fears:

1. The U.S. will attack Iran
2. The U.S. will normalize relations with Iran

On a couple of firearms/shooting sports related forums where I post regularly (under a pseudonym), I am often castigated for having the crazy idea that Russia and Iran are natural enemies. The other forum users tend to believe what they see on CNN; Russia and Iran are "allies", Russia protects Iran in the U.N. and so on and so forth. I attempt to calmly explain that Persian and Russians have so much historical antipathy, that any "alliance" between Iran and Russia is bound to be fleeting and could easily be torn asunder were the U.S. to make the Iranians a better offer.

So now the Obama administration is trying to find a way to wind down the tension between the U.S. and Iran. This is a sensible policy choice. As soon the Shia/Sunni/Israeli tensions are stabilized in the middle east - both through accepting Iran's status as a de facto nuclear power and through bringing Israel, Jordon, Egypt and the Gulf States under a true "nuclear umbrella" that does more than just guarantees a second strike but also greatly reduces the chances that an Iranian strike would even get through. Once those ducks are in a row Iran will be better positioned to focus its energy on containing Russia.

But that's okay - because that is what Russia wants.

In stabilizing the Middle East through detente - and freeing up Iran to focus its foreign policy energies on fighting global warming - President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates are building a future worth creating. Obama has the potential to be the most successful foreign policy president since Richard Nixon if he manages to normalize relations between the U.S. and Iran before he leaves office.

Now, let's see if the president decides to get interested in building a future worth creating in Afghanistan.

 

Were the Russians really surprised by Iran's Secrete Nuke Site?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "defiantly, maybe" .

The Russians seem to greet the news that Iran had a nuclear site that has been thus far secrete with an angry statement.

So are they really angry? Maybe.

Actually, Russian anger over Iran having a secrete program fits nicely with my thesis that Russia has more to fear from an Iranian nuke than America does. So, if the Russians had been in contact with Iran about its nuclear sites thus far and perhaps were somehow sure that the Iranians either were not going to weaponize or were otherwise on a tight leash, then the revelation that Iran had secrete site would scare them, because it means that Iran felt the need to hide their real intentions from the Russians as well as the Americans and everyone else.

Of course the Iranians feel the need to hide this site from the Russians, they have more to fear from Russia than from the U.S.

Putin Gets Everything He Wants: Or: Obama hands Putin a Beautiful White Elephant

"Everyone gets everything he wants."

- Capt. Willard, Apocalypse Now





I don't know how to say "when the Gods wish to punish us, they will answer our prayers" in Russian, but Putin and Co. should hope somebody inside the Kremlin does. To that end, God (or Obama) answered one of the Putin's favorite prayers this week by agreeing to pull GBI (ground based interceptors) out of Poland and the Czech Republic. Given Russia's truculence of late, and given Poland's history since 1939, its not surprising that Poland is none too please with Obama's decision.

Putin and his droogs really ought to take a minute to consider why Margret Thatcher asked Gorbachev not to "tear down that wall" in 1989. What Thatcher understood was that Europe had been at peace, at that time for 45 years, because it had been outsourcing its security to the U.S. and to a lessor extent to the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact-NATO axis preserved stability and kept the formerly rampant nationalism of Southern, Eastern and Central Europe in check. Thatcher was old enough to remember the last time no outside power would step in to guarantee the security of Eastern Europe and the massive war that followed.

In the end, thankfully, history has so far proved Thatcher completely wrong, in a way, because the former Soviet nations in Europe have, with the exception of Yugoslavia (never really part of the Soviet block anyway) remained fairly calm.

Of course another way to look at Thatcher's fear is to say, yes, she was absolutely right, and that Europe did need an outside power to whom it could outsource its security - it's just that that power could be the U.S. And indeed, after the Cold War the U.S. stepped in immediately to begin expanding NATO, first into East Germany and then all the way to Poland, the Baltic states and maybe someday Georgia and the Ukraine.

So this week, when the President of the United States seemingly bowed to Russian pressure to remove our ground based interceptors from Poland and the Czech republic, Obama began what I suspect will wind up being a long term experiment, conducted on live subjects in real-time, on whether or not Europe still needs to outsource its security to the U.S.

