Obama administration continues to hound journalist to reveal sources

US prosecutors have appealed a federal district court decision to limit the scope of a journalist’s testimony in the trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information. Last week the case against New York Times reporter James Risen was taken to the appeals court after lower courts defended his right not to name a source. Risen was originally subpoenaed to give evidence in 2008. The Justice Department were asking Risen to give up his sources for a chapter of his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” Risen refused citing a commitment to confidentiality.

Risen and a colleague won a Pulitzer for a December 2005 article in the New York Times that exposed the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program. His book State of War was written a year later and it included explosive revelations about illegal actions taken by President Bush, including the domestic wiretapping program. It also disclosed how Bush secretly pressured the CIA to use torture on detainees in secret prisons, how the White House ignored information that showed Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and how the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to Saudi involvement in terrorism.

The chapter that got him into trouble is about the CIA’s efforts to disrupt the Iranian program. The CIA sent a defected Russian scientist to Vienna to give nuclear bomb plans to an Iranian official on the pretext he would provide further assistance in exchange for cash. The CIA deliberately inserted a technical flaw in the designs but the Russian scientist spotted it and told the Iranians. In his book, Risen said the ploy was reckless and may have had exactly the opposite effect than intended. The Bush administration subpoenaed Risen to reveal his source in January 2008. Risen successfully fought the subpoena which lapsed 18 months later. But in April 2010, the New York Times reported the Obama administration was still seeking to compel Risen to testify.

In the meantime US authorities’ suspicions about the identity of the leaker fixed on Jeffrey Sterling. Sterling was a former CIA officer trained to recruit Iranians to work for the CIA in the 1990s. Sterling, who is black, was sacked in 2002 and he claimed racial discrimination. However a court upheld the sacking saying litigation would require the disclosure of highly classified information. Between 2002 and 2004, the FBI claimed it tracked email traffic between Risen and Sterling. Sterling was arrested in January on charges he illegally disclosed national defence information and obstructed justice, but there was no mention of Risen in the warrant.

In July this year, a federal judge ruled Risen did not have to testify in the Sterling case saying prosecutors had not demonstrated his testimony was critical. District Court judge Leonie Brinkema said Risen’s testimony was not necessary because court records say an unidentified former intelligence official has testified that Risen told him Sterling was the source. Prosecutors argued the official's testimony would be inadmissible hearsay, but Brinkema ruled it would not be because statements that tend to prove an individual's guilt may not be hearsay. Brinkema's order restricted Risen's testimony to matters of his authorship and the accuracy of the book.

But now prosecutors have appeal Brinkema’s decision to the US Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia further delaying Sterling’s trial which was due to start yesterday. Prosecutors cited a 1972 US Supreme Court decision Branzburg v Hayes which ruled 5-4 reporters have no First Amendment right to refuse to answer all questions before grand juries if they witnessed criminal activity. However in the years following Branzburg, federal courts nationwide interpreted the “limited nature” of case to give journalists qualified privilege to balance their right to protect the sources against the government’s need for the information.

Reporters Without Borders has urged the Obama administration to withdraw the appeal. “We remind the Obama administration that its role is not to determine what is good coverage of national security issues,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Jeffrey Sterling’s trial has now been suspended indefinitely. Forcing Risen to testify is an attempt to muzzle every journalist who might publish leaked information. It is an attempt to decide what should and should not be in the press.” They had a statement from Risen which said he would press on. “I believe that this case is a fundamental battle over freedom of the press in the United States,” Risen said. “If I don’t fight, the government will go after other journalists.”

Wikileaks cable reveals Syria's price for US support

Syrian is ready to cooperate with America again over Iraq but only at a price and flatly refuses to link an Israeli deal with Iran’s nuclear capability. These are the key messages revealed in one of the top secret cables published by Wikileaks this weekend. The cable “10Damascus8, Codel Gregg’s December 30 meeting with President” discusses “a frank one hour meeting” between Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad and six visiting US Senators Judd Gregg, Evan Bayh, Arlen Specter, Mike Enzi, John Cornyn and Amy Klobuchar on 30 December 2009. (Photo credit not known, sourced here)

Asad began the talks by saying he wanted a return of Turkish-facilitated indirect talks with Israel but said Syria's relationship with Iran should not be linked to Israeli peace negotiations. Syria's ties with Hamas and Hezbollah could be “satisfactorily resolved” only after peace was achieved. Asad said he wanted to see better relationships with the US but his foreign minister Walid al-Muallim said the ball was in the Americans’ court for taking the next positive step.

Asad called Iran the region’s most important country and said the West should acknowledged Iran's NPT-protected right to enrich uranium under IAEA monitoring. Instead of insisting Iran ship all of its Low Enriched Uranium at once as the West demands, Asad said Iran’s counter-offer to ship several batches of LEU for enrichment abroad was "reasonable". Asad said Iran was not interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon, but warned an Israeli military strike on its nuclear infrastructure would fail to end the program and would only increase Iran's determination.

Asad also refused to link Iran’s nuclear program with Israeli talks, arguing it would complicate both issues. Asad said eight months of indirect peace talks in May 2008 with Israel under Turkish auspices had achieved more than several years of direct negotiations with Israel in the 1990s. Direct talks failed because of the lack of "rules of negotiation." He said indirect talks represented the best way to establish terms of reference similar to those reached by James Baker in 1991. Asad urged the US and EU to support the Turkish initiative. “Israel's military superiority would not secure it from attack against missiles and other technologies,” he said.

Asad then bristled at suggestions Syria was allowing extremists across its borders into Iraq. Asad blamed the situation on the absence of political cooperation with the US. The Americans possessed a "huge information apparatus" but lacked the ability to analyse this information successfully. "You're failing in the fight against extremism,” he told the Senators. “While we lack your intelligence capabilities, we succeed in fighting extremists because we have better analysts.”

Asad said Syria had refused to cooperate with President Bush because it did not trust him and because his administration had wrongly accused Syria of supporting foreign fighters. When President Obama assumed office, Syria tried to be positive. Asad said he had shared the idea with Special Envoy Mitchell of a border security cooperation initiative with Iraq as a first step (the CIA analyst disputed this saying it was an American suggestion to which Syria reluctantly agreed).

Asad also compared the difficulty of patrolling the large Iraqi border with similar issues on US-Mexico border. "In the US you like to shoot (terrorists),” he said. “Suffocating their networks is far more effective.” Asad blamed “US mistakes in Iraq" for trouble in the region. The report said despite a shared interest with the US in ensuring Iraqi stability, Syria would not immediately jump to intelligence cooperation without ensuring its own interests would be respected. "I won't give it (intelligence cooperation) to you for free," Asad told the Senators.

The Senators had two other agenda items they wanted Syria to address: to facilitate the release of three detained Americans in Iran, and re-open the Damascus Community School. Asad said he was unfamiliar with the detained Americans issue but was “ready” to reopen the school after he shut it down in response to a US military attack in 2008 that killed seven Syrian civilians.

The cable went into a great more detail of the discussions than was revealed by Senator Specter’s account of the CODEL in the February congressional record. While Specter mentioned the Turkish solution and the "decoupling" of Iran he made no mention of the LEU offer or what Asad requested of the US in exchange for intelligence support.

The report is one of 15,000 Top Secret classified documents released by Wikileaks on the weekend. On Sunday they began the painstaking task of publishing over a quarter of a million leaked US embassy cables. The cables date from 1966 to February 2010 and contain confidential communications between the State Department and 274 embassies in countries throughout the world.

