Rooyesh

Iranians have seen two major leadership changes in their government in the last several weeks. Late Saturday, September 1, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, appointed a new head of Iran ’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corp. (IRGC), General Mohammad Ali Jaffari.

Second development came on Tuesday, September 4, when Iran ’s Assembly of Experts elected former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as its new chairman. There are media reports inside Iran that one of reasons General Yahya Safavi has left (resigned) from his post as the commander of Iran ’s IRGC is he is preparing to run for the Iranian parliament which is schedule for March 2008. According to the Kargozaran newspaper which is run by moderates, General Safavi along with former Iranian Defense Minister under President Khatami, Ali Shamkhani and former Iran IRGC commander, Mohsen Rezaeii are running for the parliament. Other political analysts are suggesting the Iranian regime is preparing for possible military conflict with the United States .

General Jafari has an extensive military experience. He became part of the IRGC during 1981, he has held several positions in IRGC including served as commander of operative battlefields in the South and West of Iran. He also severed as a commander of Ashura Brigade. In an interview with NPR news, Farideh Farhi, a professor at University of Hawaii said, “Jafari was long commander of the Guards’ ground forces. He had been head of its new Strategic Center , which has focused on the U.S. military.”

Another development was the election of former Iranian President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to head the Assembly of Experts. The significant of this is the Assembly of Experts is an organization who could choose or dismiss the supreme leader. Furthermore under the constitution this assembly has a right to supervise the duties of the supreme leader and choose a new leader in case of dismissal or death of the supreme leader. There have been rumors for long time a health of 68 year Khamenei is deteriorating. Mr. Rafsanjani won the vote of 41 compare to 34 for the ultra conservative, Ahmad Jananti who has the support of President Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei. There are divisions among Iranian political observers at what this election means. Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in an interview with NPR news said, “I don’t think Rafsanjani being appointed head of the Assembly of Experts is going to make a marked impact on Iran’s short-term foreign policy, but it has huge implications for Iran’s future and especially Iran’s future when Ayatollah Khamenei eventually dies or is removed from position of supreme leader.”

But Abbas Abedi, a political expert in Tehran , in an interview with the New York Times said, “I don’t think anything will change at the Assembly, It does not have anything to do with the political trends.” Shortly after his election Mr. Rafsanjani delivered a speech and among other things, he discussed the issue of the Iran’s nuclear issue as well the relationships with the United States . It is hard to tell what the election of Mr. Rafsanjani and the appointment of new head of IRGC, General Jaffari means to the country or what impact it will have on the future of Iran but surely it has started a new era in Iran ’s political future.

Rooyesh.blog, September 16, 2007

A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a massive threat to global peace and security. It would trigger a deadly arms race drawing in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Israel and Pakistan. That would raise significantly the prospect of nuclear war and the likelihood of terrorists acquiring an atomic weapon.

For those reasons, there is broad consensus between the US and the European Union that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions must be frustrated, but there is little agreement on how to achieve that. The US will this week launch a diplomatic offensive at the United Nations. Washington wants to negotiate a new Security Council resolution condemning Iran for failing to abandon its nuclear weapons programme and tightening sanctions as punishment. There is little chance of the Americans getting their way at the Security Council.

Russia wants to wait and see what effect two previous resolutions and existing sanctions will have. Tehran, meanwhile, is happy with a ‘work plan’ already agreed with the International Atomic Energy Association, under which it agrees to answer questions about its nuclear programme, but not to suspend uranium enrichment. Britain, France and Germany - the so-called EU3 - are sceptical about that plan. The US is downright scornful, believing it to be a stalling tactic. The Iranians also have reason to be sceptical. They hear some of the rhetoric coming out of Washington and conclude that, whatever they do, they will be attacked.

So they may conclude that the only course of action is full acceleration towards a nuclear deterrent. It is true that the US is increasingly bellicose. The balance of power in the Bush administration is shifting away from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who favours cautious engagement with Tehran, and towards Vice-President Dick Cheney, who urges confrontation. That shift means Britain’s diplomatic leverage in Washington is also waning. Dr Rice is much more inclined to listen to US allies than Mr Cheney. But London also has some diplomatic leverage in Iran.

