Category Archives: Iran

Corruption, Iran

Iran: Thin-Skinned Corrupt Islamic Officials……….

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“Hazrati retaliated by apparently using a pseudonym to publish a response in the same publication, branding Imami’s review “insulting” and “partial”. Alipour came to Imami’s defence, questioning the official’s photography credentials and exposing the identity behind the pseudonym. Hazrati then filed a suit against the two men. A Qazvin court found them guilty of insulting the official and sentenced them to be lashed, local media reported……. There have been similar cases in Iran. In 2012, cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraye was found guilty of insulting an MP, for which he was given a sentence of 25 lashes. The MP eventually withdrew his complaint after the case prompted widespread outrage………..”

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Iran

Iran Academic Escapes Death, Back to Prison………..

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“A well-known Iranian academic who had a death sentence overturned a decade ago has been convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for spreading propaganda against the government. No other details of pro-reform activist Hashem Aghajari’s offenses were mentioned in Iranian media reports of his conviction, published Sunday. Aghajari, a university professor, was convicted of apostasy and given a death sentence in 2003 for declaring Muslims were not “monkeys” who should “blindly follow” their religious leaders. That sentence was commuted to five years imprisonment in 2004, but he was eventually cleared of all charges………….”

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Air Disasters, Airlines, Iran, Libya, Russia

Are All Airliner Shootings Deliberate Massacres? It Depends on Who Shoots and Who Gets Shot Down……

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Poor Malaysians, they seem so unlucky with their airline this year. Still, if it had not been for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the struggle for Eastern Europe, this disaster would not have been so important. Still, not all airline disasters are equal. Let us look at a few cases when commercial civilian airliners have been shot down by military forces of governments:

1973: A Libyan Airlines Boeing 727-200 plane was shot down by Israeli fighters in Egypt’s Sinai Desert on 21 February, 1973. It was believed that the pilots got lost due to bad weather and equipment failure over northern Egypt, resulting in the plane entering Israeli-controlled airspace over the Sinai desert. Israeli fighter jets shot down the plane. Out of 113 people on board, only five, including the co-pilot, survived.
So, an Arab airliner shot down by Israel over occupied Arab land.

1983: A Korean Air flight was brought down by the USSR on 1 September 1983. The Boeing 747 civilian airliner from New York to Seoul was shot down by a Soviet jet just west of the Russian island of Sakhalin killing all 269 passengers and crew, including US congressman Larry McDonald. The Russians believed it was a US military surveillance plane and fired tracer rockets as a warning but it did not respond, the Soviet fighter pilot later said. US president, Ronald Reagan called the shoot down “a massacre“.
So, shot down over Soviet/Russian territory.

1988: On 3 July 1988 the US warship USS Vincennes, in the Persian Gulf, fired a surface-to-air missile to shoot down Iran Air flight 655 travelling from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai. All 290 passengers, mostly Iranians on a pilgrimage to Mecca, and all the crew were killed. US Navy officials later said the Vincennes’ crew believed they were firing at an Iranian F14 jet fighter, claiming the plane was off the ‘usual’ commercial route and did not respond to requests to change course. Iran, perhaps echoing Ronald Reagan, called it “a barbaric massacre“.
So, an Iranian airliner shot down by a U.S. navy ship. Not over the Gulf of Mexico, nor within sight of Manhattan. In the ‘Persian’ Gulf, right in Iran’s own backyard. 

2001: Ukrainian military shot down a Russian passenger jet containing 78 people on 4 October 2001 as it flew over the Black Sea travelling from Tel Aviv in Israel to Novosibirsk in Russia. Russian crash investigators concluded the Tu-154 was hit by a Ukrainian ground-to-air missile despite the fact it was on its flight plan on an international airway which did not fall under any restrictions imposed by Ukraine. It exploded in mid-air, sparking speculation it was downed accidentally by Ukranian military on exercises in Crimea.

So is it a crime to shoot down a civilian airliner? You may be shocked to find out that it depends, but you shouldn’t. Apparently it mainly all depends on two factors: (1) Who does the shooting; (2) Who is shot down.

