The Schools Secretary forgets where he is

A delusion appears to have gripped the Schools Secretary Ed Balls that Britain is East Germany and he is head of the Stasi. First there was his bullying this morning of my fellow Spectator blogger Fraser Nelson, who was astounded to find Balls on the phone instructing him to take down his earlier post accusing Balls of lying about government debt -- and using yet another lie to claim it was not a lie. Now there’s this on ConservativeHome from Greg Hands, Tory MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, within whose constituency Balls and Gordon Brown descended upon a school today as part of the launch of the education White Paper. Hands relates:

As has become traditional with this Government - and contrary to the Commons Conventions and Courtesies - neither Brown nor Balls notified me of their visit. I found out from the Local Education Authority. When I arrived at the school 10 minutes early, waiting for me was a Ms Izzet from Ed Balls's office, who loudly announced, in front of an ITN camera crew, that I was ‘not invited’. This was a new first - not only not told of a ministerial visit to my constituency, I was actively disinvited.

The head Teacher of the excellent Fulham Cross School was being put in a very difficult position. Clearly, nobody had ever heard of a civil servant attempting to ban a Member of Parliament from a public facility in his own constituency. Realising that I wasn't moving, and in front of dozens of children eagerly awaiting the visit, Ms Izzet then tried to entice me to an office for ‘some refreshments’. She was trying anything to get me out of the way, in a way that is outrageous to a Member of Parliament in his own constituency. Ms Izzet told me that I hadn’t even myself visited the school, which was a lie, and that I would make the visit ‘political’ - which was a bit rich coming from a Balls adviser.

Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader of the Council arrived, and Ms Izzet was remarkably and improbably even more confrontational towards him, even though the School was Council property and the Council is the Local Education Authority. She then proceeded to try to dupe Stephen and me into believing that Brown and Balls were coming in by a different entrance, and there was even a decoy posse of security people to help do the job.

Extraordinary. This administration is out of control.

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Out of sight, Iran remains on the brink

The way in which Iran has disappeared from media view is, although predictable, still dismaying. With the exception of small flurries of interest over the seizure and release of British embassy staff and the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, the people’s revolution has pretty well dropped out of sight. This is for two main reasons, one shocking and the other just, well, dispiriting. The shocking one is that the ‘progressive’ western intelligentsia, who don’t stop hollering and stamping their feet and marching and petitioning and boycotting over the perceived crimes by America or Israel (‘torture’, settlements’, ‘rendition’, ‘checkpoints’, ‘warmongering’ ‘repression’) are mute over the brutal crackdown that has been going on in Iran these past three weeks, and totally indifferent to the desperate struggle for freedom that is being waged. Dispiriting because the western media think the story is over, the revolution has fizzled out, and there wasn’t even a leader or a cause to support anyway because Mousavi just represents more of the same old regime.

Well as far as I can see it has not stopped. Yes, there’s been a crackdown and the enormous demonstrations have stopped. But it is far from over. Protests are still going on and are still being put down with brutality, as these pictures taken two days ago show. Hundreds of people have either been killed or injured or taken into custody.  See here and here, for example.

As I have said over and over again, there are two uprisings going on. There’s Mousavi and the internal challenge to the regime amongst the clergy, who remain committed to the Islamic Revolution but differ about the details; and then there are the people being clubbed down on the streets, who want freedom and democracy.  Supporting them is surely a no-brainer. Their push for freedom might work -- in which case Iran would cease to be a mortal threat to the world. It if didn’t, the world would be no worse off.

The belief that supporting them would exacerbate the problem makes no sense. Who would it make hate us? The regime? They could not hate us more than they already do. Western governments are fearful that if they backed the protesters the regime would say the protests were being orchestrated by the west. But they have been saying precisely that from the get-go anyway . And just who do our fearful leaders think might be incited against the west by such claims? Those who back the regime are driven by deranged conspiracy theories about western influence anyway; and those who aren’t are the protesters, who are the last people to be taken in by such nonsense.

