Is Obama Lying When He Says The U.S. Wasn't Complicit In The Egyptian Coup?

Obama won't even acknowledge the military takeover from a legitimately-elected government in Egypt was a coup. And he claims the U.S. had nothing to do with it. U.S. allies and puppets in the region-- other than Israel-- aren't hiding their participation though. From a report by the right-wing Israeli military intelligence website, DEBKAfile:

The lightening coup which Wednesday, July 3, overthrew President Mohamed Morsi put in reverse gear for the first time the Obama administration’s policy of sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood movement as a moderate force for Arab rule and partner in its Middle East policies. DEBKAfile reveals that the Egyptian military could not have managed their clockwork coup without the aid of Saudi and Dubai intelligence and funding.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE threw their weight and purses behind Egypt’s generals aiming to put their first big spoke in the US-sponsored Arab Revolt (or Spring), after they failed to hold the tide back in Libya, Egypt and thus far Syria.

...The coup leader, Defense Minister and army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, had two more Saudi-Gulf commitments in his pocket, say DEBKAfile's Middle East sources:

1. Should the Obama administration cut off the annual US aid allocation of $1.3 billion, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would make up the military budget’s shortfall;

2. The Saudis, UAE and other Gulf nations, such as Bahrain and Kuwait, would immediately start pumping out substantial funds to keep the Egyptian economy running. The Egyptian masses would be shown that in a properly managed economy, they could be guaranteed a minimal standard of living and need not go hungry as many did under Muslim Brotherhood rule.

According to our sources, the Saudis and the UAE pledged to match the funds Qatar transferred to the Muslim Brotherhood’s coffers in Cairo in the past year, amounting to the vast sum of $13 billion.

This explains President Barack Obama’s caution Thursday morning, July 4, in his expression of deep concern over the ousting of the Egyptian president and the suspension of its constitution. He urged the military to restore government to civilian hands-- without accusing them outright of a coup d’etat-- and to “avoid arresting President Mosi and his supporters.”

...The removal of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt has far-reaching ramifications for Israel. In the immediate term, it gives Israel some security relief-- especially, easing the dangers posed from Sinai to its southern regions. The radical Palestinian Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot which rules the Gaza Strip, has suffered the most damaging political and military setback in its history with the loss of its parent and patron in Cairo.

DEBKA is a mouthpiece for the Israeli intelligence community and its not always easy to read between the lines and understand what they're pushing and what they're hiding. Over the weekend, though, David Kirkpatrick at the NY Times filed a report from Cairo that made it crystal clear that Obama's claims that the U.S. wasn't involved with the coup or putsch or whatever he wants to call it are blatantly false. When an Arab foreign minister called Morsi with a final offer before the tanks rolled out of their barracks, Morsi sent his response-- a rejection of the terms-- to Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador and Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser. The State Department told the Times it would have no comment on the report.

Some people couldn't help recalling how the British and American intelligence services orchestrated-- and paid for-- populist street protests in Tehran in 1953 when they wanted to justify a coup to overthrow the popular government led by the very independent-minded Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. The CIA paid Iranian Organized Crime to set the coup right when it foundered on the first day causing the weak American client, the Shah, to flee the country. Take a look at Bill Moyers' report for PBS in 1987 about what happened in Iran... and how it turned out:



Now, back to Kirkpatrick's report in the Times:

The abrupt end of Egypt’s first Islamist government was the culmination of months of escalating tensions and ultimately futile American efforts to broker a solution that would keep Mr. Morsi in his elected office, at least in name, if not in power.

A new alliance of youthful activists and Mubarak-era elites was driving street protests. A collapsing economy put new pressure on Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, the once-outlawed Islamist group that had finally come to power after the ouster of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. And an alliance between Mr. Morsi and the nation’s top generals was gradually unraveling.

Senior Brotherhood officials said Mr. Morsi’s adamant response to the last proposal-- a combination of idealism and stubbornness-- epitomized his rule. It may also have doomed his presidency.

