In their latest piece, the Leveretts  are so obsessed in trying to attack Mr. Karim Sadjadpour that they have become oblivious to the fact that by copying Sadjadpour’s format and expressing the fear that Sadjadpour may have the same level of influence on Washington’s Iran policy that George Kennan had on Washington’s policy toward the former Soviet Union, they are in fact strengthening Sadjadpour’s stature.

For instance they write: “… it would be a disaster for U.S. interests if Sadjadpour’s piece attains anything close to the level of influence achieved by Kennan’s.”

It’s nice to have adversaries this blinded by their obsession.  If this is not Sadjadpour envy, I don’t know what is.  Moreover, their obsession for Sadjadpour prevents them from focusing on the merit of their own argument.

They are repeating their standard argument that this regime is going no where, that the US needs to stop isolating this regime and start engaging it to reach common interests, that President Obama didn’t try hard enough in his engagement of this regime and that containment is not the answer but rapprochement along the lines of the Nixon & Kissinger’s outreach towards communist China.  At its most fundamental level, the Leveretts’ analysis compares the current US-Iran relationship to the US-China rapprochement and argues why can’t we achieve the same result today.

The problem with this line of reasoning which is to some extent echoed by Fareed Zakaria & George Friedman, among others, is that it looks at the problem from strictly an American perspective.    It assumes that it was Nixon, Kissinger & Co. that accomplished the Chinese rapprochement and that if President Obama had just done X or hadn’t done Y, he could have accomplished a similar rapprochement with this regime.

Unfortunately, that is a wrong interpretation of history.  It was the Russian-Chinese split and armed conflict that led to the American-Chinese rapprochement.  Mao believed that he could not simultaneously confront the USSR and the USA.  He thought the Soviet threat to be the greater danger to his personal power so he pursued detente with the US.    Nixon, Kissinger & Co. were smart enough to recognize the opportunity and capitalize on it but they didn’t make it happen.  Without the common threat of the Russians, it is questionable if there ever would have been an American-Chinese rapprochement.

Today, there is no common existential threat/enemy facing the regime in Tehran and the US.  As far as Khamenei is concerned, the closer he gets to America, the more powerful Iran’s civil society will become and the weaker his grip on power will get.  For him, the existential threat is getting close to America and that’s why time after time he has has declined America’s overtures to reach a rapprochement.

Free Iran:  This piece by Mr. Ray Takeyh is arguably one of the best essays I have read about what America’s Iran policy ought to consist of.  It’s what this site has been arguing for since inception.  It’s a dramatic change for Mr. Takeyh but a welcomed one.  It’s time for the Obama administration to renounce its failed carrot and stick realpolitik approach and embrace a policy that actually has a chance of success.

In an all-too familiar ritual, the United States and Iran are once more contemplating their diplomatic dance. The question that has perennially bedeviled Washington and its allies is how to compel the theocratic regime in Tehran to alter its objectionable practices. As a rational and pragmatic democracy, the United States perceives that economic pressure will compel Iran’s leaders to yield on strategic priorities in order to relieve financial distress. The Islamic Republic has its vulnerabilities; however, too narrow a focus on its economic deficiencies has obscured its manifest political weaknesses. An insistence on human rights and the empowerment of the Green Movement can pave the way for Iran’s transition to a more tolerant society and provide the West an indispensable lever for tempering the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions.

In one of Iran’s great paradoxes, a nation in clutches of clerical despotism has given birth to the most intellectually vibrant democratic movement in the contemporary Middle East. The Green Movement, which traverses all of Iran’s social classes, has reconceptualized the relationship between the public and the state, as well as religion and democracy. At its core, a movement that emphasizes the need for the public’s consent, respect for global opinion and relaxation of onerous cultural restrictions is a denial of the politics of intolerance practiced by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Despite repression, imprisonment and show trials, the Green Movement continues to thrive and is gradually pressing the society away from state control. The movement is better organized and commands a greater degree of popular support than comparable past political movements in Eastern Europe that – with the assistance of the West – eventually dislodged the intractable communist tyrannies from power. The scale of defections from the state and the disillusionment of many stalwarts of the revolution demonstrate how the Greens have succeeded in sapping the self-confidence and the legitimacy of the system.

