Iranian opposition group seeking justice

I talked again Friday with Nasser Sharif of Californians for a Democratic Iran about the unfortunate fact that the U.S. has designated the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known and Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist organization. As I explained in a piece I wrote last June, the designation occurred in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration had some hope of breaking the US-Iranian ice with supposed moderates in power in Iran and fulfilled a request by the Iranian regime to make the designation. Both the European Community and the UK have done extensive investigation and determined that the PMOI doesn't deserve the terrorist designation and have lifted it. As Nasser argued, and I think I agree, this not only harms one of the main Iranian opposition groups (and a democratic and secular one to boot), it effectively puts the U.S. on the side of the regime.

Despite support from some congresscritters of both parties and a lawsuit, little or not progress has been made on this issue. I'm afraid that since it was a Clinton-era decision, the job of officially identifying terrorist organizations lies with the State Dept, and Hillary is SecState, that it will take dynamite or the political equivalent to get action on this issue. But it would be smart.

Iran: all choices bad so go for the symbolic

Although I am nowhere near so frightened about Iran eventually getting a nuclear weapon as almost everybody else feigns to be, there is little question that the Iranian regime knows how to push buttons and create tensions. The problem from the U.S./West perspective is that there are no good options. People thrust their chests out and say Israel will bomb them, but not only would Israel have to cross Iraqi airspace (which would mean explicit U.S. approval/cooperation), there's little likelihood that it would locate and damage all or even most of Iran's secret nuclear facilities. If the Iranians have any ambivalence -- several Iranian experts I talked to said it was quite possible they're enriching right up to the point of having the components of a bomb that they could then finish like a "turnkey" operation whenever they decided, but might not build it as soon as it was technologically possible, rather wait until a propitious moment to announce it. Diplomacy might work, but it's hardly guaranteed and would take a long time.

So the feel-good option of imposing economic sanctions is the fallback position. But such sanctions seldom harm the regime that inspired them; indeed, they're more likely to hurt the people who are already oppressed but reinforce the rulers' power. And besides the fact that China is likely to cast a Security Council veto and Russia is hardoly a sure thing, it shouldn't be hard for Iran to beat a sanctions regime with smuggling, probably fuirther enrichjing the Revolutionary Guard along the way.

Perhaps the best choice is to quit meddling and quit paying attention to Ahmadinejad's rants?

Obama's Cairo speech redux

Obama's speech in Cairo was nowhere near so remarkable as many commentators want to insist, nor was it the dreary exercise in defeatism that many Americans who somehow get their kicks from cultivating enemies and talking tough about them considered it. Here's the Register's editorial. We suggested that the speech might have an impact on elections in Lebanon and Iran this month, and sure enough, the coalition the U.S. preferred in Lebanon got a majority, handing Hezbollah a defeat (though hardly knocking them out of the political picture). It will be interesting to watch Iran's election next week.

Obama's wussy Iraq stand

Since I opposed the Iraq war from before the U.S. act of naked aggression that started it and am far from convinced that the U.S. military is even yet a stabilizing influence in Iraq, I suppose I should be angry at the fact that President Obama has set such a long tentative timetable for removing U.S. troops from Iraq. It's to be 19 months before all "combat" troops are out and after that 35,000-50,000 will be left, presumably as a sort of colonial permanent occupation force to keep the wogs under control? Although the issue faded in importance as the endless campaign dragged on, it is highly likely that Barack Obama had not separated himself from the pack as one who also opposed the war from the outset and was determined to end it as quickly as feasible, he would not be president now. He's going soft on arguably his most important implicit promise to voters.

I think that the longer U.S. troops stay in Iraq even only a peripheral combat or training role, the longer Iraqis will have a crutch to keep them from taking responsibility for their own future. It's incredibly patronizing and arrogant for U.S. officials and military leaders to have the attitude that the guys that came in and wrecked the joint -- the U.S. -- and enhanced the regional power and potential dangerousness of the most militantly anti-American regime in the neighborhood, Iran, are the only thing that prevents a descent into chaos. Our imperial leaders remain incredibly ignorant about the countries they want to run, and don't feel any obligation to learn anything, expecting occupied countries to feel grateful to us for treating ancient cultures like adolescents who need out "adult" supervisions.

