The Washington Independent » Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Lunchtime Links

Elise Foley — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:05:41 +0000

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemns D.C.’s most famous psychic octopus.

Rod Blagojevich is not corrupt; he’s just not the “sharpest knife in the drawer.”

Now it’s Republicans who need to “support our men in uniform.”

Massachusetts approves a plan to bypass the electoral college.

Voters don’t like self-financed campaigns.

Most Beautiful Person Scott Brown will model for Playboy, but not for the Hill.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’ll jail protesters of the new immigration law.

More than 6,000 graves in Arlington Cemetery could be unmarked or mislabeled.

Quotes That Susan Rice Does Not Want to Read

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:46:00 +0000

There’s one up high in this morning’s New York Times piece on the Iran/Turkey/Brazil uranium enrichment deal:

According to a Western diplomat who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran was prepared to ship to Turkey was believed to represent a little more than half its current stockpile.

“The situation has changed,” the diplomat said.

If you read on in the piece, you’ll see that Iran’s move may not be enough to satisfy the so-called P5+1′s concerns about an Iranian weapons program:

In Tehran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman told a person attending the news conference that Iran would not, for example, suspend its program to enrich uranium to 20 percent — which brings it closer to weapons grade.

Still waiting on an actual official reply from the Obama administration here. But in the meantime, Amb. Susan Rice’s next few weeks are going to be consumed with shepherding a sanctions package through a Security Council that at the very least would rather not pass a new round of sanctions on Iran. The Iranian negotiating posture to date has been to bust up punitive-minded coalitions at the last minute with the prospect of cooperation, so it’s diplomatic malpractice if this comes as a surprise. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t wavering nations who’d want to get off the sanctions bus at the first sign of Iranian openness to a longed-for enrichment deal. What the administration says — and Rice does — today in reaction to the new offering will be crucial.

Petraeus Commemorates 65th Anniversary of Concentration-Camp Liberation

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:38:13 +0000

In an eloquent address at the Capitol Rotunda sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, honored the survivors of the Nazi death camps and the U.S. soldiers who helped liberate them 65 years ago. “We approach life with fewer illusions, with hope, to be sure, but with sobriety as well,” Petraeus reflected on the “indelible mark” left upon humanity by the Holocaust. “We are wiser for having seen how order can bend to the ways of terrible men.” Survivors, family members of survivors, and 120 veterans of the U.S. Army’s European campaign during World War II looked on, as did members of Congress and the Obama administration.

Petraeus’s remarks did not touch on politics, appropriately for the occasion, but there were a few subtle undertones relevant to contemporary events. He quoted Dwight Eisenhower’s order to record the scenes at the camps, as if to “look into the future and foresee a day” when some would “deny an undeniable historical truth,” as the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly done in speeches. Petraeus’ reference to the Holocaust’s instructive lessons to the consequences of “when demonic dictators are able to hijack a country” appeared resonant in that regard.

The general recently found his comments about the relationship between the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. interests in the Middle East misrepresented and attacked by Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Petraeus has not responded. But his speech’s reminder that Holocaust survivors and their descendants have “enriched our lives immeasurably” and “helped build a nation that stands as one of our great allies” are perhaps sufficient rebuke.

Before Petraeus spoke at the ceremony, Amb. Michael Oren, Israel’s envoy to Washington, addressed the crowd, and made a point of favorably quoting President Obama’s conception of the “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel, a gesture that seemed to signal a diminishment of diplomatic tensions between the two allies over the peace process.

Western Officials Are Laughing at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:47:00 +0000

It hurts not to be taken seriously, and that’s why the Iranian dictator went around boasting that he was going to deliver a knockout blow to the West in his speech today. The speech just kind of swung and missed. How badly? Mark Hosenball explains:

A European official with knowledge of Iran, who also asked for anonymity, said that despite the latest nuclear pronouncements of Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials, many Western governments remain skeptical of Iran’s ability to produce uranium enriched to the 20 percent level—nevermind enriching it to a higher, bomb-grade purity of up to 97 percent. “Nobody even knows if they can do 20 percent,” the European official told Declassified. The Washington Postreported on Thursday that the Iranians were experiencing “surprising setbacks” in their enrichment efforts, failures the paper said “could undermine” Iran’s ambitions to dramatically expand its nuclear program.

