LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 05/12

Bible Quotation for today/The Example of Christ's Suffering
01 Peter/18-25: "You servants must submit yourselves to your masters and show them complete respect, not only to those who are kind and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. God will bless you for this, if you endure the pain of undeserved suffering because you are conscious of his will. For what credit is there if you endure the beatings you deserve for having done wrong? But if you endure suffering even when you have done right, God will bless you for it. It was to this that God called you, for Christ himself suffered for you and left you an example, so that you would follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no one ever heard a lie come from his lips. When he was insulted, he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but placed his hopes in God, the righteous Judge. Christ himself carried our sins in his body to the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. It is by his wounds that you have been healed. You were like sheep that had lost their way, but now you have been brought back to follow the Shepherd and Keeper of your souls.

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Regime Change in Iran/By: Brendan Daly/Middle East Quarterly/May 04/12
Israeli elections must become a referendum on Iran/By Ari Shavit/Haaretz/May 04/12
Obama awakens Bin Laden/By Diana Mukkaled/Asharq Alawsat/May 04/12
Saudi Arabia and Egypt: Interests at the time of “revolution”/By Adel Al Toraifi/Asharq Alawsat/May 04/12

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for May 04/12
Iran dismisses Western demand to close nuclear bunker
France: An election full of paradoxes
Socialist on track for win as French race enters final day
Syrian forces kill five in Damascus, Aleppo protests
The new pharaohs
Harb backs away from suing newspaper over lead photo
Protests in Syria's Aleppo after university raid
Thousands rally against Egypt's ruling generals
Sleiman reiterates refusal to issue overspending decree
Nasrallah tells Iran VP: Hezbollah ready for any challenge
Feltman: Assad will go but brace for long turmoil in Syria
21 suspects charged in connection with 'Lutfallah II'
Israel halts work on southern part of wall to rectify error
EDL freelancers stage work stoppage
Syrian economy spirals downward as deposits, loans plunge
Brotherhood fights image problem on Egypt campaign trail
Iran's vice president tours Israel border
Iran threatens American east coast
Iran: Israeli nukes greatest threat to peace
'Iran imported arms worth $560M in 3 years'
IDF chief: Other nations could strike Iran
The perks and perils of Obama and Netanyahu’s parallel election campaigns
Israel gets fourth Dolphin-class submarine from Germany
Palestinians renege on security ties with Israel, restore revolving door for terrorists
Al-Assad attempts to win back defectors with general amnesty
Pro-Assad gun, knife attack kills 4 - protesters
Syrian forces raid university; 4 killed
Gulf states behind weapons ship bound for Syria, Ali says
Nasrallah thanks Iran for continued support
Hezbollah says Feltman's visit aims at sowing strife
Feltman meets Sleiman, political and religious officials
Asiri slams Syrian ambassador over arms cargo accusations
Israel commits minor violation of Lebanon border
Canada Concerned by Violence in Egypt
Minister Baird Addresses American Jewish Congress Forum

Minister Baird Addresses American Jewish Congress Forum
May 3, 2012 - Washington - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird delivers a keynote address at the American Jewish Congress Global Forum 2012. During his speech, Baird renewed Canada’s commitment to a foreign policy that protects Canada’s interests and promotes Canadian values, including freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Minister Baird reiterated that Israel has no greater friend than Canada. Canada has a history of defending the vulnerable, challenging the aggressor and confronting evil.
"In the conduct of our foreign policy, we do not 'go along to get along,'" said Baird. Baird also told the audience that Israel’s President Shimon Peres will be visiting Canada next week from May 6 to 10.

Nasrallah thanks Iran for continued support
May 03, 2012/The Daily Star/BEIRUT: Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah expressed his gratitude to Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi for his country's continued support of Lebanon and the resistance party. During a meeting between Rahimi and Nasrallah, the latter also thanked Iran's leadership and people for bearing the burden of the country's humanitarian, ethical and historical stance toward Hezbollah. Nasrallah also affirmed that Hezbollah would remain steadfast in its approach and take on all challenges with which it is faced. In return, Rahimi, who was accompanied by several Iranian ministers, affirmed Iran's readiness to help Lebanon in all fields and support it under any circumstance. Rahimi arrived in Beirut Wednesday and met Thursday with Prime Minister Najib Mikati along with the the Higher Iranian-Lebanese Committee. The committee signed three agreements between the two countries.

Feltman meets Sleiman, political and religious officials
May 03, 2012/The Daily Star /BEIRUT: President Michel Sleiman discussed Lebanon and the region Thursday with visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.
No statements were made following the morning meeting at Baabda Palace which was also attended by U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly.
Accompanied by Connelly, Feltman also met with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain al-Tineh before driving to Maarab, Kesrouan, for talks with Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Additionally, he met with March 14 politicians, including Amin Gemayel and Boutros Harb, as well as Maronite Archbishop of Beirut Boulos Matar and Orthodox Archbishop of Beirut Elias Audi.
Last December, Sleiman refused to meet with Feltman, in a tit-for-tat move after U.S. officials declined to meet with the president when he was in Washington on an unofficial visit in September.
Feltman expressed America’s “steadfast support” for democratic and pluralistic governments in the Arab world that protect the rights of religious minorities, in a statement released by the U.S. embassy Wednesday. His comments were made following a first round of talks with Lebanese leaders focusing on next year’s parliamentary elections and the repercussions on Lebanon of the 13-month-old uprising in Syria.In an exchange with reporters in Maarab following his meeting with Feltman, Geagea said they discussed “the situation in the region, particularly the events and developments in Syria, without [predicting] when the crisis [in Syria] will end.”Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman prodded Lebanon to help the Syrian opposition fighting to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad.
Lieberman, a member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, also urged Lebanon to offer additional assistance to Syrian refugees fleeing their country as a result of the ongoing fighting there between government troops and rebel soldiers. His remarks coincided with a statement by the chief of the U.N. observer team in Syria, Robert Mood, who warned that a 3-week-old cease-fire brokered by the U.N. is not holding. Lieberman spoke to reporters at the end of his trip to Lebanon, which included an inspection of the Lebanese-Syrian border, as part of a tour of the Middle East region.
The senator discussed bilateral relations and the situation in Syria with Sleiman, Prime Minister Najib Mikati and PSP leader Walid Jumblatt, according to a U.S. Embassy statement.
Feltman is scheduled to meet with Mikati Thursday.

Iran's vice president tours Israel border
Dudi Cohen/05.03.12/Ynetnews/Mohammad-Reza Rahimi addresses Hezbollah supporters during visit to Israel border; Iranian VP highlights "the need to stand firmly and resist the Zionist regime" . Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi visited Thursday the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras and spoke to Hezbollah supporters in the area. During a visit to a park bordering on Israeli territory, Iran's vice president stressed the Islamic Republic's ongoing support for Hezbollah. He later met with group leader Hassan Nasrallah in a southern Beirut suburb. After speaking to resistance supporters in southern Lebanon, Rahimi stressed Iran's support for the resistance," said Iran's official news agency, IRNA. According to the report, Iranian and Hezbollah flags were raised during the VP's visit to the "Iranian Park," restored by an Iranian body entrusted with rebuilding southern Lebanon in the wake of the 2006 war with Israel. According to the Iranian report, Rahimi observed the Lebanon border and "occupied Palestine." During the ceremony, he read a message highlighting "the need to stand firmly and resist the Zionist regime."
The senior Iranian official arrived in Lebanon Wednesday for a two-day visit, where he also met with the Lebanese president. Iranian media outlets said the visit was meant to discuss the implementation of agreements between the two states. Tours by visiting Iranian officials on Israel's border have become a matter of routine in recent years. During such visits, senior officials usually meet Hezbollah leaders and senior Lebanese figures. An aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the area last year and said that "no cement or iron fence will save Israel."

