Memri TV spotlights the subliminal anti-Iranian message in this TV commercial on a Shiite channel. For those who follow such things, that’s Shia versus Shia, Iraq versus Iran.

Watch here.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported. “I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,” he said.“Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started.”

George W. Bush:

…the founding charter of Hamas calls for the “elimination” of Israel. And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant “Death to Israel, Death to America!” That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that “the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties.” And that is why the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men  and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

A former Iranian president has said that exporting violence to other countries is “treason” against Islam and Iran’s 1979 revolution, an apparent accusation that the country’s hard-line rulers are engineering unrest abroad.

Mohammad Khatami, a reformist and popular intellectual, made no mention of U.S. and Iraqi accusations that Iran is arming and training Shiite extremists in neighboring Iraq. But he said Iran should avoid actions that give it a bad image.

Engineering violence in other countries would be contrary to the goals of the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khatami said.

“What did Imam (Khomeini) want and what did he mean by ‘exporting the revolution’? Taking up arms and causing explosions in other countries and establishing groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? Imam was strongly opposed to these behaviors,” Khatami told students in northern Iran on Friday.

“This is the biggest treason to Islam and the revolution.”

Iraqpundit:

The Iranian propaganda machine is saying that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Baghdad was a great success, mostly because the Iranian leader was received so politely by some of Iraq’s leaders. Much of the U.S. coverage of the visit seems in line with this version, the idea being, apparently, to portray Iran as the real beneficiary of Bush’s Mideast policy.But ordinary Iraqis had a different reaction to the event. There are numerous reports of protests against the Iranian president’s visit, and this story says Ahmadinejad thought it the better part of valor to cancel his planned trip to the holy sites of Kerbala and Najaf. 

Indeed, the Arabic report says that Ali Sistani refused to receive Ahmadinejad, which might be a reason the Iranian president chose not to go these sites. After all, it would look strange for him to visit the holy sites and not pass by Sistani’s home. Sistani’s position has been that he does not meet with heads of state.Another reason might be security. There are reports that the U.S. military did not protect Ahmadinejad during his stay in Baghdad. If that’s so, then the drive south would have been risky, even at the political level. Iran’s PR message would have been especially muddled if Ahmadinejad had to face Iraqi protesters along the way.

And from another voice, Alireza Jafarzadeh:

Behind the orchestrated pomp and pageantry during the visit to Baghdad last weekend by the Iranian ayatollahs’ president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was hard to miss the revulsion of Iraqis of all stripes. Adjectives like “historic” could not disguise the frustrating reality for Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs: outside of Iraqi political spheres dominated by Tehran surrogates, they are seen as enemies of a secure, non-sectarian and democratic Iraq.

The greeting parties, in the Baghdad airport and later in various government buildings, were who’s who of Tehran’s proxies in Iraq’s government. They “listened to Ahmadinejad,” according to McClatchy News Service, “without need of translation into Arabic, clearly comfortable hearing his Farsi.” Not surprising; for more than two decades, they were employed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Qods Force, and the Ministry of Intelligence. Learning Farsi was a job requirement.

Outside of the very limited segment of Baghdad where Ahmadinejad visited, there was outrage. A young Baghdad resident told the New York Times, “I think Ahmadinejad is the most criminal and bloody person in the world. This visit degrades Iraq’s dignity.” Up north in Kirkuk, where Arab tribes and political parties rallied against Ahmadinejad’s visit, a tribal leader told the Times, “How can we tolerate this? Today we live under the regime of the clerics. The Iranian revolution has been exported to Iraq.” An Iraqi businessman added, “His visit is intended to reassure his followers here,” but is “provoking and enraging” the rest of Iraq.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday that Iran was the world’s “number one” power, as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy.

“Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

“Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place,” he added in the address broadcast live on state television.

In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a “filthy bacteria” whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region.

“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

All that man needs is a good talking-to from Obama.

The People’s Cube shows how one photograph became many for the Iranian regime.

 The CIA gets the Rodney Dangerfield treatment from the Washington Post.

