The Thread that Binds the Unrest in Iran and China

A common thread runs through the current hard-line crackdowns in Iran and western China. It's business -- in the case of Iran, the personal fruits of the country's entire economy; in that of China, just ordinary livelihood.

Starting with Iran, Michael Slackman of The New York Times contributes a strong profile on why the Revolutionary Guards are so intent on their man – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – retaining power after the disputed June 12^th presidential elections. It’s the “military-based conglomerate” that they control, a “multi-billion-dollar empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy,” Slackman writes. That includes oil, car-making, and road-and-bridge building. Since he came to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has awarded the Guards 750 oil and natural gas development projects, Slackman writes.

Not that Ahmadinejad initiated a new practice by enriching the group that’s primarily keeping him in power. A year before his 2004 murder in Moscow, Forbes correspondent Paul Klebnikov wrote a brilliant investigative piece on how the family of former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had grabbed control over vast swaths of the economy. Today, Rafsanjani fashions himself as a reformer defending voters cheated in the June 12^th election; during the election campaign itself, he threatened to sue Ahmadinejad for accusing him and his family of corruption. Klebnikov doesn’t document corruption; he only lays out the family’s financial rise from poor obscurity.

All this adds up to is what those familiar with the region already know – there are no innocents in the race for power around the Caspian Sea. In the remote chance that Ahmadinejad were swept from power, would a new Iranian regime be clean of such pocket-lining? If the past is any teacher, the answer has to be a firm no. Slackman’s story doesn’t declare otherwise, only that the Guards have much to gain if Ahmadinejad remains in place.

Which brings us to China. Slackman notes that Iran remained conspicuously silent on the Chinese crackdown on Muslim Uighurs this month. One possible reason? One of the Guards’ main trading partners is China, he writes.

In China, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Ian Johnson weighs in with a penetrating piece on the subtext of ordinary business in the violence in Xinjiang. The rioting that killed almost 200 people was triggered in an immediate sense by the murder of two Uighurs, Johnson writes.

But he adds that the undercurrent is seething Uighur anger over the takeover of traditional industries by the majority Han Chinese – the bazaars, even the preparation of halal meats consumed by the Uighurs.

The Grand Bazaar in the regional capital of Urumchi is now run by Han. So is the main marketplace downtown. As for halal meats, Johnson describes a business owned by Huo Lanlan, a Han who runs one of Xinjiang’s largest halal food processors. Of 300 workers, Lanlan employs just a few Uighurs, including a cleaning lady.

So that when the Uighurs rioted, it wasn’t just over a murder. The Uighurs see Chinese prosperity creeping in to Xinjiang, but largely enjoyed by Han from elsewhere.

Iran: Politics and Stirring Up Internet Cyberspace

By Sasha Meyer

A recent op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle urges the Silicon Valley to help the Iranians. The author, Cyrus Farivar, suggests providing censorship-free Internet access by means of terrestrial or airborne base stations deployed near Iran's borders. Farivar is on the right track – Silicon Valley can and should help. But this particular approach might not work.

The reason is that the adjacent countries are either war zones or run by governments that might not be keen on hosting such facilities. As their reaction to the outcome of Iran’s June 12th president election suggests (they all promptly congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his official re-election), their view seems to be that the crackdown is an internal issue. Thus they would likely avoid involvement in a project that would support the reformers.

What way might work? The Silicon Valley, Western NGOs and the general public could lease bandwidth from Google-backed O3b Networks, a satellite Internet company, give it to users in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and pay for it themselves via crowd funding. The rationale for doing so regionally rather than focusing on a single country is twofold: It would create disincentives for any single government to tamper, since that might upset its neighbors. Likewise, some of the countries are inextricably linked to a larger foreign policy puzzle, which also could discourage interference.

O3b's service, slated to start next year, will cover the Earth's surface up to 45 degrees north of the Equator. That includes all of South and Central Asia, except the northern parts of Kazakhstan. Although the initial focus is on providing up to 10 Gbps to local telecoms, plans also include 2 Mbps connectivity for consumers equipped with a 0.5-1 meter dish. That is a size possessed by many ordinary residents of the region.

Google and O3b emphasize that the service will be affordable, so it might be feasible to pay for it via online fund raising, a strategy that has proven successful in recent elections elsewhere. A complementary method could be the click-to-give ad-supported route used effectively by sites like HungerSite. Hollywood stars might be willing to help promote the effort, since they are championing an increasing number of causes.

Secondly, the Western public can help develop an inexpensive DIY (do it yourself) satellite modem for use with O3b services. An efficient and efficacious approach would be an open source hardware (OSH) project. The term refers to the engineers and tinkerers who are doing for electronics what programmers have done for software – creating free and open source products like Firefox and Linux to collapse the cost of innovation. They create and share devices by posting all the schematics and know-how online for anyone to use and modify.

Clubs like NYC Resistor and HacDC engage in OSH projects, and companies – Bug Labs, Adafruit and Arduino – make OSH products. The public can call on these modern day mad scientists to design the modem and fund the project via the Open Source Hardware Bank, which opened earlier this year.

The response in the region (at least among Central Asians) is likely to be positive thanks to a strong DIY mindset there, stemming from a combination of reasonably high educational levels and low incomes.

