The visionary shah who inspired an Islamic republic

Elaheh Rostami-Povey

Source: Guardian

Shah Abbas I, the fifth Saf av id ruler, came to power in 1587. Under his rule Iran became a great polit ical power, transforming international trade and diplomacy. His legacy, however, goes beyond political ambition and culminates in a clear and decisive vision for cultural and artistic expression and development.

Shah Abbas created a distinctive national identity by blending the ancient Iranian cultural identity with Shiism. (Intriguingly, this paralleled early nation-state developments in western Europe.) Today Shah Abbas occupies a special place in the national consciousness, as many look upon him as the founder of the modern state. His efforts to position Iran as a commercial and artistic centre between east and west have been inspirational for modern politicians who find in him a sense of national pride.

Read more

New York Times Falsifies Obama-Netanyahu Meeting

Source: Huffington Post

The New York Times assigned to the story a campaign-trail reporter, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, whose political perceptions are bland and whose knowledge of Israeli-American relations is an antiseptic zero. At the newspaper of record, a thing like that does not happen by accident. They took the most anxiously awaited meeting with a foreign leader of President Obama’s term thus far, and buried it on page 12. The coverage of a major event, which the same newspaper had greeted only the day before by running an oversize attack-Iran op-ed by Jeffrey Goldberg, has officially now shrunk to the scale of a smaller op-ed.

Read more

Videos of ‘Obama and Iran’ speeches

 

Jon Snow (Channel 4 News presenter and journalist):

 

other speeches:

Mehri Honarbin-Holliday (Campaign Iran)
Ali Fathollah-Nejad (CASMII)
John Rees (Stop the War Coalition)

Jon Snow speaks on ‘Obama and Iran’

OBAMA and IRAN
a Campaign Iran Public Meeting

with
JON SNOW   Channel 4 news journalist and presenter

MEHRI HONARBIN-HOLLIDAY   academic and writer, leading member of Campaign Iran

ALI FATHOLLAH-NEJAD   Political scientist and academic councillor of CASMII

JOHN REES   Stop the War Coalition

Chaired by
BARONESS PROFESSOR HALEH AFSHAR    Prominent Iranian academic

MONDAY 27TH APRIL – 7PM – ROOM G2, SOAS
Russel Square Campus, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
See map: http://tiny.cc/5nUFs

“YES WE CAN” G20 DEMO – 5 REASONS TO DEMONSTRATE THIS WED APR 1ST

Assemble US Embassy, Grosvenor Square at 2pm

From the Stop the War Coalition:

Saturday’s Put People First demonstration was excellent. Tens of thousands came
out to protest against the whole spectrum of the world leaders’ policies. The
anti-war bloc was very big and very loud and got lots of coverage.

The next big event is the Yes We Can demonstration this Wednesday.

This is the only anti-war demonstration at the G20. It is the main chance we
have to make sure that the G20 leaders can’t avoid the massive opposition to
their war policies.

The demonstration will assemble at the US Embassy, Grosvenor Sq, London W1A
2LQ. Nearest tubes Green Park or Bond Street.

We will hand in a message to Barack Obama and then march through central London
to Trafalgar Square for an alternative summit.

Speakers include Arthur Scargill, Tony benn, Susan George, Lindsey German,
Bruce Kent and Daud Abdullah.

5 REASONS TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST WAR THIS WEDNESDAY:

* Barack Obama has just announced a surge of 23,000 extra troops for
Afghanistan. The British government looks set to send another 2,000.

* The murderous siege of Gaza continues. Israel is still bombing the tunnels in
to Gaza.

* No date has been set for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.

* Both US and British projected military spending has risen on last year.

* Britain is still selling arms to Israel.

Norouz Greetings

Dear Friends,
 
The Iranian peoples of diverse ethnicities and languages will be celebrating Noruz or ‘new day’ in Iran and around the world on Friday March 20th this year. This is the beginning of the Spring Equinox and the month of Farvardin in the mellinia old Iranian solar calendar. Noruz marks a new cycle in the solar system and it is a reminder of our shared and common heritage over the past millenia. This  is a time to rejoice no matter where we are, a time for renewal and growth, and a time to observe and reflect on the creation of the universe. We at Campaign Iran wish you a very happy Noruz and peace for the world. We would like to mark it with this poem about the month of Farvardin from the Avesta text, the book of Zarathustra c. 1700 B.C.
 