So the CIA got it wrong on Iran’s nuclear program in the last National Intelligence Estimate, back in 2005. But does that mean they have got it right this time? Not necessarily. The history of the CIA is littered with spectacular intelligence mistakes. Sometimes, the correction of one error can lead to a new error, as analysts atone for past mistakes by moving too far in the opposite direction.

In the spirit of caution and skepticism, here is the official Fact Checker list of the CIA’S Biggest Bloopers, over six decades of intelligence-gathering. I have compiled it with the assistance of researchers at the indispensable National Security Archive, a non-profit group that has published more than half a million government documents. A disclaimer: the Agency has had some successes too, but I will let their public relations operation draw up that particular list.

The list makes the agency look awful. But commentator Bryan makes a good point:

60 years and only 11 times where they were wrong? I’d say this article just proved how good the CIA really is, I mean hindsight is 20/20 and we have the benefit of looking back at the mistakes they made but they have the hard job of trying to predict what’s going to happen before it happens generally that’s what the estimates do. Getting only 11 wrong out of the god knows how many times they had to do an estimate shows that we’re not perfect we make mistakes we’re allowed to do that, but it also shows that they know how to do what they were chartered to do…but that’s just my opinion.

Another comment:

If decades of Post articles were put under the same litmus test, how many errors in judgement and analysis would a researcher find?

Noted liberal Alan Dershowitz writes:

The recent national intelligence estimate that concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is just about the stupidest intelligence assessment I have ever read. It falls hook, line and sinker for a transparent bait and switch tactic employed not only by Iran, but by several other nuclear powers in the past.

The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop technology directly related to military use. That is what the United States did when it developed the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project. The second track is to develop nuclear technology for civilian use and then to use the civilian technology for military purposes.

Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt complained about paparazzi taking photos of her “from unflattering angles” to make some kind of point. I don’t know her work, but her complaint makes sense. Anyone can be made to look bad, stupid, drunk etc. in a single frame.

The news media expresses its bias by choosing unflattering photographs. This is especially true of President Bush, who every twit thinks is their inferior. The stories about the Iran intelligence estimate in the LA Daily News featured three images of Bush looking petulant or stupid. Unfortunately, they don’t post them online so I cannot link to them.

This from the UK Telegraph is slightly better.

Regarding the meat of the story, instead of it reflecting badly on Bush, it demonstrates his willingness to change position based on new information. Isn’t that the opposite of being stubborn?

Here, the LA Times explains what happened:

Last spring, as U.S. intelligence agencies worked to complete an assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, they were firmly on track to reach the same conclusion as previous reports: Tehran was bent on building the bomb.

But within weeks, there was an abrupt change of course. The earlier drafts were scrapped. Analysts began to assemble a new report built around the single, startling conclusion that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had actually been shut down for four years.

 What happened?

As U.S. intelligence officials sought Tuesday to explain the remarkable reversal, they pointed to two factors: the emergence of crucial information over the summer, and a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes that preceded the Iraq war.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the information that surfaced this summer included intercepted conversations of Iranian officials discussing the country’s nuclear weapons program, as well as a journal from an Iranian source that documented decisions to shut it down.

“When we first got some of this stuff, the fact that we got it was exciting,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the subject. He said the information was obtained as part of a stepped-up effort targeting Iran that President Bush had ordered in 2005, but the problem with it “was digesting it to know what we had.”

The information triggered a cascade of recalculations across the 16 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, the official said. Analysts at the CIA and elsewhere began to revisit classified reports that they had scrutinized repeatedly in recent years. As they did so, officials said, they saw details that added up to the new conclusion.

Bush, like every president, must rely on the nation’s intelligence services. Do we really expect him to don a trenchcoat and go a-spyin’?

The important issue is how to obtain better intelligence. Democrats have thwarted some efforts because of a privacy fetish, and because it makes good politics. In just 13 months, Bush will be out of office. The threats to America will continue. Damage done to us via FISA reform etc. will endure.

Finally, Big Baloney seems to be overlooking the fact that Iran apparently abandoned its nuclear program soon after we toppled Saddam Hussein. Coincidence?