One promising idea that OSH talent could pursue is software defined radio (SDR). In a conventional radio, all the processes are handled by single-purpose circuits whose functionality can't be altered or upgraded. Hence the high cost and the need for a multitude of radio gadgets – the walkie-talkie, the garage door opener, FM radio and so on – that all look and work differently. With SDR, you have a multifunctional radio device because most of the work is done through software. It can seamlessly switch from one function to another by simply starting up a different piece of software. Upgrades are not just possible but are easy. As a result, SDR can cut costs by 90%.

Not surprisingly, this approach has been embraced by big players like Nokia, Samsung and Intel. But it's the grass roots efforts that are most relevant here, such as the USB device developed by a team led by Matt Ettus. It's a universal radio peripheral that can work as a GPS receiver, TV decoder, GSM base station and radar. Presumably, one would need just another piece of software to turn it into an O3b satellite modem.

Finally, as described here in a previous post, the Americans and Europeans could lobby their governments to build a satellite that would bring a massive amount of bandwidth to the region, much as Japan is doing for East Asia and the Pacific.

U.S.-Russia Summit: Warmer Temperatures in Moscow

The chief takeaway of the U.S.-Russia summit is that it's been all upside, and no downside, for the leaders of both countries: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev got to tally up respect points from hanging out and negotiating nuclear arms reductions with President Barack Obama; and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin got to stare fiercely at the American president (video). From Obama's side, he got to take down the temperature with Moscow, Washington's loudest European critic.

Yet nothing that happened in Moscow shifts the shape of world events as they were when Obama arrived there. For instance, the two sides could do nothing to change the direction of events just south of Russia, in Iran.

The State Department has denied that Vice President Joe Biden has given Israel the go-ahead to fly over Iraq and attack Iran. That's not what Biden meant when he said in an interview Sunday that the U.S. won't stand in Israel's way were it to attack Iran, the State Department asserts. In the closing weeks of his presidency, George W. Bush refused to grant such permission. An Iranian official replies that Tehran will mount a "real and decisive" response to any such attack.

This could be mere brinksmanship. Israel itself is pushing the U.S. to put together a fresh set of "crippling sanctions," according to Michael Crowley at The Plank.

Ria Misra at Inside Politics suggests that an ideological split that's just become public in the religious center of Qom "may be the critical leverage that finally forces not only the overturning of the [June 12 presidential] election results, but maybe of the ayatollah as well." She is talking about a critical statement issued Sunday by a reformist clerical group called the Association of Scholars and Researchers of Qom Seminary. Kathy Kattenburg at The Moderate Voice is also impressed with the development.

This could be another bout of getting carried away, as pundits and the media did leading up to the Iranian election. In fact, as Najmeh Bozorgmehr reports in the Financial Times, the most powerful clerical group in Qom, the Society of Scholars of Qom Seminary, issued a simultaneous statement congratulating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his official re-election.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Mir Hosein Mousavi's outspoken appearance yesterday in public -- the first time he has been publicly cited in three weeks -- is bound to stir up more turbulence. That will offer up a chance for Obama and Medvedev to exercise their new-found camaraderie.

On Obama's Plate in Moscow: Iran and Breakfast With Putin

The philosophical underpinning of President Obama's arms-control agenda in Russia next week is that -- by allowing Moscow to preen on-stage, reviving its former role as a superpower state, ostensibly regulating peace in the world -- Russia will be more amenable to persuasion on other topics.

But does this reasoning hold? Will Moscow see things Washington's way on the Caspian, on Georgia, and on the balance of petro-power in Europe?

More important at the moment, could Moscow decouple from Iran, with which it has maintained an alliance of poking-fingers-in-the-U.S.-chest? Now that the chances for a game-changing U.S. opening with Iran have been all-but eliminated by the after-election crackdown in Tehran, is there anything to be done before Israel, for instance, decides it can no longer wait for Iran to become a nuclear state?

I've surveyed some old Russia and foreign policy hands from the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations, and the answer comes back that, at least on Iran, Moscow either can't or won't be able to help restrain Tehran. As for petro-power and the Caspian -- Moscow is capitalizing on the global financial crisis to re-assert power in its struggling neighborhood, and will push back on any attempt to deny it regional domination.

Steve Sestanovich, ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union under President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me that Moscow is already effectively cooperating with U.S. aims on Iran -- while it committed to finishing Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor and providing S-300 missiles, Moscow for years has failed to deliver either. "Their policy is to avoid annoying anybody too much," Sestanovich says. "The middle ground allows them to make a lot of money. And they hold in reserve a role as a possible diplomatic mediator if the U.S. or Iran indicate they are reconsidering their position."

Georgetown Professor Angela Stent, a former State Department and National Intelligence Council expert on the region, just got off the plane from Moscow yesterday. She says that Russian officials and experts have a mixed view of Iran -- the latter say that Russia can live with a nuclear Iran, just as it lives with a nuclear Pakistan and India; and the former say they don't believe that Tehran is anywhere near obtaining nuclear capability.

Whatever the case, seeking Russian help on Iran is misguided, Stent suggests. "Russia doesn't have the power to deliver Iran," she says.

A former Bush administration official who preferred to speak not for attribution said that any stiffer sanctions -- even if the Europeans and Russia were to agree -- "would not work quickly enough." "They are on the threshold" of nuclear capability, this official said, and this again raises the possibility of an attack by Israel on Iran.

Interestingly, Obama administration officials still talk of the possibility of negotiations with Iran. That seems to ignore political reality both in Iran -- Sestanovich notes that Iranian officials themselves seem publicly at least not to welcome further talks -- and the U.S., where Obama could face a buzz-saw of criticism should he be seen as equivocating after the bloody aftermath to the June 12th Iranian presidential election.

