Iranian regime keeps protests in check

To many observers it looks as if the regime won in Iran today. Andrew Sullivan was particularly active tracking events and linking to live-bloggers. Green Movement protesters came out on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic republic/dictatorship, but the regime was prepared with thousands of police and security people. They were able to keep protesters away from the official gathering at which Ahmadinejad gave a speech announcing that Iran is now a "nuclear state" because it is enriching uranium to 20% U-235, which is said to be enough for medical purposes, whereas it takes 80-90% enriched uranium to make a bomb. The police were often brutal with the Greenies, and several leaders were arrested. But what many of us had hoped for -- that the anti-regime protests would be so massive that it would be obvious that the regime was on the verge of falling -- doesn't seem to have happened. Still, Iran will not emerge from this period unchanged, I suspect. Whether the Greens can force reforms -- the mildest would be reducing or eliminating the veto power of the mullahs and ayatollahs -- remains to be seen.

It would be disastrous for the U.S. to get involved with overt or covert support for the greens (and almost certainly harmful to the cause), but there is one step the U.S. could take that would make some sense and correct an injustice. Back in the 1990s, at a time when the Clinton administration was hopeful of an opening with Iran, it agreed to designate the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) or Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK), an opposition group that opposed the shah before it opposed the mullahs, a terrorist organization to please the Iranians. Since the the EU and UK have done through investigations and determined that the designation is unfair, and decided to lift it. By keeping PMOI/MEK on the official terrorist list the U.S. is in essence siding with the regime. Lifting the designation would be an act of neutrality. The U.S. should do it tomorrow at the latest.

Will it be Green Day or regime day?

Thursday, Feb. 11, is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the regime plans extensive, massive staged demonstrations to celebrate. It is almost certain that the Green Movement that has bedeviled the regime ever since the (probably unnecessarily) stolen presidential election in June will stage demonstrations as well. As Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford, notes in this piece, it is a delicate time for the regime. Despite efforts to suggest to the public that the Green Movement has become reconciled to the regime -- newspaper stories saying Mohammad Khatami accepts Ahmadinejad's legitimacy, as does Mehdi Karroubi. The government wants to convince the people that the movcement has petered out, but Milani makes a strong case that this isn't true. The allegedly conciliatory statements by Green activists were taken out of context. I expect massive peaceful demonstrations. We'll see if the government feels the need to repress them violently.

Good news in Iran, Somalia

Can you stand a little good news? We certainly aren't getting a lot of it here in the good old US of A. But the State Dept. intelligence analysts (who were closer to right about Iraq in 2003 than any other gummint agencies) think that Iran will not be able to produce weapons-grade material before 2013 -- and that's a technical timetable. It also doesn't think a political decision has been made to start producing high-grade uranium.

Who knows, maybe the mullahs will have been pushed out by 2013. Of course a subsequent regime might still be interested in nukes -- the Shah started the program and two neighbors, Israel and Pakistan, have them.

Meanwhile in Somalia, word is that the Islamist rebels, al-Shahab, are at their weakest point in years, divided and unpopular. Maybe the world isn't as full of dire threats as the manic interventionists would like to have us believe.

Iran frees Roxana Saberi

I don't claim to have an idea why the Iranian regime decided to free Roxana Saberi, the Iranian- (and Korean-) American journalist who was arrested in January and then charged with and convicted of espionage. As this Register editorial notes, however, it is genuine cause for celebration. I know only a few things I have read and haven't had a chance to talk witrh anybody with special expertise. My guess is that international pressure, especially from European countries with which Iran has a certain amount of trade, was the key. But it could be internal Iranian politics or any of several other possibilities -- not including a change in character of the Iranian regime. I'm certainly glad for her, but whether it has geopolitical significance I just don't know.

Iran convicts Roxana Saberi

I suppose there's at least some remote chance that Roxana Saberi, the young Iranian-American journalist working in Iran and arrested in January, actually was spying for the United States. She was just convicted of espionage and sentenced to 7 years. But I doubt it. I suspect that, as this now-apparently-pointless Register editorial suggested, that it had to do with looking hard-line and stirring up anti-American sentiment in advance of the June 12 election. Too bad. Sooner or later the U.S. and Iran are likely to have to come to some kind of terms -- assuming we aren't about to move into an era of strategic non-engagement, which might not be a bad thing but which I don't expect. But Iran keeps making it difficult.

Iraq: fragile progress

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the U.S. turning over security control of Anbar Province to the Iraqi government. While speakers at the Republican convention were exulting that we are on the verge of victory thanks to the "surge," we made clear that things are a bit more complicated than that. Not only did the Anbar Awakening precede the surge by several months, there's a pretty serious danger, as noted previously, that the Shia-dominated Iraqi government just might mess the whole thing up. It's got a bunch oif Awakening leaders on a to-be-arrested list and has taken hardly any of the Awakening fighters (who are Sunni) into the government security forces.

Interestingly, as this article makes clear, Gen. Petraeus, hailed as the genius behind the turnaround, is much more circumspect about claiming that victory is around the corner. And even if the U.S. does find a reasonably graceful way out, that doesn't mean the war was worth starting, if only because the most significant result is to have made Iran stronger as a regional power and given it m0ore incentive to acquire nukes.

Iran: A dangerous dance

This most recent piece of mine for Antiwar.com was written before Condi Rice denounced the Iranian show at Saturday's multilateral-but-face-to-face meeting with the nuclear negotiator for Iran. It posits that there were two possible explanations for agreeing to meet face-to-face before Iran actually gave up uranium enrichment, which had been the U.S. precondition: either we're in the first stages of a mild thaw with Iran or the decision has been made to do some kind of military action and the diplomatic move was undertaken just so the U.S. would be able to say it had tried everything, sweetened the deal immeasurably, and Iran was simply unreasonable and intransigent and there's no choice left but to whack them with some super bunker busters. It might still be true that no decision has been made, but the powers-that-be think the initial meeting leaves either course open and the decider can decide later. It might even be that Condi's denunciation is intended to let the Iranians know that if there's to be a diplomatic path we have to see at least some token gesture of wanting to cooperate (even though Iran holds more cards than we do). I still think Condi has an interest in seeing a diplomatic path open -- and she may agree, though I can't be sure. Israel may yet be the wild card. It strikes me as a dangerous time.

War with Iran more likely

Justin Raimondo thinks that with the accession of Petraeus to the Central Command, and especially with a new story about Iranian speedboats coming near U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf, that war with Iran is much more likely before the Bushlet leaves office. What concerns me is that while the Army and Marines have been tested and come close to being hollowed out, the Navy and the AirForce have seen little action and some in those services might even welcome some action. Some U.S. strategists think Iran can be deterred with bombing and naval barrages. I suspect they are incredibly naive.

Hillary on Iran

Jonathan Schwartz over at A Tiny Revolution, has an interesting post on Hillary's by now notorious comment that if she were president circumstances might occur under which she might attack Iran and she wants Iranians to know we could obliterate them. It has been less noted that the comment followed the condition "if they attack Israel." I'm not sure an attack on Iran even under those circumstances would be justified, but it's a little different from attacking Iran first.

He then compares the statement to Saddam Hussein saying that if Israel were to attack Iraq, he would "make fire burn up half of Israel if it attacks Iraq." The comment was used by countless war whoopers to justify taking out Saddam -- but without including the phrase "if it attacks Israel." Since Hillary has made the threat, is it OK if Iran attacks us (as if).