Bharat Rakshak

ramana wrote:Carl look at it from if Iran is involved or not. Map the chaino f events to get an understanding.

Carl wrote:X-post from Af-Pak thread:

Does the following expain why VP Hamid Ansari visited Turkey?
MKB:
Tehran dilutes Delhi-Kabul pact

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday - hardly five days after the signing of Delhi’s pact with Kabul - and suggested that Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan should intensify their consultations so that a “regional convergence and understanding” emerges through sustained effort with regard to the Afghan problem. Ahmedinejad told Karzai, “Enemies never want to see friendship and brotherhood in the region and we should do our best to bring hearts and thoughts closer to each other.”

anjan wrote:I'm somewhat confused on how his domestic constituency perceives rapprochement with a Sunni Pakistan(that has organized Shia slayings every few days)

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has arrived in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah for a long-awaited public visit.

The Leader, who arrived in the City of Kermanshah Wednesday morning, is to address the overwhelmingly huge crowds of enthusiastic people of the western province, already gathered in the capital city of the province, within hours.

Iran may use the outlawed PKK to pose a terror threat to Turkey because of Ankara's decision to host NATO's early-warning radar system.
Experts have warned that the move may rebound against Iran. Hasan Koni, professor of international law at Istanbul-based Kultur University, said Iran might use the PKK as leverage in the short run against Turkey. “I do not believe that they will go to a great length in doing so because of the boomerang effect of the terror that might hit back at Iran in the future,” he said.

[...]

Koni argued that Iran may also decide to extend support to the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the PKK to destabilize Turkey. “When Turkey is busy with its domestic problems it would have no time to direct its attention either to Iran or to supporting Sunni groups in Arab countries,” he explained.

He underlined, however, that Iran has a limited role in the Kurdish issue because of Tehran’s fear of an eventual independent Kurdish state partly covering its own territory. “In the long run, Israel’s aim is to prepare the ground for the foundation of a Kurdish state and the largest Kurdish population is in Turkey. That is, until a structure is put in place in Turkey, it’s not possible for a Kurdish state to take shape - the structure in northern Iraq being inadequate for such an ideal - in which case, it’s clear the process will also cover Iranian territory, Kurds also being a minority group in Iran,” he said, noting that Iran would not want such a possibility.

Iranian security forces captured senior outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Murat Karayılan in August but later released him after negotiations with the terrorist organization, a Turkish daily reported on Tuesday.

The claim was made by Yeni Safak daily columnist Abdulkadir Selvi, who said Iran was planning operations against bases of the PKK’s Iranian offshoot, a group called the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), in the Kandil Mountains and suggested carrying out joint military operations with Turkey. Turkey reportedly preferred intelligence sharing to a joint operation and the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) informed Tehran of Karayılan’s location.

Carl wrote: Generally Iranians like India, and dislike Pakistan. But due to events in the last few years, there is now a perception that India is "two-faced" in its dealings with Iran, that we are heavily influenced by the US in our Iran policy, and are therefore unreliable. OTOH, as they watch Pakistan's all-too-public falling out with Unkil they see an opportunity.
...
So there is now a basis to ignore or not play up Shi'a-Sunni issues in their international relations with neighbors, especially when the US is the big enemy in the room.

anjan wrote:What do you think of the Ahemadinijad's actually influence in Foreign Policy? Should he be taken as channeling the official line or is that not necessarily true?

The claim that Iran employed a used-car salesman with a conviction for cheque fraud to hire Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington goes against all that is known of Iran's highly sophisticated intelligence service.


The confident announcement of this bizarre plot by the US Attorney General Eric Holder sounds alarmingly similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell's notorious claim before the UN in 2003 that the US possessed irrefutable evidence Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

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The problem is that the US government has very publicly committed itself to a version of events, however unlikely, that, if true, would be a case for war against Iran. It will be difficult for the US to back away from such allegations now.

