Iran Benefits from Mideast Peace Talks
New America Media, News Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 27, 2007
Editor's Note: The Bush administration hopes the Arab-Israeli peace process will weaken Arab support for Iran but the talks stand to give Iran an advantage and move the nation closer to America and its Arab allies.Iran was not invited to the Middle East summit in Annapolis, but the Iranians are there nonetheless, and they will benefit whatever the outcome.
After nearly seven years of inaction on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Bush administration has finally decided to act by convening a conference on the matter. Among the 50 countries invited, delegates from virtually every Middle Eastern nation were invited to a conference in Annapolis, Md. on Nov. 27, including a delegation from Syria. Given Iran’s absence, it is ironic that the event might not have taken place at all had it not been for Iranian challenges to American power in the Middle East.
The United States has been trying desperately to gain traction in the international community for some kind of action against Iran. Although it is not clear what an anti-Iranian action is designed to accomplish, the driving need of the Bush administration to do something to cripple the current Iranian regime is an idée fixe in the Bush foreign policy shop.
The Jerusalem Post on Nov. 26 confirmed this in its reporting on the conference: “The idea that brokering an Arab-Israeli peace would be a setback for Iran is a valid one. Iran wants to destroy Israel, so anything that safeguards Israel's freedom and security is a defeat for Tehran.”
However, the Bush administration’s greater hope is that moving the Arab-Israeli peace process will weaken Arab support for Iran. One mantra continually repeated by Washington officials is that Iran’s Arab neighbors are “worried” by its growing strength and nuclear program. Yet Bush officials such as Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns have been massively unsuccessful in raising alarms in the Arab world about Iran. The decision to move seriously on Arab-Israeli peace as a second route toward undermining Iran may have resulted from the realization that trying to scare the Arab world with the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons has not worked.
Iran's immediate Arab neighbors never condemn it to the same degree that Americans and Europeans do. Arab leaders have expressed mild discomfort with Iran's nuclear program, but they never present it in terms of being directly threatened: there is either quizzical musing about where Iran might use possible weapons, or expressions about potential regional destabilization.
Arab states refrain from attacking Iran directly on any issue. When the United States tried to blame the 1996 attack on the Saudi Arabian Al-Khobar Towers on Iran, the Saudis refused to cooperate. Moreover, popular Arab sentiment seems to be directly supportive of Iran's nuclear program. One non-scientific poll conducted by London Based Al-Qods on Jan. 26, 2006 showed that 85 percent of Arab readers supported the Iranian nuclear energy program. The same results were reported in a separate poll on Aug. 6, 2005 by the Arab television news service Al-Jazeera.
All states in the region continue to have full diplomatic relations with Iran. The principal discomfort with the Islamic Republic has been expressed by King Abdullah of Jordan, who is somewhat removed from Iran. The big exception, of course, was Saddam Hussein, who waged war on Iran.
Arab nations say the greater concern in the region is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Indeed, Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s negative pronouncements on Israeli political actions have been highly popular with the Arab public—something that has received significant notice on the part of Arab leaders. The message to the United States is that if Washington wants the Arab world to go along with sanctions on Iran, or some kind of violent action against Iran, they had better do something about the Israelis and Palestinians. Thus we see a reluctantly summoned parade of nations coming to Annapolis to demonstrate the Bush administration’s seriousness about solving the issue.
Iran might feel neglected at being left out of the party, but in reality, if everything that one could hope works out satisfactorily in Annapolis, it all would work to Iran’s advantage.
Although Iran has been painted by neoconservatives as wanting to destroy Israel, nothing could be further from the truth. Iran is opposed to the extreme repressive politics of the Israeli right-wing, but if the Palestinians were given their own state, and Israel withdrew from the West Bank, Iranian opposition to Israeli politics would end. Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has privately expressed the opinion that should the Israeli-Palestinian issue be resolved, he could imagine Iran renewing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian issue could also lead to improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations. The United States has been so intent on portraying Hamas as a creature of Iranian surrogate aggression against Israel and the United States, they have forgotten that Mahmoud Abbas is still held in some esteem in Iran. When Yassir Arafat had passed from the scene, Iranians were speculating about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' potential leadership among the Palestinians, but also about his possible role as mediator between Iran and the United States. If he is strengthened in his role in the Israel-Palestine conflict he could indeed play this role.
Syria would also have to come on board in a comprehensive settlement, adding another link to Iran. In this scenario, the Siniora government in Lebanon, which the Syrians oppose, would have to be sacrificed. However some settlement of the Golan Heights problem with Syria would be worth tossing out a faction that represents a minority of the Lebanese population.
If all these things transpire, there will be no real reason for Arab opposition to Iran. Iran would be on the path to rapprochement with both the United States and with Israel, and thus on the same side as American’s Arab allies. Hezbollah would be on the rise as rulers of Lebanon, but would no longer be a threat to Israel.
But aside from these rosy prospects, it is wise to remember that there never was any real threat from Iran toward any Arab nation anyway.
Of course, these positive developments are unlikely to transpire in Annapolis, and if they don’t, Iran will be no worse off than it is now. Arab states will still not be any more likely to oppose Iran then they were before. Hezbollah’s power would continue to grow in Lebanon, and the Palestinian issue would continue to fester and discredit American’s bona fides in the Middle East.
William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He has conducted research in the Middle East for more than 30 years. His latest book is The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, which will be issued in Paperback by the University of Chicago Press next month.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
William O. Beeman--Sanctions Against Iran Will Cure Nothing (Providence Journal, November 16, 2007)
The Providence JournalNovember 16, 2007
William O. Beeman: Sanctions against Iran will cure nothing
12:30 PM EST on Friday, November 16, 2007 WILLIAM O. BEEMAN MINNEAPOLIS
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION declared new economic sanctions against Iran on Oct. 25. These new sanctions, announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, like those already in place, will accomplish nothing except to increase international tensions.
The new sanctions are an extension of a longstanding failed policy first begun under the Reagan administration, and extended under the Clinton administration. The United States is acting utterly alone; it is not supported by any other nation.
American dealings with Iran have failed in large part because the United States has never articulated any goals in its dealings with Iran that make any sense either to Iranians or to Americans. They mostly consist of calls for Iran to cease actions that Iran asserts are not being carried out in the first place. The principal accusations against Iran include: developing nuclear weaponry, supporting terrorist groups and providing arms to Iraqi insurgents. The United States then tries to prove that Iran is indeed carrying out the things it is accused of.
The Iranians counter with further proof that the accusations are baseless, and so it goes, ad infinitum. There has never been any proof that Iran’s domestic nuclear-energy program is directed at developing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with inspecting nuclear facilities under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, has repeatedly asserted that no evidence of Iranian nuclear-weapons development exists. Iran’s leaders also maintain that they are not developing nuclear weapons; Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, has declared that nuclear-weapons development is illegal in the Islamic Republic.
The Bush administration obscures these inconvenient facts with statements like those made recently by President Bush, who said on Oct 17, “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,”
implying that the weapons are actually under development.
Iran’s support for terrorist groups is also far less than it seems. Iran provided humanitarian support for the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority after Israel and the United States established an international embargo of funds for that government. Although Iran was instrumental in the founding of Lebanese Hezbollah, Tehran no longer has any effective influence or control of this group, which has evolved into an active political party with a large number of parliamentary representatives and government officials in Lebanon today.
Neo-conservative Michael Ledeen, of the American Enterprise Institute, in a new book maintains that Iran supports al-Qaida, and that Iran was instrumental in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States, but this assertion and similar claims that Iran supports the Taliban make no logical sense. Both conservative Sunni al-Qaida and the Taliban reject Shiism, the state religion of Iran, as a heresy, and sanction the killing of Shiites.
Finally, there is no proof that Iran is supporting attacks against Americans in Iraq. As analysts Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have pointed out, the Bush administration, having failed to establish that Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons, turned in desperation to the claim that Iran is supplying explosive devices to militias in Iraq through the offices of the Revolutionary Guard and its specialized Quds force. Gen. David Petraeus, who directs American military forces in Iraq, himself has admitted that no Iranian Quds force member has ever been captured in Iraq, and evidence of Iranian-supplied weapons in Iraq is nebulous.
The U.S. sanctions will also fail because Iran still has many friends. Europeans still have extensive trade with Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned the United States not to think of attacking Iran. On Oct. 16 the nations bordering the Caspian Sea, including Iran, issued a declaration, in which the countries agreed that none would let their territories be used as a base for military strikes against any of the others. India has renewed talks with Iran to establish a pipeline between the two nations. Iran has a positive balance of trade with China (as well as India). China’s leadership has repeatedly declared that Iran’s nuclear energy program is not an international threat. Japan continues to be an important Iranian trade and diplomatic partner.
Thus the new sanctions are being greeted with skepticism by the international community of nations. They are so insubstantial that it seems they are actually designed to fail. Increasingly, it seems that the United States itself does not believe in them, but has only imposed the sanctions as a prelude to military action. As in the build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the world awaits the announcement from the White House that, “having tried everything,” nothing was left except to bomb Iran.
William O. Beeman, an occasional contributor, is an anthropology professor and chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He was a professor of anthropology and the director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.
William O. Beeman: Sanctions against Iran will cure nothing
12:30 PM EST on Friday, November 16, 2007 WILLIAM O. BEEMAN MINNEAPOLIS
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION declared new economic sanctions against Iran on Oct. 25. These new sanctions, announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, like those already in place, will accomplish nothing except to increase international tensions.
The new sanctions are an extension of a longstanding failed policy first begun under the Reagan administration, and extended under the Clinton administration. The United States is acting utterly alone; it is not supported by any other nation.
American dealings with Iran have failed in large part because the United States has never articulated any goals in its dealings with Iran that make any sense either to Iranians or to Americans. They mostly consist of calls for Iran to cease actions that Iran asserts are not being carried out in the first place. The principal accusations against Iran include: developing nuclear weaponry, supporting terrorist groups and providing arms to Iraqi insurgents. The United States then tries to prove that Iran is indeed carrying out the things it is accused of.
The Iranians counter with further proof that the accusations are baseless, and so it goes, ad infinitum. There has never been any proof that Iran’s domestic nuclear-energy program is directed at developing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with inspecting nuclear facilities under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, has repeatedly asserted that no evidence of Iranian nuclear-weapons development exists. Iran’s leaders also maintain that they are not developing nuclear weapons; Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, has declared that nuclear-weapons development is illegal in the Islamic Republic.
The Bush administration obscures these inconvenient facts with statements like those made recently by President Bush, who said on Oct 17, “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,”
implying that the weapons are actually under development.
Iran’s support for terrorist groups is also far less than it seems. Iran provided humanitarian support for the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority after Israel and the United States established an international embargo of funds for that government. Although Iran was instrumental in the founding of Lebanese Hezbollah, Tehran no longer has any effective influence or control of this group, which has evolved into an active political party with a large number of parliamentary representatives and government officials in Lebanon today.
Neo-conservative Michael Ledeen, of the American Enterprise Institute, in a new book maintains that Iran supports al-Qaida, and that Iran was instrumental in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States, but this assertion and similar claims that Iran supports the Taliban make no logical sense. Both conservative Sunni al-Qaida and the Taliban reject Shiism, the state religion of Iran, as a heresy, and sanction the killing of Shiites.
Finally, there is no proof that Iran is supporting attacks against Americans in Iraq. As analysts Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have pointed out, the Bush administration, having failed to establish that Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons, turned in desperation to the claim that Iran is supplying explosive devices to militias in Iraq through the offices of the Revolutionary Guard and its specialized Quds force. Gen. David Petraeus, who directs American military forces in Iraq, himself has admitted that no Iranian Quds force member has ever been captured in Iraq, and evidence of Iranian-supplied weapons in Iraq is nebulous.
The U.S. sanctions will also fail because Iran still has many friends. Europeans still have extensive trade with Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned the United States not to think of attacking Iran. On Oct. 16 the nations bordering the Caspian Sea, including Iran, issued a declaration, in which the countries agreed that none would let their territories be used as a base for military strikes against any of the others. India has renewed talks with Iran to establish a pipeline between the two nations. Iran has a positive balance of trade with China (as well as India). China’s leadership has repeatedly declared that Iran’s nuclear energy program is not an international threat. Japan continues to be an important Iranian trade and diplomatic partner.
Thus the new sanctions are being greeted with skepticism by the international community of nations. They are so insubstantial that it seems they are actually designed to fail. Increasingly, it seems that the United States itself does not believe in them, but has only imposed the sanctions as a prelude to military action. As in the build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the world awaits the announcement from the White House that, “having tried everything,” nothing was left except to bomb Iran.
William O. Beeman, an occasional contributor, is an anthropology professor and chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He was a professor of anthropology and the director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Pakistan Is the New Iran: U.S. Makes Old Mistakes - NAM
Pakistan Is the New Iran: U.S. Makes Old Mistakes - NAM
Pakistan Is the New Iran: U.S. Makes Old Mistakes
New America Media, Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 15, 2007
Editor's Note: In Pakistan the United States has again backed the wrong authoritarian regime, a clear parallel to its support for the Shah of Iran in 1979, writes William O. Beeman, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
In Pakistan the United States has once again placed its reliance on an authoritarian “plumber” to carry out its foreign policy goals with disastrous effects – a time-honored foreign policy blunder that seems unavoidable for U.S. presidents.
This time the plumber is President Pervez Musharraf, who is also General Musharraf, Pakistan’s military chief.
Musharraf was hardly a candidate for this in 1991. He and the Pakistani military intelligence establishment were instrumental in supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, who in turn supported al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
There was also the matter of the proliferation of nuclear technology through Pakistani nuclear expert A.Q. Khan – something that President Musharraf must surely have known about, even if he was not directly complicit. Pakistan has nuclear weapons even though it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Musharraf’s turnaround in Washington’s estimation was rapid. Once the United States was on the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader, Musharraf quickly sensed the direction of the political winds and became the Bush administration’s new best friend, vowing to find bin Laden. Washington overlooked the A.Q. Khan incident, and conveniently maintains that Pakistani nukes are okay because Musharraf is our buddy.
But the friendship is fragile.
It is virtually axiomatic that bin Laden would have been captured long ago – except that General Musharraf knew that once bin Laden was gone, his days as leader of Pakistan would be numbered. The United States would lose interest in the South Asian nation, or would scuttle him as an inconvenience. American officials might deny such a scenario, but the U.S. track record is extremely clear: once an American "plumber" ceases to be of use, he or she is toast.
The clearest parallel to General Musharraf is the Shah of Iran, who was deposed in the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. The United States saw the Shah as a bastion against Soviet penetration into the Persian Gulf and armed him to the hilt. The Carter administration never talked to the Shah's Iranian opposition and had no clue about the power of the religious forces surrounding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, until it was too late. By making the Shah the United States’ sole plumber in the region, when he fell, the United States could only watch helplessly as it lost everything.
