Are Arabs afraid of Iran?

The answer is No, Arabs fear the US and Israel, not Iran.

According to a face to face survey in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates close to 80 percent of Arabs consider Israel and the United States the two biggest external threats to their security. Only six percent cited Iran.

The poll was conducted in November and early December 2006, by Zogby International and designed by Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Asked to volunteer their favorite leader, the weighted aggregate of 14 percent named Nasrallah; eight percent, Chirac; four percent, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and three percent, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "These are people who are seen to have stood up to the U.S..Not a single one is a Sunni Arab." The least favorite leader was George Bush!

Asked about objectives of US policy in the middle east:
75%: "controlling oil"
69%: "protecting Israel"
69%: "weakening the Muslim World
68%: "the desire to dominate the region."
Only 9%: "promoting democracy."

Take note of Iranian Hegemony as the new buzz word coming out of Washington; it is not the terrorism, it is not the "bomb", it is not the fabiracted weapons' evidence anymore. Now, it is the Iranian Hegemony that they have to stop!

Thank you Furgaia for the link.

Also, visit the Project for Defense Alternatives for an good collection of articles about the current Iran-US crisis.

Thanks to The Cylinder

Turkmanchai, the 179 anniversary.

Februaray 21, 1828 ... the most frustrating chapter in the history class! In 1804 Russia claims and conquers Georgia. Persians go to war to reclaim/free Georgia, but thanks to the French betrayal in the first round of Russo-Persian wars they lose more, go to war to take it back and still lose more!

Persian territory lost to Russia in the Gulistan Treaty (Nov 5, 1813).

More Persian territory was annexed to Russia by the Turkmanchai Treaty (Feb 21, 1828).

This is Fath-Ali Shah, a soft king by some accounts. He lost all that territory. He's not marked in the history for being a moderate king (ruling from 1797-1834) or being the patron of art and gateway to european modernity. He is infamously remembered for being a loser.

The Russian medal to commemorate their victory in Turkmanchai ...

1.5 hrs later

Do Watch this! whether you hate Iran or love it. It has a balanced dose of facts for all.

Huh!

Watch this!

The Iranian Vogue!

Lotus is the first Iranian fashion magazine. Visit their website to see how Iranian models and fashion look.

30 years ago, Farah Diba (The queen) was the advocate of Persian fashion design.


Today, that trend seems to to be gaining a momentum again.

Another Quote of the Day

( I got the quote from this site, as I stumbled across his/her pro-zionism comments elsewhere.)

Adolf Hitler:

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty."

(Now I see who the neoconservatives and their Israeli coaches get ther lessons from!)

Quote of the Day

"As you know, the road in Afghanistan are not up to the same standard that we're used to in North America." the military official, explaining why "Thirteen Canadian soldiers suffered minor injuries when three armoured vehicles smashed into each other on the pre-dawn streets of Kandahar on Sunday."(CBC.CA, Feb18, 2007)

Oh geeee (or duuuh, if you wish)! All those battles they have fought in North America! But with enemies like this, does Taliban need friends?

Who's responsible for American's false image of Iran?

Farzaneh Milani's today article in the Daily Progress traces the sources of misunderstanding of Americans about Iran:

"America in Captivity" was the headline that captured the mood of a country in psychic pain.

"Nuke Iran," read graffiti and T-shirts and posters.

"The only thing that could ever straighten out this screwed-up country [Iran] is an atomic bomb! Wipe it off the map and start over," recommended "Not Without My Daughter," the most popular book about Iran ever published in the United States. [hmmm, and Betti Mahmoodi, unlike Ahmadinejad, didn't speak to America through translation, did she?]

Twenty-eight years later, Iranians find themselves hostages of their own hostage taking. read more

Farzaneh Milani is a professor in Women and Gender Studies in University of Virginia. She is the author of a great book Veils and Words, the emerging voices ofIranian women writers. Milani blames the general mis- understanding about Iran on best seller books such as "On Wings of Eagles," "Whirlwind," "Sword Point," "Shadows of Steel," "House of Sand and Fog" - and three non-fiction books - "Under Fire," "Not Without My Daughter" and "Reading Lolita in Tehran".