In the short term this is a win for Russia, but over a longer horizon, say, 5 or 10 years, this could go down as one of the worst things to ever happen to Russia foreign policy.

Now that Obama has suggested an answer to the age old question, "Would the Americans trade New York for ________ (insert European city here)" , the Poles, Czechs and Ukrainians have to be looking into other means of resisting Russian pressure. And those means come on two time horizons; short term and long term.

In the short term I expect the Baltic states, the Caucuses, the Ukraine along with Poland and Czech republic will be building up their capacity for asymmetrical warfare including a "leave behind" capacity to wreck Russian supply lines in the event of invasion as well as an increased "asset" gathering inside Russia proper (read: making contacts with Chechnyaians, Mafia types and any other anti-regime elements) and perhaps even the insertion of "sleeper agents" or sleeper cells who will lurk around inside the Russian Federation and go to work if things heat up.

Over the longer term, I suspect Poland and the Czech republic will soon take the lead on reducing their carbon output by building more "peaceful nuclear reactors" (like the reactors Iran is building) and getting themselves pretty quickly up to a "Japanese" level of nuclear ambiguity. Poland may already be in possession of 7 "Frogs", left over from the Cold War, and though an unguided short-range missile is not as effective as a missile that can hit Russia, the Poles should be able to reverse engineer the warheads in short order. Then with the warhead technology and nuclear fuel from their "peaceful civilian program" the Poles should have a hedge against Russian chicanery and can ask Russia "Would you be willing to trade Moscow for Warsaw?"

Of course, Poland is not the only neighbor of Russia which may be on the verge of going nuclear. And therein lies the beauty of Putin getting everything he wants, because, its certainly a short-term black eye for America, but it creates a long term challenge for a wizened, weakened and dying Russian. America's neighbors are friendly and unarmed, whereas Russia is surrounded by pissed off, nationalistic countries that will increasingly see fit to arm themselves lest they get carved up like Georgia , a country which I imagine is examining its carbon-output reduction options as we speak.

To top it all off, Iran, which already posses a missile that can hit Russia, had crowds in the street today shouting "Down with Russia!"


The day will come in the not-too-distant future, when Russia wants to throw its weight around in the Caucuses or central Asia and all of these answered prayers are going to haunt them. Until then, I hope the Poles and Czechs do their part to reduce global warming, I hope the protesters keep going until A-Jad either steps down or "gets Ceascued" and I hope Putin keeps getting everything he wants.

Did the army cast a ballot this morning?

From ABC News:

It was interesting that the special forces - who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad's Basij militia - were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi's men and women.

In fact at one point, Mousavi's supporters were shouting 'thank you, thank you' to the soldiers.

One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi's supporters, and said 'can you protect us from the Basij?' He said 'with God's help'.

It was quite extraordinary because it looked as if the military authorities in Tehran have either taken a decision not to go on supporting the very brutal militia - which is always associated with the presidency here - or individual soldiers have made up their own mind that they're tired of being associated with the kind of brutality that left seven dead yesterday - buried, by the way secretly by the police - and indeed the seven or eight students who were killed on the university campus 24 hours earlier.

Quite a lot of policeman are beginning to smile towards the demonstrators of Mr Mousavi, who are insisting there must be a new election because Mr Ahmadinejad wasn't really elected. Quite an extraordinary scene.

If this is part of a larger trend this is huge news.

..By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong...

Hard to say exactly what is going on in Iran now. What we know for sure is that the protests are continuing and the militia are continuing to commit and attempt to incite violence.

One of the most interesting rumors going around this evening is coming from Twitter, where people on the streets of Tehran are claiming that the military is refusing orders to shoot protesters.

Case in point:

only baseej militia and Etellaat folowing orders - they cannot contain country without Army

in azadi sq the killing was by baseej ONLY - military did not react

This could be pretty big news if it turns out to be true. If the military decides to back the protesters its game over for the regime. No wonder A-Jad left the country.

If you get into trouble make a sound like a dying regime Pt. 4

What does a dying regime sound like?

It sounds like a man proclaiming twice in two days that the election was ordained by God and then deciding to investigate allegations of voter fraud on the third day. You can have God - you can have Fraud - but you can't have both:

But in a rare break from a long history of cautious moves, he rushed to bless President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for winning the election, calling on Iranians to line up behind the incumbent even before the standard three days required to certify the results had passed.