Then there’s the argument that support is pointless because the regime has won. Those who know the country say this is far from the case. There is now a power struggle going on amongst the ayatollahs and it is far from clear how this will end. According to Amir Taheri in today’s Times, this fight will have one of two outcomes: an end to the pretence of democracy, with the theocratic regime embedding itself as an ‘imamate’; or else an end to theocracy and its replacement by a true democracy. Taheri also suggests that as a result of the continuing protests even the fearsome security apparatus may be starting to splinter:

The regime has deployed 100,000 men from the paramilitary Basij to control Tehran and eight other major cities. But such a build-up cannot be sustained. There is the risk of the fighters siding with the protesters. Hussein Taleb, the commander-in- chief of the Basij, said yesterday that ‘large numbers of individuals dressed as members of the Basij’ have been arrested after they took part in protest marches. The Basij, mostly teenagers from the provinces, are vulnerable to ‘seduction’: people invite them into their homes, give them food and soft drinks, and ask them to swap sides. ‘Exposed to this kind of brainwashing, some might succumb to temptation,’ Taleb admits.

If the Basij disintegrates, the regime could play its trump card: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. However, the IRGC is also split, with an unknown portion of it sympathetic to the opposition. Worse still from the regime’s point of view, the IRGC if unleashed may be tempted to grab power for itself rather than protecting the mullahs. The unknown is the intention of the millions who remain angry at the regime. To judge by the continuing sporadic demonstrations, and chants of ‘Death to the dictator!’ shouted from rooftops, the genie appears unwilling to return to the bottle.

Desperate at the refusal by the west to support freedom against tyranny in Iran, the Iranian writer Amil Imani has now launched a petition. Reading it, I was struck by the list of actions Imani wants the west to take against the regime. Those who wring their hands and suggest that there is no alternative to war other than appeasement should read this list:

* Enforce the U.N. sanctions by inspecting every vessel headed for Iranian ports to make sure they are not ferrying prohibited material. Other than vessels known to be carrying foodstuff and medicine, each ship should be subjected to elaborate inspection.

* Establish an Iran Assistance Fund, from Iran’s frozen assets as well as contributions from peace-loving individuals and organizations, to assist Iranian families during the hardship that the sanctions may create.

* Persuade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and other Persian Gulf oil producers to significantly increase their output and drastically cut the price. It is what they must do to help forestall the emergence of a nuclear clerical Iran bent on ruling the region.

* Obtain court orders to freeze the overseas assets of Iranian leaders, since they are clearly ill-begotten funds that rightfully belong to the nation.

* Shut down, or severely restrict the operation of the Mullahs' businesses in Dubai and other Persian Gulf states.

* Reduce the staff or completely shut down Iranian missions. Severely restrict Iranian officials and nuclear scientists from foreign travel. Recall your ambassadors from Iran.

* Deny the Iranian airlines operation and encourage non-Iranian airlines to cease serving the country. Provide for flights that serve emergency medical and other health needs of the Iranians.

* File legal charges against the leaders of the Islamic Republic's wanton violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; for their crimes against humanity, genocidal actions against religious and political groups; for support of international terrorism; for demolition of religious sites and cemeteries; for rape, torture, and summary execution of prisoners of conscience; for forgery of documents, for acts of blackmail and fraud, and much more.

* Declare and treat the clerical regime as illegitimate.

* Stop or slow down Iran's import of refined petroleum products.

* Shut down the Islamic Republic's web sites and block their television and radio broadcasts.

* Locate and seize the regime's front organizations such as Alavi Foundation in New York City.

* Identify the agents of the Islamic Republic and prosecute them as promoters of international terrorism.

* Investigate individuals and organizations that lobby or front for the Islamic Republic.

* Take all necessary steps to stop investments in Iran. Persuade banks to refrain from dealing with Iran and the issuance of letters of credit.

* Pressure businesses to stop dealing with Iran.

* Pressure governments to stop doing business with Iran. Warn countries such as China and Russia against circumventing the U.N. resolution and engaging in commercial adventurism.

If America, Britain and Europe were serious about trying to stop the Iranian regime from getting the bomb, that’s precisely what they should have been doing. The fact that they have not shows they are not in the slightest bit serious about stopping it. So who can be surprised that they should have abandoned the Iranian people in their own struggle against this tyranny?

People say the crumbling of the Soviet Union is not comparable because the situation in the Muslim world is very different. So it is. But certain things are not so different – indeed, they are constant the world over. Such as the fact that the yearning for freedom is a human given and it is unstoppable. And the fact that appeasement of tyranny always leads to worse; and that if those who are fighting for freedom are properly supported, they have a much better chance of winning.

As the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has written:

If there hadn’t been dissidents in the Soviet Union, the Communist regime never would have crumbled. And if the West hadn't been concerned about their fate, Soviet leaders would have ruthlessly done away with them. They didn't because the Kremlin feared the response of the Free World. Just like the Soviet dissidents who resisted communism, those who dare to march through the streets of Tehran and stand up against the Islamic regime founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini 30 years ago represent the greatest hope for change in a country built on the repression of its people.

