What Iran means

...or sick.

Kindly read what the National Defense University wrote on the subject of a nuclear-armed Iran:

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/mcnair/mcnair69/McNairPDF.pdf

To deal properly with Iran, one must not overhype the threat but rather attempt to understand Iran's motivations, something that the National Defense University has done (aove link).

The study concluded that Iran desires nuclear weapons mainly because it feels strategically isolated and that "possession of such weapons would give the regime legitimacy, respectability, and protection." In other words, Iran desires nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterrence, just like every other nuclear-armed nation.

The NDU study continued, "[W]e judge, and nearly all experts consulted agree, that Iran would not, as a matter of state policy, give up its control of such weapons to terrorist organizations and risk direct U.S. or Israeli retribution." And it said the "United States has options short of war that it could employ to deter a nuclear-armed Iran and dissuade further proliferation."

The most sensible way to approach the Iranian nuclear issue would be to work seriously toward eliminating nuclear weapons from the entire Middle East, starting with those in Israel (a non-NPT signatory rogue nation, unlike Iran).

Of course, having peaceful deterrence with Iran would mean that the US and its regional allies would have to reach some diplomatic compromises from time to time in the middle east which, in fact, would likely better serve the US' long term national interests anyway, as opposed to continuing a failed policy of compellence in the region.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2725a9fc-a467-11dc-a28d-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

We need to overhaul what is a flawed non-proliferation treaty

Published: December 7 2007 02:00

From Dr Yousaf Mahmood Butt.

Sir, David Miliband (“Why we must not take the pressure off Iran” December 5) is correct to point out that the Iranian uranium enrichment programme remains a concern despite the just-released US National Intelligence Estimate suggesting that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

However, no amount of “diplomacy with teeth” can compensate for what is fundamentally a flaw in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): signatory nations (such as Iran) are allowed by law to enrich uranium – ostensibly for peaceful uses – and thus collect the raw material needed, should they wish, for a bomb.

Instead of the selective application of United Nations sanctions to nations perceived to be unfriendly or unco-operative by the west (eg, No to Iran, Yes to Brazil for uranium enrichment), it would make more sense to overhaul the 1970 NPT; and, while at it, also make sure that the new treaty punishes more aggressively those (predominantly western) nations that do not abide by their arms-reduction obligations in the current NPT.

“If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?” Brazillian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said of the NPT; but it could well be said by the Iranian government in reference to Israel, which is openly allowed by the west to stockpile 200 or so nuclear warheads in the region.

It is telling that President Ford, in 1976, encouraged Iran (then under the US-backed shah) to build both uranium enrichment as well as plutonium processing plants. How is it that what was permissible then under the 1970 NPT, has now become forbidden – under the very same treaty – to the point that there are cries for further UN sanctions against Iran?

The answer is to be found in Mr Miliband’s article: we don’t trust Iran and it is not our friend. Unfortunately, if international law is to be taken seriously, it must be blind.

Yousaf Mahmood Butt,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, MA 02138, US

I commend Foreign Policy for boasting three authors, who had questioned Obama's insanity on Iran, and have made proposal comments on how to do more. Laura Rozen, David Rothkopf, and Daniel Drezner. History will remember, that you stood on the side of right, and used your brains, while others waffled.

I think it's patently clear that Obama has failed on Iran. He apologised for 1953, the next president will have to apologize for 2009! This time around, we are complicit in a new blood bath.

To support his inane position, the media has been allowed to ignore, and refuse, and confuse the cause of Freedom in Iran, by

>1) Claiming there was no difference between Moussaiv and Ahmedi-nejad.
2) That the election was disputed
3) That our intervention, would only undermine the chances of success.

I've addressed the first in my comments on foreign policy. Now I'll address the second two ,briefly, with a few quotes. I crossposted this comment in a few other authors blogs here, and I apologize if this is inappropriate, and understand any deletion (at least keep one up, please).

About the election. In What We Can Do In Iran by Bernard-Henri Levy summarizes what is known so far.

this election had, in every way, only the appearance of democracy

This is a fact eloquently presented by Hitchens in his latest column, and seconded by traditional non-interventionists such as Juan Cole on his Informed Comment website, and even by Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com. It's a fact. Shame on Obama and the media, for suppressing it. Sarkozy acknowledged it last Monday.

More from Levy:

The other fact, however, is the desire for change on the part of a substantive fraction--and perhaps even majority--of Iranian society.

