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Argos Media

Storm of Violence in Iraq Strains Its Security Forces - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25iraq.html

Iraq Islamic State of Iraq Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

shared by Argos Media on 25 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A deadly outburst of violence appears to be overwhelming Iraq’s police and military forces as American troops hand over greater control of cities across the country to them. On Friday, twin suicide bombings killed at least 60 people outside Baghdad’s most revered Shiite shrine, pushing the death toll in one 24-hour period to nearly 150.
  • The bombings on Friday ominously echoed attacks like the one at a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed and pushed the country toward civil war.
  • The latest bombings — there have been at least 18 major attacks so far this month — so far have not prompted retaliatory attacks, but they have strained what remains a fragile society deeply divided between Sunnis and Shiites.
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  • Two suicide bombers struck within five minutes of each other on streets leading to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and his grandson. One of the attacks, and perhaps both, were carried out by women, witnesses said.
  • Nearly half of those killed were Iranians making a pilgrimage to the shrine, a golden-domed landmark in the predominantly Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad that is devoted to 2 of the 12 imams of Shiite Islam. At least 125 people were wounded, many of them also Iranians.
  • A loose coalition of Sunni militant forces, the Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for carrying out many of the recent attacks.
  • The deadliest of the three bombings on Thursday struck a restaurant filled with Iranian travelers in Muqdadiya, a town in Diyala not far from the border. The toll in that attack rose to 56, with Iranians making up the majority of the dead. Over all, at least 89 people were killed in the bombings on Thursday, and more than 100 were wounded.
  • After the attacks on Friday, angry Iraqis who gathered amid the bloody debris blamed lax security and corruption of the police and government officials for what had happened. Some of their anger had a strongly sectarian cast.“They have been ruling us for 1,400 years,” said a Shiite army soldier who identified himself only as Abu Haidar, referring to the Sunni domination of Shiites in Iraq. “We took it over for four years, and they are slaughtering us.”
  • The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, says the recent attacks as part of a campaign called Harvest of the Good, which it announced in March.
  • In a statement distributed on extremist Web sites at the time, the group’s leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, ridiculed President Obama as “Washington’s black man” and called his plan to withdraw American forces by 2011 an “implied avowal of defeat.”
  • On Thursday, Iraq’s military claimed to have arrested Mr. Baghdadi, but what was touted as a major success appeared to be in question. Extremist Web sites denied his arrest, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors claims and other statements by terrorist and extremist groups. The American military command also said in a statement that it could not confirm “the arrest or capture” of the leader, who the American military believes to be a fictitious Iraqi figurehead of a movement that includes many foreign fighters.
  • A senior national police official on Friday bluntly cited the limitations of Iraq’s security forces and their equipment for detecting explosives, typically hand-held wands used at checkpoints that the official described as fakes.
Argos Media

The Waiting Game: How Will Iran Respond to Obama's Overtures? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News -... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,618764-2,00.html