As long ago as the fall, he had spoken fatalistically of the possibility of his own ouster, his senior advisers said. “Do you think this is the peak?” he asked a visibly anxious aide during his first major political crisis. “No,” Mr. Morsi said with resignation, “The peak will be when you see my blood flowing on the floor.”

That was just after what his advisers and Muslim Brotherhood leaders now acknowledge was the defining blunder of his one-year presidency. After Mubarak-appointed judges dissolved the Islamist-led Parliament, Mr. Morsi in November declared his own authority above the courts until a constitutional convention could finish its work.

...Through it all, Mr. Morsi never believed the generals would turn on him as long as he respected their autonomy and privileges, his advisers said. He had been the Muslim Brotherhood’s designated envoy for talks with the ruling military council after the ouster of Mr. Mubarak. His counterpart on the council was Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi.

The Brotherhood was naturally suspicious of the military, its historical opponent, but General Sisi cultivated Mr. Morsi and other leaders, one of them said, including going out of his way to show that he was a pious Muslim. “That is how the relationship between the two of them started,” said a senior Brotherhood official close to Mr. Morsi. “He trusted him.”

The two grew so close that Mr. Morsi caught his advisers by surprise when he promoted General Sisi to defense minister last summer as part of a deal that persuaded the military for the first time to let the elected president take full control of his government. Mr. Morsi kept relations with the military as his “personal file,” and worked out the deal without consulting his aides, one adviser said.

...Morsi insisted to his aides that he remained fully confident that General Sisi would not interfere, almost until the end of his presidency. He was the last one in the inner circle to acknowledge last week that General Sisi was ousting them.

United States officials had repeatedly urged Mr. Morsi to compromise with the opposition and include it in government. In December, President Obama met with Mr. Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, in the Oval Office to deliver that message, Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. At one point, they said, Mr. Obama offered to intervene with the opposition leaders, either Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat, or Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mr. Mubarak. But Mr. Morsi declined.

Embassy officials tried to act as intermediaries, Morsi advisers said. They said Secretary of State John Kerry suggested naming Mr. ElBaradei as prime minister. But this year, Ms. Patterson pointedly told Mr. Morsi’s aides that some in Washington were running out of patience with her defense of Egypt’s new Islamist leaders, his advisers said.

By June, the economy was sputtering, with gas shortages and blackouts. Young organizers tapped into the growing discontent with a petition drive calling for Mr. Morsi’s removal, and it was set to culminate in a demonstration on the anniversary of his inauguration, June 30.

The first alarms went off in Mr. Morsi’s inner circle on June 21, when General Sisi issued a public statement warning that the growing “split in society” between Mr. Morsi’s supporters and opponents compelled the military “to intervene.”

Mr. Morsi was given no warning, his advisers said. But when Mr. Morsi called the general, General Sisi told the president that “it was to satisfy some of his men” and that “it was nothing more than an attempt to absorb their anger,” one of Mr. Morsi’s advisers said. “So even after that first statement, the president didn’t think a coup was imminent.”

The day before the protests, General Sisi called Mr. Morsi to press him for a package of concessions, including a new cabinet. But Mr. Morsi refused, saying he needed to consult first with his Islamist coalition.

When the protests came last Sunday, demonstrators were energized by the general’s suggestions of a possible intervention. Millions poured into the streets.

Inside Mr. Morsi’s office. Mr. Morsi’s team checked the official crowd count, sent its own observers, monitored the gathering on Google Earth, and even compared the numbers of mobile phone signals in various public squares, one adviser said, and mistakenly concluded that the pro-Morsi rally in Cairo outnumbered the protests against him.

“We felt a sense of relief,” the adviser said.

The next day, on Monday, General Sisi gave political leaders a 48-hour ultimatum to reach a compromise. A shaken Morsi adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at the time the president’s team considered it “a military coup.”

Mr. Morsi’s advisers had meetings with Ms. Patterson and her deputy as well as a phone call with Ms. Rice, the national security adviser. Mr. Morsi’s advisers argued that ousting the president would be “a long term disaster” for Egypt and the Arab world because people would “lose faith in democracy.” They said it would set off an explosion in the streets that they could not control.

