Iran: Protest Through "The Rooftop Project"

The Latest from Iran (10 July): What Next?

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One of the distinctive features of the post-election protest has been the nightly calls from rooftops of "Allahu Akhbar" (God is Great). Now "The Rooftop Project" is trying to compile and present a record of the Allahu Akhbars from just before the election to the present. There are a few days "missing", which the organisers are hoping to fill with the help of readers and viewers:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LumNtGTi_W0[/youtube]

Iran: How Strong is the G8 Statement on the Nuclear Programme?

The Latest from Iran (10 July): What Next?

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After ""L’Aquila Statement on Non-Proliferation Declaration"": it's a long name for the G8's balancing act on the Iranian nuclear programme. This is a diplomatic document seeking common ground through careful language: "We reiterate our unanimous commitment to working for a comprehensive, peaceful and diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue and strongly support ongoing efforts to resolve it through negotiations."

The Statement continued:

We urge Iran to use the present window of opportunity for engagement with the international community in a spirit of mutual respect and to respond positively to the offers advanced, in order to find a negotiated solution which will address Iran’s interest as well as the international community concerns. While recognizing once again that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program under the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty], we stress that Iran has the responsibility, as reiterated by UNSC Resolutions, to restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities, allowing for the establishment of a fruitful and wide-ranging cooperation with the G8 and other countries.

The proliferation risks posed by Iran’s nuclear program continue to be a matter of serious concern. We urge Iran to comply with the relevant UNSC [United Nations Security Council] Resolutions and to fully cooperate with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] by providing the Agency such access and information that it requests to resolve the issues raised in the IAEA Director General’s Reports.

President Obama offered a suitably-worded interpretation to wag a finger at Tehran:

Now, we face a real-time challenge on nuclear proliferation in Iran. And at this summit, the G8 nations came together to issue a strong statement calling on Iran to fulfill its responsibilities to the international community without further delay. We remain seriously concerned about the appalling events surrounding the presidential election. And we're deeply troubled by the proliferation risks Iran's nuclear program poses to the world.

Others in the Obama Administration were willing to be even starker in their portrayal of the threat. A day before the release of the Statement, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, spoke to the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

I believe Iran is very focused on developing this capability, and I think when they get it, or should they get it, it will be very destabilizing.

The very same day, along with Mullen's self-confident speech, the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated that Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a destabilizing factor in the region and said that the United States would call for "even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime."

However, on Wednesday, a more careful message came from the French President Nicholas Sarkozy. On one hand, he warned Tel Aviv not to attack Tehran as this would be an "absolute catastrophe". On the other hand, he reassured, "Israel should know that it is not alone and look at all this calm. If I have fought so hard in the name of France to get people talking about Iran it's also a message to the Israelis that they are not alone," and delivered a deadline to Tehran: "If no progress is made, leaders will reach new decisions at a G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh in late September."

So it's not the statement of the G-8 Summit that poses the questions over future relations with Iran. Those are in the post-summit positions now being considered in Washington and Paris, not to mention Moscow and Beijing.

Getting Iran (Loudly) Wrong: Posturing for Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Hitchens

The Latest from Iran (10 July): What Next?

NEW Iran: How Big Were the 18 Tir Protests?
The Latest from Iran (18 Tir/9 July): Day of Reckoning?
LATEST Video: The 18 Tir Protests (9 July)

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A couple of fine examples of how to wedge events in Iran into personal and political prejudices and agendas. In Asia Times Online, Mahan Abedin charts "The Rise and Rise of Ahmadinejad" with the claim:

[He is] the most formidable leader of a faction that has incrementally broadened and deepened the scope of its reach and influence within the regime to the point where it is now completely dominant. Factional politics in the Islamic Republic - as we know it - has collapsed....All the other factions, particularly the once-powerful Islamic left, are in complete disarray. Their leaders have been exposed as losers and their supporters have been left demoralized by the entire state machinery's acquiescence in the final victory of the Islamic right.

To call this analysis "quirky", in light of Ahmadinejad's political floundering in the last three weeks would be generous. A less charitable reading would be that Abedin wants to wipe out any alternative to the President: "The biggest loser of all is former prime minister Mousavi....Another great loser is former president and arch-oligarch Rafsanjani....Many other core establishment figures, including losing presidential contender Mehdi Karroubi and former Majlis (parliament) speaker Nategh Nouri, are expected to be edged out."