Iran Israel Mir Hossein Mousavi Nuclear Proliferation Politics US

shared by Argos Media on 14 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Israel's new right-leaning government, with its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his warmongering outbursts, is more or less openly threatening a strike -- even without American consent. The Israelis, who have their own nuclear weapons, cite the Iranian president's irrationality as justification. They assume that Ahmadinejad is planning a nuclear attack on the Jewish state, without consideration for Israel's certain vehement retaliation.
  • In fact, Ahmadinejad has made no secret of his desire to see Israel wiped off the map of the Middle East. But he has also repeatedly stressed that he has no intention to attack "the Zionist entity" with armed force.
  • The conservative Arab nations, with their Sunni majorities, are now just as concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions as the fact that the Iraqi government now enjoys the best of relations with its fellow Shiites in Tehran. Tehran's increasing power also strengthens its militant clients in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: Hamas and Hezbollah.
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  • Iran is not simply a medium-sized regional power that can be ordered around at will. Ironically, America's disastrous war in Iraq has allowed its fierce adversaries in Tehran to benefit from a massive shift of power in the Middle East.
  • Before his ascent to the office of president, not even diplomats stationed in Tehran and familiar with all of the ins and outs of Iranian politics were familiar with this short man with the sparse beard and piercing eyes. The fiery revolutionary, hardworking to the point of exhaustion and filled with contempt for earthly wealth, rose to power from humble beginnings and became the hope of all "Mostasafin," the disenfranchised millions without whom the Islamic Republic probably would not exist today and for whom Ahmadinejad has fashioned himself into an Iranian Robin Hood.
  • This places the Americans before the virtually impossible task of joining forces with Iran to resolve the classic Middle East conflict and its 30-year conflict with Tehran itself. For this reason, the Iraq question is also becoming increasingly urgent for Washington.
  • Obama knows that the United States could derive substantial benefits from cooperation with Tehran. Without Iran, for example, it will be almost impossible to bring peace to Afghanistan in the long term. In Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the center of conflict that Washington describes in its new strategic concept as a single unit known as "AfPak" -- the Americans and Shiite Iran have many interests in common. Tehran's rulers battled the Sunni Taliban radicals, whom they have always seen as dangerous neighbors and ideological foes, before the Americans did.
  • And Tehran, with the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and its third-largest oil reserves, has the capacity to do a great deal of damage to the international economy -- or help it overcome the global economic crisis.
  • Conversely, rapprochement with the United States and Europe would also bring enormous benefits to the Iranians. Without know-how from the West, the country will hardly manage to achieve the modernization it needs so urgently. With inflation approaching 30 percent and real unemployment exceeding 20 percent (12 percent, according to official figures), and more than a million drug addicts -- a distressing world record of addiction -- the country faces practically insurmountable problems.
  • Whether the internally divided Palestinians will manage to come to terms and form a unified government for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is no longer in the hands of the inconsequential negotiators in Cairo, but will be decided instead by Hamas's patrons in Tehran. Tehran also decides whether the Lebanese Hezbollah or Hamas's extremists use primarily words to express their hostility toward Israel or, as is currently the case, resume their bloody terrorist attacks instead.
  • Ahmadinejad feels obligated to the permanently downtrodden members of society. As if he were one of them, he campaigned for president four years ago in Tehran's massive poor neighborhoods, traveled to the country's most remote places and promised the underprivileged their share of Iran's riches. He told them that he would fill their empty plates with the proceeds from the sale of oil, and that he would declare war on corruption and nepotism. The "era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end," Ahmadinejad told supporters after his election.
  • But the political achievements of President Ahmadinejad have been more miserable than stellar. In addition to isolating his country even further in the world, he has ruined its economy with his chaotic economic policies. In the devastating assessment of Ali Larijani, the president of the Iranian parliament and Ahmadinejad's biggest domestic rival, whom he previously removed from his position as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator with the West: "The confusion is the result of the government arbitrarily dissolving offices and dismissing experts, ignoring parliamentary resolutions and stubbornly going its own way."
  • Nevertheless, it is quite possible that this man, who has probably done more damage to his country than any other president in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic, will enter a second term this summer -- simply because he lacks a convincing and courageous opponent.
  • Moussavi is of a significantly more robust nature than Khatami. As prime minister during the years of the Iraq war, he successfully managed the country's wartime economy. Critics note, however, that Moussavi's tenure was marked by a sharp rise in arrests and repression. He has not held any public office in 20 years and is virtually unknown among younger Iranians, who make up about 60 percent of the population.
  • On the surface, the elegant Moussavi would undoubtedly represent Iran more effectively on the international stage than Ahmadinejad. He appears to be more open to negotiations with the Americans. And yet, when it comes to the central nuclear conflict, the new candidate is just as obstinate as the current president. At a press conference in Tehran just last Monday, he noted that he too would not back down on the issue.
  • Which candidate the powerful religious leader Khamenei ends up supporting will likely be the decisive question. When Ahmadinejad came into office, he kissed Khamenei's hand. The two men were long considered extremely close ideologically, although since then Khamenei has more or less openly criticized Ahmadinejad's economic policies. Only recently, however, the religious leader spoke so positively about the president that many interpreted his words as an endorsement of his candidacy. Many observers of Iranian politics believe Ahmadinejad, because of his lasting popularity in rural areas, will be elected to a second term.
  • There are no questions that the Iranian president does not answer with questions of his own. He insists, most of all, on a few core concepts. One of them is justice, but he defines what justice is. Another is respect. He claims that he and his country are not afforded sufficient respect. This desire for recognition seems almost insatiable.
  • In Ahmadinejad's view, "hagh chordan," or the act of trampling on the rights of the Iranians, is a pattern that constantly repeats itself and comes from all sides, leading to a potentially dangerous mix of a superiority and an inferiority complex -- but not the irrationality of which the president is so often accused, especially by the Israelis.
Argos Media

Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of Taliban - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08obama.html

Afghanistan David Petraeus Iraq Obama Pakistan Taliban US

shared by Argos Media on 09 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,
  • Asked if the United States was winning in Afghanistan, a war he effectively adopted as his own last month by ordering an additional 17,000 troops sent there, Mr. Obama replied flatly, “No.”
  • Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail last year that the possibility of breaking away some elements of the Taliban “should be explored,
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  • now he has started a review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan intended to find a new strategy, and he signaled that reconciliation could emerge as an important initiative, mirroring the strategy used by Gen. David H. Petraeus in Iraq.
  • “If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that outreach may not yield the same success. “The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex,” he said. “You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge.”
  • administration officials have criticized the Pakistani government for its own reconciliation deal with local Taliban leaders in the Swat Valley, where Islamic law has been imposed and radical figures hold sway. Pakistani officials have sought to reassure administration officials that their deal was not a surrender to the Taliban, but rather an attempt to drive a wedge between hard-core Taliban leaders and local Islamists.
  • During the interview, Mr. Obama also left open the option for American operatives to capture terrorism suspects abroad even without the cooperation of a country where they were found. “There could be situations — and I emphasize ‘could be’ because we haven’t made a determination yet — where, let’s say that we have a well-known Al Qaeda operative that doesn’t surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don’t have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person,” he said.“I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario,”
  • The president went on to say that “we don’t torture” and that “we ultimately provide anybody that we’re detaining an opportunity through habeas corpus to answer to charges.”Aides later said Mr. Obama did not mean to suggest that everybody held by American forces would be granted habeas corpus or the right to challenge their detention. In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court.
Argos Media