The European official added that Iran’s erratic behavior, including its on-again-off-again response to a deal brokered by international negotiators to send its nuclear-power fuel rods abroad for processing, has alienated some important powers, like Russia, that in the past might have blocked efforts by the U.S. and Europe to tighten sanctions on Iran.

Once feared, Ahmadinejad is becoming a clown.

The Many Failures of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:50:33 +0000

In a long-telegraphed speech billed as giving the west a bloody nose, Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday claimed to have enriched some of Iran’s stockpile of uranium to 20 percent potency. (That level is nowhere close to the potency required to make a nuclear weapon — it’s more like 90 percent — and experts in the west increasingly doubt Iran’s technical expertise in the nuclear arena as The Washington Post explains in this good story.) Then, in a Dr. Evil-esque moment, Ahmadinejad bragged about having lasers.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives a speech during the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. (Xinhua/ZUMA Press)

“They should know that our nation is so courageous that if we will make a nuclear bomb,” he said, as people in Tehran’s Azadi Square chanted “Death To The Dictator,” “we will openly announce it.”

Today is the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which is why Ahmadinejad, beleaguered by the Green Movement challenging the regime’s legitimacy, needed to make a big international splash. But his speech might as well have been drafted by western intelligence agencies. Not only does it fail to strike a sufficiently threatening tone, it brings the major western powers that much closer to their goal of placing new multilateral economic sanctions on the Iranian government and security apparatus. That effort has already begun to get under way — Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled abroad this week urging allied governments to support a new sanctions regime. Eyes now turn to the United Nations Security Council, where Amb. Susan Rice will see what she can get in terms of a sanctions package.

Naturally, the Green Movement is out in the streets opposing the regime on this anniversary, so just as naturally, the regime is brutalizing them. Follow Andrew Sullivan’s blog all day for what’s sure to be the most thorough English-language coverage.

U.S., EU Issue Rare Joint Statement Against Iranian Human Rights Abuses

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:25:14 +0000

Fresh out:

The United States and the European Union condemn the continuing human rights violations in Iran since the June 12 election. The large scale detentions and mass trials, the threatened execution of protestors, the intimidation of family members of those detained and the continuing denial to its citizens of the right to peaceful expression are contrary to human rights norms.

Our concerns are based on our commitment to universal respect for human rights. We are particularly concerned by the potential for further violence and repression during the coming days, especially around the anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s founding on 11 February. We call on the Government of Iran to live up to its international human rights obligations, to end its abuses against its own people, to hold accountable those who have committed the abuses and to release those who are exercising their rights.

On a possibly related note, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on foreign travel, is reiterating his call for sanctions against Iran for its renewed uranium enrichment.

‘Death to Khamenei’

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:00:36 +0000

Speaking of the Green Movement, the Iranian regime directed a new spate of violence against the Greens during street demonstrations yesterday commemorating the Shiite holiday of Ashura, which remembers the climactic battle between the martyred saint Hussein and his persecutor Yazid. Protesters, amazingly, chanted “Death to Khamenei,” the supreme leader of Iran, and compared him to the hated Yazid. That could be the death knell for a regime that claims its legitimacy from fidelity to Shiite religious precepts.

Frontline’s reporter Meir Javedanfar thinks the violence heralds an “Iranian intifada.”

Judging from the events of Ashura, however, they now seem to have the potential to turn into a full scale-civil disobedience campaign, not unlike the first intifada that the Palestinians initiated against Israel in 1987. This will mean continuous periods of strikes and civil disobedience, as well as more confrontations between members of the public and security forces.

