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BY all accounts, Thursday's talks between Iran and the 5+1 group of major powers represent a diplomatic coup for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he faces continued political unrest at home. Before the talks, Ahmadinejad's opponents -- among them former Prime Minister Mir-Hussein Mussavi, the man who believes he won last June's presidential election -- claimed that Tehran's stance on the nuclear issue was driving the country toward "sanctions and war." Ahmadinejad had countered the claim by promising to lock the 5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) into "long and well-planned talks" with an agenda...

Throughout last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama lambasted the Bush administration for fighting “the wrong war” in Iraq and ignoring the right one in Afghanistan. Iraq was a “war of choice,” Obama claimed, while Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.” Repeatedly, he claimed that, if elected president, he’d unveil a new “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.” In March, in one of those solemn-looking occasions in which he excels, Obama said that the new strategy, which he did not elaborate, was already in place. He speeded up the troop buildup ordered by the Bush administration, and a few weeks later named...

Throughout last year’s presidential campaign, Barack Obama lambasted the Bush administration for fighting “the wrong war” in Iraq and ignoring the right one in Afghanistan. Iraq was a “war of choice,” Obama claimed, while Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.” Repeatedly, he claimed that, if elected president, he’d unveil a new “stronger, smarter and comprehensive strategy.”

HAS Iranian President Mah moud Ahmadinejad won his first diplomatic victory since his disputed re-election in June? Last Thursday, Tehran presented what it calls "an updated package" as the basis for fresh talks with the G+1 (the UN Security Council's five permanent members, plus Germany). On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley called the package "unacceptable" but added that America would seek "an early meeting" and give the Islamic Republic until year's end to make up its mind. On Monday, Iran announced that fresh talks would start on Oct. 1. The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that European Union...

July 27, 2009, 0:00 a.m. End of DiscussionIn Iran, there is a growing consensus that it is time to move beyond Khomeinism. By Amir Taheri No one knows how the current Iranian insurrection, triggered by last month’s disputed presidential election, will end. However, one thing is already clear: The doctrine of walayat faqih (“government of the theologian�), the cornerstone of the Khomeinist system, is dead. The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini invented the doctrine to justify the claim that he drew his legitimacy from Allah and was accountable solely to Him. In practice, walayat faqih was supposed to work the...

When Iranians want to highlight someone's isolation, they use the proverb: "Ali is left with his pond!" The proverb was on many minds last Monday during a live telecast of ceremonies in which Ali Khamenei, the "Supreme Guide" urged "the elite" to close ranks behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The cameras did their best to show that, in this instance at least, Ali was not alone at his pond. The "Supreme Guide" was surrounded by men in uniforms, sporting ferocious beards. There were a dozen or so African dignitaries in colorful tribal attires. (What they were doing there we never fond...

As the post-election crisis in Iran enters its third week, one thing is clear: the oxymoron that was the Islamic Republic is already dead. If the radical faction led by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, wins the power struggle, Iran will drop its “republican” pretensions to become an Islamic emirate or an imamate. But if the opposition wins, the theocratic aspect of the regime will end, allowing Iran to become a normal republic in which power belongs to the people. For 30 years, Iran has suffered from a split personality: trying to remain faithful to the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s ersatz...

AS Iranians mark another day of mourning for demonstrators killed by the Is lamist forces last week, protest-movement leaders are engaged in behind-the-scenes debates over strategy. Pointing to the diminishing size of the protest crowds in Tehran, some Khomeinist-regime apologists have already concluded that the protest movement is fizzling out. In fact, the movement has won a major victory by ending the myth that the regime controls "the street" through "the popular masses." The last 12 days have shown that the opposition can produce larger, more determined crowds. The only way the regime can regain control of "the street" is...

IS Iran replaying its revolution of 30 years ago? At first glance, there are many similarities between this revolt and the 1979 one. First, the streets of Tehran and other major cities have become the power struggle's principal arena. In 1979, a big part of Iranian society had lost all faith in institutional politics. The parliament was discredited, because it was composed of the members of a single party, Rastakhiz (Renaissance), set up by the shah. The Council of Ministers, headed by the prime minister, was dismissed as irrelevant if only because all power rested with the monarch. Because there...