'World leaders must drop their slogans' | Israel | Jerusalem Post - 0 views

www.jpost.com/...Satellite

Avigdor Lieberman Israel Iran Palestine

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • JPost.com » Israel » Article Apr 24, 2009 0:14&nbsp;|&nbsp;Updated Apr 24, 2009 13:54 'World leaders must drop their slogans' By DAVID HOROVITZ AND AMIR MIZROCH PrintSubscribe articleTitle = ' \'World leaders must drop their slogans\' '; showOdiogoReadNowButton ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566',articleTitle,'0', 290, 55); E-mailToolbar + Recommend: What's this? showInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566', '0', 290, 0); Talkbacks for this article: 117 &nbsp; | &nbsp;Avg. rating 4.61 out of 5</s
  • The international community has to "stop speaking in slogans" if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict and help bring stability to the Middle East, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, in his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since taking the job.
  • "Over the last two weeks I've had many conversations with my colleagues around the world," he said. "Just today, I saw the political adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Chinese foreign minister and the Czech prime minister. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you're in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers..." Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as "land for peace" and "two-state solution," were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said.
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  • Lieberman insistently refused to rule in, or rule out, Palestinian statehood alongside Israel as the essence of a permanent accord, but emphatically endorsed Netanyahu's declared desire not to rule over a single Palestinian.
  • The foreign minister spoke as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel on Thursday that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem's commitment to the peace process.
  • The fact was, said the Israel Beiteinu leader, that the Palestinian issue was "deadlocked" despite the best efforts of a series of dovish Israeli governments. "Israel has proved its good intentions, our desire for peace," he said. The path forward, he said, lay in ensuring security for Israel, an improved economy for the Palestinians, and stability for both. "Economy, security, stability," he repeated. "It's impossible to artificially impose any political solution. It will fail, for sure. You cannot start any peace process from nothing. You must create the right situation, the right focus, the right conditions."
  • Equally emphatically, he said no peace proposal that so much as entertained the notion of a "right of return" to Israel for Palestinian refugees could serve as a basis for negotiation. "It cannot be on the table. I'm not ready to even discuss the 'right of return' of even one refugee," he said. But he also made clear that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was not a precondition for progress. "You know, we don't want to torpedo the process," he said. "But somebody who really wants a solution, somebody who really desires a real peace and a real agreement, must realize that this would be impossible to achieve without recognizing Israel as a Jewish state."
  • Nonetheless, Lieberman stressed that Israel did not regard stopping Iran as a precondition for Israeli efforts to make progress with the Palestinians. Quite the reverse, he said. "No, we must start with the Palestinian issues because it's our interest to resolve this problem. But there should be no illusions. To achieve an agreement, to achieve an end of conflict, with no more bloodshed, no more terror, no more claims - that's impossible until Iran [is addressed]."
  • The real reason for the deadlock with the Palestinians, said Lieberman, "is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers. This conflict is really a very deep conflict. It started like other national conflicts. [But] today it's a more religious conflict. Today you have the influence of some nonrational players, like al-Qaida."
  • And the biggest obstacle to any comprehensive solution, he said, "is not Israel. It is not the Palestinians. It's the Iranians."
  • Lieberman said the prime responsibility for thwarting Iran's march to a nuclear capability lay with the international community, not Israel, and especially the five permanent members of the Security Council. He was confident that stringent economic sanctions could yet achieve the desired result, and said he did not even "want to think about the consequences of a crazy nuclear arms race in the region."
  • He said it would be "impossible to resolve any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem." This, he said, related to Lebanon, Syria and problems with Islamic extremist terror in Egypt, the Gaza Strip and Iraq.
  • Lieberman said the new government would have no dealings with Hamas, which needed to be "suffocated," and that the international community also had to maintain the long-standing Quartet preconditions for dealing with the Islamist group.
  • Noting what he called Syria's deepening ties with Iran, Lieberman said he saw no point whatsoever in resuming the indirect talks with Damascus conducted by the last government. "We don't see any good will from the Syrian side," he said. "Only the threats, like 'If you're not ready to talk, we'll retake the Golan by military action...'"
Pedro Gonçalves

Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...056.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Hezbollah Iranian Revolutionary Guards

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • t's rumble time in Tehran. At dozens of intersections in the capital of Iran thousands of students are protesting on a recent Friday around midnight, as they do nearly every night, chanting pro-democracy slogans and lighting bonfires on street corners. Residents of the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods converge in their cars, honking their horns in raucous support. Suddenly there's thunder in the air. A gang of 30 motorcyclists, brandishing iron bars and clubs as big as baseball bats, roars through the stalled traffic. They glare at the drivers, yell threats, thump cars. Burly and bearded, the bikers yank two men from their auto and pummel them. Most protesters scatter. Uniformed policemen watch impassively as the thugs beat the last stragglers.
  • These Hell's Angels are part of the Hezbollah militia, recruited mostly from the countryside. Iran's ruling mullahs roll them out whenever they need to intimidate their opponents. The Islamic Republic is a strange dictatorship. As it moves to repress growing opposition to clerical rule, the regime relies not on soldiers or uniformed police (many of whom sympathize with the protesters) but on the bullies of Hezbollah and the equally thuggish Revolutionary Guards. The powers that be claim to derive legitimacy from Allah but remain on top with gangsterlike methods of intimidation, violence and murder.
  • Who controls today's Iran? Certainly not Mohammad Khatami, the twice-elected moderate president, or the reformist parliament. Not even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a stridently anti-American but unremarkable cleric plucked from the religious ranks 14 years ago to fill the shoes of his giant predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, is fully in control. The real power is a handful of clerics and their associates who call the shots behind the curtain and have gotten very rich in the process.
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  • The 1979 revolution expropriated the assets of foreign investors and the nation's wealthiest families; oil had long been nationalized, but the mullahs seized virtually everything else of value--banks, hotels, car and chemical companies, makers of drugs and consumer goods. What distinguishes Iran is that many of these assets were given to Islamic charitable foundations, controlled by the clerics. According to businessmen and former foundation executives, the charities now serve as slush funds for the mullahs and their supporters.
  • Dozens of interviews with businessmen, merchants, economists and former ministers and other top government officials reveal a picture of a dictatorship run by a shadow government that--the U.S. State Department suspects--finances terrorist groups abroad through a shadow foreign policy. Its economy is dominated by shadow business empires and its power is protected by a shadow army of enforcers.
  • Ironically, the man most adept at manipulating this hidden power structure is one of Iran's best-known characters--Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been named an ayatollah, or religious leader. He was the speaker of parliament and Khomeini's right-hand man in the 1980s, president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and is now chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which resolves disputes between the clerical establishment and parliament. Rafsanjani has more or less run the Islamic Republic for the past 24 years.
  • He played it smart, aligning himself in the 1960s with factions led by Ayatollah Khomeini, then becoming the go-to guy after the revolution. A hard-liner ideologically, Rafsanjani nonetheless has a pragmatic streak. He convinced Khomeini to end the Iran-Iraq war and broke Iran's international isolation by establishing trade relations with the Soviet Union, China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the 1990s he restarted Iran's nuclear program. He is also the father of Iran's "privatization" program. During his presidency the stock market was revived, some government companies were sold to insiders, foreign trade was liberalized and the oil sector was opened up to private companies. Most of the good properties and contracts, say dissident members of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, ended up in the hands of mullahs, their associates and, not least, Rafsanjani's own family, who rose from modest origins as small-scale pistachio farmers.
Pedro Gonçalves