Obama will spend some 10 hours with President Dmitry Medvedev while in Moscow. But on Tuesday, Obama is also going to have a private breakfast for an hour or an hour-and-a-half with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Obama told The Associated Press that Putin "has one foot in the old ways," while Medvedev understands "that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations are outdated." This is a nice public relations setup, but not likely to result in any progress -- Medvedev has done nothing so far to indicate any separation from Putin on foreign policy, and there's no reason I can think of to believe that he will.

The former Bush administration official asserted that Obama shouldn't dignify Putin's behind-the-curtain grip on power by spending time with him; technically speaking, only Medvedev is on the same protocol level, this thinking goes. For that reason, this former official told me, Bush didn't meet with Putin once he was no longer president and began serving as prime minister. That's technically correct but disingenuous. In fact, just prior to Putin's stepping down, Bush violated his own rule precluding meetings with other heads of state unless there was a concrete deliverable to be achieved: Bush did so by flying out to Putin's vacation home at Sochi, hence delivering much prestige to the Russian leader but nothing for the U.S.

Stent says rightly that it's not realistic to ignore Putin. "To move the agenda forward, you have to meet with both of them," she told me. "It wouldn't make sense not to meet with Putin."

Indeed, rolling back a few years earlier, when Bush's father went to Moscow as U.S. president, he met with both Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his antagonist-for-Soviet-power, Boris Yeltsin, who was then the mere president of the component state of Russia.

Putin is not ignorable, any more than Russia, as usual, keeps itself in the diplomatic game by its willingness to play the outsider.

Satellite-Streaming Into Iran

Over at Mother Jones, David Corn posed the question the other day on whether the U.S. could frustrate Tehran's Internet jamming by beaming broad-band service into the country by satellite. He reported that the question was asked of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who did not know the answer.

O&G's own Sasha Meyer answered this question in a post last month. There does not appear to be a currently available, off-the-shelf technology. But Meyer describes a satellite system being put in orbit by Google-backed o3b whose target is to beam high-speed Internet service from space starting the end of next year. Alcatel-Lucent is developing a similar system with SkyTerra.

Meyer suggested such systems as a way to bring tamper-free Internet to Central Asia. It's not fail-safe. As Charles Recknagel over at RFE-RL suggests, the Iranians and Central Asians can jam the signal; they also could simply prevent possibly necessary base stations from being installed. But it is technologically possible.

For the West, One Loss, One Gain

Short of a bolt of lightning from Qom, there will be no game-changing opening between the West and Iran. The politics in neither Tehran nor Washington will allow one, not after all the bloodletting, both past and what is still to come. Yet, all is not lost. Kyrgystan's agreement to allow U.S. use of a military base is a reversal for Moscow, and a comparatively less-important but still an unexpected boon for Washington.

In Iran, some reporting -- over at Eurasianet, for instance -- has had it that a highly irritated former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to persuade its powerful clerics to turn against paramount leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Unless they do -- and this report frankly appears to reflect wishful thinking by regime critics rather than a credible news leak -- there is no logical reason to anticipate any change in the current crackdown, and thus any thaw of U.S.-Iran relations.

There simply is no political scenario in which either the Obama administration, or Tehran, can be seen locally as making concessions to the other side. That includes talks on Iran's nuclear program. According to a report by Barbara Slavin in The Washington Times, the Obama administration sent a letter last month to Khamenei suggesting "cooperation in regional and bilateral relations." But the events since June 12th put the kabbosh on this notion.

Not incidentally, the Iranian crackdown about shuts off the last ray of hope for the Nabucco pipeline, the leading western option for balancing off Russian petro-power in Europe.

Then there is Kyrgyzstan. Since the Soviet collapse, U.S. influence has been on the ascent in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Kyrgyzstan has no natural resources to speak of, but managed to grab western attention by embracing the free market earlier and more tightly than anyone else; the cliche became that this nation bordering China was the Switzerland of Central Asia. That link to the west was cemented by 9/11/, when the U.S. opened the Manas Air Base to serve troops in Afghanistan.

Yet in February, Kyryz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev went to Moscow and, while standing next to Dimitri Medvedev, announced that the U.S. was out; and Russia would now get the base. Oh, and incidentally Moscow was granting $2 billion in economic assistance to Kyrgyzstan.

The loss of the base was another blow in U.S. influence in the region after the Russian defeat of Georgia in last August's war. There seemed to be no arresting the slide, either.

Knocked back on its heels, the U.S. didn't see much wiggle room. Yesterday, though, both sides confirmed that the U.S. will keep the base. The base's name will change to a "transit center," and the U.S. will pay a lot more ($60 million a year outright, in addition to various other sweeteners, compared with $17 million previously).

Over at RFE-RL, Bruce Pannier quotes Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kadyrbek Sarbayev as putting down the shift to the turbulence in Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"Unfortunately, it needs to be stated that despite the efforts of forces of the government of Afghanistan and forces of the international coalition, the situation in [Afghanistan], especially in light of the events in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, show a tendency toward becoming worse. And in the event of instability in the future, this could have an effect on the security situation in the states of Central Asia, in particular on Kyrgyzstan."