IBD: 

Far from letting us breathe a sigh of relief, the latest National Intelligence Estimate reporting that Tehran has shelved its nuclear program creates confusion. In politicized spy agencies, “facts” oftentimes aren’t.

Two years ago, the National Intelligence Estimate, reflecting the coordinated judgment of the 16 U.S. spy agencies under the guidance of the newly established office of director of national intelligence, could self-assuredly “assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

Now the same supposedly authoritative intelligence community consensus is whistling an entirely different tune. The new report, once again with “high confidence,” says Iran’s program to build a nuclear weapon has been out of operation since the fall of 2003.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005,” it states.

The change is supposedly the result of intercepted communications between Iran’s military commanders in which complaints of the program being shut down were overheard. Some senior administration policymakers suspect Iranian deception.

Here are some of the reasons our spy agencies’ switcheroo should cause more, not less, worry:

• The intelligence community’s renewed certainty that Iran did indeed have a nuclear weapons program.

• Our continued lack of human intelligence (real live spies and informers) within hostile regimes and terrorist organizations.

• The lack of confidence our spy agencies command because of the obvious fact that they either got it entirely wrong on Iran building nuclear weapons two years ago, or they have it all wrong now.

• The new estimate’s “moderate-to-high-confidence” judgment that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” and that, given its continued enrichment of uranium, Iran may have a nuclear weapon as soon as 2010.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency’s 2006 discovery of traces of highly enriched uranium on nuclear equipment — suggesting a true goal of producing enriched-uranium fuel for weapons.

Tigerhawk:

The Financial Times is reporting that China has edged off its policy of opposing new economic sanctions against Iran.

China has for the first time indicated clear support for a new package of United Nations sanctions against Iran, breaking months of deadlock inside the UN security council over how to respond to Tehran’s nuclear programme.

In a move that will boost expectations in western capitals that a new UN sanctions resolution could be agreed within weeks, Beijing signalled over the weekend that it was prepared to back measures that will hit Iran’s banking and business sector, while also prohibiting more senior Iranians from travelling abroad.

What made China move “over the weekend”? I did some free association on the treadmill this morning, and the oxygen deprivation made me wonder whether China might be increasingly worried about Russia. Last week, if you recall, Russia released fuel for Iran’s heavy water reactor, which drove some speculation from Stratfor and others that Russia had decided that a nuclear Iran was less troubling than a United States undistracted by Iran. Then, last night I absentmindedly watched the CNN special report “Czar Putin,” which puts the Vladinator’s huge domestic popularity into a larger picture of surging Russian nationalism.

Belmont Club:

While the “surge” of five US brigades plus their accompanying support elements, about 30,000 US troops total, is the main focus of commentators when discussing the current situation in Iraq, the real surge in Iraq is happening behind the scenes. The rapidly expanding Iraqi Army is where the real surge in forces is occurring. …

By the time the US plans to reduce its combat forces to pre-surge levels (July 2008), the real surge is planned to have increased the Iraqi Army to 13 divisions, 49 brigades, 154 battalions, and five or six ISOF [Iraqi Special Operations Force (ISOF)] battalions.

The US is considering plans to draw down to 10 combat brigades by early 2009. The Iraqi Army plans to continue growing to 13 divisions, 52 brigades, 162 battalions, and seven or eight ISOF battalions.

Inside this Iraqi Surge is an “exit plan”. But it’s not an exit plan that everyone — especially the antiwar Left — will like, because it has the potential to wind up an offensive spring. The arrival of substantial Iraqi forces will free up a lot of US maneuver brigades for employment elsewhere. Earlier proposals to withdraw US forces to Kurdistan, Kuwait or most ludicrously, to Okinawa and ceding Iraq to the Sunni rebels and Sunni militias were really attempts to dress up a unilateral surrender as a redeployment. A withdrawal following on a defeat in Iraq would never have freed up forces for Afghanistan or other places to because they would have been pinned in place to guard against a rapidly destabilized Middle East.

The Real Surge DJ Elliott describes is really a relief in place of US Forces by a newly generated Iraqi Army. The difference between a relief in place and a rout disguised as a redeployment is very significant.

