Category Archives: Iran

Iran’s Khamenei: No cure for barbaric Israel but annihilation

Slate: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to Twitter to call for the destruction of Israel over the weekend. He first started with a string of vitriolic anti-Israel tweets that called for the destruction of the “barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of Israel.”


He then culminated by posting a “neat table,” as Haaretz puts it, that lays out nine key questions on why—and how—his plan to destroy Israel should be implemented. The post begins with the basic: Why? Because throughout its existence “the fake Zionist regime has tried to realize its goals by means of infanticide, homicide, violence & iron fist.” But rest easy, Iran definitely does not want “the massacre of the Jewish people” but rather Iran has proposed “a practical & logical mechanism” to eliminate Israel through a referendum involving “all the original people of Palestine, including Muslims, Chrsitians and Jews” anywhere in the world.


The referendum would then give rise to a new government that would then have to decide whether Jews who have relocated to Israel can stay there or “should return to their home countries.” Khamenei is confident that the plan “can enjoy the supports of the independent nations and governments.”

Until the day when Khamenei’s plan can be realized, “powerful confrontation and resolute and armed resistance” is the only way to deal with “this ruinous regime.” And what should be the first step? Arming the West Bank. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. ties to terrorism in Iran

The New York Times reports: After a car bombing in southeastern Iran killed 11 Revolutionary Guard members in 2007, a C.I.A. officer noticed something surprising in the agency’s files: an intelligence report, filed ahead of the bombing, that had warned that something big was about to happen in Iran.

Though the report had provided few specifics, the C.I.A. officer realized it meant that the United States had known in advance that a Sunni terrorist group called Jundallah was planning an operation inside Shiite-dominated Iran, two former American officials familiar with the matter recalled. Just as surprising was the source of the report. It had originated in Newark, with a detective for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Port Authority police are responsible for patrolling bridges and tunnels and issuing airport parking tickets. But the detective, a hard-charging and occasionally brusque former ironworker named Thomas McHale, was also a member of an F.B.I. counterterrorism task force. He had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and developed informants inside Jundallah’s leadership, who then came under the joint supervision of the F.B.I. and C.I.A.

Reading the report, the C.I.A. officer became increasingly concerned. Agency lawyers he consulted concluded that using Islamic militants to gather intelligence — and obtaining information about attacks ahead of time — could suggest tacit American support for terrorism. Without specific approval from the president, the lawyers said, that could represent an unauthorized covert action program. The C.I.A. ended its involvement with Mr. McHale’s informants.

Despite the C.I.A.’s concerns, American officials continued to obtain intelligence from inside Jundallah, first through the F.B.I., and then the Pentagon. Contacts with informants did not end when Jundallah’s attacks led to the deaths of Iranian civilians, or when the State Department designated it a terrorist organization. [Continue reading…]

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Obama promised Iran’s Khamenei that U.S. campaign against ISIS poses no threat to Assad

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Barack Obama secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence.

The letter appeared aimed both at buttressing the campaign against Islamic State and nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.

Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say.

The October letter marked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since taking office in 2009 and pledging to engage with Tehran’s Islamist government.

The correspondence underscores that Mr. Obama views Iran as important—whether in a potentially constructive or negative role—to his emerging military and diplomatic campaign to push Islamic State from the territories it has gained over the past six months.

Mr. Obama’s letter also sought to assuage Iran’s concerns about the future of its close ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to another person briefed on the letter. It states that the U.S.’s military operations inside Syria aren’t targeted at Mr. Assad or his security forces. [Continue reading…]

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After acid attacks and execution, Iran defends human rights record

NPR reports: Iranian officials attacked the latest United Nations report on its human rights record Friday, blasting what they called efforts to impose a Western lifestyle on the Islamic republic.

But for Iranians and others who hoped President Hassan Rouhani would begin to turn around his county’s human rights record, the U.N. report provided a depressing but not surprising answer. It said executions in Rouhani’s first year in office had increased to what U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed called “alarming” levels.