... This is no time for hesitation on the part of the West. If, as part of an attempt to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, the leaders of democratic nations turn their backs on the dissidents they will be making a terrible mistake. President Obama has said he refuses to ‘meddle’ in Iran's internal affairs, but this is a poor excuse for passivity. If the international community is not able to stop, or at least set limits on, the repressive violence of the Islamic regime, the protesters will end up as so many have in the past -- in exile, in prison, or in the cemetery. And with them, all hope for change will be gone.

One of the greatest explosions of the desire for freedom by a subject people in our time, and all the west did was to sit on its hands while making eyes at the oppressors.

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Quis custodiet ipsum Custodem?

Peter Preston, sometime editor of the Guardian (and my own editor there for some 16 years) now writes about the media for the Observer (owned by the Guardian). Unfortunately, he no longer appears to grasp what he himself has written, let alone the journalists he writes about. In today’s column he writes that I (amongst others) wrongly predicted that Ann Widdecombe would be elected Speaker of the Commons:

If political correspondents (and editorial writers) want to play tipster, maybe you should judge them by Ascot’s standards. So who got the young stallion that the Mail now calls ‘Mr Squeaker Bercow’ right? Not Melanie Phillips in the Mail itself. She napped Widdecombe Fair, who was also the Times’s ‘temporary solution’. The Guardian wanted, but didn’t quite get, Sir George Young. Wherever odds were set and quoted - pretty well everywhere - Margaret Beckett was clear favourite. You know what they’d say at Ascot as they ripped up their tickets in fury. How could so many experts get it so wrong? But this is politics, and, strangely, we don't even pause to wonder why they missed the winner.

But I wrote nothing of the sort. In my Daily Mail column, I wrote that I wanted Ann Widdecombe to be elected Speaker. I did not tip her to be thus elected. I referred to the previous front-runner, John Bercow, having been overtaken by a new front-runner, Margaret Beckett, which was the situation at that point. Furthermore, I ended my piece by expressing scepticism that MPs would elect Ann Widdecombe. I said it was 'her moment' as she was the one candidate who would save Parliament from itself:

But whether Parliament actually wants to be saved is another matter.

In other words, I wrote precisely the opposite of what Preston says I wrote.

What’s more, he himself refers to the Times and Guardian ‘wanting’ Ann Widdecombe and Sir George Young respectively to win – but nevertheless similarly implies that the Times and Guardian thus called the result wrongly. Which they did not. So what Preston wrote makes no sense at all.

Maybe the very sight of my name still in print causes a red mist to descend in front of Preston’s eyes. Or else he’s just a sloppy writer with no concern either for accuracy or sense.

Quis custodiet ipsum Custodem?*

 * Apologies for the rusty grammar!

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The third stage for Iranian totalitarianism?

Various people have been pointing out, as if they have only just realised it, that the leader of the Iranian revolt, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is one of the architects of the 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power and is thus a Khomeinist and not much of a reformer at all. They therefore conclude – just like Obama – that there’s nothing to choose between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad and so no-one should support the people on the streets. Some also say that it’s better that Ahmadinejad remains in power so that the full impact of the deranged and menacing nature of the regime is not obscured by a ‘reformer’ who would present a more emollient face to the world but would continue to prosecute the jihad with equal vigour.

There would indeed be a lot in that last argument – if the presence of the deranged Ahmadinejad was making world leaders get tough with Iran. But au contraire – as we can all see, the only effect of this patently extreme extremist has been to make world leaders grovel gibberingly before him; and the more extreme and terrifying he becomes, the more they grovel and seek to appease.

So much for that theory, then. As for the rest, I repeat what I said at the beginning of this eruption in Iran. Mousavi may be the leader of this revolt, but there is a vast difference between him and the people on the streets. He is merely an economic reformer who believes the election was stolen from him. From all I have read and heard, most of the people on the streets want an end to theocratic terror; they want freedom, democracy, the rule of law, human rights and an end to the fight with America and Israel. Mousavi doesn’t stand for those things. But Mousavi is the only opposition leader they’ve got.