Democracies must take initiative.

Finally, the third certainty is that as a result, the initiative more than ever must be taken by democracies.

Democratic obligations

Let's summarize. From these three certainties, considered together, arises a clear obligation: aiding and strengthening, with all our might, the Iranian civil society in revolt. We have done it in the past with the USSR. We eventually understood, after decades of cowardice, that totalitarianism, in its eventual state of putrefaction, was only strong from our weakness.

Not only do democracies have obligations to help the People of Iran, but here are just some of the basic tools at their disposal:

Dan Senor of the CFR, suggests in the Wall Street Journal

First, Mr. Obama should contact Mr. Mousavi to signal his interest in the situation and Mr. Mousavi's security. Our own experience with dissidents around the world is that proof of concern by the U.S. government is helpful and desirable.

Mr. Obama should deliver another taped message to the Iranian people. Only this time he should acknowledge the fundamental reality that the regime lacks the consent of its people to govern, which therefore necessitates a channel to the "other Iran." He should make it clear that dissidents and their expatriate emissaries should tell us what they most need and want from the U.S. This could consist of financial resources, congresses of reformers, workshops or diplomatic gatherings. The key is to let the reformers call the shots and indicate how much and what U.S. assistance they want. Simply knowing we care, that we are willing to deploy resources and are watching their backs -- to the extent we can -- often helps reformers.

As with Ukraine and the Soviet Union before, Mr. Obama could at least make it clear that the U.S. will separate the issues of engagement and legitimacy.

Engagement without an effort to talk to the "other Iran" would not only be a travesty but tactically foolish as well.

Third, the president should direct U.S. ambassadors in Europe and the Gulf to meet with local Iranian anti-regime expatriates. From London to Dubai there are large Iranian communities throughout Europe and the Persian Gulf. The symbolism of this would be powerful, but this should be more than just a photo-op. Expatriates tend to know far more about their countries than even our intelligence experts -- and they could help guide efforts to aid reform.

Fourth, additional funding should be provided immediately for Radio Farda, an effective Persian-language radio, Internet and satellite property of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Farda helps Iranians get the information and analytical context that is often denied to them by their own government.

Fifth, the administration should take steps to give Iranian reformers and dissidents a level playing field with the regime in the battle of ideas. Just as providing photocopiers and fax machines helped Solidarity dissidents in communist Poland in the 1980s, today's reformers need access to the Web and other means of communication. Grants should be given to private groups to develop and field firewall-busting technology.

Now for the bridge from virtual to real-

Money should be appropriated for an NGO-run "open window" platform that enables a wide variety of indigenous voices to be carried on radio, blogs, video clips and other media. This can take the form of satellite and terrestrial broadcasting and other information tools to provide Iranians with anonymous communications and access to Internet, television and radio content that their government attempts to deny them. The president should also call a White House meeting of the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Google and other video-sharing and social-networking companies. Entrepreneurially minded high-tech companies can manage this project better than the government. Many of these CEOs are strong supporters of Mr. Obama; they should be brought on board to help make his foreign policy succeed. In the meantime, the president should order the military to make some of its EC-130 "Commando Solo" aircraft, which serve as flying television and radio stations, available to enable reformers and protest leaders to speak directly to the Iranian people.

On FP's own blogs,
none other than David Rothkopf stated

We need a forceful message that countries that violate the basic rights of their citizens should expect to pay a price for such behavior in the international community.

They could have said… ideally in chorus with our allies… that the international community was disturbed by apparent irregularities, that any recount or investigation should be made by objective observers, that the suppression of peaceful protests would be viewed with great concern, that Iran would jeopardize its talks with the international community if it undertook violence or condoned voter fraud, that nuclear weapons agreements depend on trust and that countries that seek such trust must act accordingly, that while we seek to maintain engagement, there are limits to what we will tolerate and that we reserve all our options to advance our interests. They could have convened a meeting among like-minded countries to discuss options, sent an envoy, formally postponed further discussions of the nuclear issue until this situation was clarified. They could have raised a doubt in the minds of the leaders in Tehran about how we would react in the face of a crackdown, that there might be consequences.

America's allies can also play a more direct role, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post reports that Israel

has significant capacity to help the demonstrators. It could use its communication satellites to break through the communications blackout the regime has attempted to enforce. Its Internet capabilities can be offered to the protesters to reopen closed networks. Israel could temporarily expand its radio broadcasts into the country and allow its airwaves to be used to broadcast events on the ground in real time so that protesters won't have to rely on word of mouth to know what is happening or where things are leading.