Coming days after a woman was executed for killing her alleged rapist, and after several acid attacks against women in the city of Isfahan, Shaheed’s report portrayed Iranians as suffering from an opaque justice system, regular oppression of women and religious persecution.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, attacked Shaheed for including in his report people who had been charged as terrorists. He told state television that someone with “the high-flown title of U.N. rapporteur shouldn’t act as a Voice of America showman.”

“I think such words in this report devalue the entire report,” Larijani says. “I strongly advise him to resign from this post conclusively, because his background as a rapporteur is very poor.”

Shaheed and other rights advocates say Rouhani, who promised human rights reforms during his election campaign, is hampered by the country’s fractured political system. With hardliners well-placed in parliament, the judiciary, the security services and religious establishment, Rouhani and his supporters can only try for improvements on the margins.

Faraz Sanei of Human Rights Watch says one good example is the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a well-known defense attorney who formerly worked with the exiled Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sotoudeh was arrested on what Sanei calls trumped-up national security charges and given a six-year prison term. After Rouhani took office, she was released halfway through her term. Then came the backlash: Sotoudeh was barred from practicing law, then briefly arrested again at a demonstration on behalf of the acid attack victims from Isfahan. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: A British-Iranian woman detained in Iran for trying to watch a volleyball game has been sentenced to one year in a notorious prison, according to her family and lawyer.

Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, a law graduate from London, was found guilty of spreading “propaganda against the regime” following a secret hearing at Tehran’s revolutionary court.

Ghavami has been detained for 127 days in prison since being arrested on 20 June at Azadi (“Freedom” in Farsi) stadium in Tehran where Iran’s national volleyball team was scheduled to play Italy. Although she had been released within a few hours after the initial arrest she was rearrested days later.

Speaking to the Guardian, Ghavami’s brother Iman, 28, said the family felt “shattered” by the court verdict.

“We are really disappointed because we felt she would get out on bail immediately. She’s been through a lot and now it’s a full-year sentence and she’s already served four months,” he said.

No reason was given for the conviction, although Ghavami had been accused of spreading propaganda against the regime, an unspecific charge often used by Iran’s judiciary. [Continue reading…]

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Iran: Rafsanjani v. the hardliners — the battlelines are drawn

Scott Lucas writes: While most of the world’s attention to Iran is on nuclear talks and regional maneuvers in Iraq and Syria, an important power struggle is being waged inside the Islamic Republic.

Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose political career was buried by some analysts amid regime in-fighting after the disputed 2009 Presidential election, resurged to become a leading force behind the Rouhani Government. Vocal on both domestic and foreign policy initiatives — such as “engagement” with the US and Saudi Arabia — Rafsanjani even ventured to press the Supreme Leader for the release of political prisoners, including opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

That resurgence has worried hardliners, who still consider Rafsanjani an appeaser — or even collaborator — over the “sedition” of the mass protests from 2009. So, while challenging the Rouhani Government, they have searched for a way to put the former President back in a political box.

The occasion for the showdown will be the election of the head of the Assembly of Experts, due in early 2015, to replace the recently-deceased Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani — the cleric who ended Rafsanjani’s leadership of the body in 2011.

The Assembly selects the Supreme Leader and has the nominal authority to replace him. However, its significance is more in symbolism than a role in policy: the election of its head marks out the factions and individuals who are “winning” the internal political contest. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., Iran relations move to détente

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration and Iran, engaged in direct nuclear negotiations and facing a common threat from Islamic State militants, have moved into an effective state of détente over the past year, according to senior U.S. and Arab officials.

The shift could drastically alter the balance of power in the region, and risks alienating key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates who are central to the coalition fighting Islamic State. Sunni Arab leaders view the threat posed by Shiite Iran as equal to or greater than that posed by the Sunni radical group Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Israel contends the U.S. has weakened the terms of its negotiations with Iran and played down Tehran’s destabilizing role in the region.

Over the past decade, Washington and Tehran have engaged in fierce battles for influence and power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan fueled by the U.S. overthrow of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and the Arab Spring revolutions that began in late 2010. U.S. officials still say the option of military action remains on the table to thwart Iran’s nuclear program.

But recent months have ushered in a change as the two countries have grown into alignment on a spectrum of causes, chief among them promoting peaceful political transitions in Baghdad and Kabul and pursuing military operations against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, according to these officials.