Generally third world airliners, when shot down by anyone but especially by Western missiles, are not much lamented or compensated. The Iran Air 655 victims were ignored in the West. If it had been an Iranian missile shooting down a Western airliners, Tehran would have been invaded, with full UN approval. Iran would have been blackmailed and forced to pay extortion in billions of dollars in compensation for the Western victims, who tend to be much more valuable as victims than others are. No such compensation was offered or paid, as far as I know, for Iran Air 655 victims or the Libyan victims.

Third world victims are always deemed to be worth less than Western victims. That is a fact; too bad you can’t take it to the bank, though. But I admit it is sometimes a self-made valuation suggested by unrepresentative and repressive governments.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Blockade of Iran, Iran, Iraq, Qassem Suleimani

Oh oh, Qassem Suleimani is Back Stalking Your Dreams………

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‘“Suleimani’s orchestration of brutal military campaigns in both Syria and Iraq set the stage for the Sunni Arab response turning to extremism,” explains Derek Harvey, a longtime Iraq intelligence analyst who now teaches at the University of South Florida. Harvey lists some of Suleimani’s mistakes: “He missed opportunities for moderation while still protecting Iranian interests. His partnership with extremism in Syria resulted in the threat growing in Syria and rebounding to Iraq. His refusal to counsel some moderation and inclusion by [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-]Maliki developed a fertile environment for [the Islamic State] and others to exploit.” Suleimani’s reversals are significant because he has become something of a cult figure among those who follow the paramilitary Quds Force he directs. I have likened him in past columns to John le Carré’s fabled spymaster, Karla. The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins chronicled what Arabs call Suleimani’s “khilib, or understated charisma,” in a memorable profile in September. Suleimani seemed a man who could run circles around rival commanders.……………”

Also sprach David Ignatius who has access not only to reliable unnamed high U.S. intelligence officials, but also to highly unreliable unnamed Arab Wahhabi princes and high officials. What is almost endearing about these relationships is that he believes everything that they tell him and tries to sell it to us. Occasionally I think he has converted to Wahhabism (which is neither Sunni nor Shi’a, but wayyyy out there).

If this Qassem Suleimani were head of government he would be labeled public enemy number one in Western media. In the same way that Ahmadinejad was, except that Ahmadinejad often asked for it with his big mouth. Or Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or many others of the Third World.

But no need to worry: his organization, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), I believe, is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government while the U.S. Knesset Congress considers it Satan’s twin, even though it is an official military organization of a sovereign country (the North Korean or French or Ukrainian equivalents are NOT listed as a terrorist organizations). Oddly, the IRGC have never shot in anger at any American (well, not directly), unlike the Israeli IDF (remember the USS Liberty?), or the German Wehrmacht many of whose officers served along Americans later on, or the Viet Cong some of whom….. you get the point. Not only that: anyone who deals with them is also listed as terrorist. The bank where IRGC commanders deposit their pay and finance their homes, the baker who sells them hot oven-baked Iranian bread in the morning, the butcher who provides them with lamb for the chelo kebab, and the Afghani barber who trims their beards (he is also probably a Taliban agent). Anyway, it has become hard to separate fact from fiction when we read about him. More on this Suleimani later…….

Qassem Suleimani: Plotter with Morsi, Drug Smuggler to GCC, Election Manager in Iraq …….

More on Iran’s Qassem Suleimani: Solving the Mystery………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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AIPAC, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, U.S. Foreign Policy

Israeli Lobby in the Washington Knesset Works to Derail Nuclear Talks……

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“In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy, Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, demand that any deal allow international inspectors to probe Iranian facilities for “at least 20 years.” It also says the inspections “must be intrusive,” with the International Atomic Energy Agency gaining “access to any and all facilities, persons or documentation” necessary to determine Iran’s compliance with the deal……… The letter, which is addressed to the president, went out to members of the Senate Banking Committee, Foreign Relations Committee, and Armed Services Committee on Friday, July 11. It has the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, an AIPAC official confirmed……………”

Nothing new here, just something worth revisiting briefly. We all know that an unregistered all powerful omnipotent lobby for a foreign government now shapes Obama Administration and U.S. Congressional foreign policy about anything that has to do with Iran, Lebanon, and Palestinian-Israeli issues. AIPAC has a virtual veto over U.S. policy on these issues: its tools are truly bi-partisan.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Iran, Iraq, Jihadis

First Blood? Iranians in the Battle for Iraq……..