Iran on the verge of a nervous breakdown

Iran has entered a new and dangerous period as opposition protests escalate and the Government reacts with a fierce crackdown. No-one can say with any certainty what will happen next. As Richard Silverstein says in Al Jazeera, Iran could either be at the stage of Eastern Europe just before the Berlin Wall fell or just as likely, as China was before the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Silverstein takes the China comparison further and says the death earlier this month of Ayatollah Montazeri is equivalent to the death of Chinese reformer Hu Yaobang that unleashed the Tiananmen protests. While end result of Yaobang’s death was unsuccessful, Silverstein sees hope in Iran’s more fragmented and chaotic leadership. “I doubt there is a unified Iranian command that can overwhelm the opposition in much the same way the Chinese government did after the massacre,” he said.

But there is little doubt that the Iranian Government is cracking down hard on the second round of protests since the disputed 12 June re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir Hossein Mousavi. Yesterday it issued an ominous warning that "Trying to overthrow the system will reach nowhere ... designers of the unrest will soon pay the cost of their insolence." They are also facing down foreign critics. Foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, threatened Britain with "a slap in the mouth” for encouraging the latest round of protests.

While no-one know what exactly Mottaki meant by this sabre-rattling, what is more certain is the Iranian regime that has been on the receiving end of several slaps lately. The country had been relatively peaceful for months after the traumatic events that saw hundreds killed in post-election riots. But protests have been on the rise again since the 87-year-old Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali-Montazeri died earlier this month sparking massive wide-spread demonstrations. Montazeri was a former leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who Khomeini was grooming to replace him as Supreme Leader. He fell out of favour in 1989 after he called for a more open political system. He was demoted after Khomeini died and later held under house arrest for four years. But he remained a thorn in the side of the theocracy right up to his death on 19 December. Two days later thousands attended his funeral in Qom with reports of clashes between supporters and security forces for three days afterwards.

Protesters ignored the bans on further protests until the Government used the climax of Ashura, Shia’s holiest festival, to strike a decisive blow. Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali, who was killed in battle by the sovereign Yazid. The symbolism of the day and the Iranian Government’s reaction has not been lost on protesters. Burnt-out cars, motorbikes and other debris littered the streets of Tehran after the rioting. Hundreds were arrested and at least 15 people were killed by authorities.

One of those who died on Sunday was Mir Hussein Mousavi’s 43-year-old nephew Seyed Ali Mousavi. According to one account a 4WD vehicle smashed through a crowd near his home and five occupants got out. One approached Mousavi and shot him in his chest. The men then sped away. Mousavi died before reaching hospital. Government authorities removed his body from the hospital without explanation and without a family burial.

Meanwhile dozens of key opposition figures were arrested during the crackdown. Among those detained were three of Mir Hussein Mousavi’s top aides, two advisers to the reformist former President Mohammad Khatami, and the human rights campaigner Emadeddin Baghi. Also arrested was Opposition leader Ebrahim Yazdi. Yazdi was secretary general of the outlawed but tolerated Iran Freedom Movement and served as foreign minister at the start of the Islamic revolution. A neighbour told his American-based son Youseph Yazdi he was arrested at his home at 3am on Monday. Also arrested was Nooshin Ebadi the sister of Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. Ebadi said her sister, a professor of medicine, had not been involved in any social, human rights and political activities.

Ahmadinejad theatrically blamed the US and Israel for the troubles his own election created. "Americans and Zionists are the sole audience of a play they have commissioned and sold out,” he said. “A nauseating play is performed.” But Ahmadinejad is orchestrating his own nauseating performance. Iranian authorities have urged its own supporters to take to the streets in a show of force against the opposition which it called "pawns of the enemies." It has called for a counter-demonstration “against those who have not respected the values of Ashura”.

Writing in The Drum, Iranian expatriate journalist Arash Falasiri says the major difference between the earlier protests and the current ones is that the focus of anger has openly shifted from Ahmadinejad to the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He says that while the main slogan in the first two weeks after the election was "Where is my vote", it has now been changed to "Death to Khamenei". But Khamenei could yet unleash much death of his own before he is forced to stand aside. Iran successfully tested a medium-range missile earlier this month. And now Israel has announced it believes Iran will have nuclear capability by early 2010. Dangerous times lie ahead before the world can tell if it has another Berlin Wall on its hands or just blood.

Media140: Twitter and the Iranian election

A new study of Twitter in the Iranian elections has found that that the use of the social network was greatly exaggerated inside the country. British writer Charles Leadbeater and his team found there were less than 20,000 twitterers with an Iranian address and many of these included foreigners who changed their location to “Tehran” in sympathy with the protesters. The report also found only one third of Iranians have internet access skewed towards the younger and urban opposition supporters. According to Valleywag such a tiny proportion of Iranians on Twitter means any stories about a new movement based on the social network are meaningless.

Yet it is also true to say the 2009 Iranian election was one of the most important moments for Twitter in its short life. NYU Professor Clay Shirky called it “the big one” and the first revolution catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. Leadbeater’s findings appear to dispute the transformation part of Shirky’s statement but the global impact is accurate enough. The US State Department deemed it to be so important, it twisted Twitter’s arm to delay a critical network upgrade in June so it wouldn’t cut daytime services to Iranian disputing the election result.

Introducing the third panel of the media140 conference in Sydney last Thursday, ABC’s Fran Kelly called the election a “watershed moment” for social media. The session was entitled “social media lessons from the Iranian uprising” and featured ABC’s Mark Colvin, Al Jazeera’s head of social media Riyaad Minty, UTS lecturer Tony Maniaty, SBS News Director Paul Cutler and University of Wollongong’s Dr Jason Wilson.

Mark Colvin kicked off the discussion. Colvin was an ABC foreign correspondent and in Iran at the time of the original Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. He said the slogans on the street “Marg Bar Amrika” (Death to America) have now been changed to “Marh Bar Diktator” (Death to the dictator) as protesters turned against their own government.

Colvin said Iran’s so-called Twitter revolution began abroad. Americans angry will the lack of coverage of unfolding events after the disputed election began posting comments using the hashtag #cnnfail. The 24 hour broadcaster had pushed out the official Iranian line that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election but failed to report on the disputed fairness of the ballot. Iranian authorities expelled the reporters of other broadcasters, such as the BBC for daring to cover the growing unrest on the streets of Tehran. Colvin said that cnnfail became a symbol for what was wrong with old media and Twitter began to take centre stage as people sought out alternative sources of information.

There were a lot of people purporting to give eye-witness accounts. Colvin used his knowledge of Iranian and journalistic nous to verify what was trustworthy and what wasn’t. In Australia and elsewhere he quickly became acknowledged as an expert on the topic. However, he acknowledges “Twitter didn’t really achieve much at all inside Iran.” The Social media buzz gave the protesters a sense that their protest was worth persisting with but it also helped spread rumours, false pictures and inflated protest tallies. Colvin said the revolution was defeated but there were two unexpected benefits: it made the people of Iran human in western eyes and it helped Iranians see that they were not alone. “The pretence [of religious rule] has been stripped away, and part of what did that was created by Twitter, social media, and the world wide web,” he concluded.

Jason Wilson also believes the revolution said more about Twitter than it did about Iran. Wilson said it was amazing to watch how people in Australia and elsewhere discussed the issue and invested emotionally in it, through the medium of Twitter. Wilson said it was an “intense” experience unlike any other he had witnessed in the web2.0 world. But focusing on Twitter alone underestimates the influence of the Iranian blogosphere, he noted. Wilson said the blogs were a crucial space for dissent and debate and responsible for getting the protesters out on the street. Facebook groups and old fashioned word-of-mouth also played a big role.

The Iranian experience also showed some of the potential flaws of Twitter. It was all too easy, said Wilson, to retweet something rather than check out its accuracy. The hype around Twitter also disguises the fact that its effect in Iran was overstated and its user base exclusive. Ahmadinejad’s rural and poor constituency (as subsequently confirmed by Leadbeater et al) are “the last people who are likely to fish up on Twitter” and therefore without a voice in the west. “We need to be reflexive about the nature of [Twitter’s] networks when we think about this platform as a source of information” Wilson concluded.