The main factor contributing to the new status quo is the unrelenting policies of the Supreme Leader, which have pitted his version of the Islamic Republic against longstanding Islamic institutions.

This is a battle that he will find extremely difficult to win. In fact, if developments continue in their current form, they can, at a minimum, result in significant changes to the structure of his regime, or more drastically, lead to its total demise.

A statement released by Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, on the violence, reads:

We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights. Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States. Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President Obama said in Oslo – it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation.

Iranian Dissidents Fear Repercussions of U.S. Sanctions

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:00:35 +0000

Mir-Hossein Moussavi (Roshan Norouzi/ZUMApress.com)

As the Obama administration and its allies prepare new economic sanctions for Iran, the Iranian dissidents of the Green Movement and their supporters abroad are expressing concern over what the sanctions will mean for a nascent political force that has the potential to transform the Islamic Republic. But some are beginning to think that sanctions specifically targeting the most hardline elements of the Iranian regime might be acceptable.

[Security1] Ever since the fraud-filled June 12 presidential election yielded the largest protests in 30 years from Iranians demanding widespread political reform, the Iranian regime has embarked on a campaign to discredit the Greens by portraying them as tools of nefarious western interests. The attack on the Greens’ nationalist credentials has come alongside mass detentions and brutality directed at them by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological vanguard of the Iranian military, and the pro-regime militia known as the Basij. Under those pressures, Green leaders like Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Kerroubi have staked out an even more nationalistic stance than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urging him to reject a deal offered by the Obama administration that would tamp down international tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

Similarly, both Moussavi and Kerroubi have denounced the prospect of new international sanctions. “I do not agree with any pressure on any government because, at the end of the day, the ordinary people will suffer,” Kerroubi said in October. Moussavi has circulated a statement portraying sanctions as ultimately benefiting a regime prone to demagoguery and hurting “the people who have already been agonized by this government.”

That sentiment has been echoed by some Green allies in the United States, who cringed over an exchange this spring between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) about placing “crippling sanctions” on Iran. “Economic sanctions, particularly ‘crippling’ or blanket economic sanctions, are counterproductive and will only hurt the regular Iranian citizens,” said Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “Sanctions such as the petroleum sanctions will surely help the government and Revolutionary Guards who are already so apt at smuggling and will transfer the burden to the average citizen while blaming the foreign powers for their hardship.”

On Dec. 15, the House passed a bill sponsored by Berman, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, granting President Obama new powers to place sanctions on petroleum products and other fuel imports to Iran. In a press conference after the bill passed, Berman derided “the notion that you are going to have effective sanctions that don’t impact on the Iranian people,” contending that it would be hard to devise a real sanctions package that did not have adverse economic effects on Iranian citizens.

Still, that’s exactly the distinction that some Green supporters in the Iranian exile community say lawmakers must draw if sanctions are to gain even reluctant Green support. Over the past several years, the IRGC has played an increasingly prominent role in Iranian civilian economic activity and especially in the nuclear program that has prompted the prospective sanctions. Ghaemi said he supports “very well-defined, targeted sanctions” aimed at “the government or Revolutionary Guards’ pocket book, not the people’s.”

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he perceived a shift in how Green supporters in and outside of Iran were discussing sanctions. While they once opposed any form of punitive measure against Iran, the post-June 12 anger at the regime and the IRGC has led some to view sanctions targeted against the IRGC more favorably, though that view is not universal.

“There’s a diversity of views, with some in favor and some opposed,” Sadjadpour said. “Post-June 12 was a real earthquake. Many friends who unequivocally opposed U.S. punitive measures in the past now believe [IRGC-focused sanctions] could be a necessary evil. But I don’t claim that’s necessarily a majority view, just that the view exists.”