Israel can also further support Moussvai by taking on the Ahmedi-nejad regime directly. As she notes, if the Pasderans are

preoccupied with domestic dissent, they will have less time to devote to Hamas and Hizbullah. If they are busy quelling armed insurrections by Kurds or Azeris or Baluchis, they will have less time to devote to negotiating the purchase of the S-300 anti-aircraft system with Russia, or keeping tabs on their nuclear scientists. Strategically, Israel stands only to gain - either marginally or massively - from the ayatollahs' discomfort.

Note the obvious benefit to Israel:

Were Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to publicly announce Israel's support for the protesters, Israel would stand to gain politically in a number of ways. First and foremost, it would be doing the right thing morally and so would earn the respect of millions of people throughout the world who are dismayed at their own governments' silence in the face of the brave Iranian protesters risking their lives for freedom.

And yes - its 100% MORAL.

Although I generally refrain from commenting using other's quotes in place of my text, I sincerely hope these quotes illuminate some of those who just can't get their heads around "Well How can We do Anything" gibberish and crap.

Personally, I say we send in special units to assassinate senior Iranian leadership, and foment direct revolts and revolution. It's now or never. If the regime wins, it will be more motivated than evere, to get nukes and kick our ass. Russia also needs to pay a penalty, for lending a hand to the bloody thugs. Caspian or no caspian.

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog
June 24, 2009

What’s Really Dead? “Realism” on Iran

By Jonathan Tobin

Only two days ago a wide range of pundits were praising President Obama for his refusal to take a strong stand on the situation in Iran.

At the Daily Beast, veteran foreign policy “realist” Leslie Gelb complimented the president for his refusal to embrace the street protests or to express outrage over the situation. Gelb thought Obama was wise to ignore the neocons and “leave Iran to the Iranians,” lest a presidential statement tarnish the demonstrators as tools of America.

On the same day on the same site, veteran leftie Eric Alterman took an interestingly similar stance, mocking neoconservatives such as Charles Krauthammer’s and Robert Kagan’s criticism of the president for, as Alterman put it, “not force-feeding Iran their democracy.” For Alterman, the whole idea of the United States taking a strong stand on the bloodshed in the streets of Tehran was just a wacky neocon theory, deeply reminiscent of the prelude to the war in Iraq, which he then rehearsed at length. Conveniently, Alterman omits the ultimate outcome of the war, which to date has produced a flawed and shaky but still coherent democracy that right now may look pretty good to those living under the thumb of the ayatollahs.

Indeed, Alterman thought the whole idea of Americans expecting their president to articulate a moral stance on a crucial foreign-affairs issue to be so laughable that he predicted that the dust-up over Obama’s failures on Iran means that neoconservatism will soon be as dead as Marxism. And considering that Alterman has spent a good deal of his career flaking for the legacy of the late Stalinist spy I.F. Stone, he may be presumed to be an expert on the subject of the death of Marxism.

These were just a couple of the pundits who blasted whomever who had the temerity to ask their president to start behaving like a leader. In the view of many realists, leftists and a few renegade Republicans who defy classification (such as former congressman and current MSNBC gabber Joe Scarborough who may fancy himself as a future leader of the GOP), Obama was right to stay mum.

But, lo and behold, after ten days of milquetoast releases on Iran, the president decided to significantly raise the temperature on the subject yesterday by making exactly the kind of strong statement his critics had been begging for all week. And what was the reaction from all those who had been saying that his refusal to do so was an indicator of his cool wisdom? Nothing much.

The Washington Post editorial page claimed that the president was not yielding to those who had blasted his “softness” even though that is exactly what he had just done. Instead, the Post pretended that Obama was finding his own middle way to avoid repeating what they think is the mistake of the Bush administration in trying to isolate Iran (though, in fact, Bush’s team significantly backed away from a tough Iran policy in his last year in office). Other neocon bashers seem either silent or in a similar state of denial about Obama’s flip. Like the White House spinners, they are merely pretending nothing has happened.