Is there as a result a major incoherence and problem here? Yes, for sure. As I have said before, Mousavi is himself no friend to the free world. One of the myriad unanswerable questions at present about the Iran crisis is whether, under the pressure of the popular feeling that he has helped unleash, he would ever change into the kind of reformer that the people want  – ie renounce the theocratic regime he helped bring about, which seems on the face of it unlikely.  Another -- probably more pertinent and pressing -- question is whether, if Mousavi and his wife are taken out of play (silenced, jailed, murdered) the counter-revolution can possibly continue. All movements need leaders, and a leaderless Iranian populace will get nowhere. And at present there is no such alternative leader to be seen.

Another point which cannot be ignored is that, as the nightly rallying cries of ‘Allahu akhbar’ demonstrate, at least some of the protesters want to marry human rights with Islam -- which is, to say the least, uncomfortable. But if they want to do so, does it make any sense to discount their stand as worthless? Should we not be supporting them in this attempt? Don't we all hope against hope that somewhere, somehow, an Islamic reformatiion will finally come about?

For despite all these obvious and not inconsiderable caveats, the reason why these events have set alight the hopes of so many who are not reconciled to ‘living with’ a nuclear-armed, genocidal, jihadist Iran is the feeling that a tipping point has now been reached by those who are impelled by the instinct and yearning for freedom. Those who sneer that ‘the right side of history’ is unlikely to show itself in Iran any time soon should listen to someone who has been up close when history has turned – and when, just as today, so many were on the wrong side when it did. Natan Sharansky, who spent nine years in the Soviet gulag, writes in the Los Angeles Times that what is happening now in Iran is what happens to all totalitarian regimes. They collapse. It is not a quick process, and it has distinct stages, which he is well placed to recognise:

Every totalitarian society consists of three groups: true believers, double-thinkers and dissidents. In every totalitarian regime, no matter its cultural or geographical circumstances, the majority undergo a conversion over time from true belief in the revolutionary message into double-thinking. They no longer believe in the regime but are too scared to say so. Then there are the dissidents -- pioneers who dare to cross the line between double-thinking and everything that lies on the other side. In doing so, they first internalize, then articulate and finally act on the innermost feelings of the nation.

People in free societies watching massive military parades or vociferous displays of love for the leaders of totalitarian regimes often conclude, ‘Well, that's their mentality; there’s nothing we can do about it.’ Thus they and their leaders miss what is readily grasped by local dissidents attuned to what is happening on the ground: the spectacle of a nation of double-thinkers slowly or rapidly approaching a condition of open dissent.

To see the telltale signs, sometimes it helps to have experienced totalitarianism firsthand. More than once in recent years, former Soviet citizens returning from a visit to Iran have told me how much Iranian society reminded them of the final stages of Soviet communism. Their testimony was what persuaded me to write almost five years ago that Iran was extraordinary for the speed with which, in the span of a single generation, a citizenry had made the transition from true belief in the revolutionary promise into disaffection and double-thinking. Could dissent be far behind?

... With all their sympathy for peoples striving for freedom, Western governments are fearful of imperiling actual or hoped-for relations with the world's ayatollahs, generals, general secretaries and other types of dictators -- partners, so it is thought, in maintaining political stability. But this is a fallacy. Democracy’s allies in the struggle for peace and security are the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran who, with consummate bravery, have crossed the line between the world of double-think and the world of free men and women. Listen to them, and you will hear nothing more, and nothing less, than what you yourself know to be the true hope of every human being on Earth.

I have been listening to Iranians who have an unshakeable conviction that this revolt will not die but will continue to escalate. The big street demonstrations, they say, will probably not continue because of the successful tactics of the fearsome basiji and the Revolutionary Guards; the basiji in particular, who comprise a staggering 1.5 million people and are in every province of the country, have been organising and training for years for the precise purpose of putting down an internal uprising against the regime. But the uprising may simply go underground and take other forms such as strikes and other types of civil disobedience. The people won’t stop now, they say, until the regime has been removed.

In the Los Angeles times, John Bolton says that notwithstanding the internal incoherence and mixed motives, the people want regime change and so should we:

Of course, these various sources of discontent are not entirely reinforcing, and are sometimes in conflict, which indicates how difficult it is for a purely internal Iranian opposition to coalesce. Had the U.S. and others over the last 30 years done more to help Iranian dissidents, overtly and covertly, we might be in a different place today. The question is whether we are prepared to do now what we should have been doing for some time.

To date at least, the Obama administration's answer remains a resounding no. Obama wants negotiations with Tehran, not regime change. Given that the Revolutionary Guard and the hard-line mullahs -- and not the people -- are increasingly likely to be the short-term winners of the current Battle for Iran, supporters of regime change must now make longer-term plans.