The same may well hold true in Pakistan. The Bush administration propped up Musharraf with massive financial aid and arms supplies. They never tried to take opposition to his rule seriously, or develop any backup strategy for preventing Pakistan’s disintegration should Musharraf fall.
And fall he may. He has the backing of segments of the Pakistani military, but lacks broad support among the people. His heavy-handed tactics in quashing public dissent have all but killed Pakistan’s progress in establishing an independent judiciary and an effective civil society. Having tasted a bit of freedom, the opposition to Musharraf has become emboldened, and is not likely to tolerate his authoritarian rule or singular stubbornness in hanging onto absolute power.
If he does fall, Pakistan risks disintegration. As a nation cobbled together from disparate former Indian states at the end of World War II, Pakistan is not well integrated ethnically. Its sole integrating principle is Islam, and a post-Musharraf nation will likely embrace Islamic government as a unifying force. Whole parts of the country are barely under central control. Al Qaeda and the Taliban operate with impunity near the Western border, running international terrorist training camps. And those nuclear weapons are still present, ready to be used to threaten anyone who opposes those who control them. Pakistan’s neighbor is Hindu-dominated India, and every nation that is looking toward the burgeoning Indian economy needs to be very afraid.
All the Beltway blather and talk of support for President Musharraf fail to conceal that he is both weak and vulnerable, and that the United States has no backup plan whatsoever if he is deposed. This event would extend the grand scope of American failure in the region from the Mediterranean to the borders of China. Increasingly, no place in the world may be left safe from the violence emerging through the gaping holes in U.S. foreign policy.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in the Middle East and South Asia for more than 30 years.
Pakistan Is the New Iran: U.S. Makes Old Mistakes
New America Media, Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Nov 15, 2007
Editor's Note: In Pakistan the United States has again backed the wrong authoritarian regime, a clear parallel to its support for the Shah of Iran in 1979, writes William O. Beeman, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
In Pakistan the United States has once again placed its reliance on an authoritarian “plumber” to carry out its foreign policy goals with disastrous effects – a time-honored foreign policy blunder that seems unavoidable for U.S. presidents.
This time the plumber is President Pervez Musharraf, who is also General Musharraf, Pakistan’s military chief.
Musharraf was hardly a candidate for this in 1991. He and the Pakistani military intelligence establishment were instrumental in supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, who in turn supported al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.
There was also the matter of the proliferation of nuclear technology through Pakistani nuclear expert A.Q. Khan – something that President Musharraf must surely have known about, even if he was not directly complicit. Pakistan has nuclear weapons even though it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Musharraf’s turnaround in Washington’s estimation was rapid. Once the United States was on the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader, Musharraf quickly sensed the direction of the political winds and became the Bush administration’s new best friend, vowing to find bin Laden. Washington overlooked the A.Q. Khan incident, and conveniently maintains that Pakistani nukes are okay because Musharraf is our buddy.
But the friendship is fragile.
It is virtually axiomatic that bin Laden would have been captured long ago – except that General Musharraf knew that once bin Laden was gone, his days as leader of Pakistan would be numbered. The United States would lose interest in the South Asian nation, or would scuttle him as an inconvenience. American officials might deny such a scenario, but the U.S. track record is extremely clear: once an American "plumber" ceases to be of use, he or she is toast.
The clearest parallel to General Musharraf is the Shah of Iran, who was deposed in the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. The United States saw the Shah as a bastion against Soviet penetration into the Persian Gulf and armed him to the hilt. The Carter administration never talked to the Shah's Iranian opposition and had no clue about the power of the religious forces surrounding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, until it was too late. By making the Shah the United States’ sole plumber in the region, when he fell, the United States could only watch helplessly as it lost everything.
The same may well hold true in Pakistan. The Bush administration propped up Musharraf with massive financial aid and arms supplies. They never tried to take opposition to his rule seriously, or develop any backup strategy for preventing Pakistan’s disintegration should Musharraf fall.
And fall he may. He has the backing of segments of the Pakistani military, but lacks broad support among the people. His heavy-handed tactics in quashing public dissent have all but killed Pakistan’s progress in establishing an independent judiciary and an effective civil society. Having tasted a bit of freedom, the opposition to Musharraf has become emboldened, and is not likely to tolerate his authoritarian rule or singular stubbornness in hanging onto absolute power.
If he does fall, Pakistan risks disintegration. As a nation cobbled together from disparate former Indian states at the end of World War II, Pakistan is not well integrated ethnically. Its sole integrating principle is Islam, and a post-Musharraf nation will likely embrace Islamic government as a unifying force. Whole parts of the country are barely under central control. Al Qaeda and the Taliban operate with impunity near the Western border, running international terrorist training camps. And those nuclear weapons are still present, ready to be used to threaten anyone who opposes those who control them. Pakistan’s neighbor is Hindu-dominated India, and every nation that is looking toward the burgeoning Indian economy needs to be very afraid.
All the Beltway blather and talk of support for President Musharraf fail to conceal that he is both weak and vulnerable, and that the United States has no backup plan whatsoever if he is deposed. This event would extend the grand scope of American failure in the region from the Mediterranean to the borders of China. Increasingly, no place in the world may be left safe from the violence emerging through the gaping holes in U.S. foreign policy.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in the Middle East and South Asia for more than 30 years.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
New Sanctions Against Iran Will Accomplish Nothing - NAM
New Sanctions Against Iran Will Accomplish Nothing - NAM
New Sanctions against Iran Will Accomplish Nothing
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Oct 25, 2007
Editor's Note: The United States has once again implemented economic sanctions on Iran, accusing it of developing nuclear weapons. Like the earlier sanctions, these will not accomplish anything either, writes NAM contributor William O. Beeman.
The Bush administration declared new economic sanctions against Iran Oct. 25. The sanctions, announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, like those already in place, will accomplish nothing except to increase international tensions.
The new sanctions are an extension of a long-standing failed policy first begun under the Reagan administration, and extended under the Clinton administration. The United States is acting totally alone; it is not supported by any other nation.
American dealings with Iran have failed in large part because the United States has never articulated what it wants to accomplish. They mostly consist of calls for Iran to cease doing things that Iran says it is not doing in the first place.
The principal accusations against Iran include: developing nuclear weaponry, supporting terrorist groups, and providing arms to Iraqi insurgents. The United States then tries to prove that Iran is indeed carrying out the things it is accused of. The Iranians counter with further proof that the accusations are baseless, and the exchange repeats.
There has never been any proof that Iran’s domestic nuclear energy program is directed at developing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with inspecting nuclear facilities under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, has repeatedly asserted that no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons development exists. Iran’s leaders also maintain that they are not developing nuclear weapons. The country’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamene’I, has declared that nuclear weapons development is illegal in the Islamic Republic.
The Bush administration obscures these inconvenient facts with statements like those made recently by President Bush, who said Oct. 17, "If you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," implying that the weapons are currently being developed.
Iran’s level of support for terrorist groups is also far lower than it seems. Iran provided humanitarian support for the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority after Israel and the United States established an international embargo of funds for that government. Although Iran was instrumental in the founding of Lebanese Hezbullah, Tehran no longer has any effective influence or control over this group, which has evolved into an active political party with a large number of parliamentary representatives and government officials in Lebanon today. In his new book, neoconservative Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute maintains that Iran supports Al-Qaeda, and that Iran was instrumental in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States - but this assertion and similar claims that Iran supports the Taliban make no logical sense. Both conservative Sunni Al-Qaeda and the Taliban reject Shi’ism, the state religion of Iran, as a heresy, and sanction the killing of Shi’ites.
Finally, there is no proof that Iran is supporting attacks against Americans in Iraq. As analysts Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have pointed out, the Bush administration, having failed to establish that Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons, has turned in desperation to the claim that Iran is supplying explosive devices to militias in Iraq through the offices of the Revolutionary Guard and its specialized Quds force. General David Petraeus himself has admitted that no Iranian Quds force member has ever been captured in Iraq, and evidence of Iranian-supplied weapons in Iraq is nebulous.
The U.S. sanctions will fail because Iran still has many friends. Europeans still have extensive trade with Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned the United States not to think of attacking Iran. On Oct. 16, the nations bordering the Caspian Sea, including Iran, issued a declaration in which the countries agreed that none would allow their territories to be used as a base for military strikes against any of the others. India has renewed talks with Iran to establish a pipeline between the two nations. Iran has a positive balance of trade with China, as well as India. China’s leadership has repeatedly declared that Iran’s nuclear energy program is not an international threat. Japan continues to be an important Iranian trade and diplomatic partner.
It's little wonder that the new sanctions are being greeted with skepticism by the international community of nations. The sanctions are so insubstantial that it seems they are actually designed to fail. Increasingly, it seems that the United States itself does not believe in them, but has only imposed the sanctions as a prelude to military action. As in the build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the world awaits the announcement from the White House that, "having tried everything," nothing was left except bombing Iran.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years. The second edition of his book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
©2007 William O. Beeman and New America Media. This article may be freely reproduced and distributed for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact the author or New America Media ( Peter Micek pmicek@newamericamedia.org | 415-503-4170)
New Sanctions against Iran Will Accomplish Nothing
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Oct 25, 2007
Editor's Note: The United States has once again implemented economic sanctions on Iran, accusing it of developing nuclear weapons. Like the earlier sanctions, these will not accomplish anything either, writes NAM contributor William O. Beeman.
The Bush administration declared new economic sanctions against Iran Oct. 25. The sanctions, announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, like those already in place, will accomplish nothing except to increase international tensions.
The new sanctions are an extension of a long-standing failed policy first begun under the Reagan administration, and extended under the Clinton administration. The United States is acting totally alone; it is not supported by any other nation.
American dealings with Iran have failed in large part because the United States has never articulated what it wants to accomplish. They mostly consist of calls for Iran to cease doing things that Iran says it is not doing in the first place.
The principal accusations against Iran include: developing nuclear weaponry, supporting terrorist groups, and providing arms to Iraqi insurgents. The United States then tries to prove that Iran is indeed carrying out the things it is accused of. The Iranians counter with further proof that the accusations are baseless, and the exchange repeats.
There has never been any proof that Iran’s domestic nuclear energy program is directed at developing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with inspecting nuclear facilities under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, has repeatedly asserted that no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons development exists. Iran’s leaders also maintain that they are not developing nuclear weapons. The country’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamene’I, has declared that nuclear weapons development is illegal in the Islamic Republic.
The Bush administration obscures these inconvenient facts with statements like those made recently by President Bush, who said Oct. 17, "If you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," implying that the weapons are currently being developed.
Iran’s level of support for terrorist groups is also far lower than it seems. Iran provided humanitarian support for the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority after Israel and the United States established an international embargo of funds for that government. Although Iran was instrumental in the founding of Lebanese Hezbullah, Tehran no longer has any effective influence or control over this group, which has evolved into an active political party with a large number of parliamentary representatives and government officials in Lebanon today. In his new book, neoconservative Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute maintains that Iran supports Al-Qaeda, and that Iran was instrumental in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States - but this assertion and similar claims that Iran supports the Taliban make no logical sense. Both conservative Sunni Al-Qaeda and the Taliban reject Shi’ism, the state religion of Iran, as a heresy, and sanction the killing of Shi’ites.
Finally, there is no proof that Iran is supporting attacks against Americans in Iraq. As analysts Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have pointed out, the Bush administration, having failed to establish that Iran is actually developing nuclear weapons, has turned in desperation to the claim that Iran is supplying explosive devices to militias in Iraq through the offices of the Revolutionary Guard and its specialized Quds force. General David Petraeus himself has admitted that no Iranian Quds force member has ever been captured in Iraq, and evidence of Iranian-supplied weapons in Iraq is nebulous.
The U.S. sanctions will fail because Iran still has many friends. Europeans still have extensive trade with Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently warned the United States not to think of attacking Iran. On Oct. 16, the nations bordering the Caspian Sea, including Iran, issued a declaration in which the countries agreed that none would allow their territories to be used as a base for military strikes against any of the others. India has renewed talks with Iran to establish a pipeline between the two nations. Iran has a positive balance of trade with China, as well as India. China’s leadership has repeatedly declared that Iran’s nuclear energy program is not an international threat. Japan continues to be an important Iranian trade and diplomatic partner.
It's little wonder that the new sanctions are being greeted with skepticism by the international community of nations. The sanctions are so insubstantial that it seems they are actually designed to fail. Increasingly, it seems that the United States itself does not believe in them, but has only imposed the sanctions as a prelude to military action. As in the build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the world awaits the announcement from the White House that, "having tried everything," nothing was left except bombing Iran.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and has conducted research in Iran for more than 30 years. The second edition of his book, "The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other," will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
©2007 William O. Beeman and New America Media. This article may be freely reproduced and distributed for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact the author
Saturday, October 06, 2007
David Wurmser--neocon hawk
David Wurmser has been at the elbow of the Bush administration at every step as a primary advisor. His extreme hawkish views on Iran and Syria have come close to being standard policy. If the U.S. launches an attack on Iran, Wurmser can be held as one of those responsible. See the article below and know what incredible obstacles sane people have to deal with in this current administration.
Best,
Bill Beeman
US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007
America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
Profile: US hawk David Wurmser
Toby Harnden: David Wurmser - a neocon unbowed
US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007
America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
Profile: US hawk David Wurmser
Toby Harnden: David Wurmser - a neocon unbowed
David Wurmser: 'If we start shooting, we
must be prepared to fire the last shot'
"We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep," said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser.
"That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary." He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.
Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran's theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
advertisementIran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.
"It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now."
Both countries were part of a "proliferation consortium", possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.
If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran's prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union's was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was "weak and rattled" while Iran had adopted a "go-for-broke strategy" of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that "the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile".
A situation such as last year's attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser's recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran's intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.
Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. "Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
"If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.
It was "fantastical" to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would "try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn't want", he said. "Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them."
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. "Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn't really play it very well.
"Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking.... everybody's looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area."
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. "It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran's] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we'll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground."
Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. "While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.
"It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from."
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. "If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.
"I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that's what we decided to do, things can be done."
Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
David Wurmser: 'If we start shooting, we
must be prepared to fire the last shot'
"We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep," said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser.
"That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary." He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.
Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran's theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
advertisement
Iran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.
"It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now."
Both countries were part of a "proliferation consortium", possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.
If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran's prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union's was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was "weak and rattled" while Iran had adopted a "go-for-broke strategy" of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that "the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile".
A situation such as last year's attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser's recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran's intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.
Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. "Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
"If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.
It was "fantastical" to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would "try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn't want", he said. "Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them."
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. "Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn't really play it very well.
"Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking.... everybody's looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area."
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. "It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran's] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we'll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground."
Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. "While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.
"It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from."
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. "If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.