BILLED as "unity prayers," yesterday's congregation at Tehran University's campus instead highlighted the deep divisions that are tearing apart the Khomeinist ruling elite. The gathering was supposed to reassert the authority of "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei and defuse the crisis triggered by the "re-election" of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And Khamenei did deploy his oratorical talents in a desperate appeal for calm -- yet his total support for Ahmadinejad indicated the regime's determination to rely on force rather than oratory to regain control. Khamenei went further, asserting that Ahmadinejad's views on "both domestic and foreign policies" are closer to his than...

THAT Iran's president, Mahmoud Ah madinejad, would win re-election was never in doubt. But the scale of the victory arranged for him has surprised even some of his friends. Whoever scripted the results made sure that Ahmadinejad won more votes than anyone in the 103-year history of elections in Iran. With almost 63 percent of the votes, Ahmadinejad is credited with twice as many votes as his closest rival, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. The turnout was also the highest ever -- put at 85 percent. The president won in every social category and age group and in every...

Less than three days after President Obama tried to woo Islamist forces with a major speech in Cairo, secular democratic forces in the Middle East won a dramatic victory in a crucial election in Lebanon. Two rival blocs faced off -- one pro-Iranian, one pro-Western.

PRESIDENT Obama's "ad dress to the Muslim world" was a masterwork of equivocation and political naiveté. Let's start with a sentence buried within his text -- possibly in hopes that few might notice. With it, Obama effectively accepts Iran's nuclear ambitions. "No single nation should pick and choose which nations should hold nuclear weapons," he said. He wasn't prepared to go further than warning that an Iranian bomb could mark the start of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Unlike his previous statements, the Cairo speech didn't include the threat of any action -- not even further sanctions -- against...

The new President's approach discourages change in Middle Eastern countries that need it most For the past week or so, the Middle East has been abuzz with speculation about Barack Obama's “historic address to the Muslim world” to be delivered in Cairo on Thursday. During his presidential campaign, Obama had promised to make such a move within his first 100 days at the White House. In the event, the first 100 days came and went without Obama delivering on his promise. Nevertheless, he granted his first interview as President to Saudi television and, later, made a speech at the Turkish...

There is that old saying that nature abhors a vacuum. That goes doubly so when it come to political influence. Since he became president, Barack Obama has set American Foreign policy back on its heels. He as announced a withdrawal from Iraq, a hopeless search for non-existent moderate Taliban, and his engagement with both Iran and Syria that is all carrot an no stick. Along with all that is his "down grade" of the world wide war against Islamist Terrorism. It just seems as if the United States is doing a retreat from the region. Where there is a retreat,...

IRAN is facing an "international conspiracy" to over throw the Khomeinist re gime with a "velvet revolution," the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) claimed yesterday. The latest mascot of the plotters is supposed to be Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota now charged with espionage in Tehran. A US citizen with an Iranian father and a Japanese mother, the 31-year-old Roxana has worked in Iran on and off for years as a freelance reporter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for Saberi's immediate release and safe return to the US. IRNA claims that the plot was first...

Obama’s Message to Muslims Called ‘Pathetic’ In his interview with a Saudi-owned TV channel on Tuesday, President Barack Obama referred to “an illusionary past” in the Muslim world that was in fact plagued by turmoil, a leading Middle Eastern expert declared. Amir Taheri, in a New York Post column headlined “Pathetic Message,” said Obama “looked to the past rather than the future” when he told an Al-Arabiya interviewer he wanted a return to “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” But 30 years ago, Taheri noted, American...

Early in 2007, as the American presidential campaign started to gather momentum, critics of Pres. George W. Bush’s War on Terror invented a scheme that allowed them to oppose the administration’s strategy while dodging charges of appeasement. Under that scheme, Iraq was presented as “the bad war” or, according to Sen. Barack Obama, “the wrong war, at the wrong time, and in the wrong place.” In contrast, Afghanistan was presented as “the good war,” the “just war,” or even “the necessary war.” The argument was that the war in Iraq was wrong because it had not been explicitly approved by...

