25 June 2009 @ 8:50AM >> The mullahs in Iran have unleashed an even more brutal wave of violence against protesters opposing the recent questionable election. CNN reports:

Security forces wielding clubs and firing weapons beat back hundreds of would-be demonstrators who had flocked to a square in the capital on Wednesday to continue protests against an election they have denounced as fraudulent, witnesses told CNN.

[...]

They were among the more than half a dozen witnesses who told CNN that security forces outnumbering protesters used overwhelming force to crush a planned demonstration in Baharestan Square, in front of the parliament building. The witnesses said police charged against the demonstrators, striking them with batons, beating women and old men and firing weapons into the air in order to disperse them.

The melee extended beyond the square, according to one woman, who told CNN that she was traveling toward Baharestan with her friends as evening approached “to express our opposition to these killings these days and demanding freedom.

[...]

According to official figures, 17 people have been killed in clashes with government forces over the past 11 days. Anti-government demonstrators have taken to the streets in at least four cities outside Tehran.

But CNN has received unconfirmed reports of as many as 150 deaths related to the popular uprising. The government’s response to it appears to have hardened in recent days. CNN has received numerous accounts of night-time roundups by government forces of opposition activists and international journalists from their homes.

Some Tehran residents said they were too afraid to talk about the political crisis over the phone to anyone in the United States or Europe. Many protesters debated whether to venture into the streets.

“I am not going outside my house at all,” a 21-year-old college student from Tehran said. “The streets are too dangerous, and just so very busy with police. Ahhhh, when will our lives get back to normal?”

Worried the government was monitoring their phone conversations, some residents said the Internet was the best way to transmit information. However, the spotty connection made it difficult to rely on the Web.

“It’s beyond fear,” said a woman who arrived at a U.S. airport from Iran, but still did not want her name used for fear for her safety. “The situation is more like terror.”

[...]

Asked why the government has made it impossible for nearly all international journalists to report from Iran, [Iranian ambassador to Mexico] Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri accused the media of not accurately reporting events. “In Tehran, there were much bigger demonstrations in favor of the government that you didn’t report about,” he said.

Asked about the shooting of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death, captured on video, has become emblematic of the crackdown on protesters, he said, “It is not clear who killed whom.”

However, the malice of the Iranian regime is self-evident in their treatment of Neda Agha-Soltan’s surviving family, as The Guardian reports:

The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world.

Neda Soltan

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.

“We just know that they [the family] were forced to leave their flat,” a neighbour said. The Guardian was unable to contact the family directly to confirm if they had been forced to leave.

The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring “thugs” to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.

Soltan was shot dead on Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators, turning her into a symbol of the Iranian protest movement. Barack Obama spoke of the “searing image” of Soltan’s dying moments at his press conference yesterday.

Amid scenes of grief in the Soltan household with her father and mother screaming, neighbours not only from their building but from others in the area streamed out to protest at her death. But the police moved in quickly to quell any public displays of grief. They arrived as soon as they found out that a friend of Soltan had come to the family flat.

In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building.

But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.

A tearful middle-aged woman who was an immediate neighbour said her family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, out in force in the area harassing people since Soltan’s death.

The area in front of Soltan’s house was empty today. There was no sign of black cloths, banners or mourning. Secret police patrolled the street.

“We are trembling,” one neighbour said. “We are still afraid. We haven’t had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can’t imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn’t let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda’s family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve.”

Another man said many would have turned up to show their sympathy had it not been for the police.

“In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda’s family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here,” he said. “The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That’s ridiculous - if that’s true why don’t they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government.”

Given what’s going on in Iran, the Obama Administration is finally taking a harder line:

The Obama administration is seriously considering not extending invitations to Iranian diplomats for July 4 celebrations overseas, senior administration officials tell CNN.

No, that’s not a line from a news spoof in The Onion. It’s true: the only tangible action taken by the Obama Administration in response to the violence in Iran is to disinvite Iranian diplomats to Fourth of July barbecues.

After the Soviet Union expanded the Iron Curtain by invading Afghanistan in 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter showed his steely resolve... by not allowing American athletes to attend the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Thirty years later, in response to the appalling oppression in Iran, President Obama shows his steely resolve by yanking some BBQ invites.

24 June 2009 @ 8:50AM >> The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

The “monitoring center,” installed within the government’s telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, Mr. Roome said.