"I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that's what we decided to do, things can be done."
Best,
Bill Beeman
US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007
America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
Profile: US hawk David Wurmser
Toby Harnden: David Wurmser - a neocon unbowed
US 'must break Iran and Syria regimes'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007
America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
Profile: US hawk David Wurmser
Toby Harnden: David Wurmser - a neocon unbowed
David Wurmser: 'If we start shooting, we
must be prepared to fire the last shot'
"We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep," said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser.
"That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary." He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.
Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran's theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
advertisementIran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.
"It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now."
Both countries were part of a "proliferation consortium", possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.
If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran's prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union's was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was "weak and rattled" while Iran had adopted a "go-for-broke strategy" of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that "the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile".
A situation such as last year's attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser's recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran's intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.
Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. "Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
"If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.
It was "fantastical" to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would "try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn't want", he said. "Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them."
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. "Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn't really play it very well.
"Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking.... everybody's looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area."
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. "It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran's] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we'll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground."
Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. "While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.
"It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from."
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. "If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.
"I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that's what we decided to do, things can be done."
Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
David Wurmser: 'If we start shooting, we
must be prepared to fire the last shot'
"We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep," said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser.
"That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary." He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.
Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran's theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
advertisement
Iran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.
"It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now."
Both countries were part of a "proliferation consortium", possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.
If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran's prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union's was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was "weak and rattled" while Iran had adopted a "go-for-broke strategy" of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that "the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile".
A situation such as last year's attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.
Although Mr Wurmser's recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran's intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.
Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. "Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
"If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.
It was "fantastical" to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would "try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn't want", he said. "Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them."
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. "Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn't really play it very well.
"Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking.... everybody's looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area."
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. "It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran's] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we'll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground."
Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. "While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.
"It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from."
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. "If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.
"I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that's what we decided to do, things can be done."
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
William O. Beeman No Gays in Iran… But Many Same-Sex Couples (New America Media)
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3a90d68c4ee619b83cd450f0661f0343
No Gays in Iran… But Many Same-Sex Couples
New America Media, Commentary
William O. Beeman, Posted: Sep 26, 2007
Editor’s Note: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comment that homosexuality does not exist in Iran like it does in the West is true in a sense, writes anthropologist William Beeman. In fact, same-sex relations in Iran do look very different from what is called gay behavior in the West.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was derided for his statement in a Sept. 24 speech at Columbia University that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran. Though many Americans may find it incredible, differences in the construction of sexual behavior do exist across cultures.
As an anthropologist, I can state with confidence that sexuality varies tremendously between cultures. The notion that one is either "gay" or "straight" does not accord with what we observe in human sexual behavior, which is far more flexible. This categorization is an artifact of American culture, which glories in binary categories for classifying people. Folks that identify as "bisexual" (yet another ambiguous category) in the United States often get grief from both the gay and straight community for "deluding" themselves about their sexuality.
Of course it is impossible to discern precisely what President Ahmadinejad meant in his remarks. But what is true is the construction of same-sex behavior and, indeed, same-sex affection in Iran is extremely different than in Europe and America. There has been a recent phenomenon of Western-style "gay culture" emerging in Iran – replete with gay bars, clubs and house parties – but this is very new, largely limited to the upper classes, and likely not known to President Ahmadinejad, whose social milieu is the middle and lower-middle class. This recent Western-style gay phenomenon is distinct from ordinary same-sex behavior as practiced traditionally in Iran. Indeed, there was not even a word for homosexuality in Persian before the 20th century. It had to be invented. The term used by President Ahmadinejad was “hamjensbaz,” a neologism that literally means, “playing with the same sex.”
In Iran, same-sex sexual behavior is classified rigidly into active and passive roles. The Arabic terms “fa’el” and “maf’oul” (active and passive – actually grammatical terms used to describe active and passive verbs) were the common designation for these roles. The passive partner is still called by the Arabic term “obneh,” or, more crudely, “kuni.” (Kun means anus.) The active vs. passive same-sex preference is well known in the Western world, but it is constructed quite differently in Iran and other Arab and Mediterranean cultures.
Active partners in Iran do not consider themselves to be “homosexual.” Indeed, it is a kind of macho boast in some circles that one has been an active partner with another male. Passive partners are denigrated and carry a life-long stigma if their sexual role is known, even after a single incident. They have been deflowered, as it were, in the same way that women might lose their virginity, and they are considered to be "xarob" or "destroyed."
In actual fact, many men are "versatile" in their sexual activity but if they are known to have relations with other men, they will always claim in public to be the active partner. Same-sex relations between females are undoubtedly practiced, but this is the deepest secret in Iran, and rarely talked about at all.
Emotional relations are very different. Men and women both may become exceptionally attached to people of the same sex, to the point that Westerners would swear that they must have a sexual relationship. It is not necessarily so. Kissing, holding hands, weeping, jealousy, physical contact and all the signs of partnership can exist without any sexual activity or, indeed, with an undercurrent of absolute horror that it might take place, because of the active-passive split in sexual classification and men's fear of being pegged as a passive partner. A man who truly loves another man doesn't want to degrade him by making him a passive sex partner.
More typically, male teenagers who become exceptionally attached may marry sisters in order to become kin to each other, thereby creating a lifelong bond. There is even a quasi-marriage ceremony based on the idea of “muta,” or temporary marriage, through which two men or two women can become fictive “siblings.” This takes care of many things, allowing intimate relations, and intimacy between family relations, but also imposing an even stronger taboo against sexual relations, which would be considered incest.
Iranians who come to Europe and the United States may "discover" that they are "gay" once they are liberated from the rigid cultural system that binds them into these polarized active-passive roles.
To be sure, sodomy is punishable by death in Iran, but such executions have been historically extremely rare compared with the routine incidence of same-sex sexual behavior in Iran. Much was made in the United States of two boys who were executed in the city of Mashhad a few years ago for "being homosexual," as the Western press put it. However, they were executed because they had essentially committed what we would call statutory rape on an under-aged boy. The boy's father was beside himself with rage and grief, and pressed charges. In many such cases, the shame of the family and the victim himself is so great that no one ever finds out.
In the end, both the United States and Iran classify sexuality in a way that fails to accord with the range of actual human proclivities. However, there is no doubt that the two systems are very different.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has been conducting research in Iran for more than 30 years, and is a fluent speaker of Persian. He is author of Language, Status and Power in Iran and The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, the second edition of which will be published later this year by the University of Chicago Press.
©2007 William O. Beeman and New America Media. This article may be freely distributed for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact the author or New America Media
No Gays in Iran… But Many Same-Sex Couples
New America Media, Commentary
William O. Beeman, Posted: Sep 26, 2007
Editor’s Note: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comment that homosexuality does not exist in Iran like it does in the West is true in a sense, writes anthropologist William Beeman. In fact, same-sex relations in Iran do look very different from what is called gay behavior in the West.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was derided for his statement in a Sept. 24 speech at Columbia University that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran. Though many Americans may find it incredible, differences in the construction of sexual behavior do exist across cultures.
As an anthropologist, I can state with confidence that sexuality varies tremendously between cultures. The notion that one is either "gay" or "straight" does not accord with what we observe in human sexual behavior, which is far more flexible. This categorization is an artifact of American culture, which glories in binary categories for classifying people. Folks that identify as "bisexual" (yet another ambiguous category) in the United States often get grief from both the gay and straight community for "deluding" themselves about their sexuality.
Of course it is impossible to discern precisely what President Ahmadinejad meant in his remarks. But what is true is the construction of same-sex behavior and, indeed, same-sex affection in Iran is extremely different than in Europe and America. There has been a recent phenomenon of Western-style "gay culture" emerging in Iran – replete with gay bars, clubs and house parties – but this is very new, largely limited to the upper classes, and likely not known to President Ahmadinejad, whose social milieu is the middle and lower-middle class. This recent Western-style gay phenomenon is distinct from ordinary same-sex behavior as practiced traditionally in Iran. Indeed, there was not even a word for homosexuality in Persian before the 20th century. It had to be invented. The term used by President Ahmadinejad was “hamjensbaz,” a neologism that literally means, “playing with the same sex.”
In Iran, same-sex sexual behavior is classified rigidly into active and passive roles. The Arabic terms “fa’el” and “maf’oul” (active and passive – actually grammatical terms used to describe active and passive verbs) were the common designation for these roles. The passive partner is still called by the Arabic term “obneh,” or, more crudely, “kuni.” (Kun means anus.) The active vs. passive same-sex preference is well known in the Western world, but it is constructed quite differently in Iran and other Arab and Mediterranean cultures.
Active partners in Iran do not consider themselves to be “homosexual.” Indeed, it is a kind of macho boast in some circles that one has been an active partner with another male. Passive partners are denigrated and carry a life-long stigma if their sexual role is known, even after a single incident. They have been deflowered, as it were, in the same way that women might lose their virginity, and they are considered to be "xarob" or "destroyed."
In actual fact, many men are "versatile" in their sexual activity but if they are known to have relations with other men, they will always claim in public to be the active partner. Same-sex relations between females are undoubtedly practiced, but this is the deepest secret in Iran, and rarely talked about at all.
Emotional relations are very different. Men and women both may become exceptionally attached to people of the same sex, to the point that Westerners would swear that they must have a sexual relationship. It is not necessarily so. Kissing, holding hands, weeping, jealousy, physical contact and all the signs of partnership can exist without any sexual activity or, indeed, with an undercurrent of absolute horror that it might take place, because of the active-passive split in sexual classification and men's fear of being pegged as a passive partner. A man who truly loves another man doesn't want to degrade him by making him a passive sex partner.
More typically, male teenagers who become exceptionally attached may marry sisters in order to become kin to each other, thereby creating a lifelong bond. There is even a quasi-marriage ceremony based on the idea of “muta,” or temporary marriage, through which two men or two women can become fictive “siblings.” This takes care of many things, allowing intimate relations, and intimacy between family relations, but also imposing an even stronger taboo against sexual relations, which would be considered incest.
Iranians who come to Europe and the United States may "discover" that they are "gay" once they are liberated from the rigid cultural system that binds them into these polarized active-passive roles.
To be sure, sodomy is punishable by death in Iran, but such executions have been historically extremely rare compared with the routine incidence of same-sex sexual behavior in Iran. Much was made in the United States of two boys who were executed in the city of Mashhad a few years ago for "being homosexual," as the Western press put it. However, they were executed because they had essentially committed what we would call statutory rape on an under-aged boy. The boy's father was beside himself with rage and grief, and pressed charges. In many such cases, the shame of the family and the victim himself is so great that no one ever finds out.
In the end, both the United States and Iran classify sexuality in a way that fails to accord with the range of actual human proclivities. However, there is no doubt that the two systems are very different.
William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has been conducting research in Iran for more than 30 years, and is a fluent speaker of Persian. He is author of Language, Status and Power in Iran and The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, the second edition of which will be published later this year by the University of Chicago Press.
©2007 William O. Beeman and New America Media. This article may be freely distributed for any non-commercial purpose. For commercial use, please contact the author or New America Media
Monday, October 01, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
U.S. Accusations against Iran in Iraq are False
Analysts Ervand Abrahamian and Gareth Porter have recently make essential points in talking about Iran's purported involvement with groups that have attacked the United States in Iraq. First, Brigadeer General Kevin Bergner, General David Petraeus and their underlings have used the slogan "Iranian-backed militia extremists" creating the utterly false impression that there is a unitary force backed by Iran that is engaging with the United States. Second, Bush administration officials have invoked the impression that Iran has some kind of uniform strategy to implement some kind of campaign. Both of these propositions appear to be completely false.
There are at least five identifiable Shi'a militia groups operating in Iraq. The Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr is perhaps the most troublesome of them--so troublesome that the United States has initiated attacks against them, prompting retaliation--hardly an Iranian plot. It is not clear who and under what conditions IED/ETFs have been planted in other areas, and as Porter has shown in a whole series of decisive articles, one must strain at gnats to demonstrate an Iranian connection. Wayne White's anecdote about some militia person going and getting some kind of arms across the Iranian border, if even reflecting a true event, only emphasizes the logical source of such weapons, namely from gun runners. What conflict has not had such people?
As deep as suspicion may run of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, no evidence exists that they have been active in Iraq, and no amount of public jawboning can eliminate the thundering lack of evidence. The formula "Hezbullah=Iranian control" as much as it has been invoked by the Bush administration, is patently false, as Hezbullah observers have been asserting for more than a decade. But beyond this, even the active involvement of Hezbullah in Iraq lacks any concrete proof, beyond the identification of a few individuals who may well be simple freebooters.
Does anyone seriously believe that Iran desires chaos in Iraq? Has anyone understood that Muqtada al-Sadr and Ali al-Sistani will never be Iranian clients--that they both oppose Iran's governmental structure, and have their own ideas about how Iraq should be constructed? These obvious questions are never asked by either press or politicians. They inconveniently contravene the dominant Bush administration Iranian plot scenario, but they are the most important analytic factors in understanding Iran's true relationship to Iraq today.
It only takes a little sober thought and a careful examination of the lack of evidence to see that this giant "plot" on the part of Iran is a total house of cards concocted to gin up an excuse for military action against Iran. I am frankly appalled at the U.S. government for promulgating such chicanery on the world. What is especially appalling is the gullibility of both the press and the American politicians, who now repeat this specious formulation as if it were fact. This can not end well.
There are at least five identifiable Shi'a militia groups operating in Iraq. The Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr is perhaps the most troublesome of them--so troublesome that the United States has initiated attacks against them, prompting retaliation--hardly an Iranian plot. It is not clear who and under what conditions IED/ETFs have been planted in other areas, and as Porter has shown in a whole series of decisive articles, one must strain at gnats to demonstrate an Iranian connection. Wayne White's anecdote about some militia person going and getting some kind of arms across the Iranian border, if even reflecting a true event, only emphasizes the logical source of such weapons, namely from gun runners. What conflict has not had such people?
As deep as suspicion may run of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, no evidence exists that they have been active in Iraq, and no amount of public jawboning can eliminate the thundering lack of evidence. The formula "Hezbullah=Iranian control" as much as it has been invoked by the Bush administration, is patently false, as Hezbullah observers have been asserting for more than a decade. But beyond this, even the active involvement of Hezbullah in Iraq lacks any concrete proof, beyond the identification of a few individuals who may well be simple freebooters.
Does anyone seriously believe that Iran desires chaos in Iraq? Has anyone understood that Muqtada al-Sadr and Ali al-Sistani will never be Iranian clients--that they both oppose Iran's governmental structure, and have their own ideas about how Iraq should be constructed? These obvious questions are never asked by either press or politicians. They inconveniently contravene the dominant Bush administration Iranian plot scenario, but they are the most important analytic factors in understanding Iran's true relationship to Iraq today.