Former Iran President at Center of Fight Between Classes of the Political Elite - NYTim... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...22rafsanjani.html

Iran Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Ali Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Jun 09 - Cached
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • “I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
  • It seems clear that the 75-year-old is at the center of a fight for the future of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Rafsanjani’s vision of the state, and his position in his nation’s history, is being challenged by a new political elite led by Mr. Ahmadinejad and younger radicals who fought Iraq during the eight-year war.
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  • Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have tried to demonize Mr. Rafsanjani as corrupt and weak, attacks that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not strongly discouraged. On the other side, opposition leaders, especially Mr. Moussavi, have received support from Mr. Rajsanjani, political analysts said.
  • It is a quirk of history that Mr. Rafsanjani, the ultimate insider, finds himself aligned with a reform movement that once vilified him as deeply corrupt. Mr. Rafsanjani was doctrinaire anti-American hard-liner in the early days of the revolution who remains under indictment for ordering the bombing in of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 when he was president. But he has evolved over time to a more pragmatic view, analysts say.
  • He supports greater opening to the West, privatizing parts of the economy, and granting more power to civil elected institutions. His view is opposite of those in power now who support a stronger religious establishment and have done little to modernize the stagnant economy.
  • “At a political level what’s taking place now, among many other things, is the 20-year rivalry between Khamenei and Rafsanjani coming to a head,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “It’s an Iranian version of the Corleones and the Tattaglias; there are no good guys and bad guys, only bad and worse.”
  • It is not clear what leverage Mr. Rajsanjani can bring to this contest. If he speaks out, the relative said, he will lose his ability to broker a compromise. Mr. Rafsanjani leads two powerful councils, one that technically has oversight of the supreme leader, but it is not clear that he could exercise that authority to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei directly.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani has been in opposition before. In the days of the shah, he was a religious student of Ayatollah Khomeini at the center of Shiite learning, in the city of Qum. He was imprisoned under the shah, and became so closely associated with the revolutionary leader he was known as “melijak Khomeini,” or “sidekick of Khomeini.”’ After 1979, he went on to become the speaker of Parliament.
  • Mr. Rafsanjani later served two terms as president and was instrumental in elevating Ayatollah Khamenei to replace Ayatollah Khomenei in 1989.
  • People who worked in the government at the time said that Mr. Rafsanjani, as president, ran the nation — while Ayatollah Khameini followed his lead. But over time the two grew apart, as Ayatollah Khameini found his own political constituency in the military and Mr. Rafsanjani found his own reputation sullied. He is often accused of corruption because of the great wealth he and his family amassed.
  • He was so damaged politically that after he left the presidency, he failed to win enough votes to enter Parliament. In 2002, he was appointed to the head of the Expediency Council, which is supposed to arbitrate disputes between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.
  • And in 2005, he ran for president again but lost in a runoff to Mr. Ahmadinejad. He was then elected to lead the Assembly of Experts. The body has the power to oversee the supreme leader and replace him when he dies, but its members rarely exercise power day to day.
Pedro Gonçalves

News Analysis - Ahmadinejad Reaps Benefits of Stacking Key Iran Agencies With His Allie... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25tehran.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ali Khamenei Mojtaba Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • But analysts said the crackdown now taking place across Iran suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad had succeeded in creating a pervasive network of important officials in the military, security agencies, and major media outlets, a new elite made especially formidable by support from one important constituent, Iran’s supreme leader himself.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has filled crucial ministries and other top posts with close friends and allies who have spread ideological and operational support for him nationwide. These analysts estimate that he has replaced 10,000 government employees to cement his loyalists through the bureaucracies, so that his allies run the organizations responsible for both the contested election returns and the official organs that have endorsed them.
  • There is a pattern to the way Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has selected allies throughout his career, said Said A. Arjomand, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has just finished a book analyzing the rule of the supreme leader. The ayatollah has repeatedly surrounded himself with men lacking an apparent social or political base of their own, men who would be dependent on him, Mr. Arjomand said.
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  • During the presidential campaign of 2005, the supreme leader endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad because the humble son of a blacksmith appeared to be just such an obscure candidate. But he entered the presidency with a coterie of veterans and ideologues shaped by the Iran-Iraq war who were conservative, religious, largely populist and disdainful of the old guard from the 1979 revolution.
  • Today, these allies, many of them former midlevel Revolutionary Guard officers in their 50s, run the Interior, Intelligence and Justice Ministries. They also include the commander of the Basij popular militia, the head of the National Security Council and the head of state-run broadcasting. They are aligned with another member of their generation who has emerged as the most important figure in the Khamenei camp, the spiritual leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has also changed all 30 of the country’s governors, all the city managers and even third- and fourth-level civil servants in important ministries like the Interior Ministry. It was Interior that announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the June 12 election with just 5 percent of the votes counted, analysts pointed out, and it is the Intelligence Ministry that has been rounding up scores of supporters of the reform candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and other dissidents.
  • At the same time, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor, runs three powerful educational institutions in the holy city of Qum, all spun off from the Haqqani seminary, which teaches that Islam and democracy are incompatible. The ayatollah favors a system that would preserve the post of supreme leader and eliminate elections. The Ahmadinejad administration has provided generous government subsidies to the seminary, and its graduates hold significant government posts nationwide.
  • Perhaps the most important media organization to spread the government’s message is the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. Its general director, Hossein Shariatmaderi, in recent days has resurrected a standard accusation: that foreign governments were manipulating the demonstrations on Iran’s streets.
Pedro Gonçalves