Palestinians renege on security ties with Israel, restore revolving door for terrorists
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 3, 2012/For the first time since 2006, the Palestinian Authority’s security services on the West Bank have stopped cooperating with the IDF in operations and intelligence-sharing for countering terrorism. The arrest and interrogation of suspects, the most effective measure for thwarting terrorist plots, are discontinued: Palestinian security officers invite suspects for conversation, then send them home, contrary to every explicit guarantee the Palestinian Authority and its head, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has given Israel and the US officers building up Palestinian Authority units.
A senior Israeli intelligence source engaged directly in counterterrorism told debkafile Thursday, May 3, that, in response to the Palestinian Authority’s failure to stand by its commitments, Israel has upped the terror alert level in Judea and Samaria, as well as along the Israel-West Bank boundary. Israeli security officials believe it is just a matter of time before Palestinian extremists go back to their old terrorist tactics against Israel. Until a few weeks ago, Palestinian security authorities were still willing to cooperate with Israel and Western officials working alongside them to prevent “hot attacks” – i.e., plots close to execution. But in recent days, Ramallah has discontinued even that modicum of collaboration. debkafile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources say that Washington and Jerusalem have no doubt that the Palestinian Authority would not have taken this crucial step without the approval of its chairman, Abbas.American officials who taxed him on this received a flat denial and a promise to check with Gen. Abu Dohan, Palestinian Security Forces chief, and come back with answers. This he failed to do. There is another troubling symptom of Palestinian backtracking on its war on terror: They have not only stopped arresting suspects of plotting terror attacks, they are opening the doors of their prisons to let detainees go free. This is being done gradually so as not to draw the attention of Israel and US security and intelligence services. The old Palestinian revolving door policy is back for terrorists at police holding cells and detention facilities for which Yasser Arafat was notorious during the uprising of 2000-2004.
Palestinian sources deny that Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal reached any understandings when they met in Cairo Wednesday, May 2. But Israel does not believe this is true. In fact Israeli intelligence sources told debkafile that misinformation about the meeting was disseminated as a smokescreen to deceive Israeli and Western officials.
The truth, said one source, is that “Abu Mazen and Meshal are developing a special relationship very similar to the one that existed in the early 2000’s between Yasser Arafat and the Hamas founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.” They were consistently at odds on ideology but in complete agreement on a policy of violence and terrorism against Israel.

Iran: Israeli nukes greatest threat to peace
Associated Press/05.03.12/Ynetnews
Iran's Deputy FM Mohammed Mahdi Akhondzadeh says Israel's nuclear weapons pose 'gravest' threat to Mideast peace, accuses powers of hypocrisy when it comes to following own nonproliferation regulations.A senior Iranian official said that Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to Mideast peace and accused the United States and other nuclear powers of hypocritically ignoring their disarmament commitments.Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mahdi Akhondzadeh's comments Wednesday to a 189-nation nonproliferation meeting reflected Iran's attempts to deflect international concerns that its nuclear activities could be turned to making weapons.
Usually strident Western criticism of Iran has been muted since the conference opened Monday, possibly due to reluctance to burden the atmosphere ahead of a new meeting later this month between Iran and six powers attempting to nudge it toward concessions meant to ease such worries.But Akhondzadeh didn't hold back. While avoiding direct mention of the United States, his criticism of "certain nuclear-weapon states" encompassed the US, Britain and France – three nations that will be sitting at the table with Iran, along with Russia, China and Germany in Baghdad on May 23.
He also described Israel as posing "the gravest threat to the stability and security" of the Middle East. Although Israel has never confirmed it, it is widely assumed to be the only Mideast nation to possess nuclear arms.
Official flouts US, UK, France
The United States and its allies see Iran as the greatest potential nuclear threat in the Mideast because of its refusal to stop uranium enrichment and other activities that could be used to make such weapons. But Iran and the Arab states say the Jewish state's undeclared arms program poses the most pressing danger.
The United States has thrown its weight behind efforts to convene a meeting of all Mideast states later this year to discuss creating a region free of weapons of mass destruction.
But neither Israel nor Iran have committed to attending, and a recently retired senior Israeli official told The Associated Press his country was unlikely to attend. He demanded anonymity because his information was confidential.Israel's absence would strip any such Mideast meeting of significance.
Beyond Israel, Akhondzadeh criticized "certain nuclear-weapon states" that have ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, saying their stockpile of weapons "and their continued modernization ... (is) the most serious threat to the survival of mankind."
He accused them of "lack of effective and systematic progress towards implementing nuclear disarmament obligations" under commitments to the Nonproliferation Treaty.
While he did not name the countries, his use of the term "certain" indicated he was talking about the United States, Britain and France. Iran has been careful not to irk Russia and China, the other two nuclear-weapons states that have signed the Nonproliferation Treaty and which oppose sanctions imposed on the Islamic republic by Washington and its Western allies.
"Certain nuclear-weapon states are expected to display sincerity and political will rather than hypocrisy with regard to their nuclear disarmament obligations," Akhondzadeh said.

Al-Assad attempts to win back defectors with general amnesty
By Paula Astatih/Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat – The official Syrian Arab News Agency [SANA] announced that President Bashar al-Assad had on Wednesday granted a “general amnesty” for all those who had broken “some articles of the Military Service Law and Military Penal Code.” The announcement stressed that those who have avoided military service but remained in Syria must surrender themselves within the next 90 days, whilst those who have abandoned their military service and fled the country must surrender themselves to Syrian authorities within the next 120 days. Director of the Syrian National Council [SNC] Legal Office, Hisham Marwah, informed Asharq Al-Awsat about the legal aspects of this “general amnesty”, which is legislative decree No. 30 for 2012. He revealed that this represents an amnesty for all those who have avoided military service or abandoned the Syrian military, as well as those who failed to participate in their mandatory military service.
Marwah stressed that this legislative decree “is a step by the regime to entice the youth in the Free Syrian Army [FSA] to return to the regime’s fold by claiming that they will not be brought to trial for abandoning their service, but this does not mean that they will not be tried for other crimes like incitement or attacking military apparatus etc.”
The SNC spokesman added that “the regime, via this legislation, seeks to dampen the revolution, particularly with regards to the youth activists who have failed to attend their mandatory national military service.” As for why the al-Assad regime has taken this decision at this time, Marwah claimed that “the regime is experiencing a real crisis, and it is therefore seeking to recover the youth who have abandoned their military service and joined the uprising.”
Marwah also warned Syrian defectors of responding to Bashar al-Assad’s general amnesty, stressing that “whoever responds to this call will be subject to other legal charges…therefore the regime’s move is nothing more than a new form of deception and trickery to convince the revolution’s youth that if they return to the al-Assad regime, they will be forgiven.”
He added that the regime has also begun to distribute lists of the names of Syrian youth wanted for defecting from the Syrian army or failing to attend their mandatory military service, adding “they are arrested and transferred to military barracks where they are brainwashed.”For his part, Free Syrian Army [FSA] Colonel Khalid al-Hammoud also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that it would be impossible for FSA members to take up this amnesty. He said “we, as defectors from this regime, are well aware of the fate awaiting anybody who returns to this regime, namely elimination.”
He added that al-Assad announcing this amnesty at this time confirms FSA claims that the al-Assad regime is suffering from a severe shortage of soldiers, particularly due to an increase in the number of defections. He said “al-Assad confirmed yesterday that the [Syrian] military apparatus is suffering what it is suffering due to the Syrian youth’s refusal to join and volunteer for military service, despite the fact that the Syrian army has opened the door to volunteers from all areas across the country.”

