The king of soft-kill enters the picture in Iran

A WAPO story that only long-time aficionados (I confess) of Fox TV will celebrate.  

Unlike dozens of other foreign-based satellite channels here,Farsi1 broadcasts popular Korean, Colombian and U.S. shows and also dubs them in Iran's national language, Farsi, rather than using subtitles, making them more broadly accessible. Its popularity has soared since its launch in August.

"The story is so beautiful," said Maryam, a West Tehran housewife who was using a secretly stashed satellite dish on a recent day to tune into Farsi1's latest hit, "Body of Desire," a steamy Spanish-language telenovela. Maryam, who asked that her last name not be used, said she feels awkward watching some scenes in front of her family. Still, she said, she is "hooked."

"It's all about forgiveness, desire and justice," she said, as Cuban actor Mario Cimarro, playing Salvador, rose from a blue sea, his muscular chest only partly covered by his long, dark hair.

Satellite receivers are illegal in Iran but widely available. Officials acknowledge that they jam many foreign channels using radio waves, but Farsi1, which operates out of the Hong Kong-based headquarters of Star TV, a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp., is still on the air in Tehran.

Viewers are increasingly deserting the six channels operated by Iranian state television, with its political, ideological and religious constraints, for Farsi1's more daring fare, including the U.S. series "Prison Break," "24" and "Dharma and Greg."

Rupert Murdoch, that destroyer of American morals, now does the same for Iran!

Go with God, say I.

Amir Taheri on the stagnate quality of Ahmadinejad's second term

Op-ed by Amir Taheri by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

A great listing of Ahmadinejad's woes:

Consider a few items with regards to President Ahmadinejad.

He had promised a reconciliation tour that was to take him to 20 of Iran's 30 provinces in a bid to heal the wounds caused by his disputed re-election. The tour was cancelled when it became clear that such an exercise could play into the hands of an opposition movement that refuses to fade away.

Also cancelled was a promised grand gathering of key regime figures to embrace one another and let the bygones be bygones . . .

Last month, President Ahmadinejad tried to shift attention away from the domestic crisis by announcing the imminent dispatch of a flotilla to defy Israel's blockade of Gaza. This week the entire exercise was cancelled with a terse announcement that 'international configurations' did not favour the sending of the flotilla.

Ahmadinejad had claimed that pro-Iran forces would win the Iraqi general election and create a new hinterland for the Islamic Republic. That did not happen. Iraq is now likely to emerge as an independent power with no interest in serving the Khomeinist regime's regional ambitions.

There was more bad news for Ahmadinejad. The manoeuvre he had concocted with Brazil and Turkey to divide the UN's Security Council failed to stop the imposition of the toughest sanctions yet on the Islamic Republic. The UN move was immediately followed by the imposition of even tougher sanctions by the European Union . . . 

The much heralded 'pipeline of peace' that was supposed to transport $4 billion worth of Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and India will remain a pipe-dream. Both India and Pakistan have withdrawn from the project, citing the UN sanctions as an excuse.

Also cancelled are a series of agreements with Western and Asian companies to develop the South Pars gas reserves. As a result, the entire project has been handed over to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which, for obvious reasons, lacks the expertise for such an undertaking.

Ahmadinejad had also promised that Iran would become self-sufficient in gasoline by building 12 new refineries before the end of this second term. Work on the promised refineries was supposed to start in August. Now, however, it is clear that not one of the refineries will be built anytime soon . . . 

With annual growth down to around two percent and unemployment rising at the rate of 3000 jobs lost each day, according to the Ministry of Labour in Tehran, Ahmadinejad's second term has not had a bright start on the economic front. As for his much advertised privatisation scheme, the whole exercise is beginning to look like a looting raid by the IRGC . . . Some Iranians call the so-called privatisation scheme ‘the greatest plunder in Iranian history since the Mongol invasion in the medieval times' . . .

For almost a decade the main theme of Iranian politics has been a gradual but steady transfer of power from the mullahs to the military. Ahmadinejad was propelled into the presidency in the hope that he would speed up and smooth out the transition.

Carried away by his unexpected promotion into a major historic role, Ahmadinejad, a frustrated showman, has provoked a series of internal and external tensions that have complicated the transition.

This is not a package that should scare us whatsoever.