In the latter case, a redeployment in defeat would have put US forces on the defensive for the forseeable future. A relief in place by new forces is really also another term for a strategic reinforcement. The danger which the antiwar Left will rightly see in the Real Surge is that it contains the kernel of offensive action. That’s not to say that any kind of military action against Iran or Syria is contemplated or even wise. There may be no intent. But it is fair to say that a Real Surge will create the capability to do more things than would be possible in the aftermath of a pell-mell retreat.

Even if the US never takes any military action against Iran the creation of a new and modern Iraqi Army, well supplied with artillery and logistics (as appears to be the case) will create a threat in being for the Ayatollahs. From a situation in which the Teheran could contemplate virtually annexing southern Iraq (as would have occurred if the US had admitted defeat in early 2007 and left) the Ayatolahs now face the prospect of having to maintain large permanent standing forces on their border with Iraq. Nor is this all. If most US ground forces are freed up by the Real Surge the Iranians will suddenly face the prospect of dangerous mobile US reserve. All in all it would be a nightmarish burden for Teheran to shoulder.

Does this mean war in the Middle East? Ironically the Real Surge may actually reduce the prospect of war considerably, while at the same time improving the prospects for the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem. While it is possible that Iran, watching its window of opportunity closing, may become suddenly reckless and launch an all-out attack to destabilize Iraq, it is probably too late for banzai measures. The odds are that Iran has been strategically beaten, first by the American Surge and worse, by the follow-on Iraqi resurgence.

The intolerable burden of maintaining a war-footing against the new Iraq, guarding against possible American action, Western sanctions and the need to refurbish its collapsing oil industry while maintaining a nuclear program may collapse the theocrats in Teheran in the same way it did the old Soviet Union.

That might be a good thing. For Iran, Iraq, America and the whole world.

I spent three days in Tehran in 1974, and found a beautiful cosmopolitan city with beautiful women. It felt very much like Rome. When I read stories such as this, I think something’s gotta give.

Iranian police have unveiled a list of “vices” — including makeup, un-Islamic dress and decadent movies — being targeted in an ongoing moral crackdown, a conservative newspaper reported on Monday. The list was published in the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper as part of a police drive launched in April which has seen the arrest of “thugs”, raids on underground parties, seizures of satellite dishes, and street checks of improperly dressed individuals.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week urged police to keep up its crackdown on social vices, saying they must “fulfill their duties regardless of some opposition and propaganda.”

Some moderates have questioned the need for the moral crackdown but conservatives have applauded police for a drive they say is popular with the public and necessary to improve security in society.

“The list of illegal behaviour against the security and morality of society which will be pursued by police… has been announced,” the Jomhuri Eslami said.

The list, which does not make any reference to gender, highlights the fight against extortionists and drug dealers as well as what it terms “inappropriate” clothing which is short, tight or seethrough.

Thousands of women have been warned for wearing tight, short coats and skimpy headscarves and for flouting the Islamic dress code, which requires every post-pubescent woman to cover their hair and body contours.

“Wearing boots with short pants, wearing hats or scarves which do not fully cover hair and neck instead of the proper head veil and putting on unusual make-up that contradicts public chastity (is forbidden),” the list said.

That was a little joke my brother and I played on each other. I’d “rack” his nuts, then “I ran.” And vice-versa. Lame now, but for an 11-year it was hysterical, especially if it was my brother doubled-up on the bed and not me. Besides, it helped with our geography.

I recalled this while watching PBS’s recent Frontline report on US-Iranian relations. Boiled down, PBS says that right after 9/11, moderate forces in Iran tried to end antagonism between us and them. But the belligerent, cloddish Bush administration rebuffed them, causing moderates to lose influence, and now we’re locked in a dangerous power struggle.

Most of PBS’s talking heads were current Iranian leaders. After first showing them spouting conspiracy theories that make Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan seem sane by comparison (such as, we created Al Qaeda as a pretext for war), they were positioned for the rest of the documentary as reasonable, even aggrieved people. If only we had such wise men running our country!

Never once did PBS address the illegitmacy of the theocracy running the Iranian police state. Or the dire condition of its economy under the mismanagement of the clerics. Or that “moderates” in Iran serve at the pleasure of the mullahs.

