Is There a Peace Prize Winner in the House?

3 Iranian protestors face hanging

Rick Moran
Hey! Remember the Iranian protestors who marched for a free and fair election last summer?

The administration may have forgotten them, barely acknowledging them in the first place. But the Iranian government is about to take their revenge by executing three of the protestors.

Aresu Eqbali of AFP reports:

Three people arrested after Iran's disputed presidential election have been condemned to death despite a global outcry over trials of people who claimed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election was rigged.

"Three people who were accused (for their role) in the post-election incidents have been sentenced to death," said Zahed Bashiri Rad, media officer at the justice ministry, quoted by ISNA news agency on Saturday.

Bashiri Rad, giving only the initials of the convicts said that "MZ and AP were convicted for ties with the Kingdom Assembly of Iran and NA for ties with the Monafeghin (exiled opposition group commonly known as the People's Mujahedeen)."
Massive street protests broke out in Iran following Ahmadinejad's re-election.

About 4,000 people were arrested, and 140 of them, including senior reformers and journalists, have been put on trial for seeking a "soft" overthrow of the regime and for inciting protests.

On Thursday, a reformist website reported that a member of a group seeking to restore Iran's monarchy has been sentenced to death for his involvement in the unrest, identifying him as Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani.

Judiciary officials were not available to confirm if he was the "MZ" mentioned by ISNA on Saturday.

On Friday, Amnesty International urged Tehran to lift the death sentence on Zamani. A member of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, he was among scores of arrested people in the post-vote mass demonstrations, it said.

Amnesty condemned such "show trials" as a "mockery of justice".

Will President Obama raise his voice to try and stop this travesty? Will our State Department?

Don't hold your breath.
###

Obama as War President

James Lewis at American Thinker:

The gangster regimes of the world are on the march, and they've got our number. They know how to squeeze more civilized nations. Our weakness is cowardice, and that goes double or triple in the face of nuclear weapons. That's why all the rogues are trying to get nukes as fast as they can. They know it's the perfect blackmail weapon, and it makes them invulnerable to attack.

That is also why President Obama's public rejection of General McChrystal's advice on Afghanistan affects your personal safety and mine. Gen. McChrystal wants more troops. Obama doesn't want to send them because he needs the money to promote his socialist take-over of America. You can't have both. Look at Europe, where the military have become pathetic social welfare programs. All the air is sucked out by bigger and bigger victim programs.

Obama must be realizing by now that the chance of a major war in the Gulf next year is rising to 100 percent. Ahmadinejad will have nuclear weapons too, and he already has enough radioactive materials for a dirty nuke, a low-tech weapon that can spread terror everywhere in the world. The Left always puts the burden of proof for WMDs on America, which can never prove their existence because the CIA rarely can penetrate totalitarian regimes. You can't prove a negative. Ever. So the Left is always asking the impossible. It makes them sound reasonable when they are just sabotaging common sense.

Read the rest of “Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All”.

The 'Dream' of Disarmament: Dormez-Vous?, Dormez-Vous?

It’s being reported that neither Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, nor France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, were very pleased with the Greatest Foreign Policy Genius in American History after his performance in Pittsburgh the other day.

The Wall Street Journal says that both leaders “were quietly seething on stage, annoyed by America’s handling of the announcement” about Iran’s second clandestine nuclear facility. Both France and Britain wanted to make the announcement at the UN a day earlier, when it would have had much greater effect, and been more logical, as the Security Council Obama was chairing was “devoted to nonproliferation.”

Why the wait? While Sarkozy was pushing for the announcement while still at the UN, the “Administration told the French that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde.”

The upshot?

“We thought we'd never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America’s Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.”

Here we are indeed.

Read the entire article here.

'There Are Only Two Choices Left on Iran'

A blunt editorial by ELIOT A. COHEN in today's Wall Street Journal:

Unless you are a connoisseur of small pictures of bearded, brooding fanatical clerics there is not much reason to collect Iranian currency. But I kept one bill on my desk at the State Department because of its watermark—an atom superimposed on the part of that country that harbors the Natanz nuclear site. Only the terminally innocent should have been surprised to learn that there is at least one other covert site, whose only purpose could be the production of highly enriched uranium for atom bombs.

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.

Understandably, the U.S. government has hoped for a middle course of sanctions, negotiations and bargaining that would remove the problem without the ugly consequences. This is self-delusion. . . .

Though you would not know it to listen to Sunday talk shows, a large sanctions effort against Iran has been underway for some time. It has not worked to curb Tehran's nuclear appetite, and it will not. Sooner or later the administration, whose main diplomatic initiatives thus far have been a program of apologies and a few sharp kicks to small allies' shins, will have to recognize that fact. (“There Are Only Two Choices Left on Iran”).

Please read the rest of what he has to say here.

'(Let's) Free the Irbil Five!'

Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.

Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.

Third, Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:

Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.

Fourth, President Obama’s release of the Quds terrorists is a natural continuation of his administration’s stunningly irresponsible policy of bartering terrorist prisoners for hostages. As I detailed here on June 24, Obama has already released a leader of the Iran-backed Asaib al-Haq terror network in Iraq, a jihadist who is among those responsible for the 2007 murders of five American troops in Karbala. While the release was ludicrously portrayed as an effort to further “Iraqi reconciliation” (as if that would be a valid reason to spring a terrorist who had killed Americans), it was in actuality a naïve attempt to secure the reciprocal release of five British hostages — and a predictably disastrous one: The terror network released only the corpses of two of the hostages, threatening to kill the remaining three (and who knows whether they still are alive?) unless other terror leaders were released.

Michael Ledeen has reported that the release of the Irbil Five is part of the price Iran has demanded for its release in May of the freelance journalist Roxana Saberi. Again, that’s only part of the price: Iran also has demanded the release of hundreds of its other terror facilitators in our custody. Expect to see Obama accommodate this demand, too, in the weeks ahead.

Finally, when it comes to Iran, it has become increasingly apparent that President Obama wants the mullahs to win. What you need to know is that Barack Obama is a wolf in “pragmatist” clothing: Beneath the easy smile and above-it-all manner — the “neutral” doing his best to weigh competing claims — is a radical leftist wedded to a Manichean vision that depicts American imperialism as the primary evil in the world.

You may not have wanted to addle your brain over his tutelage in Hawaii by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, nor his tracing of Davis’s career steps to Chicago, where he seamlessly eased into the orbit of Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Maoist “educator” Michael Klonsky — all while imbibing 20 years’ worth of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist “black liberation theology.” But this neo-Communist well from which Obama drew holds that the world order is a maze of injustice, racism, and repression. Its unified theory for navigating the maze is: “United States = culprit.” Its default position is that tyrants are preferable as long as they are anti-American, and that while terrorist methods may be regrettable, their root cause is always American provocation — that is, the terrorists have a point.