Is Sarbayev providing the whole, or even any, of the genuine reason for the shift? That's impossible to say. Other elements of the Kyrgyz decision must have been after-the-fact remorse over losing its careful U.S.-Russia balance by lurching to one side. In Moscow itself, the Kremlin is trying to put the best face on the shift, with one official claiming that Russia itself agreed to the quick-switch.

Whatever the case, the bigger picture is how rapidly events can shift in the region. It also underscores that, though most events seem to point to lessening U.S. influence in the region, Washington remains an important player.

Iran: 'I'm Not So Sure I Want to Die Yet'

A simple calibration underlies the diminishing of protests in Tehran: The regime's bet -- correctly -- that those unhappy with the June 12th election results aren't prepared to pay the ultimate price for the right to express their opinion.

As an example, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Farnaz Fassihi quotes a 33-year-old woman who is rethinking her participation in the street demonstrations of the last week: "It's now crossed the line. If you come out it means you are ready to become a martyr. And I'm not so sure I want to die yet," the woman says.

While his dispatch isn't poetry, Sky News correspondent Tim Marshall has it about right: "In the short term it still looks like game over; in the medium term it looks like game on."

Like Russia, Uzbekistan and other dictatorship-based governments, this regime has learned from the mistakes of brethren in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and is seeking as a priority to knock out the pillars of any resistance before they are set in place.

Indeed, in his long public speech last Friday denouncing the protesters and their alleged foreign supporters, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly cited the 2003 uprising that ousted Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze. Foreigners backing the Iranian demonstrators “thought Iran is Georgia," Khamenei said. "Their problem is that they don’t know this great nation yet.”

So, the regime has threatened to execute and try alleged offenders of public order; it has interfered with communications between would-be protesters by blocking Internet, telephone and television; and it has blocked mourning of those killed. The regime understands the last item most profoundly since the actions leading to the 1979 revolution were in part sustained by 40-day mourning periods for victims of the Shah.

Karin Laub of The Associated Press reports that on the possible show trials. Quoting state-run radio, she writes that Ebrahim Raisi, a top judicial official, said, "Elements of riots must be dealt with to set an example. The judiciary will do that."

Yet small demonstrations of defiance continue. "Protesters came up with new techniques, such as turning on the lights in their cars at certain hours of the day and honking their horns or holding up posters," Laub writes. She quotes an unidentified Tehran resident whom the AP staff got on the phone saying, "People are calmly protesting, more symbolically than with their voices."

The most frequent report in terms of next steps that one hears involve a general strike -- the shutting down of industries, public transportation, shops in the bazaars, for instance. Reports say that Mousavi's own Facebook page calls for a general strike, though I don't see this notice there. Such strikes could be effective since they would be far harder to stop than protests.

One notable aspect of these events is that, contrary to reporting leading up to the elections, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no rogue or loose cannon. The remarks by Khamenei last Friday, along with subsequent comments by the Revolutionary Guards, eerily resemble the president's.

So that when Ahmadinejad trails off on yet another incoherent diatribe on foreign conspiracies and perfidy -- the outbursts that many, including at O&G, regarded as the main impediment to a diplomatic breakthrough with the West -- he has simply been parroting his bosses.

The Second Victim in Iran

As we look for a picture of how long it will take for a resolution of Iran's brittle- and tension-filled politics, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's legitimacy is just one victim of the week-long events in Tehran.

The second victim is the already long-shot chance of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement.

Short of a remotely possible, far-reaching concession by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there is now no near- or medium-term chance of a new day in Middle East and European politics and economics -- both of which seemed possible before the current bloody crackdown.

At O&G, it had specifically seemed possible to foresee a change in the balance of petro-power in Europe. If Russian dominance of Europe's energy picture is to be tempered, there needs to be a fresh, new supply of natural gas from somewhere. Iran seemed to be the best candidate. But for the last couple of years, Ahmadinejad's voluble belligerence has ruled out a lowering of the temperature with the U.S.: Diplomatic traction requires domestic political consent in both countries, and that's not possible when one or both sides is provoking jingoism.

A Mir Hosain Mousavi-led government would not have brought a qualitatively different policy, which was too much to expect given Iranian politics. But that also wasn't necessary. All diplomacy really needed was the leadership of both countries to shift to quiet diplomacy, which would have opened the door to finding areas of agreement.

Now that Khamenei has shed blood -- at least 12 are said to have been killed yesterday alone -- President Barack Obama cannot possibly enter into serious talks. Even if he were so inclined -- a considerable improbability -- U.S. domestic politics would not allow him to.

Iran: The Virtue of Clarity

To be sure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a gambler. Yet, by making clear that he intends to crack down hard should street protests continue over the June 12 presidential elections, Iran's supreme leader has also done a service by clearing up confusion about the direction of events. By reiterating that the election was fair -- and doing so before an official reply to his request for a verdict on the polling from an oversight board -- Khamenei also underscored that the issue isn't whether the votes were counted correctly; rather, it's the sanctity of his own authority.

He intends to stay in power. And he intends for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to remain president.

The ball is now in the court of opposition candidate Mir Hosain Mousavi, and the hundreds of thousands of green-clad protesters who have marched through Tehran for the last week. A new rally is scheduled tomorrow after a one-day interregnum.

If the crowds return to the streets in the same numbers, they provide their own clarity.

Brinksmanship in Iran

Yesterday, a close friend told me that he ultimately expects the Iranian regime to crush the street protests in Tehran using "a Tiananmen." One can validly reach that conclusion, hearing government officials threatening execution of protesters, and continuing to raise the specter of the Velvet Revolution to describe what they clearly regard as a mob.