Could the accusations be true? The plot as described in court was puerile, easy to discover and unlikely to succeed. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant in Corpus Christi, Texas, with supposed links to Los Zetas gangsters in Mexico, said he had been approached by an Iranian friend of his aunt called Mansour Arbabsiar to hire the Zetas to make attacks. A link is established with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

None of this makes sense. The IRGC is famous for making sure that responsibility for its actions can never be traced to Iran. It usually operates through proxies. Yet suddenly here it is sending $100,000 (£63,000) from a known IRGC bank account to hire assassins in Mexico. The beneficiaries from such a plot are evident. There will be those on the neo-con right and extreme supporters of Israel who have long been pressing for a war with Iran. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been vociferously asserting that Iran is orchestrating Shia pro-democracy protests, but without finding many believers in the rest of the world. Their claims are now likely to be taken more seriously in Washington. There will be less pressure on countries like Bahrain to accommodate their Shia populations.

In Iraq, the US and Britain were always seeing Iran's hidden hand supporting their opponents, but they could never quite prove it. It was also true, to a degree never appreciated in the US, that Washington and Tehran were at one in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing a Shia government. There were points in common and a struggle for influence. The same has been true in Afghanistan, where Iran was delighted to see the anti-Shia Taliban overthrown in 2001.

Some Iran specialists suggest there might be a "rogue faction" within the Revolutionary Guard, but there is no evidence such a body exists or of a convincing motive for it to be associating with Mexican gangsters.

While Iran has vociferously denied any involvement and the details of the alleged plot have raised eyebrows among experts and commentators, Asia Times Online recently warned that specifically in connection with the assassination of Iranian scientists by Israel, there were strong pressures on Iran to strike back.

Saudi Arabia is viewed by Iran as being actively involved in the Western and Israeli intelligence effort to sabotage Tehran's controversial nuclear program. For example, Saudi Arabia is believed to have played a key role in the defection of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri to the US in 2009. Amiri returned to Iran a year later.

Assuming there is more than a grain of truth to the US allegations, this apparently bold Iranian action could be viewed as both a reaction to intolerable provocation as well as an attempt to take the strategic initiative by raising the stakes as part of a calculated policy of deterrence.

Viewed from this perspective, those who conceived the alleged plot may have intended it to fail, the idea being to send a strong message of deterrence, that the Islamic Republic would not hesitate to open fronts around the world (including in the US homeland) should its vital interests in the Middle East come under serious threat.

At a strategic level, the details of the alleged plot are largely irrelevant. What is important is that both the US and Iran have decided to raise the stakes dramatically, taking a significant step toward direct confrontation. Absent transparent de-escalatory measures, it would take only one or two further incidents of this kind to spark military confrontation in the Persian Gulf.

[...]

The Hollywood-style details of the alleged plot - centering on Mexican gangsters, an incompetent field agent and a handler in a faraway country - is likely to fuel speculation that this alleged operation was of a roguish nature. Indeed, this is an established mode of analysis when it comes to apparently irrational or reckless actions undertaken by alleged agents of the Iranian government.

But the truth is, there are no rogue elements in the Iranian security and intelligence establishment. Descriptions of roguish behavior are driven by a misunderstanding of the precise relationship and the balance of power between the political elites and the security establishment.

What is often overlooked is the fact that Iranian security and intelligence organizations are tightly controlled by the official clerical establishment and are ultimately answerable to them, as opposed to the executive branch of government. There hasn't been a single significant operation undertaken by the Iranian intelligence services in the past three decades that hasn't been commissioned, sanctioned or controlled by a highly placed figure in the official clerical establishment.

However, this peculiarity only causes problems when there is major discord between the official clerical establishment and the executive, in so far as diverging foreign policy views and priorities produce apparently contradictory and irrational actions. {a charade}

[...]

The first question is relatively easy to answer. Saudi-Iranian relations have been steadily deteriorating since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that empowered that country's Shi'ite majority, thus tilting the regional balance of power in Iran's favor. The Arab Spring led to a dramatic escalation of tensions, especially since the early victims, notably former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, were widely seen as strategic US assets and thus hostile to Iran.

The Saudi-led intervention in Bahrain in March, which strangled the tiny kingdom's revolution, was in part driven by anxiety to check Iran's regional advance in the midst of the Arab Spring, as well as by more immediate fears of Shi'ite empowerment in Bahrain.

In recent months, the tide has begun to turn as the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has proven incapable of crushing what appears to be a mix of popular rebellion and armed insurrection. The outcome of the struggle in Syria is likely to have a profound impact on Lebanon, where pro-Iranian parties, exemplified foremost by Hezbollah, presently dominate the political scene.

Lebanon is important to Iran, not for its rich and volatile politics, but because of Hezbollah's military, political and ideological conflict with Israel.

