News Update. Start with today's Iran headlines. The NY Times reports that Iran's rulers on Friday declared the election "healthy" (short of a formal certification); but the paper also notes that Thursday only 105 of 290 members--36 percent--of the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, showed up to publicly celebrate President Ahmadinejad's dubious victory, indicating schism within the ruling elite. Radio Free Europe reports that the regime's crackdown has intensified, with thousands under arrest and targets going beyond protesters. Senators McCain (R-AZ), Lieberman (I-CT) and Graham (R-SC) called for President Obama to take a stronger stand on Iran.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a theological rift has opened in Mideast Shia communities:
Unrest in Iran has opened a theological rift within the Shiite sect of Islam, undermining the Iranian regime's founding dogma that is shared by millions of fellow Shiites across the Middle East.
The concept, known as wilayat al-faqih -- literally "guardianship by a jurist" -- holds that, in an Islamic state, a divinely anointed scholar of Islamic law must exercise unquestioned authority over elected officials and the rest of the government.
Iran's current such incumbent, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, isn't just the top arbiter of the country's affairs. He also serves as the marjaa, or spiritual guide, for many Shiites outside Iran. Mr. Khamenei's image graces billboards in south Beirut, mosques in Shiite shantytowns of eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the walls of Shiite lawmakers' offices in Kuwait.
But, in recent weeks, this moral authority -- and the wilayat al-faqih ideology that underpins it -- has been shaken by Ayatollah Khamenei's handling of Iran's disputed June 12 presidential elections.
The WSJ article notes theological ferment inside Lebanon:
A debate around Shiite clergy's role in affairs of the state has erupted in Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-led coalition lost parliamentary elections to a pro-Western bloc days before the Iranian presidential contest.
The Shiites are the biggest of Lebanon's several religious sects, and most of them vote for Hezbollah. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech last week warned critics not to question the wilayat al-faqih ideology. "Wilayat al-faqih ... and such issues for us are a part of our religious belief. Insulting it is an insult to our religious belief," Mr. Nasrallah said.
Syed Ali Amine, the Shiite mufti -- or chief religious authority -- of Tyre and Mount Amel in the south of Lebanon, said Mr. Nasrallah is trying to stop the discussion of wilayat al-faqih because challenging this ideology would undermine Hezbollah's own power in Lebanon.
"Despite Nasrallah's statements, this challenge already happened in the streets of Tehran and several Iranian cities," Mr. Amine said, adding that "unfortunately it was a bloody challenge" because of the police attacks on protesters.
"This is the biggest proof that wilayat al-faqih is not part of the religious beliefs, but it is a power and political ideology," he said. "Those who protested in the streets of Tehran did not offend religion or the Shiite sect."
Looking Ahead. Zbigniew Brzezinski said yesterday on CNBC "Morning Joe" that he sees " a new war of attrition" underway. ZB is pessimistic in the short run but optimistic in the long run. There is bargaining going on inside the regime. He noted that Iran's movement is far broader than the student movement in China in 1989: women, young professionals, etc. But Iran is less threatened than the Communist regime in Eastern Europe, where intellectuals, clerics, and nationalist sentiment worked against a hated foreign occupier. ZB noted that the interlocutor for President Obama would be not President Ahmadinejad, but Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei. This point rings off key, as negotiation with a discredited cleric could re-legimitize him.
(ZB added an irritating caricature of Iran hardliners as "neocons" with a Manichean view of the world. This is bad both in applying American political taxonomy but also, worse, it is a grossly unfair portrait of American neocons. In the event, as neocon godfather Irving Kristol has observed, the term is now so vague the even he cannot presume to define it.)
