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April 11, 1962: On State Visit, Shah Warns of Communism
On an official state visit to the United States, the shah tells Congress that he will not surrender to communism, but that the United States must continue its foreign aid. “I recognize that it is a burden, and I sympathize with the desire to lay down,” he said. “But the need for it is not yet finished. The threat has not ended.” President John F. Kennedy praises the shah: “Occupying as you do in Iran a most important strategic area, surrounded as you are by vital and powerful people, your country has been able to maintain its national independence century after century, until we come to the present date where, under great challenges you, Your Majesty, lead that historic fight.”
This Is Not a Film BY ROGER EBERT -
“This Is Not a Film is not a film because its director is not a director. In December 2010, Jafar Panahi of Iran was sentenced to six years in prison and banned for 20 years from making movies. His crime was “propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” He was a supporter of the enormous crowds that filled the streets of Tehran to protest the suspicious re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Panahi, who is on camera almost constantly in “This Is Not a Film,” has a trustworthy face. He seems kind and philosophical — especially on this particular day, when he is awaiting a judge’s ruling on his appeal. Alone in a spacious high-rise apartment, except for his daughter’s pet iguana Igi, he has some flatbread and jam for his breakfast, calls his lawyer, is told Iranian judges almost never overturn sentences, but he might hope for a “discount” of the 20 years.
What comes next is an extraordinary act of courage. He has been filming himself, and now calls his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb to come over and join him. He’s not sure what to do. Forbidden to even say “action” or “cut,” Panahi wanders about the apartment, feeds the iguana, begins to describe the most recent screenplay he was forbidden permission to film, and comments on the DVDs of three of his films: “The White Balloon” (1995), “The Circle” (2000), and “Crimson Gold” (2003).
This man, who has been silenced, now finds things in the films he did not plan. In the first, the little girl who is playing his heroine, gets fed up with the process, tears off the cast she’s wearing for the scene and stalks out of camera range. “I’m not acting anymore!” she announces. The second is a drama about the difficulties of a group of women who attempt to move about the city without male companions (chaperones?). The third is about a large, stolid man who loses patience with himself. The actor is in fact schizophrenic (which the film doesn’t mention). He cannot take direction, but spontaneously he makes a gesture with his hands that expresses enormous frustration.
I’ve seen these films, and they are very good. They’ve won awards at many major festivals: Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and so on. I realize my description doesn’t begin to evoke the experience for you. That is precisely Panahi’s point. He demonstrates it in an agonizing scene where he begins to tell his friend the story of his banned film and uses tape on the carpet to mark out the floor plan of his heroine’s room. (She has been accepted by a university but forbidden by her father to attend, and locked in her room). He grows frustrated and tears up the tape.
Things happen. Carry-out food arrives. A neighbor drops off her dog for Panahi to watch, but the dog freaks out at the sight of the iguana. He watches the news on TV. It is Fireworks Wednesday, the Persian New Year’s, and in the evening, the city by tradition will be crowned by fireworks. Ahmadinejad has banned fireworks, murmuring darkly that they are in violation of Islamic law. The film never says the Islamic Republic shows great insecurity in the face of anything it doesn’t control. It doesn’t have to. I would like to show “This Is Not a Film” to those in the United States who are in favor of a close union of church and state.
There is nothing remotely political in Panahi’s films. But they can be read as parables. That is how Iranian directors must work these days. Even a domestic drama like last year’s Oscar-winning “A Separation” can be read in more than one way. And when religious fundamentalists are doing the interpretation, what chance does the human spirit have?
Little by little, detail by detail, “This Is Not a Film” leads to a final scene of overwhelming power. I don’t think it was even planned — no more than Panahi expected the little actress to take the cast off her arm. It simply happens, and then the film is over, having nothing more to say. Because, after all, it is not a film.”
Juan Cole: Why Washington’s Iran Policy Could Lead to Global Disaster -
“It’s a policy fierce enough to cause great suffering among Iranians — and possibly in the long run among Americans, too. It might, in the end, even deeply harm the global economy and yet, history tells us, it will fail on its own. Economic war led by Washington (and encouraged by Israel) will not take down the Iranian government or bring it to the bargaining table on its knees ready to surrender its nuclear program. It might, however, lead to actual armed conflict with incalculable consequences.