Saudi Arabia and Egypt: Interests at the time of “revolution”
By Adel Al Toraifi/Asharq Alawsat
Saudi – Egyptian relations are experiencing a testing phase, perhaps the first of its kind since the departure of the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after what some prefer to call the “25 January Revolution”.The recent attack on the Saudi Embassy is not the first of its kind; there has been an atmosphere of tension and intimidation over the past year, but the vandalism that the embassy and its consulates were subjected to, the abuse directed towards the Saudi leadership, and the defamation campaigns and insults that accompanied the incident on some Egyptian media channels and on social networking websites were all grossly excessive. The Saudis had to choose between accepting the abuse launched by some – I do not say all – towards the Saudi leadership and people, or responding firmly to it, even though this would impact upon bilateral relations between the two countries.
If you consider the nature of this abuse, you would find that they used common stereotypes to justify what happened. Egypt sees Saudi Arabia according to the commonly held impression, and likewise Saudi Arabia reads – or interprets – the campaign against it in accordance with its common impression of its Egyptian neighbor. There is no need to restore such stereotypes, namely because they are images that contain little truth and much illusion. The same negative descriptions that can be said about the Egyptian character can also be said about the Saudi character. In other words, common negative illusions reflect a shared negative culture, rather than explaining the characteristics of each party.
In every relationship between two states, or peoples, or even between two individuals, there is something of a shared history or experience, which in turn includes positive and negative aspects, or shall we say good and bad memories. If relations between the two parties become strained, one party – or both – will come out with a list of their gripes and bad memories, some real and some imagined. However, both parties can also list the reasons and circumstances why they should in fact strengthen their links.
Consider the relations between France and England, who fought each other in the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), which was followed by the imperial expansion of both states, and yet despite this the two countries share a history of intermarriage between their respective royal families and ordinary communities, as well as cultural and trade exchanges and so on.
In an interesting book published last year entitled “1000 Years of Annoying the French” (2011), Stephen Clarke writes that the squabbles and sarcastic comments between the two countries were not confined to the era of the past empires, but rather some of the comments and insults continued even at the height of Franco-British cooperation, when they attempted to create economic and political unity among the Europeans.
The former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once described the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, as “une petite bourgeoise provinciale” [a middle-class provincial]. The former French President Francois Mitterrand also once ridiculed Thatcher’s “grocer shop” mentality, in reference to the stereotypical image of the Britons as a people, selling groceries in shops. If you think that these descriptions are offensive, Clarke points out that the British Embassy in Paris once placed in the lobby of its main reception a huge painting of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo (1815). There are many contemporary examples of this love-hate relationship, which characterizes the history of relations between many European countries. Thatcher, for example, stated her concerns to Gorbachev regarding the federation of East and West Germany following unification in 1990, whilst the Americans have maintained volatile relations with many Latin American countries, even after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and until recently some Americans protested against the French stance rejecting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, demanding that “French fries” be renamed “freedom fries”!Returning to the history of the Middle East, rarely would we find two Arab countries that do not have a set of “distorted stereotypes” about each other, and even within the same country you find regional and tribal prejudices, not to mention the nationalist and partisan feuds that can be found in one area alone. In the Gulf there is an almost continuous tension between the Persians and the Arabs, and in Iraq there is constant tension between the Turks and Kurds on one side, and the Sunnis and Shiites on the other. Even in a – relatively – homogenous country such as Egypt, there are regional and class distinctions, while a person is described in accordance with their origins and ethnicity, something that no country is free of.
In the recent crisis between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a small group came out and fuelled the tension in a rowdy manner by attacking the premises of a sovereign country, and issuing insulting descriptions of Saudi political leaders, who enjoy respect, love and popularity both within Saudi Arabia and abroad. However, at the same time voices emerged and wrote from inside Egypt condemning what had happened, and apologizing for any offense caused by these infringements upon the sovereignty of the Saudi Kingdom.
Faced with this scene there are two schools of thought: The first recalls the depth of historical relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and warns against compromising the fraternity and shared history between the two countries. The second seeks to fuel the dispute, demanding that the relations carry more than they can bear under slogans along the lines of: “maintaining dignity” and restoring a sense of nationalistic “chauvinism” when it comes to relations with the outside world.
The truth is that relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or any other two countries for that matter, are governed by mutual respect, a shared history of language, religion and intermarriage, but above all there are mutual political interests. Since the establishment of the Saudi state and the independence of Egypt, relations have been governed by interests. Whenever Egypt recognized its interests with Saudi Arabia, relations developed and cooperation was consolidated, and when Egypt changed its political orientation, its interests differed and relations were strained. During the monarchy era in Egypt there were chapters of convergence and others of tension, and in the period following the 1952 revolution there were stages where relations were strained to breaking point, and stages of convergence where the two countries built upon their common interests.
The well-known political scientist Alexander Wendt formulated an important theory of international relations in the late 1990s, in his book “Social Theory of International Politics” (1999), in which he summarized the relations between states based on the shared cultural history between any two states. He defined three relationships: Enmity (represented by Thomas Hobbes’ realism approach), rivalry (represented by John Locke’s utilitarian approach) and friendship (represented by Immanuel Kant idealist approach). These three cultures affect the behavior of states towards each other, and then there is another level regarding the manner in which states seek to apply this culture in their surroundings: A state may impose its values – and interests as well – through coercion (military and economic power), through bartering, through giving priority to the gains of rapprochement, or through using the soft power of its culture. Consider two states, one of which aspires to be democratic and liberal; America, and the other aspires to be revolutionary and religious; Iran. Both countries use military force to spread their values and at the same time exercise soft power within their surroundings.
If we try to simplify Wendt’s theory, we can say that there are regimes that beat the drum of coercion to force other countries to accept their policies, others that seek to do so by prioritizing interests through cooperation, and there are regimes that adopt the revolutionary approach and accordingly attempt to export their revolution – or at least preach its message – to achieve their interests no matter what these values are. The importance of Wendt’s theory lies in the assertion that good relations between any two countries do not necessarily have to arise from a similar culture, any two revolutionary countries, for example, may seek to give priority to their vision – or revolution – over the other. In this context, consider the historic rivalry between two communist countries such as the Soviet Union and China, or two Baathist regimes such as “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq” and “Hafez al-Assad’s Syria”.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt can be interpreted through this approach. Throughout periods of history, one party has attempted to impose a political vision at the expense of the other. There was also a phase in which each party tried to prioritize the principle of mutual – or shared – interests and we are now experiencing a new phase where some want to re-formulate the relations according to a new revolutionary vision, as was the case at the time of the revolutionary or nationalist tide against the Gulf governments in the 1960s.
Today Egypt is going through a turbulent phase where different political forces are competing to re-formulate priorities, and re-interpret Egypt’s national interests after the fall of the former regime. There are those who want to emphasize Egypt’s interest in continuing its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, and there are those who say that Egypt’s interest lie in moving away from Saudi Arabia and allying – as some are calling for – with a theocratic regime like that of Iran.
Relations between the two countries will not return to how they were before unless the vision of those who want to consolidate Egypt’s interests with Saudi Arabia overcomes those who advocate change. Thus we should lend support to the voices of friendship in confrontation with the advocates of division. This will not be possible if any party resorts to fuelling the division and justifying this with distorted stereotypes of the other party. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have important common interests that go beyond any disputes. Each country must return to evoking the importance of continuing those interests. There is no doubt that mutual respect is important, but interests are even more so.