A dramatic loss of political influence in Lebanon would inflict a serious blow to the Islamic Republic's prestige and diminish Iran's ability to determine the strategic and political course of the region.
Saudi-Iranian tensions have played out against a backdrop of intense covert lobbying of key US decision-makers by Saudi leaders, diplomats and other representatives, who have called on their American counterparts to launch a military attack on Iran. According to the diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia allegedly called on the US to "cut off the head of the snake" in apparent reference to Iran.

On the face of it, Iran has ample grievances against Saudi Arabia, enough some might argue to launch a covert violent campaign against Saudi interests. But what is not clear is the calculation behind the choice of the target and what exactly Iran hoped to achieve by executing the operation.

At this early stage the most plausible speculative answer revolves around deterrence and the display of both capability and intent. From a purely speculative standpoint, it is possible that the Iranian intelligence community had obtained information pointing to short- to mid-term escalation of hostile Saudi actions, possibly in the Levant theater, and the operation was designed to either discourage those acts or warn of the consequences of prolonged hostile actions.

In regard to the strategic impact of the alleged plot, the protagonists are Iran and the United States. This affair has already developed into a diplomatic and political confrontation between the two countries.

If indeed the alleged operation was planned and directed by the Qods force, it is possible that the US government was the intended recipient of the strategic message. The content of the message is open to speculation, but doubtless Iran is anxious to deter the US from undertaking what the Saudis appear to desire, namely, a direct Iranian-US military confrontation in the Persian Gulf.

But if deterrence was the essential motivating factor, then the planners of the alleged plot have likely miscalculated. In scenarios where two or more states are locked in complex and wide-ranging strategic and ideological rivalry (as Iran and the US are), deterrence in the form of limited aggressive actions only work when sufficient safeguards, in the form of well-established de-escalatory mechanisms, are in place.

Such mechanisms are almost totally absent from the Iranian-US regional struggle for influence, underscored foremost by the absence of formal diplomatic relations.

While Iran and the United States both command highly complex decision-making processes, and hawkish domestic constituencies notwithstanding, both powers appear to dislike direct military confrontation, nonetheless the scope for misunderstanding is considerable and the potential for kinetic conflict is very real.

The burden is now on the United States government to act in a measured way and if possible to decrease tensions. A hawkish stance - such as the one immediately adopted by senior US officials - runs the risk of being misread and over-interpreted in Tehran. This could trigger further escalation and before long a shooting war may break out in the Persian Gulf.

Adam Werritty, the man at the centre of the Liam Fox cash-for-access scandal, has been involved in an audacious plot to topple Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was claimed last night.

The self-styled adviser to Mr Fox, whose close personal friendship with the former defence secretary led to Mr Fox's downfall, has visited Iran on several occasions and met Iranian opposition groups in Washington and London over the past few years, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Mr Werritty, 33, has been debriefed by MI6 about his travels and is so highly regarded by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad – who thought he was Mr Fox's chief of staff – that he was able to arrange meetings at the highest levels of the Israeli government, multiple sources have told The IoS.

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Mr Fox resigned on Friday after a stream of revelations surrounding his dealings with his adviser, centring on 18 meetings abroad at which Mr Werritty was present, including in Dubai, Sri Lanka and Israel, and 22 at the Ministry of Defence. After vowing to fight the disclosures a week ago, Mr Fox quit the Cabinet on Friday when details emerged of the business and intelligence interests of Mr Werritty's financial backers.

The minister admitted that he had allowed the distinction between his personal interests and government activities had become "blurred". But The IoS has learnt that Mr Werritty's travels went further than the luxury hotels of Colombo and Dubai: he has used his House of Commons-branded business card, which said he was Mr Fox's adviser, to pursue his business interests in conflict-torn South Sudan, other developing African countries and Iraq. The aide has also held talks in London with representatives of the new Libyan government in recent weeks. It is not known whether Mr Fox was present.

The fresh disclosures are likely to form part of Sir Gus O'Donnell's inquiry into Mr Fox and Mr Werritty, which was launched last week as the scandal unfolded. The revelation that the man who had unrestricted access to Mr Fox while he was serving in David Cameron's Cabinet was at the same time attempting to unseat the Iranian President will fuel alarm in the Foreign Office that he was pursuing a freelance foreign policy and acting as a "rogue operator".