While deciphering Iran’s internal power struggles is difficult, Britain has sufficient contact to transmit a clear but discreet message to the regime. That message should be simple: war can still be averted, but for that to happen, the US hawks must be deprived of the obvious pretext to attack and the doves sufficiently rewarded for their diplomatic efforts. That means abandoning the pretence of the IAEA ‘work plan’ and committing to an immediate halt in uranium enrichment. The US is not destined to attempt a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it is bound to lose patience with diplomacy soon.

Source: Guardian, UK

The steel door closed with the clang of finality. Suddenly, I was cut off from the outside world, surrounded by four high walls. And completely alone. In solitary confinement. It’s difficult to describe the feeling that overtakes you when you enter a prison cell. First comes overwhelming dread.

Then disbelief: How did I end up a political prisoner? And doubt: Will I be here for weeks, months, years? Will I be able to bear up under the pressure? On May 8, I was arrested by agents of Iran’s intelligence ministry on suspicion of working to destabilize the Islamic Republic. For the next 105 days, this cell in Ward 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison would be my “home.” The cell — really a room — was of reasonable size, as it was two cells joined together. It was bare but clean. A brown wall-to-wall carpet covered the floor. In one corner lay a blanket and a copy of the Koran. Against one wall stood an iron sink with a broken faucet. Along another were two steel doors, only one of which was used to enter and exit the room. About eight feet up one of the walls were two rectangular windows that looked out onto a flat roof. They were open to let in fresh air, screened to keep out flies and barred to keep in prisoners. Through these windows, I could glimpse the sky; sometimes at night I could see the moon. The third time I saw a full moon, it hit me that I had been imprisoned for three months. I had flown to Tehran last December to visit my 93-year-old mother. But in January the authorities prevented me from leaving.

I underwent many weeks of intensive interrogation by intelligence ministry officials, centering on my activities as director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. When my questioning abruptly stopped for six weeks, I thought I had answered all the queries satisfactorily. But then I was summoned to the ministry and taken into custody. Twenty-four hours later, I was brought before a revolutionary court magistrate. He was polite but businesslike as he drafted an arrest warrant accusing me of endangering Iranian national security. The charge seemed ludicrous. I, a 67-year-old grandmother, was being accused of threatening the security of the most populous and powerful country in the Middle East because I had organized conferences in Washington on Iran and other states of the region. But the implications were frightening. To be in solitary confinement means to cling to hope and to struggle with despair.

For nearly four months, my only human contact was with prison guards and interrogators. Early in the third month, I was given access to newspapers and provided with a television set. But even then, I was unaware of the media attention my imprisonment had generated, of the campaign that my family and supporters had set in motion to secure my freedom, of the letters signed by hundreds of academics, intellectuals, and well-wishers on my behalf, and of various governments’ intercessions with the Iranian authorities. All I knew was my confinement. My questioning resumed in prison. It ran along the same lines as it had before my incarceration. But the sessions were shorter, never lasting more than three or four hours, and the approach was gentler. It made me wonder why I’d been imprisoned at all. There’s always a certain calculus in encounters between interrogator and detainee. I decided from the beginning to remain polite, to maintain a certain formality and distance and, because I had nothing to hide, to answer truthfully. The interrogators’ tone, in turn, remained correct and civil. They did not threaten; they never mentioned formal charges or a trial. On occasion, they took the trouble to explain their concerns about U.S. intentions in Iran — explanations that seemed to reflect Intelligence Ministry thinking.

