"realism" has nothing to do with anything.

israeli america is an empire now, and we create our own reality.

in the meantime, i wonder what the iran/pakistan pipeline agreement has to do with anything...

our indian buddies have been cut out of the pattern, and even though india seems to be willing to pay the extra freight as gas and oil go 4000 miles out of their way from central asia, through israel, to india, it looks like the chinese will get the stuff.

but we created our own reality in ukraine, georgia and kyrgyzstan already, didnt we? ...and look how well everything's turned out...

if we assume peak oil and global warming are real "reality", and if we somehow manage to connect the dots between that "reality" and the "reality" concocted by the neocons, it's not that hard to figure out one big thing:

it doesnt make a bit of difference who's running iran as long as iran sells gas and oil to china... the israelis have to control china to have a prayer at controlling global warming, and if they fail to control global warming, they will need fuel for their american armies as those armies protect israelis from the backlash as israel cleanses the high ground in the west bank of palestinians.

too bad china is using fuel that israeli american armies will need in order to defend israel, isnt it?

As is obvious from looking at his website, Andrew Sullivan has devoted all his energy to the Iranian election since Saturday. His pace has been frenetic and I think you'd agree he is performing an invaluable service.

When I read his post about western governments not recognizing Ahmadi-Nejad's re-election, it did not seem AT ALL to me that he was saying that we would NEVER recognize his re-election (if it stands). As you say, we recognize many distasteful and questionably installed governments and Andrew is well aware of that.

You might ask why he was not more explicit about this. There are probably 2 factors:

1 - He is working at a frenetic pace and may not have imagined that it would be taken that way.

2 - To start talking about what would happen if the results stand would be to subtly admit defeat.

You state that "Obama's measured response to the events in Iran strikes me as more sensible". If you read Andrew's posts, he believes that Obama's responses have been quite good. Even when he has quibbled somewhat in thinking that Obama has not been out-spoken enough about the details of the election, he has later come to understand what Obama is doing.

You must understand that Andrew is not a representative of the U.S. (or any) government. He is a private citizen - a blogger - and he is also essentially a partisan in this situation. He has chosen a side and is promoting that sides interests. I don't think that he would think it was appropriate for Obama to say the things he has said on his blog.

Best Regards

Sully's idea sounds bad. For one thing, as you said, if Ahmadinejad ends up being president, everyone has egg on their face. For another, let's say the US calls upon everyone not to recognize Ahmadinejad's government. Don't you think that could create the counter-impression - that we will recognize Moussavi's government if he wins?

posted at pajamas media, comments on a ledeen article...

doesnt make any difference who won this election: we still need war with iran so we can close hormuz so we have an excuse to build pipelines to israel, the med, and europe.

we need to keep that oil from the chinese, and use the oil to fuel our armies as they protect israel as it completes its ethnic cleansing of the palestinians’ high ground in the west bank.

…and besides all that, we have a right to that oil because we’re the mightiest military in the world, and might makes right.

all we have to do now is cripple whatever remaining non-proliferation programs we have going… for instance, the CIA pirates who are inspecting shipping for wmds.

outing plane (sic) and brewster jennings was a step in the right direction, but we have to ensure no clues pointing to the upcoming false flag are discovered by overzealous non-proliferation agents…

it’s not gonna make a real good story if we attack iran without having an attack on america to stir up support… the boys at dimona should be able to fabricate a little nuke with a north korean signature, and counterfeit documentary evidence of north korea selling a bomb to iran (remember iraq’s yellowcake from africa… that ploy almost worked, and would have worked except for sloppy staff work.)

all we have to do now is pick the target… nominations are now open for the joint israeli american false flag attack on america that will give us an excuse to bomb iran, close hormuz, and pipe persian gulf oil and gas to israel.

please keep in mind that the event should take place where major network television coverage would already be set up for live broadcasts, or we will again have to resort to a double whammy, the first whammy to attract the cameras so they can document the second stage live.

all this comes under the heading of mr ledeen’s “creative destruction”.

“creative destruction” works, and we might as well keep using it, dont you think?

so that's the reality you guys simply cant talk about without jeopardizing your cushy positions.

it's been an hour now since i posted that stuff at pajamasmedia, and not one pajamas knuckledragger has objected.

we have to assume that everybody knows what's going on, and that they'd enthusiastically support another 9/11 if they thought they could get away with it.

and those are the people you cant talk about, because you are unable, for all your credentials as a "realist", to admit to the basic reality of 9/11.

well, we dont have to put all our eggs in the north korean basket, you know.

boris berezovsky has gone to great pains to plant the legend of soviet nukes in chechen hands, nukes stolen when security lapsed as the soviet union imploded.

there's also a legend of iranian support for chechen rebels, so despite caroline glick's attempts to set up north korea, it might be easier to frame the iranians with chechen nukes... it's just a matter of fabricating a bomb that has the same signature as a russian bomb.

the fact remains: you guys wont rest until you get your war, hormuz is closed, and pipelines are built from the persian gulf to israel... and judging from the reaction from your cohorts at pajamas media, you guys think another false flag would be a good deal.

what are you waiting for?