At the height of the storm surrounding Mr Fox last week, "friends" of the MP tried to distance him from Mr Werritty by describing him as a "Walter Mitty" figure, to the fury of Mr Fox.

Yet the access to senior government figures Mr Werritty enjoyed across the globe suggests otherwise. Mr Werritty, said one source, worked closely with US-backed neocons who thought they could "bring down Ahmadinejad".

Even though such a plot would be highly ambitious, if not impossible, Mr Werritty's activities fly in the face of the British Government's efforts to pursue a diplomatic solution, through the UN, to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Werritty joined Mr Fox, while he was shadow defence secretary, on a visit to Iran in the summer of 2007. The IoS understands the adviser has also visited the country on several occasions before and after, although it is not known how long he stayed or whom he met.

Mr Fox is an enthusiastic Atlanticist and is sympathetic to the neocon movement in the United States, which takes a hawkish stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions, although on his 2007 visit to the country he said he hoped for a "diplomatic solution" to the issue. An associate said that Mr Werritty, who can speak some Farsi, would act as a "facilitator" and "take messages" between various opposition figures, although the source insisted he was not a "freelance spy". One diplomatic source suggested that Mr Werritty, once back in London, had been debriefed by MI6 about his travels to Iran. It is not known whether Mr Fox knew the full extent of Mr Werritty's activities, or whether he was merely allowed to continue, and provide information to the British Government on an unofficial basis.

This newspaper has made repeated attempts to contact Mr Werritty but has received no response.

One Whitehall source was scathing of Mr Werritty. The source said: "Ask yourself what he was doing there. It's regime change but only in his own mind. I can't think of anything more stupid, wandering round Iran flying the British flag. Does he really think the answer to Iran's nuclear ambitions – which we all want to resolve – is to have a bunch of people encouraging the opposition there in that way? We do have a responsibility to those people, and anything that's done like that has to have government approval, which he doesn't seem to have had. It's ridiculous. You are inviting people to believe you have the Government's resources behind them, and in fact the opposition is likely to be brutally crushed.

"That is not to say that if he came back to London and he offered to tell MI6 what he had seen while he was in Iran, they wouldn't say 'yes please'. But them picking up as much information as they can, and deniably, is quite different from him being licensed by them."

The IoS has learnt that one senior military figure in a developing country, which this newspaper is not naming to protect his identity, feels he was taken in by Mr Werritty. Last night Labour MP John Mann called on Scotland Yard to launch a fraud inquiry into Mr Werritty and his use of a business card falsely giving his position as an adviser to the former Defence Secretary.

In May 2009, Mr Werritty arranged a meeting in Portcullis House between Mr Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with close links to President Ahmadinejad's regime. In February this year, Mr Werritty arranged a dinner with Mr Fox, Britain's ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, and senior political figures – understood to include Israeli intelligence agents – during an Israeli security conference in Herzliya, during which sanctions against Iran were discussed. Despite Mr Werritty having no official MoD capacity, an Israeli source said there was "no question" that Mr Werritty was regarded as anyone other than Mr Fox's chief of staff who was able to fix meetings at the highest levels, and was seen as an "expert on Iran".

The Foreign Office declined last night to comment on any aspect of Mr Werritty's activities .

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Pakistani intelligence official revealed on Sunday that Iranian-American citizen Manssor Arbabsiar, who has been accused by the US of an elaborate plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, had received fake ID documents from the Israeli Mossad agency three months ago.

"The person who is accused in this case had received fake ID documents from the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, three months ago," the Pakistani Urdu-language daily, Nation, quoted the official as saying on the condition of anonymity.

He also revealed that Arbabsiar "was due to conduct an operation named Foss Fling" for the Mossad.

"Manssor is an Iran-American and the US ties with Iran are not normal and good to let him go unmonitored by the US spy agencies; therefore, Iran is totally unlikely to use an individual for assassinating the Saudi ambassador, who is closely monitored by the US intelligence agencies," the Pakistani intelligence official told the Nation...

Carl wrote:And here's more Pakistan maalesh for Iran:Source Reveals Link between Israeli Mossad and Alleged Iranian Plotter

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Pakistani intelligence official revealed on Sunday that Iranian-American citizen Manssor Arbabsiar, who has been accused by the US of an elaborate plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, had received fake ID documents from the Israeli Mossad agency three months ago.