Most of these books depict Iran as an angry sea of chest-pounding, fist-shaking mobs that burn effigies of the American president, trample on the American flag and scream "death to America" like a mantra. Displaying images of veiled women on their covers, many of these narratives milk the cliches and reinforce the stereotypes evoked by
this all-too-familiar image.

The reason, she find to be the few conglomerates that dominate the $25.1 billion U.S. publishing industry. Obsessed by blockbuster success, these publishers are not interested in the not-so-lucrative business of translation, which establishes a cornerstone of intercultural communication and better understanding between nations.

The media is also complicit.

While scholarly books reach a narrow audience, popular books on Iran and mainstream media coverage of the country reach millions of people. They wield much power by touching the hearts and souls of the American public. Part reality and part imagination, and with a splash of concern for national and international security thrown in for good measure, they offer engaging stories and fan the flames of antagonism between the two countries.

But this is what I didn't know, did you?

...in 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control began to consider books from Iran as "embargoed literature." To publish her memoir,Shirin Ebadi , the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had to initiate a lawsuit, invoking rights granted even to non-Americans by the U.S. Constitution.

Lesson of the day

Thanks to my new friend Filasteen, I discovered Izzi's photoshock



[HERE, THERE WERE GRUESOME PICTURES. I am deleting them because they haunt my days and nights. and being haunted by violence and ugliness doesn't make me a better person. But please do visit Izzi's photoblog, if you see ANY merit in ANY war. and I hope the pictures will convince you otherwise.]

I think there is a time that we need to look at the raw images of violence. I am not posting these images because they make me hate the enemy. I am posting them because I know that this is not what I want even for my enemy. I think if we all look death in the face, we will become less violent and more forgiving humans.

Forough Farokhzad

Another Birth
By Forugh Farokhzad

My whole being is a dark chant
which will carry you
perpetuating you
to the dawn of eternal growths and blossoming
in this chant I sighed you sighed
in this chant
I grafted you to the tree to the water to the fire.

Life is perhaps
a long street through which a woman holding
a basket passes every day

Life is perhaps
a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch
life is perhaps a child returning home from school.

Life is perhaps lighting up a cigarette
in the narcotic repose between two love-makings
or the absent gaze of a passerby
who takes off his hat to another passerby
with a meaningless smile and a good morning .

Life is perhaps that enclosed moment
when my gaze destroys itself in the pupil of your eyes
and it is in the feeling
which I will put into the Moon's impression
and the Night's perception.

In a room as big as loneliness
my heart
which is as big as love
read more ...

Tehran from the neighbor's eye

here I found a little report from Tehran written by Fatima Bhutto, the pretty 24 years old Pakistani columnist that you see in a picture she has taken in Tehran Metro (or subway).

Fatima's plans for trip to Iran were made amidst worrying headlines that that the unrelentingly belligerent Israeli government had said to be mulling over plans to send laser guided bombs, followed by conventional nuclear warheads into Iran.

Nevertheless, while in Tehran, she finds herself in the middle of a dynamic city, unburdened by the threat of war, and resolved to survive.

There is so much to discover in this megalopolis of 14 million people; it even makes Karachi look quaint and small. The landscape of Iran is said to have been continuously inhabited by a single nation of people longer than any other part of land the world over
...
Safak Pavey , who heads the United Nations High Commission for Refugee's external relations office, told me that in the early 1990s, after the Gulf War (part one) Iran was home to 4.5 millions refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. "Iran should receive thanks for that; can you imagine a European country giving 4.5 million refugees asylum?"

Fatima speaks of her encounter with Mitra, an Iranian journalist, who informs her about the freedom of birth control in Iran, the availability of sex change operations and the government run rehabilitation centers for the country's large number of heroin addicts, even offering needle exchanges and methadone doses to those in need.

Mitra is an elegant and professional woman, the weekend before Muharram she was wearing red; I wouldn't have pegged her as having Revolutionary sympathies. And she didn't necessarily, but like most Iranians she was willing to balance the difficult and sometimes frustrating changes of the Revolution with its benefits.
...
It is impossible to essentialize in Iran, impossible to paint things black or white - or red - there are so many facets to life in this country. Those diametric opposites do share the same space in Iran and its people, and perhaps Mitra, are examples of its dynamism.