Through their brightness and glory,
the waters run and flow forward from the never-failing springs;
 
through heir brightness and glory,
the plants grow up from the earth by the never-failing springs;
 
through their brightness and glory,
the winds blow, 
driving down the clouds towads the never-failing springs. 
 
From Farvardin Yast 14 in the Avesta the book of Zarathushtra

Game on in the Middle East

Simon Tisdall, Guardian, 5 Mar 2009

The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s quasi-regal progress through the Middle East this week seems to have been too much for Iran’s Supreme Leader to bear. Speaking publicly about the new US administration for the first time since Barack Obama took power, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was by turns angry and dismissive.

“Even the new American president, who came to office with the slogan of bringing change in the policies of the Bush administration, avows unconditional commitment to Israel’s security,” Khamenei said. “This commitment means the defence of state terrorism, injustice, and oppression … of Palestinians.”

Obama was following the same “crooked ways” as his predecessor, he went on, and people such as the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, “who succumbed to surrender and compromise with the usurpers [Israel]” should by now have realised their mistake. Hamas-style resistance was the only way forward.

Khamenei’s rant should not be considered Iran’s final word on Washington’s so far non-specific offers of bilateral dialogue. Rather it reflects an uneasy realisation in Tehran that Obama and Clinton are in the process of launching a multi-pronged strategic offensive across the Middle East that directly challenges recent Iranian gains.

It is a truism that George Bush’s policies, especially the invasion of Iraq, greatly enhanced Iranian influence in the region. Now Obama appears intent on rolling back those advances even as he holds out the prospect of improved relations.

This week, after a phoney war dating from last November, the grand US-Iran battle for strategic control in the Middle East was joined. The visiting Clinton’s underlying message was simple: game on.

Speaking in Egypt at the beginning of the week, Clinton saidWashington’s top priority was achieving “a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours and we will pursue it on many fronts”. But this objective is becoming inextricably intertwined with the more urgent aim of pegging back Iran.

Clinton’s announcement of $900m in aid to the Palestinians was carefully tied up with caveats that none of the money would go to, or be administered by, Iran’s Hamas “clients” in Gaza. Proposed additional US funding for training Palestinian Authority security forces, past and possible future adversaries of Hamas, is another indirect way of pushing back Iran.

By insisting that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was “inescapable”, and criticising the latest Israeli land grab in Arab East Jerusalem, Clinton seemed to set herself at odds with Israel’s prime minister-designate, Binyamin Netanyahu. But on the biggest security issue facing Israel – Iran – there is no fundamental difference of opinion, just a (possibly temporary) difference in approach.

According to foreign policy expert Scott Lucas, writing on the Enduring America website, Washington may even be anticipating that, in due course, “Netanyahu will insist on a withdrawal from engagement with Iran if there is to be an [Israeli] engagement with the Palestinian Authority and the two-state process … Indeed, he may already have made that clear to the Americans”.

Washington’s decision to send senior US envoys to Damascus after a four-year rift has opened another anti-Tehran front. This move, apparently orchestrated with Saudi Arabia, may augur resumed Israeli-Syrian peace talks, part of Clinton’s “many front” approach. But equally it affords an opportunity to weaken Syria’s alliance with Iran – and with Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

Speaking of which, Britain’s unexpected volte-face this week in deciding to pursue talks with Hezbollah’s political wing looks like another concerted attempt to undermine Tehran’s influence. It’s unlikely this hyper-sensitive initiative was undertaken without prior discussion with, and approval from Washington. If it flies, the US may talk, too.

Clinton’s busy week isn’t finished yet. Tomorrow in Geneva, she will seek firmer Russian support for western efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programme when she meets Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

This move follows closely on a letter sent by Obama to Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, reportedly linking a tougher, joint US-Russia approach to Iran to the possible scrapping of US plans to station defensive missiles in eastern Europe (which Russia abhors).

Closer co-operation with Moscow on the Middle East peace process, Afghanistan and strategic arms reductions is also on the Geneva agenda. But vitally important though these issues are, the discussion always seems to come back to Iran.

This was the week when Iran emerged as the central front in Obama’s fast-evolving Middle East policy – and he is beginning to deploy his diplomatic forces with the audacity of hope and not a little cunning. Little wonder Ayatollah Khamenei sounded a bit rattled.

