The Dreyfuss Report

Real Peace -- Or A Mirage?

By Robert Dreyfuss

One way to keep Bibi Netanyahu from making trouble is to keep him so busy meeting US envoys and diplomats that he doesn't have time for anything else. That appears to be President Obama's strategy this week, since Netanyahu will be meeting with a veritable avalanche of Americans, including: George Mitchell, the US special envoy; Jim Jones, Obama's national security adviser; Robert Gates, the holdover secretary of defense who is showing no signs that he intends to go away; and Dennis Ross, the neocon-linked NSC official whose actual job remains ever vague.

Unless this is an covert effort to push Israeli hotel prices higher during the tourist season, the goal of the US effort seems to be to prepare Israel for what may, in fact, be a serious effort by the United States to resolve the Palestine conflict. There've been rumors floating that Obama may be thinking about proposing the outlines of a comprehensive US peace plan as early as this September. If so, it would be a plan that goes far beyond the nasty dispute over Jewish "settlements" -- i.e., massive, concrete and asphalt cities being built in the environs of Jerusalem and around the West Bank -- to include the elements of a final status agreement.

Or, on the other hand, Obama can do what AIPAC wants, namely, to continue to call for endless negotiations between the two sides.

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July 27, 2009

A Saad Story

By Robert Dreyfuss

Last December, Mike McConnell, the outgoing director of national intelligence, said that Osama bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden "has left Iran" and is "probably in Pakistan." Yesterday came the news that Saad bin Laden is dead, that even the CIA is not certain and the Taliban is denying the report. He was reportedly killed in one of the CIA's Predator drone attacks in Taliban-controlled tribal areas of Pakistan.

It's a mystery worthy of a spy novel.

In 2001, fleeing the US invasion of Afghanistan, Saad bin Laden and a small number of other top Al Qaeda officials ended up in Iran, though the vast majority of Taliban and AQ officials headed south and east into Pakistan. The choice of Iran was a curious one, since the anti-Taliban force in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance, was supported by Iran, Iran had nearly gone to war with the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the past, and Al Qaeda's militant Sunni fundamentalist ideology put it at odds with Iran's Shiite version of political Islam.

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July 24, 2009

Invisible Iraq

By Robert Dreyfuss

You'd never know that the prime minister of a nation occupied by 130,000 US troops is in the United States, but he is. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in Washington to meet President Obama and other US officials today and tomorrow, but the press coverage is weak. And in yesterday's press briefing by Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, the issue of Iraq didn't come up at all. Not once.

But it's a critical visit, and I'll be updating this entry today and tomorrow as developments warrant. Obama and Maliki are scheduled to appear at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, and I'll comment on that. Tomorrow morning, I'll be attending a speech by Maliki at the US Institute of Peace, and I'll report back.

Sadly, the mainstream media seems to be buying into the idea that Maliki has suddenly transformed himself into an ardent Iraqi nationalist. Don't be fooled. If anything, Maliki has conducted a power grab in Baghdad, arrogating to himself increasingly broad powers that have led many Iraqis to view him as a dictator-in-the-making. But he is still the head of the secretive Al Dawa party, an Islamist political formation that has long had ties to neighboring Iran. It's true that Maliki has noticed that the political winds in Iraq have shifted from sectarianism and religious identity to a more nationalist orientation. As I reported extensively in The Nation, the January 2009 provincial elections gravely weakened the most extreme manifestations of the sectarian/religious movement in Iraq, including the Iran-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and the fundamentalist Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood-led Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP). To accommodate that trend, Maliki has increasingly tried to portray himself as a nationalist, but there's no evidence that he's changed his sectarian spots.

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July 22, 2009

Patience with Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

You know things are off kilter when the Wall Street Journal supports industrial strikes, including a general strike by workers and merchants, but in yesterday's edition the paper did so, albeit in the context of Iran:

Oil workers, bus drivers and the bazaar guilds are mulling a general strike. ... Ahmadinejad can't seem to get traction for a second term. The so-called Green Revolution hardly looks to be over. Which raises a quandary: Why is Washington rushing to confer U.S. and international prestige on a regime that doesn't enjoy legitimacy among its own people?

It's true that the Green Wave in support of former Prime Minister Mousavi and his allies isn't over. Today, in Tehran, tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters gathered to hear Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafansjani deliver the Friday prayer sermon at Tehran University, where they were once again met with violence by the security forces.