It only takes a little sober thought and a careful examination of the lack of evidence to see that this giant "plot" on the part of Iran is a total house of cards concocted to gin up an excuse for military action against Iran. I am frankly appalled at the U.S. government for promulgating such chicanery on the world. What is especially appalling is the gullibility of both the press and the American politicians, who now repeat this specious formulation as if it were fact. This can not end well.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Iran and America: Conflict, Context & Connect (Minnesota Public Radio Broadcast)
Minnesota Public Radio held a forum on July 19th entitled
"Iran and America: Conflict, Context & Connect," a discussion about the U.S.-Iranian relationship with members of Minnesota's Iranian community in which I also participated.
The discussion was broadcast on July 23, and included additional listener call-in remarks. Both broadcasts are sound-archived at the following web site.
Iran and America: Conflict, Context & Connect--Minnesota Public Radio
The discussion was highly enlightening. The Iranian members of the panel were exceptionally articulate and balanced in their views. MPR would likely be open to allowing rebroadcast of the program if anyone were interested.
"Iran and America: Conflict, Context & Connect," a discussion about the U.S.-Iranian relationship with members of Minnesota's Iranian community in which I also participated.
The discussion was broadcast on July 23, and included additional listener call-in remarks. Both broadcasts are sound-archived at the following web site.
Iran and America: Conflict, Context & Connect--Minnesota Public Radio
The discussion was highly enlightening. The Iranian members of the panel were exceptionally articulate and balanced in their views. MPR would likely be open to allowing rebroadcast of the program if anyone were interested.
Monday, July 23, 2007
How To Talk The Talk With Iran--William O. Beeman
How To Talk The Talk With Iran
by William O Beeman
Editor's Note: Face-to-face talks between Iran and the United States over Iraq's future will be fraught with pitfalls unless Washington adopts complex rules of engagement. Key will be mastering the art of "inside" as well as "outside" communication. William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He is author of "Language, Status and Power in Iran" and "The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Face-to-face talks between Iran and the United States have a good chance of success if the Bush administration knows how to handle their part of the exchange,
Some denizens of Washington are under the mistaken impression that the Americans can dictate the terms of the conversation and the Iranians will fall in line. They will not.
The first rule in Iranian negotiations is that both sides must exhibit mutual respect, even if they harbor virulent hatred for each other. Iran is a hierarchical society, and negotiations are stabilized by balanced reciprocity in terms of respect. Each party elevates the other party in status and humbles him or herself in turn. In this way hierarchy is preserved, but mutuality is maintained.
Politeness is an exquisite art in Iran; it is especially appreciated in difficult negotiations. One can see this demonstrated in public encounters between Iranian officials themselves. Many of Iran's political leaders and clerics hate each other with a vengeance. Their intense rivalry is always hidden behind a veil of outward respect. This system of encounter, replete with bowing, complimentary language and deference, is called "ta'arof". It is an essential political and social skill.
Second, Iranians will not tolerate accusations or accept blame except from those with whom they have a personal relationship that embodies respect because of their superior social or political position, morality or accomplishments. Even the most exalted individual will tolerate criticism from his or her parent, teacher, spiritual leader or acknowledged patron. The same person will bristle and remonstrate when faced with accusations from some unrelated party, or someone considered to be of equal or inferior status. The Revolution of 1978-79 hinged on this principle. When the Shah's army began firing on unarmed women and youths in public, his superior status vis-a-vis the public - anchored in his implicit pledge to protect his people - evaporated, and he fell like a rock in a matter of weeks.
Third, a resumption of relations after estrangement is especially difficult. Estrangement in Iran is institutionalized. It is called "qahr and involves a period of ritual non-interaction. The resumption of relations usually requires a neutral mediator and even then, reconciliation can be fraught with pitfalls. Either party can quickly test the sincerity of the other party with unreasonable or difficult demands. The only way forward in this situation is to continually demonstrate good will, and present scenarios that show the mutual benefit of the resumption of relations.
Finally, Iranians make a very clear distinction between "inside" and "outside" communication. An appeal to the "inside" values of spirituality, virtue and human feeling is always likely to win the Iranian heart; but such an appeal must be sincere. "Inside" expressions recall the mysticism of Sufi orders, and are redolent with spiritual meaning. Practiced Iranians are quick to detect insincerity, cynicism and overt flattery, all of which are definitely "outside" in nature. Cynical overtures are immediately rejected as a sign of bad faith, and can destroy any delicate negotiation. And no wonder, since the "inside" communication mode is so powerful, and its misuse so despised.
These principles can easily be implemented by the United States for any mutually useful purpose in talking with Iran.
If the talks are to be about stability in Iraq, the United States must not bias them by making pre-conditions about other issues - such as Iran's nuclear program. It must acknowledge that Iran has an equal and respected position in creating stability in the region. Language must be unfailingly polite and humble.
The United States must avoid making accusations against Iran. Frankly, from Iran's perspective, the United States has no standing to make such accusations. It is neither respected as a social or cultural superior, nor has it acted as an acknowledged patron of Iran or its people. If talks are productive, the accusatory matters can be handled once relations are on a more even keel.
In dealing with Iran, the United States must be prepared for the fits and starts that accompany the 28-year estrangement between the two nations. Iran will feint, pull back, charge forward with seemingly helpful suggestions, only to withdraw them. This is normal, expected and part of the process of reconciliation.
Finally, the United States must speak with sincerity about mutual desires to cooperate with the Iranian government on matters of mutual interest. Nothing could be more essential to both nations than stability in Iraq. There can be ho holding back here. The message must be from the heart, and unqualified.
Only then will the long chill between Iran and the United States begin to abate.
by William O Beeman
Editor's Note: Face-to-face talks between Iran and the United States over Iraq's future will be fraught with pitfalls unless Washington adopts complex rules of engagement. Key will be mastering the art of "inside" as well as "outside" communication. William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He is author of "Language, Status and Power in Iran" and "The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.
Face-to-face talks between Iran and the United States have a good chance of success if the Bush administration knows how to handle their part of the exchange,
Some denizens of Washington are under the mistaken impression that the Americans can dictate the terms of the conversation and the Iranians will fall in line. They will not.
The first rule in Iranian negotiations is that both sides must exhibit mutual respect, even if they harbor virulent hatred for each other. Iran is a hierarchical society, and negotiations are stabilized by balanced reciprocity in terms of respect. Each party elevates the other party in status and humbles him or herself in turn. In this way hierarchy is preserved, but mutuality is maintained.
Politeness is an exquisite art in Iran; it is especially appreciated in difficult negotiations. One can see this demonstrated in public encounters between Iranian officials themselves. Many of Iran's political leaders and clerics hate each other with a vengeance. Their intense rivalry is always hidden behind a veil of outward respect. This system of encounter, replete with bowing, complimentary language and deference, is called "ta'arof". It is an essential political and social skill.
Second, Iranians will not tolerate accusations or accept blame except from those with whom they have a personal relationship that embodies respect because of their superior social or political position, morality or accomplishments. Even the most exalted individual will tolerate criticism from his or her parent, teacher, spiritual leader or acknowledged patron. The same person will bristle and remonstrate when faced with accusations from some unrelated party, or someone considered to be of equal or inferior status. The Revolution of 1978-79 hinged on this principle. When the Shah's army began firing on unarmed women and youths in public, his superior status vis-a-vis the public - anchored in his implicit pledge to protect his people - evaporated, and he fell like a rock in a matter of weeks.
Third, a resumption of relations after estrangement is especially difficult. Estrangement in Iran is institutionalized. It is called "qahr and involves a period of ritual non-interaction. The resumption of relations usually requires a neutral mediator and even then, reconciliation can be fraught with pitfalls. Either party can quickly test the sincerity of the other party with unreasonable or difficult demands. The only way forward in this situation is to continually demonstrate good will, and present scenarios that show the mutual benefit of the resumption of relations.
Finally, Iranians make a very clear distinction between "inside" and "outside" communication. An appeal to the "inside" values of spirituality, virtue and human feeling is always likely to win the Iranian heart; but such an appeal must be sincere. "Inside" expressions recall the mysticism of Sufi orders, and are redolent with spiritual meaning. Practiced Iranians are quick to detect insincerity, cynicism and overt flattery, all of which are definitely "outside" in nature. Cynical overtures are immediately rejected as a sign of bad faith, and can destroy any delicate negotiation. And no wonder, since the "inside" communication mode is so powerful, and its misuse so despised.
These principles can easily be implemented by the United States for any mutually useful purpose in talking with Iran.
If the talks are to be about stability in Iraq, the United States must not bias them by making pre-conditions about other issues - such as Iran's nuclear program. It must acknowledge that Iran has an equal and respected position in creating stability in the region. Language must be unfailingly polite and humble.
The United States must avoid making accusations against Iran. Frankly, from Iran's perspective, the United States has no standing to make such accusations. It is neither respected as a social or cultural superior, nor has it acted as an acknowledged patron of Iran or its people. If talks are productive, the accusatory matters can be handled once relations are on a more even keel.
In dealing with Iran, the United States must be prepared for the fits and starts that accompany the 28-year estrangement between the two nations. Iran will feint, pull back, charge forward with seemingly helpful suggestions, only to withdraw them. This is normal, expected and part of the process of reconciliation.
Finally, the United States must speak with sincerity about mutual desires to cooperate with the Iranian government on matters of mutual interest. Nothing could be more essential to both nations than stability in Iraq. There can be ho holding back here. The message must be from the heart, and unqualified.
Only then will the long chill between Iran and the United States begin to abate.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Economist editorial "The Riddle of Iran" --Why was it Written?
The Economist editorial "The Riddle of Iran" --Why was it Written?
William O. Beeman
The mystery of the Economist "editorial" about Iran, entitled "The Riddle of Iran" is why it was written at all, and why now? The editorial once again attacks Iran for its nuclear development program. It contains absolutely nothing new--nothing that was not already in the press and in the editorial pages a year ago or more. It gives prominence to the demagoguery of likely future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spouting the same anti-Iranian rhetoric he has been pushing on Fox News for the past two years. It also contains the same falsehoods about the illegality of Iranian actions under the NPT. However, the Economist employs a trick that the New York Times and others have used. They get away with publishing outright untruths, but in an editorial, where it is "opinion" and not news reporting. The underlying "special report" referred to in the editorial is also dismally stale, containing nothing at all of note, except to advertise that the American Enterprise Institute is trying to publicize companies who are doing business with Iran in some vain hope that Washington might somehow find a way to enforce the economic sanctions against Iran, the better to generate some minimal pressure on the Iranian leadership. The sanctions are foolish and unworkable, but presenting a picture where all is copasetic is the White House line, lest they endure another dismal and embarrassing failure of strategy. We had Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman in a speech here in the Twin Cities recently, accompanied by AIPAC Handlers (who reportedly sponsored the event) giving exactly the same talk to a pre-selected audience--"the economic sanctions are working, Iran is feeling the pain, etc.". Of course it is nonsense. It is wearying to hear the same tripe over and over again, and surprising in the extreme to see such a respected journal as The Economist joining in--especially with a cover story no less with virtually no news inside. But every time these lies are repeated, it makes me fearful that the administration hawks and the neocons are on a tear to soften up the American public for their cherished military strike.
William O. Beeman
The mystery of the Economist "editorial" about Iran, entitled "The Riddle of Iran" is why it was written at all, and why now? The editorial once again attacks Iran for its nuclear development program. It contains absolutely nothing new--nothing that was not already in the press and in the editorial pages a year ago or more. It gives prominence to the demagoguery of likely future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spouting the same anti-Iranian rhetoric he has been pushing on Fox News for the past two years. It also contains the same falsehoods about the illegality of Iranian actions under the NPT. However, the Economist employs a trick that the New York Times and others have used. They get away with publishing outright untruths, but in an editorial, where it is "opinion" and not news reporting. The underlying "special report" referred to in the editorial is also dismally stale, containing nothing at all of note, except to advertise that the American Enterprise Institute is trying to publicize companies who are doing business with Iran in some vain hope that Washington might somehow find a way to enforce the economic sanctions against Iran, the better to generate some minimal pressure on the Iranian leadership. The sanctions are foolish and unworkable, but presenting a picture where all is copasetic is the White House line, lest they endure another dismal and embarrassing failure of strategy. We had Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman in a speech here in the Twin Cities recently, accompanied by AIPAC Handlers (who reportedly sponsored the event) giving exactly the same talk to a pre-selected audience--"the economic sanctions are working, Iran is feeling the pain, etc.". Of course it is nonsense. It is wearying to hear the same tripe over and over again, and surprising in the extreme to see such a respected journal as The Economist joining in--especially with a cover story no less with virtually no news inside. But every time these lies are repeated, it makes me fearful that the administration hawks and the neocons are on a tear to soften up the American public for their cherished military strike.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Beeman--The National "Intelligence" Estimate
The National "Intelligence" Estimate
William O. Beeman
I cannot begin to express my dismay at the announcement of the cowardly and anemic national intelligence estimate today. The operative sentence, reported at least in the New York Times, was “These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information, are not a fact, proof or knowledge." Boy howdy. It is not only the information that is fragmentary, it is the "terrorist network" itself. The administration continues to do its best to present a monolithic picture of terrorism when all evidence points to isolated groups with intensely parochial interests operating without any central control, except perhaps a kind of franchise label to make them seem part of something bigger than they really are.
The administration has tried desperately to link the original Al Qaeda to Iran, to the Iraqi insurgency, to Hezbollah, to the Taliban, to Anwar al-Islam and even to Hamas and various North African splinter groups. The term "affiliated" should be seen for what it is when used to link Osama bin Laden to any of these other groups--a fudge factor designed to support a mythology of the Bush administration's own creation. None of these groups can be approached with the same strategies that must be applied to the others. They do not use the same tactics. They don't have the same ideologies. Most importantly, they do not have the same leadership, nor political survival strategies. Hamas and Hezbollah are political entities in their own countries. Hamas is fighting Israel and the supporters of Al-Fatah; Hezbollah is fighting Israel and its own Lebanese central government. The Iraqi insurgency is rebelling against its own central government and the United States. The Taliban once housed Al-Qaeda, but they are primarily interested in regaining control over Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda itself in the far-away hills of Pakistan may launch verbal volleys at the United States, but it still seethes at the Saudi Royal Family. And we are now to believe that all of these entities, with all of their local concerns and investments in local conflicts are ganged up with the sole purpose of attacking the United States on its shores? This may satisfy an ego- and ethno-centric American public but it makes no logical sense at all.
Of course, the all purpose logical glue for some in Washington is to claim that Iran is masterminding everything. This is either wishful thinking, or a diabolical deceit of the American public.