The Obama administration also has markedly softened its confrontational stance toward Iran’s most important nonstate allies, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Lebanese militant and political organization, Hezbollah. American diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry , negotiated with Hamas leaders through Turkish and Qatari intermediaries during cease-fire talks in July that were aimed at ending the Palestinian group’s rocket attacks on Israel, according to senior U.S. officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly tipped off Lebanese law-enforcement bodies close to Hezbollah about threats posed to Beirut’s government by Sunni extremist groups, including al Qaeda and its affiliate Nusra Front in Syria, Lebanese and U.S. officials said. [Continue reading…]

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The collapse of order in the Middle East

freemanIn a speech delivered in Washington DC today, Chas Freeman said: Da`ish [ISIS] and the 15,000 foreign jihadis it has attracted are an existential threat to Arab societies and a potential menace to Muslim societies everywhere. Da`ish poses no comparable threat to the United States. Some Americans argue therefore that Da`ish doesn’t matter. A few suggest that, because tight oil and shale gas production is making North America energy self-sufficient, what happens in the Middle East as a whole should also no longer matter much to Americans. But the Persian Gulf is where international oil prices are set. If you doubt this, ask an American tight oil producer what’s happening in today’s energy markets and why. Without stability in West Asia, the global economy is also unstable.

Da`ish aspires not only to destroy the states of the Mashriq – the Arab East – but to conquer their territories and use their resources to mount attacks on the United States, European countries, Russia, and China. It wants to get its hands on the world’s major energy reserves. Its depredations are a current threat only to stability in West Asia, but its recruitment efforts are as global as its aspirations. Quite aside from the responsibility the United States bears for creating the conditions in which this dangerous cult could be born and flourish, Da`ish threatens American interests abroad today. It promises to threaten American domestic tranquility tomorrow. It sees inflicting harm on the West as a central element of its mission.

For all these reasons, Da`ish cannot be ignored by the United States or other nations outside the Middle East. It requires a response from us. But Da`ish must be actively countered first and foremost by those it targets within the region, not by the United States and its Western allies. This means that our response must be measured, limited, and calculated to avoid relieving regional players of the primary responsibility for protecting themselves from the menace to them that Da`ish represents.

Muslims – whether Shiite or Sunni or Arab, Kurd, Persian, or Turk – now have an expanding piece of Hell in their part of the Earth, a growing foulness near the center of Islam. It is almost certainly a greater threat to all of them than they have ever posed to each other. Da`ish will not be contained and defeated unless the nations and sects on its regional target list – Shiite and Sunni alike – all do their part. We should not delude ourselves. The obstacles to this happening are formidable.

Virtually every group now fighting or being victimized in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon has engaged in or been accused of terrorism by the others. Sectarian violence continues to stoke hatred in the region. The religious animosities between Shi`ites and Sunnis are more intense than ever. The geopolitical rivalry between Iran and the Gulf Arabs remains acute. The political resentments between Turks, Kurds, and Arabs and between Arabs and Persians are entrenched. Each describes the other as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Unity of command, discipline, and morale are the keys to both military and political success. Da`ish has all three. Its opponents do not. Some are dedicated to the defense of Shiite privilege. Others assign priority to dislodging Shiite or secular authority. Some insist on regime change. Others seek to prevent it. A few support Islamist democratic movements. Others seek to suppress and eradicate them. Some fear terrorism from the victims and enemies of Da`ish more than they fear Da`ish itself. Most treat opposing Da`ish as a secondary strategic objective or a means of enlisting American and other foreign support in the achievement of other priorities, not as their primary aim.

With few exceptions, the states of the region have habitually looked to outside powers for leadership as well as firepower and manpower with which to respond to major security challenges. Despite vast imports of foreign weapons systems, confidence in outside backing has enabled the countries in the region to assume that they could avoid ultimate responsibility for their own defense, relying instead on their ability to summon their American and European security partners in times of crisis. But only a coalition with a strong Muslim identity can hope to contain and shrink Da`ish.