Khamenei: No chance Iran elections were rigged - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1094245.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009 Ali Khamenei Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 19 Jun 09 - Cached
  • "If there is any bloodshed, leaders of the protests will be held directly responsible," Khamenei declared in his first address to the nation since the upheaval began.
  • "The result of the election comes from the ballot box, not from the street," the white-bearded cleric told huge crowds thronging Tehran University and surrounding streets for Friday prayers. "Today the Iranian nation needs calm."
  • He said any election complaints should be raised through legal channels. "I will not succumb to illegal innovation," he said, in an apparent reference to the street protests, which have few precedents in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history.
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  • "It's a wrong impression that by using street protests as a pressure tool, they can compel officials to accept their illegal demands. This would be the start of a dictatorship," Khamenei said.
  • "After street protests, some foreign powers ... started to interfere in Iran's state matters by questioning the result of the vote. They do not know the Iranian nation. I strongly condemn such interference," Khamenei said.
  • "American officials' remarks about human rights and limitations on people are not acceptable because they have no idea about human rights after what they have done in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the world. We do not need advice over human rights from them," he added.
  • "This election was a political earthquake for [Iran's] enemies and a celebration for its friends," Khameini told the vast crowd. "This election showed religious democracy for the whole world to see."
  • "The enemies [of Iran] are targeting the Islamic establishment's legitimacy by questioning the election and its authenticity before and after [the vote]," Khamenei told the vast crowd.
  • Khamenei told the crowd that it would have been impossible under law of the Islamic Republic to fix the election results and declared Ahmadinejad's victory "definitive."
  • The supreme leader reportedly gave defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi an ultimatum this week to either accept the disputed results of the recent elections, or leave the country for exile.
  • Khamenei had earlier instructed Mousavi to stand beside him as he uses his prayer sermon to call for national unity, according to The London Times. The reformist candidate did not accede to this request and his supporters have so far ignored Kahmeini's call to support Ahmadinejad, holding huge rallies in defiance of an official ban.
Argos Media

World news Feed Article | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...8408792

Iran Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Argos Media on 18 Mar 09 - Cached
  • "Like you, I believe the correct path is reforms that return to (Islamic) principles but refine them," Mousavi said Tuesday in a message to Khatami
  • "Mousavi is seeking to win the support of both reformers and moderate conservatives," said Tehran-based political analyst Hedayat Aghaei.
  • He clashed with Khamenei — then Iran's president — over political authority and powers. The prime minister post was eliminated after Mousavi's term.
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  • He was firmly part of the political inner circle after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, serving as editor of Jomhuri Eslami, which was the state newspaper at the time. He then was prime minister from 1981-89 — spanning nearly the entire eight-year war with Iraq that left an estimated 1 million dead and plunged Iran into a crippling economic crisis. There were early hints, however, that he chafed against the system even as he was hailed as a revolutionary patriot.
  • Since leaving office, he has generally stayed in the background in advisory roles and as a member of the Expediency Council, which mediates between the parliament and the non-elected Guardian Council, which is directly influenced by the supreme leader.
  • "To hard-liners, Mousavi is a more acceptable version of Khatami. And to reformists, Mousavi is a moderate who won't seek profound changes," said Hasan Vazini, a political commentator at the conservative Tehran-e-Emrooz newspaper. But others believe that this type of middle ground approach will do little to shake Iran's establishment. "(Mousavi) is Ahmadinejad without the invective or anger," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "He does not appear to be a bold reformer."
  • Political analyst Vazini said that "with Khatami out of the race, conservatives are not so likely anymore to support Ahmadinejad as their sole candidate." The Islamic Iran Participation Front, the country's largest reformist party, quickly threw its support behind Mousavi, a trained architect who is known as an accomplished amateur painter.
Argos Media

U.S. green light for Israeli attack on Iran will have to wait - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1076056.html

Iran Israel US Gary Samore Mike Mullen Gabi Ashkenazi IDF Uzi Arad Ashton Carter Charles Freeman Iron Dome Arrow defense system