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“Iran is pursuing a delicate strategy of supporting fellow Shiite Muslims and preserving its influence in neighboring Iraq—where the government is under siege by radical Sunni militants—without pushing the confrontation into outright sectarian warfare. For the second straight week, influential clerics, who are appointed by the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, used their Friday sermons to denounce the militant groups and support Iraq’s government. But their speeches steered clear of explicitly encouraging individual Shiites to act against the Sunni insurgents……… The country has openly sent top military advisers to help the Iraqi government, and blamed a collection of foreign enemies from Saudi Arabia to Israel and the U.S. for the violence. It deployed at least three battalions of elite Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials—an action Iran’s foreign ministry denied…………….Yet it has stopped short of sending in large numbers of its own troops and discouraged ordinary Iranians from crossing the border to fight or defend holy sites in Iraq.………..”

So which one is it, pray tell? Did they send three battalions of the IRGC as those usual “unnamed security officials” have claimed or is it untrue as the foreign ministry says? Is Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani of Quds Force in Baghdad as Western and Arab media have claimed for three weeks, or is he in Syria, or maybe in Lebanon, or could it be that he has snuck into Yemen? Can he be lurking somewhere in the Gulf trying to reinvigorate the mythical Wahhabi-created ‘Gulf Hezbollah’ smack in the middle of the royal police states?

Or maybe he is making some deal with the new Saudi ambassador-at-large Prince Bandar over a cold glass or two of Leban (in Gulf Arabic) or Dough (in Gulf Persian).

On the other hand the Iranian news agency IRNA reported that an Iranian citizen has died fighting in Iraq. It claimed he died protecting the Shi’a shrines; maybe, but that can cover a lot of territory in Iraq. It did not specify his military service or rank. Which means that there are now some Iranians on the front lines inside Iraq, and some of them will die. More problematic is that these Iranians will also be killing Iraqis, not a very good prospect for either Iraqis or Iranians. They will not be able to keep it private, anymore than it was possible for Lebanese Hezbollah to keep its casualties in Syria private.  A death and its aftermath are very public affairs for us Muslims, whether we are Sunni, Shi’a, Wahhabi, Sofi, Khawarij, or Episcopalian.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al Aqeda, GCC, Iran, Jihad, Saudi Arabia, Sectarian, Terrorism, Wahhabi

A Wahhabi Neocon Explanation for the Rise of ISIS and other Terrorists…………

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“There has never been any doubt in my mind that elements within Iran’s security services have facilitated ISIS,” Col. Derek Harvey told Foreign Policy, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, a terrorist network-cum-jihadist army that has now taken over territory in Syria and Iraq that, when combined, is roughly the size of Jordan. “When given opportunities to interdict, or have an effect, [the Iranians] have refrained.” Harvey, a retired Army intelligence officer and senior Central Command advisor, was emphatic that any solution for containing the rising threat of ISIS, an al Qaeda breakaway group, must foreclose on the possibility of U.S.-Iranian collusion. ………… Intelligence reporting during this period, Welch added, suggested that Iran was indeed funding “al Qaeda-type elements” in Iraq as well as Shiite militias such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, both of which are now said to be playing a major role in fortifying central Baghdad and Shiite-predominant cities and towns in southern Iraq. Iranian documents captured by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007 did indeed state that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC) was helping Sunni jihadists along with Shiite militias ……………”

This Neocon piece is closely following the Saudi Wahhabi marketed script on Iraq and Syria and the origins of the ISIS and al-Nusra Front. The Saudi strategy has been to divert attention from the fact that these terrorist groups and militias are Wahhabi movements with roots close to the power structure in Riyadh. The fact that they are the products of the triple alliance of: the Wahhabi religious doctrine which distorts Islam, the Saudi educational system, and Saudi oil money.