“If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them,” said Mr. Roome.

[...]

Human-rights groups have criticized the selling of such equipment to Iran and other regimes considered repressive, because it can be used to crack down on dissent, as evidenced in the Iran crisis. Asked about selling such equipment to a government like Iran’s, Mr. Roome of Nokia Siemens Networks said the company “does have a choice about whether to do business in any country. We believe providing people, wherever they are, with the ability to communicate is preferable to leaving them without the choice to be heard.”

14 December 2008 @ 11:38AM >> The day the world comes together as one may have to be postponed a bit.

Barack Obama’s election was supposed to usher in a new era in which America’s enemies shed their animosity, embraced hope, and began worshipping our new leader along with the rest of us.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell al Qaeda (which greeted Obama’s election with racial insults) and Iran.

The leader of the Iranian parliament “has branded US President-Elect Barack Obama’s comments on Tehran’s nuclear activities as ‘cowboy’ talk,” according to London’s Telegraph:

“These comments resemble those of old American cowboys. If you have something to say about (Iran’s) nuclear issue, just say so. Why wave a stick,” asked [parliamentary speaker Ali] Larijani, in a speech in Qazvin province.

“The new US president has said he wants to pressure Iran since it seeks to produce atomic weapons and because it supports the terrorists like Hamas and Hizbollah,” he added.

“We are proud of supporting Hizbollah since they are defending their homeland and you are wrong in calling them terrorists.”

Iran is a staunch supporter of the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hizbollah.

In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Mr Obama vowed “tough but direct diplomacy” with Iran, offering incentives along with the threat of tougher sanctions over its atomic programme.

As president from January 20, Mr Obama said he would make clear to Tehran that the nuclear program was “unacceptable,” along with support of Hamas and Hizbollah and its “threats against Israel.”

Mr Obama, whose offer of direct talks with Iran represents a break with three decades of US foreign policy, promised a “set of carrots and sticks in changing their calculus about how they want to operate.”

Three days ago, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said “the carrot and stick approach has proven to be useless.”

Some problems may require a bit more than Mr. Obama’s kind smile and warm charm to solve.

23 February 2008 @ 10:03AM >> It no longer matters whether you live in a Western country that respects free speech. If you dare say anything critical of radical Islam, the long arm of Sharia law will still try to reach out and choke you:

Iran has urged the Netherlands to block a planned anti-Koran film, citing Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights as the legal basis for doing so. [...] Iran’s Justice Minister Gholamhossein Elham asked his Dutch counterpart Ernst Hirsch Ballin to use European human rights law to stop a European from exercising one of those most basic rights. Freedom of expression has been the rallying cry of those who defended the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten for publishing the Mohammad cartoons - and republishing the most controversial one (the turban bomb) this week after a death threat against the artist who drew it.

[...]

On Friday, Iran’s news agency IRNA reported on the letter, which the Dutch government told NRC Handelsblad it had not yet received. IRNA wrote the following [...]:

“You can stop the process of this satanic and highly intriguing move resorting to articles in European Convention on Human Rights ... We, too, know and respect the freedom of expression, but insulting the sanctities and ethical values on that pretext is totally unacceptable.”

Elham reminded Balin of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, where it states, “...On this basis, observing freedom of expression, keeping in mind the responsibilities thereof, can be restricted in order to avoid the occurrence of chaotic social conditions, commiting crimes, safeguarding ethical values, or the others’ rights.”

Iran’s Justice Minister at the end of his letter to his Dutch counterpart considers the movie insulting against the most sacred sanctity of the world Muslims, a satanic move that can intrigue social unrest, and violating the rights of the entire world Muslims, asking for immediate halting of the blasphemous film’s production.

If you assume that complaints like this won’t go anywhere, you haven’t been paying attention.

29 December 2007 @ 1:13PM >> How did this Photoshopped picture make it from a satirical website run by some friends of mine to the Iranian Press TV website? For the hilarious story, visit The People’s Cube.

4 July 2007 >> It can be tough for a left-thinking American to get any respect in Tehran.

You can speak out against the United States until you’re blue in the face, and you still get treated like a dirty infidel.