Which means that, presto magico!, Ahmadinejad stands atop "a new consensus" in Iran: "While the contours of a broader political alliance have still to be worked out, there are indications that at the grassroots level at least a substantial number of Islamic left personalities and activists are willing to fall behind Ahmadinejad and accept the public hegemony of the Islamic right."

Meanwhile, swerving violently from the other direction, Christopher Hitchens in Salon finally finds the moment to vindicate his 7-year "liberation of Iraq" shout-out by linking it to the "liberation of Iran". Unfortunately, that moment is based on the wildly inaccurate New York Times story of 5 July that "the most important clerical group" in Iran had come out against the regime:

So it is very hard to overstate the significance of the statement made last Saturday by the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qum, a much-respected source of religious rulings, which has in effect come right out with it and said that the recent farcical and prearranged plebiscite in the country was just that: a sham event. (In this, the clerics of Qum are a lot more clear-eyed than many American "experts" on Iranian public opinion, who were busy until recently writing about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the rough-hewn man of the people.)

This shaky pretext self-justifies Hitchens in the ignorance of every internal dynamic in Iran, apart from Ayatollah Khomeini's "good" grandon Sayeed, in favour of an Iraqi platform:

Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran's regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let's pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.

The silver lining in this cloud of promoting, posturing and preening analysis is that it's much easier to expose by going to the real "experts" in this story, the folks getting information out of Iran by any means necessary. So, farewell, "Rise and Rise of Ahmadinejad". Bye bye, Christopher. Hello, new media.

Iran: How Big Were the 18 Tir Protests?

The Latest from Iran (10 July): What Next?

The Latest from Iran (18 Tir/9 July): Day of Reckoning?
LATEST Video: The 18 Tir Protests (9 July)

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We're not certain about the extent of the marches in Tehran yesterday (and, to be honest, I think the symbolic significance of the show of opposition outweighs any number), but others are trying to establish the size of the rallies.

CNN's assertion of 2,000 to 3,000 appears to be based on little more than a scattering of information and has not been updated for many hours. The New York Times, from either caution or an inability to establish what is happening, sticks with "thousands".

Far more insight, and possibly accuracy, comes from the "alternative" media on the Internet. Fintan Dunne offers a "guesstimate", based on videos, reports, and a knowledge of Tehran's geography, of 25,000. Josh Shahryar's "Green Brief", with an excellent summary of the day's events, puts out a figure of 35,000 in Tehran and, with less apparent support, "slightly more than twice as much...all over the country". (Thanks to Shahryar for the note he just sent me, clarifying that he means a total of more than 70,000 protesters across Iran, including the numbers in Tehran.)

Shahryar offers the valuable information, if true:

Large protests were fully confirmed in Ahvaz, Mashhad, Rasht, Isfahan, Tabriz, Sari, Hamadan, Babol, Kerman, Dezfol and Shiraz. Reports from Shiraz indicate that the protest there was probably the largest. Isfahan was a close second in terms of the number of people on the streets.

Israel’s Plan B on Iran: Paralyzing Sanctions?

After U.S. Vice President Joe Biden stated last week that Israel would decide for itself whether to attack Iran, a senior Israeli government official offered a "Plan B" of paralyzing sanctions against Tehran as soon as it is established that there is no hope for a dialogue: "Israel is adjusting its messages to the new circumstances created by the unrest in Iran… These things must be stated clearly now so that there is no confusion about our position.”

The official added:

Before the protests in Iran began, Israel's assessment was that the planned American-Iranian dialogue had little chance of succeeding. But in light of the protests, and the need of Iranian hard-liners to shore up their rule, Israel's intelligence community believes the chances of the dialogue even beginning, much less succeeding, are near zero… In the situation that has arisen following the protests in Iran, there is much greater international readiness for harsh steps against the regime in Tehran.

However US officials reportedly have again rejected Israel’s Plan B because the groundwork for stiffer sanctions would signal that the Obama Administration is not serious about dialogue with Tehran.

So back to Square One. What is Tel Aviv's next step in the manoeuvres between the US and Iran?