The extensive campaign to absolve Wahhabism from the modern rise of terrorism has been so audacious as to try and blame some of its primary victims. Some elements of American media and retired former officials and generals have been pushing this as well. Some Neocons are happy to adopt this even if it rewrites the history of Al Qaeda to blame anyone but their Arab allies.

Sectarian fault lines in the Arab world should exist, if they must, only in a few countries of the region from the eastern Mediterranean to the Gulf. That is where the populations are divided, that is where Iranians have made political and economic inroads into Arab territory. That is also where the Wahhabis have counterattacked with the only weapon they can rely on: the sowing of sectarian division and hatred. That is why the Wahhabi Salafis and their allies quickly took over the Syrian uprising in 2011 and made it into a sectarian civil war, drawing in Lebanese factions from both sides (and not only Hezbollah as is commonly misrepresented in Western media). That is also why the Wahhabis sent their mercenary forces to help crush the Bahrain uprising and worked hard to paint it as a sectarian movement inspired by Iran. That is also why the Wahhabi princes early on painted Iraqi politics as purely sectarian (they are sectarian but no more so than in most other Arab countries, and less than in some like Saudi Arabia for example). In doing so, and in sending their money and terrorists to commit mass murder in Iraq, they helped widen the Iraqi sectarian and political divide.

Even in the countries of North Africa, where the sectarian issue should be irrelevant, where there are few Shi’as and the population is mainly divided among Sunni Muslims and some recently converted to Wahhabism. In Egypt, now fully back under the Saudi sphere of influence, much of the political and religious classes occasionally tend to ignore their serious major problems and go sectarian: they profess that they are facing a Shi’a threat. That is the way to conform to this new Wahhabi Arab age. That same trend now extends west from Libya to Morocco.

Is this Wahhabi sectarianism spreading to Washington? Congressmen and senators and (mostly former) generals are eagerly taking sides. Will we soon hear senators discussing comparative Shi’a and Wahhabi theology like so many mullahs and shaikhs and imams?

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Al-Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, Jihadis, Syria, U.S. Foreign Policy

Middle East Focus: From Red Herrings and Axis of Evil to an Axis of Convenience………..


“There’s only one strategy with a decent chance of winning: forge a military and political coalition with the power to stifle the jihadis in both Iraq and Syria. This means partnering with Iran, Russia, and President Assad of Syria. This would be a very tricky arrangement among unfriendly and non-trusting partners, but the overriding point is that they all have common interests. All regard the jihadis as the overwhelming threat, and all would be willing to take tough joint action. And with this fighting arrangement in place, the “partners” could start seriously fixing the underlying political snake pits in Damascus and Baghdad. Now, don’t start firing rockets at me just yet. Hear me out. First, every state, even the United States, works with bad guys, adversaries and enemies whenever the need is great, whenever it suits reality. Don’t forget, Iran helped us protect the western border of Afghanistan for almost the first two years of America’s war effort there. Tehran didn’t like the Taliban and neither did we. The cooperation stopped when President George W. Bush threatened to overthrow the Ayatollah’s regime with his “axis of evil” speech………….”

That foolish “axis of evil” speech is already marked as one of the stupidest creations of the White House in the modern era. A soundbite that the media dutifully propagated. And it came just months after Wahhabi terrorists, all citizens of Arab countries allied with the Bush Administration, committed the worst act of terrorism in the United States history on September 11, 2001. It was as if the Neocons were using Iran and Iraq as a ‘red herring’ to distract from other ‘facts’ leading up to 9/11, facts that now stare us in the face from Syria through Iraq.