There is no such coalition at present. Every actor in the region has an agenda that is only partially congruent with the Da`ish-related agendas of others. And every actor focuses on the reasons it cannot abide or work with some or all of the others, not on exploring the points it has in common with them. [Continue reading…]

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The crisis in U.S.-Israel relations is officially here

Jeffrey Goldberg writes: The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it’s ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.

Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.) But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.” [Continue reading…]

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The Kurdish vision of Democratic Confederalism

In the preface to Democratic Confederalism, published in English in 2011, the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, writes: For more than thirty years the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been struggling for the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people. Our struggle, our fight for liberation turned the Kurdish question into an international issue which affected the entire Middle East and brought a solution of the Kurdish question within reach.

When the PKK was formed in the 1970s the international ideological and political climate was characterized by the bipolar world of the Cold War and the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist camps. The PKK was inspired at that time by the rise of decolonialization movements all over the world. In this context we tried to find our own way in agreement with the particular situation in our homeland. The PKK never regarded the Kurdish question as a mere problem of ethnicity or nationhood.

Rather, we believed, it was the project of liberating the society and democratizing it. These aims increasingly determined our actions since the 1990s.

We also recognized a causal link between the Kurdish question and the global domination of the modern capitalist system. Without questioning and challenging this link a solution would not be possible. Otherwise we would only become involved in new dependencies.

So far, with a view to issues of ethnicity and nationhood like the Kurdish question, which have their roots deep in history and at the foundations of society, there seemed to be only one viable solution: the creation of a nation-state, which was the paradigm of the capitalist modernity at that time.

We did not believe, however, that any ready-made political blueprints would be able to sustainably improve the situation of the people in the Middle East. Had it not been nationalism and nation-states which had created so many problems in the Middle East?

Let us therefore take a closer look at the historical background of this paradigm and see whether we can map a solution that avoids the trap of nationalism and fits the situation of the Middle East better. [Continue reading…]

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Obama sees an Iran deal that could avoid Congress

The New York Time reports: No one knows if the Obama administration will manage in the next five weeks to strike what many in the White House consider the most important foreign policy deal of his presidency: an accord with Iran that would forestall its ability to make a nuclear weapon. But the White House has made one significant decision: If agreement is reached, President Obama will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.

Even while negotiators argue over the number of centrifuges Iran would be allowed to spin and where inspectors could roam, the Iranians have signaled that they would accept, at least temporarily, a “suspension” of the stringent sanctions that have drastically cut their oil revenues and terminated their banking relationships with the West, according to American and Iranian officials. The Treasury Department, in a detailed study it declined to make public, has concluded Mr. Obama has the authority to suspend the vast majority of those sanctions without seeking a vote by Congress, officials say.

But Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate those sanctions. Only Congress can take that step. And even if Democrats held on to the Senate next month, Mr. Obama’s advisers have concluded they would probably lose such a vote. [Continue reading…]

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Iran vows to aid Lebanese military

The Associated Press reports: Iran said Sunday it is ready to provide aid to the Lebanese army as well as the Shiite Hezbollah group to help combat “terrorists.”

The promise of aid comes after Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars to Lebanon’s armed forces, and will be seen by many Lebanese as part of a competition for influence over the tiny country, which is gripped by sectarian tensions and bitterly divided over the Syrian civil war.

Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by state TV as saying that “supporting the Lebanese nation, army and resistance will still remain on Iran’s agenda.” Hezbollah’s allies refer to it as the “resistance” because of its stated mission of driving Israel out of occupied territory.

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Iran’s ‘shadow commander’ Major General Qassem Suleimani steps into the light

The Atlantic reports: On October 16, Iran’s Fars news agency proclaimed the “magnificent role of General Suleimani in the fight against the terrorists of Daesh,” using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, boasted that The Guardian had noted the role of Major General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force — the branch of the Revolutionary Guards responsible for overseas operations — in combating Islamic State militants.

“According to this publication,” Fars enthused, “General Suleimani is playing a key role in the fight against the Islamic State group.”

It is no coincidence that Fars dedicated a whole news article to the fact that an “English newspaper” had commented on Suleimani’s presence in Iraq. Iran has made a concerted effort in recent weeks to show the world that Suleimani — and by extension, the Quds Force — is bolstering Shiite militias against ISIS.