Barack Obama has been toying with the idea of dialogue with the Islamic world for two years now - but he has yet to approach the idea of actually saying anything meaningful. At one point, his advisers talked of convening a White House summit with Muslim leaders. When that scheme was exposed as fanciful, they recommended that he attend the Islamic Summit Conference, convened once every three years. But that, too, has turned out to be problematic - so now they talking of plans for "a major address in an Islamic capital." But what does Obama wish to say in...

The Army of Muhammad is back. This was the message buzzing in radical Islamist circles yesterday as the world tried to absorb the shock of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, India's economic capital. While it is not yet clear which group was behind the attacks, it looks as if the perpetrators were trying to imitate the tactic of ghazwa, used by the Prophet against Meccan caravans in his decade-long campaign to seize control of the city. The tactic consists of surprise no-holds-barred attacks simultaneously launched against a caravan or settlement with the aim of demoralising the enemy and hastening his...

Is Barack Obama the "promised warrior" coming to help the Hidden Imam of Shiite Muslims conquer the world? The question has made the rounds in Iran since last month, when a pro-government Web site published a Hadith (or tradition) from a Shiite text of the 17th century. The tradition comes from Bahar al-Anvar (meaning Oceans of Light) by Mullah Majlisi, a magnum opus in 132 volumes and the basis of modern Shiite Islam. According to the tradition, Imam Ali Ibn Abi-Talib (the prophet's cousin and son-in-law) prophesied that at the End of Times and just before the return of the...

FOR once, Joe Biden wasn't making a gaffe when he warned that, if elected president, Barack Obama would quickly be put to the test by America's many enemies. Biden didn't say why this is bound to happen, but the answer is clear: Obama would be put to the test because he is untested. More important, perhaps, as a candidate, Obama has worked hard to remain untestable by offering ambiguous, contradictory and confusing views on key issues of US policy: Obama's interest in international affairs looks to be quite recent. As a community organizer and then a Chicago politician until 2005,...

The way Barack Obama talks of Iraq, you'd think the whole county is a sea of fire and blood, created by the United States. So he might be surprised to learn that tour operators in Europe and the Middle East are touting this "sea of fire and blood" as a new holiday destination. One program just put on the market by Terre Entiere, a leading French tour operator, offers a "Christmas Pilgrimage" in December to Iraq's biblical sites, some of which date back more than 2,000 years. Another program starts in January. Called "Forgotten History," it includes visits to some...

On Monday, in an opinion piece published in the New York Post, I suggested that Senator Barack Obama had urged Iraqi leaders to postpone making an agreement with the United States until there was a new administration in Washington. I said this because Obama himself had said it. By trying to second-guess the present administration in its negotiations with Iraq, Obama ignored a golden rule of American politics. I first learned about that rule from Senator Edward Kennedy more than 30 years ago. During a visit to Tehran, Kennedy received a few Iranian reporters for a poolside chat. The big...

THE way Barack Obama talks of Iraq, you'd think the whole county is a sea of fire and blood, created by the United States. So he might be surprised to learn that tour operators in Europe and the Middle East are touting this "sea of fire and blood" as a new holiday destination. One program just put on the market by Terre Entiere, a leading French tour operator, offers a "Christmas Pilgrimage" in December to Iraq's biblical sites, some of which date back more than 2,000 years. Another program starts in January. Called "Forgotten History," it includes visits to some...

Earlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops. "Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a drawdown of the American military presence," Post columnist Amir Taheri wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told the Post that Obama, during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July, "asked why we were...

What happens when Democrats get their wires crossed? What happens when drivel like “Change you can believe in” collides with such malarkey as “our commitment to the Rule of Law”? Fraud happens. The etymology, by the way, traces to the Latin word fraus - which the Obama campaign might bear in mind if it’s planning to whip up any more of those mock presidential seals. Or, for that matter, mock presidential addresses. Sen. Barack Obama has just bestowed another of these upon us: a two-minute political ad on a Wall Street upheaval so sudden the campaign didn’t have time to...

Story growing legs? I'm surprised it's being folowed up on.

Why isn't Obama denying Amir Taheri's charges? He admited to it in June to MSNBC! [NOTE: The New York Post's Amir Taheri, in "OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL", "discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for."] We've discovered an MSNBC article which directly contradicts Obama's defense of his negotiations with the Iraq government....