Ahmadinejad wins Iranian presidential election

Early results from the Iranian presidential election are showing a comprehensive victory for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir Hossein Mousavi. Turnout was heavy as 34 million people voted and the polls stayed open an extra four hours to cope with the traffic. With 80 percent of the vote counted, the election commission say Ahmadinejad leads by 65 to 32 percent. The other two candidates Mohsen Razai and Mehdi Karroubi have taken less than two percent of the vote.

Ahmadinejad needs 50 percent of the total to avoid a runoff election. His campaign manager said the distance between Ahmadinejad and his rivals is so great that “any doubts cast on this victory will be treated as a joke by the public." State news agency IRNA has declared Ahmadinejad the definite winner. "Doctor Ahmadinejad, by getting a majority of the votes, has become the definite winner of the 10th presidential election," it reported. According to Al Jazeera “he not only won, he blew Mousavi away."

But Ahmadinejad’s pro-reform rival Mousavi is not accepting the result and has asked Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, to intervene. Mousavi complained of a number of voting irregularities and is accusing the authorities of fraud. He told a news conference overnight that that he was the clear winner and won by a substantial margin. Hundreds of his supporters marched on the streets of Tehran chanting "If there is rigging, Iran will be like judgment day!" Meanwhile Global Voices claims several reformist sites such as Norooznews were “filtered” today in advance of the election and there were also reports of blocked phone and internet access.

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note says Ahmadinejad’s election results “are just about impossible to believe”. Clemons says he expected him to win but says this is unsubtle election rigging. “To be up front, I never thought that Mousavi's strategic policy course would differ substantively from his now unlikely predecessor Ahmadinejad,” he said. “But a change in optics and posture, which Mousavi would have offered, might have yielded significant new opportunities down the road.”

While even Clemons admits that such an outcome was not assured, what can be stated with certainty is this has been the most polarising election in the thirty year history of the Islamic Republic. Mir Hussein Mousavi’s appeal across the political boundaries made him a real threat to unseat Ahmadinejad. Mousavi launched a vigorous attack on the president’s record since his election victory in 2005. He accused Ahmadinejad of creating a culture of dictatorship and cronyism and of “encouraging” government departments and employees to vote for him.

Ahmadinejad hit back in a fiery presidential debate last week. In his 10-minute opening statement, he said his government had been the target of unprecedented slander from Mousavi and from previous Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. He said these three had led Iran away from the path of the 1979 Islamic revolution, and were part of a current "that saw itself as the owner of the nation, of the revolution, rulers of the people.” Ahmadinejad claimed he was the first President since the revolution to have secured Iran against US intervention.

However, as German Spiegel Online International reminds us, the Iranian presidency is only the second most important position in the country. Iran is ruled under Velayat-e Faqih, or "Rule by the Supreme Jurist". The real power lies with the Supreme Jurist Ayatollah Khamenei. He decides foreign and nuclear policy and is effectively the president’s boss. It quotes Die Tageszeitung which stated: “The republican institutions in Iran serve to balance the interests of the regime's various fractions. However, the basis of the political system is the late Ayatollah Khomeini's doctrine. The 'Islamic Republic' is not just a flowery phrase."

Bloggers get behind Mir Hussein Mousavi’s Iranian Presidential campaign

One thousand bloggers have announced their support for former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi’s bid for the Iranian presidency. The bloggers have published their names and websites on www.mirhussein.com (in Farsi) which proclaims itself as a forum created by “a big group of bloggers supporting Mousavi.” The bloggers publicly backing Mousavi come from a wide variety of viewpoints ranging from reformist to fundamentalist.

Mousavi’s appeal across the political boundaries makes him a real threat to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 12 June election. However it the reformists who have most hopes in Mousavi. His position as the leading challenger firmed in March when he was endorsed by former liberal president Mohammed Khatami who pulled out of the election to avoid splitting reformist supporter votes. Mousavi’s campaign received another boost yesterday when former Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar also announced she was quitting the race and supporting him. Meanwhile Ahmadinejad's popularity has slumped badly as Iran suffers in the global recession with chronic unemployment and double-digit inflation.

Mousavi has subsequently gone on to label Ahmadinejad as an extremist and attack him for his mismanagement of the economy. Last month the New York Times reported Mousavi wants a more positive relationship with the US although, like his opponent, refuses to back down on Iran’s nuclear program. “Weaponisation and nuclear technology are two separate issues, and we should not let them get mixed up,” he said. Mousavi also said he was in favour of freedom of speech and relaxing media restrictions including changing the law that bans private television stations.

But it is Ahmadinejad’s economic record that remains the focus of Mousavi’s campaign. Addressing his supporters in the town of Qarchak near the capital Tehran, he criticised the government for the “expansion of poverty under the excuse of administering justice” and claimed the government was making promises it was unable to keep.

The 68 year old Mousavi does have good economic credentials. He was admired for his management of the economy when he was Prime Minister under during the difficult days of 1980s war with Iran. The then president Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, changed the constitution to eliminate the role of Prime Minister when Mousavi resigned in 1989 and he (Mousavi) has not held a government position since then.

Mousavi then kept a self imposed silence until he re-emerged to announce himself as a presidential candidate. His current online support is significant as blogs were one of the few places where Iranians could find public dissent of Ahmadinejad’s recent stand-off with western powers. Some Iranian bloggers have paid a high price for taking a stance against the government and religious hierarchy according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ labelled Iran as the second worst country in the world (behind Burma) for bloggers who must all register their Web sites with the Ministry of Art and Culture. Hussein Derakhshan has been detained since November 2008 because of comments he allegedly made about a key cleric while another blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi committed suicide in prison in March. Mirsayafi was serving 30 months in prison for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Mirsayafi was not a political blogger. Most of his articles were about traditional Persian music and culture. His lawyer told Reporters Without Borders that Misayafi’s death was “a sad reminder of the fact that the Iranian regime is one of the harshest in the world for journalists and bloggers”. In the press conference when he announced his candidacy for the president Mousavi told 90 reporters his opposition to the government’s plan ‎to boost moral security, which includes monitoring the behaviour of Iran’s youth. ‎Mousavi said, “if I am elected president, I will put an end to inspections by the morality ‎police.” ‎It was this promise, more than any other, that has probably earned him the support of the country’s bloggers.

Iran revolution: 30 years on

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Thousands marched yesterday in Tehran in celebration of the anniversary chanting anti-US slogans, just as they did 30 years ago. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the rally and said Iran was prepared to talk to the US to end international sanctions provided the dialogue was based on “mutual respect”. He also praised the revolution saying that “although it started in Iran and is the core of the Iranian nation, it belongs to all nations anywhere in the world.”

If anyone could have been the judge of that statement, it would have been the late Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. Kapuscinski witnessed 27 revolutions in the third world, including the Iranian one. He believed that although the consciousness of poverty and oppression are the seeds of a revolution, it also needs another factor. What is needed, he wrote in Shah of Shahs (his version of the downfall of the Pahlavi regime), was the conviction that poverty and oppression were not of the world’s natural order. The indispensable catalyst for this mind shift was, he said “the word, the explanatory idea”.

The Shah thought he controlled the explanatory idea. On 8 January, 1978 the pro-government newspaper Etelat published an article attacking Khomeini who was still in Paris. Etelat tried to undermine Khomeini by calling him a foreigner, whose grandfather came from India. The article said the Shah was right to expel him and he was a traitor working together with foreign enemies of the country and a danger to the health of the country.