Numerous photographs have circulated on social media and in Iran’s state press showing Suleimani in Iraq and Syria. They are notable largely because until now, Suleimani has been an elusive figure, a subject of great media interest and speculation but also great secrecy. Suleimani’s name has appeared frequently in the Western press, but usually accompanied by the description “shadowy,” as in “shadowy figure,” or even “Shadow Commander.”

Yet this month, the hitherto rarely glimpsed Suleimani has been snapped in Irbil, grinning with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters; meeting with a top Shiite commander, Mohammad Kazmi, at the Quds Force headquarters in Iraq; and hanging out with Shiite militias while wearing a reversed baseball cap and Palestinian keffiyeh: [Continue reading…]

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Is there an answer for Syria?

Jessica T. Mathews writes: In August 2012, not long after former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stepped down as the international community’s special envoy on Syria, he and I shared a coffee break between airplane flights. Speaking with deep sadness, this consummate international negotiator said he’d never worked harder on a problem with less to show for it. Since then, the widely respected former Algerian foreign minister and international civil servant Lakhdar Brahimi has done the same, with the same result.

What Annan and Brahimi tried to do through a series of meetings in Geneva was to weave together enough threads of political agreement to form the basis for a cease-fire. The problem was that when one side had brought off recent military success, it felt optimistic enough to believe it could fight to victory and was uninterested in making political concessions. Even had the fighters themselves come close to equal levels of exhaustion and suffering, half a dozen powers that were fueling the war by proxy could and did ensure that a stable military equilibrium was never reached. Those powers included Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, which were backing Assad, and Saudi Arabia, various Gulf States, and the US, which were backing the opposition. Despite enormous efforts, the Geneva talks failed.

What’s different now is that the two most important players, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, share an urgent interest in defeating ISIS before the chaos it is sowing reaches their own borders. According to a leading expert on the Syrian conflict, this might make it possible for the Assad regime and the non-jihadi opposition to take a highly unusual step. Yezid Sayigh — my colleague at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut — argues that the time is ripe for both the Assad regime and the non-jihadi opposition groups to execute comprehensive (that is, not local), unilateral truces, undertaken separately but in parallel.

For this to take place, no formal agreement would be necessary or indeed possible. No agreement-blocking preconditions would be considered, just two clean cease-fires. Sayigh’s insight is that both sides currently share a balance of weakness. Both need a respite from fighting each other to enable them to concentrate their forces on preventing ISIS from winning what could be game-changing military victories. [Continue reading…]

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Iran says it’s under attack by ISIS

The Daily Beast reports: On May 13, 2014, a pickup truck approached a caravan of white vans moving on a road near Baqubah, east of Baghdad, in Iraq. Within few meters of the caravan, the pickup exploded, leaving five Iranian engineers and several of their Iraqi guards dead, according to local news reports. The attack came less than 24 hours after a threat by ISIS spokesperson, Abu Mohammad al Adnani.

ISIS could — and very much wanted to — “transform Iran into pools of blood,” Adnani said. After all, Iran was the “bitterest enemy” of the Islamic State.

But al Qaeda long has been known to have deep, complex relations with Iran. And so ISIS, which grew out of a branch of al Qaeda in Iraq, “held back its soldiers and repressed its rage over the years to preserve the unity” of al Qaeda’s ranks.

“So let history record that Iran owes an invaluable debt to al Qaeda,” he added.

But in May, Adnani announced a change of plans: ISIS would not respect al Qaeda requests any more. And while Adnani did not overtly threaten Iran, the May 13th attack turned out to be one in a string of purported terror attacks against Iran and Iranians. These attacks have been pinned by local media and Iranian officials to ISIS and other Sunni extremist groups.

The American intelligence community has heard the claims. But they’re not sure whether the violence can be blamed on the Islamic State — or some other Sunni militants. “While no one is ruling out the possibility of an ISIL presence in Iran,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast, using the government’s preferred acronym for ISIS, “at this time we are not able to validate reports of any activity there.”