And they argued that the United States was implicated: “Nobody who knows Egypt is going to believe a coup could go forward without a green light from the Americans.”

At a meeting with General Sisi at 2 p.m. the next day, Mr. Morsi’s advisers said that they had their coalition’s blessing to accept the earlier concessions the general had suggested before the protest.

But when the general returned to the Republican Guard building at 6 p.m., he said “the opposition” had balked, the advisers said.

Mr. Morsi’s team did not know who the general actually consulted and the young protest leaders and some other opposition leaders said they did not know either. But that night Mr. Morsi delivered a fiery address denouncing his opponents as traitorous conspirators.

General Sisi later publicly cited the speech as a turning point in his decision to act.

On Wednesday, the generals convened a four-hour meeting at military headquarters with protest and opposition party leaders. The head of Mr. Morsi’s Islamist party, now jailed, was invited but did not attend.

In Washington, officials stepped back and said little.

This is going to be a real disaster in the long run, probably as bad as the one the CIA triggered in Iran in 1953. I'll go to my grave glad I didn't vote for Obama in 2012. Congress is already splitting between those who want to keep giving away billions of taxpayers dollars to Egypt's military and those who want to obey the law and cut off the aid.

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We Need A Nobel Peace Prize Winner In The White House-- One Who Earned The Award

No one knows exactly why Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize before he had done anything other than run for president as a vaguely pro-peace candidate, unless it was just the Nobel committee trying to express their relief that Bush was out of the White House. I wonder how embarrassed they are about their selection now?

So what's new on the peace front? Well... Iran sent 4,000 Revolutionary Guard troops to Syria to bolster Assad. And Putin warned David Cameron that arming the Syrian rebels would be a mistake.

Putin, who has made no secret of his opposition to US president Barack Obama's plans to send arms to the rebels, was unsparing when he was asked about previous comments by Cameron that those who armed the regime had "the blood of the children of Syria" on their hands.

"The blood is on the hands of both parties. There is always a question as to who is to blame for that. One should hardly back those who kill their enemies and eat their organs," he said, referring to an incident when a rebel fighter was filmed taking a bite out of an organ he had cut out of the body of a dead Syrian soldier.

"It is hardly in relation to the humanitarian and cultural values Europe has been professing for centuries."

Putin has also reacted sceptically to evidence produced by Britain, France and the US that the regime has used chemical weapons-- crossing Obama's "red line" for intervention.

And mixed up, sleazy little closet case Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was on Meet the Press (above) demanding Obama use cruise missiles to establish a No Fly Zone. But in the midst of all this dangerous war-talk, the Iranian people elected-- and pretty overwhelmingly-- a man who professes to be a moderate and who says he wants to establish normal relations with the West. Will Obama's response by a No Fly Zone? Vali Nasr at Foreign Policy thinks it would be a tragic missed opportunity if Obama does follow the clueless advice he's getting from Lindsey Graham, John McCain and other warmongers and Likudniks in Congress.

There is cautious optimism that popular support for moderation at the polls will translate into concessions at the negotiating table. Rowhani sent clear signals during the presidential campaign that if elected he would seek to end Iran's international isolation. Favoring engagement over resistance, he said, "We have no other option than moderation." That may well be the case, but a nuclear deal is still far from certain, and in fact this June surprise could confound U.S. strategy in dealing with Iran.

...The dilemma for Washington is that, as a reformist, Rowhani is an outsider, weaker than Ahmadinejad when it comes to selling any compromise with the West to Iran's suspicious conservative establishment. Rowhani's electoral mandate gives him room to maneuver, but that is not enough to shield him from the backlash that would follow any rebuff at the negotiating table. So he will likely wait for a signal of American willingness to make serious concessions before he risks compromise.