When news of the article reached the Iranian holy city of Qom, the locals were outraged. Khomeini was the idol and conscience of the people. Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini was born in 1902 in the small town of Khomein, about 160 kms southwest of Qom. After getting early schooling at a local maktab (religious school) he arrived in Qom in 1923 to become a religious scholar. By 1955 he was the most prominent religious leader in the city. There he denounced the Shah’s secular reform program and growing alliance with the US and he was arrested twice. In 1965 he was exiled to Najaf in Iraq where he continued to attack the Pahlavi regime.

By 1975 his supporters back in Qom rioted on the anniversary of his arrest. Military forces put down the riot harshly as they did three years later in the wake of the Etelat article. The Shah also sought Saddam’s agreement to expel Khomeini from Iraq. After he was refused entry to Kuwait, Khomeini flew to Paris where he became the darling of foreign journalists.

Following the Qom massacre, other towns rose against the regime’s despotism. In Tabriz, a crowd marched in the streets shouting “Death to the Shah”. The army opened fire as they did against demonstrators in Isfahan. But the growing anger forced the Shah to backtrack and he sacked generals involved in the Tabriz massacre and also dumped the head of Savak, his secret police. These latter actions did not help his popularity and only created more enemies within his support network.

Demonstrations and strikes continued through the end of 1978. The Shah declared martial law but was powerless to prevent a two-million strong demonstration in Tehran’s Azadi Square in December. Their demands were simple: the Shah must go and Khomeini must return. The Shah appointed the moderate liberal Shapour Bakhtiar as Prime Minister in a desperate effort to appease his opponents and shore up his own power. But the Shah underestimated him. Though he only lasted 36 days in the job, in the time Bakhtiar dismantled Savak, released all political prisoners and finally demanded that the Shah leave the country. Pahlavi and his wife departed on 16 January 1979 to enormous joy across the country. But Bakhtiar then made his biggest mistake, he allowed Khomeini back into the country.

Khomeini quickly denounced Bakhtiar as a stooge of the Shah and the prime minister was forced to follow his former leader into exile. Khomeini arrived back in Iran on 1 February to be greeted by millions. He immediately made his intentions known to his political enemies saying “I shall kick their teeth in”. Within a week he had won the crucial support of the armed forces. He assuaged Iran’s middle class by installing another moderate Mehdi Bazargan as Prime Minister but the real power stayed with Khomeini and his clerically dominated Revolutionary Council. Bazargan was forced to resign after he opposed the US embassy takeover and the path was clear for the creation of a fully-fledged Islamic Republic.

By 1980 Khomeini has established himself as outright ruler and the darling of the Muslim world. As Time magazine wrote at the time, the revolution was unique in several respects: “a successful, mostly non-violent revolt against a seemingly entrenched dictator, it owed nothing to outside help or even to any Western ideology.” The revolution was ultimately strengthened by the ordeal by fire of the gruelling eight-year war with Iraq.

Most of the 1990s was spent in introspection and rebuilding. Its nuclear power program dates back to the Shah’s era but has gotten increasing emphasis in recent years with the aid of Russia and China. Bushehr I expected to open later this year. In 2002 US concerns that its nuclear program might have a military component led George W Bush to use his infamous State of the Union speech to label Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil” (with its unlikely soul mates of Iraq and North Korea). Relations between the two nations have yet to fully recover from the outcry of this classification.

There are now hopes in both countries that the election of Obama may be the trigger for a more positive relationship. While Obama is still talking tough against a nuclear Iran for a sceptical domestic audience, behind the scenes his administration will be looking to improve matters. Similar while Ahmadinejad spouts the usual anti-American slogans at rallies, his government is making overtures in the background. A foreign ministry spokesman today tried to soften Ahmadinejad’s message. “As President announced, Iran is ready for talks with the United States based on mutual respect and justice,” he said. “We want the opportunity of fundamental and basic changes to be given to Mr Obama so that the world can see what happens in practice, we don’t want to prejudge and to prevent it we must give this opportunity.”

Iraqi end games: Shia Government says US troops out by 2011

Though it is hazardous exercise setting a military withdrawal timetable three months before a US presidential election, Iraq says it has signed a deal that could see all US troops out of the country by 2011. As well as the doubts on the US side, Chief negotiator Mohammed al-Haj Hammoud and Iraq’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs also has to sell the so-called “27 point deal” to his own parliament but it may be the best chance to lock the US into a timetable for withdrawal. Hammoud said Baghdad and Washington had agreed to "withdraw the US troops from Iraq by end of 2011." The US is refusing to confirm the deal is finalised, but it is there for negotiation even if no-one is mentioning the agenda of where Iraq’s oil goes.

But if the US troops leave, the contest will go on in Baghdad and Basra as the consequences of the genie Saddam’s removal from power continue to be felt. The clash of whether Sunnis or Shias inherit his kingdom is a battle the US can no longer manage. During his long regime Saddam was a political opportunist who was quick to bend in what favourable wind was blowing. But he was also a Sunni and when US tanks rolled into Baghdad in April 2003, the long Sunni reign in Mesopotamia was over. According to Vali Nasr’s theory in “The Shia Revival”, Iraq is now the vanguard of a new Shia power, subtly different from the more theocratical version next door in Iran.

Hussein was deeply hostile of Iraqi Shias whom he believed were in secret allegiance with their co-religionists in Iran. Shia were also a majority in his own country. But they were concentrated in the south around Basra. Hussein’s clan was from the Sunni north where power was concentrated. When the British left the “mandate” of Iraq they handed over power to the Sunni. Senior diplomat Gertrude Bell, the “uncrowned queen of Iraq” and “daughter of the desert”, harboured suspicions of the prickly Shia mullahs and ayatollahs whom she believed were behind the revolt against the British at the end of World War I. The Shia uluma reciprocated and watched in bitterness as Bell handed power to the Sunnis.

The subsequent Sunni 80 year reign was only briefly punctuated by the 1958 coup in which Colonel Qasim overthrew and murdered Iraq’s last king Faisal II. Qasim was nominally Sunni but his mother was Shia and he had close ties to Iraq’s Communist Party which was also Shia. But Qasim lasted only five years before he was himself was deposed. The subsequent rise of Arab nationalism and Ba’thism kept the Shia further out of the picture.

When Saddam came to power, he ruthlessly suppressed any hint of Shia revolt against his regime. According to Vali Nasr, he systematically neglected the cities of the south and starved them of services. He caused the environmental catastrophe of the draining of riparian wetlands so they could no longer shelter anti-Saddam rebels. One million poverty-stricken Shia were forced to seek homes in the slums that surround Baghdad and Basra. As well, Saddam banned public Shia festivals such as Ashoura and murdered popular religious leaders. He also discouraged pilgrimages to shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, the two holiest places of Shia orthodoxy.

Despite a litany of oppression, the Shia remained generally mute and mostly loyal. It was not until George Bush Snr’s false call to rebellion in 1991, that they lashed out. A riot in Basra rapidly spread north to Karbala and Najaf boosted by Bush 41's call for Iraqis to overthrow Saddam. But when a horrified Saudi Arabia saw the extent of the Shia uprising, they influenced the US to stay out of the resulting conflict. US forces in the Euphrates Valley merely watched on as Saddam crushed the revolt with the tanks of his praetorian division he had kept out of the war – the dreaded Republican Guard.

And while the Americans fiddled, Shia towns burned and the shrines at Karbala and Najaf were shelled. No one lifted a finger to help as tens of thousands of Shias died. One Iraqi general told the New Yorker he had captured many people whom he divided into three groups; those whom he knew were involved in the rebellion, those he wasn’t sure about, and those he knew had no involvement. He telephone High Command to ask what to do with them. “They said we should kill them all,” said the general, “and that’s what we did.”

Many mass graves would not be found until after the fall of Saddam. And it wasn’t until 30 January 2005 when Iraqis went to the polls that Sunni dominance would finally end. The hugely influential Ayatollah Sistani brokered a truce between Shia factions to present a united face. Only after Shia majority rule had been won, argued Sistani, could the Shia quibble about who precisely rules and under what system. The Shia House took 48 percent of the vote and almost half the seats in the new parliament. They did better again in the December elections that year and won 46 percent of all the seats, more than the Sunni and Kurdish blocks put together.