As part of any negotiations with the West, the Islamic Republic should be asked to amend not just its nuclear infractions but also its human rights abuses. This entails releasing political prisoners, lifting the restrictions on civil society groups and allowing publication of banned newspapers. Unless Tehran accedes to such measures, it must continue to confront economic pressure and political isolation. Should the United States take such an unequivocal stand as part of its diplomatic outreach, it can further stimulate domestic dissent in Iran. In the meantime, an isolated, weakened regime faced with economic decline, political ferment and international ostracism maybe tempted to offer important concessions to escape its predicament. The path to disarmament and democracy lies in making common cause with the Green Movement and making Iran’s behavior toward its citizens a precondition to its reintegration in the community of nations.

…History has shown that human rights do contribute to dramatic political transformations. The Helsinki Accord of 1975 invigorated the moribund opposition groups behind the Iron Curtain and ensured a smooth transition to a post-communist reality. More so than arms races and arms control treaties, those accords defied the skeptics and cynics by contributing to the collapse of the mighty Soviet empire. Go to Washington Post.

…No sign of a breakthrough

So, as things stand, the parties might be in for a long, protracted haggling with no chances of a breakthrough in sight. Western powers are still counting on the success of sanctions, but there are no real signs yet that Iran is buckling under economic pressure. Sanctions are effective to a point when it comes to a country like Iran, and the country might have already passed that stage. The experience of the past three decades has shown that the Islamic republic can weather any outside pressure as long as it does not cripple its oil exports, and the US and allies have a long way to go before they reach that point. Iran’s economy is minimally integrated into the global system and not quite vulnerable to conventional methods of punishment. Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country has grappled with one crisis after another — war, sanctions, internal strife, etcetera — and the regime has emerged from all unscathed, relying on an effective military and police force and an efficient system of charity to contain popular anger. This time around, too, Ahmadinejad’s government is already bracing for the worst, lifting subsidies on basic goods and instead creating a safety net of cash to benefit the “disinherited”, which constitutes his main popular support base. This, together with a militarised state and conservative backing, will help the president to ride high. It will give him enough control to risk a new round of international sanctions, or even more, by refusing to budge in the nuclear talks.

Time on his side

Ahmadinejad has little to lose by holding fast. He sees no imminent threat of military action, with the US and its allies bogged down in Afghanistan and still engaged in Iraq. On the contrary, the stalemate in talks gives him time to pursue his aims — whether it is to develop a bomb or, as he says, secure recognition of his country’s nuclear rights. The other side, however, does not have much time on its hands, amid fears that Iran is moving quickly towards nuclear weapon capability. Some Israeli intelligence officials claim Tehran might already be in possession of a few bombs. True or not, they add urgency to the debate, and the harsh rhetoric coming out of Iran is not helping it either. Sooner or later the US and its western allies may come to the conclusion that sanctions are doomed to fail. Some US politicians are already calling for war and this trend might gather pace with Republicans’ Congressional victory this month. For now, President Barack Obama is expected to resist calls to turn the page on Iran and continue to insist on a diplomatic solution. But things may change with his declining popularity over the economy and as he gears for re-election in about two years.

Free Iran:  Cut the oil exports.  Tie the sanctions to Iran’s human rights.  The rest is just talk.

Go to original article.

A Republican-controlled House of Representatives can help stiffen President Barack Obama’s policies toward hostile states like Iran, the congresswoman in line to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee said on Wednesday.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who as senior Republican on the committee is poised to take over its leadership, told Reuters she believed the House body would have an “important voice” in foreign policy, without wanting to over-inflate its role or influence.

…The representative said the kind of foreign policy voice the new House Foreign Affairs Committee projected would depend on its final composition, to be formally determined along with the chairmanship in early December.