For the past eight years, U.S. policy has relied on pressure-- threats of war and international economic sanctions-- rather than incentives to change Iran's calculus. Continuing with that approach will be counterproductive. It will not provide Rowhani with the cover for a fresh approach to nuclear talks, and it could undermine the reformists generally by showing they cannot do better than conservatives on the nuclear issue.

Washington must realize that its success in rallying the international community to isolate Iran was due in no small part to Ahmadinejad's bombastic style. In denying the Holocaust, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, and deliberately ratcheting up tensions with the West, he made it easy to paint Iran as an existential threat to Israel and a menace to the international community. Washington will find it difficult to make the same case when Iran has elected a reformist president who has publicly repudiated his predecessor. Nor will the United States be able to as easily threaten war-- or inflict economic pain-- on a country where half the population has voted for positive change.

Rowhani's victory is not regime change in Iran-- but it is a game-changer. The supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards continue to control all the levers of power. However, the election result has altered the face of Iran, enough to put to question the continued viability of American policy. There is now both the opportunity and the expectation that Washington will adopt a new approach to strengthen reformists and give Rowhani the opening that he needs if he is to successfully argue the case for a deal with the P5+1.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has relied on economic sanctions-- backed by veiled threat of war-- to get Iran to agree to a nuclear deal. It has offered Iran little in exchange for giving up its nuclear program, in effect hoping that Iran would capitulate. No Iranian president, conservative or reformist, would accept that outcome, or survive the political firestorm it would unleash at home.

To take advantage of Rowhani's victory and break the logjam over nuclear negotiations, Washington has to put on the table incentives it has thus far been unwilling to contemplate. It will have to offer Iran sanctions relief in exchange for agreeing to Western demands. At a minimum, the United States would like Iran to accept IAEA demands for intrusive inspection of its nuclear facilities; cap its uranium enrichment at 5 percent, and ship out of the country its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent. Iran in turn wants a formal recognition of its right to enrich uranium and, more immediately, the lifting of crippling sanctions on its financial institutions and oil exports. Ahmadinejad is faulted in Iran for wrecking the country's economy. Populism, mismanagement, and international isolation have combined to put Iran's economy into a downward spiral. Between 2009 and 2013, real GDP growth has fallen from 4 percent to 0.4 percent, unemployment has risen to 17 percent, and inflation has grown to 22 percent-- and those are official numbers, which tend to downplay the gravity of the economic crisis. It is estimated that 40 percent of Iranians live below the poverty line. Reformists will grow in strength if they are able to show that they can reverse that trend by at least getting the West for the first time to offer negotiating away specific sanctions.

The Obama administration has spurned the possibility of sanctions relief because escalating economic pressure on Iran is popular in America, while the appearance of conceding to Iran is not. The White House, which has tightly controlled Iran policy, has thus far seen serious diplomacy with Iran as politically dangerous-- a risky gambit with a low chance of success and a high cost for failure. President Obama does not want confrontation with Iran, but he has also been unwilling to assume the risk -- and spend the necessary political capital with Congress and the American public-- to pursue a diplomatic strategy. Staying the course-- relying on economic sanctions under the guise of exploring diplomacy-- has been the default strategy. This has had the added advantage of being the Bush administration's strategy, which means Republicans have been hard-pressed to oppose it.

But a reformist victory in Iran should give the administration greater room to maneuver. The American public will be more open to a new approach to Iran now, and Rowhani's election should give Congress pause in further intensifying sanctions. Washington need not lift any sanctions yet, but simply being willing to discuss the possibility in exchange for Iranian concessions would be a sea change in the nuclear negotiations. Failing that, nothing will change in the nuclear impasse and the reformist moment could just be that. The ball is in Washington's court.

An aside: if you're sickened by Lindsey Graham's constant warmongering and would like to see him out of the Senate next year, please help Democrat Jay Stamper defeat him. This afternoon, Jay told us "I wish I could say I'm surprised at Lindsey Graham's desire to establish a cruise missile enforced no fly zone in Syria. But it's just another example of Graham's guiding philosophy of war as a first resort. And it's consistent with Graham's strategy of incrementally escalating the conflict to the point where US troops can be deployed. I believe his ultimate goal isn't even a war with Syria but a wider conflict involving Iran. Thanks to Graham and other voices for war, we're now in the position of backing radical Islamic rebels in a proxy war that involves not just Syria and Iran but Russia as well."