The very saddest realization of all is that every one of these groups pre-existed the 9/11 tragedy. Their interests and their struggles go back decades. If Americans only had minimal education about the region, they would see this charade for what it is--a serious attempt to fool and scare the American public into granting this administration yet another loan extension on our national lives, liberties and treasure--just to "get them through the next few months," when they can dump the whole mess they have created on the next poor saps, and go off to Crawford or wherever and pontificate about how they acted on "principle" rather than "politics."
William O. Beeman
I cannot begin to express my dismay at the announcement of the cowardly and anemic national intelligence estimate today. The operative sentence, reported at least in the New York Times, was “These assessments, which are based on incomplete or at times fragmentary information, are not a fact, proof or knowledge." Boy howdy. It is not only the information that is fragmentary, it is the "terrorist network" itself. The administration continues to do its best to present a monolithic picture of terrorism when all evidence points to isolated groups with intensely parochial interests operating without any central control, except perhaps a kind of franchise label to make them seem part of something bigger than they really are.
The administration has tried desperately to link the original Al Qaeda to Iran, to the Iraqi insurgency, to Hezbollah, to the Taliban, to Anwar al-Islam and even to Hamas and various North African splinter groups. The term "affiliated" should be seen for what it is when used to link Osama bin Laden to any of these other groups--a fudge factor designed to support a mythology of the Bush administration's own creation. None of these groups can be approached with the same strategies that must be applied to the others. They do not use the same tactics. They don't have the same ideologies. Most importantly, they do not have the same leadership, nor political survival strategies. Hamas and Hezbollah are political entities in their own countries. Hamas is fighting Israel and the supporters of Al-Fatah; Hezbollah is fighting Israel and its own Lebanese central government. The Iraqi insurgency is rebelling against its own central government and the United States. The Taliban once housed Al-Qaeda, but they are primarily interested in regaining control over Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda itself in the far-away hills of Pakistan may launch verbal volleys at the United States, but it still seethes at the Saudi Royal Family. And we are now to believe that all of these entities, with all of their local concerns and investments in local conflicts are ganged up with the sole purpose of attacking the United States on its shores? This may satisfy an ego- and ethno-centric American public but it makes no logical sense at all.
Of course, the all purpose logical glue for some in Washington is to claim that Iran is masterminding everything. This is either wishful thinking, or a diabolical deceit of the American public.
The very saddest realization of all is that every one of these groups pre-existed the 9/11 tragedy. Their interests and their struggles go back decades. If Americans only had minimal education about the region, they would see this charade for what it is--a serious attempt to fool and scare the American public into granting this administration yet another loan extension on our national lives, liberties and treasure--just to "get them through the next few months," when they can dump the whole mess they have created on the next poor saps, and go off to Crawford or wherever and pontificate about how they acted on "principle" rather than "politics."
Friday, July 13, 2007
Iran's Press TV to give Alternative View--LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-presstv13jul13,1,3696911,full.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=4&cset=true
Iran's Press TV to give alternative view
The 24-hour satellite news channel will compete with Western outlets to counter what Tehran sees as propaganda.
By Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, Special to The Times
July 13, 2007
TEHRAN — Host Susan Modaress is trying to get London correspondent Roshan Mohammed Saleh on the satellite link to talk about the tasks ahead for Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown.
"Hello, London?" says the host of the show "Four Corners" on Iran's new English-language news channel, Press TV. "Can you hear me, London?"
Silence and darkness gape back.
She quickly moves on, trying to reach Tony Benn, a former member of Parliament with Brown's Labor Party. He's also not on the line. And neither is Robert Ayers, of the British think-tank Chatham House. But Modaress doesn't lose her cool.
"OK," she says in near flawless American-accented English. "We're having some technical problems. Let's take a break."
In fits and starts, Iran this month entered the business of providing 24-hour English-language satellite television news programming, competing in a field that includes BBC World, CNN International, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Al Jazeera International and France 24.
The government aims to use Press TV to counter what it sees as a steady stream of Western propaganda against Iran as well as offer an alternative view of world news.
"We are the target of global media war, and there is hardly any media delivering on its commitment," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a July 2 ceremony marking the station's launch. "We cannot help but be attentive to the agony of our fellow human beings. Even if one day our country is not the target of a bullying power, we will not be indifferent to the world and to oppression."
Iran has eagerly used satellite television to deliver its message, usually to reach out to people in times of crisis. It has launched stations aimed at Afghans, Bosnians and Arabs in their homelands.
But Press TV, housed in a modest and drab five-story apartment building on a quiet street of north Tehran, is said to be the most expensive project ever undertaken by Iranian broadcasting, which is wholly controlled by the state.
"Now the international circumstances are changing and we want to make an impact on the international developments," said Mohammed Sarfaraz, director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting's foreign language department. "That is the reason we are launching Press TV."
The station has a staff of more than 400, including more than two dozen reporters around the world, to produce a total of 48 news bulletins for each 24-hour cycle. It has correspondents in Moscow, Rome, Cairo, London, Brussels and Beijing. It has bureaus in Beirut, Gaza and the West Bank and is seeking a Baghdad correspondent.
The staff also includes correspondents in Washington and New York, said Shahab Mossavat, a spokesman for the channel.
"It was very difficult to get them accredited," he said, citing a law passed during the Clinton administration.
The broadcast is available on numerous satellite frequencies but also through live streaming on its website, http://www.presstv.com . An Iranian television executive said half the 3 million hits on the Press TV site in the months before the station launched came from the United States. Videos also are posted on YouTube.
The newscast itself has surprised observers. Reporters refer to Israel by its name instead of calling it the "Zionist entity," as it is on Persian-language channels. Reports include relatively neutral updates on violence in the Middle East and Iraq, as well as on noncontroversial subjects such as an art gallery in Tehran or living conditions for Muslims in Russia.
"Copies of the Koran are readily available and many mosques are being built in areas with large Muslim populations," the broadcaster says of Russia.
During the launch ceremony, Mossavat said that the station would cover pressing domestic issues, such as human rights, "but not just from the negative side."
"We try to explore all other under-reported aspects of these issues…. We also cover human rights violation in Europe and the U.S."
William O. Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota, appeared on a live talk show about the role of the media.
"I thought it was a fine discussion overall, involving a mix of international and very savvy Iranian commentators," he said. "The latter were extremely clever in saying things that were non-objectionable to the Iranian government, but which could easily be read by a sophisticated audience as at least questioning of the current state of the Iranian press."
But critics say that so far Press TV has provided little or no coverage of Iran's domestic troubles, including economic hardship stemming from inflation and stagnant wages.
The news headlines at the bottom of the screen include messages that present a positive picture of Iran's international relations and economy, such as "Iran, Belarus to talk expanded defense ties" or "Iran boosts oil production capacity."
But the ads for upcoming documentaries show the channel's slant. They include "Back From Iraq," a series about Western correspondents who covered the war and are critical of the conflict; "America Countdown," in which Americans speak out against the Bush administration; and "AMIA," a documentary that purports to prove that Israel had a hand in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that has been blamed on Iranian operatives.
Another documentary, "Land of Religions," is said to show how Iran's Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians live peacefully side by side.
But observers have found themselves more frustrated by the station's irksome programming missteps than its politics.
"First impression is that it is not as slanted as one might expect," said Glenn Hauser, editor of Review of International Broadcasting, an online newsletter. However, "the news headline crawlers are too repetitive. The promos are too repetitive. The upcoming documentaries look interesting, if only we knew when to expect them."
Overall, initial reviews for Press TV in Iran and abroad were positive, but perhaps not what its founders had in mind. Hauser said his favorite segments were the colorful animations of battle scenes, using famous medieval Persian miniatures from various Tehran museums, that fill the time between segments.
At a barbershop in north Tehran, Pooya Ardaroudi said he would use the channel to sharpen his English.
"I am preparing to emigrate to Australia and work as barber there," the 25-year-old said. "I can watch the news and improve my English while I am cutting people's hair."
--
________________________________________
daragahi@latimes.com
Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Daragahi from Cairo.
Iran's Press TV to give alternative view
The 24-hour satellite news channel will compete with Western outlets to counter what Tehran sees as propaganda.
By Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi, Special to The Times
July 13, 2007
TEHRAN — Host Susan Modaress is trying to get London correspondent Roshan Mohammed Saleh on the satellite link to talk about the tasks ahead for Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown.
"Hello, London?" says the host of the show "Four Corners" on Iran's new English-language news channel, Press TV. "Can you hear me, London?"
Silence and darkness gape back.
She quickly moves on, trying to reach Tony Benn, a former member of Parliament with Brown's Labor Party. He's also not on the line. And neither is Robert Ayers, of the British think-tank Chatham House. But Modaress doesn't lose her cool.
"OK," she says in near flawless American-accented English. "We're having some technical problems. Let's take a break."
In fits and starts, Iran this month entered the business of providing 24-hour English-language satellite television news programming, competing in a field that includes BBC World, CNN International, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Al Jazeera International and France 24.
The government aims to use Press TV to counter what it sees as a steady stream of Western propaganda against Iran as well as offer an alternative view of world news.
"We are the target of global media war, and there is hardly any media delivering on its commitment," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a July 2 ceremony marking the station's launch. "We cannot help but be attentive to the agony of our fellow human beings. Even if one day our country is not the target of a bullying power, we will not be indifferent to the world and to oppression."
Iran has eagerly used satellite television to deliver its message, usually to reach out to people in times of crisis. It has launched stations aimed at Afghans, Bosnians and Arabs in their homelands.
But Press TV, housed in a modest and drab five-story apartment building on a quiet street of north Tehran, is said to be the most expensive project ever undertaken by Iranian broadcasting, which is wholly controlled by the state.
"Now the international circumstances are changing and we want to make an impact on the international developments," said Mohammed Sarfaraz, director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting's foreign language department. "That is the reason we are launching Press TV."
The station has a staff of more than 400, including more than two dozen reporters around the world, to produce a total of 48 news bulletins for each 24-hour cycle. It has correspondents in Moscow, Rome, Cairo, London, Brussels and Beijing. It has bureaus in Beirut, Gaza and the West Bank and is seeking a Baghdad correspondent.
The staff also includes correspondents in Washington and New York, said Shahab Mossavat, a spokesman for the channel.
"It was very difficult to get them accredited," he said, citing a law passed during the Clinton administration.
The broadcast is available on numerous satellite frequencies but also through live streaming on its website, http://www.presstv.com . An Iranian television executive said half the 3 million hits on the Press TV site in the months before the station launched came from the United States. Videos also are posted on YouTube.
The newscast itself has surprised observers. Reporters refer to Israel by its name instead of calling it the "Zionist entity," as it is on Persian-language channels. Reports include relatively neutral updates on violence in the Middle East and Iraq, as well as on noncontroversial subjects such as an art gallery in Tehran or living conditions for Muslims in Russia.
"Copies of the Koran are readily available and many mosques are being built in areas with large Muslim populations," the broadcaster says of Russia.
During the launch ceremony, Mossavat said that the station would cover pressing domestic issues, such as human rights, "but not just from the negative side."
"We try to explore all other under-reported aspects of these issues…. We also cover human rights violation in Europe and the U.S."
William O. Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota, appeared on a live talk show about the role of the media.
"I thought it was a fine discussion overall, involving a mix of international and very savvy Iranian commentators," he said. "The latter were extremely clever in saying things that were non-objectionable to the Iranian government, but which could easily be read by a sophisticated audience as at least questioning of the current state of the Iranian press."
But critics say that so far Press TV has provided little or no coverage of Iran's domestic troubles, including economic hardship stemming from inflation and stagnant wages.
The news headlines at the bottom of the screen include messages that present a positive picture of Iran's international relations and economy, such as "Iran, Belarus to talk expanded defense ties" or "Iran boosts oil production capacity."
But the ads for upcoming documentaries show the channel's slant. They include "Back From Iraq," a series about Western correspondents who covered the war and are critical of the conflict; "America Countdown," in which Americans speak out against the Bush administration; and "AMIA," a documentary that purports to prove that Israel had a hand in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that has been blamed on Iranian operatives.
Another documentary, "Land of Religions," is said to show how Iran's Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians live peacefully side by side.
But observers have found themselves more frustrated by the station's irksome programming missteps than its politics.
"First impression is that it is not as slanted as one might expect," said Glenn Hauser, editor of Review of International Broadcasting, an online newsletter. However, "the news headline crawlers are too repetitive. The promos are too repetitive. The upcoming documentaries look interesting, if only we knew when to expect them."
Overall, initial reviews for Press TV in Iran and abroad were positive, but perhaps not what its founders had in mind. Hauser said his favorite segments were the colorful animations of battle scenes, using famous medieval Persian miniatures from various Tehran museums, that fill the time between segments.
At a barbershop in north Tehran, Pooya Ardaroudi said he would use the channel to sharpen his English.
"I am preparing to emigrate to Australia and work as barber there," the 25-year-old said. "I can watch the news and improve my English while I am cutting people's hair."
--
________________________________________
daragahi@latimes.com
Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Daragahi from Cairo.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
William O. Beeman--Economic Sanctions Against Iran are Old Hat—and They Have Never Worked--New America Media
Economic Sanctions Against Iran are Old Hat—and They Have Never Worked
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 03, 2007
Editor’s Note: President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are talking about putting the economic squeeze on Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program. NAM contributing writer William O. Beeman says it won’t work. Beeman is professor and chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. His latest book is “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other” (Praeger Publishers).
Increasing economic pressure on Iran is part of the agenda at this weekend’s meeting between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. One aim of these talks is to create a unified strategy of trade and economic sanctions that will eventually pressure Iran into giving up its uranium enrichment program.
The two leaders are wasting their time. This strategy will not work with the Iranians.
European attempts to control Iran’s economy and political life are part of Iran’s historic legacy going back nearly two centuries. Culturally, the Iranian people consider these attempts illegitimate, and have no compunctions about frustrating them—even if it means bending the principles of international law and trade to make sure that these efforts fail.
In the 19th century, Iran was virtually ruled by Russia on the north, and by Great Britain on the south. The Russians controlled customs operations on Iran’s northern borders. They paid nominal fees to the Qajar Dynasty that ruled Iran, and collected customs duties in both directions.
Great Britain by 1820 had secured a General Treaty with the small sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf which turned them into protectorates of the British Empire. Britain’s purpose was nominally to control piracy in the transit route to India. However, from these outposts, the British wrested control of the shipping lanes and the ports from the Iranians.
At the time, the struggle between Great Britain and Russia over Iran was part of the “Great Game” for control of Asia that raged throughout the 19th century. Although Moscow and London saw this as competition, the Iranians saw it as European oppression.
Oil and technology were not the issue at that time. Commodities not grown in Iran at the time, such as tea, became the prime object of increased trade restrictions, but imported manufactured goods from Europe were also part of the mix.
The Iranian response to the economic pressure exerted by these great powers was, first, to play them off against each other. As the Russians increased tariffs in the north, the Iranians imposed their own tariffs on the British in the south to offset them. Late in the 19th century the Qajars began to sell economic concessions to the British or other Europeans to offset the Russian influence, and trade concessions to the Russians to offset Western European influence.
