Who is New Iranian President Hassan Rowhani?

The news is full of stories proclaiming that new Iranian President Hassan Rowhani is a real moderate and that with him replacing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad there is opportunity for renewed relations and a solution to the Iranian nuclear program difficulties. Oh if only that were so. Even a cursory review of the pre-election schemes and actions taken to prepare the ballot which was finally placed before the people will disavow any rational person from such thoughts. Initially there were literally hundreds of candidates who wished their names to be on the ballot so, as in any nation, there was a primary of sorts. These names are listed and sent to the Assembly of Experts which is made up of leading Imams and Ayatollahs where the list is selectively narrowed to a list of names these Clerics approve. There are those who believe that in all honesty the Assembly of Experts never even bothers to view the list and simply puts together a list of the names of whoever they think should hold the office of President. The possibility of a true liberal who believes in separation between the religious hierarchy and those who run the political functions of the State have absolutely no chance making past this review. The list formulated in the Assembly of Experts is passed along to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who then prepares the final list of five to eight candidates who make up the actual ballot. So, in the end only those whom the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei feels would best support his views and desires before the people and the world are allowed to even be on the ballot thus removing any possibility of a true moderate becoming President of Iran.

 

But what is known about now Iranian President Hassan Rowhani. We know he is sixty-four years old and his first statement announced a “new opportunity” for the West to treat the Islamic Republic with respect and to recognize its rights. Treat the Islamic Republic with respect and to recognize its rights was also a favorite grouping of words used by the preceding Iranian President and he used them to mean for the world to prostrate themselves before their betters and permit Iran to do whatever they pleased and be happy about it. I suspect it still means the same thing. We know that Rowhani was the country’s former nuclear negotiator under the former President Mohammad Khatami and also served as top security official under former moderate President, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. There were no cracks in the Iranian insistence to the right to develop nuclear projects as they desired during his time in either position. To his credit, Rowhani recently accused his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of needlessly incurring crippling economic sanctions though such was very likely simple campaign rhetoric. In his first speech as Iran’s new President, Hassan Rowhani showed his true colors when he launched into a diatribe almost immediately against Israel, blaming the Jewish state for Iran’s economic problems. He defiantly pointed out, “The Iranian nation has done nothing to deserve these sanctions. Our activities are in line with international norms. If the sanctions help anyone, it is Israel. They are directed only at us. The Western nations do not have sanctions against anyone else.” He concluded his tirade claiming it was all part of the Israeli plan to “ruin” Iran.

 

Across the world it appears that all the players are lining up salivating at the chance to prostrate themselves before the new great hope in Iran. The United States said it was prepared to engage Iran directly. The White House said such engagement would seek a, according to reports, “diplomatic solution that will fully address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.” Along similar lines, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was committed to working with Rowhani towards finding a “swift diplomatic solution” over concerns about the Iranian controversial nuclear program. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated he hoped Iran will now play a “constructive role” in regional and international affairs. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France is eager and “ready to work” with Rowhani, on issues including the country’s nuclear program and its involvement in the Syrian conflict. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle welcomed the election of Rowhani as a vote which may provide for “a constructive foreign policy.” He added, “We hope that the country’s new administration collaborates in this sense in order to reach solutions on international and regional questions.” The British statement urged Rowhani to set “a different course” for the future of the Iranian Islamic Republic. Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said Italy hoped that Iran and Italy would find a “relationship of renewed comprehension and constructive dialogue.” And lastly, the Syrian National Coalition representing the rebels in the Syrian Civil War hoped that Rowhani will review Iranian support for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. This is almost reminiscent of the press and world’s stated praises for newly elected United States President Barack Obama upon his first winning the election in November of 2008. Let’s hope that everybody takes the eventual letdown when this person fails to live up to the hype better than they did when President Obama proved to be merely a fallible human-being. On a more sane reaction, Israel issued a blunt reaction to Iran’s new president Saturday saying, “Iran’s nuclear program has so far been determined by Khamenei, and not by Iran’s president. After the election, Iran will continue to be judged by its acts, in the nuclear field as well as that of terrorism.” During a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, Netanyahu was quoted yesterday saying, “Iran should not be allowed to gain time by holding drawn out talks” with the nations of the international community thus gaining precious time to complete their nuclear intentions. “Today, it is indispensable to keep the pressure. We should not surrender to illusions.” Israel was simply pointing out through the cacophonic din that, in reality, nothing has changed once again. There really is no great new hope on the Iranian horizons or especially in the office of the President.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Next Land for Peace After the Palestinian West Bank Theft