What does all this prove? That after taking a beating on the issue, Obama accepted that the so-called “realist” policy of engaging Iran is simply unacceptable to an American people that seem curiously susceptible to ideas like support for democracy and freedom abroad, even though such neoconservative notions were supposedly dead. Obama may still hope to one day engage Ahmadinejad rather than deal with the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and terrorism at home and abroad, but he can’t afford to be branded an appeaser or enabler of that regime even if that’s what his realist and left-wing fans want.

Obama is still a popular president and, given his keen political instincts, may remain so despite his obvious failings. But the events of the last two weeks have shown that the only ideological corpse on display is the realist foreign policy on Iran that he had embraced to applause from the same pundits who are mum about his switcheroo.

--Posted - 06.24.2009 - 1:24 PM

Copyright © 1997-2009 Commentary Magazine
All Rights Reserved

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/71202

As a world comes to grips once again through media memories being refreshed over the Iran activities over the past two weeks, we remember the tarnished US involvement in past revolutions and shudder. Did those things really happen. It is all well-documented and yes, it did happen.
Was the US involved again?. Knowing the US predilection for foreign affair dalliances, a disgraceful record, one can't help thinking that the new Washington regime may have had a flutter but now, as we have seen already, we will be subject to the condemnation of the mullahs and Iranian government for having a vote that wasn't perfect. Hypocrisy at its best.
How any American can claim that Iran has just been through a stolen election without reflecting on the 'stolen' elections that have occurred over the past eight years in the US, 'the home of democracy'. Phooey!
Certainly the violence on US street was substantially less, simply because until that time, one had a high degree of confidence in the Supreme Court and justice and fair play and honesty. All these have taken a battering over recent times and will continue to do so as all the qualities enshrined in the Constitution are eroded, bit by bit. But who cares? No one seems to, particularly the elected non-entities on the hill.
So let's be careful in giving democratic advice to Iran. The US record is somewhat tarnished.
The Iran result must have pleased Netanyahu and his cabal of warmongers hungry for a conflict in which they would dearly love to drag in the US as a willing partner. However, one would have to hope that the slow moving elephant that is US Foreign Policy has other plans. One day, allowing for the devious and disloyal Israeli lobbies running out of money to influence the Senators and elected representatives, there will be a vote on the need to enforce all the UN resolutions that over the years have been ignored by the out-of-control monster child of US weak government, Israel.
When that happens and the world can see that the US has recovered from giving its soul to the Jews by way of aid, military muscle, unending support, ignoring murderous actions like the USS Liberty, the US may get some respect back from all small countries who used to think that the US way of life was enviable. That was a long time ago.
Button the lip on democratic elections, Mr. President. Let he who is free from sin, throw the first stone.

Iran's Democratic Upsurge

June 25, 2009
By Hamid Dabashi

The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21790

"A messianic apocalyptic cult..."

-- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Iran and Iranians

By design or serendipity, the Israeli claim to be "the only democracy in the Middle East " has suddenly been globally exposed for the ludicrous joke that it is.

The June 2009 parliamentary elections in Lebanon will go down in history as a major advance for the cause of democracy in that small but vital country. The victory of the March 14 coalition of Saad Al-Hariri, by which they now hold 71 seats in the 128- member parliament, has left the remaining 58 seats to the Hizbullah-led coalition. Israel and its American allies have been quick to paint this result as a victory for "pro-Western" elements and thus a defeat for Hizbullah. This is not the case. Victory of the March 14 coalition is the victory of democracy in Lebanon -- a victory Hizbullah shared.

Because Israel is a racist apartheid state, it cannot see the world except through its own tribal lens. The victory of the March 14 coalition in Lebanon is the victory of the electoral process, which now solidly includes Hizbullah and its parliamentary allies. Hizbullah is now not only part of Lebanon 's civil society, but also its political apparatus and institutionalised democratic process, and Hizbullah achieved this without abandoning its status as a national liberation army that will defend its homeland against any and every Israeli barbarity that may come its way.

As the Arab and Muslim worlds celebrate this democratic victory, it is imperative to see it as having nothing to do with Obama's presidency, or his speech in Cairo , lecturing Muslims in the region on democracy while his army is illegally occupying Iraq and slaughtering Afghans.