But the Shia alliance is an artificial one and remains fraught with hazard. There are three big power blocks. Firstly there is Sistani himself allied with the other grand ayatollahs of Najaf. Unlike their Iranian counterparts they have not been inclined to turn Iraq into an Islamic Republic. But they remain hugely influential. The second power block is the slum rebellion in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr is the scion of a prominent Shia family who inherited a huge flock of urban poor from his cleric father who was murdered by Saddam. He is now trying to turn his Mahdi Army into a political machine.

The third element in Iraqi Shia politics is the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). SIIC and its military wing, the Badr Brigade, straddle the boundary between Sistani and Sadr. Founded as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) by the Hakim Brothers, their father was a Najaf Ayatollah. The Hakims fled to Qom in Iran in the 1980s and their Badr Brigade fought in the war against Saddam. When Sunni extremists killed one brother in 2003, the other, Abdul-Aziz Hakim became SIIC’s leader.

The current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is from none of these three factions. He represents the nonclerical Islamic Da’wa Party but as the name would suggest it too has Islamists roots, dating back to a Saddam-era party dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq. Dawa and Maliki now depend on a coalition of Sadr and SIIC to rule. Sadr will not be happy with the timescale of the US withdrawal nor the vague conditions of “security” that might delay it. SIIC will proceed cautiously but Hakim is proving to be a surprisingly gifted operator and far from being an Iranian stooge.

Hakim’s political front the “United Arab Alliance” is the largest single party in parliament. In 2006 he met George W Bush at the Oval Office where he claimed the Iraqi situation has been “subjected to a great deal of defamation”. Hakim said US, Iraqi, and regional interests were are all linked. But he made it clear Iraq was going to go its own way. “We believe that the Iraqi issue should be solved by the Iraqis with the help of friends everywhere,” he told Bush 43. “But we reject any attempts to have a regional or international role in solving the Iraqi issue.” With an 2011 agenda now in place, McCain or Obama will have to take this man on his own merits.

America and Iran: the lesson of Mohammad Mossadegh

Not for the first time, the White House has refused to clarify its position on a war with Iran. The latest stonewalling came this weekend after Israel threatened to strike Tehran's nuclear facilities. On Friday Israeli deputy prime minister Shaoul Mofaz claimed Israel has no choice but to strike Iran's nuclear sites as 'options are disappearing and sanctions have proven to be ineffective'. Later that day, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel refused to condemn Mofaz and instead accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program. He also evaded questions to clarify what Washington thought about Israel’s 'unavoidable' attack.

This is the latest development in a series of hawkish poses by the Bush Administration against Iran. The US worries that Iran has nuclear capability and appears to be supporting Israel in a pre-emptive strike. The strike could be timed to support Republican candidate John McCain in a bid to wedge Barack Obama. America does not appear to be interested in compromise at the moment. The Tehran Times claims the US has ignored the outcome of technical examinations that show Iran is co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The world waits for a confrontation that if it occurs, would leave Iraq looking like a minor sideshow.

This is far from the first time that Iran is at the centre of world attention. It was of massive interest to two of the three Allied Powers in World War II. By late 1943, it was clear Germany was not going to win the war and the thoughts of the Allies turned to the future. In December that year Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met on a sunny Tehran morning to discuss how to divvy up the post-Nazi world. Both Stalin and Churchill came in military uniform, Roosevelt chose a suit. They had just pledged to work together “in war and the peace that will follow”. After the photographers searched their faces for smiles while seated on the veranda, the three great men retire to a hall for a more private conversation.

Before they discussed weighty matters of empire, Roosevelt asked Churchill whatever became of the ruler of this country, Shah Reza, adding “if I’m pronouncing it correctly”. Churchill tells him he became a Nazi and denied Britain and Russia the use of oil and a supplies railway. Britain and Russia couldn’t stand for this and invaded Iran. Shah Reza was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Mohamed Reza Pahlavi. The father was removed to a comfortable life in Johannesburg where he died not long after the Tehran conference. The question showed up US ignorance of Iranian affairs.

Yet the choice of Tehran for this meeting of great minds was no accident. Not only had Britain and Russia invaded it in 1941, it had been zone of influence for both since a 1907 treaty shared the country’s spoils between them. The terms of both conquests allowed the natives to rule as long as they did not act against their powerful guests. An officially neutral Iran was of vital strategic importance to both. Roosevelt was happy to let the two fight it out over Iranian oil while the US maintained control of the biggest fields of all in Saudi Arabia.

But the turmoil of the Russian revolution left Iran almost entirely a Britsh colony. While Russia turned to its own problems, AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (then nationalised by Churchill, now corporatised as BP) was Britain main supplier of oil. First extracted out of a corrupt 19th century leader as a concession to drill in the wastelands near Abadan, AIOC quickly became one of the world’s leading producers in time to supply Britain in two world wars. The company enjoyed a lucrative monopoly on the production and sale of Iranian oil but its wealth was not fairly distributed. In 1947 it reported on an after tax profit of £40 million and gave the young Shah’s country just seven million. It had reneged on a 1933 deal with his hard-nosed father to provide the workers with better pay, more schools, roads, telephones and job advancement. The young Shah was a playboy and had little interests for his people’s problems. As long as he kept control of the military, it didn’t matter how well or badly his country was performing economically.

Mohammad Mossadegh was less sanguine. He knew the people chafed bitterly about the abject poverty they lived in to support Britain and their puppet leaders. By 1951 he personified the country’s anger at the AIOC. Born in 1882, he was a member of the country’s elite and a parliamentarian for 34 years, implacably opposed to foreign influence. In a wave of fervour, he was elected Prime Minister with a mandate to throw the company out of Iran, reclaim the country’s oil reserves and end the subjection of foreign power. Mossadegh was now in his seventies and in the manner of Proust, did much of his business in bed. But when he nationalised Anglo-Iranian, he became a national hero. Shortly after, Iran took control of the refinery.

The British were outraged. They declared Mossadegh a thief and demanded he be punished by the UN and the World Court. When neither organisation would support Britain, they imposed an embargo that devastated the Iranian economy. Mossadegh was unmoved and said he “would rather be fried in Persian oil than make the slightest concession”. But while Britain fumed, Mossadegh struck a chord elsewhere. He became a third world hero and delighted his admirers further when he ridiculed Britain at the World Court saying it was trying “to persuade world opinion that the lamb had devoured the wolf”.

Even Time made him their man of the year in 1951 saying he “put Scheherazade in the petroleum business and oiled the wheels of chaos”. They called him a “strange old wizard” in a region where, importantly, the US had no policy. Britain, of course did have a policy, and Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee warned President Truman not to interfere with the dealings of “an ally.” The US complied but Attlee also knew that Truman would not support a British military invasion of Iran.

Events were to change dramatically when both Britain and the US turned to the right. In Autumn 1951 the old warhorse Churchill was running for re-election and denounced Attlee in several speeches for failing to confront Mossadegh firmly enough. Churchill said the Prime Minister had betrayed “solemn undertakings” not to abandon Abadan. He knew that the loss of Iranian oil meant the loss of empire and considered Mossadegh “an elderly lunatic bent on wrecking his country and handing it over to the Communists.” Britain’s position suddenly toughened when Churchill defeated Labour in that election.

Truman was also up for re-election in 1952 but decided not to contest. As in Britain, a Second World War hero won the election and Dwight Eisenhower was the new Republican President. The Cold War was Eisenhower’s biggest focus and Iran was one of the first challenges. Britain cleverly played up to the new regime in Washington claiming Iran was in crisis under Mossadegh and could easily fall to the Communist Party backed by Moscow. The new Cold Warriors were ready to step up to the challenge of removing Mossadegh.