“It depends a lot on whether the makeup of our committee will be more Republican-Libertarian or Republican hard line,” she said.

“I think the common denominator is advancing America’s interest, keeping America safe, being non-apologetic about being a superpower, being proud of who we are, advancing human rights”.

Ros-Lehtinen said the committee would also increase oversight of U.S. overseas programs to “see whether they really work, do we want to continue funding them.”

Free Iran:  It’ll be ironic if the Republicans press President Obama on human rights.  But no matter how it comes, it’ll be a welcome change.

Go to Reuters.

THE OBAMA administration has focused much of its foreign policy on what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to call the “three D’s:” diplomacy, development and defense. A fourth D, democracy, is missing from that formula – and too often it has been absent from President Obama’s strategy. So it has been encouraging to see the emphasis the president has placed on democratic countries and democratic values during his ongoing tour of Asia. In a region where the shadow and the example of autocratic China are formidable, Mr. Obama is visiting four free countries, and in his speeches he is making a strong case for why they are more likely to succeed in the long run.

On Wednesday in Indonesia, the president offered an important addendum to Ms. Clinton’s slogan. “Development,” he said, “is inseparable from the role of democracy. . . . Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.” He went on to explain why: “It takes a free press and an independent justice system to root out abuses and excess, and to insist on accountability. It takes open society and active citizens to reject inequality and injustice.”

China lacks those forces, but Indonesia, which has spent the past decade building them, is also developing rapidly. It has done so as a majority-Muslim nation that embraces religious tolerance. “This is the foundation of Indonesia’s example to the world, and this is why Indonesia will play such an important part in the 21st century,” Mr. Obama said.

Part of the president’s address was explicitly aimed at the Muslim world, and it reviewed his efforts “to begin to repair these relations.” Curiously, the theme of democracy disappeared. He talked about “issues that have caused tensions for many years”: “violent extremism,” the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Middle East peace process. But having just extolled Indonesia’s democracy, he made no mention of its absence in countries where extremism is strongest, such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt. He recommitted himself to a Palestinian state without saying whether it should be a democracy.

Mr. Obama did, however, support the promotion of democracy and human rights in Asia. While “the nations of Southeast Asia must have the right to determine their own destiny,” he said, “the people of Southeast Asia must have the right to determine their own destiny as well. . . . There’s no reason why respect for human rights should stop at the border of any country.” That is a good policy for Asia; it would also be a good policy for the Arab Middle East. Go to Washington Post.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who smothered his reformist opposition in the wake of last year’s elections, faces a new and potentially dangerous threat from the people and groups he once relied on as his closest allies.

The opposition to what many in Iran regard as Ahmadinejad’s increasingly centralized rule had been largely conducted behind the scenes. But it has suddenly emerging in a harshly worded editorial in the Iran Revolutionary Guards’ monthly magazine Payam-e Enghelab (Message of the Revolution) on a seemingly obscure subject on the role of the country’s parliament.

“You have an independent president for the first time since the revolution. Ahmadinejad is undermining the leadership and this could lead to an [unraveling] of the current system,” Ali Alfoneh, a resident fellow, at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, told The Media Line.

Outside of Iran, Ahmadinejad is seen as a powerful figure who is resisting Western pressure to abandon the country’s controversial nuclear program, challenging America in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and crushing his reformists’ opponents after he won the 2009 presidential elections. At home, however, the president’s growing power has alienated everyone from his one-time patron, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, too many in the Guards. Go to original article.

Free Iran:  At long last, Ms. Ebadi has made a linkage between economic issues  and the opposition against the regime.  One of the big problems with Iran’s green opposition leaders is that they don’t talk nearly enough about bread and butter issues.  This regime will go down for economic reasons and sanctions can play a critical part in this process.

Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi said Monday that opposition to the Iranian government is growing, spurred by an increase in government violence, more human rights violations and deepening poverty.

The human rights lawyer, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy, said in an interview with The Associated Press that she came to the United Nations to talk about the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran and seek support for a draft U.N. General Assembly resolution that would condemn the country’s rights record.