Art in Nature

Jan22-28, 2007: 58 Iranian artists gather in the Persian Gulf to hold an Environmental Art Festival

Iran Strives for Security

I would like to draw your attention to Les Politiques. The blog that inspired me to start mine. In the past few posts, Les Politiques has been providing comparative analysis of the French versus the English media in reporting the Bush-generated crisis around Iran.

In her recent post, Sophia has provided a translation and commentary of Le Temps''s Interview with Akbar Velayati's (previous Foreign Affairs Minister of 17 revolutionary years).

Velayati compares allegations of Iran's interference in Iraq to that of de Gaulle's interference in the Quebec-Canadian politics, and stresses on the Iranian's firm belief that

a) The Iraq problem should be decided by democracy (and if the 60% of shiite majority establishes a shiite government, it should not be discouraged by Americans!

b) Iranians DO NOT WANT WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP, that innocent Israelis deserve peace and land and that the Jewish, the Muslim and the Christian inhabitants of the Israel/Palestine should arrive at a "democratic" resolution to their conflict.

My Funny Valentine

See the Frontline's documentary: Valentine's day in Iran

A soldier's letter to the Senate

Visit Hope Springs a Turtle please.

The Weapon's Tale

No doubt, fans of the US standard MM-DD-YY date format that pisses off so much of the rest of the world will be delighted to discover that the Iranians also apparently use it - presumably because the US is such a big export customer for Iranian produced munitions...

Read more on Stef's blog:
He simply (and pictorially) asks

How do markings printed on a Western standard calibre mortar round, written in English and conforming to Western not Iranian dating conventions prove that the round was recently manufactured in Iran? And while we're at it, what the fuck are you paid for? To uncritically parrot everything you are told by 'unnamed senior security sources' or to do some elementary research before passing that crap off as news and in-depth analysis?

Update:
Washington Post: A Shaky Briefing on Iran

The administration finally unveiled its case this weekend, first in coordinated and anonymous leaks to a trusting New York Times reporter, then in an extraordinarily secretive military briefing at which no one would speak on the record, journalists weren't allowed to photograph the so-called evidence, and nothing even remotely like proof of direct Iranian government involvement was presented.

Iran: the high plateau!

Homeyra's recent post broght me to this little excerpt of an article by Kam Zarrabi:

The fear that the regional Arab states might find it imperative to enter a nuclear arms race to neutralize an atomic-armed Iran is based on politically motivated and clearly flawed arguments. First, a nuclear Pakistan, the home of Al-Gha'eda and other terrorist groups that are the arch enemies of the oil-rich and corrupt Arab rulers did not invoke such fears. Second, neither has Israel's known nuclear arsenal that rivals that of France or Great Britain. Third, All these Arab states are signatories to the NPT agreement, as is Iran. With the IAEA supervision and monitoring, embarking on such an arms race would not be possible, especially for desert-dwelling lands with no hiding space to clandestinely pursue such projects.

Which reminds me of what I read in a history book when I was young. It was something to the effect that the "mountains" have been cruicial in shaping the character and the culture of the Persian civilization (I think the comparison was drawn to India, which unlike the Iranian plateau enjoyed plentitude of water, vegetation, flat lands and etc.)

So here, some pictures of the mountains that the Americans are going to conquere (or maybe not, since they didn't seem too successful in "flat" Iraq)!!!!
Please click on the picture to go to the source where it was taken from. (Especially theJackson School of Geoscience )

Isareli Apartheid Week (Feb12-17)

Update:
FurGaia has suggested a "heart wrenching piece of music by Shaheed" to introduce this event.

Women on the death row

Every now and again, a petition pops in my mailbox: "Save Nazanin!", "Save Malek", "Save Afsaneh", "Save Raheleh". Sentencing women to death is a sensational event for two camps: first the human right activists (both in Iran and elsewhere) and second for the Iranophobes who have yet obtained another unquestionable! evidence of the evil deeds of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Untold, however, are the stories of the formidable success of the Women's Rights movement in Iran, in stopping such executions. Untold, also is the fundamental contribution of this particular brand of activism to the improvement of the human rights in Iran.