Gates: stating the increasingly obvious on Iran

Wash Times story on Gates noting how the clerics have been set aside by the military putsch led by Ahmadinejad's Revolutionary Guards.  Story by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Gates the Wise recognizes the value in calling a spade a spade: My "Pentagon's New Map" prediction that the mullahs would lose power by 2010 actually came true, and to our benefit.

Now we face a military dictatorship (Gates' phrase, falling in line with Secy Clinton's descriptions) unblemished by religious nuttiness and thoroughly committed to preserving its power. Ahmadinejad's strategic goal of a non-cleric-based party dictatorship has been achieved.

Why to our benefit?  The cleric-based rule could never be satisfied, because we could never give it what it craved:  control over Islam.  But Ahmadinejad's regime wants something far less and easier to negotiate: regime preservation and recognition of its "great achievements"--just like Brezhnev's "great patriotic war" vets wanted their due, so now does Ahmadinejad's Iran-Iraq vets. And they seek it is such unimaginative ways--the nuclear program.  Nothing we haven't seen before or dealt with.

So either we manage Iran for what it is, or we spend all our time and effort trying to stave off the nuclear achievement--a true fool's errand promoted by those interested in seeing Israel's regional WMD monopoly maintained at all costs.  That brand of "realism" is anything but.

Instead, Iran's achievement ultimately works to our favor. Why? Because it provides us the dynamics we seek to achieve a regional security architecture that's top-down instead of bottom-up and based on the unachievable--for now--goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Ahmadinejad's achievement, as repugnant as it is, moves the ball. Just check out Turkey's responses if you doubt me.

Nice op-ed buttressing my arguments on Turkey-v-Iran over Gaza

NYT op-ed by way of Michal Shapiro.

See if this sounds familiar:

SINCE Israel’s deadly raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara last month, it’s been assumed that Iran would be the major beneficiary of the wave of global anti-Israeli sentiment. But things seem to be playing out much differently: Iran paradoxically stands to lose much influence as Turkey assumes a surprising new role as the modern, democratic and internationally respected nation willing to take on Israel and oppose America.

While many Americans may feel betrayed by the behavior of their longtime allies in Ankara, Washington actually stands to gain indirectly if a newly muscular Turkey can adopt a leadership role in the Sunni Arab world, which has been eagerly looking for a better advocate of its causes than Shiite, authoritarian Iran or the inept and flaccid Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf.

Turkey’s Islamist government has distilled every last bit of political benefit from the flotilla crisis, domestically and internationally. And if the Gaza blockade is abandoned or loosened, it will be easily portrayed as a victory for Turkish engagement on behalf of the Palestinians.

Bottom line:  this is all about Turkey's countering of Iranian influence, and just like Iran uses Israel as a whipping boy, now it's Ankara's turn, the difference being that when Tehran does it, it hurts US interests and when Ankara does it, it actually serves US interests--given Netanyahu's intransigence on all things Palestinian.

Check this out:  

... a new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 43 percent of Palestinians ranked Turkey as their No. 1 foreign supporter, as opposed to just 6 percent for Iran.

More:

Turkey has a strong hand here. Many leading Arab intellectuals have fretted over being caught between Iran’s revolutionary Shiism and Saudi Arabia’s austere and politically ineffectual Wahhabism. They now hope that a more liberal and enlightened Turkish Sunni Islam — reminiscent of past Ottoman glory — can lead the Arab world out of its mire.

You can get a sense of just how attractive Turkey’s leadership is among the Arab masses by reading the flood of recent negative articles about Ankara in the government-owned newspapers of the Arab states. This coverage impugns Mr. Erdogan’s motives, claiming he is latching on to the Palestinian issue because he is weak domestically, and dismisses Turkey’s ability to bring leadership to this quintessential “Arab cause.” They reek of panic over a new rival.

I keep telling you, Turkey is moving big-time and in ways that benefit the region and US foreign policy interests.

Turkey's like the fourth-year player who's finally coming into his own on the roster.  Yes, a big ego and a bit to handle, but how not to welcome this infusion of talent?

The phony war posturing continues

Pair of WSJ stories on the further posturing of Iran and Turkey.

Iran gives Syria radar that will do little to prevent Israeli strikes against Iran’s ally but will give Iran that much more warning time WRT Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities.  It could also improve the aiming of Hezbollah’s rockets. 