Even before Eisenhower was inaugurated, his new team prepared to organise the coup. Eisenhower appointed wartime Chief-of-Staff and former CIA General Walter Bedell Smith as his undersecretary of state. Bedell would seamlessly link the campaign between the White House, State Department and the CIA. At the head of these two latter organisations lay a pair of remarkable brothers. John Foster Dulles was a world-class international lawyer now turned Secretary of State while Allen Dulles now ran the intelligence organisation. The brothers had long developed a special interest in Iran and Allen went to Tehran in 1949 on business where he met both the Shah and Mossadegh. Both Dulles brothers were ideological Cold War warriors determined to prevent Communism in Iran.

Eisenhower gave implicit approval for the action but presented a front of plausible deniability. Behind the scenes the two Dulles and Smith had full authority to proceed with Operation Ajax. They appointed a remarkably gifted secret agent with a fantastic name to bring the coup together. He was the grandly titled Kermit Roosevelt. Kermit was not related to FDR, but was a grandson of fellow president Theodore. He was the prototype of the gentleman spy. Independently wealthy, he was a history professor at Harvard until he joined the newly established Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in WW2. His work in the OSS remains shrouded in mystery but he stayed on in peacetime when it was rebadged as the CIA.

When given charge of the Mossadegh plan, Roosevelt quickly liaised with his British counterparts in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Iranian tribal leaders on the British payroll softened things up when they launched a short-lived uprising. Roosevelt moved to Tehran where he prepared to gather a rebellion force. He met with anti-Mossadegh politicians and persuaded the Shah to sign the “firman” (a document of doubtful legality sacking the Prime Minister). Mid-August 1953 found Roosevelt and his local agents ready to strike. He paid newspapers and religious leaders to scream for Mossadegh’s head. He organised protests and riots and turned the streets into battlegrounds.

But at the last minute Operation Ajax seemed as if foiled. On 15 August 1953 an officer arrived at Mossadegh’s house to present the “firman”. But he arrived minutes too late, too many people had found about the coup and the Prime Minister was tipped off in advance. The Shah fled the country in disgrace while units loyal to Mossadegh surged through Tehran. Incredibly Roosevelt did not quit and three days later he organised a second attempt. Once again he launched a massive mob in the capital. Crucially Mossadegh did not call out the police to stop them. Armed units loyal to the Shah launched a gunbattle against Mossadegh’s supporters. The following morning Tehran Radio announced “the Government of Mossadegh has been defeated!”

Mossadegh was now under arrest. The Shah flew home from Italy in stunned triumph. The New York Times wrote that "the sudden reversal was nothing more than a mutiny by the lower ranks against pro-Mossadegh officers”. Roosevelt was understandably delighted. Barely a day earlier he had been ordered home by his own superiors, now he would be returning in triumph. Mossadegh was given a three year prison sentence. He served it until 1956 and was confined to home in Ahmad Abad until his death, aged 85 in 1967.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to return to their old monopoly position after his overthrow. But the US had invested too much in the coup to let that happen. An international consortium was organised to assume control of the oil. AOIC held 40 percent, five American companies held 40 percent and the remainder split between Royal Dutch Shell and Compagnie Francaise de Petroles. The consortium agreed to split the profits fifty-fifty with the Shah but never allowed Iranians to examine the books.

Although the Shah had forbidden his countrymen ever to speak of Mossadegh new enemies emerged within. By the late 1970s the Shah had crushed all legitimate political parties and a new religious force filled the void. When he was forced to flee the country in 1979 as a reviled tyrant, the first government to replace him were determined to invoke Mossadegh’s legacy. Mossadegh had dispatched the new Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan to Abadan after the British fled in 1951. Another Mossadegh admirer Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was elected president. But behind the scenes Ayatollah Khomeini was consolidating his power. Before long he was arresting all his enemies. Mossadegh had been defeated again, this time in death.

The Mossadegh coup had profound impacts on America. Overnight the CIA became a central part of foreign policy apparatus. While Kermit Roosevelt went home in quiet retirement, the Dulles brothers used the new template to overthrow other rulers. President Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown a year later in Guatemala. Later they would fail to kill Castro but were more successful with Allende in Chile. The incident also changed how Iranians viewed the US. Before 1953, Britain was the rapacious and greedy enemy. Now the US was the sinister party, manipulating quietly in the background. The 1979 embassy hostage was a direct result of Carter’s decision to allow the Shah into the country. But the reason the crisis last 14 months was the fact that the royalist regime was re-installed in the first place by the US back in 1953.

With their devotion to radical Islam, Iran’s revolutionary leaders have become heroes to fanatics in many countries. They inspired the Taliban to take control of neighbouring Afghanistan. Their strength so worried Saddam Hussein he fought a ten-year war with them which led to a disastrous quarter century for Iraq. It is not too strong a view to say that the CIA’s overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh has led to the US being involved in two concurrent wars in the region. Mossadegh would be outraged if he could see the state of his country today, but he might afford a smile at the way the coup has bitten the hand that fed it.

Fallon Gone

The head of US Central Command, which controls the theatre of operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, resigned overnight after a dispute with the White House. 63 year old Admiral William Fallon Long was long critical of the administration’s hardline stance on Iran, and matters came to head last week in a magazine article portrayed him as challenging President George W. Bush’s Iranian policy. Defence Secretary Robert Gates mentioned the magazine article and quoted a letter from Fallon announcing his resignation which blamed it on “public perception of differences between my views and administration policy”.

Fallon resigned after a 41 year career in the military which also included head of Pacific Command. He began as a fighter pilot and flew missions in Vietnam. Appointed to his current role this time last year, he told his confirmation hearing by Senate Armed Service Committee that the US might have to lower expectations in Iraq. Fallon’s career ended publicly by what Time called “jumping onto a hand grenade to take the explosion and save his buddies' lives” when a magazine article portrayed him as the one man standing in the way of Bush in the escalating tension about Iran.

That public cause of Fallon’s resignation was Thomas P.M. Barnett’s 11 March article in Esquire magazine. The article claimed Fallon talked down conflict with Iran while his political bosses talked it up. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, called him the “good cop on Iran” who has openly disagreed with the hawkish sentiments on Iraq from Bush and Cheney. They quoted his speech to Al Jazeera last year "This constant drumbeat of conflict...is not helpful and not useful,” he said. “I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for.”

Fallon was picked out to head Central Command as one of the first acts of Secretary of Defence Robert Gates when he replaced Donald Rumsfeld. At the time Gates described Fallon as “one of the most brilliant strategic minds in the military.” Fallon’s previous role was as head of Pacific Command where he earned a reputation as a peacemaker with China. While Gates now denies Fallon was acting against the president, he acknowledged that the mere talk of a rift had made his job impossible.

Gates has also dismissed as “ridiculous” the suggestion that Fallon’s departure is a signal the US is planning to go to war with Iran. However, he did not expand on why he thought it was ridiculous. While the Bush administration accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, Fallon talked up dialogue and resolution but also said the US would be prepared to enforce the Carter Doctrine and would “take steps” if Tehran were to attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz, the outlet of the Persian Gulf and much of the world's oil. Meanwhile, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Fallon's resignation showed that independent views "are not welcomed in this administration."

The resignation comes in the wake of news that violence in neighbouring Iraq has picked up sharply in 2008. The rise follows a significant decline in attacks in the previous six months of 2007. Tuesday was the deadliest day in Iraq for six months with 42 people killed. Eight US troops were killed on Monday, the worst single day for the military since 10 September. Morale on the ground may be shaky following the latest events. "I guess it will never end," one US soldier in Baghdad told the Washington Post. "Such evil." Fallon’s resignation may spread that evil next door.