...the situation is deteriorating, people are learning more every day about how this catastrophe came about, they're learning that prominent israelis are calling for all jews to abandon their morals to defend israel, and after gaza, who needs more proof of israelis' moral degeneration?

once you've admitted to abandoning your morals, you gots to be a prime suspect in any crime that furthers your drive to war with iran, dont you?

First and foremost, it is highly unlikely that the Islamic Republic would concede to western demands with respect to its highly contentious nuclear program. All in all, it really does not matter who is president of Iran, considering the fact that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (the Supreme Leader) holds the final say in all state matters, whether it involves economic policy or its role in the Middle East.

One only needs to look back at the recent article by Ranj Alaaldin in this very same magazine. It is almost universal to conclude that Tehran's conservative establishment would kill any attempts by President Mousavi to open up Iranian society to westernization. In addition, the likelihood that Mousavi would be willing to practice what he preaches remains skeptical. Who is too say that Mr. Mousavi's campaign for change against the incumbent Ahmadinejad was not just a ploy to win the presidential election? He is a politicain after all. This question is a very reasonable one to ask, especially when the history of Iran's "reformist" candidate is intimately involved with political persecution. Lets keep in mind that this is the very same man who oversaw the execution of thousands of political prisoners throughout the 1980's.

The Weekly Standard
From The June 29, 2009 Issue:

The June 12 Revolution

Whatever happens in Tehran, there's no going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic.

By Reuel Marc Gerecht

The modern Middle East has had numerous "game-changing" moments, when history turned. Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Muhammad Ali's conquest of the Nile Valley in 1805, and the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 introduced Europeans and European ideas into the region. The British discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina in 1925, the awakening of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Arab Revolt in Palestine in 1936, and the God-father-like victory of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Cairo in 1954 further accelerated tradition-crushing Westernization and gave birth to nationalism, pan-Arabism, and contemporary Islamic fundamentalism. The Israeli triumph in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and the birth of Iraqi democracy two years later buried secular pan-Arab dictatorship, politically inflamed the Islamic identity, and set the stage for the growth of representative government in a more religious Middle East.

The Iranian presidential election of June 12 may soon rank with these history-making events. We may well look back on it as the "June 12 revolution" even if--especially if--the regime cracks down on the supporters of Mir-Hussein Mousavi, the candidate who ran second to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the dubious official vote tally. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), which almost destroyed the Islamic Republic and forged the reputation and character of then-Prime Minister Mousavi, most Iranians have been exhausted revolutionaries. More like sheep than foot-soldiers of a dynamic faith, Iranians have largely veered away from confronting their increasingly unpopular rulers.

Now the election appears to have stiffened their backbones and quickened their passions. They've had enough of their unpleasant, joyless lives. The election has given a wide variety of Iranians--many of whom would not voluntarily associate with each other because of religious, political, and social differences--a simple and transcendent rallying cry: One man, one vote! . . .
Raised on a diet of mostly Western thought that the creation of the dictatorial Islamic Republic has only amplified, Iranians have had quite a bit of democratic conditioning, that prelude to representative government that "realists" believe a people must experience before they can handle democracy. As Khosrokhavar revealed in his astonishing book Avoir vingt ans au pays des ayatollahs ("To Be Twenty in the Land of the Ayatollahs"), Western ideas--especially feminism and the right of individuals to define themselves--are more powerful today in the deeply conservative holy city of Qom than they were 30 years ago. Khamenei began to realize in the 1990s what Khomeini instinctively knew from a richer understanding of Islamic law and the human condition: A majority of Muslims can do the wrong thing if given a chance.

Khamenei acted so crudely and rashly on June 12 because he'd already seen this movie. What's happening in Iran now is all about democracy, about the contradictory and chaotic bedfellows that it makes, about the questioning of authority and the personal curiosity that it unleashes. Khamenei knows what George H.W. Bush's "realist" national security adviser Brent Scowcroft surely knows, too: Democracy in Iran implies regime change. Where Iranians in the 1990s could try to play games with themselves--be in favor of greater democracy but refrain from saying publicly that the current government was illegitimate--this fiction is no longer possible. Khamenei has forced Mousavi and, more important, the people behind him into opposition to himself and the political system he leads. Unless Mousavi gives up, and thereby deflates the millions who've gathered around him, a permanent opposition to Khamenei and his constitutionally ordained supremacy has now formed. Like it or not, Mousavi has become the new Khatami--except this time the opposition is stronger and led by a man of considerable intestinal fortitude.