This is the belief that the Bush administration, entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan, no longer contemplates military action against Iran. Rather, it hopes to encourage a “velvet” revolution, like the peaceful ones that occurred in Georgia and Ukraine. To achieve this end, it uses think tanks, foundations and even universities to organize workshops for Iranian women, to invite Iranian opinion-makers and scholars to conferences and to offer them fellowships. In time, the officials believe, the administration hopes to create a network of like-minded people in Iran who are intent on regime change. Iranian officials also seem to believe that an alert and vigilant Islamic Republic is successfully foiling — and effectively discouraging the United States from pursuing — this coordinated plan. Over many weeks of questioning and discussion, I tried to convince them that the Wilson Center is not part of any such scheme. I don’t believe I succeeded in that, but I do think that in the end they came to accept that I, at least, was not engaged in any conspiracy I always felt confident that the center and my family would never abandon me. But there were still moments when I wondered whether I’d been forgotten or whether I would ever get out of Evin. I decided from the start that if I was to avoid falling apart, I had to impose a strict discipline on myself, maintain a positive attitude and use prison rules to my advantage. To stay focused, I avoided thinking about my family — even though I dreamed of my leisurely Sunday morning coffee with my husband, Shaul, and my weekend dinners with my daughter, Haleh, and my grandchildren. Interrogations aside, I had the days to myself. I adopted and stuck to a strict regimen of exercise, walking (or pacing) in my cell and outdoors when allowed, and reading.

I noted that, though they were at first amused by my frenetic activity, some of the female guards were soon pacing up and down the corridor themselves. While exercising, I wrote an entire book — a biography of my grandmother — in my head, editing, transposing paragraphs, rewriting passages. I spent the first night sleeping uncomfortably on the floor on a single blanket, having rejected the offer of a cot, which I didn’t think would be good for my lower back pain. But then I asked for more blankets. I folded six to make a bed. One I rolled up and used as a bookshelf and another as a shelf for my clothes. Ward 209, which was reserved for political detainees, had its own routine. Breakfast was available after 6 a.m., lunch was served at noon, and dinner around 7. I organized my day accordingly. I would get up at 7 a.m. and exercise on the floor for an hour, then shower and dress. After breakfast I would resume exercising until it was time to go out on one of the two rooftop terraces available to the inmates. Both were surrounded by high walls. One terrace was quite small. It included water faucets and clotheslines for the female inmates. I washed my T-shirt and slacks there every day. The other was large and open to the sky, and excellent for walking. I surprised the guards one day by insisting on continuing to walk back and forth even though it was raining. I spent as much time on the terraces as I could. Sometimes, I was allowed many more hours outdoors than the regulation one hour a day. I was always alone and never met another inmate on the terraces.

But one day I saw a white butterfly. I thought to myself: “I am compelled to be here, but what are you doing in this place?” At 6 p.m. every day I would shower and change. I remembered a friend telling me that at her English boarding school, everyone had to change for dinner, and I had seen movies in which the British aristocracy did the same. So I would put on an unironed T-shirt and a wrinkled but fresh pair of cotton pants and sit down in grand style to read books between 6 and 10 p.m., stopping only to eat. One of the guards brought me books from the prison library — mostly on Shiism and Islamic subjects. Kian Tajbakhsh, another Iranian American prisoner who lived and worked in Iran and could get English language books from home, was allowed to share books with me, including Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” and Georges Simenon’s police thrillers. They made excellent prison reading. In return, I was once allowed to send fruit to Kian. My mother came to visit me during my third month of captivity. I hadn’t wanted her to see me in prison or to see how much weight I had lost. But the visit did us both much good. I couldn’t help thinking about the Irbil five — Iranian officials arrested by U.S. forces in Irbil, Iraq, in January and, I was told, denied any family visits. The subject of humanitarian gestures such as family visits had come up repeatedly during my exchanges with my interrogators. In early August I learned in a general way of the letters exchanged by Woodrow Wilson Center President Lee H. Hamilton and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This communication, I believe, provided the breakthrough that led to my release, which seemed as sudden as my arrest. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 23, my senior interrogator came to Evin and told me to pack my things. I was free to go. Ten days later I had my passport, and on Sept. 3, I boarded an Austrian Airlines flight for Vienna. I watched as the hostess secured the plane door, the sound of its closing signaling my return to my family, my friends and my freedom.