BAKU (UPI)—Azerbaijan is expected to acquire 60 small Israeli-designed unmanned aerial vehicles built under license in the oil-rich former Soviet republic that’s moving closer to the Jewish state as the Baku government modernizes its military.

The burgeoning military and intelligence alliance between the countries is causing growing concern in Iran, Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor, and in nearby longtime rival Armenia.

The Israeli Aerostar and Orbiter 2M UAVs are being manufactured by Baku’s Azad Systems Co., a joint venture between Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry and Aeronautics Defense Systems of Israel.

That’s the country’s third largest UAV manufacturer after Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems.

Around 70 percent of the components are produced in Israel, the rest in Azerbaijan.

Sixty of the drones are to be delivered to Azerbaijan’s armed forces by the end of the year, primarily for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

Azerbaijan’s military already operates Elbit Systems’ Hermes 450 and IAI’s Searcher reconnaissance drones, as well as some of Aeronautics Defense Systems’ Aerostar and Orbiter craft.

Azerbaijan Minister of Defense Industry Yavar Jamalov told the Azerbaijan Press Agency earlier this month that Baku is considering the production of missile-armed UAVs within the next two years, a development guaranteed to deepen Iranian and Armenian concerns.

The UAV deal with Azerbaijan allows Israeli manufacturers to pick up some of the slack that appeared when Israel’s strategic military alliance with Turkey collapsed in 2010.

APA reported that Aeronautics Defense Systems beat out several Turkish defense firms, including TAI, Baykar Makina and Global Teknik, for the UAV venture set up in March.

Azerbaijan, which lies in the energy-rich Caspian Basin, has oil reserves of more than 1.2 billion barrels as well as 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It is one of Israel’s largest suppliers of crude oil.

Earlier this month, Israel’s air force marked the 40th anniversary of the formation of its first UAV unit, Squadron 200 at the Palmachim Air Base on the Mediterranean coast south of Tel Aviv from where IAI satellites are launched.

The government agreed in June 2010 to build a pipeline to export 21.5 million cubic meters a day of gas to neighboring Pakistan. It hopes eventually to extend the link to China, Shana reported on Oct. 14, citing Hossein Bidarmaghz, managing director of National Iranian Gas Export Co.

Bidarmaghz said if the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is extended to China it will facilitate gas exports to the country adding that Iranian and Chinese officials would review the matter in the future.

The multi-billion-dollar Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline deal, which was signed in June 2010, aims to export an annual amount of up to 21 million cubic meters of natural gas to Pakistan.

The project was originally known as Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project. Iran, India and Pakistan held tripartite negotiations over the project, which was also known as 'The Peace Pipeline,' until New Delhi's vacillation caused Tehran and Islamabad to continue talks bilaterally.

New Delhi finally left the trilateral talks over differences with Islamabad on issues such as the fee Pakistan would charge India for gas transit.

In October 2007, Iran and Pakistan began a new round of talks in Tehran, where the details of the deal were finalized.

Indian Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal says his country will not yield to any pressure on the bolstering of its ties with Iran.

“Currently, more than 20 percent of India's oil imports are supplied by Iran and this indicates the magnitude of the cooperation among the two countries,” Bansal said in a meeting with Iran's Energy Minister Majid Namjou on Thursday.

He pointed to the historic ties between the two countries, saying that India has no limitation in its desire to expand collaborations with the Islamic Republic, IRNA reported.

The Indian official urged for the enhancement of bilateral cooperation in various fields of energy.

He pointed to Iran's high stature in the world in building dam and related installations and said Iranian companies can invest in different fields related to water, road building and establishing ports, citing India's plan to expand its economic infrastructures with an investment equivalent to USD 500 billion.

Iran's First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi announced in October that Iran has the world's third biggest dam construction industry.

According to Rahimi, 135 dam projects are currently underway in Iran that will transform the level of agricultural production in the country once they come on stream.

Iran has engaged in dam construction activities in Tajikistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and consultations are underway with a number of other countries.

In addition to the necessity of generating electricity, Iran needs dams to effectively control and manage its water shortage across the country. The country's central provinces are located close to vast deserts and suffer from severe water shortages that threaten agricultural operations.