Can’t they see that you’re not some stupid flag-waving, Bible-thumping, Bush-voting, buck-toothed hick? Can’t they see that you’re a jet-setting artist, a sophisticated post-national citizen of the world, a member of the intelligentsia who always recycles, and that you want nothing more than to bring world peace by connecting cultures through the magic of film?

These sorts of questions may be floating around in the mind of Oliver Stone, now that he won’t be making a film about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokesman for the Iranian president “said that Stone had requested to make a film about Ahmadinejad”:

“We have already seen his documentaries - even though Stone is considered a member of the opposition group in the US, it is still part of the Great Satan,” he said.

Despite his ties to the Great Satan, “Stone is regarded within cinema circles in Islamic Iran as a distinguished filmmaker.”

But I guess Stone’s exalted status in Iran was not enough to overcome his most fundamental flaw.

No matter how great his talent, no matter where his political sympathies lie, he’s still nothing more than an infidel.

And these days, that’s a crime punishable by death.

19 June 2007 @ 8:55AM >> The Washington Times reports that Pakistan is condemning Britain’s decision to grant knighthood to author Salman Rushdie. You may recall that Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses led to an Iranian fatwa being issued against him that ordered his death.

This leads to the Quote of the Day, courtesy of Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan’s Religious Affairs Minister:

The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the ’sir’ title.

In other words, do what we say—and don’t accuse us of being terrorists!—or we’ll blow you up.

As the Washington Times report indicates, this sentiment has some support:

In the eastern city of Multan, hard-line Muslim students burned effigies of Queen Elizabeth II and Mr. Rushdie. About 100 students carrying banners condemning the author also chanted, “Kill him. Kill him.”

Remember this next time someone tries to tell you that it is our foreign policy that creates terrorism. In reality, the Jihadists want the rest of the world to bow down before their demands.

This war will end in one of two ways: the Jihadists will be defeated, or the world will be ruled by Sharia law. Odds are, we’ll be gone long before this battle for civilization is over.

Update: More thoughts here, from Flemming Rose, the editor of the Danish newspaper whose publishing of cartoons containing images of Mohammed sparked worldwide violence.

1 May 2007 @ 8:53AM >> &When Iran needs help building two nuclear reactors, where do the mullahs go to place the ad?

To their acquaintances at The New York Times Company, of course!

Update: A reader has alerted me to the fact that the ad also appeared in a recent issue of The Economist (page 111 of the April 28th, 2007 edition, on the lower-righthand side). I would have expected The Economist to exercise better judgment than that.

All this reminds me of the statement “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them,” which is attributed to Vladimir Lenin. Although in this case, it’s not rope, it’s radioactive fuel. And we’re teaching Iran how enrich it, perhaps so it may one day end up in a nuclear bomb.

2 April 2007 @ 9:19AM >> Germany’s Der Spiegel asks “Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?“

And in another piece, the widely-read pan-European magazine looks at anti-Americanism in German society, noting that Germans now “believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran.” Perhaps part of the reason Germans don’t perceive Iran as a threat is that the country, like the rest of Europe, has carefully avoided inflaming Iran for decades:

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country’s foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a “critical dialogue” between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they’ve been naughty, they’ll stop condemning their women to death for “unchaste behavior” and they’ll stop building the atom bomb.

That plan failed at some point — an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

[...]

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.

[...]

Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant. Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women’s underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.

Fast forward to the Cartoon Intifada, the rioting, the burning embassies, and the death toll that arose out of cartoons in a newspaper, and you can see why the trembling Europeans are reluctant to say anything critical about Iran or radical Islam. But they might not see Iran as a threat, much in the same way that a compliant gradeschooler doesn’t see the local bully as a threat as long as he hands over his lunch money whenever he’s asked.

Say what you want about the Americans, though, because your head won’t get chopped off as a result. So it’s easy, although shortsighted, for you Europeans to direct your anger at the United States. There are no consequences for it. We’ll still come to your defense when your cities start falling to your own home-grown Jihadists in a generation or two, just as we provided for the common defense of Europe for the half-century bounded by World War II and the fall of the Soviet Empire, allowing you to spend next to nothing on your own defense and build up your lavishly unproductive welfare states.