We have missed a huge opportunity because of Obama's error (and that of his predecessors), but the continuing threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and support for international terrorism make the imperative of regime change no less compelling. The Iranian people will continue their opposition no matter how inconvenient it is for Obama’s hoped-for negotiations. We should support them, and not just by rhetoric.

Alas, the one place where the Americans voted for regime change was the White House. Now, in Obama’s abandonment of freedom and democracy, they have apparently got what they wanted.

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On the wrong side of history

The official death toll is still being generally given as 17, but it would seem that dozens may have been killed in the awful crackdown in Iran. CNN has received unconfirmed reports of 150 deaths. It has also been reported that 70 professors have disappeared. Yesterday, it appears the demonstrators were clubbed down in Tehran’s Baharestan Square by security thugs carrying knives and batons. Opposition activists and international journalists are being rounded up. See this CNN article, and  this, and this graphic account with footage on Revolutionary Road. See also this story in today’s Guardian about the appalling treatment meted out to the grieving family of Neda Agha Soltan, whose bloodied face after she was killed earlier this week has become an iconic image of these protests; her family have been forced out of their house, the police did not hand her body back to them, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques.

This is the regime before which Obama has been grovelling. We have learned from the Washington Times (whose reporter is apparently being thrown out of Iran) that before the disputed Iranian election, Obama sent a letter to supreme Leader Khamanei, holding out the prospect of ‘cooperation in regional and bilateral relations’ and a resolution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. Surprise surprise – the outcome of this craven display of weakness was mockery of the US by Khamanei.

Now the Obama administration has got really tough! It has cancelled its invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebration parties  -- the very parties that only the day before, in his pathetically feeble press conference, Obama said that the ‘Iranians will have to decide whether they want to attend’. The Iranians must indeed be quaking now. It would be laughable were it not so serious that such a clown is in the White House, and at such a time.

In Forbes, Anne Bayefsky rips into Obama. At that press conference, he was asked

‘Shouldn’t the present regime know that there are consequences?’ He answered: ‘We don't yet know how this is going to play out.’ This is a man who embodies the opposite of the courage to act. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at his press conference that ‘the Iranian people … aren’t paying a lot of attention to what's being said … here.’ On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here--as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense. The president’s storyline that we don't know what has transpired in Iran is an insult to the intelligence of both Americans and Iranians.

Instead of denouncing the fake election, President Obama now tells Iranians who are dying for the real thing ‘the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’ Whose sovereignty is that? The Hobbesian sovereign thugs running the place? Sovereignty to do what? To deny rights and freedoms to their own people? In a state so bereft of minimal protections for human dignity, why should the sovereignty of such a government be paramount?

As Obama said at the press conference:

Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

He hasn’t. He is not. That 3am call to which Hillary so memorably referred during her doomed election campaign has now rung off the hook.

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So where's the boycott call?

Another essential piece by the indispensable Khaled abu Toameh reveals how the Palestinians are committing ‘massive’ abuses of human rights and intimidation of journalists seeking to investigate those abuses – behaviour which is being totally ignored by western media who hang the Israelis out to dry on any pretext. He reports how a Palestinian TV crew was stopped recently at a Palestinian checkpoint in the West Bank – yes, you read that right – where Palestinian soldiers confiscated and erased their tape. The crew had been preparing a report on the death of a detainee at the Palestinian Authority detention center in Hebron that might have been the result of torture. He writes:

One can only imagine the international media's reaction had the TV crew been detained by Israeli security forces. Anti-Israel groups and individuals would have cited the incident as further proof of the ‘occupation’s brutal measures’ against the freedom of the media. Moreover, it is highly likely that Israeli human rights organizations like Betselem would have dispatched researchers to the field to investigate the incident had IDF soldiers been involved.

 Yet foreign journalists and human rights activists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories either chose to ignore the story or never heard about it simply because it was lacking in an anti-Israel angle. One can also imagine how the media and human rights organizations would have reacted had a Palestinian died in Israeli prison after allegedly being tortured.

One can.

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The Iran crisis moves closer to home

There is chatter in some quarters that the Iranian ‘green revolution' may be petering out. Well, it depends whom you’re reading.