Additionally, the Iranians used transshipment via free ports, notably Dubai as a way to circumvent direct European economic influence. They also tolerated smuggling.
Today the United States has replaced Great Britain in the Iranian mentality, and Russia, having gone through the Soviet period, is once again Russia in Iranian eyes. For the Iranians the European oppression of the 19th century is still alive and well, and must be resisted. The sentiment was expressed once again on June 30 by Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamene’i in a meeting with government officials, who reaffirmed that Iran would continue to take a proactive stance in foreign policy matters, and would not be controlled by European and American policy concerns.
Iran continues to play competing sides against each other today. Its first nuclear power plant, started 30 years ago with American blessings but built with Russian technology, has yet to open. This delay is due largely to obstacles arising from American objections to any Iranian nuclear development. The plant, which cannot practically generate any weapons grade material, promises to be lucrative for the Russians for many years to come, and will set the stage for future Iranian-Russian economic cooperation. President Putin knows that this prospect is in danger if he capitulates to President Bush’s demands for unified sanctions against Iran. Iran, for its part, already has a favorable trade balance with both India and China, and is ready to deal further with them despite American attempts to frustrate these relationships.
At times Iran need do nothing at all to set its rivals against each other. The Bush administration tried to use the notion that Iran posed a danger to the world, and presumably to Russia as a pretext for establishing long-range missiles in the Czech Republic. This was such a stretch that it was immediately denounced by Russian officials, including President Putin. Russian officials know that Iran poses no perceptible danger for them, and no amount of alarmist rhetoric on the part of President Bush could convince them to approve a missile base on their doorstep.
In short, Iran has many time-worn tools in its political arsenal to withstand attempts to control its economy and politics. Its enormously long borders are porous on all sides. The northern border in particular, which Iran shares with former Soviet states Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—not to mention the vast Caspian Sea—are particularly open. Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west—both with new land routes into Central Asia and China–are uncontrolled by the West. Dubai and other Gulf free ports, as well as newly developed facilities on the Sea of Oman guarantee that needed goods will flow into the country if severe trade sanctions are enacted. Even the present chaos in Iraq guarantees free flow of goods across the Iranian border.
The lesson that the Bush administration refuses to learn is that Iran will not respond to pressure. The only route to Iranian cooperation is face-to-face dealings with no preconditions, where Iran is treated respectfully as an equal partner. This proposition sticks in the craw of the Bush administration—to the point where the irrational call for military action becomes preferable in some quarters.
However, Iran knows that historically when it is able to exercise its strength to resist control by outsiders, it eventually achieves the respect it requires. Until that time, all other strategies aimed at changing its behavior will fail.
New America Media, Commentary, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 03, 2007
Editor’s Note: President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are talking about putting the economic squeeze on Iran to give up its uranium enrichment program. NAM contributing writer William O. Beeman says it won’t work. Beeman is professor and chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. His latest book is “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other” (Praeger Publishers).
Increasing economic pressure on Iran is part of the agenda at this weekend’s meeting between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. One aim of these talks is to create a unified strategy of trade and economic sanctions that will eventually pressure Iran into giving up its uranium enrichment program.
The two leaders are wasting their time. This strategy will not work with the Iranians.
European attempts to control Iran’s economy and political life are part of Iran’s historic legacy going back nearly two centuries. Culturally, the Iranian people consider these attempts illegitimate, and have no compunctions about frustrating them—even if it means bending the principles of international law and trade to make sure that these efforts fail.
In the 19th century, Iran was virtually ruled by Russia on the north, and by Great Britain on the south. The Russians controlled customs operations on Iran’s northern borders. They paid nominal fees to the Qajar Dynasty that ruled Iran, and collected customs duties in both directions.
Great Britain by 1820 had secured a General Treaty with the small sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf which turned them into protectorates of the British Empire. Britain’s purpose was nominally to control piracy in the transit route to India. However, from these outposts, the British wrested control of the shipping lanes and the ports from the Iranians.
At the time, the struggle between Great Britain and Russia over Iran was part of the “Great Game” for control of Asia that raged throughout the 19th century. Although Moscow and London saw this as competition, the Iranians saw it as European oppression.
Oil and technology were not the issue at that time. Commodities not grown in Iran at the time, such as tea, became the prime object of increased trade restrictions, but imported manufactured goods from Europe were also part of the mix.
The Iranian response to the economic pressure exerted by these great powers was, first, to play them off against each other. As the Russians increased tariffs in the north, the Iranians imposed their own tariffs on the British in the south to offset them. Late in the 19th century the Qajars began to sell economic concessions to the British or other Europeans to offset the Russian influence, and trade concessions to the Russians to offset Western European influence.
Additionally, the Iranians used transshipment via free ports, notably Dubai as a way to circumvent direct European economic influence. They also tolerated smuggling.
Today the United States has replaced Great Britain in the Iranian mentality, and Russia, having gone through the Soviet period, is once again Russia in Iranian eyes. For the Iranians the European oppression of the 19th century is still alive and well, and must be resisted. The sentiment was expressed once again on June 30 by Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamene’i in a meeting with government officials, who reaffirmed that Iran would continue to take a proactive stance in foreign policy matters, and would not be controlled by European and American policy concerns.
Iran continues to play competing sides against each other today. Its first nuclear power plant, started 30 years ago with American blessings but built with Russian technology, has yet to open. This delay is due largely to obstacles arising from American objections to any Iranian nuclear development. The plant, which cannot practically generate any weapons grade material, promises to be lucrative for the Russians for many years to come, and will set the stage for future Iranian-Russian economic cooperation. President Putin knows that this prospect is in danger if he capitulates to President Bush’s demands for unified sanctions against Iran. Iran, for its part, already has a favorable trade balance with both India and China, and is ready to deal further with them despite American attempts to frustrate these relationships.
At times Iran need do nothing at all to set its rivals against each other. The Bush administration tried to use the notion that Iran posed a danger to the world, and presumably to Russia as a pretext for establishing long-range missiles in the Czech Republic. This was such a stretch that it was immediately denounced by Russian officials, including President Putin. Russian officials know that Iran poses no perceptible danger for them, and no amount of alarmist rhetoric on the part of President Bush could convince them to approve a missile base on their doorstep.
In short, Iran has many time-worn tools in its political arsenal to withstand attempts to control its economy and politics. Its enormously long borders are porous on all sides. The northern border in particular, which Iran shares with former Soviet states Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—not to mention the vast Caspian Sea—are particularly open. Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west—both with new land routes into Central Asia and China–are uncontrolled by the West. Dubai and other Gulf free ports, as well as newly developed facilities on the Sea of Oman guarantee that needed goods will flow into the country if severe trade sanctions are enacted. Even the present chaos in Iraq guarantees free flow of goods across the Iranian border.
The lesson that the Bush administration refuses to learn is that Iran will not respond to pressure. The only route to Iranian cooperation is face-to-face dealings with no preconditions, where Iran is treated respectfully as an equal partner. This proposition sticks in the craw of the Bush administration—to the point where the irrational call for military action becomes preferable in some quarters.
However, Iran knows that historically when it is able to exercise its strength to resist control by outsiders, it eventually achieves the respect it requires. Until that time, all other strategies aimed at changing its behavior will fail.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Neoconservatives Going Down--Taking Iran with them
Neoconservatives Going Down--Taking Iran with them
John Bolton, former UN Ambassador has written another screed on Iran for the Jerusalem Post, calling for Iran's destruction because it is a danger to Israel.
I must say that I am absolutely flabbergasted at the persistent obsession in the
neoconservative camp with Iran. Other neoconservatives such as American Enterprise Institute denizen Meyrav Wurmser and others reflect this. What is astonishing to me is that the predictions that Iran is the principal danger for Israel absolutely
overlook the far more important and logical challenges to Israel on its
own borders.
There is some fantasy abroad that if only Iran would disappear or cease
some political operations (financial support, supplies of military
equipment, etc.), Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups challenging Israeli
operations vis-a-vis the Palestinians would simply dry up and blow away.
Witness the focus on the $22 million allegedly supplied to Hamas by Iran,
when in the same breath, more than twice that amount was acknowledged to
have been supplied by other Middle Eastern parties.
There is still no hard evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons
program, and yet we have Bolton and others fulminating over something
that, even if it existed as a threat, is far in the future, compared to
the immediate dangers Israel faces today from local actors who have been
so politicized and demoralized that they engage in the extreme violent
actions that all sensible people decry. These local actors are not going
to go away, or suddenly become docile as a result of attacking Iran. The
irony is that if the United States and Israel were to nuke Iran into
oblivion, Israel would be no safer at all--indeed, it would be in greater
danger than ever.
My guess is that the neoconservatives have realized that the Bush
administration has now destroyed their chances for political dominance in
the future, and if they don't act now to force the administration into
taking military action against Iran, it will never happen. They are going
down, and by golly, they are going to take Iran with them.
John Bolton, former UN Ambassador has written another screed on Iran for the Jerusalem Post, calling for Iran's destruction because it is a danger to Israel.
I must say that I am absolutely flabbergasted at the persistent obsession in the
neoconservative camp with Iran. Other neoconservatives such as American Enterprise Institute denizen Meyrav Wurmser and others reflect this. What is astonishing to me is that the predictions that Iran is the principal danger for Israel absolutely
overlook the far more important and logical challenges to Israel on its
own borders.
There is some fantasy abroad that if only Iran would disappear or cease
some political operations (financial support, supplies of military
equipment, etc.), Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups challenging Israeli
operations vis-a-vis the Palestinians would simply dry up and blow away.
Witness the focus on the $22 million allegedly supplied to Hamas by Iran,
when in the same breath, more than twice that amount was acknowledged to
have been supplied by other Middle Eastern parties.
There is still no hard evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons
program, and yet we have Bolton and others fulminating over something
that, even if it existed as a threat, is far in the future, compared to
the immediate dangers Israel faces today from local actors who have been
so politicized and demoralized that they engage in the extreme violent
actions that all sensible people decry. These local actors are not going
to go away, or suddenly become docile as a result of attacking Iran. The
irony is that if the United States and Israel were to nuke Iran into
oblivion, Israel would be no safer at all--indeed, it would be in greater
danger than ever.
My guess is that the neoconservatives have realized that the Bush
administration has now destroyed their chances for political dominance in
the future, and if they don't act now to force the administration into
taking military action against Iran, it will never happen. They are going
down, and by golly, they are going to take Iran with them.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
Perry: U.S. eyed Iran attack after bombing, but Al-Qaida was the likely perpetrator--United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Briefing
United Press International - Security & Terrorism - Briefing
Perry: U.S. eyed Iran attack after bombing
Published: June 6, 2007 at 4:25 PM
E-mail Story Print Preview License
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- A former U.S. defense secretary says he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry said he had a contingency plan to attack Iran if the link had been proven, but evidence was not to either his nor President Bill Clinton's satisfaction.
The attack would have struck "at a number of their military facilities that would have weakened -- substantially weakened ... the Iranian navy and air force," he said in New York Tuesday during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Khobar Towers bombing at a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia is often referred to by the Bush administration as one of the first salvos in the war with terrorism. It killed 19 service members. The Sept. 11 commission suggested a connection between al-Qaida and the attack, the first time the group has been linked to the bombing.
"I believe that the Khobar Tower bombing was probably masterminded by Osama bin Laden," Perry said. "I can't be sure of that, but in retrospect, that's what I believe. At the time, he was not a suspect. At the time ... all of the evidence was pointing to Iran."
He said al-Qaida did not emerge as a major threat until Clinton's second term.
"We probably should have been more concerned about it at the time than we were but in the first term we did not see Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida as a major factor, or one that we were concerned with," he said.
In 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced a 46-count indictment against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man in the bombing. All were allegedly connected to Hezbollah, a terrorist group the United States believes is linked to Iran.
Perry said the FBI strongly believed at the time the bombing was ordered by Iran, but Saudi officials tried to discourage that theory.
"They feared what action we would take. They rightly feared it. In fact, I had a contingency plan for a strike on Iran, if it had been if it had been clearly established. But it was never clearly established, and so we never did that," Perry said.
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Perry: U.S. eyed Iran attack after bombing
Published: June 6, 2007 at 4:25 PM
E-mail Story Print Preview License
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- A former U.S. defense secretary says he now believes al-Qaida rather than Iran was behind a 1996 truck bombing at an American military base.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry said he had a contingency plan to attack Iran if the link had been proven, but evidence was not to either his nor President Bill Clinton's satisfaction.
The attack would have struck "at a number of their military facilities that would have weakened -- substantially weakened ... the Iranian navy and air force," he said in New York Tuesday during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Khobar Towers bombing at a U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia is often referred to by the Bush administration as one of the first salvos in the war with terrorism. It killed 19 service members. The Sept. 11 commission suggested a connection between al-Qaida and the attack, the first time the group has been linked to the bombing.
"I believe that the Khobar Tower bombing was probably masterminded by Osama bin Laden," Perry said. "I can't be sure of that, but in retrospect, that's what I believe. At the time, he was not a suspect. At the time ... all of the evidence was pointing to Iran."
He said al-Qaida did not emerge as a major threat until Clinton's second term.
"We probably should have been more concerned about it at the time than we were but in the first term we did not see Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida as a major factor, or one that we were concerned with," he said.
In 2001, the U.S. Justice Department announced a 46-count indictment against 13 Saudis and one Lebanese man in the bombing. All were allegedly connected to Hezbollah, a terrorist group the United States believes is linked to Iran.
Perry said the FBI strongly believed at the time the bombing was ordered by Iran, but Saudi officials tried to discourage that theory.
"They feared what action we would take. They rightly feared it. In fact, I had a contingency plan for a strike on Iran, if it had been if it had been clearly established. But it was never clearly established, and so we never did that," Perry said.
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© Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.United Press International, UPI, the UPI logo, and other trademarks and service marks, are registered or unregistered trademarks of United Press International, Inc. in the United States and in other countries.
The Great Satan spars with the Islamic Republic - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition
The Great Satan spars with the Islamic Republic - Deccan Herald - Internet Edition
ANALYSIS
The Great Satan spars with the Islamic Republic
From Michael Jansen
Washington’s backing for the Shah, the presence of US forces and firms, the granting by the shah of extra-territorial status to US citizens, soldiers has transformed Iran into a US client state.