Armenia state of emergency after disputed election

The Armenian government has imposed a 20-day state of emergency after police killed eight demonstrators protesting against a disputed election result.
Outgoing President Robert Kocharian has banned public rallies and imposed a communications blackout of internet, satellite and non-state TV in the capital Yerevan. The confrontations over allegations of electoral fraud have led to death, injury and property damage.

The violence erupted on the weekend between government forces and opposition activists. Police fired shots and used clubs and tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators. They also broke up a camp site where hundreds of protesters had stayed for more than a week. As well as the eight dead (seven civilians and one police officer), over a hundred people were injured in the clashes. Kocharian has since deployed hundreds of troops to enforce the state of emergency.

The violence is in response to the disputed presidential election on 19 February. President Kocharian's handpicked successor, Serzh Sargsyan defeated Levon Ter-Petrosian in the election. Western observers declared the poll “relatively fair” however Sargsyan had the benefit of massive state TV coverage. Official results gave Sargsyan 53 per cent of the vote while Ter-Petrosian received 21.5 per cent. Ter-Petrosian's supporters said the election was marred by ballot stuffing and intimidation. Armenia's deputy prosecutor-general came out in support of Ter-Petrosian and encouraged his supporters to continue protesting. Ter-Petrosian was subsequently placed under house arrest. After 11 days of peaceful protests, the demonstrations became violent on Saturday.

Yesterday, the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent a special envoy to Armenia to try to resolve the political crisis. Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, whose country currently holds the OSCE'S rotating chairmanship, said he sent his special envoy to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Heikki Talvitie, a veteran diplomat with long experience in the region, will hold separate talks with Kocharian, Sargsyan and opposition leaders. "The OSCE considers dialogue central to stability, and stability is vital in the South Caucasus,” said Kanerva. “Everything should be done to avoid further casualties and any further escalation of tension.”

Levon Ter-Petrosian led Armenia for most of the 1990s. He was elected president in 1991 with four policy planks: the development of a market economy; democratisation; a realistic foreign policy unburdened by Russia or the Armenian genocide; and the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Ter-Petrosian was portrayed in the west as an introverted intellectual, a democrat, and a moderate. He was re-elected in 1996 but hardliners forced Ter-Petrosian to resign the presidency two years later due to his dovish stance on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Kocharian replaced him as president.

Kocharian and Sargsyan are both natives of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region over which Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan fought a war in the 1990s. Peace talks have stalled over Kocharian’s refusal to return Azerbaijani regions captured during the 1991-94 conflict. At the time Turkey froze diplomatic relations with Armenia in solidarity with Turkic-speaking and Muslim Azerbaijan. Complicated by the Armenian massacres of World War I (which Turkey refuses to acknowledge), the countries have not yet restored relations.

While there is close economic cooperation in the region between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenia prefers to deal with Iran and Russia. Armenia borders Iran and lies on a transit route from the energy-rich Caspian Sea region. Armenia currently relies on Russian pipelines for natural gas but intends to diversify its supplies by purchasing gas from Iran. Construction finally began in early 2005 on the Iranian portion of the pipeline. The 140km natural gas pipeline is financed by Iranian Bank of Export and Development at a cost of $30 million.

Kurds Turkey shoot

With Turkey on the brink of attacking Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the potentially great faultlines of the 21st century could be opened. There are 25 to 40 million people that call themselves Kurds. Their misfortune is to be scattered over rugged terrain in some of the most important countries of the Middle East. A Kurdish proverb says 'the Kurds have no friends but the mountains'. This is particularly true today when there is little enthusiasm in the wider world to support the merits of a separate Kurdish nation. The Kurdish nationalist party PKK is declared a terrorist organisation in the US, Europe and Australia.

While Kurds have some autonomy within Iraq, they remain a disadvantaged minority group in Iran, Syria, Armenia and Turkey. Although Iranian troops invaded Iraqi Kurdistan last year, it is the Turks who feel most vulnerable to the Kurdish threat. Turkey does not recognise its Kurdish minority and simply calls them “Mountain Turks”. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now seeking approval from his parliament to launch an “incursion” into Iraq any time in the next 12 months.

This is no idle threat. In May, Erdogan called for an invasion of Iraq to seek out Kurdish militants and take what the Turkish foreign ministry calls “urgent and resolute measures”. It was in response to a suicide bombing in Ankara which killed six people and injured more than 100. The Turks identified Guven Akkus from Turkish Kurdistan as the culprit and said his methods were similar to those of Kurdish militants. The PKK have copped much of the blame even though there is no link between it and Akkus and it denied responsibility. One Turkish commentator described Akkus as a “Communist”.

While Turkey may be looking for an excuse to punish Kurdish militia, locals have promised a tough reception if they invade. A Kurdish rebel commander told AP on Saturday Turkey would face a long and bloody conflict if it launched an attack. Murat Karayilan, head of the armed wing of the PKK, said an invasion would "make Turkey experience a Vietnam war." "Iraq's Kurds will not support the Turkish army," he said. "If Turkey starts its attack, we will swing the Turkish public opinion by political, civil and military struggle."

The PKK was founded in 1973 and gets its initials from its Kurdish name, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party). They first launched an armed independence campaign in Turkey’s southeast almost 25 years ago. More than 37,000 people have died in the ongoing violence with deaths spread evenly between the two sides. Turkey launched a major military crackdown in 1999 and captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan causing 5,000 fighters to flee to Iraq. The PKK is not entirely welcome in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are already two Kurdish factions in Iraq which exist in an uneasy power-sharing relationship. The PKK operates as a Pan-Kurdish organisation that rejects Iraqi Kurdish efforts to remain within Iraq.

The 25 million Kurds are not necessarily politically united. They are spread across eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and parts of Syria and Armenia. 12 million live in Turkey. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres which fixed Turkey’s border after World War I included the “possibility” of a Kurdish state but Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk rejected it three years later. From the 1980s, the PKK spearheaded a bitter armed resistance in Turkey's Kurdish southeastern provinces.

The PKK gained momentum in the 1990s with the rise of charismatic leader Abdullah Ocalan. But while his supporters call him "Apo" (Kurdish for "uncle"), the Turkish state calls him "child murderer" and "terrorist". Ocalan studied political science at Ankara university where he set up the PKK with fellow students. He left Turkey before the September 1980 military coup and remained in exile until 1999. He was controversially captured in Kenya, with the suspected help of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. Turkey triumphantly paraded their prisoner in blindfold for the world’s media.

Since 1999, Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement as the only prisoner on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, guarded by a thousand Turkish military personnel. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001. Ocalan appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey, mindful of the impact to its possible EU membership, agreed to await the court’s judgment. In 2005 the European Court of Human Rights decided Ocalan’s trial was unfair. However Turkey dismissed a retrial request last year.

While Ocalan festers on Imrali, his homeland is about to take a greater role on the world stage. Turkey has used the US congress stand on the Armenian genocide as an excuse to ignore calls for caution in Kurdistan. Now the price of oil has surged to a new record high of $84 a barrel as the crisis threatens some of the nearby oilfields. Analysts are worried that if Turkey attacks Iraq, the PKK will target the Iraq to Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “Mountain Turks” will soon find out how many friends they have.

Iran defends the Revolutionary Guards

Iran has hit back against the accusation its Revolutionary Guards are terrorists by claiming it is the US military and the CIA that deserve the label. The Iranian foreign minister has backed a statement on Saturday by 215 members of the Majlis (parliament) which branded the US military and the CIA as “terrorists because they support terrorism”. Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters at his weekly press conference he supported their stance. He also condemned the recent US Congress approval to declare the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) terrorists. “Placing the armed forces of the UN member states on the list of terrorist groups is unprecedented,” he said.