Playing nuclear politics

Ali Fathollah-Nejad / Guardian 20th Feb 09

The latest report on Iran’s nuclear programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has spurred alarmist speculation about the whereabouts of the “mullahs’ bomb” just when hopes for a US–Iran rapprochement are at an all-time high.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog says Iran has only slowly increased the number of centrifuges in the last four months, with now almost 4,000 centrifuges spinning and enriching uranium at a low level (under 5%). Iran has reportedly accumulated about 1,000kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU). To produce weapons-grade material, roughly 30kg of LEU are needed for about 1kg of HEU (high-enriched uranium). A typical uranium bomb has 25 kg or more of HEU material, so Iran would theoretically be able to yield enough HEU for a nuclear device. This is what western diplomats refer to as the country’s “latent bombmaking ability”.

But from that stage to the making of a bomb, considerable technical and technological hurdles have to be overcome. Thus the head of the IAEAasserted earlier this month that there is “ample time to engage the country”. However, what is crucially important – and still rarely mentioned – is that any effort towards weaponisation would immediately be detected by the IAEA under whose close surveillance the Iranian nuclear programme is placed.

In the shadow of discussion about the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme, a sober analysis about Tehran’s intentions and ambitions is missing. As Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, stated in his recent book on Iran (p113): “It can be argued that a strategic decision on the final aim of the Iranian nuclear programme has not been made.”

Adopting a realistic assessment, his predecessor, Christoph Bertram, also asserts there is no danger emanating from the programme. Bertram, a former director of the International Institute for Security Studies (IISS) clarifies in a report written for the main EU thinktank that a “nuclear Iran” would not be in Tehran’s strategic interest; on the contrary, a nuclear Iran would jeopardise the strenuously-gained political capital that it has earned since the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Citing Israeli military strategists, Perthes writes (p61) that Iran must be understood as a “rational and ‘logically’ behaving actor”. Therefore one could argue that if Obama rejects taking the military option off the table and Israel openly threatens Iran with an attack, such menaces could provoke a militarisation of Iran’s programme for deterrence purposes. A considerable reduction of Iran’s security dilemma – such as a WMD-free zone – is thus the best way to repel the alleged nuclear ambitions of Iran.

To date there is still no evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, which was reiterated by the US’s new intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, earlier this month. A way forward would be for Tehran to implement the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would allow for more intrusive inspections. Iran has signalled its willingness to do so only when its nuclear dossier is returned from the UN security council to the Vienna-based IAEA – a step that would correct its groundless referral there in the first place.

Model resolution against war and sanctions on Iran

Campaign Iran has prepared a resolution for trade union activists to pass at the own branches and to move at union conferences. It’s an important resolution. The new US administration has so far shown no signs of removing the crippling sanctions on Iran that are damaging the lives of ordinary Iranians especially the poorest sections of society. In fact, both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have called for tougher sanctions.

Despite the rhetoric, sanctions are not a “soft” form of pressure on the Iranian government. Instead, they strengthen power at the top of society and restrict the potential of those at the bottom. As the UNICEF-estimated deaths of half a million Iraqi children testify, sanctions can have catastrophic consequences. By isolating a whole country and suffocating its people, sanctions have historically been used by states as a prelude for war (as again was the case with Iraq).

Please download the motion in either a Word or PDF document below and distribute widely:

1. Model Resolution on Sanctions and War on Iran.doc

2. Model Resolution on Sanctions and War on Iran.pdf

For more information email us:

dontattackiran@campaigniran.co.uk

Obama and Iran

 

by Naz Massoumi (Campaign Iran)

On Tuesday this week, in a rally celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Iranian President Ahmadinejad softened his recent more hostile stance to the US by welcoming talks based on ‘mutual respect’. This came on the back of a number of recent reports, ever since the election of US President Barak Obama last November, suggesting a historic three-decade thaw in Iran-US relations.

First came news, immediately after the Nov 4th election, of the new US administration’s intentions to deal directly with Iran. Then the Guardian learnt of a letter being drafted by the state department giving assurances that the new administration would not attempt to topple the Iranian government. Finally at the end of January came Obama’s interview with al-Arabiya TV where, paraphrasing from his own inauguration speech, he said that “If countries like Iran [were] willing to unclench their fist, they [would] find an extended hand from us.”

The ‘clenched fist’ refers to Iran’s supposed self-imposed isolation for the past three decades. And, in the way it has been reported by the Western media, this view was vindicated by Ahmadinjead’s initial response to Obama’s ‘extended hand’ which called for an apology for past US crimes against Iran and a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq.