But by engaging in this ostrich act whenever confronted with reality, Europe is not only postponing the inevitable, but making it inevitably worse. Because today’s schoolyard bully doesn’t have a nuclear weapon...yet. But it may soon, no matter how many worthless pieces of paper the U.N. issues. So when the bully graduates to mass murder of unspeakable proportions, there will be those of us who said we told you so. And we’ll remember all those nasty words you said about us. And then we’ll help, because this is our fight too.

We just wish you’d wake up and see it for yourselves.

23 January 2007 >> It looks like our old friend is at it again:

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.

“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives,” the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

[...]

The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel’s destruction. He called on “regional countries” to “support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent.”

Ahmadinejad has threatened the State of Israel with annihilation several times in recent months, and has recently added the US and Britain to the list of countries he says will be destroyed.

Why can’t we just talk to Ahmadinejad? I’m sure if we sent pleasant-looking ambassadors to sit down with him, smile politely, and ask him in kind, measured tones to give up his nuclear plans and his apparent desire to see our country destroyed, maybe the nice man would find it in his heart to spare our deaths. Maybe at the very least he could be convinced to delay our deaths by a few weeks.

All we are saying, Mahmoud, is give peace a chance.

He has to listen to reason.

Doesn’t he?

16 January 2007 @ 11:19AM >> As president in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter was a leader of legendary impotence. For the last 444 days of his presidency, Islamic revolutionaries in Iran held Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. According to the hostages, one of those terrorists was a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Today, Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran. And Jimmy Carter is an apologist for terrorists. In his new book, which compares the state of Israel to the segregationist apartheid regime that once ruled South Africa, Carter writes:

It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

In other words, keep those attacks coming until Israel does what is demanded by “the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups.”

I can only imagine that by venturing into the territory of pure wingnuttery, Carter’s book is part of some elaborate scheme to make the foreign policy of his administration seem sensible by comparison.

11 January 2007 >> There’s something about our psyche which seems to make self-criticism the new national pastime. Naturally, our political leaders know this. They know that when hundreds of newspapers and television stations align in a daily tearing-down of the war effort, the American people will eventually lose their nerve and want to give up. Others know this, too, which is why al Qaeda distributed copies of Black Hawk Down as a means to understand how the media can be used to amplify a relatively minor military failure and drive the United States from the field of battle. If terrorists provide enough negative footage to our media, they know we’ll turn and run. But if we fight too vigorously, that will be held up by our own media as evidence of our inherent evilness. More >>

5 November 2006 >> Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe reports on a few fronts in the global Jihad:

Australia: Australia’s foremost Muslim cleric triggers an uproar when he likens women who don’t wear an Islamic headscarf to “uncovered meat” and blames them for attracting sexual predators.

Afghanistan: The kidnappers of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello threaten to murder him unless Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is returned to Afghanistan and handed over to an Islamic court.

Iran: The president of Iran calls Israel “a group of terrorists” and threatens to harm any country that supports the Jewish state. “This is an ultimatum,” warns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the elmination of Israel and the United States.

Thailand: Islamist terrorists bomb a column of Buddhist monks as they collect offerings of food in Narathiwat, a city in southern Thailand. One person is killed; 12 are injured.

France: “We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists,” says police union leader Michel Thoomis. “This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifadah, with stones and firebombs.”

Britain: In a “true Islamic state,” sexually active homosexuals would be executed, says Arshad Misbahi, an imam in Manchester’s Central Mosque.

Meanwhile, Muslim Kurds in Iraq prefer to live in peace:

There are no insurgents in Kurdistan. Nor are there any kidnappings. [...] Iraqi Kurdistan is optimistic, full of hope, infused top to bottom with a go-go, build-build attitude.

Who would have thought that a glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence with our Muslim brothers could be found in—of all places—Iraq?

27 August 2006 @ 11:37AM >> Here’s what you’ll find at the Holocaust International Cartoon Contest exhibition currently being held in the Iranian capital:

There is [...] a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large, in fact, that it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word “Holocaust.” Another drawing shows a vampire, wearing a big Star of David, drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas, but with the Star of David.

The show’s curator is quoted as saying, “It is not that we are against a specific religion...”

Of course you’re not.

25 August 2006 >> If there’s any hope for Iran, it’s not the old mulllahs.

23 August 2006 >> The mullahs in Iran have come up with a great way to point out Western hypocrisy. Last week, USA Today carried this AP dispatch from Tehran, Iran:

An exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust opened this week, reflecting Iran’s response to last year’s Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.