Everyone in Tehran may have crossed the Rubicon. It was always questionable whether the office of the velayat-e faqih would survive Khamenei; he has now pretty much guaranteed that it will not. If it turns out that Mousavi has actually had one of those life-changing epiphanies that sometimes happen on the Iranian "left"--the cases of Abdullah Nuri, Iran's boldest clerical dissident who was interior minister under Rafsanjani and Khatami, and Saeed Hajjarian, a dark lord of Iran's intelligence service who became a source for some of the nation-rattling exposés about domestic assassination teams in the '90s, come to mind--who knows what could happen if Khamenei were so stupid as to rerun the election fairly. . . .

No matter what happens, the Islamic Republic as we have known it is probably over. All regimes need some sense of legitimacy to survive, and the Islamic Republic has rested on two pillars. One is the belief that the people of Iran continue to back the Islamic revolution and the essentials of the political system that has developed since. Cynics may say that the regime has never really believed this, that dictatorships always only pretend that they are popular but really know they are unloved. Although cynicism isn't uncommon among Iranians, the illusion of representative government backing the Islamic revolution has been inextricable from Iran's identity since 1979. The ruling elite, in their domestic and foreign propaganda, have prided themselves on the image of a country that is both more religious and more populist than any other Muslim country in the Middle East. Khamenei's speeches, unlike Khomeini's, often focus on the God-fearing, virtuous Iranian people as a source of his strength and the strength of the entire Muslim world. Khomeini really did think of himself as a long-awaited Shiite manifestation of God's will. The Iranian people weren't important to his ability to communicate with the Almighty. By contrast, Khamenei is somewhat humble and earthbound. He needs the Iranian nation's approval in ways that were utterly foreign to his predecessor. If Iran collapses into just another military dictatorship, this populist raison d'être goes with it. . . .

It's not difficult to foresee the Islamic Republic spiritually unraveling. If it does, the most important experiment of Islamist ideology since the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood will have proven itself--to its own people, to the clerical guardians of the faith, and to the world--a -failure. Unless Mousavi withdraws and leads his followers in a renewed quietist retreat, the Islamic revolution, which shook the Muslim world 30 years ago, will now become either a real laboratory of democracy or a crude and violent dictatorship that might rival the Baathist regimes of Iraq and Syria in its savagery. Either outcome would be momentous.

It's a pity that President Obama has trapped himself in a doomed outreach to Khamenei. Even if Mousavi wins the present tug-of-war, he'll probably support Iran's continued development of nuclear weapons. He was in office when the Islamic Republic first became serious about building the bomb; his powerful backer, Rafsanjani, is the true father of the nuclear program; and there is little reason why Mousavi would want to anger a pro-nuclear Revolutionary Guard Corps that had refrained from downing him.

But for there to be any chance that Iran will cease and desist from its nuclear quest, Mousavi must win the present struggle. If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei triumph, they will not relent. For them, and for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, nuclear weapons are the means to become global players and secure the power they can no longer confidently draw from their own people. Triumphant, the Revolutionary Guard, who have overseen all of the Islamic Republic's outreach efforts to Arab extremists like Hamas and Hezbollah, will surely get nastier abroad as they become more vicious at home.

The principal issue right now inside Iran isn't the nuclear question. It's what it has been since Khomeini died: How do you escape from a religious revolution? Mousavi might, just might, have an answer. Even if he is not our friend--and turns out to be in many ways our enemy--we should all pray that he wins. President Obama would do well to be just a bit more forceful in defending democracy for a people who must surely have earned his respect. Iranians will forgive the president his "meddling." He does carry, after all, the name of the man--Hussein, the prophet's grandson--who long ago defined Shiism's boundless admiration for those who defend their people and their faith from tyranny.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

© Copyright 2009, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/649ktodb.asp

Mobile connections are disconnected. Internet is working just till noon and slow. We can not call abroad and when people can not say anything to their families outside, because the would be arrested, if they do.

Up to now 130 youngers are killed during their silence protest in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and other cities. The government throughs hot water, Acid to protesters and shot easily to people. They enter houses whithout permision and beat people. I would like to inform you that Mr. Mousavi is the last hope for youngers for a peacefull reform or now even in better words revolution in Iran. At this moment iranian youngers need your help.

Please join Sea of Greens in IRAN. Please refuse to accept Ahmadinejad as President. He is not our President. Already after killing the first protester, he is not the President anymore. We don't want such Person as our President.

Please write to your governments and ask them to refuse Ahmadinejad! A world whithout Ahmadinejad is more peacefull.