ISIS’s rampage through Iraq has produced collateral damage that’s been largely unnoticed in the West. Iran, on the other hand, has been paying close attention. When ISIS took over the city of Jalawlah near the Iranian border, several Iranian media outlets reported a heavy attack on a border guard post near the city of Qasr-e-Shirin—on Iranian soil. The initial toll was reported four guardsmen killed in the incident. Qasr-e-Shirin’s representative in the Iranian parliament, a hardliner conservative named Fathollah Husseini, denied any casualties. But less than two days later, Iranian media outlets reported on funerals held for privates killed in the incident. Later reports suggested at least 11 Iranian border guards were killed in the incident.

Iranian political and military leaders tend to censor terrorist threats inside Iran, to bolster their reign over the country. But the ISIS threat is so bold inside Iran that even the highest officials have publicly acknowledged it. [Continue reading…]

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‘I am not a spy. I am a philosopher’ — 125 days in an Iranian prison

Ramin Jahanbegloo writes: The heavy steel door swung closed behind me in the cell. I took off my blindfold and found myself trapped within four cold walls. The cell was small. High ceiling, old concrete. All green. An intense yellow light from a single bulb high above. Somehow I could hear the horror in the walls, the voices of previous prisoners whispering a painful welcome. I had no way of knowing whether they had survived. I had no way of knowing whether I would. So many questions were crowding my mind. I heard a man moaning. It was coming through a vent. I realized that he must have been tortured. Would I be tortured, too?

I was, and am, a philosopher, an academic. Life had not been easy for Iranian intellectuals, artists, journalists, and human-rights activists since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2005. As a thinker on the margin of Iranian society, I was not safe, and so, rather than stay in Iran, I had accepted a job offer in Delhi, India. I had come back to Tehran for a visit. On the morning of April 27, 2006, I was at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport to catch a flight to Brussels, where I was to attend a conference. I had checked in my luggage and gone through security when I was approached by four men. One of them called me by my first name. “Ramin,” he said, “could you follow us?”

“I’ll miss my plane,” I said.

“We just want to ask you a few questions.”

People around us were watching, but nobody moved. I realized that I had no choice but to go with them.

I was placed in a car. Two of the men got in the front; the other two climbed in the back with me between them. They pushed my head down, and the car headed toward an airport garage where another car was waiting. With fewer witnesses around, the men were more aggressive now, pulling me out of the first car and throwing me into the second. They pushed my head down again, and this time one of them covered it with his jacket, which smelled of rotten onions. It had a hole in it, so that I could see out of one of the side windows. As the car sped away, one of the men said into a walkie-talkie: “We have the package. The package is arriving.”

For the first time, I realized that my life was in danger. I knew that in the early years of the Islamic regime, many people had been taken away and executed without notice or trial. Their mutilated bodies were found in the suburbs, and the police pretended to look for the assassins. Those abductors were similar to the men surrounding me—intelligence officers who picked up intellectuals and activists and killed them on the spot. I panicked. An agitated voice kept escaping me, though I was not aware of speaking. It echoed, bouncing around the car, falling back into my throat and escaping again. “Where are you taking me? Where are you taking me?” And the simple, hollow reply, “Shut up!” over and over again. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu finds himself increasingly alone on Iran

Dimi Reider writes: For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, are essentially the same thing.

During a diatribe against Iran in his United Nations speech on Monday, Netanyahu asked: “Would you let ISIS enrich uranium? Would you let ISIS build a heavy water reactor? Would you let ISIS develop intercontinental ballistic missiles? Of course you wouldn’t.”

It was almost as if Netanyahu views Iran and ISIS as interchangeable. But the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way — least of all the United States, which is making a crucial last push for a comprehensive agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even as it musters an international coalition to fight the Islamic State.

In insisting that Iran and ISIS are essentially the same enemy, Netanyahu broadcast his isolation among world leaders and underscored the jadedness of the idea that he has championed for most of his political career: the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb and the apocalyptic threat it would pose to the free world.

After all these years, Netanyahu still calls for every nook and cranny of Iran’s nuclear program to be demolished by military force, though preferably not Israel’s alone.