Although much of the opposition movement has gone underground since the violent crackdown after the disputed June 2009 presidential election, Ebadi said it definitely isn’t faltering.

“I can tell you that opposition is increasing in Iran,” she said. “Not only the government is becoming more violent every day, and there are more violations of human rights, but the issue of poverty has become another issue now. … And, of course, poverty plays a big role in opposition.”

She said the latest statistics she received had Iran’s economy growing by just 1.6 percent a year, lower than the rates in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ebadi urged the international community “to bring the voice of the people of Iran and the political prisoners to the outside world,” stressing that the human rights situation in Iran “is very bad … (and) is worsening.”

She singled out the case of prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been on hunger strike since Sept. 25 but stopped drinking all liquids five days ago to protest her detention in solitary confinement on suspicion of spreading propaganda against the ruling system. Go to AP.

Don’t fall for the nostalgia — George W. Bush’s foreign policy really was that bad.

…Don’t believe a word of it. George W. Bush’s presidency really was that bad — and the fact that Obama has largely followed the same course is less a measure of Bush’s wisdom than a reminder of the depth of the hole he dug his country into, as well as the institutionalized groupthink that dominates the U.S. foreign-policy establishment.

Decision Points has 14 chapters, each one pivoting around a key decision that Bush made in his adult life. So, in honor of America’s newly published ex-president, here’s my own list of 14 decisions that Bush made — ones that tell a slightly different history of the 43rd presidency.

7. Department of Rhetorical Catastrophes, Part II: The “Axis of Evil.”

In the months following 9/11, the United States received a surprising degree of help in Afghanistan from Iran, a country which (whatever its history with the United States) was no friend of al Qaeda and a bitter enemy of the Taliban. Intelligence sharing and diplomatic coordination with Tehran helped the United States rout the Taliban and later install Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul.

How did Bush reward Iran for this valuable assistance? By labeling it part of an “Axis of Evil” in his January 2002 State of the Union address, along with Iraq and North Korea. This foolish bit of bombast derailed any possibility of building a better relationship with pre-Ahmadinejad Iran, which may have been precisely what Bush’s neoconservative speechwriters intended.

8. Iraq.

The Iraq war was a screw-up of such colossal magnitude that it’s easy to forget how many discrete screw-ups went into the making of it. There were the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and the nonexistent links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. There’s the humiliating spectacle of Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting hours of bogus testimony to the U.N. Security Council. There was Paul Wolfowitz’s bizarre claim that the war would pay for itself, when the real price tag is now in excess of $1 trillion. And let us not forget the 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, more than 30,000 American soldiers wounded, and several million Iraqi refugees forced to flee their homes. A strategy that was supposed to bring U.S.-friendly democracy to the Middle East instead produced an empowered Iran and a more fragile balance of power in the region. The only thing more astonishing than the scope of these blunders is the fact that the former president does not regret his decision, even now.

9. Snubbing Iran, Again.

Free Iran:  There are doubts that such an offer of a grand bargain did ever take place and moreover this regime could never be trusted to keep its word, but the Bush administration’s bellicose policies did badly undermine the reformists’ position in Iran and helped pave the way for the rise of the radical conservatives.

In the midst of the “Mission Accomplished” euphoria that followed the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, a worried Iran sent a Swiss intermediary to Washington with a far-reaching offer for a “grand bargain,” including an end to Iranian support for groups such as Hezbollah and a deal on Iran’s nuclear energy program. The offer was reportedly approved by Iran’s top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Bush administration turned the Iranians down flat — why negotiate with the next candidate for regime change? — and Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reportedly reprimanded the Swiss ambassador for even delivering the message in the first place.

Instead of a possible rapprochement, we ended up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president and a steadily worsening relationship with Tehran. Would a different response have left us in a better position today? We’ll never know.