In Iran, it is no longer enough for a rickety regime, whose anti-American vitriol is its only vital sign, to rig the “democratic” process. This time, blatant electoral fraud was also required to mulct victory for the mullahs’ candidate. The chicanery ignited a popular revolt. But the brutal regime guessed right: The new American president would be supportive. So sympathetic is Obama to the mullahs’ grievances — so hostile to what he, like the regime, sees as America’s arrogant militarism — that he could be depended on to go as far as politics allowed to help the regime ride out the storm.

And so he has. Right now, politics will allow quite a lot: With unemployment creeping toward 10 percent, the auto industry nationalized, the stimulus revealed as history’s biggest redistribution racket (so far), and Democrats bent on heaping ruinous carbon taxes and socialized medicine atop an economy already crushed by tens of trillions in unfunded welfare-state liabilities, Iran is barely on anyone’s radar screen.

So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere “diplomats.” Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening.

Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing.

'Today Everyone Is an Iranian'

Today Everyone is an Iranian

By Amil Imani

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy

Today, all Iranian expatriates are united in solidarity with the Iranian people in Iran. Today, we are all standing tall to let the world hear our continuous aspiration for a free and democratic Iran. Today, we pledge ourselves, under the divine inspiration, to stand beside the Iranians in Iran and echo their voices around the globe. Today, we make history, yet again.

It is critical that freedom-loving people, governments and media, rally behind the Iranian people and end the tyrannical mullahcracy that is a scourge on Iran as well as the world. The Iranian people themselves are fully capable and are determined to remove the cancer of Islamism from their country. The United States and Israel and other democracies have a huge stake in the success of the Iranian people to rid themselves of the Islamic oppression and tyranny.

The situation in Iran is dire indeed. Anyone who believes that sane rational people on both sides are engaged in brinkmanship to secure the best advantage, but would eventually work out a compromise, is deluding himself. In some cases, time works as a healer and even as a solution of thorny problems. Yet, this problem will not go away, and time would only make the cataclysmic clash more likely and deadly. The best chance for resolving the impasse is regime change in Iran.

For the past thirty years, the intrepid Iranians have been paying with their blood for liberty, independence and human dignity while the world looked the other way and did business with the Islamist rulers in Iran. Thirty years ago, a fanatic Shi'a Muslim by the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the assistance of western governments (with Jimmy Carter on top of the list), succeeded in overthrowing the Shah of Iran during Iran's 1979 revolution.

Khomeini promised Iranians heaven, but he created hell on earth, turning Iran into a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Ever since, tens of thousands of political activists have been killed or imprisoned. Tens of thousands of opposition groups, women, ethnic and religious minorities, have been subjected to inhumane treatment and tens of thousands of political prisoners are spending their precious lives, in the medieval barbaric Islamic Republic dungeons.

Since 1979, this illegitimate government of the Islamic Republic has been waging a brutal war against the entire population of Iran who has been fighting for individual and religious freedom. In spite of tens of thousands of political executions, other brutal practices and years of a reign of terror, the Islamists have not succeeded in uprooting the nationwide movement for democracy in Iran.

We honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for proclaiming from a Birmingham jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." To demand justice for others, he risked his life, left his native Georgia, and ended up in jail in the-then-bigoted south, Birmingham, Alabama. We "Iranians" must do no less. We must demand justice for our compatriots who are suffering under the yoke of Islamofascism in Iran.

We also do well to recall the example of an Irish-American President-John F. Kennedy-looking at the Communists' Wall of Shame in Berlin, proclaiming, "Ich bin ein Berliner"-"I am a Berliner." By so claiming, he helped rally free people of the world that brought down the wall and created a momentum that eventually swept the totalitarian Communist wall-builders into the dustbin of history.

Another great American President, Ronald Reagan, took a stand on freedom with the Polish people.

"The Polish nation, speaking through Solidarity, has provided one of the brightest, bravest moments of modern history. The people of Poland are giving us an imperishable example of courage and devotion to the values of freedom in the face of relentless opposition. Left to themselves, the Polish people would enjoy a new birth of freedom. But there are those who oppose the idea of freedom, who are intolerant of national independence, and hostile to the European values of democracy and the rule of law."

History records that Reagan's decision to take a strong stand for Polish freedom -- and bringing down the Communist system itself -- was the right one." Reagan led and inspired the Poles to continue the struggle which resulted in half of Europe being freed from iron-fisted domination, by then, the Soviet Union.

Even the European Union called on Islamic authorities to investigate allegations of vote-rigging during Iran's presidential election on Friday, expressing concern at Tehran's crackdown on protesters. Germany's Angela Merkel took a much tougher stand than President Obama did, calling the oppression "totally unacceptable," while all Obama could say was that it's "deeply troubling" (video here).

President Obama's halting comments only made clear his fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Islamic regime. It appears President Obama is going to betray the Iranian people as Jimmy Carter did 3 decades earlier. Senator John McCain, President Obama's rival in last year's US election, described the president's response as "tepid," and blasted him for abandoning the "fundamental principles" of the United States. Iranian people don't expect the Americans to come to Iran and fight for them. Every decent and freedom-loving nation knows that the Iranian people have the right and the duty to change their form of government. What Americans can do for the Iranian people is to lend them their support; not to fight on their behalf, but to rally to their side and to cheer their struggle.

We Iranians in spirit-free people of the world--greatly cherish liberty, where the mind is imbued with enlightenment, and every individual, by the virtue of being born human, is afforded freedom. It is within the open expanse of liberty that each and every person can be at his or her best. And when the individual person is at his best, humanity is at its best.

Today, we are reaching outside of ourselves. Today, we are raising our own standard. Today, we are standing tall and declaring our perpetual commitment to the liberation of Iran and her citizens. Today, we are marching for the support of the brave and courageous people of Iran. Today, our demonstration is inspired by demonstrations of the Iranian people inside Iran against the dictatorship and barbarity of the Islamic Republic. We shall all demonstrate until every Iranian is free. Today, everyone is an Iranian.

'Don't Shoot! We're Unarmed!'

There has to be a limit to how far President Obama can go in reversing and undoing past foreign policy and national security decisions just to prove to the rest of the world that he's better than all that.