The United States is already effectively embroiled in an economic war against Iran. The Obama administration has subjected the Islamic Republic to the most crippling economic sanctions applied to any country since Iraq was reduced to fourth-world status in the 1990s. And worse is on the horizon A financial blockade is being imposed that seeks to prevent Tehran from selling petroleum, its most valuable commodity, as a way of dissuading the regime from pursuing its nuclear enrichment program.
Historical memory has never been an American strong point and so few today remember that a global embargo on Iranian petroleum is hardly a new tactic in Western geopolitics; nor do many recall that the last time it was applied with such stringency, in the 1950s, it led to the overthrow of the government with disastrous long-term blowback on the United States. The tactic is just as dangerous today.
Iran’s supreme theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly condemned the atom bomb and nuclear weapons of all sorts as tools of the devil, weaponry that cannot be used without killing massive numbers of civilian noncombatants. In the most emphatic terms, he has, in fact, pronounced them forbidden according to Islamic law. Based on the latest U.S. intelligence, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has affirmed that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear warhead. In contrast, hawks in Israel and the United States insist that Tehran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program is aimed ultimately at making a bomb, that the Iranians are pursuing such a path in a determined fashion, and that they must be stopped now — by military means if necessary.”
Read on.
What We Don’t Know About Washington’s Iran Policy -
“Negotiators for Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany are to meet in Turkey today, face to face, for the first time in more than a year. There are small signs of possible future compromise on both sides when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program (and a semi-public demand from Washington that could be an instant deal-breaker). Looking at the big picture, though, there’s a remarkable amount we simply don’t know about Washington’s highly militarized policy toward Iran. Every now and then, like a flash of lightning in a dark sky, some corner of it — and its enormity and longevity — is illuminated. For example, in 2008, the New Yorker’s indefatigable Seymour Hersh reported that the previous year Congress had granted a Bush administration request for up to $400 million “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran,” including “cross-border” operations from Iraq. Just recently, Hersh offered a window into another little part of the U.S. program: the way, starting in 2005, the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command spent years secretly training members of M.E.K., an Iranian opposition-group-cum-cult that’s on the State Department’s terror list, at a Department of Energy site in the Nevada desert.
Similarly, from time to time, we get glimpses of the U.S. basing and naval build-up in the Persian Gulf, which is massive and ongoing. As for the skies over Iran, last year the Iranians suddenly announced that they had acquired — downed, they claimed (though this was later denied by the Americans) — an advanced U.S. spy drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel. Indeed, they had the photos to prove it. Until then, there had been no publicity about American drones flying over Iranian territory and initially the U.S. military claimed that the plane had simply strayed off course while patrolling the Afghan border. Last week, however, a range of typically anonymous officials leaked to Washington Postreporters Joby Warrick and Greg Miller the news that the CIA’s drone surveillance program over Iran was more than three years old, large-scale, and itself just part of an “intelligence surge” focused on that country. According to their sources, “The effort has included ramped-up eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, formation of an Iran task force among satellite-imagery analysts, and an expanded network of spies.” In addition, under former CIA Director Leon Panetta, “partnerships” were built “with allied intelligence services in the region capable of recruiting operatives for missions inside Iran.”
Such reports and leaks give us at least the bare and patchy outlines of a concerted military, covert action, spying, surveillance, and propaganda program of staggering proportions (and that’s without even adding in the Israeli version of the same, which evidently includes the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists). All of this, we have to believe, is but part of an even larger set of intertwined, militarized operations against a modest-sized regional power with relatively limited military capabilities. It’s a program that we’re sure to know less about than we think we do, filled with what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have called “known unknowns” as well as “unknown unknowns.”
In his recent TomDispatch.com piece, “Why Washington’s Iran Policy Could Lead to Global Disaster,” Juan Cole does a remarkable job of offering us a full-scale picture of the complex economic underpinnings of the present Iran-U.S.-Israeli crisis and the unnerving dangers involved. But for the full, grim story of Washington’s campaign against Tehran, we are reliant either on the next Bradley Manning, a future WikiLeaks, or declassification of the necessary documents in time for our grandchildren to grasp something of the folly of our moment.”