The display, showing 204 entries from Iran and abroad, was strongly influenced by the views of Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a “myth” and saying Israel should be destroyed.

One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other.

So far, it sounds like the kind of thing you might find at a left-wing protest here in the United States. And I can’t recall the expression of such sentiments ever resulting in a murderous backlash of rioting.

[The exhibit] came following worldwide protests by Muslims against the cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Many Muslims considered the cartoons a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophet.

[Iranian newspaper] Hamshahri said it wanted to test the West’s tolerance for drawings about the Nazi killing of 6 million Jews in World War II.

I’m sure we’ll handle it just fine. In fact, the folks behind these cartoons might just end up getting hired as professors.

And in other news related to Iran’s interesting definition of tolerance:

Human rights groups and concerned individuals worldwide are demanding an end to stoning executions in Iran - and right now are pressuring the head of the Islamic nation’s judiciary to lift the death sentence against a 34-year-old mother of two young children.

Malak Ghorbany was sentenced to death June 28 by a court in the Iranian city of Urmia after being found guilty of committing “adultery.”

Under Iran’s strict Sharia law, women sentenced to execution by stoning have their hands bound behind their back. They are wrapped from head to toe in sheets before being seated in a pit. The ditch is filled up to their breasts with dirt, and the soil is packed tightly before people assemble to execute the woman by pitching rocks at her head and upper body.

Article 104 of the Iranian Penal Code states that the stones used for execution should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones.”

Ironically, the court sentenced the woman’s brother Abu Bakr Ghorbany and husband Mohammad Daneshfar to only six years in jail for killing her lover. According to Sharia law, murder carries a lesser penalty than “crimes against chastity.”

Stonings decreased after international pressure on former reformist President Mohammad Khatami in the late ’90s. And Ayatollah Shahroudi, the current head of Iran’s judiciary, issued a ruling to judges ordering a moratorium on execution by stoning in December 2002. But the brutal killings have continued and the practice was never abolished from the penal code of the Islamic Republic. In May, two other women, Abbas Hajizadeh and Mahboubeh Mohammadi, were executed for committing adultery, with more than 100 members of the Revolutionary Guards and Bassij Forces participating in the stoning.

Iranian tolerance. Catch the feeling!

18 August 2006 @ 8:45AM >> The Iranian mullahs have outlawed satellite dishes, and they’re now in the process of destroying the nearly 4 million residential satellite dishes in the country.

7 August 2006 @ 3:37PM >> Last week, I wrote:

[T]he Middle East would be much better off if there were more countries like Israel, the region’s only stable, functioning democracy where Jews and Muslims are even allowed to serve side-by-side in the legislature.

A reader responded to point out that the Iranian parliament sets aside one seat for a Jew, who represents the approximately 25,000 Jewish residents of Iran. (Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, some 100,000 Jews lived in Iran.)

As blogger/law professor Eugene Volokh notes:

Naturally, this doesn’t mean that Jews in Iran have equal rights, or are treated well by the government or by fellow citizens — the presence of a non-set-aside Jewish politician would be much better evidence of social tolerance than the presence of a set-aside one — but only that Iran’s Islamic legal system sometimes yields things that are unexpected to the uninitiated.

True indeed.

And while this doesn’t invalidate my original assertion—I don’t think Iran can be rightly called a “stable, functioning democracy“—it was worth noting.

3 August 2006 @ 5:05PM >> One might even say it’s the final solution:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel. In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate halt to fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.

“Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate cease-fire must be implemented,” he said.

So, in other words, the purpose of a cease-fire is just to buy time until “the Zionist regime” can be eliminated. Iran would annihilate Israel today if it could, but it takes time to build a nuke. So the only purpose of a cease-fire would be to protect what remains of Hizbollah; after all, Iran might need them again in the future.

Ahmadinejad, who has drawn international condemnation with previous calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, said the Middle East would be better off “without the existence of the Zionist regime.”

Actually, the Middle East would be much better off if there were more countries like Israel, the region’s only stable, functioning democracy where Jews and Muslims are even allowed to serve side-by-side in the legislature.

Ahmadinejad disagrees. To him, the world simply needs more jihad.

---

Note: A point in this post has been clarified since it was initially written.