IN Monday's Post, I discussed how Barack Obama, during his July trip, had asked Iraqi leaders not to finalize an agreement vital to the future of US forces in Iraq - and how the effect of such a delay would be to postpone the departure of the US from Iraq beyond the time Obama himself calls for. The Obama campaign has objected. While its statement says my article was "filled with distortions," the rebuttal actually centers on a technical point: the differences between two Iraqi-US accords under negotiation - the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, to set rules governing US...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday Amir Taheri in the New York Post quoted the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying that Obama made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July that (paraphrasing) "You guys shouldn't start talking about troop withdrawal now, you should wait 'til the next president's elected." The quote here from the Iraqi foreign minister, "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement on US troop withdrawal until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington. However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates...

Barack Obama's statement denying secret negotiations with the Iraqi government on the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in fact confirms Amir Taheri's allegations that the Illinois Senator made an end run around U.S. officials on the disposition of American forces. Obama's own statements reveal he indeed appealed to the Iraqi government for a delay in the withdrawal plans. In the New York Post, conservative Iranian-born columnist Amir Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying the Democrat made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July, while publicly demanding an early withdrawal. ... Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said...

The Obama campaign issued an angry denial to a report yesterday that the Democratic presidential candidate privately urged Iraqi leaders to delay U.S. troop withdrawals, but the statement essentially confirmed the story. Responding to a column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in the New York Post, Obama spokeswoman Wendy Morigi insisted Obama "has never urged a delay in negotiations, nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades." But in the same statement, Morigi said Obama had told the Iraqis they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of...

Stick a fork in Obama: he's doneThe following is in today's New York Post,. The bottom line is that Barack Obama allegedly attempted to undermine official U.S. policy in Iraq, an action that could have endangered thousands of lives as well as regional peace and security, for his own political benefit. We encourage our readers to circulate this story as widely as possible, because it alone should mean the end of Obama's candidacy. OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL by Amir Taheri WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has...

The New York Post is no friend of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Any knock of Obama by its editorial writers and op-ed columnists should be taken with the whole bag of salt. That´s likely the case with this stunning allegation that´s making its way around the internet courtesy of Post Columnist Amir Taheri. He alleges that in a private talk with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari during his visit to Iraq in July, Obama allegedly tried to talk Zebari and other Iraqi leaders into stalling the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. The alleged reason for the...

http://www.againstobama.com/2008/09/obama-tried-

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. "He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview. Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in...

AHMADINEJAD'S NEW ENEMY: WOMEN By AMIR TAHERI September 6, 2008 -- IN one of his last sermons before his death, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned of "three threats" to his vision of Islam: the US, the Jews and women. Two decades later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks he has the United States and the Jews in hand - and is moving on the third "enemy." Women were the first to demonstrate against Khomeini's regime with a mass rally in Tehran on March 8, 1979 - less than a month after the mullahs had seized power. Over the next decade, the authorities...

BACK TO JIMMY - What Biden Pick Really Signals BY choosing Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presiden tial running mate, Barack Obama sent three messages. The first two are implicit admissions that Hillary Clinton had a point in the primaries. The third tells us more of what Obama means by "change." Biden is supposed to make up for Obama's lack of the knowledge and experience needed to leader on national security and international affairs. And the Delaware senator, with his humble working-class origins, is also meant to reassure the "simple folk" that Obama seems to be losing. But the third...

Missiles of Illusion Remember al-Qaher and al-Zafer? You don't? Well, what about al-Hussein and al-Abbas? No, again? The first two were the names of missiles that the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser relied upon as "secret weapons" in his promised "Battle of Destiny" in 1967. The other two were names of Saddam Hussein's missiles that were supposed to secure him victory in his "Mother of Battles" in 1991. We now have to learn the names of two other missiles, Shahab and Zelzeleh presented by Iran's Khomeinist rulers as in what they regard as an inevitable war against the United States...

Tehran's Tricks: Plays Rope-A-Dope On Nukes August 1, 2008 TOMORROW is the deadline for Iran to respond to the latest offer on its nuclear program. The package, shaped by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and offered in Geneva two weeks ago, offers a way out of the impasse. But don't expect Tehran to call the lead negotiator, European Union foreign-policy czar Javier Solana, to say it's accepted the deal. Iran has made it clear it doesn't intend to show any flexibility. "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set the tone Wednesday in...