Shadi Sadr the Iranian lawyer who has successfully rescued some of the women on death row (and the recipient of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism raises an interesting issue:

In all those years that the women movement activists were worried for the fate of Afsaneh Noroozi, Kobra Rahmanpoor, Leyla Mafi, Shahla Jahed, Nazanin Fathi, Fatemeh Pejooh, ashraf kalhori and etc*; and restlessly collected petitions, wrote articles and demonstrated to save their lives, many a man walked blindfolded up to gallows and were hanged, without a short report in any paper, without a voice of protest.**

...

Why is it that the stoning and the execution of women has turned into a social discourse, but the civil society is silent about the execution of men?

Sadr draws attention to the image of women in Persian culture, typifying kindness, love and nurturing, which can hardly be juxtaposed with the images of a death deserving criminal. But she also focuses on the fact that the Iranian Women Movement is the best organized and the most effective form of activism in Iran. Sadr projects that The Women's Movement will inevitably be gaining enough momentum to push forward the humanrights's agenda, genderless.

* Of the 14 women sentenced to capital punishment, 6 have escaped the sentence; and 8 are having their cases reviewed or referred to the supreme court. It appears to me that although the sentence is given according to the law, the judges and the head of the judiciary system do exercise their authority to prevent the sentence from being carried on. To change the law, however, is what the feminist lawyers are most striving for.

** Quotations are translated from her Persian article in the Zanan Magazine, 15:136, August 2006, page 18-22

This post was inspired by and thus dedicated to A Friend to Humanity

Internet Usage in Iran

More than half of Iranians are "connected". The graph is produced from data pubished by Iran's ministry of Communication. [reference, Persian BBC]

The option that is not on the table

Washington Post

Paradoxically, to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief.
A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power.
In the meantime, as Iran became assimilated into the global economy, the regime's influence would inevitably yield to the private sector, with its demands for accountability and reform.

Guardian:A new Plan A, with more American carrots and European sticks, is necessary. But don't count on it working. (by Timothy Garton Ash)

(Comments on this article are more readworthy!)

Reza Aslan: Dangers of a cornered George Bush!

Reza Aslan, the Author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam is a scholar of religions, a Middle East Analyst for CBS News and a regular guest in other networks. His writings have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and others. (Well all that said, I have neither seen him once, nor have paid attention to his name, if I have read something by him; and I know my blogger friend Behem has raised some criticism of his book. Chck his blog Kampfeblog) But in a recent article he draws attention to the fallacy of the Bush administration's dealing with Iran:

...
Iran has more or less stopped looking west. That is what has made it look so dangerous. That's why it's been able to more or less shrug off the fear of sanctions. It recognises that it has far more to gain by simply strengthening ties with Russia, China, India and even Pakistan (as evidenced by its recent $7 billion oil pipeline deal with Islamabad and New Delhi). That's why it stopped trading in dollars. There used to be a time when the US could maintain control over Iran through the purse string. Those days are gone. Iran is saying to Europe and the United States, "Who needs you? We've got China, Russia, India." That is a great fear for the United States, and it underlines the growing power of Iran.
...
Rather than recognise the reality and treat Iran like the regional power that it has become (as a direct result of US actions), the US is still treating Iran like some petty state teetering on the verge of another popular revolution.
...
United Nations Resolution 1737 was a useless idea, a total waste of time. The plan that the Europeans are floating around – that there would be a symbolic halt to uranium enrichment that would coincide with the beginning of negotiations – seems more productive. But the Bush administration has no interest in speaking to Iran. It feels quite rightly that it cannot negotiate from a position of strength, so it feels obliged to ratchet up the military option, its only recourse.

...

And on that note:
Iran and South Korea sign $500m Liquefied Natural Gas contract

Iranian politicians are welcoming proposals to form an international natural-gas producers' organization -- similar to oil's OPEC -- allowing members to exercise greater control over natural-gas prices

Nokia, LG to launch cell phone production in Iran

Iran's auto production hits 891,000 in ten months (Iran is the first largest car manufacturer in the middle east and the 12th in the world see Wikipedia's entry on Iran Khodro)

Iran tests modern air defense shield

mobility ... modernity ... phones ... cars ... mind wonders in the alleyways of the early 20th century ... end of daily digest of Iran news ... all that thinking and writing for later ... back to the safe bubble of work

Benyamin; a pop singer from Iran

Those of you who know I have just returned from Iran, and those of you who are Iranians living abroad and who visit Iran not so very often, perhaps also know that one cannot rid oneself of Iran-blues that easily, no matter how great one's blessing in the wonderful first world may be.