The Iran expert Michael Ledeen says he has no idea what’s going to happen. But there are signs that the regime is preparing for an all-out assault; and that they are panicking and the ayatollahs are at odds amongst themselves; and that, most interestingly of all, this:

...that there are cracks in the regime’s edifice, ranging from declarations of small groups of Revolutionary Guards calling on their brothers to defect to “the people,” to a phenomenon that is just beginning to be discussed here and there, mostly on the Net but originally in an Arab newspaper.  Steve Schippert posted on it and did a first-class analysis.  Steve starts with a report from al Arabiya that says senior ayatollahs have been meeting secretly in Qom to discuss significant changes in the structure of the Iranian state.  In addition to the Iranian clerics, there was a foreigner:  Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.

If this is true, it is, as Steve says, huge.  Because it means that senior religious leaders in Iran are talking to the representative of an Iraqi Imam who believes, as most Shi’ites did before Khomeini’s heresy, that the proper role of religious leaders is to guide their people from the mosque, not from the political capital.  In other words, they are talking about the most serious form of regime change.

As Ledeen also says, however, the protesters know they are on their own facing the thugs of the basiji. Despite Obama’s belated condemnation today of the brutality being meted out, his remarks were far too little, far too late and still far too inadequate. As Mladen Andrijasevic notes, his strategy of engaging the regime remains, regardless of how many protesters have been killed, tortured or jailed -- and will remain, it would appear, even if worse happens in the days to come. And as Joseph Ashby devastatingly notes :

Obama believes, on some significant level, the propaganda promoted by America's enemies that the United States is the main instigator and perpetrator of international unrest. So shockingly, amazingly, unbelievably, Obama is saying that Iran may very well use America as a propaganda tool, but at least this time they won't be right.

What a disgrace that this man is leader of the free world; and at such a point in history. If he had put America stoutly behind the protesters and championed them against the regime, by now they might have toppled it. There are signs today that even the fawning American media is appalled.

In a standfirst to an article by Joshua Muravchik observing that the Iran debacle confirms that Obama has totally abandoned the long-standing American objective to promote human rights and democracy, Commentary has this to say:

Iranian exiles in the U.S. are receiving calls from back home asking why President Obama has ‘given Khamenei the green light’ to crack down on the election protestors. To conspiracy-minded Middle Easterners, that is the obvious meaning of Obama’s equivocal response to the Iranian nation’s sudden and unexpected reach for freedom. How to explain that this interpretation is implausible? That the more likely reason for Obama’s behavior is that he is imprisoned in the ideology of loving your enemies and hating George W. Bush?

Whatever the reason, Obama’s failure may destroy his presidency. His betrayal of democracy and human rights through a series of pronouncements and small actions during his first months in office had been correctable until now. But the thousand daily decisions that usually make up policy are eclipsed by big-bang moments such as we are now witnessing. Failure to use the bully pulpit to give the Iranian people as much support as possible is morally reprehensible and a strategical blunder for which he will not be forgiven.

Ledeen also says this: that there are

...reliable accounts that Khamenei has left Tehran for a mountain retreat, and has given orders to his people to go all-out in the coming days, not only against the dissidents in Iran, but also against any and all American, British, French and German targets.

Today, the crisis between Britain and Iran has developed apace with the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats and the burning of the UK and US flags outside the British embassy in Tehran (protester pictured above). As we know, Britain has been singled out for special vilification on the grounds that it has done most to foment the revolt, although America also stands accused -- if only of storming the Branch Davidians' compound to end the Waco siege, which apparent crime against 'human rights' by the Clinton administration seems to loom very large in the Supreme Leader's supremely bizarre mind.

The question is why Britain has been thus singled out.  It may sound strange – indeed, it is strange, but there’s none so deranged as an Iranian Islamist; just look at  Khamanei’s ravings the other day – but as John Burns correctly pointed out in the New York Times there is a long if baffling history of Iranian paranoia about the unique evil of British imperialism. There is a deep belief in Iran that Britain is the true puppet-master manipulating everything behind the scenes. You can hear it when Ahmadinejad rants about how Britain was responsible for the creation of Israel through the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (as if!) for which he clearly holds all subsequent British governments responsible, including the current one, and for which he has repeatedly said Britain must be punished.

Nevertheless, people are scratching their heads about the fight that Iran has picked with Britain. This is an awful thought, and hopefully off the wall -- but might it be because Britain is where the most radicalised Islamic community in Europe contains the most significant number of Hezbollah sleepers waiting for the signal to attack?

I hope I’m wrong, and that it’s all just because the BBC Iran service has upset them instead.