From The American Thinker:

Obama Flunks the 3 A.M. Test

By Joel J. Sprayregen

While President Obama was speaking in Prague about nuclear disarmament, North Korea delivered the most tellingly timed comment on The Trip. The Pyongyang rogue regime -- proprietor of a nuclear arsenal -- defiantly launched an intercontinental multi-stage rocket in violation of an explicit U.N. Security Council resolution. The President used strong words about the rocket launch:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."

Obama flunked his first 3 A.M. test.

Tragically, there were no actions to match Obama's words. This President prefers to use the United Nations, rather than U.S. power, to protect world peace. Ludicrously, the Security Council immediately convened in emergency session. Guess what? After hours of futile discussion, it adjourned without taking action.

A week later, the Council issued a toothless statement "condemning" the launch. Several Council members pointedly pre-empted Obama from bragging about this charade by noting that only a "resolution" -- in contrast to a mere "statement" -- is legally binding. The Russian/Chinese vetoes protect the rogues, and all of Obama's "engagement" and concessions have not moved these countries to do anything about the North Korean threat.

Pyongyang immediately showed its brazen contempt for the U.N. and Obama's diplomacy by announcing it is quitting the "Six-Party talks," expelling IAEA inspectors and restoring nuclear facilities it had agreed to disable . This will allow reprocessing fuel rods to make plutonium. The end product is likely to be delivered to Iran and Syria, or possibly, G-d forbid, to Hezbollah and Hamas for desperately needed cash.

To be fair, the policy of appeasing fanatic Pyongyang -- which starves its own civilians to death -- through food deliveries for its army and the "Six-Party talks" originated under Clinton and continued under Bush, who unwisely removed North Korea from the list of terrorist states.

North Korea has gotten away with breaking every promise it made, including restarting a closed nuclear reactor. When I visited Seoul and U.S. military bases near the North Korean border last year, I noted that the world's ninth largest economy was menaced by the world's fourth largest army. North Korea now threatens much of the world. The real Obama response to the unlawful launch can be found in this declaration quietly made in Seoul by Stephen Bosworth, chief U.S. envoy to North Korea:

"Regardless of the short-term problem, everyone has a long-term interest in getting back to the negotiations in the 6-party process as expeditiously as possible."

In my non-objective view, this characterizes the Obama approach to defending our national security. The aim is to continue blathering in multilateral forums, no matter how dysfunctional, rather than taking effective action. As the Wall Street Journal (but not liberal media) headlined, "North Korea crisis tests Obama's reliance on U.N." The deafening non-response to North Korea's "serious act of provocation" (Obama's words) is linked lethally to the other disaster of The Trip, i.e., Obama's failure in meetings with many heads of state to advance forward even one inch in thwarting Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran, which recently tested its own long-range missile, had observers present at the North Korean launch. The two terrorist states (both are on my list) collaborate on nuclear development.

No Progress on Iranian Threat

Since there can be no doubt that the gravest contemporary threat to international security is Tehran's nuclear quest, it therefore seems clear that the world is a far more dangerous place than it was when Obama embarked on his journey. The rogue states are flexing their muscles while our government opts for fruitless "negotiations." To confirm this, let's look closely at Iran's responses to Obama's publicized attempts at "engagement." Secretary Clinton announced proudly that at the end of a conference on Afghanistan,

"Our special representative, Richard Holbrooke had a brief and cordial exchange with the head of the Iranian delegation."

Iran announced the next day:

"There was no official or unofficial meeting or conversation between the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the America on the sidelines of the conference. We do not play hide and seek with anyone. Our policies are clear."

Those policies include Iranian demands that, prior to negotiations the U.S. must renounce support of Israel, cancel sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets.

Tehran Ridicules Obama

Analysis of Obama's speeches in Turkey reveals he has not stopped at dropping Bush's demands that Iran cease uranium enrichment before we negotiate directly; our demand to cease enrichment is being watered down to "no nuclear weapons" under amorphous international inspection. Thus, a Tehran newspaper headlined on April 4:

"The U.S. capitulates to the nuclear goals of Iran."

The Obama Administration announced on April 8 that it will join in six-party nuclear negotiations with Iran. Those are the same negotiations in which Iran has endlessly stalled the European powers as if they were negotiating the price of a carpet. Iran's contemptuous response (reported in overseas media, not by the New York Times):

"We will review it and then decide about it."

State Department spokesman Robert Wood obsequiously replied:

"We hope that the government of Iran chooses to reciprocate."

Iran declared the day after the U.S. announcement that it had installed 7,000 centrifuges in its uranium enrichment facility. In further appreciation of Obama's "engagement," Iran charged an American journalist with spying and announced, through its president, that it has mastered the final stage of nuclear fuel production.

Can any sane person contend that the result is other than an inexorable Iranian march toward assembling a nuclear arsenal while American deterrence is fast receding toward invisibility? I exclude from the company of sane observers the New York Times' fatuous Roger Cohen who -- replicating Times predecessors who assured that Stalin and Castro were democratic reformers -- has made himself for Iran what Lindberg was for Hitler in 1936. Keep in mind that Iran's apocalyptic Shi'a Islam believes that nuclear retaliation against it would hasten universal redemption and that Iran supplies weapons to terrorist proxies. Also that Iranian nuclear capability would spark nuclear proliferation in the combustible Middle East, as well as possible Israeli pre-emption.

Obama sycophants will argue that I am caviling when I should be kvelling over the theatrics of Obama's parleying with world leaders and students and addressing Turkey's Islamist Parliament. If I wanted to amplify, I could elaborate on additional Obama overtures which further endangered our country:

(1) offering to scrap U.S. development of modernized nuclear weapons while Russia scraps obsolete warheads;

(2) informing the Russians, without reciprocation, that we will abandon anti-missile defenses in central and eastern Europe;

(3) letting the Europeans get away with not making any meaningful troop contributions in Afghanistan (oh yes, the French are sending a few gendarmes, but their police can not even keep the streets of Paris safe, as evidenced by the French chief rabbi's advice that observant Jews not wear yarmulkes in public lest they be mauled by Muslim hoodlums;

(4) announcing drastic cuts in U.S. defense, especially the F-22 fighter and missile defense; and

(5) courting a Turkish prime minister who aspires not to build a democratic secular society but rather to lead the Islamic world as the ally of Iran and Syria and the protector of Hamas and the Sudan (imagine what Ataturk would have thought about Turkey's chairing the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which seeks to make criticism of Islam a universal crime?) Obama's negotiations in Turkey make it likely that never again will NATO choose as its top official a European politician who champions freedom of the press against those who seek to muzzle criticism of Islam.

