Obama: AWOL in Iran crisis ~ By Tom Tancredo

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Tom Tancredo Posted: January 02, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2010 It is now abundantly and painfully clear that President Obama is clueless about America's national security interests in this dangerous world. Obama is playing golf in Hawaii as the Islamist regime in Tehran shoots protesters in the streets and admits it has beaten to death scores of other protesters taken to jail. Obama's silence in not voicing support for the protesters is deafening. Anyone who has watched events unfold in Iran over the past three months can see that the street protests have evolved from a protest against a stolen election to a wider protest against the regime itself. The protests are not only taking place in the capital but in major cities all across the country. The most recent protests featured banners and shouts aimed at America: "Obama, which side are you on?" is a chant heard often. Unfortunately, that's a good question. Since the revolution in 1979 that overthrew the pro-Western shah, Iran has pretended to be a democracy, but its "fundamentalist regime" slowly concentrated power in the hands of radical clerics. So, Iran now pretends to be a democracy, and the world pretends to believe it. Last October, the regime pretended to have a presidential election but overplayed its hand by stuffing the ballot boxes. In the last 27 years, over 120,000 citizens in Iran have been killed by the regime, executed after sham trials or simply shot or beaten to death in prison without benefit of a trial. The street protests are escalating because millions of Iranian citizens have decided they have no other recourse. The question is not, what do Iranians want? The question is, is the civilized world listening? Is Obama listening? Obama's silence over Iran's democratic protests is especially confounding after his rush to judgment in Honduras. After the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress ousted the president under a constitutional provision allowing that move, the U.S. State Department protested their action. In Honduras there was no reluctance to criticize a pro-American regime, but in Iran, the United States bends over backwards to maintain neutrality and keep "open channels" to the dictatorship run by the radical mullahs. Why this double standard? Obama's silence is not merely hypocritical, it is patently contrary to America's vital interests. READ FULL STORY >

Letter From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

From Foreign Affairs (Published by the Council on Foreign Relations)

Who Is in Control of the Islamic Republic? By Jerry Guo September 30, 2009 Summary -- Iran's disputed election marked the rise of a new power elite. Now, with more protests looming and a nuclear program facing international pressure, can the Revolutionary Guard and its allies sustain their tightening grip on the Islamic Republic? JERRY GUO was an analyst in an Iranian investment bank in Tehran. The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IRGC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent. So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.) The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution. In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy. But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Iran diplomats: 'Israel is bluffing' ~ By Michael Evans

From WorldNetDaily

By Michael Evans Posted: October 01, 2009 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 In 20 minutes at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York City where Iran's infamous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stayed during the U.N. General Assembly, six Revolutionary Guard diplomats responded to my question, "How will you avoid an attack upon your nuclear reactors, especially in view of President Ahmadinejad's belligerence at the U.N.?" In my conversation with the Iranian diplomats, the men made it quite clear Iran had nothing to fear. They said there would not be an attack. "Israel is bluffing," confidently averred one of the men. "There is absolutely nothing for us to concern ourselves with because neither Israel nor the United States tried to save its ally, the shah. They could have with their military, but were too weak to do it. If you think either one will go to war with us, I can tell you, it will never happen." He went on to say that stringent sanctions, including an oil embargo imposed by the West or an attack by Israel or the U.S., would serve only to unite the people behind Ahmadinejad, who has been under attack since the mullahs in Iran confirmed his re-election earlier this year. These men consider President Obama just another Jimmy Carter who would never attack Iran. They believe he is already losing two wars on their borders – Iraq and Afghanistan – and would not dare instigate a third – especially a war that could mean a 10-year ground offensive with the probability of over one-quarter million body bags. Ahmadinejad's bravado suffered a major blow, however, when it was disclosed last Friday that Iran had constructed a secret uranium enrichment facility near its holiest city, Qom. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be had failed to inform the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency. The disclosure prompted the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany to schedule a meeting Thursday in Geneva to discuss Iran's rogue nuclear program. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Iran has tea party, Obama not thirsty ~ By Doug Powers

By Doug Powers Posted: June 22, 2009 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 As the governing body of Iran slaughtered unarmed protesters, a skateboarder rolled through hallways of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (marking the first time in months a Hawk has been in the White House) and Barack Obama was praised for skillfully killing a fly, the president managed to eke out an ignorant and/or purposefully misleading statement on the Iranian unrest – in between frozen custards of course:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights. …

Tough as liquid nails, eh? "We've got Twitter and we know how to use it, buddy!" The rest of Obama's statement is here. Iran could get around the "innocent life that is lost" part by referring to their dustup operation as "super late-term abortions." Did you know there are "universal rights"? I didn't. Our government can't manage to adhere to the rights contained in our own Constitution anymore, but it can whip up a fresh batch of rights for the entire universe? What Obama's statement seems to imply – either by naiveté of biblical (or Koranical) proportions, or by "strange bedfellows" empathy with the ruling Iranian clerics – is that a totalitarian theocracy can remain a totalitarian theocracy as long as it can bite its tongue long enough to allow people to complain in the streets. It's in this kind of defense of freedom that oppression metastasizes. Another reason I believe Obama has refused to speak out more on this is pure conjecture on my part, but I have a suspicion that those protesters in Iran remind Obama just a little too much of American tea partiers, and so, ultimately, there is no love lost there. Couple that with accusations of election fraud in Iran (how do you say ACORN in Farsi?), and it isn't difficult to see why Obama is less than enthusiastic about addressing this particular "problem." [CONTINUE READING]