Meanwhile, Turkey says it has closed its airspace to Israel—a total non-surprise since Turkey already canceled three scheduled mil exercises with Israel after the flotilla fiasco.

This “war” will remain phony until Israel decides to strike, and then we’ll see some heating up across the board, but nothing on the scale of ’73, because nobody really wants to own anything—just restructure the regional arms balance in the short-term.

Turkey the only state in the region really pursuing a strategy worth noting, and it’s mostly economic.

The Turkey-Iran rivalry comes to the fore

FT story noting that Turkey’s moves as of late have nothing to do with Islamic ideology and everything to do with expanding the nation’s influence in the Middle East vis-à-vis competitor Iran.

Yeah, Turkey said no to the US on invasion plans WRT Iraq, but as soon as Saddam fell, Iraq was crawling with Turkish contractors.  So the big refusal was a case of having one’s cake and devouring it too.

I made the same argument on the Esquire blog recently regarding Turkey’s reorientation WRT Israel, the tipping point being the Gaza flotilla show.

The whole package can’t be viewed as some fit of pique regarding the EU, nor a turn east, says the FT, and I agree wholeheartedly. 

That is the behaviour of a regional power with a long-term view of its strategic interests, not of a country veering towards Islamist activism.

The author Gardner then makes the argument that Turkey, Iran and Israel and locked in a three-way fight to dominate the region.  I agree with Turkey v Iran and certainly see Saudi Arabia v Iran, but tossing Israel into that dynamic is mistaken.  Tellingly, after Gardner makes the statement, he spends the rest of the piece focusing on Iranian and Turkish moves to that effect, except to note that Israel might strike Iran over its nukes in coming months.  Gardner believes this would leave Turkey’s strategic approach in tatters, but I think that overstates the notion by a ways.

If Israel strikes, then Turkey will demonize it further—for its purposes.  Turkey will also be able to portray Iran as a nutcase that creates regional instability, whereas it represents growth and development and stability and solid relations both East and West.

Frankly, I don’t see how Turkey can lose in any kinetics between Iran and Israel.  Both sides will be weakened and Turkey will simply be that much stronger as a result.  Also, Saudi Arabia will look weak for having the “Jews” do its dirty work.

Chart of the day: Iraq will soon outproduce Iran in oil--another sad expression of America's complete failure (!) in Iraq

Projection, mind you, from WSJ's gov sources, but one that shows the difference between connectivity and the lack thereof.

Iran's oil-field problems predate its recent standoff with the West and the latest round of sanctions. Revolution and eight years of fighting with neighbor Iraq through the 1980s took their toll, with output plunging from a high of 6 million barrels a day from the mid-1970s. Oil infrastructure was damaged, and oil expertise fled the country. Many of Iran's oil fields are older than those of their Mideast neighbors, and so are declining much faster.

Iran has to replace roughly 300,000 barrels a day of production each year from old fields just to keep its total output from falling.

More recently, many foreign oil companies—sought out by Tehran for their expertise and capital—have been deterred by the increased politicization of Iran's energy sector under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who came to power in 2005.

Only the pinheads imagine the Big Bang strategy purely in military terms. 

Iran getting by with black-market gas

WSJ story that suggests the 4th round of sanctions won't be as "crippling" as the administration suggests, citing a "shadowy network of Middle East gasoline suppliers is already undermining" our efforts.

By definition, a Gap region has sophisticated black markets.  It's a primary reason why sanctions don't work, even as they drive up the prices, which Tehran can then blame on the West.

But we continue with sanctions because they make us feel good, and they appeal to our obey-the-rules mentality, which is good, of course, but kind of meaningless when applied to rogue regimes inside the Gap.

Iran: doing its best to block out sat TV

Iranians' love of foreign media is a well-documented fact, from the obsession with "Lost" to South Korea soaps.

Newsweek reports that the regime maintains its insane enmity to the Brits and the BBC, though.  After the putsch, the Revolutionary Guards made a supreme effort to block BBC's Persian TV channel. They blocked it by uplinking static to the satellite, but in doing so they scrambled a lot of popular fare from the same satellite.  

The problem:

Iran's domestic TV broadcasts--key to the regime's ability to maintain control and stability--depend on the very European satellites Iran is toying with to get its signals distributed across the country. (Arab-owned satellites have quit carrying Iran's broadcasts, and Iran has no satellies of its own.)