Spiderman in Tehran 25/07/2008 By Amir Taheri "A picture is worth a thousand words!" This is the proverb invented by an American photographer in the 1920s but ascribed to the Chinese for good effect. While not always true, like all other proverbs, it is surprisingly accurate on some occasions. No picture could replace a thousand words by Neffari or Roumi. But no number of words could replace the 1990 photo of an Afghan teenage girl with terror in her green eyes, reflecting two decades of war and famine. Sometimes, however, words are needed to reveal the hidden meanings of a...

Iran's Brutal Labor Crackdown New York Post Amir Taheri A year ago last Saturday, Ali Khamenei ordered the abduction of trade-union leader Mansour Osanloo. In so doing, Iran's top ruling mullah hoped to kill in infancy the independent trade-union movement that Osanloo had launched in '05 with the help of colleagues among bus drivers and conductors in Tehran. A year later, Osanloo is still in prison, sentenced to five years on a charge of "undermining the security of the Islamic Republic." Yet the free-union movement that he inspired has spread like wildfire. Transport workers in Tehran and its suburbs have...

Sufism, Sophistry and Politics 27/06/2008 By Amir Taheri Bombing the Islamic Republic's nuclear installations would turn the Middle East into a "ball of fire". The warning comes from Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Muhammad El-Baradaei. The "ball of fire" is a poetic expression, and I wondered where it came from. I thought of Johnny Cash's famous song, The Ring of Fire. However, a friend suggested that the image came from a qasida by the great Egyptian Sufi Ibn al-Farid. That Egyptians, besides being masters of jokes (nokats), have a poetic bend of mind is to their credit....

"Hit us and we shall hit you ten times harder!" This is how General Muhammad-Ali Jaafari, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has responded to speculation about a possible attack by the United States and/or Israel on Iran's nuclear installations. Jaafari replaced General Yahya Safavi last year after the latter made a speech in which he implicitly warned the mullahs that Iran's military was not ready for war against far more powerful enemies. Those familiar with Iranian military capabilities know that it is Safavi's sober assessment, and not Jaafari's bluster, that reflects the true situation. The...

The Offer He Will Refuse May 09, 2008 Asharq Alawsat Amir Taheri Will you take an offer if you knew that by refusing it you would get a better one? The answer from Tehran is an emphatic no, and concerns the latest "generous package" that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany put together in London last week. The “package” shaped after days of hard bargaining between the United States and the European Union on one side, and Russia and China on the other, is designed to persuade the Islamic Republic to break the diplomatic logjam...

Why Does Ahmadinejad Want Russian Troops in Iran? 25/04/2008 By Amir Taheri Why is the leadership in Tehran anxious to give Russia the right to land troops in Iran? The question is not fanciful. The Islamic Republic is conducting a devious campaign to prepare public opinion for that eventuality. The message is relayed through deliberately vague terms that diplomats understand immediately while the general public does not. The device is to revive two treaties that most students of Iranian history thought were dead and buried long ago. The first is the 1921 Treaty that the government of Sayyed Ziauddin Tabatabai,...

Murder's Mess for Muqtada April 16, 2008 New York Post Amir Taheri Riad al-Noori liked to boast that a "host of angels" protected him, along with his 250 heavily armed bodyguards. Yet, he has just been gunned down in his home in Najaf, Iraq's principal "holy" city, by a three-man hit team that managed to get away without any of the angels or bodyguards making a move. Noori was a bad man but an important player in the dirtiest corner of Iraqi Shiite politics. He headed the special bureau of Muqtada al-Sadr, the maverick mullah sponsored by Tehran. Himself a...

April 10, 2008 -- A GAMBLE that proved too costly. That's how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran's state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous "uprising." Rather, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq's second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse. Tehran's decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions: * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in Iran. * The international force would be...

IRAN'S BUSTED IRAQ BID By AMIR TAHERI April 10, 2008 -- A GAMBLE that proved too costly. That's how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran's state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous "uprising." Rather, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq's second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse. Tehran's decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions: * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in...