An example of the heated debate within pro-Green communities in the United States came earlier this month in New York, when a student group expressing solidarity with the Greens held a forum featuring Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi and Akbar Batebi, a former Iranian student activist leader. According to an account of the forum posted on Iranian.com, Batebi contended that “we have to use sanctions against the coup government,” while Dabashi countered that “sanctions would be a precusor [sic] for military strikes on Iran, as they had been in Iraq.”

Sadjadpour noted that while some on the pro-Green side were starting to warm to sanctions, none accepted the prospect of a military strike on Iran. “Military action would would kill the opposition movement.”

In an unexpected move, last month the Iranian filmmaker and close Moussavi ally Mohsen Makmalbaf endorsed “sanctions to hurt the regime, but not the people” during an appearance at at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. Provocatively, Makmalbaf suggested that Green leaders only publicly opposed sanctions because they would be placing their lives in danger if they endorsed them. At his press conference on the 15th, Berman echoed the suggestion that Moussavi and Kerroubi’s opposition to sanctions was insincere. “There are a lot of different reasons why they might have said that,” he said.

To Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, attempts at reading Green leaders’ minds are exasperating. “The opposition has made it as clear as it possibly can make it: They’re not seeking sanctions,” Parsi said. “How many different ways do they have to say it before it sinks in?”

The Obama administration has yet to decide on a sanctions package, and accordingly has not secured international support for any specific sanctions. But the administration is looking at targeting the IRGC specifically — although a knowledgeable U.S. official said that unintended effects of sanctions on the Greens were a real concern. “It’s a fair critique,” the official told TWI last week.

Absent a diplomatic breakthrough, the sanctions package will likely be finalized early in the new year. However, circumstances could change before then; Iran’s foreign minister said this weekend that Iran might accept a modified version of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal.

It’s Like Iran Wants U.N. Security Council Sanctions

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:46:00 +0000

In a move sure to increase Iran’s international isolation, not only is the Islamic republic showing every sign of rejecting the Vienna deal on uranium enrichment, but now President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces ten new enrichment facilities. The response from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:

“If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple UN security council resolutions, and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself. The international community has made clear that Iran has rights, but with those rights come responsibilities. As the overwhelming IAEA board of governors vote made clear, time is running out for Iran to address the international community’s growing concerns about its nuclear program.”

This comes right after an overwhelming rebuke of Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency that was supported by both China and Russia, traditionally the great powers most sympathetic to the Iranian nuclear program. It’s unclear whether China and Russia will go along with a robust program of sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. But Iran’s I-double-dare-you response will probably help push both Moscow and Beijing into the corner shared by Washington, Paris, London and Berlin.

Iranian-American Group Urges Diplomacy Despite Violence

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:23 +0000

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Flickr: Daniella Zalcman)

Provocations from Iran accelerated this week, as the ruling Iranian ayatollah gave a speech that suggested Iran would reject a nuclear-fuel deal reached in Vienna last week, while his regime violently suppressed a new round of anti-regime demonstrations across several cities. Yet a group of former diplomats convened by a leading pro-opposition Iranian-American organization urged the Obama administration not to abandon diplomacy.

[Security1]Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have been stalled over the Iranian leadership’s reluctance to endorse a deal offered by the United States and its allies — and accepted by Iranian negotiators in Vienna — to enrich 75 percent of Iran’s uranium stock in Russia and France, yielding a form of uranium suitable for civilian nuclear power but not an atomic bomb. Iran’s foreign minister said that it was not rejecting the deal, but wished to seek still-unspecified modifications. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, however, declared during a trip to Morocco that “we are not altering” the proposal.

Leaders of both countries issued heated rhetoric. President Obama, in a statement issued late Tuesday night, referred to the Vienna offer and said, “It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.” While not responding directly to Obama, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, Iran’s supreme leader, derided American outreach in a speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the revolutionary siege of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. “Whenever they smile at the officials of the Islamic revolution, when we carefully look at the situation, we notice that they are hiding a dagger behind their back,” Khamanei said, deriding diplomacy with the U.S. as “naive and perverted.”