1 August 2006 >> Apparently, Israel’s vigorous war against Hizbollah has weakened Iran’s ability to act in the region. At least that’s what some in Tehran think, according to The New York Times:

In the past, Iran believed that Israel might pause before attacking it because they would assume Hezbollah would assault the northern border. If Hezbollah emerges weaker, or restrained militarily because of domestic politics, Iran feels it may be more vulnerable.

“This was God’s gift to Israel,” said Nasser Hadian, a political science professor at Tehran University and an expert in Iranian foreign policy. “Hezbollah gave them the golden opportunity to attack.”

He said that Iran does not have the military ability at home to fight an aggressive offensive war against Israel from so far away. He said its only offensive tool would be a missile, which he said would be of limited effect and accuracy.

My first reaction is: good.

My second reaction is, an Iranian missile today might only be “of limited effect and accuracy.” But an Iranian missile in a few years, tipped with nuclear material, would be a different story. With a nuke, the missiles don’t have to be terribly accurate to have the intended effect, and that effect would most certainly not be “limited.”

22 July 2006 @ 4:21PM >> Sheesh. I can’t even take a week off without war breaking out.

Of course, to those who’ve been paying attention, this is not a new war. Israel has been under siege since the founding of the modern state in 1948. The war has never been about the plight of Palestinians. If the Palestinians wanted to live side-by-side with Israel in peace, then the Oslo peace accords would have worked. When Oslo didn’t stick, and Israel offered virtually everything Yassir Arafat demanded, the Palestinian leader instead rejected peace and launched an intifada. If Israel’s neighbors truly wanted peace, then why didn’t Israel’s retreat from Palestinian territory secure it? Why is every Israeli compromise and concession followed by more war?

Because Israel’s enemies will not be satisfied with anything less than the country’s complete destruction. They believe Israel is an illegitimate state and that no infidel has a valid claim to what they believe should be Muslim land. But to any fair-minded person, a cursory look at history settles that debate quite easily, as Judith Weiss points out:

Half of Israel’s Jewish population is Arab Jews, not European Jews. How come there are Arab Jews? Because they were in Israel/Judea before Arabs became Muslim. In fact, they were the Jews before various historical events scattered and exiled some of them, one destination being Europe. [...]

The earliest verifiably Jewish artifacts in Israel date to 1500 years before it was conquered by Islam. Contemporary documents and archeological finds verify some Biblical history, and show evidence of Jews in Persia 1000 years before it was conquered by Islam, in Babylonia (later Iraq) 1000 years before it was conquered by Islam, and in Egypt (especially Alexandria) during the Roman Empire, before Egypt was conquered by Islam. Even the Koran acknowledges that Jews were living in Arabia before Mohammed decided to create a new religion, and there is evidence for Jewish residence in what are now Arab countries dating back to Solomonic times.

Don’t expect any of this to satisfy the likes of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These facts won’t sway Hamas, the terrorist organization that the Palestinians recently elected to govern them. Nor will these facts stem the never-ending volley of rockets that have been raining down on Israel from Hizbollah-controlled areas in southern Lebanon.

Yes, in the two years since the U.N. flaccidly ordered militias like Hizbollah to disarm, the group has inexplicably failed to do so. It’s almost as if terrorists have no respect for the authority of the United Nations! Shocking, I know; I assumed the threat of more speechifying from Secretary General Kofi Annan would be enough to cause even the most militant fanatic to lay down his arms. But I guess the U.N. isn’t as potent as I thought.

Which leads to the current problem. After Syria—Hizbollah’s terror co-sponsor with Iran—withdrew its occupation forces from Lebanon last year, optimism abounded in that newly-independent state, but the state proved too weak to secure its own southern territory. So Lebanon became a broken nation. And, just as the failed state of Afghanistan made it succumb to the Taliban and al Qaeda, Hizbollah succeeded in turning southern Lebanon into its terror playground.

With the backing of Syria and Iran, the playground bully has become quite strong. Hizbollah has already fired thousands of missiles into Israel, and thanks to weapons from Iran, the group now appears capable of hitting every major Israeli population center. And now that Iran looks to be on a fast track to becoming a nuclear power, within the next five or ten years, Hizbollah—if it still exists—could be dropping Iranian nukes on Israel.