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Iran, Syria, Obama-Bush and... Alan Grayson

If you read Ken's preview of the Iranian presidential election Friday night, you probably got the impression Hasan Rowhani was the guy we should be rooting for. By this morning he seemed to have a wide lead in the vote count, 51% against the 15% of his closest rival (hardliner Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, the Iranian equivalent of Ted Cruz or Louie Gohmert)-- enough to avoid a run-off next week. USA Today's coverage was even more upbeat about Rowhani than Ken was.

The man poised to take the Iranian presidency is a moderate-conservative known for his negotiating skill over the country's nuclear weapons program and a reformist some hardliners in Iran previously saw as too liberal and conciliatory, analysts say.

As a result, analysts predict Hasan Rowhani, who took a wide lead in early returns from Friday's election, might take the country's top political post and bring hope to the country's liberal classes but not wield any real power, especially on the nuclear issue.

"A president Rowhani would probably try to persuade the supreme leader that a deal on the nuclear issue would be in the interest of the Islamic Republic, especially if Rowhani believes that it is the only way to avoid a war," said Bruno Tertrais, a senior researcher at Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique (Foundation for Strategic Research) in Paris. "But (Supreme Leader) Khamenei will remain the ultimate decision-maker."

...In a sea of hardliners, a victory for Rowhani would be a win for reformist sentiment in Iran, observers say. During his candidacy, he attracted thousands to his rallies over his calls for an end to the repressive atmosphere prevailing in Iran-- including the lifting of economic sanctions that have crippled the economy and led to a spike in food and fuel prices-- and his pledge to open the door to more individual liberties and better relations with the West.

"We won't let the past eight years go on," Rowhani told crowds attending a pre-election rally. "(President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration) brought sanctions for the country and they are proud of it. I'll pursue a policy of reconciliation and peace, we will also reconcile with the world."

Still, even as his words lean liberal, Rowhani's background is firmly based in the political establishment of Iran.

A cleric, Rowhani first studied religion before graduating with a law degree in 1972, eventually earning a master's degree in law at Caledonian University in Glasgow, Scotland. He was swept up in the 1979 Iran's Islamic Revolution as a firm opponent to the shah and became an ally and part of the inner circle of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, serving in various roles in the government following Khomeini's ascension to power.

Regardless, some Iranians hold out hope that he will fulfill his promises due to his background as a skilled negotiator and conciliator. Rowhani served as head of the Supreme National Security Council during the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997. Following that, he was the country's top nuclear negotiator with the West from 2003 to 2005 during the administration of reformist leader Mohammad Khatami as the U.S. and other European allies grew concerned over Iran's nuclear program. He negotiated a temporary suspension in Iran's uranium enrichment activities.

When hardliner Ahmadinejad-- who is barred from seeking a third term-- took office in 2005, Rowhani resigned after arguments with the new leader.

Since then, Rowhani has remained in the background of reformist causes until earlier this year when the Guardian Council approved his candidacy and he earned the backing of Khatami and Rafsanjani who represent the liberal strain of Iranian politics.

Some Iranians remain hopeful that a Rowhani win could sway Iran to become more open and liberal.

A hopeful sign? Not everyone agrees. Alireza Nourizadeh is an Iranian scholar based in London. He warns that Rowhani "has always pretended to be a moderate, played the game really well and convinced voters he is a reformist by promising a different kind of conversation and behavior in the future. But I know this man-- he's the same man that served in the Supreme National Military Council for 24 years and called for the execution of student protesters (during the 1999 protests)." If the Supreme Leader allows Rowhani to become president-- and he did allow him to run-- then his first big test is sitting on his doorstep already: Syria... with a deadly little note from Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Hussein Obama.