Obama awakens Bin Laden!
By Diana Mukkaled/Asharq Alawsat
A year has passed since the US Army killed Osama Bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, and dumped his body in the sea. At the time, Washington was not concerned by the campaign of criticism launched against it, regarding the principle of state sponsored assassination without trial, or throwing the dead body into the ocean. What was important for Washington at the time was revenge for the 3,000 victims who were killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The US Administration has now restored interest in the incident on its first anniversary, by placing it at the heart of President Barack Obama’s achievements. It is investing in this to the fullest extent by allowing journalists into the secret war room where the operation was carried out, and through propaganda videos aiming to say that Obama did it and killed Bin Laden, and that his republican rival Mitt Romney would not have taken the decision.
The operation to kill Bin Laden is being used in this manner as electoral propaganda, and as part of the internal American debate coinciding with Obama signing resolutions to expand US drone strikes as part of its campaign to target al-Qaeda, which gives the CIA the authority to target and kill suspects without first verifying the identity of the intended targets.
These decisions, which are covered up in a boastful propaganda campaign regarding the killing of Bin Laden, represent a significant expansion of the continuing American war, which is based on the principle of killing rather than pursuing, and assassinations through drone strikes.
However, these assassinations also kill innocents, and already there have been many victims. This happened last year with the killing of Abdul Rahman Anwar al-Awlaki, the son of the accused Yemeni cleric who was also killed. Abdul Rahman was only a boy, no more than 15 years old, and was killed by a drone attack. This is the same unmanned aircraft that has killed at least 160 children in Pakistan.
In celebrating the anniversary of killing Osama Bin Laden, is this anything more than an electoral propaganda tactic? It is no exaggeration to say that celebrating a death and bragging about it, even if the victim was a mass murderer like Bin Laden, is an acknowledgement of the inability to deliver justice without targeted assassinations.
The renewed celebrations about Bin Laden being killed and thrown into the sea are not greatly different from US soldiers celebrating killing members of the Taliban and urinating on their bodies, or an American soldier standing near the body of an Afghan boy, which is stained in blood, and smiling in front of the camera.
Making the act of killing an occasion for celebration in an electoral propaganda campaign is part of a wider endeavor to incorporate state sponsored assassination into government programs that are supposed to aspire to better standards of living. With electoral programs, the candidates promise to make their voters lives better. It is unwise to directly link organized killings to improving living standards. And what about deaths by drone strike? This is a mechanical killing merely directed by a human…a machine that a human tells to kill, but it also strikes unintended targets…It kills children and civilians, and this should not be celebrated. Perhaps Bin Laden is smiling today at the bottom of the ocean after we have all become like him, professional killers who boast of murder and laugh at the camera after doing so!

Israeli elections must become a referendum on Iran
By Ari Shavit/Haaretz
Netanyahu is playing three-dimensional chess on a rickety board, without public support.
Let’s talk facts.
Fact No. 1: The person dismantling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition is Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not being broken up by the threats of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, nor by pressure from Interior Minister Eli Yishai. Nor is fear of Shaul Mofaz or Shelly Yacimovich behind the Knesset's dissolution.
Netanyahu tried to break up his government before Passover so that the election could be held before the summer. The government proved to be too strong, so he had to wait until the Knesset reconvened. The prime minister himself is behind the process that aims to return us to the polling stations in September.
Fact No. 2: Netanyahu is not breaking up his government for political reasons. His political standing is strong. Nor does he want elections for socioeconomic reasons. Although demonstrations are expected in the summer and an economic slowdown is expected in the fall, the the Israeli public still sees the prime minister as being highly skilled in the socioeconomic sphere.
The reason Netanyahu is himself dismantling his strong and stable government is external: the upcoming U.S. election. The prime minister of Israel is determined to get to the Israeli election booth before the president of the United States gets to the American election booth in November.
Fact No. 3: The first reason Netanyahu wants to beat U.S. President Barack Obama to the polls is personal survival. It was U.S. President George H.W. Bush who replaced Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992. And it was U.S. President Bill Clinton who replaced Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his first term, with Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1999. Both instances of a right-wing government being replaced by a left-wing one were inspired by U.S. presidents who were fed up with the Likud government in power.
Obama loathes Netanyahu even more than Bush loathed Shamir or than Clinton loathed Netanyahu. If Obama wins in November, he will immediately crush the Israeli prime minister who dared to defy him. As a result, by December the right-wing government might already be feeling the pain. That's why Netanyahu wants to hold the election toward the end of the summer.
Fact No. 4: The other reason Netanyahu wants to beat Obama to the polls is national survival. The prime minister is determined to strike Iran, and judges that he will only be able to do so before the U.S. election in November. He wants to make sure he has some wiggle room after the Israeli election and before the American election.
During this interim the new Israeli government will have absolute authority, while the U.S. administration will be impotent. By bringing the election forward Netanyahu is defining the ideal time to attack Iran: September or October. The ramifications of these four facts, taken together, are clear. The turbulent political season that will begin in Israel next week indicates not that the threat of a confrontation with Iran has passed, but rather that it has grown. Slowly but surely, without anyone noticing, Netanyahu is working to advance a well-organized action plan, according to a strict timeable, that will bring the strategic crisis to boiling point before next winter. He is operating decisively within both the Israeli and the American political systems in order to reach his goal. So far he is getting what he wants, fashioning the chessboard to his liking. He is bringing to life the scenario of elections (in Israel ), war (in Iran ) and elections (in the United States ).
The timetable is insane. But so are the situation, the challenge and the political system. There is an intolerable gap between the national leadership and the public.
Netanyahu is playing three-dimensional chess on a rickety board, without public support. That means the election campaign will not be only about economic and social issues. It must address the issue of Iran and it must become a referendum on Iran. That is the only way to guarantee that the decision on Iran, whatever it may be, will be made by the nation and not by one person