So chairman of broadcasting in Iran admits that when Iran messes with other people's broadcasts, they can easily retaliate, "So we have to make sure that we don't overreach ourselves."

Connectivity comes with code.

Co-opting Turkey and Iran--in tandem

Fascinating Stephen Kinzer piece in The American Prospect, by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

The subtitle makes the statement boldly:

Why America's future partners in the Middle East should be Turkey and Iran -- yes, Iran.

Underlying argument:  two countries in the region have a long history of struggling with democracy--Turkey and Iran.  Both currently sport the Islamist veneer, but beneath lies a restive and vibrant civic culture.

In the future, it is not Turkey alone where "they come together." Improbable as it may seem right now, given the current regime in Iran, a partnership that unites Turkey, Iran, and the United States is the future and makes sense for two reasons: The three countries share strategic interests, and their people share values. Our evolving relationship with a changing Turkey offers a model for the kind of relationship we might one day--not necessarily tomorrow--have with a changing Iran. This is the tantalizing possibility of a new way for the U.S. to engage with the Middle East in the 21st century.

Why explore?  Because our Cold War stalwarts aren't working out:

Today we work in the region primarily through two bilateral relationships--with Israel and with Saudi Arabia. These pairings served Washington well during the Cold War. They have not, however, produced a stable Middle East. 

I like this piece very much.  Very intelligent, unemotional, and strategic in vision.

Also adapted from a new book (Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future).

Practicing the mutually-assured-destructing dialogue

Chart here

The Times (London) has a story that's popping up everywhere now.  I got it via Michael Smith.

The supposition has always been there: the Saudis turn a blind eye toward Israel flying over its airspace (and perhaps even refueling on the ground at some makeshift landing site) in order to attack Iran's nuclear sites.

So now The Times reports:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

No matter how Israel goes about it, we'll be complicit, and that's okay.  While it will not get us the outcome we seek, beyond temporary delay, it signals our seriousness and our ability/willingness to strike. Ditto for the Saudis.

I'm against the US mounting a big-time effort, but I don't have any problem with Israel getting their limited-strike stuff off their chest.  Israel wants the sensation of acting, and it dreams of a new president in the US come 2013 who would approach the problem differently, so this is a time-buying exercise like all the rest. Again, it won't accomplish much, but it does start the signaling process to come, when Iran does get its nukes.

Since I see that path as inevitable, I don't mind the early practice.

Iran a year later

Summary news analysis piece in NYT a year later.

Iran has changed since the political crisis of June 12, 2009.

In scores of interviews conducted over the past several months with Iranians from all strata of society, inside and outside the country, a clear picture emerged of a more politically aware public, with widened divisions between the middle class and the poor and — for the first time in the Islamic republic’s three-decade history — a determined core of dissenters who were opposed to the republic itself.

The political grievances have merged with more pragmatic concerns, like high unemployment and double-digit inflation, adding to the discontent.

“I was on the bus the other day and there was a man, you would not believe the kind of information he had,” said a 59-year-old who works for the government. “He started to talk about the foreign currency reserves of different countries and began to criticize the government.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his patron, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are stronger today than they were a year ago, political experts say, although their base of support has narrowed.

They are relying heavily on force and intimidation, arrests, prison terms, censorship, even execution, to maintain authority. They have closed newspapers, banned political parties and effectively silenced all but the most like-minded people. Thousands of their opponents have fled the country, fearing imprisonment.

As a formal political organization, the reform movement is dead.

All pretty much know--unfortunately.

Now for the change:

The crisis accelerated and institutionalized a transfer of power that began with the first election of Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005. The shift was from the old revolutionaries to a generation that came of age during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, hard-liners who deeply resented the relatively liberal reforms promoted by former President Mohammad Khatami.

The vanguard of the new political elite is now the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which oversees Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and has extended its control over the economy and the machinery of state. It has improved its ability to control the street, to monitor electronic communications and keep tabs on university campuses, and its alumni head the government’s security organs.

This is the key thing to understand: the new generation is not the original revolutionary one led by the mullahs, who now serve more at the pleasure of the Guards than the other way around. It is the Iran-Iraq War generation, and here's where the comparison to Brezhnev's crew in the USSR is salient.

These guys want their sacrifice recognized and rewarded. They're survivalists, not ideologues. Their quest is regime survival, not revolutionary fervor. They see nukes providing them global recognition for their deeds, safety for their regime, and a means enabling Iran's continued rise as a great power--along with energy.