Opposition leader Mousavi is being pressured by the regime to drop his challenge and being isolated as well. Claudia Rosett examines a predictably pathetic UN response--verily, a series of non-responses--to the brutal crackdown in Iran. Hudson scholar Anne Bayevsky skewers Team Obama's yawning words/deeds gap between its lofty human rights pretensions and hands-off deeds. Michael Barone attributes President 44's policies re engaging Iran & North Korea to 44's adolescent desire to do the opposite of his predecessor (though it is hardly the case--Bush 43 wound up weak on both regimes which originally he had placed along with Saddam in the Axis of Evil). In a similar vein, Bob Tyrrell assails President 44's flaccid policy toward Iran, noting an anonymous Obama aide's plaintive quote to the Washington Post: "We're trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves." John Bolton sees Obama repeating mistakes of earlier Presidents by standing aloof; JB rightly states that 44's is putting negotiation over Iran's nuclear program first, and that if he gets a chance to sit down with the mullahs he will ultimately accept an enrichment-only solution to Iran's uranium program, leaving Iran with the ability to weaponize within weeks. At Human Events Kathryn Gaines wonders if Iranians will come to resent America for failing ot lift a finger to help them. On TAS, former top Romanian security chief Ion Marie Pacepa, whose masterful book, Red Horizons, opened a window on a hideous communist tyranny, writes an open letter to the Iran Revolutionary Guard asking them to turn their guns on the regime. A Washington Post front-pager reports Cairo activists motivated by events inside iran to seek liberalization of Hosni Mubarak's harsh rule. Reagan-era National Security Adviser Robert "Bud" McFarlane (who went to Iran in 1986 trying to propitiate the mullahs, part of what became known as Iran-Contra) calls on 44 to promote democracy. Ex-Bush 43 speechwriter Michael Gerson says that democracy promotion is not a mere choice for America; without it, says Gerson, political and economic progress in the Mideast is not possible. One blogger calls 44 "the great equivocator."
Charles Krauthammer sees Iranian protesters "desperately seeking" a Boris Yeltsin establishment figure turned reformer to lead their movement. CK castigates 44 for likening Mousavi to Ahmadinekad, because while originally true, revolutions are fluid events that can transform leaders, as happened with Yeltsin. In a gruesome note, CK identifies Nokia Siemens Networks as the company that supplied Iran's tyrants with technology to suppress cell phone & Internet activity.
For sheer calculated cruelty, consider report from The Guardian on this latest outrage by the Iranian authorities: forcing the parents of martyr Neda Soltan out of their home. Here are the gory details:
The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world.
Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.
"We just know that they [the family] were forced to leave their flat," a neighbour said. The Guardian was unable to contact the family directly to confirm if they had been forced to leave.
The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring "thugs" to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.
More inhumanity:
Amid scenes of grief in the Soltan household with her father and mother screaming, neighbours not only from their building but from others in the area streamed out to protest at her death. But the police moved in quickly to quell any public displays of grief. They arrived as soon as they found out that a friend of Soltan had come to the family flat.
In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building.
But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.
An online resource of note is the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. At it site is Cntrl+Alt+Delete: Iran's Response to the Internet (May 2009), an 89-page report on the regime's efforts to control and shut down, when needed, Internet access inside Iran. Check out also Huffington Post's Live Iran Blog for updates during the day.
Looking Back. Clifford May has followed events in Iran for three decades--he was actually on the tarmac when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in January 1979. He explains that elections in Iran have never been free and fair. The late Peter Rodman, vastly experienced in national security, recalls in a must-read 4-pager that corrects numerous misconceptions held on the left and on the right, events during the Carter administration re Iran.
Bottom Line. The regime's brutal suppression is prevailing in the streets and shutting down to a trickle communications between Iran and the outside world. The stage of continued struggle is now held by the ruling elite, where deep fissures have emerged. Over months, perhaps years, the struggle for change in Iran will continue, with the regime's clerical fascist character permanently tarnished. Perhaps a telling indicator of Iran's youth orientation is that Tweets from Iran were divided since last night between accounts of regime brutality and mourning the death of Michael Jackson. (Memo to Mullahs: Go ahead, diss the King of Pop and see the revolution explode in your faces!)
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