Pray That I Am Wrong

Obama refused French suggestions that he visit D-Day beaches and cemeteries. Why did he fear to recall American heroism which saved Europe from Hitler? Times diplomacy pundit emeritus Leslie Gelb understands in Power Rules, his new book on foreign policy, that power is

"what is what it always was -- essentially the capacity to get people to do what they don't want to do by pressure and coercion, using one's resources and position...and that only the U.S. is a true global power with global reach."

Even Gelb's pro-Obama successor, Tom Friedman, asserts in his April 15 column that to change the conduct of Iran and North Korea,

"... we would have to generate much more effective leverage from the outside ...through a a bigger and longer U.S. investment of money and power, not to mention allies."

In contrast Obama believes that unilateral a priori concessions and "engagement" through multilateral parleying, which further dilutes American power, can move malign actors like North Korea and Iran to do things they don't want to do, like refraining from assembling nuclear arsenals with extensive intercontinental delivery systems.

President Obama missed his opportunity on The Trip to use his charisma to persuade our allies to stand fast against the rogue states. North Korea's flinging the gauntlet at Obama proves that our President has flunked his first 3 A.M. test.

Iran Celebrates 30-Year Anniversary by Taking Another American Hostage

President Obama is "deeply disappointed" that Iran has imprisoned an American journalist on phony charges of spying after a secret kangaroo trial.

So he's disappointed, but is he ever going to learn anything?

From the TimesOnline:

April 19, 2009
Talks setback as Iran jails US ‘spy’

Sara Hashash and Sarah Baxter, Washington
AN Iranian court sentenced an American journalist to eight years in prison yesterday, accusing her of spying for the US. President Obama was said to be “deeply disappointed” by the ruling, which is seen as a blow to Washington’s efforts to engage Tehran in talks.

Roxana Saberi, 31, who holds joint American-Iranian citizenship, a freelance who has worked for the BBC and National Public Radio, was arrested in January and went on trial behind closed doors last week.

A former beauty queen who has degrees from Cambridge and Northwestern universities, Saberi is the first American journalist to be found guilty of espionage in Iran. Her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said he would “definitely appeal”.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said: “We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government.”

Saberi’s conviction comes as Washington presses ahead with overtures to Iran, which US analysts believe is close to developing nuclear weapons. Clinton is to send Dennis Ross, her special adviser on Iran, to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to discuss holding one-to-one talks with Tehran.

Last week Clinton met European diplomats including Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, to discuss inviting Iran to participate in talks with the United Nations security council. “We’re willing to have a direct dialogue with Iran,” said a state department spokesman.

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he had chatted briefly with Iran’s foreign minister at a conference in Tokyo last week.

Observers at the annual Army Day parade in Tehran yesterday noted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a relatively low-key speech and there was little sign of the antiwestern banners and slogans usually seen at the event.

From Tehran with Love

Iranian expert Michael Ledeen has a current article, ("Caving to Iran"), about how the British government has been giving in to Iranian blackmail lately. In it Ledeen paints a picture of a high-level doomsday summit of global bad guys in Tehran that could have come out of an old James Bond movie:

After the humiliation of Hamas by Israel earlier this year, the Iranian leaders summoned more than a dozen terrorist groups to Tehran for meetings with Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad. The meetings went on for several weeks, from mid-February to mid-March. According to usually reliable sources, the terrorists were informed that Iran had committed a billion dollars for the “liberation of Palestine,” and that actions would be coordinated by an umbrella organization to be called “Hezbollah of Palestine.” Participants included Egyptian and Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leaders and top officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Reportedly, representatives of the Turkish government were also present. The Iranian regime was represented by officers from the Revolutionary Guards and the Quds Forces, and by Khamenei himself, a clear demonstration of the urgency with which the Iranians viewed the matter.

Check out the complete article.

When A=A, You've Solved It

In logic, and I believe algebra, which I had to take over, they call this the principle of identity. A being is what it is. A = A.

A committed jihadist, whatever else he may be, is not a moderate.

Twice in only a few weeks two of America’s bitterest Islamic enemies have rebuffed President Barack Obama’s highly illogical offers to sit down and treat with the "moderate" members of our enemies’ camp.

First there was Obama's offer to make friends with Iran. Ahmadinejad responded with a "not so fast," outlining a few conditions:

Other than "apologizing for the U.S. crimes" against his country "in the past 60 years," Ahmadinejad said the United States should withdraw all its troops from around the world and put them back inside the U.S. borders "to serve their own people."

He insisted the United States should also "stop interfering in other people's affairs," accusing it of having caused wars due to its military presence. He also suggested that advocates of change "must stop supporting the Zionists, outlaws and criminals."

For what it's worth, Democrat "moderates" Jack Murtha, Chas Freeman, and Jimmy Carter all thought these Iranian terms were very balanced and reasonable.

Then President Obama said he would reach out to the Taliban "moderates." That's when the Taliban had to get all Mr. Spock on the President and explain that the word "Taliban" translates into English as "incapable of being moderate":

Taliban say Obama's call on moderates "illogical"
Tue Mar 10,
7:17 am ET

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan's Taliban on Tuesday turned down as illogical U.S. President Barack Obama's bid to reach out to moderate elements of the insurgents, saying the exit of foreign troops was the only solution for ending the war.

Obama, in an interview with the New York Times, expressed an openness to adapting tactics in Afghanistan that had been used in Iraq to reach out to moderate elements there.

"This does not require any response or reaction for this is illogical," Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a purported spokesman for the insurgent group, told Reuters when asked if its top leader Mullah Mohammad Omar would make any comment about Obama's proposal.

"The Taliban are united, have one leader, one aim, one policy...I do not know why they are talking about moderate Taliban and what it means?"

"If it means those who are not fighting and are sitting in their homes, then talking to them is meaningless. This really is surprising the Taliban."

It's not surprising to us. We've been saying this for years. We agree it's illogical. The idea of a moderate Taliban is about as illogical as, well, the idea of a moderate Barack Obama. The idea of negotiating with an opponent whose sine qua non is your subjection or, failing that, your destruction, is not rational.

Mr. President, how about restoring some of that "scientific integrity to government decision making" when it comes to real issues, like defending the nation from her enemies?

A Bridge Too Easy

I'm guessing that local Muslim Affairs Bureau Reporter Tanveer Ali wasn’t being deliberately funny when he described our local Iranian agent Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi as “seizing” President Obama's inaugural appeal for unity amongst religions when Elahi staged an “interfaith” prayer Friday. (“Obama inspires interfaith prayer”).

The choice of verb is funny because of the well-known habit of Islamic Khomeinist Iranians, of whom Elahi is a proud example, for “seizing” or trying to seize things and people in the name of jihad, (like American embassies, American embassy personnel, the governments of Syria and Lebanon, Gaza, and who can forget “Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”).