This package is not new to us, nor is it unique. We have the tendency to swallow its propaganda and remember its motives in the past tense, and this hobbles our thinking.

For now, the nukes are perfect for Iran: gets everyone talking that vice the regime-v-opposition, keeps the whole Islam-v-Israel thing up front, plays to national honor, etc. So long as it's just Israel as counterparty, there's no danger of negotiations being forced upon Iran.

But once that twosome is joined, most likely in rapid time by Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey, then the international pressure by great-power patrons will be intense.

And when Iran starts having to talk with the devil, just like the Sovs did in their own quest for global recognition, the revolution is extinguished for good, because revolutions cannot survive such deals with "unplacable foes."

So everybody thinks nukes locks Iran into all sorts of new power, when it's the other way around. Nukes will be no more usable for Iran than they've been for anybody else.

In the end, nukes will be the Revolutionary Guards' undoing, just like the Sovs.

The USSR cuts its first nuke deal in 1972, and 17 years later the Wall falls. It'll be a much shorter timeline with Iran.

Why engaging Iran on the nuclear program makes more sense now than ever

 

Charles Kupchan, almost always a terrifically reasonable fellow, in the Moscow Times on the need to talk with Iran.  Item found via WPR's Media Roundup.

Highlights:

With diplomacy having failed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, critics of engagement charge, it is time to resort to coercion before Iran crosses the nuclear Rubicon. A rising chorus of voices now forswears engagement with Iran’s rulers, insisting that it is time for the regime to go.

But closing off dialogue with Iran would be a precipitous and dangerous mistake. Even fierce adversaries can settle their differences through negotiation. The United States and its allies should keep the door open to dialogue until the 11th hour for four compelling reasons.

First, tighter sanctions make sense only as a diplomatic tool, not as a blunt instrument of coercion . . .

Second, the costs of abandoning diplomacy are so high that continued engagement makes sense even as Iran refuses to budge . . .

A military strike would likely have worse consequences. Even if a strike were an operational success, it would only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several years, while giving the regime a new incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent and build better hidden and defended nuclear facilities . . .

The third reason for pursuing dialogue is that factional infighting and political intrigue within the Iranian regime make for considerable political fluidity . . .

Finally, even as stalemate continues on Iran’s uranium enrichment, continued engagement may offer a roundabout means of arriving at a bargain on the nuclear issue. Dialogue with the United States could focus on areas, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where the two parties share a measure of common ground. Joint efforts to combat drug trafficking in Afghanistan, for example . .

With Iran having spurned Obama’s offers of compromise, it is tempting for the U.S. administration to turn its back on dialogue. But the stakes are too high to abandon engagement.

Basically agree, but simply caution that I believe the impetus for talking will only get stronger once Iran inevitably fields those nuclear weapons in a way that's recognized by the world.

No, I don't think talking will stop this, but I think the practice is worthwhile, whether or not Israel strikes or not. The challenge cannot be wished away or bombed away or ignored. Practice will never make perfect here, but it will build up some semblance of a dialogue, and that matters when the alternative is isolating and demonizing a new nuclear power.

Would I prefer Iran without nukes?  Who wouldn't?  But this isn't about our preferences anymore; it's about dealing with a reality that rushing toward us while we prefer to engage in a lot of diplomatic escapism.

Our frustration with Iran is borne of our obsession with nukes

WAPO story.

A year ago, Iran was on its way to becoming a pariah state. Dozens of governments accused Iranian leaders of stealing the presidential election and condemned the brutal crackdown on protesters that followed. The country faced sanctions and international scorn over its controversial nuclear program.

Now, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose its fourth round of sanctions on Iran with a vote slated for Wednesday, Tehran is demonstrating remarkable resilience, insulating some of its most crucial industries from U.S.-backed financial restrictions and building a formidable diplomatic network that should help it withstand some of the pressure from the West. Iranian leaders are meeting politicians in world capitals from Tokyo to Brussels. They are also signing game-changing energy deals, increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even gaining seats on international bodies.

Iran's ability to navigate such a perilous diplomatic course, analysts say, reflects both Iranian savvy and U.S. shortcomings as up-and-coming global players attempt to challenge U.S. supremacy, and look to Iran as a useful instrument.