The confrontation between Washington and Teheran over Iran’s nuclear programme can be expected to continue because neither side can afford to back down without losing face. However, this confrontation is unlikely to escalate into a full blown crisis. The parties themselves, the countries trying to mediate between them, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) striving to defuse tensions seek to avoid this possibility. The US, beleaguered by the insurgency in Iraq, cannot court a fresh disaster in neighbouring Iran by taking military action. Teheran would like to end its international isolation and attract foreign investment. Germany, France and Britain are trying to secure Iran's agreement to halt its efforts to enrich uranium in order to avert further US adventurism. India, which, apparently, has also attempted to calm the situation, has close ties with Iran and is improving relations with the US and does not want to be forced to choose between them. Teheran’s refusal to suspend the conversion of raw uranium into gas, the first step in developing an independent fuel cycle, means that Iran is unlikely to resume negotiations with the three European states before the meeting of the IAEA's 35-member board in November. During this gathering the US, the Islamic Republic’s inveterate antagonist, plans to press for Iran to be brought before the UN Security Council. However, China and Russia, which is building Iran’s Bushehr reactor, do not favour referral to the Council and could use their vetoes if the US tables a resolution calling for the imposition of sanctions on Tehran.
Washington argues that Tehran must not be permitted to develop the nuclear fuel cycle which could transform Iran into an independent nuclear power capable of manufacturing atomic weapons. Therefore, Iran must abandon its programme and accept that any nuclear power plants it builds will acquire fuel from established nuclear powers and undergo close IAEA monitoring. This view has been accepted by Britain, Washington’s closest ally, and the rest of the Europeans and, to a certain extent, by the Agency, which is, after all, governed by a board where the US is the most powerful and influential member. Iran argues that the US is trying to deprive it of its rights under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and is not prepared to capitulate. Its view was spelt out by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now heads the powerful Expediency Council. “Iran is ready to negotiate but not when preconditions are attached.” Iranians call Washington's attempts to dictate to others “power-mongering.” The more the US attempts to tell Teheran what to do, the more determined it is to resist bullying. The more Iran resists, the greater becomes the US desire to tame Teheran. The deep antagonism between these two countries developed in 1979 when the mullahs overthrew Washington’s loyal ally the shah. US scholar William O Beeman writing in his book The ‘‘Great Satan’’ vs the "Mad Mullahs:" How the United States and Iran Demonise Each Other, says the defining event was the seizure by radical students of the US embassy in Teheran and the holding of 50 diplomats based there for 444 days. Iranians saw the saga of the “hostages” as payback for years of US domination but Americans were humiliated and infuriated by their government’s inability to secure the release of the diplomats. Since the two countries did not pose a direct political and military threat to one another until the US occupied Iraq in 2003, Beeman says that the conflict was more contrived than real. Thus, he writes, “...both nations construct the 'other' to fit an idealised picture of an enemy.” The constructs they produced – the “Great Satan” and the "Mad Mullahs" – were for home consumption rather than used for name-calling. The “Great Satan” is a religious and cultural symbol for Iranians. The term was applied to Britain at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century when it was intervening in Iranian politics. Beeman says that after the revolution this image was adopted to show Iranians that the "United States and all it supported (in Iran), principally Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was a force alien to Iran and its civilisation – a force that was attempting to corrupt the Iranian people." Washington’s backing for the shah, the presence of US forces and firms in the country, and the granting by the shah of extraterritorial status to US citizens, soldiers and companies transformed proud Iran into a US client state. The clerical regime adopted a confrontational stance in order to curry to popular sentiment. Angered by the ouster of one of its major political and economic assets in West Asia and stung by Teheran's rejection, Washington, which refuses to accept that Iranians could object to its pre-revolutionary policies, argued that Iran's clerical rulers were irrational and mentally unstable, that is "Mad Mullahs." Washington was doubly insulted when Teheran conditioned a resumption of relations on a demand for dialogue on the basis of "equality." The US expects other countries to bow to its demands and accept inferiority and subservience. Now that US troops are in Iraq, the two countries do pose a threat to each other. The US can use its military assets against Iran while Iran can exploit for political gain its close ties with Islamic Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the dominant parties in the government which are determined to transform that country into an Islamic state. This means that "Great Satan," which has, so far, rejected dialogue with Iran, will have to come to terms with the "Mad Mullahs" to avoid payback in Iraq if, as seems likely, their Shia allies secure control of the full-term parliament in the December poll. An authoritative source in Dubai told The Deccan Herald that Teheran is not worried about Washington's threat of sanctions because the Iran is cooperating with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. US bluster and bullying and Iran's defiance are meant to camouflage the cooperation between the Great Satan and the Mad Mullahs. This hoax is essential if the two governments are to maintain the current climate of tension and sustain the campaigns of demonisation which both regimes find useful.
ANALYSIS
The Great Satan spars with the Islamic Republic
From Michael Jansen
Washington’s backing for the Shah, the presence of US forces and firms, the granting by the shah of extra-territorial status to US citizens, soldiers has transformed Iran into a US client state.
The confrontation between Washington and Teheran over Iran’s nuclear programme can be expected to continue because neither side can afford to back down without losing face. However, this confrontation is unlikely to escalate into a full blown crisis. The parties themselves, the countries trying to mediate between them, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) striving to defuse tensions seek to avoid this possibility. The US, beleaguered by the insurgency in Iraq, cannot court a fresh disaster in neighbouring Iran by taking military action. Teheran would like to end its international isolation and attract foreign investment. Germany, France and Britain are trying to secure Iran's agreement to halt its efforts to enrich uranium in order to avert further US adventurism. India, which, apparently, has also attempted to calm the situation, has close ties with Iran and is improving relations with the US and does not want to be forced to choose between them. Teheran’s refusal to suspend the conversion of raw uranium into gas, the first step in developing an independent fuel cycle, means that Iran is unlikely to resume negotiations with the three European states before the meeting of the IAEA's 35-member board in November. During this gathering the US, the Islamic Republic’s inveterate antagonist, plans to press for Iran to be brought before the UN Security Council. However, China and Russia, which is building Iran’s Bushehr reactor, do not favour referral to the Council and could use their vetoes if the US tables a resolution calling for the imposition of sanctions on Tehran.
Washington argues that Tehran must not be permitted to develop the nuclear fuel cycle which could transform Iran into an independent nuclear power capable of manufacturing atomic weapons. Therefore, Iran must abandon its programme and accept that any nuclear power plants it builds will acquire fuel from established nuclear powers and undergo close IAEA monitoring. This view has been accepted by Britain, Washington’s closest ally, and the rest of the Europeans and, to a certain extent, by the Agency, which is, after all, governed by a board where the US is the most powerful and influential member. Iran argues that the US is trying to deprive it of its rights under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and is not prepared to capitulate. Its view was spelt out by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who now heads the powerful Expediency Council. “Iran is ready to negotiate but not when preconditions are attached.” Iranians call Washington's attempts to dictate to others “power-mongering.” The more the US attempts to tell Teheran what to do, the more determined it is to resist bullying. The more Iran resists, the greater becomes the US desire to tame Teheran. The deep antagonism between these two countries developed in 1979 when the mullahs overthrew Washington’s loyal ally the shah. US scholar William O Beeman writing in his book The ‘‘Great Satan’’ vs the "Mad Mullahs:" How the United States and Iran Demonise Each Other, says the defining event was the seizure by radical students of the US embassy in Teheran and the holding of 50 diplomats based there for 444 days. Iranians saw the saga of the “hostages” as payback for years of US domination but Americans were humiliated and infuriated by their government’s inability to secure the release of the diplomats. Since the two countries did not pose a direct political and military threat to one another until the US occupied Iraq in 2003, Beeman says that the conflict was more contrived than real. Thus, he writes, “...both nations construct the 'other' to fit an idealised picture of an enemy.” The constructs they produced – the “Great Satan” and the "Mad Mullahs" – were for home consumption rather than used for name-calling. The “Great Satan” is a religious and cultural symbol for Iranians. The term was applied to Britain at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century when it was intervening in Iranian politics. Beeman says that after the revolution this image was adopted to show Iranians that the "United States and all it supported (in Iran), principally Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, was a force alien to Iran and its civilisation – a force that was attempting to corrupt the Iranian people." Washington’s backing for the shah, the presence of US forces and firms in the country, and the granting by the shah of extraterritorial status to US citizens, soldiers and companies transformed proud Iran into a US client state. The clerical regime adopted a confrontational stance in order to curry to popular sentiment. Angered by the ouster of one of its major political and economic assets in West Asia and stung by Teheran's rejection, Washington, which refuses to accept that Iranians could object to its pre-revolutionary policies, argued that Iran's clerical rulers were irrational and mentally unstable, that is "Mad Mullahs." Washington was doubly insulted when Teheran conditioned a resumption of relations on a demand for dialogue on the basis of "equality." The US expects other countries to bow to its demands and accept inferiority and subservience. Now that US troops are in Iraq, the two countries do pose a threat to each other. The US can use its military assets against Iran while Iran can exploit for political gain its close ties with Islamic Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the dominant parties in the government which are determined to transform that country into an Islamic state. This means that "Great Satan," which has, so far, rejected dialogue with Iran, will have to come to terms with the "Mad Mullahs" to avoid payback in Iraq if, as seems likely, their Shia allies secure control of the full-term parliament in the December poll. An authoritative source in Dubai told The Deccan Herald that Teheran is not worried about Washington's threat of sanctions because the Iran is cooperating with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq. US bluster and bullying and Iran's defiance are meant to camouflage the cooperation between the Great Satan and the Mad Mullahs. This hoax is essential if the two governments are to maintain the current climate of tension and sustain the campaigns of demonisation which both regimes find useful.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
SOCIAL DRAMA / There's nothing funny in black and white
SOCIAL DRAMA / There's nothing funny in black and white
In the past year, more and more famous white men have gone berserk, spewing venom at the rest of American society. First, there was Mel Gibson mouthing off in a drunken anti-Semitic rage. Then there was Michael Richards' meltdown, in which he screamed a racial epithet at his comedy audience. Now Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team have resulted in his being pulled off the air. Before these incidents, we had the Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant cases, but the most recent ones have been of white men gone wild.
Why?
Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, who died in 1984, coined the term "social drama," which describes what's going on here. Turner defined a social drama as a process that has four stages: breach, crisis, redressive action and reintegration.
Let's walk through the stages.
First, there's the breach: a rupture between society and one of its participants. In each case -- Richards, Gibson and Imus -- the breach was triggered by an ethnic slur or ethnic joke, and decent people in the larger society became aware of the incident.
Next, the crisis. According to Turner's theories, the crisis cannot be ignored, lest society threaten to come undone. As Americans watched the coverage of the Imus incident, they had the feeling that something must be done.
The third stage is redressive action, "the culturally defined process that resolves the crisis," according to Brown University anthropologist William O. Beeman. Although he had already been fired, society didn't begin its collective sigh of relief until after Imus' apology to the Rutgers women was accepted.
Finally, there is reintegration, which, Beeman writes, "eliminates the original breach that precipitated the crisis. This can be done in two ways -- by creating a permanent split in society, or by healing."
The emotional gain for both the joke teller and those to whom he offers forbidden humor is the thrill of "getting away with it," a staple of white male humor, from plantation owners to Quentin Tarantino to Imus.
For generations, it has been known by the name of the location where men gathered: "locker room humor," "club house humor" or "frat house humor." Invariably, the vicious put-down of black men at the mercy of the "superior" white man is called the "n -- joke," whether it's at a golf course, a country club or in movies like "The Jerk'' or "Pulp Fiction.''
Next up, of course, is "the black woman joke," in which the woman is stripped naked and put into sexual situations with licentious white men, as seen in minstrelsy, literature and films.
Imus' calling the basketball team "nappy-headed hos" should be blamed, not on hip-hop, but on blackface white performers and the culture of white male humor.
In the first half of the 19th century, white men put on cork and acted out black behavior onstage. This became blackface minstrelsy.
In 1822, a white English actor visiting America observed an audience asking a black performer to sing "Pussum up a tree." When the black man didn't comply, the actor put on black cork and sang the song himself. The white public grew up around this form, which was intended to show blacks as small, inferior, despicable and comic.
"Minstrelsy was the first example of the way American popular culture would exploit and manipulate African Americans and their culture in order to please and benefit white Americans," observes Robert Toll, author of "Blackening Up: The Minstrel Show in 19th Century America.''
"Minstrel blacks did not have hair, they had 'wool'; their hair [had] to be filed, not cut," according to Toll.
African American hairstyles have been a subject of discussion since white slave owners took away slaves' African combs. Whore was what many black women were under slavery: If a white man desired her, she became a whore who didn't get paid.
Minstrelsy was a way of allowing whites to live with themselves by venting the pressures of being racist. After the emancipation of blacks, minstrels lost their power.
Minstrelsy served as a release, what the late UC Berkeley folklore Professor Alan Dundes called "the safety-valve function of oral humor."
Imus' show shared a similarity to minstrelsy in form and content. In minstrelsy, the interlocutor acted as the master of ceremony. "With a pompous command of the language, an extensive vocabulary, and a resonant voice, the interlocutor personified dignity, which made the raucous comedy of the endmen even funnier," Toll writes.
Imus' end man was Bernard McGuirk, who, Imus told a "60 Minutes" producer, was hired to tell racial jokes.
Just like Imus' format, minstrelsy mixed racist and obscene humor with commentary on the social issues of that day.
The most appalling result of the Imus' affair is how the literary establishment wilted under his redneck charm. New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus was a frequent visitor to the show, where Imus helped market his book on Whittaker Chambers.
"Of course, I was hearing the slurs against black athletes ... and Clarence Thomas ... and the almost continual soundtrack of leering sexual comments," Tanenhaus writes retrospectively. "But I also had been summoned into the exotic presence of mass, or mob, culture, with its populism and prejudices."
This concept of popular culture is what minstrelsy depended upon, a culture of white male humor that is not popular because most people like it but because it is about white men versus the rest of us.
Novelist and author Cecil Brown's most recent work, "Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department: The Disappearance of Black Americans From Our Universities'' (North Atlantic Books), will be available in May.
This article appeared on page F - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
In the past year, more and more famous white men have gone berserk, spewing venom at the rest of American society. First, there was Mel Gibson mouthing off in a drunken anti-Semitic rage. Then there was Michael Richards' meltdown, in which he screamed a racial epithet at his comedy audience. Now Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team have resulted in his being pulled off the air. Before these incidents, we had the Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant cases, but the most recent ones have been of white men gone wild.
Why?
Cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, who died in 1984, coined the term "social drama," which describes what's going on here. Turner defined a social drama as a process that has four stages: breach, crisis, redressive action and reintegration.
Let's walk through the stages.
First, there's the breach: a rupture between society and one of its participants. In each case -- Richards, Gibson and Imus -- the breach was triggered by an ethnic slur or ethnic joke, and decent people in the larger society became aware of the incident.
Next, the crisis. According to Turner's theories, the crisis cannot be ignored, lest society threaten to come undone. As Americans watched the coverage of the Imus incident, they had the feeling that something must be done.
The third stage is redressive action, "the culturally defined process that resolves the crisis," according to Brown University anthropologist William O. Beeman. Although he had already been fired, society didn't begin its collective sigh of relief until after Imus' apology to the Rutgers women was accepted.