Now Elahi is "seizing" Obama's appeal for mutual respect between religions for his own ends. He recognizes in Obama's election, no doubt, a weakening of American resolve against radical jihadism. As Ali’s article notes, “Elahi was among the local Muslims who took note Tuesday, when Obama said American relationships with Muslims should no longer be divisive. ‘To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,’ Obama said.”

But in fairness to the President, he didn’t only mention mutual respect, but also took a well-deserved smack at the kinds of regimes, like the Islamic dictatorship in Iran for whom Elahi works, President Obama doing everything but calling Iran out by name:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

If you’ve noticed, Elahi can’t do anything without a clenched fist, which he’s usually shaking either at Israel, or George W. Bush. Even his “interfaith” prayer had to get political, “as Elahi and other religious speakers said world leaders have a moral obligation to investigate and prevent any future military actions into Gaza.”

As I think I mentioned somewhere, these interfaith events with Detroit’s Islamic leaders never admit the equal status of the priests, rabbis, and ministers gullible enough to show up: they always take place on Muslim terms. They're held at an Islamic location, during an Islamic prayer period (e.g. Friday), a always Muslim leads it, and afterwards the Muslims get all the press.

(Okay, I admit it: when a priest or rabbi attending these fiascos has anything to say, it's never worth reading anyway. ITEM:

"We need peace and justice,"said Jack I. Seman, who spoke at the event as a part of the Chaldean Christian community. "The best ammunition you have is be at peace with each other.")

In Chaldean, this would be pronounced: "Baah, Baaah, Baaaaaah!")

Pay attention and you'll notice that for all the claptrap about “mutual” understanding, Elahi and his fellow Islami interfaith leaders are always very careful to stage these events with dhimmitude in mind.

This is a “seizing” indeed. This is dawah. Just one more tiny bit of ground, yes. That’s how it’s done.

'Getting It' In Iran?

Getting It
Do ordinary Iranians understand the Israel/Hamas conflict better than the experts?

By Clifford D. May

The essential facts of the Hamas/Israel conflict are not complicated: Hamas is a client of Iran’s ruling mullahs whose rallying cry is, “Death to America!” Hamas’s ideology is indistinguishable from that of al-Qaeda. For these two reasons alone, it cannot be in the U.S. interest for Hamas—or any similar group—to prevail anytime, anywhere.

Also beyond question: Hamas has been raining missiles on Israel for years. No nation can passively endure such punishment—and remain a nation. It was only a matter of time before Israel had to take action against Hamas, a sworn enemy that openly expresses its genocidal intentions, and that routinely uses Palestinian women and children as human shields, exploiting their suffering for public-relations benefits.

What’s curious is who gets this and who does not. Jeffrey Gedmin is president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose Iranian service, Radio Farda, has been receiving messages from its Iranian listeners regarding the war in Gaza. Many have been along the lines Iran’s rulers prefer and you might expect:

“Death to Israel, to the imperialists and Zionists!” But the “majority,” Gedmin told me, has been of a different nature. Here’s a sampling (translated from the Farsi):

"The clerical regime is lying. It was not Israel who started this war."

"Any other country [apart from Israel] would have done the same a long time ago."

"Hamas should be destroyed. This cowardly group is taking cover in hospitals and residential areas. The people of Gaza should help Israel."

"As long as [Iran’s rulers] are helping Lebanon and Palestine, we're not going to have a decent living."

"We're soldiers from Jebrani and we don't have enough to eat, but the government is airlifting food and medicine to Gaza." (Actually, the Iranian government is not.)

"In my opinion, it would be better if our leaders, together with their supporters, would relocate to Palestine. . . . This way we would have peace and quiet in Iran and our economic situation would improve."

"Yes, it's true. [I hear] they want to give part of our salaries to Hamas."

In the Arab world, too, there are those whose views may surprise you. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak told a visiting delegation of European foreign ministers that Hamas “must not be allowed to emerge from the fighting with the upper hand.”

Karam Jaber, editor of the Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssef, blamed Hamas for inflicting “death and destruction on the Palestinians. . . . We hope the Hamas leaders will realize that they are fighting a destructive war on behalf of the Iranians and Syrians.”

And Muhammad Dahlan, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, told the Arabic language newspaper al-Hayat that Hamas has sacrificed “the Palestinian cause for the illusion of an Islamic emirate in Gaza.”

By stark contrast, an army of American and European commentators have been treating Hamas with kid gloves while bitterly criticizing Israel. Reuters, the international wire service, relentlessly editorializes—in what are ostensibly news stories—against what it terms “Israeli aggression against Palestinians.” Reuters characterizes pretty much anyone who is against Israel—no matter how extreme their views—as “in support of the people of Gaza.”

Others make the case for moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, or charge that Israel’s response to Hamas’s attacks has been “disproportionate.” On CNN the other day, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg offered an apt analogy: If you call the police to report an intruder in your home, do you want only a single officer dispatched—because that would be “proportionate?” Or would you rather enough cops arrive to ensure your safety?

By that measure, Israel’s response has been not disproportionate but inadequate—as demonstrated by the fact that the missiles keep on coming.

Time magazine’s most recent cover story argues that no matter what Israel does militarily it “can’t win.” Time proposes that Israelis stop fighting and return to the borders they had in 1967—when they were attacked by their Arab neighbors in a war meant to wipe the Jewish state off the map. “Only then will the Palestinians and the other Arab states agree to a durable peace,” Time advises. “It’s as simple as that.”

But if it were as simple as that, wouldn’t Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 have brought something other than a 500 percent increase in missile salvos? What’s more, from the West Bank, even the smallest missiles could hit Israel’s largest cities and international airport. Can you imagine the death toll should those come under daily assault?

Evidently, many pundits and solons cannot. More than a few ordinary Iranians could probably explain it to them.

— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Iran's Gazan Puppet Show

While the whole world (except the USA, under the Bush administration), is calling for a cease-fire to spare Hamas terrorist lives in Gaza, who else but the Iranians are telling the other guys, Hamas, they'd better not agree to any cease fire?

Behold:

Iran warns Hamas not to accept Egyptian truce proposal

Jan. 12, 2009
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST

Iran is exerting heavy pressure on Hamas not to accept the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire with Israel, an Egyptian government official said on Sunday.

The official told The Jerusalem Post by phone that two senior Iranian officials who visited Damascus recently warned Hamas leaders against accepting the proposal.