On the heels of the Lebanese elections, the cause and the march of democracy took an even bolder leap in Iran , and that leap is not because of US promotion of democracy, but in fact is despite and against it. At time of writing, millions of Iranians inside and out of their homeland are angry and heartbroken with the official results. Some go so far as considering what happened a coup d'état. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to question the validity of the official results that have declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the clear winner. The only point of which Iranians can be sure and proud is the extraordinary manifestation of their collective will to participate in their politics. This unprecedented participation neither lends legitimacy to the illegitimate apparatus of the Islamic Republic and its manifestly undemocratic organs nor should be abused by bankrupt oppositional forces outside Iran to denounce and denigrate a glorious page in modern Iranian history.

Every four years, during presidential elections followed by parliamentary elections, the paradox of the democratic theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Iran fascinates and baffles the world. During this presidential campaign, Iranians boisterously joined rallies and then stood in long queues to vote under the extended shadow of Israeli warlords threatening a military strike. The propaganda machinery at the disposal of Israel will have the world believe that a populist demagogue like Ahmadinejad is "the dictator" of Iran , as one of their spokesmen in New York , Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, once put it. And thus on the model of an Oriental despot he represents a backward people whose fate deserves to be determined by others (the US / Israel , of course). As the prominent Israeli scholar of Iran , Haggai Ram, one of a handful of courageous Israeli dissidents, has aptly demonstrated in his Iranophobia, Israel 's fixation with Iran has now reached pathological proportions and is a case study of self-delusional hysteria feeding on itself.

The reality of the Iranian polity, as the world has once again been witness to, is vastly different to the picture US/Israel propaganda is feeding the world. A vibrant and restless society is defying all mandated limitations on its will and demanding and exacting its democratic rights. The undemocratic institutions of the Islamic Republic -- beginning with the idea of velayat-e faqih, or rule of the cleric, down to the unelected body of the Guardian Council -- are not obstacles to democracy in Iran but invitations to democratic assault. What the Iranian electorate, young and old, men and women, seem to be doing is far more important than a mere head on collision with ageing and arcane institutions. They are pushing the limits of their democratic exercises in unfathomable and unstoppable directions. The Internet has connected Iran 's youth to the global context, and they have in turn become the catalyst of discursive and institutional changes beyond the control of the clerical clique in Qom and Tehran .

This is more than anything a battle between generations. Iranian society is changing and fast. The ageing custodians of the Islamic Republic wish to limit what can be said or expected. But the globally geared and wired youth, more than 60 per cent of the electorate, is now radically altering the contours of those limits. They are not merely defying them, but are sublimating them. The red line in Iran is thinning by the hour, for facing it are skilful players exercising their political muscles. It was quite evident in the course of the US presidential election of 2008 that an Internet-savvy Obama outmanoeuvred McCain's arcane operation. The same is true of Mir-Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi's campaigns, the two reformist candidates, on the one side, and Ahmadinejad's on the other, with Mohsen Rezai in-between. The social basis of Mousavi's platform is the urban middle class, the youth, and women. The economic basis of Ahmadinejad's demagoguery is the rural and urban poor. They are both skilful campaigners in reaching out to their respective constituencies.

The rising demographic tide is against the old revolutionaries. Iranian children born after the revolution in the late 1970s have no active memory of its hopes and furies and could not care less about those who do. Every four years since the end of Iran-Iraq war in 1988, and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, the Iranian electorate has been upping the ante. They voted for Rafsanjani in 1989 and for eight years he rebuilt the economic infrastructure of the country after the war, creating a class of nouveau riche. Then in 1997 they voted for Mohamed Khatami who gave them a modicum of civil society and opened the vista of wide-ranging social reform, and yet did nothing -- or very little -- to alleviate the poor masses Rafsanjani had left behind. In 2005, those disenfranchised by Rafsanjani's economic project and indifferent to Khatami's social and cultural agenda pushed power into the hands of Ahmadinejad. And now, in 2009, a major segment of disaffected voters, in their millions, are investing trust in Mousavi, a former prime minister with impeccable revolutionary credentials, a war hero, and a socialist in his economic projects.

Again, the scene is overwhelmed by the massive participation of the youth, students, and above all women, on both sides of the political divide. This new generation is Internet-aware, versatile with Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It is globally wired. The presence of Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi's distinguished wife, is an added aspect of this campaign. A prominent public intellectual and a former university chancellor, a poet, painter and sculptor, and a staunch advocate of women's rights, Rahnavard is dubbed by some foreign journalists as the Michelle Obama of Iran . "No," retorted one of her Iranian admirers in response, "Michelle Obama could have aspired to become the Zahra Rahnavard of the United States ."

