October 23rd, 2009 by Jason

With a draft deal hammered out that stipulates for external enrichment of Iran’s uranium stockpile, Western leaders are waiting for the Iranian government to give final approval. IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei admitted his “fingers are crossed” in hopes Iran will agree to the deal by the Friday deadline.  Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton demanded action from both Iran and North Korea on non-proliferation while also suggesting the U.S. will undertake substantive changes in its own nuclear policy. Finally, news of a secret nuclear meeting in Cairo that included both Israeli and Iranian representatives has been leaked to the press, but official details are still scarce.

UPDATE: Reuters is now reporting that Iran has failed to accept the U.N.-drafted plan for it to cut its stockpile of nuclear fuel.  Iran has offered is own plan, details of which were not made public, and in doing so it “appeared to be following a well-tested strategy of buying time to avert a threatened tightening of international sanctions.”

In an interview, Michael Ledeen argued “We should support the Iranian revolution […] It’s relatively rare that a policy is at once strategically sound and morally right, but this is one of those cases.” Towards that end, the House of Representatives is considering H.Res. 175 today that condemns the Iranian government for state-sponsored religious persecution and continued violations of human rights.

Ledeen added that the U.S. should do more to promote communication technology in Iran, such as Facebook and Twitter, that have propelled the opposition movement. But the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced the creation of 40 new blogs intended to battle for the war of ideas in cyberspace (h/t Tehran Bureau). Last year, the IRGC stated its intention to create 10,000 blogs for the Basij militia “to control the Internet and other digital devices including SMS.” Responding to an article by Evgeny Morozov that explored the downsides of the “Twitter Revolution,” Michael Allen suggests the U.S. needs to reconsider the role of traditional media platforms like Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.

Family members of Kian Tajbakhsh, who was sentenced to at least 15 years in Iranian prison, expressed their surprise at the verdict. Experts believe Iran wants to use the Iranian-American as a bargaining chip, especially in light of Maziar Bahari’s recent release on bail. The newly-freed Bahari just flew to London in time to see the upcoming birth of his first child. Michael Allen elucidates on the “perverse logic” of such Iranian show trials and NIAC has condemned the sentence as “an affront to universal principles of justice.” Haleh Esfandiari, a fellow prisoner of Tajbakhsh, has also strongly condemned the sentence as “a travesty of justice.”

Meanwhile, Tehran Bureau reports PM Ahmad-Reza Dastgheib criticized recent calls to bring Mir Hossein Moussavi to court as contrary to Supreme Leader Khamenei’s doctrine to “preserve peace and unity.” In addition, an Iran media court cleared all charges against the editor of a pro-reform newspaper, Etemad Melli, but the paper will remain closed for now. Such events have led Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri to conclude the government is destroying the ideals of the Islamic Revolution in a letter translated into English by insideIran. In addition, Sohrab Ahmari at Tehran Bureau elucidates how “private expressions of faith” now threaten to bring down the entire Islamic regime.

The New York Times details an increasing generational gap between Iran’s regime leaders and their opposition-minded children. In one among many publicized cases, Narges Kalhor, the daughter of a senior advisor to President Ahmadinejad, has applied for asylum in Europe. According to Kalhor, “my generation wants its most basic needs such as freedom of expression and personal freedoms. We want to live, we do not want to face persecution for expressing our political opinion.”  Robert Baer in Time elaborates on a different kind of schism within Iran: “what really keeps the mullahs up at night is the specter of ethnic and sectarian conflict,” as exemplified by the recent terror attack in Baluchistan. Iran, therefore, has a strategic interest in a secure Afghanistan and Pakistan, or else risk sectarian conflict permeating their border regions.

Posted in Afghanistan, Congress, Freedom, Human Rights, Iran, Journalism, Judiciary, Neocons, Pakistan, Sectarianism, Terrorism, US foreign policy, US politics, United Nations |