His remarks came as Hamas representatives met in Cairo with Egyptian Intelligence Chief Gen. Omar Suleiman and his aides to discuss ways of ending the fighting in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas representatives reiterated their opposition to a cease-fire that did not include the reopening of all the border crossings into the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesmen said on Sunday.

The spokesmen said Hamas voiced its strong opposition to the idea of deploying an international force inside the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian official said that the two Iranian emissaries, Ali Larijani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, and Said Jalili of the Iranian Intelligence Service, met in the Syrian capital with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ramadan Shallah.

"As soon as the Iranians heard about the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, they dispatched the two officials to Damascus on an urgent mission to warn the Palestinians against accepting it," the Egyptian government official told the Post.

"The Iranians threatened to stop weapons supplies and funding to the Palestinian factions if they agreed to a cease-fire with Israel. The Iranians want to fight Israel and the US indirectly. They are doing this through Hamas in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon."

The official pointed out that the Iranians were applying "double standards" regarding the current conflict - on the one hand, they encouraged Iranian men to volunteer to fight alongside Hamas; on the other hand, Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, told the volunteers that they would not be permitted to join the fight against Israel.

"The Iranians never fired one bullet at Israel," he said. "But now they are trying to appear as if they are participating in the war against Israel. The leaders of Teheran don't care about the innocent civilians who are being killed in the Gaza Strip."

The Egyptian official accused Iran of "encouraging" Hamas to continue firing rockets at Israel with the hope that this would trigger a war that would divert attention from Iran's nuclear plans.

"This conflict serves the interests of the Iranians," he said. "They are satisfied because the violence in the Gaza Strip has diverted attention from their nuclear ambitions.

The Iranians are also hoping to use the Palestinian issue as a 'powerful card' in future talks with the Americans.

"They want to show that they have control over Hamas and many Palestinians."

Karam Jaber, editor of the semi-official Egyptian weekly Roz Al-Youssef magazine, said that Hamas was caught between the Syrian anvil and the Iranian hammer. The Iranians, he said, prevented Hamas from negotiating a cease-fire with Israel, while the Syrians were blackmailing and intimidating the Hamas leaders in Damascus.

"History won't forget to mention that Hamas had inflicted death and destruction on the Palestinians," he said. "We hope that Hamas has learned the lesson and realizes that it has been fighting a war on behalf of others. We hope the Hamas leaders will realize that they are fighting a destructive war on behalf of the Iranians and Syrians."

Egyptian political analyst Magdi Khalil said he shared the view of the Palestinian Authority and Egypt that Hamas was responsible for the war in the Gaza Strip. "Ever since Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, they turned the area into hell," he said. "They imposed restrictions on the people there and even prevented them from performing the pilgrimage to Mecca."

The analyst said that the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service was right when he recently described Hamas as a group of gangsters. "Hamas and its masters in Damascus and Teheran want to spread chaos in Egypt," he said. "They want to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip by handing the area over to Egypt. They want to create a homeland for the Palestinians in Sinai."

He said that Hamas was not only jeopardizing Egypt's national security, but had also destroyed the Palestinians' dream of statehood. "By endorsing the Iranian agenda, Hamas has brought the Iranians to Egypt's eastern border," he said. "Hamas has also copied Hizbullah's policy of entering into pointless adventures."
#

The More You Talk About Change, the More We Stay the Same

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”

--Lloyd Bridges, as MCrosky in Airplane!

This photo depicts Iranian demonstrators chanting "Death to Obama!" outside the Swiss embassy in Tehran. They're doing this at the Swiss embassy because the U.S. doesn't have an embassy in Tehran any more, although we used to--10 points for anyone who remembers what happened to it!? They've also got Obama's picture plastered to the street so people can drive over it. Anyhow, the demonstrators are mad, or at least their Iranian Intelligence organizers want to make you think they're mad, because Obama isn't taking Hamas's side on Israel--so far.

Now what we in the good old USA happen to know is that the election of Barack Hussein Obama is the Most Historic Election since Linco--or no, Washing--oh, hell, it's the most important election since time began. And, in my view, this Iranian enthusiasm for burning The One helps proves that. You see, every other lesser American president the Iranians have burned in effigy--which so far includes Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43--was at least in office first. Obama is so far ahead of the curve he got himself burned before he's even been inaugurated.

It also proves eruptions of Iranian demonstrators are not a very good indicator of how we in America should choose our leaders.

Mr. President Elect, welcome to international relations, Muslim-style. Will that be smoking, or non?

Elahi Fights With Only Weapon He Has--Lies

The Detroit News’s resident jihadist crank, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, has weighed in this morning on the Israeli offensive in Gaza, with the kind of illogic and misstatements we’ve come to expect. (“Israel perpetrates slaughter in name of self-defense”).

This time his turban is in a particular twist, limiting himself mostly to denunciations of just about everybody, (except Hamas, of course), and the odd misstatement of fact. In what must be the most breathtaking hypocrisy I’ve seen in my life, Elahi criticizes non-Muslim religious leaders for what’s going on now in Gaza:

Where are religious leaders to promote peace and love among Abraham's children? Where is the pope and the rabbis? Silence may protect them from the Israeli lobby and media, but it won't save them from God's justice and the consequences of this barbaric blood bath.

That’s right. Elahi, that unapologetic agent of the Iranian regime (the one that wants to wipe all of “Abraham’s children” associated with Israel off the map), and who is a defender of Hezbollah, (best known for promoting peace and love among Abraham’s Christian and Jewish children with high explosives, rocket attacks, and terror) blames nonMuslims for all this, and can't think of one word to say against Hamas.

Nor did Elahi have any reaction to the jihadist massacre in Mumbai, in spite of his sensitivity to the plight of "Abraham's children."

Elahi denies Israel’s right to defend herself, as good as saying that any action Israel takes to protect her citizens is a war crime. On the other hand, he doesn’t bat an eye implying that the endless rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas that have brought this offensive on are legitimate self-defense, quoting a London Guardian columnist, "Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist. But there is no right of defense for an illegal occupation."

As stated over and over, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005, and was not occupying Gaza, and Elahi knows this.

He is lying about this.

The way he tells it, (he even quotes Patrick Henry!) if Hamas kills Jews, it's the American War of Independence all over again. If Israel responds, it's "slaughter."

Iranian Clerics Adopt Obama-Style Diplomacy

This was reported in today's Detroit Free Press:

U.S. ambassador: Iran toying with Iraq security talks

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD — U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker is criticizing Iran for trying to block a new security agreement between the United States and Iraq.

In an interview today, Crocker said a steady stream of public statements from clerical and political figures in Tehran make it clear that Iran is interfering in the bilateral negotiations between Iraq and the United States. The talks must conclude by the end of 2008.