When Hizbhollah operatives recently ventured into Israeli territory to kidnap two soldiers, they weren’t just violating the borders of a sovereign nation, they were trying to show the Israeli people that not only was their military incapable of protecting civilians, they weren’t even capable of protecting themselves. Against the backdrop of the missile attacks, Israel interpreted this as what it was: yet another act of war. And this time, Israel responded with a forceful attack on Hizbollah positions inside Lebanon.

But many are now criticizing Israel, saying that the country’s response is not proportional to the provocation, as if the provocation hasn’t been ongoing for years. Pretending that Hizbollah’s only crime is capturing two Israeli soldiers requires quite a bit of historical amnesia. But to the wishy-washy handwringers at the U.N., that amnesia is required; without it, they might actually be forced to take a stand. They might actually have to do something besides laundering money for Saddam Hussein and selling 12-year-old girls into sexual slavery. But, of course, the U.N. will do nothing useful; what do you expect from a world body where terror regimes like Iran and Syria get the same vote as Canada and Finland?

Cease-fires and negotiated peaces have been tried. Throughout history, world opinion repeatedly forces Israel into bargains with adversaries who use “peacetime” to build strength. No matter how many handshakes, strained smiles and photo ops each new peace deal yields, Israel’s enemies invariably come back and attack later. And no matter how much land Israel gives up—and they’ve given up quite a bit of strategically-important land in their many futile attempts to buy peace—groups like Hizbollah will not be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of the Israeli nation.

That’s why a cease-fire, the proposed solution of people who see no moral distinction between the actions of Hizbollah and Israel, has the effect of undermining Israel’s security. Hizbollah won’t perceive a cease-fire as a cooling-off period before joining Israel on a road towards peace, they’ll just see it as a brief pause in a continuing war, a time-out they can use to start rolling more Iranian rockets towards the Israeli border. And if Hizbollah manages to hold on to southern Lebanon until Iran can produce a nuclear weapon, is there any doubt that they’ll use it? Terrorists aren’t usually known for their restraint. And yet the world is demanding restraint from Israel, which is merely trying to prevent that day from coming.

You can’t negotiate peace with an enemy whose only goal is your destruction. The end result of a cease-fire will not be peace. A cease-fire merely puts off the inevitable for a future day when the stakes are higher. If Hizbollah is not destroyed, and if the current regimes in Iran and Syria maintain power long enough to produce a nuclear weapon and a way to deliver it to Israel, you can be damn sure that weapon will be used. Iran’s president has virtually guaranteed it.

So when the rest of the world demands restraint from Israel, it makes me wonder: would any other country put up with living like the Israelis have for decades? If suicide bombs and lobbed rockets were exploding all over France with such regularity, would we expect the French to sit by and do nothing? Okay, bad example. But you get my point.

As long as the mullahs control Iran and the Baathists control Syria, they will use proxies like Hizbollah to wage war on Israel. Unfortunately, the reality is, this war is inevitable. And it goes beyond Hizbollah. Ultimately, Syria and Iran must be confronted. It can happen today, next year, or sometime after Iran has acquired nukes. As far as the fate of Israel is concerned, this war better play out before the mullahs get the bomb. After that, it’ll be too late.

When will the world wake up and realize that ignoring the Jihadists does not make them go away? People don’t seem to learn until the bombs start blowing up their own cities. And even then, the lesson is quickly forgotten. But if the last five years has taught the world anything, it’s that the hatred of the Jihadists isn’t limited to Israel. And this bone-deep hatred won’t magically vanish if Israel disappears under a mushroom cloud. No, if you’re an infidel, you’re on the list. The only question is how long it’ll take them to get to you.

15 April 2006 @ 1:52PM >> I don’t know any other way to interpret these statements, other than to say that Iran will attack Israel with nuclear weapons at the earliest possibility (emphasis added):

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was “heading toward annihilation,” just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

[...]

“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,” [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

[...]

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium using a battery of 164 centrifuges, a significant step toward the large-scale production of enriched uranium required for either fueling nuclear reactors or making nuclear weapons.

For the last few years, peace-at-all-costs advocates have argued that there is no justification for pre-emptive war. They claim that talk and diplomacy can solve all world crises, and that we should put our trust in the United Nations to do just that.

If ever there were a time for the U.N. worshippers to prove that their cherished institution is of any use at all, this is it. Put up or shut up. Solve this problem. The world needs it.