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Cheers

mhg

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Al-Qaeda, GCC, Iran, Iraq, Syria

Delusions about Syria and Iraq: Should Ignatius Stick to Writing Novels?………

      

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“Political cover for the campaign to co-opt the Sunnis and defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria could come from the Gulf Cooperation Council. This alliance of Gulf monarchies has sometimes been toothless in the past, but recently it has worked effectively to keep Yemen from splintering, and it can play a key role now, working in tandem with fellow monarch King Abdullah of Jordan. The GCC should call for an immediate summit with Iran to discuss the crisis in Syria and Iraq. At the same time (hopefully with Iranian acquiescence), it should call for a GCC or Arab League stabilization force to be deployed in Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. As the coalition broadens to include the United States (and hopefully Russia and China, whose anti-ISIS sentiments match America’s), this stabilization force can resemble the broad coalition that liberated Kuwait from Iraq in 1991, or the so-called “Arab Deterrent Force” that stabilized Lebanon after the worst years of its civil war in 1975 and ’76……………..”

FYI: that “Arab Deterrent Army” he refers to was the Syrian Army, which stayed in Lebanon until a few years ago. He should just call it by what it is: the Syrian Army of Hafez Al Assad.

I don’t know what kind of sense of humor David Ignatius has. But he is pushing to get the Saudis and Qataris and the Emiratis into Syria and Iraq ‘to keep order’, and with Iranian blessing. That is a no go, DOA. Imagine any Iraqi (or Syrian) government welcoming these clowns into its territory, after all they have done to destabilize their regimes and after sending and funding thousands of Jihadist terrorists to kill their civilians.

And here is why I mentioned the ‘sense of humor’: several of these regimes engage foreign mercenaries to maintain the internal security in their own countries (and repress their peoples). They can’t even form a reliable police force. How can one expect them to help pacify Iraq or Syria? Would they send their imported foreign mercenaries? And how would they fare in battle against the Wahhabi Jihadists and Hezbollah?

Would the Iranians accept a summit with the GCC over Syria and Iraq? Shouldn’t the Iraqis and Syrians be behind all this? The
Iranians will more likely prefer to discuss such matters with the
parties that really count, the United States, not some strutting
potentates.


I must agree that Ignatius certainly thinks outside the box here. But the best “thinking outside the box” is the work of fiction. Maybe he should stick to fiction as far as the Middle East is concerned. Didn’t he write some fiction a couple of years ago about Mr. Arbabsiar, the Texas Iranian who conspired with the Mexican Drug Cartels and Hezbollah and Colombians to blow up the not-so-important Saudi ambassador in Washington? I recall Ignatius was reassured that the plot was wider and spread all the way to the Persian Gulf. I recall that he was reassured of the extension of the plot by security officials of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. No LOL is needed on that last one.

Cheers
mhg

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Cyber Security, Cyber Wars, Internet, Iran

John Bolton’s Gift to Iran: the Chickenhawk and the Cyber Mullahs………

      

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“In Iran’s intelligence war against America, the regime has a new weapon: “John R. Bolton.” No, Iran has not turned President Bush’s former ambassador to the United Nations into a sleeper agent. Instead, hackers believed to be connected to the Tehran government are posing as Bolton on social media platforms in a scheme to get human rights activists and national security wonks to hand over their passwords and user names. The fake Bolton LinkedIn account provides a window into how Iran’s hackers are trying to penetrate the policy networks of their government’s adversaries. Most experts say Iran lacks the sophistication to launch the kinds of advanced cyber attacks it has suffered at the hands of the West, such as the Stuxnet worm……………..”

John Bolton is so far out to the extreme that the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected him when Bush (W) nominated him for U.N. ambassador. He was appointed for one year during a congressional recess, bypassing the Senate vote. 

He has been advocating more Muslim wars for some years now, from Iran to Syria and to other places. He has never met a Muslim war he has not loved, as long as he did not have to do the fighting (sort of like his stand on Vietnam?). A classic chickenhawk position. Now apparently the Iranian hackers have found a way to use this implacable enemy of their country. And possibly pay back for the cyber attacks their systems suffered from all the malware Western intelligence (and other) services invaded it with.

Cheers
mhg

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