By: Haleh Esfandiari, The Washington Post

The head of Israel’s airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel’s Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair,

 a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer’s month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed ‘Orchard’, carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots. Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel’s politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel’s military censor. But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid.

The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp. Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that it was an ‘operation rehearsal’ for a raid on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Finally, however, at the week’s end, the first few tangible details were beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source involved in the Israeli operation. They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel’s most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs.

Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft. What was becoming clear by this weekend amid much scepticism, largely from sources connected with the administration of President George Bush, was the nature of the allegation, if not the facts. In a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the impression of being co-ordinated, a narrative was laid out that combined nuclear skulduggery and the surviving members of the ‘axis of evil’: Iran, North Korea and Syria. It also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy concerns: that North Korea was not being properly monitored in the deal struck for its nuclear disarmament and was off-loading its material to Iran and Syria, both of which in turn were helping to rearm Hizbollah. Underlying all the accusations was a suggestion that recalled the bogus intelligence claims that led to the war against Iraq: that the three countries might be collaborating to supply an unconventional weapon to Hizbollah. It is not only the raid that is odd but also, ironically, the deliberate air of mystery surrounding it, given Israel’s past history of bragging about similar raids, including an attack on an Iraqi reactor.

It was a secrecy so tight, in fact, that even as the Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits of their planes they were not told the nature of the target they were being ordered to attack. According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post who spoke to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the attack, revealed only to the pilots while they were in the air, was a northern Syrian facility that was labelled as an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river, close to the Turkish border. According to this version of events, a North Korean ship, officially carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the raid in the Syrian port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be carrying nuclear equipment. It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. But others have entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who, without mentioning Syria by name, suggested to Fox television that the raid was linked to stopping unconventional weapons proliferation. Most explicit of all was Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for nuclear non-proliferation policy, who, speaking in Rome yesterday, insisted that ‘North Koreans were in Syria’ and that Damascus may have had contacts with ’secret suppliers’ to obtain nuclear equipment.

‘There are indicators that they do have something going on there,’ he said. ‘We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen. ‘So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that we pay very close attention to that,’ he said. ‘We’re watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely.’ But despite the heavy inference, no official so far has offered an outright accusation. Instead they have hedged their claims in ifs and buts, assiduously avoiding the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’. There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other officials and former officials familiar with both Syria and North Korea. They have pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has neither the economic nor the industrial base to support the kind of nuclear programme described, adding that Syria has long rejected going down the nuclear route. Others have pointed out that North Korea and Syria in any case have also had a long history of close links - making meaningless the claim that the North Koreans are in Syria.

The scepticism was reflected by Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Centre, quoted in the Post. ‘It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can’t get a good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing,’ adding that there was ‘a great deal of scepticism that there’s any nuclear angle here’ and instead the facility could have been related to chemical or biological weapons. The opaqueness surrounding the nature of what may have been hit in Operation Orchard has been compounded by claims that US knowledge over the alleged ‘agricultural site’ has come not from its own intelligence and satellite imaging, but from material supplied to Washington from Tel Aviv over the last six months, material that has been restricted to just a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community uncertain of its veracity. Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria - and Israel has a long history of employing complex deceptions in its operations - the message being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if Syria’s ally, Iran, comes close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and the world fails to prevent it, either through diplomatic or military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.

So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran’s nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran and Syria of the supremacy of its aircraft and appears to be designed to deter Syria from getting involved in the event of a raid on Iran - a reminder, if it were required, that if Israel’s ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war its airforce remains potent, powerful and unchallenged. And, critically, the raid on Syria has come as speculation about a war against Iran has begun to re-emerge after a relatively quiet summer. With the US keen to push for a third UN Security Council resolution authorising a further tranche of sanctions against Iran, both London and Washington have increased the heat by alleging that they are already fighting ‘a proxy war’ with Tehran in Iraq. Perhaps more worrying are the well-sourced claims from conservative thinktanks in the US that there have been ‘instructions’ by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney to roll out support for a war against Iran. In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder. In a world of proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of military action against Iran has far from disappeared from the agenda.

Source: The Guardian