I'm not going to start hyperventilating or speculating about Obama's motives or ambivalence. According to the Washington Post, though, the decision to involve the U.S. in a war to topple Assad, Iran's ally in Syria, was made some time ago, and the "evidence"-- probably trumped up evidence-- was just the kind of bullshit excuse they were waiting for, like the nonsense the Bush Regime presented to the American people to justify toppling Saddam Hussein and invading and occupying Iraq.

President Obama’s decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels followed more than a year of internal debate over whether it was worth the dual risks of involving the United States in another war and seeing U.S. weapons fall into the hands of extremist groups among the rebels.

The White House said the final push came this week after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with “high certainty” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against the rebels.

But U.S. officials said that the determination to send weapons had been made weeks ago and that the chemical weapons finding provided fresh justification to act.

As Syrian government forces, with the help of Hezbollah and Iranian militias, began to turn the war in Assad’s favor after rebel gains during the winter, Obama ordered officials in late April to begin planning what weaponry to send and how to deliver it.

That decision effectively ended the lengthy disagreement among those in the White House-- primarily Obama’s political advisers-- who argued that providing arms would be a slippery slope to greater involvement, military leaders who said it would be too risky and expensive, and State Department officials who insisted that Syria and the region would collapse in chaos if action were not taken, officials said.

If you're wondering why many people who are not the Three Stooges (John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar) argue that Obama's excuses about starting a new war are pure bullshit, keep in mind that when Bush was pulling the same magic trick, it was McClatchy-- not the cheerleaders at the NY Times and Washington Post-- who saw through them and called them out. And McClatchy is reporting the distinct smell of another rat.

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”

Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.

“In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was  taped by someone, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t see videos, that we don’t see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected,” he said.

Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

White House foreign policy adviser Benjamin Rhodes gave dates and places for the alleged attacks-- March 19 in the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal; April 13 in the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud; May 14 in Qasr Abu Samrah in Homs province, and May 23 in Adra, east of Damascus. But he provided no details of the fighting that was taking place or the number of dead in each incident. He said the United States estimated that 100 to 150 had died in all.

“Ultimately, without more information, we are left with the need to trust the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community in arriving at its ‘high confidence’ judgment,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said in an email. While he said that “my guess is they have it right,” he also noted that the White House statement was “carefully and prudentially worded” and acknowledged the lack of a “continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin.”

“It does not eliminate all doubt in my mind,” he said.

Philip Coyle, a senior scientist at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, said that without hard, public evidence, it’s difficult for experts to assess the validity of the administration’s statement. He added that from what is known, what happened doesn’t look like a series of sarin attacks to him.

“Without blood samples, it’s hard to know,” he said. “But I admit I hope there isn’t a blood sample, because I’m still hopeful that sarin has not been used.”

Even a proponent of the United States providing military assistance to the rebels raised doubts about the possible motive for announcing the chemical weapons conclusion.

In a passionate argument for U.S. involvement in Syria, Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote Friday that “the ‘discovery’ that Syria used chemical weapons might be a political ploy.” The phrase was in an article that described strong strategic and humanitarian reasons for involvement in the crisis, particularly the recent involvement of the Lebanese group Hezbollah on the side of Assad.

I know I promised to not hyperventilate but I just want to say one more thing about this catastrophic blunder Obama is making. The folks making the case that we need to provide arms to help prevent more deaths are virtually all bloodthirsty warmongers who would like nothing more than to see every Syrian dead. Likud-backers like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Eliot Engel. and if you think you can ignore what President Eisenhower said about how the Military Industrial Complex would take over the country if we weren't vigilant (which we haven't been), I want to beg you to watch this video of Alan Grayson on the floor of Congress Friday afternoon. Big Brother flipped out. (By the way, most Members of Congress have NOT read the reports exposed by Glenn Greenwald and are virtually clueless about what the NSA has been up to-- yes most members of our watchdog Congress we're counting on to keep 'em on the straight and narrow.)