7 March 2006 >> From Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

The world will be in the hands of Islam over the next few years.

15 February 2006 >> The Iranian government is upset over a new cartoon published in the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

Shown in the cartoon are four soccer players with “Iran” on their uniforms standing field-level in a stadium. The soccer players also have explosives wrapped around their midsections. According to a statement from the Iranian embassy in Berlin, the cartoon has incited “outrage among the Iranian people.” (Uh oh! That doesn’t sound good!) And Manuchehr Sandi, a leader from the Iranian Press Association, called on Germany to give an “appropriate reaction” to the cartoon. (If you’re in the Iranian press, I guess it’s natural to assume that all governments are responsible for the content of their nation’s media.)

While we wait to see how many people are killed and buildings torched as a result of this cartoon, here’s some unsolicited advice for the Iranian government:

If you spent as much time denouncing suicide bombing as you spend denouncing cartoons, perhaps there’d be fewer cartoons mocking you as terrorists.

Just a thought.

5 December 2005 @ 1:03PM >> Mohammed ElBaradai, the chairman of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that Iran may now be several months away from developing a nuclear weapon. As if to underscore that point, Iran is starting the process of building two new nuclear reactors. Although oil-rich Iran maintains that it needs nuclear energy to power the country, the byproduct of the reactors also happens to be useful for constructing nuclear weapons.

A nuclear Iran is rather worrisome considering the recent statements of new Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

[T]he “new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away.”

“[Any country that] recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.”

Since we all know that military action is not justified until a threat becomes full and immediate, I’m looking forward to seeing how the brilliant minds at the UN negotiate their way out of this mess. A chance to say, “See, I told you so!” won’t feel nearly as satisfying if I’m doing it from the inside of a mushroom cloud.

18 November 2005 >> According to London’s Guardian newspaper, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the process of purging political opponents from the Iranian government:

Iran is facing political paralysis as its newly elected president purges government institutions, bringing accusations that he is undertaking a coup d’etat.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s clearout of his opponents began last month but is more sweeping than previously understood and has reached almost every branch of government, the Guardian has learned. Dozens of deputy ministers have been sacked this month in several government departments, as well the heads of the state insurance and privatisation organisations. [...]

Ahmadinejad took power in Iran in what some described as a flawed election where certain reform candidates—and all women—were barred from running for office. After Ahmadinejad’s election, several newspapers were shut down when it became known that they would print a critical letter from a reform candidate who had earlier lost to Ahmadinejad.

Known as a hard-line Islamist, Ahmadinejad is believed to be one of the terrorists responsible for the hostage crisis that consumed the final 15 months of the Carter Administration. Some of the 52 American hostages that were held in Iran for 444 days are “convinced” that Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders who orchestrated the holding of the hostages. More recently, Ahmadinejad has been making news by saying that Israel “must be wiped out.” Of course, like any good Jihadist, Ahmadinejad didn’t stop there. Here are some other choice quotes:

“And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

[T]he “new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away.”

“[Any country that] recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.”

Sounds like a pretty reasonable guy, right?

These recent developments are quite disconcerting in a country with very active nuclear ambitions. And it raises an interesting question for the peace-at-all-costs crowd. Their entire ideology is based on the mistaken notion that everybody behaves in a way that we would find rational. If a terrorist running a country in the process of enriching radioactive uranium turns out to be someone who can’t be reasoned with, what is the proposed solution? How do you broker a deal?

If you’re Israel—certainly under more immediate threat from Iran than the U.S. is—what concessions could you possibly make to satisfy an enemy that seeks no less than your complete destruction? Such threats from Iran don’t seem to leave much room for a face-saving compromise that would leave all parties smiling and shaking hands at a bargaining table. And even if you could arrange a deal, would it be wise to trust someone who uses this sort of apocalyptic rhetoric? History is littered with dupes who tried to make peace with aggressors hell-bent on war. It rarely worked out well for the dupes.

So, if there are any anti-war activists out there who truly believe the slogan “war is never the answer,” kindly send me an e-mail and explain how war can be avoided if a nuclear-armed Iran decides to launch a few missiles at Tel Aviv. What would you pacifists suggest if Iranian warheads start raining down on Israel—or on us? Peace is only possible when no parties want war. As soon as there’s one that does, you’re pretty much screwed.