This election has also been extraordinary because of live televised debates that exposed skeletons collected for 30 years in the closets of the ageing elders of the republic. Ahmadinejad, bastard son of the Islamic Revolution, is fast devouring, in his populist demagoguery, the idealism and aspirations of that revolution. Opposing Ahmadinejad are the architects of Iran 's creative imagination. More than ever Iranian artists and filmmakers have been active in this election. They have published open letters, produced video clips, and joined others in rallies. From Paris , Mohsen Makhmalbaf wrote an open letter supporting Mousavi and encouraging everyone to vote for him while dispatching his youngest daughter, Hana, to go to Iran to make a documentary about the elections. When Mousavi challenged the official results, Makhmalbaf became a conduit of his campaign with international news outlets, using his connections with foreign journalists.

Majid Majidi, another prominent Iranian filmmaker, directed Mousavi's campaign commercials. Other Iranian directors, actors, producers have similarly exerted their efforts. Student organisations, labour unions, professional associations and women's rights organisations -- all have been engaged, on the streets, on the Internet sites, writing fiery essays, shooting movies, and producing video clips. Rahnavard, a painter with a talent for colour symbolism, chose green for her husband's campaign (neither red for violence nor white for martyrdom, the other two colours in the Iranian flag). And when Khatami went to Isfahan to campaign for Mousavi, upwards of 100,000 people came together in the historic Meydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan to cheer him and support the reformist candidate. This is democracy from bellow; democracy not by virtue of institutions, but by collective and defiant insistence. Israeli warlords should think twice before aggressing the Iranians.

Disappointed by this democratic flourishing are not just Israeli and American Zionists that spent time and money portraying Iran as a diabolic dictatorship deserving to be bombed. Equally scandalised by this election are the colourful band of lipstick jihadi Hirsi Ali wanna-bes who are writing one erotic fantasy after another about Iranian "women", over-sexualising Iranian politics as they opt for "love and danger" during their "honeymoon in Tehran". The representation of Iranian women in the flea market of the US publishing industry began under President Bush with Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran and has now come to a new depth of depravity in Pardis Mahdavi's Passionate Uprisings: Iran's Sexual Revolution. Between a harem full of Lolitas and a bathhouse of nymphomaniacs is where Nafisi and Mahdavi have Iranian women, marching in despair awaiting liberation by US marines and Israeli bombers. What a contrast to the real work of women, as testified to in this election, and now on the street in defence of the collective will of the nation.

On two sides of Iran lie in waste Iraq and Afghanistan, liberated for democracy by George W Bush and now Barack Obama. In the middle, millions of Iranians who would have been maimed or murdered by a similar "liberation" peacefully poured into streets and jubilantly marched to polling stations to vote, in a grassroots, however limited and flawed, but still promising and beautiful, march towards democracy. And now that they think their votes have been stolen from them they are more than capable of demanding them back.

Whoever the final winner of Iran's election may be, fanatical Zionists in Israel and the US, power-mongering Mullahs in Tehran and Qom, comprador intellectuals and career opportunists from Washington DC to California, are its sorest losers. The winners are the indomitable Iranian people. We are witness, regardless of controversy, to a triumph of democratic pluralism, from Lebanon to Iran -- a nightmare for the Jewish state that wants the whole region remade in its delusional, racist, apartheid image where sects and factions fight each other to the dogged end. "A messianic apocalyptic cult," indeed, can only describe the country of the man who pronounced it.

Mr Prime Minister, thou dost protest too much.

The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Don't know who you are Clint, but I do like your comments.

My comments are always late getting in as I am on another continent but I would like to think that occasionally, when the comments on the good writings of Stephen Walt are not too long, not often I admit, that you read some of hastily written comments on the middle east and all that covers, including the Iran failed revolution.
That is what it was, but different to the average (if there is such a thing) revolution, this one is more about freedom as one would expect, but held back and therefore failed because it really is a revolution against religious dominance.
When the women of Iran throw off their headscarfs and are treated as equals to men, then and only then can such a revolution take place. You cannot demonstrate against both religious control and freedom at the same time particularly in a country where the leaders are religious mullahs.
The political leaders did not say stay 'off the streets, it is over'; it was the religious leaders who said that and while they control the country absolutely, other freedoms will be withheld from the Iranians.
They have to choose to downgrade Islam to become just a religion, not a controlling way of life.
In my opinion, a secular Iran could be one of the powerhouses of the world.