Meanwhile in Iran

Reading the Twitter hashtag #IranElection is getting ever more unsettling. There are many, many posts linking to first aid instructions in Farsi. It’s still hard to separate fact from fiction but we do seem to be in a new phase where either the government is in a terminal state or we will witness a hardline resurgence followed by a crackdown of intense proportions.

Obama & Aesop on Iran

The neocons, the same gang that have shown themselves such experts on the Middle East in their Iraq blunder, now want Obama to embrace the protesters and take a hard line on the conservative clerics led by Ayatollah Khamenei. Obama continues to take the same gentle, warm approach of his Noruz greeting to the people of Iran. It all reminded me of this story attributed to Aesop:

“THE WIND and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: ‘I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger You begin.’ So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.”

I think Obama’s approach has so far given the uprising a far better chance than if he had embraced them and denounced the regime thus allowing the regime to claim that the protesters were American stooges.

Instead Obama is there saying “happy new year” and “peaceful protest should be respected” – I mean how silly do the hardliners in Iran look calling this guy “the Great Satan” and calling him a threat:

Iran Again

“If you want to serve the age, betray it”

-Brendan Kennelly

I think what we are seeing in Iran is the inverse of the above quote. If you want to betray the age, serve it. What I mean is that for years the Iranian government has insisted that it has a democratic basis for its legitmacy – the people you see on the streets are taking that at face value now and demanding that their votes be counted. In effect they are saying, “we have been told this is a democracy, now count our votes.” Which is far more devastating to the regime than a sort of cynical detached shrug that says, “who cares, my vote doesn’t count.” This is an invitation to do nothing – to see the flaw in the regime and yet nonetheless sustain it.

What is more delicious is that the chant of protest is “Allahu akbar” or “God is great” – again, this is an Islamic Republic so who can be chastised for exalting God? This is probably why Khamenei and company are threatening to take such a hard line with the protesters, they have co-opted everything for which the regime claims to stand. By taking seriously the claims of their government, the people of Iran are now undermining it.

Twitter and a Couple Twits

Hilarious cartoon by John Cole on the events in Iran and how the Iranians are using Twitter, Facebook and other forms of new media to thwart the clerics and Ahmadinejad.

Spectators, but to what?

Like many others I’ve been following the situation in Iran without having a good sense of where all of this is leading. The danger inherent in overthrowing an existing political order is that one does not know what one will end up with as the end result of such an endeavour. The only other thoughts I have right now are for the protesters themselves. Doing what they have done has likely put them at risk of the fate of Zahra Kazemi or of Iran’s gays and lesbians as Iranian officials are indicating that the secret police are taking note of what is going on.

It Isn’t About Us

Whatever is happening in Iran, it is about Iranian dissatisfaction with the (as yet unproven per se, but likely) corruption and incompetence of the Iranian government. This is why it’s so silly to read something like this about how the success of the protesters in Iran turns on the support of Western bloggers and Twitter users. This is not, incidentally, to say that one should stay silent about the matter, merely that those comfortably ensconced in the West should deflate their since of heroism. It is worth remembering that Iranians are perfectly capable of overthrowing an unjust government, they did the same thing just 30 years ago.

Democracy(?) in Iran

I’ve been following the coverage of the Iranian election along with the ensuing fallout. Like most anyone else writing about this topic, I’m just not sure what we are witnessing here. It is possible that Ahmadinejad actually won fair and square. The protests seem to be confined mainly to the cities (especially Tehran) and Ahmadinejad’s base of support was predominantly rural. Are the protests a sort of bourgeois reaction against the will of the broader population? After all there were debates, there was media coverage, people in Iran were fairly informed about the election. All the same Iran still has an awful lot of authoritarian structures that “manage” the democratic process – though in fairness the British parliamentary system evolved out of a fairly authoritarian/elitist structure too.

It’s important to remember that Mousavi hasn’t exactly been an angel in his political life – he’s probably preferred in the West by virtue of the fact that he is the Not Ahmadinejad candidate – I don’t know what the Iranian image of Mousavi is though it is almost certainly more detailed than that. I find it hard to believe that Ahmadinejad won though because the polls weren’t going in that direction. I think at a minimum most were expecting that Ahmadinejad would be facing a run-off election. So what are we seeing? Was this a most ham-fisted attempt to steal an election by someone either in the government or the military? Is this actually what the people want?

Evil!

I’m really not impressed by the news that Harper’s talking like Bush on Iran. Of course Canada by itself can do relatively little to be jingoistic. All we can do is get upset about Russian bombers in international airspace. Harper’s words seem only to be able to give some political cover to the Israeli government if and when the Likudniks go for the airstrike option. He’s cashing in Canada’s reputation for even-handedness on behalf of Israel. For what? Probably the deluded belief that he can carry Jewish-dominated ridings in Toronto and Montreal. Either that or he’s appealing to the John Hagee brand of evangelicals. Of course this only works if you believe in some stereotype that all Jews (and/or all evangelicals) are pathological hawks.

If you were worried about Iran…

…don’t be, Israel could mop the floor with the Iranian military – or so says Eric Margolis.

Iran Not Going for the Bomb

This story has been floating around the blogosphere quite a bit: it appears that the Iranian government abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. While the American intelligence community has been pretty damaged by the Iraq fiasco, but the pressure was undoubtedly on the CIA et cetera to show that there was a bomb being built.

Here’s some speculation: 2003 was the invasion of Iraq, could it be that once the American military did away with Iran’s greatest existential threat, Saddam and his alleged weapons programs, there was no good reason to develop a deterrent.