Learning from Cuba and Dwight Eisenhower

I think that the Iranian elections should make everybody sit back, take a deep breath, and try to see whether they really understand the dynamics of Iranian politics. Some are covering the "developing Iranian story" from the luxury of faraway places like Washington, D.C., London, and Paris. From their air conditioned offices, they write story after story on Iran, typing away on their laptops, frantic either to meet publication deadlines, make an extra buck (if they are freelancers), or simply, add spice to an event that is seen by everybody as "a hot topic." Most of those who are writing on Iran have never been to Tehran, and never met a post-1979 Iranian politician in their lives. They fall in the trap of getting "taken away" by what Western audiences want to hear and see, basically, that the Iranian regime is about to collapse, because of fraud and corruption, any minute now.

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Ahmadinejad and the Press

Two days after the June 12 election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a press conference for the foreign media in Iran. As usual, Ahmadinejad opened by re-stating his desire for the hasty return of the Mahdi, the Shiite Messiah figure whose return is expected at the end of days, and then moved quickly into a condescending and passive aggressive tirade against the foreign media, who he said had been fighting a propaganda war against his holy administration since it took office four years prior. Some of those responsible for that war, he added, could be seen there in the audience that day.


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Iran's Struggle, and Ours

The now-joined struggle for Iranian hearts and minds is where the universal battle of ideas -- democracy vs. tyranny -- meets the dictates of Middle Eastern geography. Whereas Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are puzzle pieces carved out of featureless desert, with no venerable traditions of statehood, the roots of a great Persian power occupying the Iranian plateau date to the Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid empires. With nearly 70 million people occupying the tableland between the oil-rich Caspian Sea and the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Iran is the Muslim world's universal joint.

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Beijing cautions US over Iran

China has broken silence on the developing situation in Iran. This comes against the backdrop of a discernible shift in Washington's posturing toward political developments in Iran.

The government-owned China Daily featured its main editorial comment on Thursday titled "For Peace in Iran". It comes amid reports in the Western media that the former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is rallying the Qom clergy to put pressure on the Guardians Council - and, in turn, on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - to annul last Friday's presidential election that gave Mahmud Ahmadinejad another four-year term.

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Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private

Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a "show trial" if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal.
The revelation that the former prime minister - who led Britain to war in March 2003 - had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers, military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by Brown's decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors.
Blair, who resisted pressure for a full public inquiry while he was prime minister, appears to have taken a deliberate decision not to express his view in person to Brown because he feared it might leak out.

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Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want

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

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Ayatollah's offer of Iran vote recount falls short of opposition demands

The offer of a recount of Iran's ­presidential vote represents a climbdown by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who initially endorsed of the election result when he declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory a "massive success" and a "divine blessing". But it falls far short of the opposition demands.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, had called for a fresh election and he was reported to be reluctant to go along with a recount conducted by the guardian council, a deeply conservative group of Islamic jurists.
The council referred to the results declared by Khamenei as ­"provisional", an important symbolic concession. "It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," said a spokesman, Abbasali Kadkhodai.

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Iran and Russia nip at US global dominance

The "age of empires has ended" and the "international capitalist order is retreating," declared a beaming Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday, speaking in the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg before an audience that included the top leaders of Russia, China, and India.
Experts are debating why Iran's controversial president chose to address the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional grouping led by Russia and China – of which Iran is only an observer – even as he still faces mass protests and sharp questions at home over his deeply disputed election victory last week.

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Khamenei rides a storm in a tea cup

Western capitals must make a difficult choice: how long to pin hopes on the eruption of a "color" revolution in Tehran? The burden falls almost entirely on Europe, since Washington has different priorities.

The United States cannot afford to be spotted in the barricades on the frontline of any attempt to prise open the Iranian regime at this delicate point in Middle Eastern politics. Tehran will not forgive for another quarter century at least any such American folly, and the Barack Obama administration has no intentions of committing hara-kiri, either.

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Sri Lanka: Beijing’s Growing Foothold in the Indian Ocean

The Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government have received praise and accolades from several quarters after their triumph last month over the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).  The total annihilation of this separatist group brought an end to a civil war that has lasted over two decades. The long civil war resulted in the deaths of 80,000 to 100,000 people and over 300,000 displaced (Indian Express, May 30; Internal-displacement.org, June 4).  The Sri Lankan victory over the LTTE was made possible by military support from a number of countries who supplied weapons and platforms, training, intelligence and guidance to the Sri Lankan armed forces. In addition to providing military support, contributing countries also urged Colombo to seek a political solution to the Tamil problem. Of particular interest is Chinese political and military support to Sri Lanka in its fight against the LTTE.