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Stavridis, an officer/scholar/diplomat with a Ph.D. in security issues, last month warned about the intensified activity of Hezbollah and other fanatic Islamic organizations in South and Central America.
  • The possibility of an Israeli attack against a nuclear Iran, which will result in Iran and Hezbollah making good on their threats to attack American assets in response, will be a test of the willingness of NATO's member states to implement Article 5 of the treaty's convention and assist in the American defense (in other words, the counterattack).
  • The U.S. army learns from IDF experiences and considers the latter's operations an important laboratory, even though not all such tests are blessed with complete and immediate success. For example, the Americans admire the Israel Air Force's proven ability to operate aircraft in difficult weather. Very few armies in the world are closer in spirit to the U.S. Army than the IDF.
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  • The Mullen-Ashkenazi axis, like similar axes between heads of the two countries' intelligence communities, allows the Americans to sense the genuine atmosphere beneath the public propaganda disseminated in Israel and to understand the extent to which Israel is really concerned about the Iranian nuclear threat. It also affords them the opportunity to reassure, to delay and, at the very least, to walk the hidden line between the desire not to officially know in advance, in order to safeguard the ability to shrug off responsibility, and the need not to be surprised.
  • Make no mistake about the Obama administration, when it comes to Iran: Its policy differs from that of the Bush administration only in style, not in content. Its officials express themselves in positive terms, cloaked in an expression of conciliation, as opposed to the angry face worn by president George W. Bush - but the conclusions are similar, as are the results. Gary Samore, who Jones put in charge of coordinating the issue of weapons of mass destruction, said often, before his appointment, including during a speech at the Herzliya Conference in 2007, organized by Uzi Arad (today Benjamin Netanyahu's national security advisor), that the Iranians will continue their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and that economic and diplomatic pressure will not help.
  • Ashton Carter, recently nominated by the president to be under secretary of defense for acquistion, technology and logistics, offered a similar analysis for the Bush administration, when he outlined three alternatives to confronting Iran. Plan B3, the military option, also entailed a possible bombing of Iranian oil installations, which are not protected and concealed like components of the nuclear infrastructure. The prevailing balance of power within the Obama administration tends to favor attacking Iran's nuclear installations, or to tolerate an Israeli attack. A prominent opponent of using military force against Iran, Charles Freeman, who had been slated to head the U.S. National Intelligence Council, was dropped under pressure of Israel's American supporters.
  • Obama will wait - not only for Iranian elections, scheduled for June (and those in Lebanon, that same month), but also for September's elections in Germany, and for Britons to vote at more or less the same time (elections have yet to be scheduled), in order to know who will stand by his side in the trenches. In that way 2009 will pass without a decision, but not all of 2010, because come that November, Congressional elections will be held, immediately after which the Democrats will begin organizing Obama's reelection campaign. The summer of 2010 will be critical, because by then the evacuation of most of the American forces from Iraq will be completed and fewer exposed targets will remain for Iranian revenge attacks.
  • The development of the Iron Dome system for intercepting Katyusha rockets, whose first battery will protect the environs north of the Gaza Strip (Ashkelon, Sderot), is expected to be completed by the summer of 2010. That will make it difficult for Hamas to open another front to harass the IDF on Iran's behalf. In the coming months, the tests of the Arrow missile defense system will continue, in a scenario that simulates an attack by a long-distance Iranian missile. The tests will be carried out in cooperation with American systems, including the large radar facility at the Nevatim air base. Preparations for defence against a radioactive attack will also improve, at an event to be staged at either an Israeli or an American port, as will preparations for a plague of smallpox, in a joint exercise involving Israel and one of NATO's important European member states.
  • In the Pentagon's most recent report about the strengthening of China, Israel receives a pat on the back, of the kind given to a well-behaved child: It has been cured of the habit of providing air-to-ground Harpy missiles to China, which extend the Chinese air force's operational range, and has also enforced stricter export supervision. The Americans are displaying a false naivete: Nothing has changed except for two offices having been moved around administratively. The decision to launch a military operation against Iran, particularly using American-made planes (such as the F-16, whose supply was suspended after Israel's 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor), will have to be preceded by feelers to discern where Obama stands exactly on the continuum between approval and opposition. Apparently Israel wants Obama to emerge sufficiently strengthened from this week's NATO summit, but still too weak to say no to Israel.
Pedro Gonçalves

Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...056_3.html

Bonyads Iran Iranian Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rafiqdoost Mostazafan&Jambazan Foundation Noor Foundation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - No Cached
  • The other side of Iran's economy belongs to the Islamic foundations, which account for 10% to 20% of the nation's GDP--$115 billion last year. Known as bonyads, the best-known of these outfits were established from seized property and enterprises by order of Ayatollah Khomeini in the first weeks of his regime. Their mission was to redistribute to the impoverished masses the "illegitimate" wealth accumulated before the revolution by "apostates" and "blood-sucking capitalists." And, for a decade or so, the foundations shelled out money to build low-income housing and health clinics. But since Khomeini's death in 1989 they have increasingly forsaken their social welfare functions for straightforward commercial activities.
  • Until recently they were exempt from taxes, import duties and most government regulation. They had access to subsidized foreign currency and low-interest loans from state-owned banks. And they were not accountable to the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance or any other government institution. Formally, they are under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Leader; effectively, they operate without any oversight at all, answerable only to Allah.
  • According to Shiite Muslim tradition, devout businessmen are expected to donate 20% of profits to their local mosques, which use the money to help the poor. By contrast, many bonyads seem like straightforward rackets, extorting money from entrepreneurs. Besides the biggest national outfits, almost every Iranian town has its own bonyad, affiliated with local mullahs. "Many small businessmen complain that as soon as you start to make some money, the leading mullah will come to you and ask for a contribution to his local charity," says an opposition economist, who declines to give his name. "If you refuse, you will be accused of not being a good Muslim. Some witnesses will turn up to testify that they heard you insult the Prophet Mohammad, and you will be thrown in jail." The Cosa Nostra meets fundamentalism.
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  • Other charities resemble multinational conglomerates. The Mostazafan &amp; Jambazan Foundation (Foundation for the Oppressed and War Invalids) is the second-largest commercial enterprise in the country, behind the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co. Until recently it was run by a man named Mohsen Rafiqdoost. The son of a vegetable-and-fruit merchant at the Tehran bazaar, Rafiqdoost got his big break in 1979, when he was chosen to drive Ayatollah Khomeini from the airport after his triumphal return from exile in Paris.
  • Khomeini made him Minister of the Revolutionary Guards to quash internal dissent and smuggle in weapons for the Iran-Iraq war. In 1989, when Rafsanjani became president, Rafiqdoost gained control of the Mostazafan Foundation, which employs up to 400,000 workers and has assets that in all probability exceed $10 billion. Among its holdings: the former Hyatt and Hilton hotels in Tehran; the highly successful Zam-Zam soft drink company (once Pepsi); an international shipping line; companies producing oil products and cement; swaths of farmland and urban real estate.
  • A picture emerges from one Iranian businessman who used to handle the foreign trade deals for one of the big foundations. Organizations like the Mostazafan serve as giant cash boxes, he says, to pay off supporters of the mullahs, whether they're thousands of peasants bused in to attend religious demonstrations in Tehran or Hezbollah thugs who beat up students. And, not least, the foundations serve as cash cows for their managers.
  • Today Rafiqdoost heads up the Noor Foundation, which owns apartment blocks and makes an estimated $200 million importing pharmaceuticals, sugar and construction materials. He is quick to downplay his personal wealth. "I am just a normal person, with normal wealth," he says. Then, striking a Napoleonic pose, he adds: "But if Islam is threatened, I will become big again."
Argos Media