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Who was who in the Iranian presidential election? (UPDATE: And the winner is . . .)

Was Saeed Jalili, described in a February Reuters head as "rigid ideologue close to Khamenei," the Supreme Leader's guy in today's Iranian presidential election? Nobody seems to know.

"Where the Supreme Leader is concerned, [Mohammad Baqer] Qalibaf and [Hassan] Rowhani have got to be the two least attractive candidates. Neither has the profile of an ideological true believer or an unquestioningly faithful lieutenant. Khamenei has had enough of Presidents who challenge him from bases of power of their own. But to sideline these two relatively popular figures in favor of a dour foreign-policy bureaucrat would be a hard sell to the Iranian people. Iranian elections may not be transparent exercises in popular sovereignty, but neither are they decided by naked diktat. It will be interesting to see how this election reconciles the drives for legitimacy and for unity at the top."

-- Laura Secor, in a newyorker.com blogpost,
"Iran's Choice on Election Day"

by Ken

Possibly there are readers who, like me, have been sitting out the Iranian presidential election. It's not as if there's anything we can do about it, or for that matter any great likelihood that the winner, whoever he is, stands much chance of changing anything, with overall control of the country's affairs still pretty much at the mercy of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. But as Laura Secor, who has been covering Iran for The New Yorker, having visited since 2004, writes in her newyorker.com blogpost "Iran's Choice on Election Day":

There really is no such thing as a dull election in Iran. This alone is testament to the incurable persistence of dissent, or of fractiousness, within Iran's inner circle of power; to the relentless optimism of its voting public; to an irreducible flexibility at the core of the Islamic system, which bedevils those who would close its ranks.

About as much as I had gleaned about the election before reading Secor's piece was that the four candidates are mostly foreign-policy guys, and are all hard-liners. Well, that appears to be serious oversimplification. There are, it appears, two candidates who, as suggested in the quote above (the conclusion of the piece), aren't likely to ease the Supreme Leader's digestion. One of them, Hassan Rowhani, even has the support of two former presidents who are not at all favorites of Khamenei: the famously reformist Mohammad Khatami and the more distantly remembered Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was chairman of Iran's parliament from 1980 to 1989 and then succeeded (the not-yet-supreme) Khamenei as president. Khamenei is presumed to have been involved in the disqualification of Rafsanjani from running in this election.

HASSAN ROWHANI

Rowhani happens to have occupied the position now occupied by one of the front-runners, Saeed Jalili, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council ("the country's foreign-policy-making body"), from 1989 through 2005, and could hardly have approached the job more differently.

[H]is flexible approach was the one that Jalili reversed. Under Rowhani's stewardship, Iran had suspended uranium enrichment, a concession that was roundly criticized by hard-liners. Rowhani is a pragmatic figure, associated, above all, with former President Rafsanjani, who was himself disqualified for running in this election. Now Rafsanjani and another former President, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, have united behind Rowhani, throwing him the support of disaffected urban youth, and persuading another reformist candidate to withdraw in Rowhani's favor. Although his record on civil liberties is thin, Rowhani now carries that agenda into the race, along with the frustrated hopes of the vanquished Green Movement, whose leaders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, remain under house arrest.

MOHAMMAD BAQER QALIBAF

"The candidate to watch for my money," Secor writes, "is the one nobody is talking about."

Unlike the others, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf does not come out of the foreign-policy establishment but out of the military; he served in the Iran-Iraq War and, later, as commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Air Force. Since 2005, he has been the mayor of Tehran. It is no accident that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held the same job. Ever since 1999, when the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami instituted popular elections for city and provincial councils, the municipality of Tehran has been a semi-independent political machine. The reformists, who held the city from 1999 to 2003, never managed to harness it to their ambitions. But the previously unknown faction of conservatives who succeeded them propelled their mayor, Ahmadinejad, to the Presidency, peopled his government, and gave the more traditional conservative establishment a run for its money.