Fortunately, John Bolton is out with a book. As IBD observes, we’ve had three decades of BS from Iran, going back to Iran-Contra:

“Surrender Is Not an Option,” a new book by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, was released only this week, but a story within its pages is already getting around.

After hearing of the decision to have direct talks with Iran if the regime promises to end its uranium-enrichment activities, Bolton, dining with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a fancy French restaurant, made a point of ordering as his appetizer . . . carrot soup.

Bolton complains that we are deferring to Europe’s dovish diplomats and offering Iran “several boatloads of carrots.” Bolton called this a “disjunction between the goals the president has and the policies he’s pursuing.”

As he points out, “after going on five years of negotiation by the Europeans,” there’s no evidence of “any sign of change in the Iranians’ strategic policy that they’ve been following for close to 20 years, which is to get nuclear weapons.”

A similar “disjunction” happened during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “It’s time to serve notice we won’t hold still for their barbarism,” Douglas Brinkley’s “Reagan Diaries” finds the president writing in January 1985, on the subject of striking back at Iran for Hezbollah’s holding of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

That September, Reagan recorded, “It seems a man high up in the Iranian govt. believes he can deliver all or part of (seven U.S.) kidnap victims in Lebanon sometime in early Sept.” on a beach in Tripoli. By December, the president had discovered that “the Iranian ‘go between’ . . . turns out to be a devious character. Our plan regarding the hostages is a ‘no go.’ “

Don Surber:

The good news on Iraq continues to be buried in the Washington Post. The story about the dramatic decrease in civilian deaths in Iraq relegated to Page 14 on Wednesday. The LA Times gave it the best play on Page 1 on Thursday.

Now comes news that Iran is curtailing its activities in Iraq. Apparently that saber-rattling over the A-bomb is working. ‘Tis better to rattle sabers than to have to actually use them.

The Post relegated this story to page 18.

Niall Ferguson:

True, after all that has gone wrong in Iraq, Americans are scarcely eager for another preventive war to stop another rogue regime from owning yet more weapons of mass destruction that don’t currently exist. It’s easy to imagine the international uproar that would ensue in the event of U.S. air strikes. It’s also easy to imagine the havoc that might be wreaked by Iranian-sponsored terrorists in Iraq by way of retaliation. So it’s very tempting to hope for a purely diplomatic solution.

Yet the reality is that the chances of such an outcome are dwindling fast, precisely because other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are ruling out the use of force — and without the threat of force, diplomacy seldom works. Six days ago, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin went to Iran for an amicable meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Putin says he sees “no evidence” that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. On his return to Moscow, he explicitly repudiated what he called “a policy of threats, various sanctions or power politics.”

The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, also seems less likely to support American preemption than his predecessor was in the case of Iraq. That leaves China, which remains an enigma on the Iranian question, and France, whose hawkish new president finds himself distracted by the worst kind of domestic crisis: a divorce.

By contrast, Washington’s most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel, recently demonstrated the ease with which a modern air force can destroy a suspected nuclear facility. Not only was last month’s attack on a site in northeastern Syria carried out without Israeli losses, there was no retaliation on the part of Damascus. Memo from Ehud Olmert to George W. Bush: You can do this, and do it with impunity.

The big question of 2007 therefore remains: Will he do it?

James Lewis:

This will sound alarming. A literal reading of Ahmadi-Nejad’s UN address suggests that he is predicting a total war coming soon.

The key is in his invocation and his conclusion. Normal official communications by Muslims start with, “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” A’jad followed that formula immediately with:  

“Oh God, hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and those who attend to his rightfulness.” [italics in the official Iranian version]

Sounds like a pretty standard invocation, but it’s not.  It is a specific call for the Shiite Messiah, who will bring a final holy war, the final jihad, which in the Khomeini cult implies all-out war with the infidels to bring about the Millenarian Age of Paradise on Earth. (For Khomeini, the term “infidels” includes Sunni Muslims, who do not recognize the Mahdi). That is why Khomeini started the nuclear program twenty years ago, and why it has been pushed consistently by all the major cult leaders.