Iran's offer of help to rebuild Afghanistan heralds new age of diplomacy with the US | ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...iran-afganistan-foreign-policy

Iran Afghanistan US Richard Holbrooke Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh Hillary Clinton

shared by Argos Media on 01 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, had an informal meeting with the Iranian delegate, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, later described the exchange as "unplanned but cordial", adding that they had agreed to "stay in touch".
  • Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, said Iranian offers of help could mark a new "spring in the relationship" between the west and Iran.He was responding to Akhundzadeh's public pledge at the conference of Iranian co-operation in counter-narcotics and development efforts in Afghanistan.
  • "I did think the Iranian intervention this morning was promising. The issue of counter-narcotics is a worry that we share. We will look for ways to co-operate with them on that," Clinton said. "This is a promising sign that there will be future co-operation."
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  • Clinton had pressed for Iranian participation in The Hague conference, stressing the importance of finding a regional solution to the insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and western officials were encouraged that Akhundzadeh, a deputy foreign minister and former charge d'affaires in London, was sent by Tehran.
  • Akhundzadeh told ministers from more than 70 countries at the meeting: "Welcoming the proposals for joint co-operation offered by the countries contributing to Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran is fully prepared to participate in the projects aimed at combating drug trafficking and plans in line with developing and reconstructing Afghanistan."
  • He repeated Tehran's criticism of the Nato role in Afghanistan, but used relatively moderate language, saying: "The presence of foreign forces has not improved things and it seems that an increase in the number of foreign forces will prove ineffective, too."
  • Akhundzadeh added: "The military expenses need to be redirected to the training of the Afghan police and army and Afghanisation should lead the government building process" - an apparent nod towards the Obama administration's decision to send 4,000 more American military trainers.
  • Western officials expressed hopes that the west and Iran could return to the close co-operation over Afghanistan that took place in the months after the 9/11 attacks. Iranian officials even helped the US target the Taliban, but the relationship cooled after Bush's "axis of evil" speech.
  • "There is a meeting of minds on drugs, development issues and the [August Afghan] elections, though not on foreign troops, on which they made clear their objections."
  • Malloch Brown acknowledged that Iran had done some "bad things" in both Afghanistan and Iraq, supplying weaponry to insurgents that had been used against British soldiers.But he argued: "This is Iran supporting its proxies because of a lack of diplomatic partnership around Iraq and Afghanistan. If this is a rapprochement, whether it is overall rapprochement or just aimed at stabilising Afghanistan, it offers the prospect of this behaviour getting moderated and hopefully stopping."
Pedro Gonçalves

Addressing Muslims, Obama Pushes Mideast Peace - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...05prexy.html

Obama US Middle East Palestine Israel Hezbollah Paul Wolfowitz Israeli Settlements

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • In opening a bold overture to the Islamic world on Thursday, President Obama confronted frictions between Muslims and the West, but he reserved some of his bluntest words for Israel, as he expressed sympathy for the Palestinians and what he called the “daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”
  • While Mr. Obama emphasized that America’s bond with Israel was “unbreakable,” he spoke in equally powerful terms of the Palestinian people, describing their plight as “intolerable” after 60 years of statelessness, and twice referring to “Palestine” in a way that put Palestinians on parallel footing with Israelis.
  • Mr. Obama said the bond between the United States and Israel was “based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”“On the other hand,” Mr. Obama added, “it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years, they’ve endured the pain of dislocation.” He said Americans “will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”
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  • Mr. Obama seemed to connect with his audience in his 55-minute speech from Cairo University as he quoted repeatedly from the Koran and occasionally sprinkled his remarks with Arabic, even beginning his address with the traditional Arabic greeting “salaam aleikum,” or “peace be upon you.”
  • while he spoke uncompromisingly of the American fight against Al Qaeda, Mr. Obama never mentioned the words “terrorism” or “terrorist.” That was a departure from the language used by the Bush administration, but one that some Middle East experts suggested reflected a belief by the new administration that overuse had made the words inflammatory.
  • Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former top Bush administration official who was an architect of the war in Iraq and is a strong supporter of Israel, offered general praise for Mr. Obama’s address. “I could have used less moral equivalence, but he had to get through to his audience, and it’s in America’s interest for him to get through,” Mr. Wolfowitz said.
  • Mr. Obama’s stark statement that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” is also likely to be seen as a sharp challenge to Israeli assumptions that existing West Bank settlements will always be allowed to remain.
  • It was noteworthy that the only Palestinian political group that Mr. Obama specifically mentioned was Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. Hamas governs Gaza, but is loathed by Israel. Mr. Obama called on Hamas to forswear violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist, but Middle East experts said that his mention was an acknowledgment that Hamas might have become a more important actor than the Fatah Party, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Mr. Obama said, “Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities.”
Argos Media