The ambassador said Iran wants to keep Iraq "off-balance" to be able to control events in its Arab neighbor to its satisfaction.The new agreement would govern the long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq and replace a temporary UN Security Council resolution.

###

Who do these Iranians think they are? Barack Obama? (“Two-Faced Obama Tries to Slow Iraq Withdrawal, While Telling Voters We Need to Get Out Now”).

Even Sarah Has To Take It Underground

Funny who turns up underground.

Even as prominent a person as Sarah Palin has to find ways to get her message out.

In her case, it’s because she was scheduled to speak yesterday at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance at the UN and elsewhere of President Ahmadinejad of Iran, but then she was disinvited at the last minute, “two days after U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) canceled her longstanding plans to address the rally.”

This disgraceful decision by the rally organizers to disinvite Palin was almost certainly the result of Democratic pressure. So overpowering, apparently, would have been the appearance of the fluffy former Mayor of Nowhere, Alaska, that the only way to keep things fair to the Democrats--and Hillary Clinton--was to tell Palin just to stay away. Democratic organizers didn't dare risk casting an advantageous light on the Republicans. That would have been tough to avoid, given that it’s been the Bush administration, and people who share much of his foreign policy, like John McCain, who have the vastly stronger record of standing up to Iran than the Democrats could ever claim to have.

So the speech Palin intended to deliver in New York on Monday was released as a column through the New York Sun. (Okay, the New York Sun’s not exactly underground. But running as a column, Palin's message won't get the coverage—especially the TV coverage-- it would have had if she’d been allowed to speak at the rally).

So we’re posting her speech in full below, guaranteeing at least three more Americans will see it.

By the way, it seems that in spite of the efforts of the rally organizers to keep “politics” out, some of the participants didn’t read the memo. Check this out:

Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin and Iranian dissident Amir Abbas Fakhravar also spoke at the event.

Fakhravar thanked Israel and the United States for not recognizing and doing business with the Iranian regime. He also made his preference in the U.S. presidential election clear, criticizing “those who want to go to the White House to have unconditional talks with the Islamic Republic”—an apparent reference to a remark Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made in a debate last year about being willing to meet with Ahmadinejad.

Yes, that would be an apparent reference to Obama, wouldn't it?

Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped'

By SARAH PALIN September 22, 2008
Governor Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, was scheduled to speak today at a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to protest the appearance here of President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Her appearance was canceled by rally organizers who sought a nonpolitical event. Following are the remarks Mrs. Palin would have given:

I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.

Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.

He must be stopped.

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation."

Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.

The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the "Iranian nation would not retreat one iota" from its nuclear program.

So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.

If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.

But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world's most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran's desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.

Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran's official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the "One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws."

The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of "propaganda against the system." After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to "only" 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that" effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!

Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime's dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran's behavior.

Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran's allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran's refined petroleum imports.

We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran's economic influence.

We must target the regime's assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.

President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.

We must sanction Iran's Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.

Together, we can stop Iran's nuclear program.

Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel's enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain's promise and it is my promise.

Thank you.

'The Hollow Regime'

The Hollow Regime

Bragging in Tehran.

By Michael Ledeen

The Iranian regime has two fundamental instruments of power, whether at home or abroad: terror and deception. Both are dramatically on display. This past Sunday, 30 people were executed for a variety of alleged “crimes,” and a number of whom lost their lives because they dared to criticize the regime. This wave of executions in the world’s second-most active killer of its own citizens (China tops the list) coincides with the anniversary of the resumption of public hangings last August, which was viewed as “sending a message” to would-be critics and anyone in the West who might be tempted to support Iranian dissidents. This weekend’s victims were convicted of drug trafficking and disruptions of public order, and so far as I can tell the mass executions mark a new grisly watershed in the mullahs’ ongoing terror war against their own people.

This dramatic carnage surely bespeaks a profound insecurity in Tehran. It documents the fear that dominates the rulers’ nightmares, the fear of their own people, who are the greatest threat to the survival of the mullahcracy.

Many of the pundits, in public print and in the oxymoronically mislabeled “Intelligence Community,” would have us believe that the regime is stable, and that the Iranian people have given up their hopes for freedom. But the mullahs’ decision to carry out mass executions gives the lie to that analysis, as does the recent attack on a Revolutionary Guards convoy in the country’s capital city. The RG are the pretorian guard of the regime, and if they cannot protect an armed column (apparently carrying arms to Hezbollah for the next campaign against Israel), they cannot protect anything. No wonder the Supreme Leader and his viziers are worried.

This assault against the symbol of the mullahs’ power is only the latest such event, and news of it arrived slowly in the West. But there have been several other attacks, including a bomb in a prominent mosque, and other RG units in areas of ethnic repression such as Baluchistan and the Arab zones near the Iraqi border.

The RG are also doing badly on foreign battlefields. In Iraq, its agents and officers are now routinely killed and arrested — often without putting up a fight — by Coalition and Iraqi security forces. This report from the U.S. Armed Forces Press Service is typical:

. . . coalition forces captured two suspected Special Groups leaders in Baghdad today. These key leaders were taken in the Rusafa district of Baghdad.

Coalition and Iraqi forces continued operations over the weekend discovering a number of arms caches, capturing al-Qaida terrorists, discovering roadside bombs and attacking terror and criminal networks.

In Rusafa, coalition forces used intelligence information to locate and capture an Iranian-trained senior leader of Special Groups criminals. The agent of Iran is responsible for attacks against Iraqi security and coalition forces as well as kidnappings and smuggling of weapons from Iran to Iraq. He was captured without incident.

Coalition forces also captured another Special Groups criminal in a separate Rusafa district operation. He is a senior leader responsible for supplying weapons, money and logistical support to subordinate Special Groups commanders. He also provides fighters as reinforcements to areas in need — making his role crucial for sustained operations by Special Groups in the area. He, also, was captured without incident.

The Special Groups took another hit when Iraqi special operations forces detained two other criminals in Baghdad, July 24 and 25. . . . One of those detained was associated with improvised rocket-assisted mortar attacks. The other man is reportedly responsible for weapons trafficking from Iran into Diyala.

The mullahs know that the domestic and foreign fronts are linked, for Iran’s humiliating defeat in Iraq is greatly encouraging to the dissidents at home. Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the others are doing everything in their power to deceive Iranians (perhaps including themselves) into believing that they are winning in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the Coalition is teetering, and that all opposition to the regime is hopeless.