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July 17, 2009

Iran's Opposition Speaks

By Robert Dreyfuss

The two leaders of Iran's not-so-loyal opposition will appear together tomorrow at Tehran University, when Mir Hossein Mousavi, the challenger to President Ahmadinejad, makes a public appearance alongside Ayatollah Ali Akbad Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and billionaire who supported Mousavi's campaign. Rafsanjani, who's boycotted his turn at leading Friday prayers since June 12, will deliver a closely watched sermon that is expected to lay out a direct challenge to Ahmadinejad. The fact that Mousavi will attend the event means that it's likely that other leading reformists will be there, including former President Khatami and cleric Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of Iran's parliament who also ran against Ahmadinejad in the June 12 election.

It's likely that the event will attract a huge crowd, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands.

Iran's intelligence minister, a close ally of President Ahmadinejad and a follower of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, has already warned the opposition about tomorrow's event. "The vigilant Iranian nation must be aware that tomorrow's sermon should not turn to an arena for undesirable scenes," said Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei. "Hopefully we will not have a security question in Tehran in the coming days."

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July 16, 2009

"Women Commandos" in Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

On Monday, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington assembled an all-star panel of analysts for perspective on the role of women in the recent Iran election and post-election upheaval.

Among the participants: Pari Esfandiari of IranDokht.com, a web site that describes itself as "an online media platform that connects the global community to Iranian women"; Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of Iran's parliament (2000-2004); Nayereh Tohidi, a Cal State professor; Norma Moruzzi, a professor from the University of Illinois, Chicago; and Jaleh Lackner-Gohari, from Vienna, a physician, activist, and vice president of innerChange Associates.

The moderator was Haleh Esfandiari of the Wilson Center, whose 2007 arrest in Iran made headlines around the world. So strong is the women's movement that a web site linked to Iran's intelligence ministry has begun referring to "woman commandos" in describing post-election protests, according to Haleh Esfandiari, who added that there are reports that Zahra Rahnavard, Mir Hossein Mousavi's well-known activist wife, is the leading voice behind the scenes urging Mousavi not to accede to pressure to halt his campaign against the election results. (So well known is Zahra Rahnavard that, when Mousavi became prime minister in the 1980s it was said in Iran that "Rahnavard's husband was named prime minister.")

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July 13, 2009

Talks with Iran by September?

By Robert Dreyfuss

Let's try to sort out what happening on the front of dealing with Iran's pesky nuclear program.

In Italy, the G-8 countries took a stab at addressing the issue, but the result is, well, less than clear.

First, here's President Obama's take, from a news conference on Friday in L'Aquila:

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July 10, 2009

New Showdown in Iran?

By Robert Dreyfuss

UPDATE Thursday, July 9--Clashes erupted today between at least a thousand protestors in Tehran and baton-wielding security forces. Demonstrations took place all over Iran -- according to one report, in 400 cities.

In Iran, a supposed sandstorm is being used to create its own "fog of war."

The Iranian opposition called for a three-day general strike to demonstrate their rejection of President Ahmadinejad, and in response the Iranian government ordered the shutdown of all banks, businesses, and universities because of a sandstorm.

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July 8, 2009

Iran's Eye-Gougers

By Robert Dreyfuss

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is dropping the mask.

Until June 12, when the Guard emerged as the critical pillar of the regime in putting down the post-election protest demonstrations, the IRGC remained in the shadows. Intelligence specialists say that there isn't a lot known about the organization, structure and operational commanders of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), otherwise known as the pasdaran. During my visit to Tehran last month, I spoke to one Iranian expert, a former journalist, who said that there are two things that are very closely shielded in Iran: the organization of the IRGC and the organization of the Office of the Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But now, at least, the Guard is openly acknowledging its role.

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July 7, 2009

Opposition Holds Firm in Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

Let's leave aside, for today, Vice President Biden's incredibly destructive comments on Israel's "sovereign" right to bomb Iran, remarks that are widely being interpreted in the Middle East as a green light from the United States for Israel to launch an attack. If the bungling veep meant what he said, then we're in big trouble. Even if he didn't, it's bound to give fuel to Iran's hardliners in their inane campaign to blame the US, the UK and Israel for Iran's home-grown opposition movement. Thankfully, comments from a White House spokesman and from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs may have undercut Babblin' Joe this time.

In Iran itself, efforts by the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei regime to silence the opposition clearly aren't working yet. The street protests, brutally suppressed, have quieted. But the political opposition continues to build.

Most important, none of the oppositionists are backing down. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and former President Khatami have all continued to press their challenge to the regime. According to a reformist newspaper in Iran, Etemad-e-Melli, Mousavi is planning to organize a political party that can carry the movement forward. (There are, in Iran, no real political parties. In the election, although Mousavi ran with the support of the reformist establishment, students, the business class, women, and other constituencies -- including many clerics -- he did not have a political party to support him, with offices in cities and provinces and a staff.)

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July 6, 2009