I am still very nostalgic. I have been cooking Iranian food (which I rarely have time to do) and I have been on an all-Iranian-movie diet (Since I am in cinema business, I see everything, B-movies and masterworks alike. And speaking of masterwork, it has become imperative that someone write a paper like "Dariush Mehrjui, the "other" great master of Iranian Cinema", those of you who don't know him, investigate works like Cow, Mix, Banoo).

I am listening to random music that my itune's picking for me, and now it is playing "Benyamin". I don't know who Benyamin is, but I am loving this music because first, it is terribly energetic, and second, because this is what my 24 years old brother played in his car, when he raised the volume to what seemed to be infinity, and drove his car at speed of what seemed to be infinity, on the state of the art highways of that lovely city Tehran, which is infinitely beautiful, infinitely chaotic (crowded and polluted), and ever alive with the mischievous outbursts of people like my brother and I, taking a break from the habit of "intellectualism" into what my dear friend Dr. V may call "contrarianism".

Benyamin is singing:
chesham be rahe jadeha
piyadeha savareha
miraftan o miyoomadan
amma naboodan male ma

and I google him up:

Here's what strikes me in what Avaye Nakisa has to say:

... A couple of months ago some scattered songs surfaced on the internet from an artist by the name of Benyamin, who later showed himself to be Benyamin Bahadori! Given the man’s background as a Noheh/Rozeh-khaan and composer of music for recorded religious/moral anecdotes for children, it wasn’t totally a surprise that what characterised his style and sound was summed up by updated and revised versions of the traditional religious chants and hymns ... It should be mentioned that our music in general and the POP music in particular is not completely untouched and uninspired by the religio-cultural vein hidden and beating under the skin of our society. ... That’s how it manages to rub the right nerve and provoke passion and sentiments in many of Iranians regardless of their current geographical location and social background! ... Benyamin, however, has now released his official album entitled “85”, in which he has only included two of those previously available songs. Interesting enough ONLY those two that have been revised lyrically beyond recognition to a more romantic theme!

I tend to draw a lot of meaning from transmogrification of a "religious singer" to a pop singer. Listen to track9 of his album to see what I mean! And if anyone called Iranians fundamentalist, just play the music that's coming out of (not underground) Islamic Republic of Iran.

My favorite tracks are 1, 6 and 9! No they are not great works of art; but they resonate with the beat of the youth in Iran.

Freedom of Speech

Last Sunday in San Francisco, the Anti-Defamation League sponsored "Finding Our Voice," a conference designed to help Jews recognize and confront the "new anti-Semitism."

For me; writes Joel Beinin (Stanford University professor and Mideast peace activist) , it was ironic. Ten days before, my own voice was silenced by fellow Jews.

Apparently, his talk to a group of students in a private school in San Jose was cancelled in the last minute because of the opposition of "a certain community of parents," influenced by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Silicon Valley.

In his article in the SanFransico Chronicle , Beinin (who is raised as a Zionist) writes:

I have long advocated equal rights for the Palestinians, as I do for all people. I criticize Israeli policies. I seem to have crossed the council's line of acceptable discourse. Because I am a Jew, it is not so easy to smear me as guilty of this "new anti-Semitism." Instead, hosts like the Harker School, and others, are intimidated, and open dialogue on Israel is censored.

Beinin draws attention to his Jewish upbringing and the belief that "being Jewish meant being actively committed to social justice". A belief that motivated him to go to move to Israel in the pursuit of that dream. Yet much of what I saw there called this into question., he writes.

His stark criticism however is directed at the method of smear campaign adopted by some Jewish American communities:

Organizations claiming to represent American Jews engage in a systematic campaign of defamation, censorship and hate-mongering to silence criticism of Israeli policies. They hollow the ethical core out of the Jewish tradition, acting instead as if the highest purpose of being Jewish is to defend Israel, right or wrong.

...

Even former U.S. presidents are not immune. Jimmy Carter has been the target of a smear campaign since the release of his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Carter's most vociferous critics have not challenged him on the issues. Rather, they discredit him with personal attacks, even insinuating that the man who has achieved more than any other American president in Arab/Israeli peacemaking is anti-Semitic.

Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? Beininn believes that "it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts. He suggests that everlasting peace in the middle east can only be achieved an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options.

(thank you Dr. V for the link)

Images of Tehran

One of the visitors of this blog asked me to post a link to images of Tehran, that debunk the notion of it being a fundamentalist state in the middle of desert.

Please Click Here

And here are some pictures by Arash Hamidi. He is talented.

Milad Tower (the forth highest tower of the world; looks like CN tower)

(an aerial view of Tehran's infamous smog!)

(and this is the view from the Milad Tower.)

Laura Secor's Reports

Thanks to Homeyra I came across two articles by Laura Secor in the New Yourk Times and another in The New Yorker Magazine.

I highly recommend them, but here are samples:

From the New Yorker

Later that day, I went to see a man who is perhaps Iran’s most famous and most endangered dissident, for whom the stakes of Ahmadinejad’s victory were unimaginable high. Hashem Aghajari, a historian at Tehran’s Tarbiat Modares University, is a popular her in Iran, especially among students. revolutionary religious intellectual, Aghajari had lost a leg fighting in the Iran-Iraq War. But in a 2002 speech in Hamadan, the city he’s from, Aghajari called for a reformation of Shiit Islam and proclaimed that Muslims were not “monkeys” who should “blindly follow religious leaders. He was convicted of apostas and sentenced to death by hanging.
...
In June, however, Aghajari insisted that he was not in despair over Ahmadinejad’s victory. “I’m optimistic,” he said. “The people of Iran should experience this period so that things go better in the future. If the people hadn’t experienced theocracy, they would still be waiting for it. But now that we have experienced theocracy, there is no future for it here.”

And this from the New York Times has a funny and familiar resonance to it. I wasn't sure if she was talking about Bush or Ahmadinejad:

By mid-January, Ahmadinejad’s isolation even within his own faction was complete: 150 of 290 members of parliament, including many of Ahmadinejad’s onetime allies, signed a letter criticizing the president’s economic policies for failing to stanch unemployment and inflation. A smaller group also blamed Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory foreign-policy rhetoric for the United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. As if that were not enough, an editorial in Jomhouri Eslami, a newspaper that reflects the views of the supreme leader, accused the president of using the nuclear issue to distract the public from his failed policies. Ahmadinejad’s behavior was diminishing popular support for the nuclear program, the editorial warned. The Iranian political system seems to be restoring its equilibrium by showing an extremist president the limits of his power.

Carrots and Sticks?

Have you seen this?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US accepts economic role but rejects the military tie of Tehran to Baghdad.

So, on the one hand "Senior Bush administration officials said the U.S. won't block Iran's efforts to establish financial institutions in Iraq" but on the other hand they aretaking a tougher stance against Iran, in relation to alleged involvement of Tehran in the killings last month of five U.S. soldiers in the Iraqi city ofKarbala . Although " Senior U.S. officials acknowledged yesterday [Feb,1, 2007] that they had no direct evidence to support this claim, and Iran has long denied accusations that it is supplying weapons to Shiite groups in Iraq or that it has expanded its paramilitary operations inside the country."

According to the WSJ, "In late January, Iran's ambassador to Iraq surprised U.S. officials by telling the New York Times that Tehran was preparing to significantly increase its financial and trade ties to Iraq." On Feb 1st, 2007 "senior Bush administration officials said the U.S. accepted the Iranian economic moves and would make no effort to block them."

However, "The willingness to allow Iranian banks to operate in Iraq comes as the U.S. is trying to shut down Iranian financial activity elsewhere in an effort to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear-weapons program."

Now I wonder, is it more dangerous if Iranians have economic and financial ties to Iraq, or to the European union? Is it more dangerous--as far as the oh-so-delicate safety of the American lives (which are undoubtedly worth 100 times more than non-American lives) is concerned-- for Iranian-born naturalized citizens of Canada to have American savings in the Royal Bank of Canada, in the Westmount Branch, or for the Iranian National Bank to have a branch in Baghdad?

Wouldn't the cynic be suspicious that what the Americans are really after in Iran, is NOT the WOMD, but an unquestionable economic dominion, made possible by obtaining Iran's natural resources through the black markets of Syria, at slashed prices--if they do not succumb to the wishes of the empire that is?