Yet at a forum in the Dirksen Senate Office Building convened on Wednesday by the National Iranian-American Council — an Iranian-American education and advocacy group that gained new precedence after denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election in June as illegitimate — a few retired diplomats urged Obama to give diplomacy more time to work, even if it meant retracting Clinton’s refusal to amend the Vienna offer. “Political isolation is something the Iranians are very much concerned about,” said Thomas Pickering, who served as undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, arguing that continued diplomacy gave the U.S. the leverage of presenting Iran with a united coalition.

If Iran, in its formal response to the Vienna offer, rejects the idea of either Russia or France enriching uranium for it, “there are ways to get around that,” said Greg Thielmann, a former top nuclear intelligence official at the State Department.

There are several bills moving through the Congress to place new economic sanctions on Iran, including one sponsored in the House by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and another in the Senate from Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). But retired Amb. John Limbert, one of the U.S. diplomats held hostage at the embassy in 1979 and 1980, pronounced himself “very skeptical” of sanctioning Iran. “It’s easy to talk about smart sanctions,” he said, “but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one.” Instead, Limbert contended, sanctions would most likely “create shortages and artificial, wonderful opportunities for hoarding” that benefit “those with the best connections to the regime” at the expense of the population. Thielmann agreed, saying sanctions risked “strengthening the regime, when it’s meant to do the opposite.”

The clash between the regime and the Iranian population was on display today in Iran, as demonstrators in Tehran, Shiraz, Rasht, and Tabriz defied a regime order not to use the anniversary of the embassy seizure to protest the regime. Police and regime militiamen beat demonstrators and fired tear gas canisters to disrupt the gatherings. It is unknown whether anyone was killed in the clashes. But at the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said he “hope[s] greatly that violence will not spread.”

Trita Parsi, the head of the National-Iranian American Council, reiterated his support for the demonstrators. “The demonstrations and the reaction of the government shows the aspirations of the Iranian people for fairness, human rights and democracy has not been crushed,” Parsi told TWI. “It shows the opposition’s timeline is correct: this is not a hundred-meter sprint, but a marathon” to achieve Iranian democracy.

Yet in recent days, articles in The Weekly Standard and The Atlantic have accused Parsi of loyalty to the very Iranian regime he has opposed. The Standard’s online editor, Michael Goldfarb, called Parsi “the Iranian regime’s man in Washington,” while Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic blogged last week that Parsi “does a lot of leg-work for the Iranian regime.” When asked by Mother Jones to provide evidence for the accusation, Goldberg clarified that while he “assume[d]” Parsi didn’t “take Iranian government money or Iranian government instruction,” Parsi “does argue quite vociferously against sanctions, and he does tend to present, at least in my reading, a fairly benevolent understanding of Iran’s rulers and their motivations.”

Parsi described his opposition to sanctions and opposition to Ahmadinejad as two halves of the same coin. His organization “strongly stands for human rights, but also opposes war and sanctions for that reason, and favors diplomacy,” he said. He denied taking money from the Iranian regime, saying, “Our records are open and our tax returns are on our Website, and the only people who have made [such allegations] are people with a diametrically opposite political view.”

Parsi continued, “You can debate us on the merits of your policy prescriptions, or you can attack, smear and character assassinate us. Unfortunately, due to the weakness of their position, they’ve chosen the latter. That’s what’s motivating these attacks.”

At Parsi’s Hill forum, Limbert, the former U.S. diplomat held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries, said that the Obama administration had no choice but to negotiate with Iran and should not be too distracted by Ahmadinejad’s character. “I don’t buy the argument that you legitimize Ahmadinejad [through negotiation, since] Iran is more than Ahmadinejad, and he will not be there forever,” Limbert said. “What’s the alternative? To continue what we’ve done for 30 years? That has not had any results.”

Update: This story originally referred to the National Iranian-American Council as a lobby group, when in fact it is an education and advocacy association.