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Obama Derangement Syndrome strikes London's Mayor

A remarkably silly article by London Mayor Boris Johnson in this morning’s Telegraph suggests that Obama Derangement Syndrome has now spread to City Hall. Noting that the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei has blamed Britain in particular for fomenting the Iranian protests, Boris ululates:

There is a good reason why the ayatollah bashed Britain with such singular ferocity, and it is to do with the Iranians’ changing view of America. We have been co-opted to play the role of Great Satan, because America is now led by Barack Obama, or Barack Hussein Obama, as Fox News always calls him, and it is obvious that the mullahs don’t know quite how to handle him.

Obama’s intelligent speech in Cairo has had a big impact in the Muslim world, and it is obvious that it is his presence in the White House -- far more than any BBC broadcast -- that is giving hope to the demonstrators in Tehran... Barack Obama has shown the Iranian bourgeoisie that America is willing to engage, to treat their country with respect, and it is that sudden hope - of a new role and status for Iran -- that is driving the protesters to see if they can be rid of their crazy regime.

Obama is thus credited with inspiring both the regime and those who want to bring it down. Truly the One has miraculous properties in Boris’s eyes.

So let’s get this clear. The Iranian protesters are trying to bring down the regime. According to Boris, they have been emboldened to come onto the streets by Obama’s hand of friendship to... the regime. Obama has repeatedly made it crystal clear to the regime that he will not act against it, will not bring it down but will ‘engage’ with it. By extending the hand of friendship to it, and thus strengthening it against its opponents both within and without, he has somehow motivated the Iranians to protest.

Astounding!

Moreover, it is Obama’s oratory in Cairo which is supposed to have brought the protesters out on the streets of Iran - but which, according to Boris, has made the regime less disposed to bash America.

Logical!

Obama abandoned the protesters by refusing to back them against the regime on the grounds that he was too frightened to be seen to take sides. So just who was he worried might be driven to shout 'Death to America' if he backed the protesters? Would this perhaps have been the hundreds of thousands who were shouting 'Death to the dictators?' His position only altered a little in the last couple of days after such a craven spectacle produced astonishment, anger and scorn, not least among the protesters. Not for Oboris, it seems, for whom this was doubtless merely further proof of the One’s powers of giving succour to the good and undermining the bad by doing the precise opposite.

Miraculous!

And apparently Obama has ensured that the Iranian regime now believes the CIA have absolutely nothing to do with the unrest in Iran, which is entirely down to the British Secret Service and the BBC. Because of the healing properties of that Cairo speech, the regime thinks that every CIA infiltrator and instigator has now been recalled from Iran to Langley.

Masterly!

Here’s what the opposition in Iran actually appear to think of Obama. Iran expert Michael Ledeen has published a statement in the form of a letter to Obama, apparently from opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi’s office - this cannot be authenticated, says Ledeen, but it undoubtedly reflects opinion amongst Mousavi’s supporters. The letter takes the President to task for having said that Mousavi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad were ‘two of a kind.’

‘...we consider this as a grave and deep insult, not just to Mr. Mousavi but especially against the judgment of the Iranian people, against our moral conviction and intelligence, especially those of the young generation that comprises a population of 31 million. It is a specially grave insult for those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom, and an unwarranted gift and even praise for [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose security forces are now killing peaceful Iranians in the streets of every major city in the country.

Your statement misled the people of the world. It was no doubt inspired by your hope for dialogue with this regime, but you cannot possibly believe in promises from a regime that lies to its own people and then kills them when they demand the promises be kept. By such statements, your administration and you discourage the Iranian people, who believe and trust in the values of democracy and freedom. We are pleased to see that you have condemned the regime’s murderous violence, and we look forward to stronger support for the rightful struggle of the Iranian people against the actions of a regime that is your enemy as well as ours.'

Silly opposition leaders! Can’t they see what is so clear to Boris in ODS-struck London, that by failing to support the protesters Obama is actually supporting them and the regime -- and thus bringing peace on earth so much nearer?

NB: The picture above shows a detail from ' Religion' by Charles Sprague Pearce (1896).

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Who needs evidence when we already know the verdict ?

Weighing into the controversy over the British government's decision to hold the inquiry into the Iraq war in private, the LibDem leader Nick Clegg says:

If the inquiry is to have any legitimacy, the prime architect of the decision to go to war in Iraq alongside George Bush should give his evidence in public under oath. I think anything less will make people feel this is just a grand cover-up for, after all, what was the biggest foreign policy mistake this country has made since Suez.