Honestly, the first word out of my mouth at reading the opening paras of the piece was "bullshit"--at least regarding the line of America's "shortcomings as up-and-coming global players attempt to challenge U.S. supremacy, and look to Iran as a useful instrument."

I do think the Iranians are savvy, and that we shoot ourselves in the foot every time we reduce them to some caricature of irrational religious nutcases.  I see Ahmadinejad as a very clever fellow, who piously led his Revolutionary Guards right into a successful and impressively bloodless military putsch, effectively giving the president his goal of a party-based dictatorship that supplants the theocracy in too many ways to count. His veterans of the Iran-Iraq war feel they've earned their dictatorship, and all the economic earnings that go with it. In that way, they remind me plenty of Brezhnev's grubby, unimaginative crew.  And like Brezhnev's bunch, they know full well that getting nuclear weapons is a huge credentializing signpost.

I stipulate all that.

I also stipulate that rising great powers, when forced to by our singular obsession with nukes, will take advantage of Iran's equally laser-like focus on nuclear weapons.  But none of these powers want Iran in that position, don't kid yourselves, because it does nothing for them and rising great powers tend to be about as unsentimental and ungenerous as they come about potential rivals.

What drives this whole show more than anything else is our insistence that damn near everything in our foreign policy agenda take a back seat to the all-crucial goal of preventing that which will not be prevented.  We made/make our effort in Iraq take a backseat to it.  Ditto for Afghanistan.  Ditto for our lackluster attempts in recent years to do anything about the Palestinians. We hold a good chunk of our relationships with a host of crucial rising great powers hostage to this dynamic--all of this to no avail.

In the end, we'll be forced down the path that was always there: we'll simply greet Iran's achievement with a clear promise to liquidate the entire place if they ever choose to be so stupid as to launch one of those missiles or expect that some bomb passed to others will not be traced back to them.

And then we let those jackasses live with their "amazing, world-changing achievement" that will earn them nothing.

Or we can continue pretending that all this effort has real meaning and impact, when neither is true.

I've said it before and I will repeat it endlessly: there is nothing magical or unprecedented about a "Shiite bomb." They work like all the rest. We have the only history of using them.

We shouldn't forget that now, much less go all wobbly over such a peon power. If Russia was revealed by history and globalization as just Upper Volta with nukes, what exactly does that make Iran?

And don't tell me the oil and gas make it different, or the religious ideology. This is all about power; when we imagine otherwise we insult everybody's intelligence.

Brezhnevian Iran: obsessing with the surface

WAPO piece that highlights an uptick in "morality police" activity.  

Gist:

Iranian authorities have begun police patrols in the capital to arrest women wearing clothes deemed improper. The campaign against loose-fitting veils and other signs of modernism comes as government opponents are calling for rallies to mark the anniversary of the disputed presidential election, and critics of the crackdown say it is stoking feelings of discontent.

But hard-liners say that improper veiling is a "security issue" and that "loose morality" threatens the core of the Islamic republic.

This is so pathetically transparent that it would laughable absent all the other nasty stuff that Tehran's ruling militarized government does to serious dissidents.  But it gives you the same sense I had as a budding Sovietologist when I lived a summer in Leningrad in 1985. The government made this huge effort to maintain the appearance of control over a fairly sophisticated population whose hearts and minds it has lost long ago (maintaining the loyalty really only among the isolated rural folk who knew no better), but the compromise was clear: you pretend to obey in public and we pretend to rule over all.  The more obsessed you see the government become with appearances, the less control it really has.  It's all just the Potemkin village effort that everybody, on both sides of the power equation, engages in.

I know a lot of people see Iran's reach for nukes as a grand culmination of a threat, but I view more as the last gasp of a failed revolutionary movement.  Yes, just like the Brezhnev crowd, the Revolutionary Guard crew harbor all manner of beyond-border ambitions. That's just part of the fantasy.

Grunstein on "what has Iran really won?"

Map found here (the flashing bits are the shifting line in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war--another "longest war")

I just really like this bit:

It is by now the consensus view that the primary strategic beneficiary of the Iraq War has been Iran. By this view, the removal of a hostile regime in Baghdad has not only moved Iraq into the Iranian sphere of influence, but has also opened the floodgates for Tehran to extend its influence westward throughout the Middle East. 