Pro-Assad gun, knife attack kills 4 - protesters
May 03, 2012/By Erika Solomon/The Daily Star BEIRUT: Syrian security forces and students armed with knives stormed a protest march at Aleppo University early on Thursday, activists said, killing four and rounding up 200 demonstrators demanding President Bashar al-Assad step down.The pre-dawn raid was an unusually bloody incident for Aleppo, Syria's normally fairly peaceful commercial hub, and prompted condemnation from the White House. It accused Assad of making "no effort" to honour a three-week-old U.N. truce and warned that world powers might do more to bring change to Syria.
"If the regime's intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat and work to address the serious threat to peace and stability being perpetrated by the Assad regime," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
"Political transition is urgently needed in Syria."
Western powers back the 14-month revolt but lack appetite for the kind of military intervention seen last year in Libya. Assad has counted on support from Russia and China to block U.N. sanctions. However, Moscow and Beijing backed the ceasefire plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan and Western states might hope to prevail on them to agree to penalise Assad if it collapses.
On Thursday, however, the head of the monitoring mission despatched to Syria under the plan said the team of U.N. observers in the country was having a calming effect.
Yet a Reuters team in the opposition centre of Homs during the day heard continuous gunfire and the occasional sound of shelling, despite a permanent presence of monitors there.
Video posted on the Internet showed students in Aleppo chanting against four decades of Assad family rule but being drowned out by gunfire. Activists posted images of a dead student, drenched in blood, and what they said was a burning dormitory. Small solidarity protests broke out in other universities across Syria, videos uploaded by activists showed.
A British-based opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 28 other students were wounded overnight, three critically.
Knife-wielding youths attacked fellow students marching from their dormitories, the group said, followed by a security force raid on the latest march of a growing student protest movement.
"Freedom forever in spite of you, Assad!" chanted the young demonstrators in a video shot in the morning twilight.
There was no comment from officials and it was not possible to verify the account from the northern city, whose relatively prosperous, business-oriented population has been reluctant to join the 14-month-old revolt against Assad. Many members of Syria's middle classes and religious minorities are wary of the uprising dominated by majority Sunni Muslims against Assad and the elite around him, drawn largely from his Alawite minority. They fear it could descend into the kind of sectarian and ethnic bloodbath they have watched destroy neighbouring Iraq over recent years.
Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists" and his international friends, including in Moscow, point out that rebels too have mounted attacks in breach of the ceasefire.
ANOTHER TRUCE BREACH
From Aleppo, anti-Assad activists uploaded video of a burning residence block, its windows shattered. Dormitory hallways appeared to have been smashed up and men were dragging furniture outside as students screamed. Other videos showed crowds of students leaving the campus with suitcases and bundles of clothes. Activists say busloads of security forces had taken over the dormitories, which were where students usually began the protests. Student activists said they had been ordered to move out by Thursday afternoon.
The truce brokered by former U.N. Secretary General Annan has led to a small reduction in the daily carnage, mostly in cities were monitors are deployed permanently.
The head of the monitoring mission, Major General Robert Mood from Norway, told reporters during a trip to Hama on Thursday that observers were having a "calming effect" and that state forces appeared willing to cooperate with the truce. "There have been steps taken by the government forces on the ground that indicate a better willingness to live up to the commitments made in the agreement," he said, giving no details. Still, the Reuters team could hear mortars exploding in the Khalidiya neighbourhood of Homs at a rate of one a minute. They also reported the sound of heavy gunfire but did not know where it was coming from. Explosions rocked the rebellious Jabal al-Zawiya area in Idlib and at least one woman was killed by security force fire, the Observatory said. Security forces followed up by raiding the area and arresting several men. Clashes between rebels and the army also flared in Palmyra, home to historic Roman ruins in central Syria.
Mood, speaking in Homs later on Thursday, said that observer mission was growing as a steady pace, with a total of 50 monitors in the country which would be doubled within weeks.
"We have reinforced our permanent teams in Hama and Deraa with an extra two monitors in each city," he said from the al-Safir hotel in Homs, where six monitors are based permanently.
Around 300 monitors will be deployed by the end of May. In Washington, the White House spokesman expressed doubts at whether the truce would hold, however:
"It is certainly our hope that the Annan plan succeeds," Carney said. "We remain, based on the evidence, highly sceptical of Assad's willingness to meet the conditions of that plan, because he has so clearly failed to meet them thus far."
"THEY HAVE TO SHOOT US ALL"
While the city of Aleppo itself has rarely seen clashes, it has not been free of assassinations, apparently by rebels. The Observatory reported the killing overnight of Ismail Haidar, son of the head of a pro-Assad political party. Syria's news agency said another state figure, national basketball team player Bassel al-Raya, succumbed to his wounds on Thursday after being attacked by unidentified gunmen a week earlier. At Aleppo University, activists said small protests continued to break out sporadically on the campus. "Our anger will breed more hope. If we have to go to the streets, we will," said a student activist called Mustafa. "They can't stop the students, even if they have to shoot us all." While most opposition areas in Syria have been overtaken by an armed revolt, peaceful anti-Assad protests had continued almost daily at the university in Aleppo. It is hard to assess if those protests reflect widespread sentiment among the younger generation native to the city or whether students living there who come from rebellious hotspots like Idlib and Deraa might be taking a lead in Aleppo. Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations inspired by a wave of Arab revolts against long-ruling autocratic leaders, but it has become increasingly militarised in response to Assad's violent crackdown. The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died in the crackdown, while the Syrian government says it has lost at least 2,600 of its forces to "foreign-backed terrorists". Despite the turmoil, Syria plans to hold a parliamentary election on Monday under a new constitution which has allowed the creation of new political parities and formally ended decades of monopoly by Assad's ruling Baath Party.