To that end, the mullahs routinely resort to the most shameless forms of deceit. The most hilarious — bringing back memories of al-Qaeda’s claim to have captured an American soldier, only to have the “hostage” turn out to be a G.I. Joe toy — was the recent photo of a “new warplane,” which on examination, was another plastic toy.

This was of a piece with the Photoshopped “evidence” of “new Iranian missiles,” which was doubly deceptive: it was an old missile, not (as claimed) a new one, and there was only one of “them,” not (as claimed) four launched simultaneously.

Alongside these hoaxes, designed to convince their people and the West that Iran is a mighty military power, Iranian leaders brag about their economic power as well. It’s another hoax; every Iranian knows that the country is a basket case. I doubt many simple souls were impressed (except to laugh bitterly at the outrageousness of the assertion) by Ahmadinejad’s promise that Iran would soon be the world’s leading economic power. They know better; they are paying a terrible price in misery for the incompetence of their kleptocrats. They know that the regime spends a fortune on the nuclear program, another fortune to support terror abroad, and pockets yet another fortune. So there’s nothing left for “the economy.”

All these bits of deception are aimed at maintaining and expanding the power of the regime, despite its many manifest failures, despite the contempt in which it is held by the majority of Iranians, and despite its quasi-pariah status in the international community. So far, it has worked. No government in the West has seen fit to support the Iranian dissidents. Some European labor unions have given at least verbal support to the Iranian workers’ organizations, but not the AFL-CIO, a pathetic shadow of the brave organization that supported freedom in the Soviet Empire. And the American government, Seymour Hersh and other fabulists notwithstanding, has done nothing of consequence to challenge the regime, and so far as anybody knows, has no intention of doing any such thing.

We act in such a feckless way as to permit the mullahs to say to their people, “you see, the Americans are afraid of us. They will do nothing. You have no hope.” And the hell of it is that the Islamic Republic is hollow, as its own behavior and its own results on the battlefield prove abundantly.

Lots of Iranian people know that the mullahs are losing Iraq, and more of them would know if we had a more accurate and honest press, and an administration capable of explaining the world, and its reaction to it. Still, the Iranians know a lot. Iranians are among the most avid surfers of the internet; they are second in the world (to the Chinese) in the use of “anti-filtering” software (manufactured by the Chinese). So when Iranian deceptions are exposed by American journalists or bloggers, many Iranian people find out about it. And more would find out if Western governments saw fit to provide them with the tools of the modern world: laptops, servers, cell and satellite phones, phone cards, and the like.

Our miserable policy, which is to chant “we don’t want regime change, we want a change in behavior,” is doomed, as the whole world has known from the get-go. Paradoxically, this non-aggressive policy is destined to make military conflict inevitable, whoever is the next president. This policy is a preemptive acquiescence to a nuclear Iran, with all the incalculable consequences attendant to it, and is guaranteed to bring us face to face with the Sarkozy option of “Bomb Iran, or Iran With the Bomb.”

And yet, the Iranian regime is hollow. So far as we know, they are without atomic bombs and a reliable delivery system. We have defeated them in Iraq and will repeat it in Afghanistan. Their economy is a shambles, their people hate them, they present us with Potemkin weapons systems. It is a political explosion ready to happen, it only needs the support of the West. Mainly, us, although I think we would get the support of the French and Italians at a minimum, and perhaps the Danes as well.

But we seem bound and determined to wait until the mullahs don’t need deception any more. I wrote a book about this sort of policy many years ago. It was called Freedom Betrayed; How American Won the Cold War, led a Global Democratic Revolution, and Walked Away. Still seems right.

— Michael Ledeen is author, most recently, of The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction.

'Surrender, Make a Deal, or Win'

Amir Taheri explains in a New York Post article why Iran doesn't believe there will be any military action against them if they continue working towards the bomb--and will end up with it eventually:

In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the then newly-minted President of the Islamic Republic and darling of the IRGC, unveiled a strategy based on the assumption that once George W. Bush is out of the White House, the United States would bite the bullet and accept a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic as "regional superpower" in the Middle East.

Two events convinced Ahmadinejad that his strategy was correct:

The first came in May 2006 when the Bush administration, then at the nadir of its unpopularity because of the situation in Iraq, joined the line of supplicant Europeans begging Tehran to negotiate a deal.

That unexpected shift in Washington's policy produced the opposite effect.

Far from persuading Ahamdinejad that this was a good time to defuse the situation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attempt at nuance and multilateral diplomacy convinced Tehran that the Americans had blinked.

The second event that confirmed Ahmadinejad's belief that "America cannot do a damn thing" came with last year's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

Using a language of obfuscation, the NIE claimed that Tehran had abandoned key aspect of its nuclear program in 2003. The NIE undermined the whole case brought by the International Atomic Energy Agency against the Islamic Republic.

Whatever one might say about Ahmadinejad, one thing is certain: he plays an open hand. He is convinced that the US does not have the stomach for a fight and that Bush is the last American president to even dream of pre-emptive war.

He thinks the dominant mood in the US, and the West in general, is one of pre-emptive surrender. ("WHY THE US POLICY ISN'T WORKING - AND IRAN WILL GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS").

I don't think Taheri is the only one who thinks that the end of the Bush administration will toll the end of an historical moment in our confrontation with radical Islam. A moment far too soon, after far too much neglect. How much of Israel's recent demonstration or air power is explained by the shortening time they sense remaining before a possible Obama presidency leaves them more isolated and exposed than ever to an Iranian nuclear threat?

Taheri's conclusion deserves to be thought about. Hard. He writes:

The Islamic Republic has been at war against the United States and the international system it leads for almost 30 years. This has been a low intensity war because the US and its allies have shied away from full-scale confrontation. The US has shown it has lots of power but not the courage to use even a fraction of it. The Islamic Republic's power, on the other hand, is "tiny," as Senator Barack Obama has noted. But the mullahs have been prepared to use that "tiny" power in full, with already devastating effects.

The issue is not how to avoid war with the Islamic Republic. It is how to end a war that has been going on for almost 30 years.

As in all wars there are three ways to end this one: surrender, make a deal, or win.

Our American Imam Wants You to Know, 'I Am Not an Iranian Agent'

Detroit-area residents who can’t find copies of the Arab American News, or who’ve had their satellite link to Al Jazeera cut off, need go no further than the Op Ed page of the Detroit News to get a view of current affairs from the pro-Iranian side of the street.

That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”

The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by noting

that Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.

"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”

I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?

As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).

He’s also stated in his column that,

Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:

--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."

--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”

--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."

Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.

Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):

“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.

Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.

After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."

Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,

“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”

I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”

Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.

But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.

For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”

But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.

Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).

But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”

But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.

Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”

His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”

Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”

(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")

Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.