Then angry crowds swelled in cities around Iran, and he backpedaled, announcing Monday that the 12-member Council of Guardians, which vets elections and new laws, would investigate the vote.

“After congratulating the nation for having a sacred victory, to say now that there is a possibility that it was rigged is a big step backward for him,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Stanford University’s Iranian studies program.

This is how a theocracy dies. Islamic Republic is done - the question remains as to what it will morph into - Islamist State? Secular Republic? Military dictatorship?

It's in the hands of the kids in the streets.

Fear and loathing in the Blogosphere has gone "green"...

..To support these guys:

The para military religious police killed their fellow protestors - so they burned the militia headquarters.

I think the key question that remains is this: where is the rubicon? The point beyond which negotiation becomes futile? The people have three ways to control the government - the ballot box - the jury box and the ammo box - where is Iran right now?

From the looks of things today I'd say they're crossing into ammo box territory.

Why this is not just another protest.....

Great Article from Jim Muir of the BBC on the differences between today demonstrations and the student protests of 1999 and 2003. This is why the regime is fighting so hard to maintain control.

On the face of it, the disturbances currently shaking Tehran in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election look very similar to the street clashes that erupted there in July 1999 and June 2003.

As happened then, thousands of angry and disillusioned people, their hopes for change frustrated, have taken to the streets, clashing with security forces and hardline vigilantes who roam the city on motorcycles.

Buses and banks have been burnt, and student dormitories raided by police or irregulars, as happened on those earlier occasions.

The 1999 and 2003 disturbances involved thousands of protesters, rather than the millions it would take to shake the Islamic regime seriously.

They petered out after about 10 days, and achieved nothing, in the face of stern repression.

Will that be the fate of the current protests, too?

But these protests include more than just angry students and there is more at stake than just some decisions about administration at Tehran U.

This time it is very different.

The protests are in reaction to specific political grievances involving senior politicians well-embedded in the Iranian system.

On Monday, they led to a peaceful mass demonstration in Tehran - despite an official ban - that by all accounts ran into hundreds of thousands, far bigger than any of the earlier protests, and too big for the authorities to disperse without causing potentially more serious repercussions.

The current protests bring together grassroots sentiment and the political level in a way that the earlier protests did not.

That carries the current dissension into the heart of the Islamic power system.

Heavyweight supporters

The man at the centre of the storm, presidential challenger and runner-up Mir Hossein Mousavi, is not some lightweight outsider.

Ahmadinejad supporters demonstrate outside the British embassy in Tehran on 15/6/09
Ahmadinejad supporters have also rallied in Tehran

He was Iran's prime minister from 1981 until 1989, and was generally given high ratings for running the country through almost all of the eight years of war with neighbouring Iraq.

One of his closest associates and backers, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is an even weightier figure who has been a major pillar of the Islamic Republic since its foundation.

Twice president, from 1989 to 1997, Mr Rafsanjani is a pragmatic conservative who currently heads two of the regime's most powerful bodies: the Expediency Council (which adjudicates disputes over legislation) and the Assembly of Experts (which appoints, and can theoretically replace, the Supreme Leader).

He also wields huge influence and economic clout behind the scenes.

But in this year's presidential campaign, Mr Rafsanjani was bracketed together with Mr Mousavi and lambasted vitriolically by Mr Ahmadinejad in televised debates.

Mr Mousavi was also supported by another two-term former president, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who withdrew his own candidacy in Mr Mousavi's favour and is now also calling for the vote to be cancelled and re-run.

The same demand has been made by another of the election losers, Mohsen Rezaie, who for 16 years commanded the Revolutionary Guards, another of the regime's main pillars.

In addition to alienating reformist and centrist circles, Mr Ahmadinejad (the first Iranian president not to be a cleric) is also not uniformly backed by hardline conservatives, including the religious establishment in Qom.

Where he is believed to enjoy huge support is among the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its auxiliary basij (volunteer) militia, where he has built up a strong following and patronage.

His support among the military is such that many Iran analysts have portrayed what has happened as a kind of military coup from within the regime.