Qalibaf has now had eight years at the capital's helm. He is a hard-liner with a security background, he's proud of his role in violently suppressing street demonstrations, and he's credited by his allies with efficiency. He has executive experience and close ties to the Revolutionary Guard. As a result, unlike Jalili or Velayati, Qalibaf brings his own money, popular appeal, and institutional support, most significantly from within the Revolutionary Guard. Unlike Rowhani, he does not carry the baggage of two former Presidents whom the Supreme Leader has worked tirelessly, and at cost, to exclude from the scene.

AS FOR THE FRONT-RUNNERS . . .

The curious thing is that no one seems to know which of the two, Jalili and Ali Akbar Velayati (who was minister of foreign affairs for 16 years, under both Khamenei and Rafsanjani, and "has been a close foreign-policy adviser to the Supreme Leader"), is favored by Khamenei. In a country where the leader has that much power, naturally a lot of people have wanted to know.

JALILI, Secor writes,

is the most rigid and ideological candidate in this Presidential race. Years ago, a European diplomat based in Tehran confided to me that he and his colleagues found Jalili impossible. You couldn't have a conversation with the guy, the diplomat said; he just recited positions as though he were reading from a script. This was no accident. Jalili, who is forty-seven, assumed the nuclear portfolio in 2007, and presided over a retrenchment of Iranian foreign policy under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Conciliatory gestures toward the West had availed Iran little, proponents of the new strategy argued, with some justification. Iran would do better to adopt a tougher stance. Kayhan, a newspaper associated with the office of the Supreme Leader, has praised Jalili, calling him a "super Hezbollahi," which is something many read as an endorsement. Curiously, though, Kayhan's repeated calls for conservatives to drop out of the race and unite behind a single candidate have gone unheeded.

VELAYATI, however, had been "pegged as the Leader's pick and as the odds-on favorite to carry the election," which left many observers puzzled by Kayhan's virtual endorsement of Jalili. As foreign minister, Velayati negotiated the end of the war with Iraq, and in his recent incarnation as a foreign-policy adviser to Khamenei, he has been --

so trusted, in fact, that for decades journalists leaned in closely when he spoke, hoping to read the Leader's intentions. In a debate this week, Velayati pounced on Jalili, accusing him of lecturing his European counterparts as though he were teaching a philosophy class and failing to move the ball even an inch. What, exactly, had Jalili accomplished in the past eight years, apart from bringing sanctions down on Iranians' heads? How could he hope to wring anything from the Americans without showing the slightest flexibility himself?

If this suggests some indecision about foreign policy at the higher policy-making levels, this is in fact what Secor herself divined when she covered the Iranian parliamentary elections last year. "A question I brought with me was whether there was a debate over the direction of Iranian foreign policy within the Islamic Republic's inner circle." And now here was an open rift between the two leading candidates in a presidential debate.

Of course, even with major foreign-policy issues confronting Iran (e.g., its nuclear policy and how to deal with the Syrian crisis), the president has very little say, since foreign-policy is exclusively the Supreme Leader's preserve. However, as Secor writes, "The choice of President is, at the very least, an indicator of the direction policy will take."

I don't know whether we'll know the election result by the time this appears. But whenever we do, at least now I will have some idea of what just happened.


UPDATE: AND THE WINNER IS . . . ROWHANI

From washingtonpost.com:

Moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani wins Iran’s presidential vote

By Jason Rezaian

TEHRAN — Hassan Rouhani, a moderate Shiite cleric known as one of Iran’s leading foreign policy experts, has won the election to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Islamic Republic’s next president, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar announced Saturday evening.

With results from all the precincts in, Rouhani had won 50.7 percent of the votes, avoiding a runoff, Mohammad-Najjar said.

The mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, came a distant second, with 16.6 percent of the vote. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s hard-line nuclear negotiator, came third with 11.4 percent. A handful of other conservative candidates fared poorly.

After a surge of support in the final week of campaigning from Iranians who did not plan to vote, Rouhani won a surprising decisive majority in a field of six candidates considered loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. . . .

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