Given the history of US intervention in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s initial reaction was not as outrageous as the Western commentators would like to think. Indeed, as Muhammad Sahimi argues in this brilliant piece – from the CIA coup which overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953 and support for the Shah’s dictatorship during the 60s and 70s, through to the backing of Saddam Hussain in the devastating Iran-Iraq war and the shooting down of a Iranian civilian airbus in 1988 – Iran’s fist might be clenched for a reason. Rather it’s been the American government’s clenched fist that has suffocated Iranians lives for decades.

Almost everyone would welcome a new dialogue between the US and Iran especially if it were to avert another devastating war.  We must recognize however that this shift didn’t start with Obama’s election. The last few years has seen a battle between different sections of the US administration over their Iran policy. The likes of Bush and Cheney advocated war, but were increasingly sidelined by the disastrous consequences of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the latest US attempt, following successive administrations, of wrestling US hegemony over the Middle-East and dealing with the loss of the their most strategic ally in the region, the Shah, in the Iranian revolution of 1979.  But far from rebalancing the forces in the region in their favour, the neoconservatives achieved the opposite. Iran extended its influence and emerged as a regional power. The failure of the Iraq war, the Israeli defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in 2006 and the propaganda disaster of the recent invasion of Gaza have only strengthened Iran’s hand. On the Arab street, Iran has been the only power in the region prepared to stand up to Israel and the US.

As the neoconservatives lost support, other sections in Washington who wanted to deal with Iran, gained ground. Back in 2006, the Baker-Hamilton report called for direct talks.  Last summer, the state department considered opening a diplomatic mission in Iran and Under Secretary of State William Burns engaged in the first direct talks between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear programme. More importantly, the US army generals expressed open opposition to military intervention and the contradictions of all this played out politically.

So whilst Obama’s election appears to resolve these contradictions, his willingness to talk to Iran, though encouraging, is not new. But if he is honest about a real change in policy and a new US-Iran relationship then his ‘extended hand’ has to be more than symbolic. 

The lifting of the crippling US sanctions must be the first and most immediate step. Far from effecting the government, sanctions have rippled past those in power, increasing prices and putting pressure instead on a population already suffering under difficult economic conditions with high unemployment and inflation at 24%. As Ali Mostashari argues they also have a negative impact on Iran’s strong, functioning civil society:

Iranian state-owned airlines are flying dilapidated planes that put passengers at risk, and the consumers purchase U.S. products at double or triple their original price. Iranian students intending to study at U.S. academic institutions cannot take standardized tests such as TOEFL and GRE, and Iranian academics are barred from publishing papers in U.S. based scientific journals, since the U.S. Treasury considers editing an article a financial service…the sanctions are undermining the growth of a civil society that could serve as a vehicle for democratization in the country.

And if the recent Iraq war is any warning on the consequences of military intervention, then so too are the sanctions that preceded it: a UNICEF-estimate of half a million children died as a result.

So an ‘extended hand’ would involve immediately lifting the crippling US and UN sanctions. It would also would mean releasing the millions of Iranian assets frozen by the US ever since the Iranian revolution. It would involve engaging in direct talks with the Iranian government over its nuclear programme without any preconditions. It would call for an end to the $400 million allocated to regime change in Iran through covert operations and stoking of ethnic divisions. And of course, it would require the immediate end to the threatening presence of the US navy fleet and nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf with guaranteed security of the Iranian state from any military intervention from the US or Israel.  

Unfortunately Obama is far from such proposals with talk of increasing sanctions and refusing to rule out military intervention. In the same interview with al-Arabiya, he spoke of Iran in the same rhetoric as the Bush administration. He has chosen to keep the Bush official involved with Iran sanctions in his post and is likely to appoint the former US ambassador to Israel, Dennis Ross  - who wants tougher sanctions and military intervention on the table – as his senior advisor on Iran. Of course, these appointments won’t feel out of place in an administration including chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel who has served in the Israeli Defence Force and Hilary Clinton who talked of ‘obliterating’ Iran in her Democratic Party nomination campaign. Nor do they contradict Obama planning to send more troops to Afghanistan, extending bombing into Pakistan and thus refusing to end Bush’s War on Terror. 

It’s true that a shift in US-Iran relations is now quite possible and an immediate war with Iran unlikely. But despite all the talk, Obama’s foreign policy has so far in practice changed very little from the previous administration. A policy of engagement needs to respect Iran as a serious player in the region and on equal terms. Campaign Iran has always campaigned against war and sanctions on Iran. We aren’t shutting up shop any time soon.