Posted on 11/07/2005 4:53:44 PM PST by DoctorZIn
Top News Story
An Excerpt:
Bush's Great Middle East Gamble
Reuel Marc Gerecht,The Weekly Standard:
Ahmadinejad, who is an unvarnished revolutionary, makes even the Europeans blanch (they still won't support sanctions, but they do blanch). The Iranian president's recently expressed desire to wipe Israel off the map was a vivid reminder that Iran's ruling elite are still, on the important issues, faithful children of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Ahmadinejad is, of course, fundamentally no different from former President Mohammad Khatami, who loathed Israel as only a very left-wing cleric can, or Iran's leader, Ali Khamenei, who often gives the impression that he's memorized every single line of the Persian edition of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is in the West probably the most misunderstood cleric in the Islamic Republic. For the Europeans, and some in the Bush administration, Rafsanjani was the white-turbaned hope, the realpolitician-pragmatist who would save the West from a showdown over Iran's nuclear-weapons program. In reality, he is the true father of Iran's nuclear-bomb program, an overlord for the Iranian terrorism that struck Europe in the 1980s and '90s, and quite possibly one of the dark princes behind the domestic assassination campaign of Iranian liberals that began in the late 1990s. Concerning Israel, Rafsanjani has never given any indication that he differs with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group Rafsanjani has always supported: Israelis are best when dead.
Which brings us back to where we were two years ago: Are we willing to use military force to back up a nuclear counterproliferation regime against a state with a long record in terrorism, whose ruling elite is probably the most anti-American on earth? If we are not, then nuclear counterproliferation is effectively over. Iran's ruling clergy has enormous tenacity and a sixth sense for weakness (that's how they downed the shah). Unfortunately, the EU-3 negotiations have left us looking increasingly weak. This could change if the EU-3 could at least bluff the clerical regime into believing that they might consider draconian sanctions--but this seems very unlikely. The only real bright spot on the horizon is Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the possibility of a Shiite-led democracy just across the border. Ahmadinejad's election appears to have shaken Tehran's establishment. The new president, unlike the old, appears to be an unreconstructed socialist, who might actually make Iran's dirigiste economy even worse. This is no mean achievement with oil prices sky-high--we should, of course, wish him well.
The only way Iran is going to get better is for it to get a lot worse--and Ahmadinejad may just possibly be the man to galvanize a broad-based opposition to the regime. Right now, he and Sistani are the only hopes we've got for convulsions and evolution inside Iran's clerical class. If the Bush administration were wise, it would start to speak about religious freedom in Iran and the ruling clergy's oppression of the more traditional clerics of the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. If the Bush administration were serious, it would batter the CIA until it began the slow and difficult process of trying to make contact with the anti-Khamenei forces among Iran's mullahs. In all probability, irreversible evolution or regime crackup will be driven by clerical dissent, not by Iranian liberals, progressives, or others with whom counterrevolutionary American-Iranian expatriates are comfortable.
- SMCCDI reported that hundreds of protesters clashed with Islamic regime's security forces once again after a soccer game.
- Dexter Filkins, The New York Times reported that Ahmad Chalabi met with senior Iranian leaders here on Saturday in what appeared to be an effort to distance himself from their Islamist government.
- Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting reported that Russian Ambassador to Iran Alexander Sadonikov said that the deepening relations between the two nations of Iran and Russia could solve or at least minimize political problems.
- Roee Nahmias, Ynetnews reported that in a leaflet published by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades expressed their identification with Ahmadinejad.
- Reuters reported that the EU foreign ministers will review the bloc's policy of engagement with Iran.
- BBC News reported that ethnic unrest has broken out in Iran's Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan.
- And finally, Mark Dooley, Irish Independent said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes that he has been divinely ordained to bring about the final drama in the struggle for the world's soul.
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Very good article. I read this at the AEI website. This is the most important part, in my opinion...
"Are we willing to use military force to back up a nuclear counterproliferation regime against a state with a long record in terrorism, whose ruling elite is probably the most anti-American on earth? If we are not, then nuclear counterproliferation is effectively over... The only real bright spot on the horizon is Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the possibility of a Shiite-led democracy just across the border. Ahmadinejad's election appears to have shaken Tehran's establishment. The new president, unlike the old, appears to be an unreconstructed socialist, who might actually make Iran's dirigiste economy even worse. This is no mean achievement with oil prices sky-high--we should, of course, wish him well.
The only way Iran is going to get better is for it to get a lot worse--and Ahmadinejad may just possibly be the man to galvanize a broad-based opposition to the regime. Right now, he and Sistani are the only hopes we've got for convulsions and evolution inside Iran's clerical class. If the Bush administration were wise, it would start to speak about religious freedom in Iran and the ruling clergy's oppression of the more traditional clerics of the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. If the Bush administration were serious, it would batter the CIA until it began the slow and difficult process of trying to make contact with the anti-Khamenei forces among Iran's mullahs. In all probability, irreversible evolution or regime crackup will be driven by clerical dissent, not by Iranian liberals, progressives, or others with whom counterrevolutionary American-Iranian expatriates are comfortable."
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