The name of the trespasser, who was killed on Azerbaijan-Iran border, has been made public. Azerbaijani media inform that the trespasser was 20-year-old serviceman of the Border Troops of the Islamic Republic of Iran Akbar Hasanpour. His body has been handed over to the Iranian side today.

The violation of the border was observed on Azerbaijan-Iran border near Aranli village of Bilasuvar region at 14.00 on October 19.

The frontier guard opened fire, the trespasser was wounded, he was given first medical aid and taken hospital. The trespasser died in hospital.

The Iranian side was immediately informed about the incident.

Investigation is underway.

You’ll recall that the the U.S. claimed that the Iranian alleged conspirator in the terror plot against the Saudi ambassador, Gholam Shakuri, was a Revolutionary Guard (IRG) official. Though many Iranians have scoured every resource they could think of, none have found evidence of such a person with any IRG affiliation. If the U.S. has such evidence it ought to produce it if it wants to be believed. Yesterday, the well-placed Alef site, run by an Iranian majlis member who’s run for president twice, alleged that Shakuri is in fact a high level Mujahadeen al Khalq (MEK) leader. It offered evidence to support the charge.

Today, the official MEK leadership has denied that Shakuri is a member and the U.S. has also denied the charge. But in fact, a former high-ranking MEK leader, Massoud Khodabandeh (he has allowed me to use his name), writing in the Gulf2000 listserv, confirmed that Shakuri is in fact an MEK member. He cautions that there may be more than one Gholam Shakuri, and the one who is the MEK member may not be the same Shakuri the U.S. has named. While this may be true, this new development moves Shakuri a lot closer to being MEK than being IRG. And moves the entire U.S. account of this supposed crime closer to the trash heap.

About the author: Richard Silverstein is an author, journalist and blogger, with articles appearing in Haaretz, the Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Al Jazeera English, and Alternet.

On domestic policy, the Supreme Leader's remarks addressed another of his favorite themes: favoring Iranian conservatives over pragmatists and reformists. Khamenei's most recent comments, however, included a new twist: an assertion that the Islamic Republic may do away with the post of a directly elected president.

[...]

"Presently, the country's ruling political system is a presidential one in which the president is directly elected by the people, making this a good and effective method," Iran's Supreme Leader, himself a former president, told an audience in the city of Gilan Gharb. "However, if one day, probably in the distant future, it is deemed that the parliamentary system is more appropriate for the election of officials with executive power, there would be no problem in altering the current structure."

Regardless of if and when such a change were to take place, Khamenei's comments reflect the consistent progression of a nearly decade-long conservative, undemocratic trend in Iranian politics where political change has been engineered and managed.

The year 2003 was a turning point for Khamenei and Iranian conservatives. They began their reemergence and ascent in the local council elections that February, sweeping reformists away in most major cities. It was also an election that traditional conservative groups had boycotted, thus aiding the rise of Iran's next generation of conservatives -- nonclerical, war-veteran technocrats that are today embodied by the likes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and others. Factional tensions have often been high between Iran's various conservative camps, but they were loosely grouped together because of their allegiance to Supreme Leader Khamenei.

The conservative takeover of Iran's elected institutions continued with the Majles elections in 2004, and culminated in the 2005 presidential election. Steadily building tensions within and between factions of all stripes were exacerbated by the disputed 2009 presidential election and subsequent political fratricide. Which brings us to the present: Why is Khamenei hinting at abolishing the presidency?

[...]

One thesis has favored reducing the powers of the Supreme Leader and empowering the presidency. This current is dominated by the pragmatists and reformists who composed much of the Rafsanjani and Khatami administrations. The opposing thesis has favored turning the president into a quasi-prime minister with the Supreme Leader at the helm of policymaking. This current is dominated by the various conservative factions that have increasingly gained prominence since the 2003 local council elections. Indeed, this latter current has emerged as the status quo. And given the power balance in Iran for nearly the past decade, Khamenei's remarks in Gilan Gharb are less groundbreaking than calculated.

To that end, steps to eliminate the presidency and reestablish the position of prime minister are well within the realm of possibility. Indeed, this sort of development would resemble the Islamic Republic's 1989 constitutional amendment that eliminated the premiership and empowered the presidency. Ironically, it was Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi's position that was abolished nearly 24 years ago at the end of his term, and President Ali Khamenei's position that was greatly enhanced -- shortly before he was anointed Supreme Leader and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani shifted to the role of president from his previous post as Majles speaker. In Iranian politics, history does have a tendency to repeat itself.