Yet, the government continues to concede ground to the protesters; despite the blockage of Internet and so forth, the Guardian Council -- the body designated to investigate allegations of election fraud last Friday, has offered a meeting the day after tomorrow with the opposition presidential candidates including Mir Hosain Mousavi.

And then there are the compellingly large, continued street demonstrations.

Since brinksmanship is not a matter of simple arithmetic, there in fact is no way to project how this ends up.

In a smart analysis At RFE-RL, the perspicacious Geneive Abdo sees a power shift coming from the tumult, but the balance of power remaining in current hands for at least another decade -- until the leaders of the 1979 revolution leave political life. Support of Hamas and Hezbollah will remain, in addition to development of nuclear technology. What do the younger generation want once they do have power? Not "a government that shuns Islamic principles or even a state that does not include clerics, as some in the West might think," writes Abdo.

"Instead, they want free and fair elections to choose their own leaders; social freedom, now denied them by strict interpretations of Islamic law; and they want Iran’s militias to stay out of their private lives. They also want uninterrupted access to technology, which includes the Internet and social networks."

Update: The Wall Street Journal's Jerry Seib, who has deep experience in Iran, weighs in with a list of possible outcomes, both optimistic and pessimistic. Seib, too, thinks the situation is impossible to predict.

Iran: The Power of Memory

As suggested in previous days, the decisive factor in who prevails in Iran is command of public perception. Regardless of the true result of last Friday's election, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can persuade sufficient numbers of Iranians that he is the legitimate victor, the game is over. If he cannot, the opposite is true -- he and the entire clerical and military edifice behind him are in trouble. Defensive measures would then be required in order to save the regime.

Events of the last two days appear to show that Ahmadinejad is losing this battle. This is why we are witnessing such astonishingly rapid-fire concessions from the heretofore stone-faced government. That includes supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order that the election be probed, the subsequent repetition of this order every 15 minutes over state-controlled radio, and the announcement today of a partial vote recount.



So what is in the minds of Khamenei, the powerful clerics who stand alongside him, and the rest of the regime?

It has to be 1979. It is the subtext of the entire drama in Iran.

Both those backing Ahmadinejad and those behind Mousavi recall viscerally that they once brought down a seemingly immovable regime, that of Shah Reza Pahlavi. And the youth who are too young themselves to have observed or participated in the taking down of the Shah have heard sufficiently detailed stories about it from relatives, friends and teachers to possess vicarious experience of the event.

Knowing and feeling how it was once done -- quite recently indeed -- makes both sides grasp what those crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands mean. Once you've done it once, the usual doubts about capability -- from one side, can we really do it; from the other side, there is no way that mob can unseat us -- vanish.

What unfolds next will be reaction to this potent memory.

Listening to Contrarian Voices on Iran

Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty conducted a fascinating poll of Iranian voters prior to Friday's presidential election. Published as an op-ed in today's Washington Post, it concludes that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's official triumph isn't as outlandish as some think. Three weeks ago, the Iranian president was leading by a 2-1 margin, according to this poll.

Whether or not the poll accurately reflects what happened on election day -- the authors are credible; Doherty for instance is from the New America Foundation. They say the poll was financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund -- it suggests that caution is in order for those convinced of rigging.

For an excellent take on what the election says about Iran's ultra-emboldened power structure, have a look at this piece by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and reporter Michael Slackman. Keller is reporting in Tehran.

While leading contender Mir Hosain Mousavi spent the last several weeks alarming powerful clerics by challenging social mores and urging his followers to take to the streets, Ahmadinejad has continued his careful cultivation of supreme leader Ali Khamenei. He has made himself the indispensibly "shrewd and ruthless front man for [Iran's] clerical, military and political elite," Keller and Slackman write.

The Associated Press is making much of Khamenei's order today for the Guardian Council to evaluate Mousavi's charges of rigging. AP writers Anna Johnson and Ali Akbar Dareini call the move "stunning." Read the text. To my ear, it sounds equally possible as an off-handed sop to Mousavi.

Iran: A Matter of Appearances

Is there the possibility that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did win re-election Friday? The answer is yes. But it isn't the most important question. Neither, really, is whether the winner was his chief opponent, Mir Hosain Mousavi.

The most crucial question is the appearance of legitimacy. Whether or not Ahmadinejad in fact did win the most votes, if sufficent numbers of Iranians conclude that the result was fair, he and the clerical circle surrounding Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are probably secure for the next four years.

But if Iranians conclude the opposite, the ruling class could lose the veneer of legitimacy. Considering Iran's history -- in particular how the regime itself came to power -- that could be perilous for its survival.

The government seems to perceive this danger. As Ahmadinejad's landslide triumph collided with the pre-election expectations of many Iranians, the government detained dozens of opposition leaders and members, and continued to sever social networking among Iranians -- text-messaging, Facebook and so on. As for Mousavi, though he issued a statement today -- calling for the election result to be overturned -- he has vanished from the public eye.

This space has argued for the last week that the pre-election public anointment of Mousavi -- on the streets of Tehran and in the columns of blog and newspaper writers -- was premature. All alert Iranians are aware that their electoral system is tightly controlled by Khamenei's circle. Mousavi was open-eyed to the prospect of a staged result; hence his declaration of victory before any vote totals were announced, a move that makes sense only as an attempt to seize the post-election initiative. Mousavi either knew or should have known that this result was possible, and should have been prepared for it. If he wasn't, he doesn't deserve to be president.