But Mr Ahmadinejad has also won much support among the poor by pursuing a populist political and economic policy, disbursing funds in rural areas in a manner that his critics say has added to Iran's woes by generating high inflation.

'Burning dilemma'

And so how will it all end?

Much will clearly now depend on whether the street demonstrations escalate, whether the authorities respond violently, and what decision emerges from the Council of Guardians, the highly-conservative oversight body which has 10 days to adjudicate appeals lodged by Mr Mousavi and Mr Rezai.

Ayatollah Khamenei has urged the Council to study the claims closely.

Its decision could provide him with a way out of a dangerous situation and avert an eventuality where Mr Ahmadinejad could emerge in such a powerful position that Ayatollah Khamenei's own standing could be undermined, with traditional balancing power centres eclipsed.

Much must be going on behind the scenes, involving key figures such as Mr Rafsanjani, from whom little has been heard since the results were announced.

If the confrontation remains unresolved, he and others may have to decide whether to throw their weight behind an effort that could tear apart and bring down the system in which they have a big stake, or trim their sails and accept a reduced status.

To avert an escalation, Ayatollah Khamenei may have to find a way either to persuade the losers and their backers and followers that the results were genuine and fair, or to pacify them by other means - perhaps by curbing Mr Ahmadinejad or diluting his policies in some way.

I think a lot depends on what happens tonight in the U.S. and tomorrow in Iran. Tonight president Obama is supposed to make a statement - I think he needs to be careful what he says but we'll see. And tomorrow there is supposed to another huge rally in Tehran, this time accompanied by a national strike of Mousavi's supporters. If Obama treds carefully, and if the strike happens tomorrow, I think it becomes almost impossible to dismiss this as just another protest or just people pissed at the outcome of an election. This may be the beginning of a 2nd Iranian revolution.

Q.What should the U.S. due right now?

A. Nothing. The U.S. and especially president Obama himself should remain as quiet as possible about the unfolding events in Iran. There is no upside to commenting; if he were to say something good about the protesters and they are eventually suppressed then he's left being forced to deal with a government in Tehran that he would have effectively declared illegitimate. On the other hand, if he recognizes the regime's "win" and the government collapses then how would he recognize the (presumably) more reform oriented government that takes its place? And all of this is to say nothing of latent anti-Americanism and suspicion that runs through Iranian society.

All and all, President Obama has so far followed a smart path. In the coming days the temptation to respond in favor of the protesters may grow. There will be intense pressure from Republicans to say or do something, maybe even something as rash as recognizing Mousavi as the winner. President Obama must resist the temptation to do this. Through sub cabinet spokesmen and the V.P., the White House can express concerns about the potential human rights violations against the protesters and also about the silencing of media. But through it all the president must remain silent and resist the temptation to take sides in the power struggle.

If you get into trouble make a sound like a dying regime Pt. 3

What does a dying regime sound like?

Consider this rumor from via Andrew Sullivan - from an Email from one of his readers:

Just got off the phone with my dad. He leaves in northern Tehran, off Afrika Blvd.

He said that most iranians believe that a lot of the "commandos" on the bikes are Hezbollah arabs brought in to do to the citizens what a Persian cop would refuse to do. Accordingly when the protesters knock one of the biker thugs off they are being particularly brutal, believing that the rider is Arab.

Bank storefronts have been smashed all over northern Tehran. Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani are allegedly meeting at Mousavi's house (who is under house arrest) and are planning their next move. People there are waiting for further instructions from Mousavi. In my dad's neighborhood BBC Persia and Voice of America have been knocked off the satellite but not in all parts. Sorry this is rambling I'm getting constant calls from Tehran. Will speak to my father again in two hours and will let you know anything new.

Only a rumor now - but if true it says a lot about what a fake regime looks like.

Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men...

The regime has two choices - the first is to crack down with extreme prejudice - shoot the opposition and completely crush all signs of resistance.

The second choice is - well - ask the government of East Germany.

For his part Mousavi is seems to believe that regime is hollow, has little support from the people and will collapse with constant, nonviolent preasure.

To that end, he urging his supporters to take to the street and asking for a national strike on Tuesday.