The isolation of his views was evidenced not only by the near-empty General Assembly hall when he gave his speech, but also in the Israeli media. [Continue reading…]

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Iran, the thinkable American ally

Roger Cohen writes: The interim agreement with Iran, reached in November 2013, has had many merits. Iran has respected its commitments, including a reduction of its stockpiles of enriched uranium and a curbing of production. The deal has brought a thaw in relations between the United States and Tehran; once impossible meetings between senior officials are now near routine.

The rapid spread over the past year of the Sunni jihadist movement that calls itself Islamic State has underscored the importance of these nascent bilateral relations: ISIS is a barbarous, shared enemy whose rollback becomes immeasurably more challenging in the absence of American-Iranian understanding. Allies need not be friends, as the Soviet role in defeating Hitler demonstrated. President Obama’s war against ISIS makes war with Iran more unthinkable than ever. Absent a “comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful,” in the words of last year’s accord, the drumbeat for such a war would almost certainly resume. From Jerusalem to Washington countless drummers are ready.

It is critical that this doable deal get done, the naysayers be frustrated, and a rancorous American-Iranian bust-up not be added to the ambient mayhem in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic, 35 years after the revolution, is — like it or not — a serious and stable power in an unstable region. Its highly educated population is pro-Western. Its actions and interests are often opposed to the United States and America’s allies, and its human rights record is appalling, but then that is true of several countries with which Washington does business. [Continue reading…]

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As Assad loyalists feel he can no longer protect them, Iran’s support becomes questionable

BBC News reports: In the Damascus suburb of Dummar stands a four-storey building overlooking a wide residential street that has been spared the scars of war.

In the first three years of the uprising in Syria, Aliya would peer through the window, watching explosions and smoke as neighbouring areas were bombarded by government forces stationed on nearby Mount Qassioun.

But since the summer, the view has changed dramatically.

Aliya now sees people flying through the sky on a ride at a new amusement park, leisure and shopping centre called Uptown.

President Bashar al-Assad’s feared younger brother, Maher, is believed to be the main backer of the $35m (£22m) development, which was built at a time when almost half of the country’s 22 million population has been displaced and more than half are living in poverty.

The road leading to Uptown is regularly blocked by expensive cars, while its colourful lights are unaffected by the severe power cuts that plague the rest of the area.

“Most of the crowd going there is mainly watching the rides rather than going on them because very few can afford such luxury,” Aliya says.

While some Syrians have welcomed Uptown, it has angered many others.

Not far away is the eastern Ghouta, an agricultural belt around Damascus from which rebels launch daily mortar attacks on the city centre in response to the government shellfire and air strikes.

There, members of religious minorities that have largely stayed loyal to President Assad have been more concerned about the reported approach of jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS), known locally in Arabic as Daish.

A few weeks ago, hundreds of residents of Dukhani and Dwaila in the Ghouta fled after members of the National Defence Forces (NDF), a pro-government militia, warned them of the imminent threat from a group that considers Shia Muslims heretics and has told members of other faiths that they must convert to Islam, pay special taxes or die.

The residents quickly returned after being informed by the army that they had never been at risk, but once they got home they found their possessions – including their furniture – had been stolen.

Those affected told me that they were too afraid to confront NDF personnel, who they believed were responsible for the thefts.

Pro-government militiamen have long been accused of looting homes in opposition areas they have captured and selling the stolen goods, creating what has become known as the “Sunni market” – a reference to Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims who dominate the opposition to President Assad, a member of the heterodox Shia Alawite sect. But now loyalists are also being affected.

“In areas under government control, there is no unified central command. They are ruled by a cluster of mafia-style gangs,” says one resident of Damascus, referring to the NDF.

“A few men with guns call themselves the ‘protectors of the neighbourhood’. They then set the rules and bypass the law, in a country that is already lawless.”

A new class is emerging in Syria of warlords who have grown rich with the money they have earned from kidnapping ransoms and theft. Their rise has led many to believe that President Assad cannot control his own militia anymore.

“We used to think that this was intentional to terrify people who dared oppose his rule, but the problem now is that this savagery is targeted against his own people, even amongst the Alawites,” said the Damascus resident.

Members of minority groups feel Mr Assad can no longer protect them. [Continue reading…]

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