The people demanding this inquiry already know what its conclusion must be. It is that we were ‘taken to war on a lie’ and that the whole British involvement in Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish: unnecessary, illegal, mendacious and catastrophic. There can be no deviation from this conclusion. A show trial is required so that the guilty man, T Blair, can be strung up along with the corrupted spooks, law officers and spin merchants who supinely did his bidding in perpetrating this monstrous crime against the people.

Personally, I do not believe the Iraq war was illegal; I do not believe it was unnecessary; I do not believe we were ’taken to war on a lie’. I do believe it was very badly handled by both America and Britain. If there is to be an inquiry, it makes no sense to hold it in secret. The point is there is no need for an inquiry. We have had several already. The only demand for this one is coming from those who are furious that all the previous ones have failed to come up with the correct conclusion and are determined to have an inquiry that does. It is behaviour which – what’s that maxim they chant over detention of suspects and every other measure taken to protect our security? – ‘undermines the very values we are supposed to be defending’.

It is all the more striking that such attention is being focused upon events in 2003 while all but ignoring the tumultuous events going on now on the streets of Iran. An estimated ten dead yesterday; a population fighting for freedom and not backing down even under the sticks and bullets of the regime’s thugs and the boiling water from water cannon; a protest that started over a rigged election but is now an open confrontation with the regime and its Supreme Leader; a regime that is split and undecided and may well fall; an opposition leader who is just as much of a threat to the west but who is being swept along by quite different popular passions that he may not be able to control; the possibility of a counter-revolution in a country that right now is behind virtually every serious threat to the free world and is about to go nuclear.

Yet it is the inquiry into the Iraq war which is today consuming the progressive classes in Britain, who are giving Iran barely a second glance. The deep yearning for freedom in the Middle East is just so embarrassing, isn’t it. As for Iran posing any threat to us, well that’s just another lie, isn’t it, just like over Iraq. We know this without any doubt. We know that all claims of threats to us from that part of the world are a lie. So while the people of Iran are dying on the streets for freedom, we’ll fearlessly take to the keyboards and TV studios until we get an inquiry to prove it.

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The encounter of truth with prejudice

Ex-US President Jimmy Carter is a prominent enemy of Israel, whose history of action as President and subsequent writings have consistently displayed a deep animus matched only by a staggering level of ignorance. So this report in the Jerusalem Post of his visit a few days ago to the heart of the dreaded Israeli settlements, Gush Etzion, is fascinating – and poignant:

...A casual browsing of the Carter Center Web site reveals that as recently as 2007 Carter gave an address at Brandeis University in which he demonstrated extreme and total ignorance about the geography, demographics and even traffic patterns of the area, when he said about Judea and Samaria, ‘...their choice hilltops, vital water resources and productive land have been occupied, confiscated and then colonized by Israeli settlers. Like a spider web, the connecting roads that join more than 200 settlements in the West Bank, often for the exclusive use of Israelis, Palestinians are not permitted to get on those roads... This divides this area into small bantustans, isolated cantonments.’

Anyone who has traveled through Judea and Samaria would be astonished at those words. The roads are replete with both Jewish and Palestinian vehicles, and it is the Jewish communities - settled on barren land - that are isolated. In addition, there is abundant Palestinian land outside of the Jewish communities which is richly cultivated, and kilometers of land that lie fallow.

...In the end, Carter came, and in addition to local officials, met with victims of Palestinian terror, like Sherri Mandell, whose son Koby, 13, was murdered in a cave near Tekoa, and Ruth Gillis, whose husband Shmuel, a hematologist from Hadassah University Medical Center, was shot dead on the road from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion. Goldstein spoke passionately about the history and roots of Gush Etzion.

At the end of his visit, Carter declared to TV cameras, ‘I think I've done more listening than talking this afternoon... This particular settlement area is not one that I envision ever being abandoned... this is part of the settlements close to the 1967 line that I think will be here forever.’ Goldstein said, ‘He said he saw things here that he never saw before. He was never here before.’

Aye, there's the rub. He (like many others) was never here before.

And will the experience cause Carter to stop promulgating his falsehoods about Israel which have done so much to promote hatred and strife? Can someone who has been so thoroughly inculcated with Palestinian propaganda ever renounce falsehood for the truth? He went off to pay a visit to Hamas after his encounter in Gush Etzion. I'm not holding my breath. But who knows? Sometimes the still small voice of conscience wakes.

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