Finally, there is reintegration, which, Beeman writes, "eliminates the original breach that precipitated the crisis. This can be done in two ways -- by creating a permanent split in society, or by healing."
The emotional gain for both the joke teller and those to whom he offers forbidden humor is the thrill of "getting away with it," a staple of white male humor, from plantation owners to Quentin Tarantino to Imus.
For generations, it has been known by the name of the location where men gathered: "locker room humor," "club house humor" or "frat house humor." Invariably, the vicious put-down of black men at the mercy of the "superior" white man is called the "n -- joke," whether it's at a golf course, a country club or in movies like "The Jerk'' or "Pulp Fiction.''
Next up, of course, is "the black woman joke," in which the woman is stripped naked and put into sexual situations with licentious white men, as seen in minstrelsy, literature and films.
Imus' calling the basketball team "nappy-headed hos" should be blamed, not on hip-hop, but on blackface white performers and the culture of white male humor.
In the first half of the 19th century, white men put on cork and acted out black behavior onstage. This became blackface minstrelsy.
In 1822, a white English actor visiting America observed an audience asking a black performer to sing "Pussum up a tree." When the black man didn't comply, the actor put on black cork and sang the song himself. The white public grew up around this form, which was intended to show blacks as small, inferior, despicable and comic.
"Minstrelsy was the first example of the way American popular culture would exploit and manipulate African Americans and their culture in order to please and benefit white Americans," observes Robert Toll, author of "Blackening Up: The Minstrel Show in 19th Century America.''
"Minstrel blacks did not have hair, they had 'wool'; their hair [had] to be filed, not cut," according to Toll.
African American hairstyles have been a subject of discussion since white slave owners took away slaves' African combs. Whore was what many black women were under slavery: If a white man desired her, she became a whore who didn't get paid.
Minstrelsy was a way of allowing whites to live with themselves by venting the pressures of being racist. After the emancipation of blacks, minstrels lost their power.
Minstrelsy served as a release, what the late UC Berkeley folklore Professor Alan Dundes called "the safety-valve function of oral humor."
Imus' show shared a similarity to minstrelsy in form and content. In minstrelsy, the interlocutor acted as the master of ceremony. "With a pompous command of the language, an extensive vocabulary, and a resonant voice, the interlocutor personified dignity, which made the raucous comedy of the endmen even funnier," Toll writes.
Imus' end man was Bernard McGuirk, who, Imus told a "60 Minutes" producer, was hired to tell racial jokes.
Just like Imus' format, minstrelsy mixed racist and obscene humor with commentary on the social issues of that day.
The most appalling result of the Imus' affair is how the literary establishment wilted under his redneck charm. New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus was a frequent visitor to the show, where Imus helped market his book on Whittaker Chambers.
"Of course, I was hearing the slurs against black athletes ... and Clarence Thomas ... and the almost continual soundtrack of leering sexual comments," Tanenhaus writes retrospectively. "But I also had been summoned into the exotic presence of mass, or mob, culture, with its populism and prejudices."
This concept of popular culture is what minstrelsy depended upon, a culture of white male humor that is not popular because most people like it but because it is about white men versus the rest of us.
Novelist and author Cecil Brown's most recent work, "Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department: The Disappearance of Black Americans From Our Universities'' (North Atlantic Books), will be available in May.
This article appeared on page F - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Inter Press--Iran: Lessons in Capture, Release of Britons
POLITICS-IRAN:Lessons in Capture, Release of Britons
Inter Press News Service Agency
Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - The drama surrounding the release of 15 British sailors and marines after 12 days in Iranian captivity was designed to convey two key messages that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush would do well to heed, say experts here.First, the Britons' original capture by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard near the entry to the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway was meant to demonstrate that, despite its conventional military weakness and diplomatic isolation, Iran retains the ability to strike at western interests when it feels sufficiently provoked. Second, when western powers engage Iran with respect and as an equal, they are more likely to get what they want than when they take a confrontational path designed to bully or humiliate the regime. While neither message is likely to be well received either at the White House or among the neo-conservative and other right-wing pundits who have tried hard to depict the incident as the latest sign of Islamic or Persian barbarism, properly understood, they could form the basis of a new approach capable of yielding results, according to Juan Cole, a regional expert at the University of Michigan. ''The British have now opened a channel,'' he told IPS. ''Although this incident really did constitute a crisis -- one that might have escalated to very dangerous levels -- the resolution was diplomatic, and that diplomatic resolution could contain the seeds for future diplomacy, if the British and the Americans are so inclined.'' The announcement on Wednesday, that the sailors and marines were being released in honour of the Prophet Mohammed's forthcoming birthday and the Christian Easter holiday, was made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who then met with the captives personally. ''Our government has pardoned them; it is a gift from our people,'' he said, adding that the gesture had ''nothing to do'' with Tuesday's release in Iraq of a senior Iranian diplomat who was abducted two months ago reportedly by a special Iraqi intelligence agency that works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ''We approached the subject on a humanitarian basis. It was a unilateral decision on our end,'' he insisted. Nonetheless, the diplomat's release, as well as reports that Tehran also just received assurances that it would be given consular access to five alleged Revolutionary Guard officers seized by U.S. forces at an Iranian liaison office in Arbil nearly three months ago, suggested that Wednesday's events were more than just coincidence, although both London and Washington, like Ahmadinejad, insisted there were no quid pro quos. ''I personally believe that the U.S. action (in Arbil) .accounts for why Iran chose to stage its capture of the British sailors,'' noted Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in White House under former President Jimmy Carter. ''Iran appears to have gained something from its pressure tactics.'' That assessment was shared by Trita Parsi, president of the U.S. National Iranian American Council (NIAC). ''By taking the (British) soft targets, the Iranians put pressure on the U.S..'' In addition to collecting bargaining chips, the original capture had other purposes, as well, including rallying nationalist sentiment behind the regime just as it faced the imposition by the UN Security Council of a new round of sanctions for rejecting demands to suspend its uranium enrichment programme. As important, however, was the message Tehran wished to convey to the West that it could indeed respond to what it saw as U.S. provocations in ways that could harm or embarrass its allies. ''In seizing the Iranians, who after all, had been invited by the Iraqi authorities, the Americans were seen as behaving aggressively,'' according to Cole. ''Now, the Iranians have demonstrated that the Anglo-American forces are not in a strong enough position to afford to do these things. They can play tit for tat.'' ''It is a reminder that Iran has quite an array of asymmetrical options available to it to counter indirectly the actions of the U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere,'' Sick agreed. At the same time, according to Sick, Tehran's behaviour during much of the crisis -- including both the seizure itself, the precise location of which remains a matter of dispute, and its use of ''confessions'' by the British captives and threats to put them on trial -- will probably have cost it much-needed international support. ''I suspect that recognition of this fact accounts for Iran's desire to end this dispute as promptly as possible,'' said Sick. ''For the same reason, I suspect that this ploy will not be repeated any time soon.'' ''I think the Iranians thought it was better to declare victory and put an end to the crisis before there was any further escalation,'' noted Parsi. At the same time, however, Parsi and other analysts said that the point at which victory could be declared was reached because of important changes in the British approach to the crisis. While London officials have said the turning point came Monday, when Iran's national security chief, Ali Larijani, gave a conciliatory interview to Britain's Channel Four television -- an interview that was followed by a critical conversation between Larijani and Blair's top foreign-policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, according to 'The Independent' -- Cole points to a shift in the British stance from one of threats and demands to a more diplomatic approach over the weekend, including confirmation by British Defence Secretary Des Browne that London was ''in direct bilateral communication with the Iranians.'' ''These sorts of incidents are always to some extent about face, and apparently the Iranians felt that when Britain agreed to enter into direct bilateral negotiations, Iran had gained enough face to be magnanimous,'' he said. ''On Sunday, they were admitted as equals, not scolded as little children. That created the opening for (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to climb down and save face.'' ''Iranians have been signalling repeatedly, and not just during this crisis, that they will engage diplomatically, but without preconditions and on the basis of equality,'' said William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota. ''So now they say, 'You see, when we have the upper hand, you see how magnanimous we are; we are a charitable, civilized people. We are reasonable. You can talk with us'.'' ''The Iranian message is that if you deal with us respectfully, through incentives, then things can get resolved rather quickly,'' said Parsi. ''If you only resort to force or impose sanctions at the UN Security Council, then you'll only get stuck, and Iran will respond in kind. They're hoping that the West gets the impression that that is the incentive structure through which it can make progress with Iran. Whether that will be understood in the West is obviously a complete different question.'' The Bush administration's relative silence during the crisis may also have conveyed, inadvertently perhaps, another message -- that, despite widespread speculation that its recent military build-up in the Gulf was intended to prepare the grounds for an attack on Iran, it had no wish to do so, at least for the moment. ''The Iranian capture of 15 (British) military personnel could certainly have been used as .a pretext (for a military strike), since it could easily have escalated to a full-fledged military crisis,'' according to Sick. ''I regard the absence of unbridled escalation in this case as a significant indicator that the U.S. desire for a strike may be more muted than it has been portrayed.'' (END/2007)
Inter Press News Service Agency
Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - The drama surrounding the release of 15 British sailors and marines after 12 days in Iranian captivity was designed to convey two key messages that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush would do well to heed, say experts here.First, the Britons' original capture by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard near the entry to the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway was meant to demonstrate that, despite its conventional military weakness and diplomatic isolation, Iran retains the ability to strike at western interests when it feels sufficiently provoked. Second, when western powers engage Iran with respect and as an equal, they are more likely to get what they want than when they take a confrontational path designed to bully or humiliate the regime. While neither message is likely to be well received either at the White House or among the neo-conservative and other right-wing pundits who have tried hard to depict the incident as the latest sign of Islamic or Persian barbarism, properly understood, they could form the basis of a new approach capable of yielding results, according to Juan Cole, a regional expert at the University of Michigan. ''The British have now opened a channel,'' he told IPS. ''Although this incident really did constitute a crisis -- one that might have escalated to very dangerous levels -- the resolution was diplomatic, and that diplomatic resolution could contain the seeds for future diplomacy, if the British and the Americans are so inclined.'' The announcement on Wednesday, that the sailors and marines were being released in honour of the Prophet Mohammed's forthcoming birthday and the Christian Easter holiday, was made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who then met with the captives personally. ''Our government has pardoned them; it is a gift from our people,'' he said, adding that the gesture had ''nothing to do'' with Tuesday's release in Iraq of a senior Iranian diplomat who was abducted two months ago reportedly by a special Iraqi intelligence agency that works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ''We approached the subject on a humanitarian basis. It was a unilateral decision on our end,'' he insisted. Nonetheless, the diplomat's release, as well as reports that Tehran also just received assurances that it would be given consular access to five alleged Revolutionary Guard officers seized by U.S. forces at an Iranian liaison office in Arbil nearly three months ago, suggested that Wednesday's events were more than just coincidence, although both London and Washington, like Ahmadinejad, insisted there were no quid pro quos. ''I personally believe that the U.S. action (in Arbil) .accounts for why Iran chose to stage its capture of the British sailors,'' noted Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in White House under former President Jimmy Carter. ''Iran appears to have gained something from its pressure tactics.'' That assessment was shared by Trita Parsi, president of the U.S. National Iranian American Council (NIAC). ''By taking the (British) soft targets, the Iranians put pressure on the U.S..'' In addition to collecting bargaining chips, the original capture had other purposes, as well, including rallying nationalist sentiment behind the regime just as it faced the imposition by the UN Security Council of a new round of sanctions for rejecting demands to suspend its uranium enrichment programme. As important, however, was the message Tehran wished to convey to the West that it could indeed respond to what it saw as U.S. provocations in ways that could harm or embarrass its allies. ''In seizing the Iranians, who after all, had been invited by the Iraqi authorities, the Americans were seen as behaving aggressively,'' according to Cole. ''Now, the Iranians have demonstrated that the Anglo-American forces are not in a strong enough position to afford to do these things. They can play tit for tat.'' ''It is a reminder that Iran has quite an array of asymmetrical options available to it to counter indirectly the actions of the U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere,'' Sick agreed. At the same time, according to Sick, Tehran's behaviour during much of the crisis -- including both the seizure itself, the precise location of which remains a matter of dispute, and its use of ''confessions'' by the British captives and threats to put them on trial -- will probably have cost it much-needed international support. ''I suspect that recognition of this fact accounts for Iran's desire to end this dispute as promptly as possible,'' said Sick. ''For the same reason, I suspect that this ploy will not be repeated any time soon.'' ''I think the Iranians thought it was better to declare victory and put an end to the crisis before there was any further escalation,'' noted Parsi. At the same time, however, Parsi and other analysts said that the point at which victory could be declared was reached because of important changes in the British approach to the crisis. While London officials have said the turning point came Monday, when Iran's national security chief, Ali Larijani, gave a conciliatory interview to Britain's Channel Four television -- an interview that was followed by a critical conversation between Larijani and Blair's top foreign-policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, according to 'The Independent' -- Cole points to a shift in the British stance from one of threats and demands to a more diplomatic approach over the weekend, including confirmation by British Defence Secretary Des Browne that London was ''in direct bilateral communication with the Iranians.'' ''These sorts of incidents are always to some extent about face, and apparently the Iranians felt that when Britain agreed to enter into direct bilateral negotiations, Iran had gained enough face to be magnanimous,'' he said. ''On Sunday, they were admitted as equals, not scolded as little children. That created the opening for (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to climb down and save face.'' ''Iranians have been signalling repeatedly, and not just during this crisis, that they will engage diplomatically, but without preconditions and on the basis of equality,'' said William Beeman, an Iran expert at the University of Minnesota. ''So now they say, 'You see, when we have the upper hand, you see how magnanimous we are; we are a charitable, civilized people. We are reasonable. You can talk with us'.'' ''The Iranian message is that if you deal with us respectfully, through incentives, then things can get resolved rather quickly,'' said Parsi. ''If you only resort to force or impose sanctions at the UN Security Council, then you'll only get stuck, and Iran will respond in kind. They're hoping that the West gets the impression that that is the incentive structure through which it can make progress with Iran. Whether that will be understood in the West is obviously a complete different question.'' The Bush administration's relative silence during the crisis may also have conveyed, inadvertently perhaps, another message -- that, despite widespread speculation that its recent military build-up in the Gulf was intended to prepare the grounds for an attack on Iran, it had no wish to do so, at least for the moment. ''The Iranian capture of 15 (British) military personnel could certainly have been used as .a pretext (for a military strike), since it could easily have escalated to a full-fledged military crisis,'' according to Sick. ''I regard the absence of unbridled escalation in this case as a significant indicator that the U.S. desire for a strike may be more muted than it has been portrayed.'' (END/2007)
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