Obama offers Iran 'a new beginning' - Middle East, World - The Independent - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-a-new-beginning-1649988.html

Iran Obama Ali Akbar Javanfekr

shared by Argos Media on 20 Mar 09 - Cached
  • "The Iranian nation has shown that it can forget hasty behaviour but we are awaiting practical steps by the United States," Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told Reuters.
  • "The Iranian nation has shown that it can forget hasty behaviour but we are awaiting practical steps by the United States," Aliakbar Javanfekr, an aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told Reuters. "The Obama administation so far has just talked," he added, calling for Obama to make "fundamental changes in his policy towards Iran".
  • In an unusually swift reaction to Obama's overture, presidential aide Javanfekr said Iran welcomed "the interest of the American government to settle differences". But he said the Obama administration "should realise its previous mistakes and make an effort to amend them." "By fundamentally changing its behaviour America can offer us a friendly hand," he told Reuters."Unlimited sanctions which still continue and have been renewed by the United States are wrong and need to be reviewed." Javanfekr singled out US backing for Israel, Iran's main enemy in the region, saying that: "Supporting Israel is not a friendly gesture."
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  • Obama has already expressed a readiness to have face-to-face diplomatic contacts with Tehran, a major shift from former President George W. Bush's policy of trying to isolate a country he once branded part of an "axis of evil".
  • Mohammad Hassan Khani, assistant professor of international relations at Tehran's Imam Sadiq University, described Obama's appeal as a positive gesture but noted it came only a week after the extension of US economic sanctions. "This is somehow conflicting and making people here confused," he said. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has demanded Washington say sorry for decades of "crimes" against the Islamic Republic. Tehran also says it cannot let down its guard as long as US troops are posted on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts have said that Iran is setting tough conditions for dialogue with the United States to buy time for its ponderous and opaque decision-making process, which is facing a dilemma on whether or not to open up.
  • European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he hoped Iran would pay close attention to Obama's appeal. "I hope that that will open a new chapter in relations with Iran," he told reporters before going into an EU summit. To stress the seriousness of Obama's overture, the White House distributed the videotape with Farsi subtitles and posted it on its website to coincide with Iranian observance of the ancient festival of Nowruz, celebrating the arrival of spring. But his appeal was not shown nor mentioned on Iran's main 2pm state television news, although it was reported by Iranian news agencies including the official agency IRNA.
Pedro Gonçalves

At opposite ends of Tehran's great avenue, the two Irans gathered | World news | The Gu... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...n-protesters-violence-election

Iran Iran Elections 2009

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 17 Jun 09 - Cached
  • "What you're seeing is the result of 30 years of pressure and strangling," said Hossein Rahmati, a 68-year-old carpet seller wearing an old-fashioned 1980s suit to attend the march. "Iran is like a dam about to burst."
  • "My son was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war. I don't want to lose our Islam. We did not participate in 1979, in the revolution, to have this kind of freedom that Mousavi supporters claim they want."We don't want the freedom they want. Ahmadinejad is a courageous president. There was not any rigging in Friday's election. What's happening now is just [being influenced] by foreigners."
  • Tehran was a city literally divided yesterday as rival rallies for incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his defeated centrist challenger Mousavi took over either end of Vali Asr Avenue, the city's north-south spine.
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  • In the first official ­confirmation, state radio also reported that seven people had been killed at the end of Monday when state militia appeared to open fire on demonstrators bent on breaking into a building.It was feared this rally of Ahmadinejad supporters would result in further deadly clashes between ordinary ­Iranians. But violence was avoided, to begin with at least, after the Mousavi campaign rescheduled its mass meeting to a northern district of Tehran and an hour later.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran says Obama sweet talk not enough for Muslims | World | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...idUKTRE55319W20090604

Iran US Israel Ali Khamenei Obama

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jun 09 - Cached
  • "The nations of this part of the world ... deeply hate America because during many years they have seen violence, military interference, rights violations, discrimination ... from America," Khamenei said in a televised speech. "Even if they give sweet and beautiful talks to the Muslim nation ... that will not create a change," said Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure with the final say on all matters of state. "Nothing will change with speeches and slogans."
  • He also called Israel, which Iran does not recognise, a "cancerous tumour in the heart" of the Muslim world.
  • "If you (Muslims) see that the Western world is talking more softly to you it is the result of public awareness and resistance in the Islamic world," Khamenei said.
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  • "The Iranian nation has repeatedly announced that it does not want nuclear weapons ... keeping nuclear arms would create a big danger and trouble and even if they pay us we do not want it," he said. Khamenei said the United States had occupied two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, under the pretext of fighting terrorism. "The terrorists kill one, two or ten people ... but you kill 100 or 150 people," he said, referring to a rising civilian death toll as foreign and Afghan troops battle Taliban insurgents.
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