Having gotten all that out of my system, however, it's hard to work up real anger. I'm disappointed -- the logistics of withdrawal will take a few months, but the process really should begin today -- but not surprised. This is pretty much what Obama was promising -- a few months longer, perhaps -- from about the middle of last year. Americans and Iraqis will be killed for nothing but the foolish pride of our political leaders for another year and a half, but that's been happening for the last 6 years already, and if we're lucky the body count won't be too high.

Silver lining to the financial crisis?

Here's a link to my most recent piece for Antiwar.com. It argues that if there is a bright side to the world financial crisis, it is the falling price of oil, which means that several countries that have amassed petrodollars and used them to make mischief in the world at large -- notably Iran, Russia and Venezuela -- will have less money available and thus less capacity to create problems for others.

The Register ran an editorial today that made a similar argument. Coincidence? I think not. I'm afraid my former colleague John Seiler misunderstood the import of the editorial and attacked it in his own blog. We ran the editorial in part to undercut the idea that the United States needs to be actively interventionist overseas to counter these countries, because the threats are petering out of their own accord -- not only because of the falling price of oil but because that falling price exposes some inherent weaknesses in the economies of those countries. I agree with almost everything John wrote, in fact, except for the part where he said the Register had become economic nationalists, for heaven's sake. John and I will remain friends, of course.

Admiral Fallon out -- Iran next

I don't know if Adm. William Fallon quit or was pushed out as head of the U.S. Central Command, but he left today. Unless he's decided to take his sensible opposition to loose talk of a possible attack on Iran public, it looks like a fairly ominous sign to me. Now it may be that this article in Esquire made the administration think he's already gone too public even though they don't plan to be more active militarily against Iran. But a voice of reason is gone from within the top circles of the military. My strong impression is that most of the military is as opposed to the idea ofg attacking Iran as Adm. Fallon is, but this administration has a record of finding people to promote who will go along with administration plans -- see Petraeus as the savior.

As to Petraeus, although there's little question that violence has declined, although there are reasons to doubt just how responsible the surge has been, that decline leveled off in November and has not declined much since. Today a suicide bomber killed five Americans, another bombing killed three more.

Ahmadinejad in Baghdad

The visit to Iraq by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad highlights yet another bit of blowback from the Iraq war. I did a piece before the war that sketched Mesopotamian history and explained the ethnic/religious landscape, noting that the majority Shia had an affinity for and connections with Iran. Shortly thereafter any number of commentators noted that one impact of removing Saddam Hussein, Iran's mortal enemy, from power, was to increase the regional power and influence of Iran.

I don't think it's helpful to analysis to label certain regimes as "devil states." Every government has more than a bit of the devil in it. The Iranian regime is much more complicated than simply being an anti-American machine. But if one is concerned about Iran's growing regional influence, as is not unseemly, one would have hoped somebody among the geniuses touting war with Iraq in 2002 would have considered the likely impact of enhancing Iran's influence and power.

Why bomb Iran?

Here's a link to the Register's editorial last week on the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. If I do say so myself, it includes a pretty good succinct description of just what an NIE is, which implies why all of them including this one, are conditional even when the summary sounds certain, to wit:

"A National Intelligence Estimate represents the official consensus view of the government's 16 intelligence agencies, prepared by the National Intelligence Council under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence. Because of the necessarily incomplete and ambiguous nature of intelligence, especially about a society effectively closed to outsiders, NIEs are couched in terms like "judge," "assess," estimate, "probably" and "likely," further modified by terms like "high," moderate" or "low" levels of confidence. NIEs are supposed to be objective – free of bias for or against current policy – but different analysts, all of whom have personal preconceptions, often look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions."

However accurate this one is -- I think its significance is that it is an official rebuke to Cheney and to some extent Bush, and I'm reasonably sure Cheney at least tried to suppress it -- it would be incredibly stupid to bomb Iran, however emotionally satisfying it might be to some people.