A new poem by the German Nobel laureate Günter Grass depicting Israel’s undeclared nuclear might as a threat to world peace drew wide condemnation from Jewish groups and commentators in Germany on Wednesday, showing the strength of enduring taboos in German public discourse about Israel more than six decades after the Holocaust.
In the poem, titled “What Must Be Said,” Mr. Grass, 84, asks why he has remained silent about Israel’s nuclear might — which Israel has never publicly confirmed — and concludes that he had been constrained by a broader fear of being judged an anti-Semite.
But with Israel threatening to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program, the German author writes: “Why do I say only now, aged and with my last drop of ink, that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow.”
He also complained that by supplying submarines to Israel, Germany risked becoming “a subcontractor to a foreseeable crime.” Israel has threatened to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing that they are being used to acquire the capability of building nuclear weapons. But Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. “I will no longer remain silent because I am tired of Western hypocrisy,” he said, according to an unofficial translation.
“At 8:58 P.M. on Tuesday, Israel’s 2012 war against Iran came to a quiet end. The capricious plans for a huge aerial attack were returned to the deep recesses of safes and hearts. The war may not have been canceled but it has certainly been postponed. For a while, at least, we can sound the all clear: It won’t happen this year. Until further notice, Israel Air Force Flight 007 will not be taking off.
According to a war simulation conducted by the U.S. Central Command, the Iranians could kill 200 Americans with a single missile response to an Israeli attack. An investigative committee would not spare any admiral or general, minister or president. The meaning of this U.S. scenario is that the blood of these 200 would be on Israel’s hands. The moment the public dispute over whether to attack Iran is put in those terms, Israel has no real option to attack in contravention of American declarations and warnings.
That’s the negative side. The complementary positive side was presented this week, on Tuesday evening. At 8:20, Pentagon spokesman George Little announced that the Defense Department would be seeking more money to help Israel fund the Iron Dome antimissile defense system.
Noting that support for Israel’s security was a top priority for U.S. President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Little said that, given the Iron Dome system’s success in intercepting 80 percent of the rockets fired from Gaza this month, the Defense Department “intends to request an appropriate level of funding to support such acquisitions, based on Israeli requirements and production capacity.”
Thirty-eight minutes after that, Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly thanked both Panetta and himself (“The decision was the result of contacts between the Defense Ministry and the Pentagon” ).
Israelis may be the world champions of chutzpah, but even biting the hand that feeds you has its limits when the bitten hand is liable to hit back. When Barak thanked the Obama administration “for helping strengthen Israel’s security,” he was abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without permission before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
For all intents and purposes, it was an announcement that this war was being postponed until at least the spring of 2013.”
Map of the Persian Gulf, 14-15th century AD,
(via catherinewillis)
Iranian president praises Syrian handling of uprising
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadeinejad praised Syria’s government for its handling of an uprising against President Bashar Assad, saying Iran would do “all in its power to support this country,” according to state media.
“I am very happy that Syrian officials are managing the situation well,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast Tuesday. “I hope the situation in Syria improves day after day.”
While Syria has faced increasing international pressure to halt its violent crackdown on the rebellion, Iran has sided with the Assad regime.
Ahmadinejad made his remarks while a special envoy from Assad, Faisal Maqdad, was in Iran to talk to top officials. He assured the Syrian government that Iran would back it.
“Iran will not leave any stone unturned to support the Syrian system of Bashar Assad,” Ahmadinejad was quoted in Iranian media.
News of the Syrian conflict recently began to appear on Iranian television, which originally shied from covering the uprising and is now taking angles sympathetic to the Assad regime.
More than 10,000 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict in Syria, many of them civilians. The United Nations has condemned the Assad government for widespread human rights abuses. Syrian officials argue they are under attack from armed terrorists and must defend themselves.
I’m going to go against the typical character of my blog to say something that needs to be said: Go fuck yourself, Mahmoud.
“Khayyam, your body
is like a royal tent;
your spirit is king
and its residence is temporary.
The angel of fate
strikes this tent
when the king moves on,
in favor of another dwelling.”
— Omar Khayyam translated by Juan Cole