The battle for legitimacy is already under way. As one data point, Al-Jazeera's Teymour Nabili points out that Ahmadinejad was declared the victor even in Mousavi's native city of Tabriz, the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan. Mousavi himself is Azeri, who are "among the tightest ethnic groups in the country, unfailingly voting along ethnic lines," Nabili wrote. "In the 2005 presidential election, Mohsen Mehralizadeh was a largely unknown and wholly unsuccessful candidate. He came in seventh and last, and yet he still won the Azeri vote in the Azerbaijani provinces."

This phenomenon -- that of opposition supporters purportedly failing to vote for their own candidate on election day -- is an age-old indicator of a stolen election. My own first experience of this was in the Philippines. I recall one witty parliamentary candidate in notorious Ilocos Norte who was thumped by the incumbent, 100%-0%. In explanation of how this was possible, he responded that even he didn't vote for himself.

Carnegie's Sadjadpour doesn't think the protests so far are "significant enough to cause any type of existential threat to the regime." Khamenei's circle, he says, probably presumes that opposition unhappiness will peter out after a week or so.

That could be a safe bet. Yet legitimacy is a precious commodity. Once one loses it, the rest is a running battle.

Updates: Mousavi issued a statement saying he is under house arrest and is banned from appearing in public, according to the Wall Street Journal's Farnaz Fassihi. A previous such report turned out to be false, and Fassihi notes that the government has not confirmed this one. Separately, I just ran across Nader Uskowi's excellent news blog on Iran. I highly recommend it for those interested in straight-forward coverage, videos and insidery news.

What Ahmadinejad's Declared Victory Means

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's officially declared re-election today may reflect the following not-altogether-surprising calculus by the nation's ruling circle: Victory by Ahmadinejad was validation of pre-eminent ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his clique; a triumph by any of his rivals, conversely, was revolution.

Supporters of Ahmadinejad's chief rival, Mir Hossain Mousavi, appear not to be giving up -- they are issuing full-throated declarations that Mousavi won.

What happens from here can't be predicted. But the regime's attitude -- meaning the context in which events will play out -- is crucial. Leaders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards the last few days have equated Mousavi's apparent surge of popular support to an incipient "velvet revolution." As noted previously, the analogy to Czechoslavakia's 1989 overthrow of Communism is striking. It means, as suggested above, that a Mousavi victory was rejected in leading circles -- it would not be genuine election by popular vote, but rather an invalid seizure of power.

That is not surprising, since it is precisely how most leaders in the region regard political opponents.

The ruling circle surrounding Khamenei predicted that Mousavi's people would go to the streets were he to lose. Therefore, look for a violent crushing of protests if they do. Again as previously discussed, the models to look at are Uzbekistan 2005 and Putin's Russia.

Why Fear of Velvet (Roses, Oranges, Tulips and other Colored Threats) Could Influence the Outcome of Iran's Elections

On the eve of tomorrow's Iranian presidential election, a senior officer in the influential Revolutionary Guards has come right out and expressed the conservatives' fear: Opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are trying to mount a "color revolution."

If Ahmadinejad wins re-election, the likelihood for game-changing U.S.-Iranian diplomacy -- including a break in the Moscow-Tehran diplomatic alliance that frustrates pipeline and other economic advances in the region -- will be dampened. That's because Ahmadinejad isn't likely to tone down his often-belligerent rhetoric sufficiently to allow normal diplomacy to take place.

Hence the import of the latest reporting out of Tehran. As The Washington Post's Thomas Erdbrink reported today, Gen. Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guards, said, "Any movement for a velvet revolution in Iran will be nipped in the bud."



Javani of course is referring to the 1989 Czech Velvet Revolution that ushered out Communism, in addition to the clutch of uprisings it helped to inspire -- Georgia's Rose Revolution of 2003; Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2004; and Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution of 2005. (On the latter, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Alan Cullison has an excellent page-one piece today on Russia's gain and the U.S. loss as the Kyrgyz revolt has turned sour. )

For the dictators of the world, these revolts were shuddering events. In response, Russia's Vladimir Putin formed his thuggish nationalist movement called Nashi. According to some, the revolts were one reason for Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov's murderous crushing of the 2005 Andijan protests.

And now we know that Iran's ruling class feels similarly. What specifically appears to have triggered Javani's remarks are the enormous, green-clad crowds that have marched through the streets of Tehran in support of Mir Hossain Mousavi. Ahmadinejad has attracted his own large crowds; he is an excellent campaigner, a populist who knows the power of pork-barrel politics, enjoys blanket coverage by state-run television, and appears to enjoy the direct backing of paramount leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The New York Times' Robert Worth writes today that former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was defeated by Ahmadinejad in the 2005 elections, is operating a war room to help prevent official cheating. Rafsanjani is dispatching an army of election monitors around the country

(Note to Rafsanjani: The most pernicious election-cheating around the world occurs not during voting, but long afterward, indeed after the local counting. Specifically, it occurs in the computer rooms of the central election commissions that are both responsible for tallying up the count, and answerable to the country's incumbent leaders.)

Given the general belief that Iran's democracy is a relatively regulated one, what will be the impact of this apparent attitude toward the turnovers of power in the above-mentioned nearby countries? If Mousavi does as well as many predict -- if he wins outright, or forces a second round of voting -- will the announced count reflect this result?