The new pharaohs
By Mshari al-Zaydi/Asharq Alawsat
The crisis between Egypt and Saudi Arabia – following the attack on the Saudi embassy in Cairo and the Saudi consulate in Suez – has revealed the depth of the gap in the two countries knowledge of each another.
Many things have been said about the implications of recalling the Saudi Arabian ambassador from Cairo and closing the Saudi embassy there, as well as the Saudi – Egyptian efforts to calm the situation, whether from the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces [SCAF], the Egyptian parliament, or the political forces that mobilized to extinguish the political fires.
Who benefits from this crisis? Does this crisis have any logical or political grounds, away from the language of emotion and the logic of “there are no problems between friends?”
Perhaps we will have another opportunity to discuss these issues in the future.
What is important here is to stop, if just for a moment, and consider the extent of our ignorance regarding our knowledge of one another, not to mention our lack of knowledge regarding each other’s cultures. This crisis has revealed the huge gap in the two countries knowledge of one another. Anybody who monitored what much of the Egyptian media said about this crisis – whether the satellite television channels or even some heroes of the new media – would notice the strange paradox in the relationship between the society in the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt; this is a complex, multi-layered and indeed ancient relationship. In fact some Egyptians are closer to Saudi Arabia and Saudi culture than they are to other Egyptians and their own country, whilst the same can also be said about some Saudis and their relationship with Egypt. This is something that exists even with regards to dialect and traditions, as well as on a cultural level at large.
What was particularly funny were the statements issued by some of those in Egypt who lauded the Pharonic civilization, particularly as most of them were Islamists! These figures described the people of the Arabian Peninsula as “Bedouins” and “tent-dwellers”, and this is rhetoric that is closer to the stereotypical images put forward by western cinema with regards to the view of Arabs in general! Therefore it is extremely ironic and laughable that we Arabs are utilizing this ignorant stereotype to describe one another, dividing ourselves utilizing empty classifications between the north and the south or Mediterranean Arabs and desert Arabs. This is precisely the kind of rhetoric that we heard and saw from certain parties within Egypt against the backdrop of this crisis.
This is laughable because the statistics regarding development, education and the economy do not provide any justification for the boasts of the proud [Egyptians]!
However if we wanted to be more realistic and credible in our rhetoric, then the intermixing between the people of the Hejaz, Nejd and the Arabian Peninsula – before the establishment of the modern state of Egypt by Mohamed Ali Pasha, or the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by King Abdul Aziz – with the people of Egypt, represents a comprehensive intermingling. For the people of the Hejaz undertook jihad against the Napoleon campaign in Egypt, whilst Khedive Abbas Pasha was a personal friend of Imam Faisal Bin Turki, grandfather of King Abdul Aziz. Whilst in the modern era, Egyptian Sheikh Abdul-Razzaq Afifi was one of the symbols of the official Saudi religious institution and a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars. Sheikh Hafiz Wehba, the Egyptian reformist, was one of King Abdul Aziz’s most prominent advisers, whilst one of Egypt’s most famous politicians, Muhammad Mahmoud Pasha, was a member of a family that originated from the desert of the Arabian Peninsula.
There has been much talk about this issue, however the situation is intensifying and it is truly a crisis when issues that have nothing to do with the main issue are raised. We were aware of this tendency to glorify the Pharonic civilization by some Egyptian isolationist intellectuals in the past; however this was subject to the condemnation of Egypt’s Islamists and conservatives. However for those who claim to be Islamists to jump on this Pharonic bandwagon, and this including the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party – if we read between the lines of their statement on this crisis – then this truly represents a catastrophe!

France: An election full of paradoxes
By Amir Taheri/Asharq Alawsat
Let’s march to victory!”, “It is time to storm the Bastille!”. These are some of the slogans on placards carried by 1 May demonstrators in Paris. Someone unfamiliar with French political folklore might assume that yet another revolution is under way. No such luck. The time for revolution is all but gone for good, even for France which is the birthplace of revolutionary ideas.
All that is happening in France these days is yet another presidential election in which two wings of the same ruling elite are competing for power.
Nicolas Sarkozy, a geyser of untamed energy who represents the conservative coalition Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), leads one wing. The other wing’s standard bearer is the Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, a low-profile operator who, in one of those paradoxes of French politics, is supposed to represent the revolutionary tradition.
In the current campaign the focus has been the economy. This comes in a curious historical context. Here, for the first time, we have a privileged majority that is concerned about the plight of the underprivileged minority but is not ready to accept painful reforms.
In the past, those enjoying privileges formed a minority of the population and always faced the danger of a revolution backed by the underprivileged majority. For centuries, that was the pattern in French history. When democracy came to France, the form of the interaction between the privileged minority and the downtrodden minority changed while its substance remained the same. On occasions, such as the 1936 general election that led to the Popular Front reforms, the underprivileged majority would vote for a fairer distribution of privileges.
In more recent decades, however, the situation in France has been blocked because the majority, anxious to protect its privileges, refuses change. Each time a government proposed reforms that threatened such privileges as a five-week holiday stint, a shorter working week and a later retirement age, it was chased out of power.
This time, however, the situation may be different if only because many French realise that their economy may no longer be in a position to provide the high living standards they have gotten used to. While globalisation has nibbled at many markets for French goods, France has also been losing is phenomenal competitive edge. In fact, French productivity, which rose for a steady one per cent each year for three decades, has all but stagnated since 2008.
The resultis a 10 percent unemployment rate and a general fall in the average French family’s purchasing power. Some fear that the good times may well be over.
Such concerns have put two economists under the limelight, once again.
At one end of the spectrum we have John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose ideas are supposed to have helped the Western world emerge from the Great depression of the late 1920s. The core Keynesian idea is that at a time of recession the government should intervene to create jobs, even if, in normal circumstances, such jobs make no economic sense.
At the other end of the spectrum is the American economist Milton Friedman whose recipe is built around a sound monetary policy and a reduction of public expenditure.
In this election, Hollande represents the Keynesian option while Sarkozy is inspired by Friedman’s ideas.
The trouble is that both men assume a freedom of choice that France no longer has. As a member of the European Union and the Eurozone, France is in no position to adopt either philosophy. It has no control over its currency and is chained to narrow options by Eurozone’s strict budgetary rules.
In dealing with the economy, Sarkozy may be better placed than Hollande because his views are more in tune with the philosophy currently dominant in the EU where all the talk is about reducing public debt and curbing budget deficits.
In the final analysis, however, whoever is elected president on Sunday will not be able to do more than surf a tide formed in places beyond his control.
It is in foreign policy that Sunday’s election might have an impact.
Unable to make much of running the economy, Hollande may well try to silence his radical leftist flank with a number of foreign policy gesticulations. He has already hinted that he would try to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan two years earlier than agreed with other NATO members. He may also tone down Sarkozy’s tough line on Syria and his almost personal campaign against the Islamic Republic in Tehran. Hollande also banks on the possibility of finding new friends from among the regimes produced by the “Arab Spring”.
That would be no easy trapeze for Hollande. The French Socialist party has always been staunchly pro-American. In 1982, President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, was part of the front line campaigning for the installation of American nuclear missiles in Europe. And in 1991, it was also Mitterrand who mobilised European backing for the US-led war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In contrast, the Gaullist family, of which Sarkozy is the champion today, has always included a bit of anti-Americanism in its ideological cocktail. And, yet, Sarkozy could be regarded as the most pro-American French president ever.
In other words, this Sunday’s election is full of paradoxes. With ideological demarcation lines blurred, it is difficult for the French voter to know who he is electing and why.

Canada Concerned by Violence in Egypt
May 3, 2012 - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today issued the following statement:
“Canada is deeply concerned by the deaths of at least 11 protesters in Cairo yesterday.
“Canada urges all sides to remain calm and avoid violence in the run-up to Egypt’s first post-uprising presidential poll, scheduled for May 23 and 24.
“On behalf of all Canadians, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to the families and friends of those killed in these attacks, and I wish a speedy recovery to the injured.
“During the ongoing election period, it is of utmost importance that Egyptian authorities ensure the protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Egyptians, including the right to freedom of assembly.”