This analysis, while compelling, begs the question: If Iran has "won" the Iraq War, just what has it really won? In a best-case scenario of a stable Iraq, it still amounts to a potentially volatile and dangerous relationship, and definitely a high-maintenance one, just next door. If the recent negotiations over Baghdad's coalition government are any indication, maintaining that stability among Iran's Shiite clients, friends and allies in Iraq will require significant diplomatic investment. That investment will only increase once U.S. forces are no longer present to serve as a firewall against potential conflict outside Iran's circles of friends. And in a worst-case scenario of simmering ethno-sectarian violence or outright civil war, Iran has simply inherited a veritable sinkhole of political, financial and military resources.

The Big Bang moves in mysterious ways.

The rest of the piece is a critical deconstruction of the Turkey-Brazil deal and how Iran once again "triumphed."

Nuclear-weapon subs off Iran's coast: Israel's perfectly fine response

pic here

The Times via Michael Smith.

The logic and the signaling are impeccable--and entirely familiar.

Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.”

Each of the submarines has a crew of 35 to 50, commanded by a colonel capable of launching a nuclear cruise missile.

The vessels can remain at sea for about 50 days and stay submerged up to 1,150ft below the surface for at least a week. Some of the cruise missiles are equipped with the most advanced nuclear warheads in the Israeli arsenal.

The deployment is designed to act as a deterrent, gather intelligence and potentially to land Mossad agents. “We’re a solid base for collecting sensitive information, as we can stay for a long time in one place,” said a flotilla officer.

The submarines could be used if Iran continues its programme to produce a nuclear bomb. “The 1,500km range of the submarines’ cruise missiles can reach any target in Iran,” said a navy officer.

Apparently responding to the Israeli activity, an Iranian admiral said: “Anyone who wishes to do an evil act in the Persian Gulf will receive a forceful response from us.”

Smart move by Israel, good move for the region, and a harbinger of the balancing to come.

Scary period to navigate, but much better chances for regional peace lie on the other side. 

Iran's oil production decline: oh mighty sanctions!

FT front-pager, but the facts underwhelm.  When Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, Iran was producing 4.2mbd (million barrels per day).  Now it's down to 3.8 or 3.9, which definitely costs them billions, but as a percentage drop, we're talking only 10% max.  Frankly, I would expect that level of drop anyway because of Iran's wariness on using foreign technology in the first place--a bad habit of NOCs (national oil companies) everywhere. I wonder what PEMEX's drop in production has been the last five years in Mexico.  Subtract PEMEX's percentage drop from Iran's and you might get a clearer sense of the delta caused by the sanctions.

Iran's bigger is also much like Mexico's or Saudi Arabia's:  the domestic use of oil is growing faster than the production, narrowing the margin for export.  The effect of sanctions, I would imagine, pales in comparison, even as it exacerbates the situation.

But back to Bremmer's good point in his book:  state capitalism prioritizes the state over economic efficiency, so this is simply viewed as  the cost of doing politics.

Esquire's The Politics Blog: The Real Israeli Raid Fallout: Turkey with a Bomb?

If you look beyond the international shouting match that began on Monday after Israel botched its handling of a Turkey-sponsored aid flotilla bound for Gaza, well, things look pretty shocking. Just because at least nine people are dead — Western casualties included — doesn't mean the boat raid itself is what "has the makings of a huge international fracas." And just because the Turkish foreign minister says "this attack is like 9/11" — which it isn't — doesn't mean Tel Aviv will take its eyes off what the Israelis actually perceive to be the larger threat: Iran's nuclear weapons.

Read the full post at Esquire.com's The Politics Blog.

Oil is too fungible for effective sanctioning--to wit, Iran's thriving oil trade with West

None of the tougher sanctions proposed for Iran, says this WSJ front-pager, will target its oil sales, which account for 1/2 of government revenue.  The market is so fungible and international and sensitive, that doing so would likely push gas up a $1 here in the States, even though we don't import any Iranian oil--openly.

As a result, no big trick to buy resold Iranian oil, a la the chart above.

"Everyone buys from the Iranians—governments, states, other companies," says Mark Ware, a spokesman for Vitol Group, an energy-trading company that continues to deal in Iranian crude and is one of the few companies willing to talk about it. "It's not subject to any legislation."

This is the reality of a sophisticated global market:  all demand affects all production affects all prices.