Officials like Javani assert that this gets at their beef -- the opposition, they assert, are prepared to strongly protest the election results regardless of whether Ahmadinejad genuinely wins. That could be true.

Reporters on the spot are calling this Iran's most vigorously contest election since the 1979 revolution. They say, for instance, that it's the first time that women have been so centrally involved. These facts lay on the opposite side of the equation from the official fear of colored revolution as Khamenei decides how to respond tomorrow as the election results come in.

Choosing Iran's Next Leader

Does Mir Hossain Mousavi have a genuine chance to defeat Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Friday's elections? Or is he simply the latest beneficiary of the predilection of reporters and pundits to make a wishful-embrace of electoral challengers in dictatorial nations?

At O&G, we are closely watching the first round of Iran's presidential election because of the potential game-changing impact on natural gas politics in Europe: At once, a less populist leadership in Tehran could help lower the diplomatic temperature, thus opening the door to genuine talks with Washington, and possibly a deal that, among other benefits, ultimately unfetters the development of Iran's sanctions-crippled natural gas fields.

A string of reports over the last 10 days or two weeks has built up much expectation around Mousavi, a 67-year-old ethnic Azeri intellectual who served as a revolution-enabling prime minister two decades ago.

In The New York Times today, Robert Worth describes a "screaming, honking bacchanal" at night in Tehran surrounding Mousavi's campaign, and a poll suggesting a 54%-39% edge over Ahmadinejad.

The key moment that has electrified observers is last Wednesday's televised debate between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Reports are drubbing Ahmadinejad for attacking Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, who is campaigning for her husband and held a high-profile news conference at which she demanded an apology from Ahmadinejad. CNN reports that some have dubbed Rahnavard "Iran's Michelle Obama." At the Impudent Observer, Fred Stopsky wonders whether Rahnavard is "the secret weapon to unseat Ahmadinejad."



Much of the reporting of the debate itself reflected surprise verging on delight at Mousavi's willingness to mix it up with Ahmadinejad. Yet -- injecting caution here -- the Financial Times' Najmeh Bozorgmehr seemed to see something different. Bozorgmehr focused on how Ahmadinejad "went on the offensive," and suggested that, while Mousavi did much attacking himself, he spent most of the 90 minutes parrying, not thrusting. In another report today, Bozorgmehr points out that Ahmadinejad himself is enjoying raucous support in rural areas, in large part because of his deftness at the universally practiced tactic of pork-barrel politics.

As suggested above, such pre-election public anointments are far from unusual. Apart from what occurs in the West, I've witnessed similar dynamics in the Philippines, in Pakistan, in Georgia, and in Russia. Often the candidates do actually win. But not always, and even when they do win, they don't always usher in finer times.

The clear-eyed Karim Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment writes that Iranian elections are still "unfree, unfair and unpredictable." Sadjadpour says that Iran's true center of power -- surrounding Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- could be on the cusp of one of the country's occasional political self-corrections because of Ahmadinejad's "economic mismanagement and foreign policy adventurism." But he adds that, until now, such corrections have occurred after two presidential terms. Ahmadinejad has served just one.

Iran's Election, and the Tehran-Moscow Alliance

Would a new Iranian president change the complexion of relations with the United States?

That’s the conventional wisdom. It’s also the hope in Washington and elsewhere. With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in another term as president after the June 12th elections, the thinking goes, there will simply be more nationalist and anti-Semitic bombast; in contrast, a new president will doubtlessly continue to embrace uranium enrichment, but will be less reliant politically on an antagonistic relationship with the U.S.

Whatever the case, the president ultimately is not Iran’s principal power. That position in society is held by Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who ultimately balances Iran’s various religious, commercial and political forces, and forms the consensus that we see as Iranian policy. He is whom President Barack Obama is directing his diplomacy.

That’s more or less what was laid out today by Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council and author of the award-winning Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.

Parsi addressed a small group at the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington, where he argued against any further hardening of economic sanctions against Iran (there is a push to block refined oil products from Iran, whose refineries product far less fuel than the country requires). Parsi argued that such a move would work against U.S. interests, driving Iran away from the negotiating table, while doing nothing to loosen its resolve to go its own way on nuclear development, Hezbollah and so on.

I filmed a clip of Parsi’s reply to a question on Iran and Russia’s tactical alliance. While he didn’t predict the disintegration of the alliance, he did note that it’s built on soft sand, given the two nations’ long and deep distrust.

Anti-Missile Defense and Iran's Nuclear Intentions

Two bits of news deserve the rubric: How far do you intend to push this game of chicken?

Missile Defense: U.S. anti-missile defense policy has been misguided. It continues to argue the system’s merits for placement in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the failure of the technology so far when decoys are employed. Yet Russia has been similarly imprudent. Its latest rhetorical fusillade comes from Armed Forces chief Yuri Baluyevsky, who said over the weekend that any missile fired from the anti-ballistic system could inadvertently trigger an automated strike by Russia’s own defenses. Vladimir Putin has been vocal but articulate. Baluyevsky’s remarks, by contrast, are Soviet-era blather.

Iran: And now is the news that Russia has delivered the first nuclear fuel rods to an Iranian power station that’s at the center of Western concerns regarding the country’s enrichment of uranium. In statements today, Russia and Iran confirmed the shipment to the plant near the city of Bushehr. The plant can start six months after the final shipment is made, and it’s not clear when that will be. Meanwhile there’s talk in Russia and the West that this is part of Putin’s plan to get Iran to cooperate with international inspectors, and stop enriching uranium. I’ve argued previously that Putin would like to win the diplomatic prestige to be accorded any person who can resolve the Iranian-Western standoff. Putin must be confident of what he’s doing. But it’s a perilous game.