تغيير النظام في إيران
في أسفل دراسة واقعية تحاكي الصعوبات الإقتصادية والعقل المتحجر للملالي وتذمر شرائح كبيرة من الشعب الإيراني من نظامهم البالي. الدراسة تتوقع سقوط هذا النظام في وقت ليس ببعيد
Regime Change in Iran?
by Brendan Daly/Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2012, pp. 81-86
http://www.meforum.org/3225/iran-regime-change
There is every reason to believe that the Islamic Republic's days are numbered. The current government, lorded over by the religious supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, and his Guardian Council of aging mullahs, who can overrule any policy change by the pseudo-elected president, seem wildly out of touch with the general populace. Not only are the youth of Iran—some 70 percent of whom are under the age of thirty—chaffing under the "guardianship of the Islamic jurists" (velayet-e-faqih)—but so is the economy, due to sanctions imposed by the West in response to the regime's insistence on pursuing its nuclear program.[1] Inflation has long been out of control and trade and tourism a tiny fraction of what it could be, and yet the establishment has on the whole shown little interest in sacrificing militant, revolutionary principles for economic, and indeed, political expediency. Can this approach be sustained in view of the tightening economic noose around Tehran, and at what cost?
Background
Tensions between the mullahs and the West are ratcheting up. The downing of a U.S. spy drone was both a feather in the cap for the ayatollahs and a warning that Washington and its allies may soon seek to exert even greater pressure on the Islamic Republic.
The replacement of a relentlessly Islamist regime—emerging as it is in competition with Turkey as the primary regional superpower—with a liberal, secular, democratic government that will eschew domestic repression and international subversion is certainly attractive.[2] And it is not unprecedented, for Iran long struggled for constitutional and democratic rule. The constitutional revolution of 1905 was the first of its kind in the Middle East. Even the 1979 revolution, customarily referred to as the "Islamic Revolution," was in fact, initially, the result of a confluence of agitators: republican, nationalist, Marxist, and Islamist. But in the months and years following the flight of the shah and Khomeini's triumphant return, the ayatollah wrest control from the liberals and progressives, and through a brutal campaign of street violence, assassination, intimidation, and expert propaganda, crushed any opposition to his totalitarian ideology.[3]
Any visitor who spends significant time in the country will find ample justification for the Iranians' reputation for open-mindedness, artistry, intellectualism, and an almost fanatical reverence for culture. The most popular poet in Iran is Hafez, a national hero who is more readily quoted by most Iranians than the Qur'an. His poetry is full of wine-soaked revelry, unrequited and requited love, and a palpable hatred of religious hypocrisy and austerity.
Indeed, even after decades of repressive Islamist rule, Iran is still full of apparent contradictions. It is run by a highly moralistic, puritanical clergy, yet cannabis and heroin are more freely available than in most Western countries;[4] a country where producing music with a lone female voice is illegal, yet relatively early-term abortion is not;[5] where most people are constantly on guard against expressing true political opinions, yet one will find an old woman who will loudly shout "Long live the shah!"; where nepotism reigns at almost every level of society and wealth and power go hand in hand, yet many of its most powerful political figures were three decades ago "riding donkeys in the provinces" as one Tehran resident put it.[6]
Advocates of the Islamic Republic's imminent demise point to the small semi-nationalist, Zoroastrian revival burgeoning among the youth of Iran. The Faravahar, the symbol of the religion, is a common sight on key-rings and hanging from rearview mirrors. For some it simply represents Iran and its past glory. But for others, it is a real spiritual alternative to Islam. As Ali-Reza, a construction worker in his fifties from south Tehran told me: "My grandparents were Zoroastrian, but my parents were forced to convert. … We are still Zoroastrian in our hearts, but in Islam, if you change your religion, they kill you," he adds, followed by several expletives.
But one must be careful not to get carried away with this narrative. For every Zoroastrian revivalist, for every youth in north Tehran who spits at a passing bearded militiaman; for every exile who speaks in glowing terms of the shah; for every student in Shiraz who visits the bathroom with the words "I need to say hello to our President (Ahmadinejad)"— it is hard to escape the conclusion while travelling around the country that those who demand nothing less than the total abolition of the Islamic Republic are in a clear minority. Still, it is a minority that history and demographics would suggest is steadily growing.
Why No "Iranian Spring"?
With the ostensibly pro-democratic upheavals in the Arab world in 2011, many were asking why there were no equivalent mass protests in Iran. In fact, in the earliest days of the Arab uprisings, Tehran witnessed a series of sizeable demonstrations. Two protesters, Sane Jaleh and Mohammed Mokhtari, were killed on February 14-15, 2011. Amazingly, the state-run media tried to claim that they were in fact pro-government activists and that they were killed by either anti-regime terrorists or supporters of Green Movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi—a quite ludicrous notion that was conclusively refuted by interviews carried out with the men's friends and family.[7]
However, the bulk of the Iranian population did not back these February-April protests. Even among north Tehran's educated middle-class, the stronghold of the opposition movement, the prevailing feeling since the failed 2009 anti-government "Green Movement" demonstrations is one of cynicism and despair. Shokoufeh, 27, is an artist and veteran of antigovernment activity. When I asked her in March 2011 of her estimated time-frame for the collapse of the regime, she said,
Twenty, thirty years. If we all protest now, and don't give up, they will kill thousands of us. They don't care. They have all the power, all the guns, and they consider us traitors. They will kill as many of us as they want; they will win easily.
There is a hard-line element of the Iranian population, estimated at anywhere between 10 to 25 percent, that is willing to die and kill for the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, this militant minority has a monopoly on political and military power. The genius of the Islamic Republic is that for every state and civic institution—parliament, judiciary, military—there is a parallel, unaccountable religious body to either mirror it or police it. The on-the-ground authority of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Basij militia exceeds that of the official Iranian military and police respectively.[8]
In short, the regime is strong and dynamic. Its byzantine political structure provides fundamental veto powers to any attempt at systemic, democratic change from within, and its sophisticated security and military apparatus dwarfs anything that could conceivably be mustered by the opposition. And there is no indication that the supreme leader and his circle of ayatollahs have any intention of "giving up one iota"[9] of control over the reins of power. Indeed, just the opposite is true.
Ahmadinejad Down, Ayatollahs Rising
In 2009, Ayatollah Khamene'i took the unprecedented step of publicly backing incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election victory against the reformist opposition and its claims of electoral fraud, declaring the victory a "divine assessment."[10] Several days later, as protests continued to escalate, the supreme leader appeared to backtrack somewhat, announcing that he had ordered the Guardian Council to investigate the claims of fraud—who, of course, denied the claims.[11]
Virtually all serious commentators have alleged some degree of fraud in the elections. The accusations came not only from every opposition candidate but from numerous nongovernment clerics and from foreign journalists.[12] Some results, such as Mousavi's loss in his own home province of East Azerbaijan, were too hard for many to swallow.[13] But to what extent Ahmadinejad's victory reflected, or failed to reflect, the majority's genuine preference has been hotly debated. Polls conducted by Western organizations both before and after the June 2009 elections, showed anywhere between a 12 percent to 39 percent[14] margin in favor of Ahmadinejad. However, such polls are themselves subject to a myriad of weaknesses, not least self-censorship.