Should Iran decide to eliminate the post of a directly elected president, the primary role of a reinstated premiership would be to execute the Supreme Leader's directives. This was -- and continues to be -- what is expected from Ahmadinejad. His increasing intransigence has only sped up an otherwise steady moving process toward the domestic vision for Iran that many unelected officials hold: more Islamic than republican. Factional tensions in the Islamic Republic remain high, but key conservative factions have accepted the central role of Supreme Leader Khamenei. In the short to medium term, this is likely to remain Iran's domestic political status quo.

brihaspati wrote:there are inevitable and unavoidable internal domestic issues, not necessarily of economic or financial or material development aspect only - where the mullah in gov will have to take sides, utter theological nonsense in support of blatant injustice or sheer stupidity and greed. The long term prospects of a directly theologian run Islamic regime is bleak. They inevitably give rise to implacable Islamist factions within themselves fighting like street dogs in a very public fight over the b00ty. This weakened the Talebs, and is eating away silently at the insides of the Khomeini regime.

The largest case of bank fraud in Iranian history is threatening to engulf President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after a parliamentary commission decided to investigate his office for possible connections to the crime, Iranian state media has reported.

To add insult to injury, Islamist hard-line legislators loyal to Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, subsequently sent the commission a letter requesting specifically that Ahmadinejad be included in the investigation. They have since said they would not follow up on the letter out of respect for Khamenei.

It is one move of many by Islamists to link the president to the alleged embezzlement of 30 trillion Iranian rials -- more than $2.5 billion.

To frame the extent of allegations in U.S. terms: It would be akin to religious conservative legislators attempting to implicate a sitting American president in the infamous Madoff Ponzi scheme, in which disgraced financier Bernie Madoff cheated investors out of $50 billion.

Ahmadinejad has vehemently rejected accusations that anyone in his government is linked to what is currently the highest-profile crime in the country, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

[...]

Two Iranian economists who spoke to CNN alluded to political opportunism in the accusations against the president and people close to him. But both believe politicians were involved, possibly even directly.

The size and nature of the fraud required "a trend inside the government to make this problem and this scandal," said Tehran economic analyst Saeed Laylaz.

A second economist points out that the main suspect in the case has ties to the Iranian president's chief adviser, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who used his influence in a bank business deal for the accused man, Amir Mansoor Khosravi.

Khosravi had opened a private bank known as the Bank Arya. Getting a license is usually difficult, but Mashaei used his political pull to help pave the way, said economist Dr. Behrooz Hady Zonooz from Tehran...

RamaY wrote:^ I doubt it that way.

It didn't happen in KSA in spite of all the ruling family's transeggressions.

...In Afghanistan, on the contrary, Pakistan is going to prevail upon the Taliban not to make an issue of the US military bases. That is the least it could do for the US in return for the deal Clinton stuck. What matters most for Pakistan is that its “strategic assets” are catapulted into power in Afghanistan. The US presence in Afghanistan is something that may even suit Pakistan so long as Washington accepts Pakistan’s primacy in Afghanistan. Arguably, Pakistan may even benefit from the US presence in terms of continued American engagement with the region. Pakistan factors in that the US’s ‘New Silk Road’ project ensures a key role for it in the American regional strategies for decades to come.

In comparison, Iran’s approach was to passively cooperate with the US to ’stabilise’ Iraq and once that objective was achieved, it began working for the expulsion of the Americans by the Iraqis. Iran is not harbouring illusions of dominating Iraq. It settles for a level playing field where it is confident that Baghdad will always accord the pride of place to friendship with Tehran. Pakistan, on the contrary, has done everything possible to subvert the US policies so that Afghanistan remained weak and in a state of acute instability - and thereby creating the conditions for the projection of power into that country. Pakistan won’t settle merely for a level playing field in Kabul. It will push for a regime in Kabul that it can dominate.
The ideal state of affairs for Pakistan would be if there is a Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the US remains a stakeholder. Pakistan tried hard to get such an arrangement worked out in the late 1990s but failed. To my mind, it is now an achievable objective.

ramana wrote:Shyamd,

I asked many times for folks to dig deeper into the Iranian delivery system and not be taken by 'expert' opinions. It will give better understanding of what is being pursued. use the Iran thread for that exploration.