The United States is joining the chorus of virtually the entire world in the song to sweetly lull Israel into a stupor which is necessary for them to surrender the entirety of the gains from the Six Day War in Judea and Samaria for the formation of a Palestinian Arab State. The song has sweet words which make the future after the next great sacrifice to complete the surrender begun by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Gaza by adding the so-called West Bank such that the central heart of Israel can share in the heavy metal rain of rockets, mortars, and death from the ballistic terror which is sure to soon pour out of the surrendered lands just as they poured forth from the skies of Gaza onto Sderot, Ashod, Ashqelon, Beer Sheva, Dimona and the farms, kibbutzim and towns bordering Gaza. President Obama has loosed Secretary of State Kerry with the holy mission to grant the Palestinians the high ground overlooking the heart of Israel while the Administration sings platitudes about their undying support for Israel as the Jewish State within the 1967 Lines living side-by-side with the Palestinian State in peace and security. The backup chorus for this production is supplied by the backers of the Arab Plan, the authors of said plan, Saudi Arabia, the European Union with Lady Ashton singing the lead solo, the United Nations with special choral harmony provided by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and numerous nations from every corner of the globe.

 

But fear not as this is simply the first act in the decommissioning of the Jewish State of Israel and the second act has made their initial appearance. Thousands of Bedouins marched through the city of Beer Sheva in the northern Negev region of Israel this past Thursday. In order to assure that there were no doubts as to their desired message, they were waving Palestinian authority flags and carrying signs demanding the return of the Negev as their holy and ancient homelands. What is very interesting about the Bedouin tribes residing and tending their flocks of sheep in Israel compared to their brethren throughout the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa is that throughout the world the Bedouin Tribes are referred to as a migratory and nomadic people while the Bedouins in Israel are defined by the United Nations as an indigenous peoples. This is no accident or oversight or typo, it is intentional with an eye to the future when the world will demand that Israel return the Negev Desert to its indigenous and ancient people, the Bedouins. The Bedouins have been setting facts on the ground building small villages and towns on lands which have been assigned for their use but also have spread to areas of State owned land and even onto farm lands owned by Israeli farmers who end up pushed off their land unable to fight the more populous Bedouin families who simply move in and then threaten the farmers treating them as trespassers. Fortunately the Knesset had come up with an ingenious solution; they are working on legislation to turn much of the lands claimed by the Bedouins which belong to the State into new Bedouin lands in a bribe to establish these new areas and have the Bedouins in return promise not to settle more lands. It is rumored that the Bedouins simply nodded staring blankly and returned to their daily business. The honest truth is there are activists from Europe and extreme leftist Israelis who are working with the Bedouins and aiding them in similar manner as they have assisted the Palestinians by encouraging the Bedouins to take more land and simply disregard any agreements, treaties or laws which may inconvenience their takeover of the Negev Regions in southern Israel.

 

Thus far this has simply been an inconvenience but has the potential to become a tragedy for the Jews and non-Bedouin Arabs living in southern Israel. Already there are a fair number of Bedouin camps and towns being constructed in order to surround Beer Sheva, Dimona and other Israeli towns in the Negev. If this problem is permitted to grow in scope it will very soon come to threaten the Israeli possession of the southern half of their country and an area which many had believed to be an area for future growth as Israel’s population grew. Instead the Bedouins are at the beginning stages of imitating the Palestinian methods for usurping areas of land and making their case to the world that these are their historic homelands. If Israel does not take measures to end this war by attrition and stealthily usurping land piecemeal, then the Israelis will be facing a world sympathetically demanding the Negev be returned to its natural and ancient owners and that the Apartheid attitudes of Israel to the blighted Bedouins who they are causing to be oppressed and denied their rights. This is coming though not likely to make the headlines for the immediate future but in a couple of years whether the Palestinians have been granted their state or not. This will be the second attack in the piecemeal destruction of Israel by breaking off a peripheral area slowly drawing and quartering the nation of Israel as if it were a peasant who was sentenced to death by some medieval European nobleman. Talk about the four horsemen.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Lady Ashton and the EU out to Save the World

I feel so much safer knowing the Lady Aston with a noble effort from the European Union have finessed Iranian lead nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili into yet another round of urgent negotiations within the framework of the P5+1 setting. This means that the Iranians will once again sit down and refuse everything proposed by the representatives of the United States, Britain, France and Germany while the representatives for Russia and China sit watching the Western negotiators crash and burn. After the next round of negotiations finally break-off  without even the slightest evidence of accomplishment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili will once again say that the Western powers are simply dragging their feet by refusing to recognize, accept and respect the Iranians right to research all levels of nuclear technology. So, why have the European Union nations’ governments placed so much importance towards arranging yet round of hopeless negotiations with Iran? There are so many potential reasons, all just as revolting as the negotiations will prove to be.