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North Korea Warns of Nuclear War as Tensions Continue to Rise

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is traveling to the United States for talks with President Obama, as tensions on the Korean Peninsula reached a new high today. North Korea has responded to US plans to stop its ships under a new UN resolution by threatening war in that event. The nation also appears to be raising the specter of a nuclear war.
Yesterday, North Korea’s state media published a commentary which claimed the US has been deploying massive numbers of nuclear weapons in that theater of operations, and noted that the peninsula has the highest chance of nuclear war of any place in the world.

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Nuclear war is Kim Jong-il's game plan

Nuclear war is Kim Jong-il's game plan
By Kim Myong Chol

"Our military first policy calls for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, retaliation for retaliation, ultra-hardline for hardline, war for war, total war for total war, nuclear war for nuclear war." - Kim Jong-il

TOKYO - A little-noted fact about the second nuclear test conducted on May 25 by the Kim Jong-il administration of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is that it was a highly successful fission trigger test for multi-megaton warheads.

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Oil rises to near $71 in Asia, hitting 2009 high

Oil prices closed in on $71 a barrel Wednesday in Asia, reaching a 2009 high, as investors poured money into the commodity as a hedge against a weakening U.S. dollar and inflation.

Benchmark crude for July delivery was up 70 cents at $70.71 a barrel by midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Tuesday, it jumped $1.92 to close at $70.01.
Oil has jumped more than 100 percent in three months as traders have cheered news showing the worst of a severe U.S. recession is likely over, and have brushed off data -- such as a 9.4 percent unemployment rate in May -- that suggest crude demand will remain weak.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we're testing $80 in a week or two," said Gerard Rigby, energy analyst with Fuel First Consulting in Sydney. "The momentum right now is too strong."

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The IAEA Report

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released June 5, 2009 its latest report on the implementation of NPT safeguards in Iran and the status of Iran’s compliance with Security Council Resolutions 1737, 1747 and 1803.

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Iran Has Centrifuge Capacity for Nuclear Arms, Report Says

A week before Iran’s presidential election, atomic inspectors reported Friday that the country has sped up its production of nuclear fuel and increased its number of installed centrifuges to 7,200 — more than enough, weapon experts said, to make fuel for up to two nuclear weapons a year, if the country decided to use its facilities for that purpose.

In its report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that it had found no evidence that any of the fuel in Iran’s possession had been enriched to the purity needed to make a bomb, a step that would take months.

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Turkey Bets on Regional Influence as EU Hopes Fade

Frustrated by European opposition to its EU membership bid, Turkey is looking instead to its eastern and southern neighbors in a bid to flex its regional muscles. But will courting the Arab street actually bring Ankara any benefits?

At the Sütlüce Cultural and Congress Center on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, experts and officials from around the world have come together to talk about water. The thousands attending the event include water experts, presidents and ministers, and they are here to talk about the Euphrates, the Nile and the Tigris, about major dams and about the privatization of entire rivers. One of mankind's future problems is being debated, and it is the Turks who are hosting the event. A coincidence?

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India can launch a short war in case of a Pak misadventure

"In case of a misadventure of Pakistan triggered by major terrorist attack or the attack like the one we had on Parliament, attack on our leader, a major city, public or hijacking an aircraft, any such action by them can obviously lead to a reaction from India which could be a short intense war," the Air Marshal said.

"India is a stable democracy surrounded by Pakistan, China, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which are troubled states," Air Marshal Singh said while delivering a lecture on 'Military view of Indian National Security" at a function here. 

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After Tezpur, Sukhoi war planes at Chabua near India-China border

After stationing the Sukhoi Su-30MIK war jets in Tezpur in Assam, the Indian Air Force will post another squadron of its frontline jets at the Chabua air base under its military policy to boost security along the border with China in the northeast.

On June 15, four Su-30MKIs will land in Tezpur for a symbolic induction, making the airbase the third in the country to house the combat jets.
It will be a symbolic induction as of now. Currently it’s not clear which of the Sukhoi bases - Pune or Bareilly - the aircraft belong to, a senior IAF official told IANS.

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