Photo: Fuzzy Gerdes
Rights: Creative Commons

Blow to Bush: Russia Says No New Sanctions on Iran

Russia today joined China in a public rejection of the Bush administration's effort to increase sanctions on Iran. In Moscow, Russian and Iranian officials announced that they moved closer to finalizing Russian construction of a $1 billion nuclear power plant near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr.

The agreement in itself is unimpressive -- another of those interim pacts in which the parties agree to do something later, in this case to finalize a timetable for completing the plant, which is at the heart of Western concerns about Iran's uranium enrichment program.

But it puts meat on Vladimir Putin's resistance to further Iranian sanctions after a U.S. intelligence estimate last week said Iran had stopped trying to develop nuclear arms four years ago. The Bush administration has continued to push for stepped-up sanctions, saying the new intelligence doesn't mean that Iran is less dangerous.

The Russian position makes it even harder for Bush to get agreement since China on Sunday made its feelings on the matter known when Sinopec, the Chinese oil company, signed a $2 billion oil contract with Iran.

Photo: Daniella Zalcman
Rights: Creative Commons

Russia: Note to Presidential Candidates

This week's U.S. reversal on Iranian nuclear aims is a wake-up call on multiple fronts for those who will run American foreign policy for the next few years.

Among them is this: Vladimir Putin isn't a simple gadfly. Instead, he's one of the most important leaders the U.S. can cultivate over the next few years. Why? Because he's engaging and challenging the U.S. on issues that both countries care about, and happens to get it right -- and the U.S. wrong -- at important times.

As we learned this week, Iran is one. For years the U.S. tried to stampede him into supporting ever-escalating sanctions, leading to possible war, against Iran. But he resisted, asserting that President Bush's claims about Iran's nuclear weapons capability were overblown, and according to the new U.S. intelligence estimate it is Putin's judgment that was correct.

The new Iran intelligence highlights another needed correction: Putin in fact isn't inaccurate -- nor belligerent -- when he asserts that the U.S. presumes to know the only way on foreign policy.

U.S. policy on Russia currently amounts to this: You hurt my feelings.

It would be better to focus on issues, and the main one is energy, the foundation of Russian -- and Putin's -- power, how he's asserting Moscow's prerogatives in Europe and elsewhere.

As readers of this blog know, I think that one of the most potent instruments of power in Europe today is control of the flow of oil and natural gas. Putin has learned the lesson of the momentous U.S. foreign policy triumph last year with the completion of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and is conducting his own, much more ambitious pipeline policy.

Putin's strategy is market-oriented -- to cement and increase Russia's current control of 30% of Europe's natural gas market. It so happens, in my opinion, that that aim is incompatible with European and U.S. interests in a more diversified natural gas supply so that no one can dictate terms.

The U.S. is attempting to counter the Russian pipeline thrust, but is late to the game. U.S. energy bureaucrats led by Steven Mann are meeting in Sofia tomorrow and Friday to talk over how the U.S. can polish its strategy, and it'll be interesting to know the outcome.

I personally think that the new intelligence assessment on Iran -- like the previous one -- sounds too smugly certain. Anyone who has read Tim Weiner's excellent Legacy of Ashes can see that the intelligence business is barely manageable at best, like herding cats as the saying goes. But the fact that the intelligence services did not have rock-hard evidence before on Iran's intentions gives little comfort to those reading this week's abrupt, contrary assertions.

And it's equally discomfiting to those who have watched American policy on Russia amount to finger-pointing.

Photo: a2gemma
Rights: Creative Commons

Putin's Churchillian Aspirations

Ninety-dollar-a-barrel oil is wonderful for one's self esteem, as well as for stimulating the deference of one's acquaintances. But can it earn genuine respect?

That is Vladimir Putin's challenge. His best chance of securing that much-craved legitimacy is to pull off a diplomatic miracle. One such as resolving the Iranian crisis.

His high-minded actions and statements with his Caspian Sea neighbors in Tehran this week imply that Putin recognizes this. But can he do it?

One piece of intriguing news involves Putin's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. According to Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, Putin gave Khamenei a "message" of which the nuclear issue was a component, and that "we are now examining it."

Yesterday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad undercut Larijani by saying that Putin had not even mentioned the word "nuclear."

Still, let's take Larijani at his word. One enormous factor calling for optimism is that the two parties involved -- Russia and Iran -- would love to resolve the nuclear issue in a way that raises their own diplomatic credentials while diminishing the West's.

It's not known what Putin's message was. But we can imagine. For instance, on the difficult issue of electricity-production, he might have suggested a Russian agreement, for example, to build, supply and manage a self-contained nuclear power facility for Iran. In order to make Iran feel both safe and part of a bigger club, Putin might have suggested a comprehensive mutual defense accord building on the declaration that the Caspian republics made Tuesday. Putin definitely would have included a face-saving measure that allowed Iran to climb down on the nuclear issue without appearing to have done so.

Any agreement that gets Iran to renounce nuclear weapons-making ambitions would catapult Putin, and Russia, into a different and higher global sphere, while improving Iran's image as well.

Putin would not be spending so much diplomatic time and effort simply being a spoiler. He would receive -- and deserve -- genuine deference.