So Iran has really two choices: Either hand in the keys to the US, so they can take what they wish in peace and in "freedom"; or to have the US break the lock with the bunker buster nukes (an option which will look bad on the American resume of nuclear habits and if allowed to be designed by the European allies, will turn into: let Iranians just smuggle their assets to Syria, and cash them cheap --as they did during the Iran-Iraq-- war, in exchange for bread, and in exchange for more weapons (deals brokered by Israel, of course), for the inevitable time that the US with its culture of instant-gratification, will come to break the lock!)

Now excerpts from the The Guradian (by Jonathan Steele) that I mentioned above:

The real purpose of Washington's heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the "who lost Iraq?" debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up, Bush's people will name its fall guys. Number one will be the Democrats, for failing to fund the war adequately and allowing the "enemy" to take comfort from the sapping of American will. Number two will be Iran for its alleged arming of militias and insurgents. Number three will be Syria for allowing suicide bombers through Damascus airport and into Iraq.

The second purpose of Washington's anti-Iranian claims, as the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recently suggested, is to prepare a case for a US military strike on Iran. It will be described as defensive, just as the first attacks on North Vietnam two generations ago were falsely said to be an answer to the other side's aggression.

The safest conclusion is that Washington remains confused about what Iran is doing, and frustrated by its own inability to find allies to support a response. All options are being prepared, along with their "justifications". The International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual survey rightly pointed out this week that US power is fading. It can shape an agenda but not implement it globally.

Two stark new events prove that. One was the meeting between the Saudi and Iranian security chiefs to try to stop Lebanon sliding back into civil war. This showed Iran can be a force for regional stability, and that Saudi Arabia is resisting US efforts to isolate Tehran. The other was President Jacques Chirac's comment that it would not matter if Iran developed a nuclear bomb or two as they could not be used productively. Described as a gaffe since it broke ranks with Washington, it expressed the views of many Europeans (as well as the contradiction inherent in the French and British nuclear arsenals), since the French president added that the bigger problem was the push for other nations to follow suit.

As Washington's neocons go into eclipse and the realpolitikers dither, Britain and other European governments need to be far clearer in public than they have so far been. They should point out that the dispute with Iran is not as monumental as Washington claims. Fomenting new divisions in the Middle East or resorting to force are cures far worse than the disease.

Diasporic Memoirs

If you live in North America, the chances are that when you talk about the "media-fabricated wars" in a cocktail party, you would hear something like "yeah, like Wag the Dog", or if you talk about the Iraq war, you get a nodding head "yeah like in the Three Kings". And the chances are that when people talk about the women in Iran, Betty Mahmoudi of Without my daughter; Never! comes to mind. I was among many Iranians who boycotted this film, to protest against the act of engraving the memories of an Image-driven nation, with non-representative images of a case of domestic violence-- turned into a factual cultural ubiquity, thanks to the magic of "based on memoirs of ...".

But now, a group of Iranian-American feminist scholars are raising an alarm flag about "a particularly lucrative industry of Iranian and Muslim women's memoirs [that] has mushroomed in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities." Niki Akhavan, Golbarg Bashi, Mana Kia and Sima Shakhsari, warn that "These women's memoirs have assumed center-stage in appropriating the legitimate cause of women's rights and placing it squarely in the service of Empire building projects, disguised under the rhetoric of the "war on terror."

Once the favored tale of "civilizing missions", the contemporary rescue fantasy now has a new twist. Rather than being spoken for by ambassadors of "civilization", Iranian women are able to speak for themselves courtesy of international publishing houses. Women selected according to the resonance of their experience within this narrative become the mouthpiece for the "authentic" Iranian experience, making the current construction of the "rescue fantasy" more insidious than ever.

See a short version of the article here.

In today's Iran, women are at the forefront of literacy, educational, artistic, journalistic, and legal advancements. In a social, literary, and political tradition of resistance that extends from generations of peasant and working class women down to Tahereh Qorrat al-Ayn, Shirin Ebadi, Shams Kasma'i, and Forough Farrokhzad, Iranian women continue to struggle for their dignity and civil rights. Iranian women took two monarchic dynasties to task and they now hold the Islamic Republic responsible to address their demands. Any military or economic sanctions against Iran will only set Iranian women back in their achievements, and cause nothing but hardship and tragedy (as disastrously evident in Iraq today).