Still, the Guardian Council's alliance with the president turned out to be ephemeral. Ahmadinejad and his circle have never been true orthodox conservatives. Instead, he is a part of a "religious nationalist" current within the broader conservative milieu. Ayatollah Khomeini was famous for his anti-nationalism: "Those who say that we want nationality, they are standing against Islam... We have no use for the nationalists. … Islam is against nationality."[15] In a Machiavellian twist, the president is now being derided as a "deviant" by the conservative establishment, accusing him and his inner circle of having messianic aspirations[16] and of trying to usurp the supreme leader and the velayet-e-faqih.
Ahmadinejad's closest friend and confidant Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose daughter is married to the president's son, is particularly loathed by the orthodox conservatives and has even been jeered at by hardliners in the streets. It was the general opinion, both within and outside Iran, that Ahmadinejad was grooming Mashaei to be his successor (the presidency has a two-term limit).[17] This now seems impossible. When Ahmadinejad caused outrage by appointing Mashaei as first vice president (one of twelve VPs), Khamene'i quickly ordered Mashaei to resign from the cabinet, forcing Ahmadinejad to appoint him his chief of staff instead.[18] After being relentlessly slandered in the conservative state-run press, Mashaei has now been implicated in the largest corruption scandal in the republic's history—as have several of Ahmadinejad's other close associates.[19]
The antipathy does not end there. On November 21, 2011, Ahmadinejad's top media advisor and chief of the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Ali Akbar Javanfekr, was arrested and handcuffed by security services in his own office. Reportedly, only a personal telephone call from the president secured Javanfekr's release.[20]
In the ultimate affront to what semblance of democracy the country has, in mid-October, the supreme leader casually remarked that the position of a popularly-elected president may be abolished "someday in the distant future" and replaced with a prime minister appointed by the parliament.[21]
These events mark a high point in Khamene'i's involvement in politics from which he is traditionally supposed to be aloof. With Mousavi under indefinite house arrest,[22] and Ahmadinejad's faction despised if not decisively discredited in the eyes of the Guardian Council, it is hard to imagine what kind of reformist candidate might be allowed to run—let alone succeed—in the upcoming 2013 presidential elections.
Regime Change and the Pitfalls of Intervention
It has been a busy few months in Washington-Tehran diplomacy. First there was the FBI's revelation of a plot by Iranian nationals to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States (and possibly bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies),[23] followed by a damning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report[24] and Washington's promise of increased sanctions,[25] then by the downing of a U.S. spy drone,[26] and now, according to some reports, by placing the Revolutionary Guards "on a war footing" in anticipation of further escalation.[27]
Keeping all these recent developments in mind, it is easy to understand why the rhetoric in favor of regime change and confrontation has escalated in the United States. At a recent Republican Party presidential debate, Newt Gingrich argued that not only was regime change in Iran possible but that it could be accomplished within a year.[28] Indeed, some of the Republican presidential candidates seem to have been trying to outdo each other in their willingness to use the "military option" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The problem with this kind of posturing, and any possible campaigns of solidarity with the opposition, is the strengthening of the regime's already dominant "siege-mentality"—thereby forfeiting more credibility, in a domestic political sense, to the hard-line conservatives. The success of the elites running the Islamic Republic depends heavily on their ability to assume the moral high-ground for their domestic audience—regardless of how twisted their moral compass might seem to outside observers. Events like the seizure of the U.S. drone or presidential candidates hinting at invasion are huge propaganda coups for the regime.
In the words of the pro-Western, antigovernment Parisa, a 28-year-old teacher from Shiraz: "I hate the government, but I hate more that [John] McCain would come over here and attack our country... Also, it would be a disaster. It would make Iraq look like nothing."
The Waiting Game
Some argue that sanctions have the same effect of rallying the Iranian people behind the regime, but conversations with Iranians have not borne this out. Whether an Iranian is likely to place the blame for the sanctions on Ahmadinejad's hostile statements or U.S. and European hawkishness tends to depend on their preexisting political views. It is true that sanctions cannot do much to hinder the activities of the likes of the Qods Force, the external Iranian intelligence agency, or the "millionaire mullahs,"[29] but their loosening or tightening can be an invaluable pressure card against the regime.
For all the ayatollahs' political maneuverings, there is no doubt about the regime's "protracted crisis of legitimacy"[30] since the 1990s. So much so that, in sharp contrast to the Islamist surge elsewhere, Iran may be the world's only sizeable Muslim-majority nation where Islamism is on the decline. Whether this makes the regime's collapse both inevitable and unpredictable, as suggested by Carnegie Endowment scholar Karim Sadjadpour, remains to be seen.[31] For now, all eyes are on the 2013 elections
*Brendan Daly is a journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East and conflict and post-conflict zones.
[1] BBC News, Nov. 8, 2011.
[2] Melik Kaylan, "How a Regime Change in Iran Would Transform the World," Forbes, July 24, 2010.
[3] Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2008), chap. 6.
[4] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 18, 2005.
[5] BBC News, Apr. 12, 2005.
[6] Author interview, Mar. 2011.
[7] The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 17, 2011; Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Tehran Bureau, Feb. 16, 2011.
[8] Harold Rhode, "How Iran's Rulers Think about the Nuclear Program," Hudson New York, Dec. 15, 2011.
[9] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, Oct. 9, 2011.
[10] Time Magazine, June 15, 2009.
[11] Press TV (Tehran), June 29, 2009.
[12] See, for example, Agence France-Presse, July 7, 2009; Reuters, June 13, 2009.
[13] Ynet News (Tel Aviv), June 13, 2009.
[14] "Iran: Public Opinion on Foreign, Nuclear and Domestic Issues," International Peace Institute, New York, Dec. 8, 2010; "Iranian Opinion on Current Issues," WorldPublicOpinion.org, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2009.
[15] Mehregan Magazine (Washington, D.C.), Spring and Summer 2003, p. 16.
[16] Mohebat Ahdiyyih, "Ahmadinejad and the Mahdi," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, pp. 27-36.
[17] The Guardian (London), Apr. 21, 2011.
[18] Reza Molavi and K. Luisa Gandolfo, "Who Rules Iran?" Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010, pp. 61-8.
[19] Newsweek, Nov. 21, 2011.
[20] The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2011.
[21] insideIRAN (New York), Nov. 1, 2011.
[22] Amnesty International, London, Sept. 29, 2011.
[23] ABC News, Oct. 11, 2011; al-Jazeera TV (Doha), Nov. 19, 2011.
[24] Voice of America News, Nov. 10, 2011.
[25] BBC News, Dec. 1, 2011.
[26] The Scotsman (Edinburgh), Dec. 14, 2011.
[27] The Daily Telegraph (London), Dec. 5, 2011.
[28] The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 24, 2011.
[29] Paul Klebnikov, "Millionaire Mullahs," Forbes, July 21, 2003.
[30] Danny Postel, "The Specter Haunting Iran," Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Tehran, Feb. 21, 2010.
[31] Paul R. Pillar, "Inevitable and Unpredictable Regime Change in Iran," The National Interest, May 14, 2011.