The easiest reason one could attach to this insincere courting of the Iranians to yet another session, which is guaranteed to be a waste of time and nothing more, is a state of severe panic that somebody somewhere might decide to take actions before diplomacy has been completely exhausted, which it only will after Iran is nuclear capable. It could be the overriding aversion of the Europeans for any actions which might require force and an actual commitment to actually declaring that Iran has evil intents. To make such a judgment of the Iranians nuclear weapons program and the deceit spun to keep it from view would require a moral backbone and sufficient fiber to stand for something. This is unfortunately beyond the ability of the Europeans who have forsworn principles and the efforts enforcing such necessitate. The European governments, whether individually or collectively, as the European Union, when faced with a situation that demands fortitude, they simply cower and coil deeply into the fetal position quivering promising to come out only if more talking can be arranged. What is interesting about this bout of pursuing negotiations until the problem resolves itself is that the actions the European Union are attempting to avoid will not require them to mobilize a single person.

Adding to the great urgency to do as little as possible beyond sanctions and posturing is President Obama and his Administration. Each time any country posed the possibility that perhaps actual plans should me formed and possibly implemented, in simple language, force be applied, as a possible solution to the Iranian uranium enrichment and related nuclear research efforts, President Obama has dispatched some high ranking Administration official to visit the upstart nation and talk them back off from their perch. We would not wish for any country to spoil a good crisis before it can be utilized to its fullest potential, though what could be gained by allowing Iran to possess nuclear weapons capability is beyond me. Either way, the United States appears to be satisfied that there is no reason to push the pace and that patience and waiting for the sanctions and other diplomacy to work their wonders is the plan for the foreseeable future. Defense Secretary Panetta relayed this message to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israelis during his recent visit to Israel when he informed them that the United States has taken the position that negotiations and sanctions will work should they be given sufficient time, at the least eighteen months. So, this is the state of the great plan that the P5+1 will be implementing that will prevent the Iranians from succeeding in their quest to achieve nuclear weapons capability.

From the Iranian side, there has been a single development which will soon be revealed. In the upcoming meeting of the one-hundred-eighteen member Unaligned Nations in Iran, the Iranians are planning to propose and expect to pass a motion declaring the right of developing countries to enrich uranium and develop nuclear power, regardless of limits set out in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The objective of this ploy is blatantly obvious; the Iranians are looking for legitimization for their nuclear program with which to further back their claims that the Western powers must recognize the Iranian innate right to develop anything nuclear, including nuclear weapons, of course. The passage of this measure has already been guaranteed by the numbers of nations who have already stated their intent to vote in its favor. So, if Iran has been stubbornly insistent of possessing the right of full scale nuclear development in the face of all treaties which were designed to limit such ventures, how confidently intolerable will they be with their own treaty with sufficient backing to easily be passed in the United Nations General Assembly, should they decide such a step is warranted. Their demands that the West stop dragging their feet and respect the Iranian right to nuclear development will become even more shrill and unbearable, not to mention they will take such an agreement as a license to ignore any and all opposition, as if they were not already doing so.

So, what exactly was the driving force behind Lady Ashton, the European Union Foreign Minister, and her frantic charge to reinitiate another round of utterly useless talking, each side talking to the other side’s hands? What was the United States reason for dispatching high level Administration figures to any countries which gave even the slightest indication of addressing the Iranian nuclear program problem with anything stronger than a slow head shake and a deep rumbling moan? And who were the countries, or country, to which these envoys were dispatched to prevent a potential Armageddon which most assuredly would erupt if the sanctions and diplomacy had not been allowed to fully run their course? The answer is simple, Israel. Yes, once again the one country out of step with the Europeans, Americans, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Germans, and the European Union as well as very likely the United Nations and the Members of the Unaligned Nations was Israel. It was a simple mention by any of a number of Israeli politicians, military personnel or retired government, intelligence and military ranking personnel of the Iranian nuclear program and that Israel might have some serious and deep concerns and the European Union would dispatch the Lady Catherine Ashton to plead with Saeed Jalili to persuade the Iranian hierarchy to permit one more session where the P5+1 would evoke an endless string of rejection from the Iranians simply by speaking. Concurrently, the Administration of United States President Obama would draw straws to see who would be dispatched to Israel to demand they see the truth and rationality of the continuing of the endless futility of the current actions and immediately rescind all plans for any brazen actions they had been considering and return to the fold of civilized nations who place their faith in diplomacy even with the most dangerous of foes.

That leads to the big question to which we would all like to know the answer, how long will the Israelis choose to stand down before they make that fateful choice and ignore the demands of the all-so-civil world and do what they feel is necessary to protect their people and nation? That leads to the next and equally vexing question, once Israel commits to taking, as President Obama defines it, kinetic action against the Iranian nuclear sites, what will these same all-so-civilized nations do once it has been decided for them that the time for action is right now? And finally, what will be the reaction of the people; both in Europe and the United States, to an Israeli strike and what will the people demand from their governments, and will their governments listen to the people or simply continue to serve their gods of timidity? Stay tuned as these and all your questions are likely to be answered in the not too distant future, very likely weeks before the elections in the United States.

Beyond the Cusp