Just in from Tehran (9:32 am EST) Zahra Rahnavard gave a speech at Tehran University today, Sunday, June 14. To a large audience of students, Ms. Rahnavard announced the latest official statement issued by Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has pledged he will not back down from contesting the fraudulent 22 Khordad election results.

Mousavi calls on all Reformist supporters to take part in a PEACEFUL MARCH & MASS DEMONSTRATION in 20 cities across Iran on Monday, June 15 (doshanbeh, 25 Khordad) at 17:00 to denounce the election results as fraud. He has applied for a license to protect the safety of protestors.

The Tehran location is Valiasr Avenue, from Valiasr Square to Tajrish Square. The locations in other cities are listed below.

Mousavi has also called for a NATIONAL STRIKE on Tuesday, June 16 (Khordad 26) and asked all those who contest the results to close their shops, businesses, etc. and for employees to not go to work that day.

Communication is critical to success for a large turnout, so please forward this to every Iranian you know. The statement is verified on Ghalam News (ghalamnews.ir), the official site of the Mousavi campaign (site rasmi setad).

If the regime has truly granted permission for these marches it seems they will be electing to go down the East German way.

If you get into trouble make a sound like a dying regime Pt. 2

What does a dying regime sound like?

This:

BERLIN - Several foreign news organisations complained Sunday that Iranian authorities were blocking their reporters from covering protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.

German public television channels ZDF and ARD said their reporters were not allowed to broadcast their reports, while the BBC said the signals of its Persian services were being jammed from Iran.

The Dubai-based Arab news channel Al-Arabiya in Tehran was forbidden from working for a week and Dutch broadcaster Nederland 2 said its journalist and cameraman were arrested and ordered to leave the country.

Foreign media converged in Iran to cover Friday’s presidential election, whose official result sparked violent protests in Tehran after Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a landslide.

Violence erupted for a second day on Sunday as supporters of Ahmadinejad’s closest challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi clashed with riot police. Mousavi denounced the election as a fraud and called for the vote to be annulled.

The editors in chief of German public television channels ZDF and ARD sent a letter to the Iranian ambassador in Berlin accusing Iranian authorities of barring their reporters from doing their work.

ARD correspondent Peter Mezger can no longer leave his hotel while ZDF journalist Halim Hosny and his colleagues have not been allowed to report on the events, their chief editors wrote.

“We see a breach of freedom of the press and democratic principles,” their editors said in their letter.

Iranian authorities had already barred the journalists from filming and broadcasting their images in recent days, the editors said.

ARD and ZDF insisted that they would “continue to report on the events in Iran” in a “critical, fair and independent” manner.

“We would have liked to broadcast the story of our correspondent Halim Hosny, but the Iranian authorities forbade journalists from working,” ZDF said in its nightly news programme.

The British Broadcasting Corporation said the satellites it uses for its Persian television and radio services had been affected since Friday by “heavy electronic jamming” which had become “progressively worse.”

Smooth move guys! It's not anybody is going to notice the BBC going down or anything - and it doesn't look at all suspicious that you're shutting down foreign media at the same time your claiming you just won a fixed election. Real smooth.

..Summer's here and the time is right for fighting....

Great photos from the streets of Tehran.

The Huffington Post is live blogging the revolution. It appears that a large number of faculty from one of Iran's largest universities have resigned in protest:

It has been confirmed that 120 faculty members at Sharif University have resigned in protest of the election, and are gathering in front of the university for a demonstration."

Twitter is full of accounts of violence at Sharif University right now, including riot police firing rubber bullets and storming through dorms. I have not seen independent confirmation of this yet (please email me if you have) but fyi.

And from Roger Cohen, we get a first hand account of just how "free and fair" the Iranian elections were:

He was from the Interior Ministry. He showed his ID card. He said he’d worked there 30 years. He said he hadn’t been allowed in; nor had most other employees. He said the votes never got counted. He said numbers just got affixed to each candidate.

He said he’d demanded of the police why “victory” required such oppression. He said he’d fought in the 1980-88 Iraq war, his brother was a martyr, and now his youth seemed wasted and the nation’s sacrifice in vain.

Quoting Ferdowsi, the epic poet, he said, “If there is no Iran, let me be not.” Poets are the refuge of every wounded nation — just ask the Poles — and nowhere more so than here in this hour.