On Wednesday last week, the American Senate voted 76-22 in favour of a resolution that urged the State Department to designate the IRGC a terrorist organisation. Iran’s biggest concern is that the move could affect businesses linked with the Guards, as it could allow the US. Treasury Department to move against them. The Guards are the elite defenders of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and it gained considerable popularity and power during the eight year Iran-Iraq war that followed.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was formed in May 1979 in the immediate wake of the Islamic revolution. It was set up by the then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to be the “guardian of the revolution”. Former CIA analyst Bruce Reidel said the ayatollah wanted protection against threats from Iran's regular army, who may still have had loyalties to the Shah and his foreign backers such as the CIA. The group was originally intended to be a popular people's army but was bloodied in the eight year war with Iraq. The Guards acted as human waves in some of the toughest battles and hundreds of thousands of fighters perished.

According to Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Revolutionary Guards are not just a major military force, they are the spine of government. Religious leader and commander-in-chief of the armed forces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appointed many former commanders to top political positions, blurring the line between military and civil authority. Former Guards senior officers holding significant positions in government include the secretary of National Security, the head of state television and radio services, several cabinet ministers and the president himself Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Guards are also a major economic force. They not only operate legal businesses, but they also register as foreign companies, and engage in illegal smuggling. After the Iran-Iraq war the country passed legislation to allow the IRGC use its “engineering capability” to rebuild the economy. However there is no oversight organisation and corruption is rife. The IRGC control billions of dollars of Iranian oilfield contracts and automotive industry on a no-bid basis. According to Washington based Iranian exile, Rasool Nafisi, that is one reason why the private sector is unable to function well – “because the juiciest part of the economy was swallowed up by the IRGC”.

Known in Farsi as the "Pasdaran", the guards were established by a Khomenei decree with a mandate to defend the revolution. By 1986, the Pasdaran consisted of 350,000 personnel organized in battalion-size units that operated either independently or with units of the regular armed forces. In 1986 the Pasdaran acquired small naval and air elements. By 1996 the ground and naval forces were reported to number 100,000 and 20,000, respectively. It has a massive intelligence unit to monitor the regime's domestic enemies. It also has strong links to overseas organisations such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad through the Quds (Jerusalem) Force.

The shadowy Quds Force led by Qassem Soleimani reports directly to Ayatollah Khamenei. While the Quds and the US have found themselves on the same side in the past (they both supported the Northern Alliance in the Afghan war against the Taliban), they are now deemed to be enemies. In January this year, US President Bush accused the Quds of assisting the insurgency in neighbouring Iraq. Afterwards, the White House backed away from the implication that Iran is complicit in the war across its border. Some of the evidence linking Quds to weaponry found in Iraq is also dodgy. Asked why the writing on the weapons allegedly made in Iran was in English, one U.S. intelligence official responded: “That’s a very good question.”

Salman Rushdie: Satanic Voices

Iran summoned its British ambassador in Teheran yesterday to protest against the knighthood of author Salman Rushdie. Iran's Foreign Ministry Director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour said it was a suspicious and improper act against Islam and claimed that the award “has seriously wounded the beliefs of 1.5 billion Muslims and followers of other religions." Rushdie’s knighthood has opened old wounds over charges of “blasphemy”.

Ahmed Salman Rushdie, of London WC1B, was knighted on the weekend for “services to literature” in the Queen’s honours list. Rushdie, who turned 60 yesterday, was one of 21 men knighted (women are excluded) and is joined on the list (pdf) by cricketer Ian Botham, as well as civil servants, local politicians, educators, businessmen and a policeman. But none of the other twenty awards are of interest to the world wide Islamic community. Rushdie is an Indian born British novelist whose fourth novel The Satanic Verses catapulted him into the world spotlight when he attracted a fatwa from Iran’s then spiritual and political leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Published in 1988, the book is a dense and difficult but compelling study of Indian Muslims living in contemporary England. It combines typical Rushdie elements of magical realism and dream narratives. However it also has parallels with the story of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Rushdie’s title “The Satanic Verses” was coined by Scottish orientalist and fellow knight Sir William Muir to describe rogue verses which possibly appeared in the Koran over a hundred years after Muhammad’s death. According to Muir, some Muslim tradition has it that Muhammad himself added verses to the Koran accepting three Meccan goddesses as divine beings but then later revoked it as a temptation from the devil.

The Muslim-born Rushdie was immediately in trouble for blasphemy. However while blasphemy officially remains a crime in England, no one has been sent to prison for it since eccentric trouser salesman John William Gott in 1921. Gott got nine months for publishing attacks on Christianity. His mistake was to go for a cheap laugh rather than a reasoned criticism. The Lord Chief Justice upheld the sentence saying “It does not require a person of strong religious feelings to be outraged by a description of Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem ‘like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys’.

But because England didn’t recognise Rushdie’s blasphemy as a crime, Iran decided to act in absentia. On 14 February 1989, the day before the book was to be published in the US, Khomeini announced a fatwa against Rushdie on Teheran radio. In Islamic law, a fatwa is a declaration issued by a legal authority. Khomeini's fatwa said “I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world. . . that the author of the book titled The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed, and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, have been declared madhur el dam ["those whose blood must be shed"]. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult Islam again. . . .”

Iran’s Khordad Foundation backed up the fatwa with a $2.8 million dollars bounty calling for Rushdie’s assassination. Rushdie went into hiding, protected by the British police. Meanwhile two London bookshops were firebombed after they received letters warning it to stop selling the book. In 1991 the book’s Japanese translator was stabbed and killed at Tsukuba University northeast of Tokyo. The book’s Italian translator was also stabbed but survived.

Rushdie himself issued a statement expressing his regret for the distress that his book may have caused Muslims. A little over a year later, Rushdie announced that he had returned to Islam. He went on to renounce anything in his novel that insulted Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, or the Koran. But Khomeini refused to cancel the fatwa instead declaring flatly, "It is incumbent on every Muslim to do everything possible to send him to hell."

The fatwa remains in place to this day. It was reaffirmed by the hard-line Revolutionary Guards in 2005 despite a 1998 agreement where Tehran promised the British Government that Iran would do nothing to implement it. Iran struck that deal as a pre-condition to normalise relations with the EU. Now the foreign ministry is saying Rushdie was "one of the most hated figures" in the Islamic world.

And Iran is not alone in the condemnation of Rushdie’s knighthood. Pakistan also hauled in the British ambassador and adopted a parliamentary resolution condemning the act. It said that “conferment of a knighthood on Salman Rushdie shows an utter lack of sensitivity on the part of the British government” while the government's religious affairs minister said Rushdie’s honour could incite suicide bombings.

Supporters of Malaysia's hardline Islamic opposition party Parti Islam se-Malaysia also launched a small protest outside the British embassy today. Chanting "Destroy Salman Rushdie" and "Destroy Britain", about 30 members (outnumbered by 40 police) urged London to retract the honour or risk the consequences. Party treasurer Hatta Ramli said "This has tainted the whole knighthood, the whole hall of fame of the British system."

But Rushdie is not without his supporters in the West. The Guardian said the honour was richly deserved and described Rushdie as “amongst the greats of British literature and “the Dickens of our times”. It also noted the Satanic Verses was as much a hallucinatory satire on Thatcher's Britain as it, notionally, offended Islam. The Guardian also condemned the labelling of his fiction as “blasphemous” saying it surrender “to those pressures on our cultural life which have historically sought to gag all criticism of the status quo”.

But blasphemy may be coming back on the agenda. In the aftermath of the Danish Jyllands-Posten controversy, Norwegian Muslim lawyer Abid Q Raja called for anti-blasphemy regulations to protect minorities against derisive and hateful expression. But Oslo Professor of Public Law Eivind Smith is sceptical. He believes it is important than any future tightening of the law favours human rights rather than religion. "The point is to protect people against insult” he said. “God should be able to take care of himself.”