10. Sabotaging Peace in the Middle East.

When Bush took office, he decided to put Israeli-Palestinian peace on the back burner, even though plenty of people warned him that the situation would only get worse if neglected. After 9/11, he did briefly try to persuade Israel to exercise some restraint in the occupied territories; the situation there, he realized, was fueling anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world and making it harder to weaken al Qaeda. Bush soon came under pressure from the Israel lobby, however, which helped convince him that the United States and Israel were “partners against terror” and that he should just follow the Israeli lead on this issue.

For the rest of his presidency, Bush’s Middle East diplomacy consisted of a series of essentially meaningless gestures, most notably the 2003 “road map” and the 2007 Annapolis summit. Meanwhile, Israel continued to expand settlements in the West Bank with hardly a murmur of protest from Washington. Bush refused to have anything to do with Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and did hardly anything to bolster Arafat’s moderate successor, Mahmoud Abbas, even after the new leader repeatedly renounced the use of terrorism, endorsed Israel’s right to exist, and reaffirmed his desire to negotiate a final status agreement. Bush also did virtually nothing to build on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which the Arab League endorsed at its Beirut summit that year and again at the 2007 Riyadh summit. By the time Bush left office, a two-state solution was more distant than ever, and America’s image in the Middle East had hit a new low.

It gets worse: Bush also gave a green light to Israel’s misguided attempt to use air power disarm Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel’s strategy was doomed to fail, and though U.S. officials had been briefed about its plans well before the war broke out, Bush did not tell the Israelis to come up with a better strategy. Instead, he gave Tel Aviv consistent diplomatic backing, even when it became clear that its strategy was not working and was causing massive damage throughout Lebanon. The United States even delayed a U.N. cease-fire resolution in order to give Israel time to “finish the job,” a measure that prolonged the war for no good purpose and led to even greater Israeli casualties.

12. Democracy, but Only When Our Guys Win.

When it turned out that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction, Bush tried to justify the invasion as part of a broader campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. Unfortunately he was no better at that than he was at finding mobile bioweapons labs or chemical weapons caches. Bush pressed the Palestinian Authority to hold legislative elections in 2006, but when Hamas won, he simply refused to accept the results. For Bush, it seemed, democracy only made sense when the candidates that he liked won. The White House subsequently tried to foment a Fatah-led coup, a ploy that backfired and left Hamas in charge of Gaza and the Palestinians badly divided.

14. The Crash Heard ‘Round the World.

By lowering taxes while waging costly wars, Bush produced near-record fiscal deficits and a mountain of foreign debt. At the same time,  Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s easy money policy encouraged a vast real estate bubble that eventually collapsed in 2008. Bush’s economic team also paid little attention to regulating Wall Street, thereby facilitating the reckless behavior that produced a major financial collapse in 2008. The resulting meltdown cost Americans trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, and the aftermath will affect U.S. economic prospects for many years to come.

Although Bush does not deserve all the blame for causing the greatest recession since the 1930s, he was in charge when it happened and his actions contributed significantly to the debacle. And because international influence ultimately rests upon a state’s economic strength, the damage wrought by this economic crisis may be Bush’s most enduring foreign-policy legacy.

…One could go on. There’s the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the opportunistic decision to impose tariffs on imported steel in 2002, the failure to hold military commanders accountable for letting bin Laden escape at the battle of Tora Bora, the failure to fire the serially incompetent Rumsfeld after the Iraq war went south, and the mixed messages from Washington that encouraged Georgia to miscalculate its way into war with Russia in the summer of 2008. But there’s no need to pile on further, and you may be running short on anti-depressants by now.

The United States would have been far better off had George W. Bush never decided to enter politics and instead had spent the last two decades running a baseball team. The former president wasn’t particularly good at that job either, but failure there would have had far fewer consequences for America and for the world. Obama’s efforts to clean up Bush’s legacy may have been disappointing so far, but that’s no reason to feel nostalgic for the man who created all these messes in the first place.

Go to Foreign Policy.

George Bush ordered the Pentagon to plan an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and considered a covert attack on Syria, the former president reveals in his memoirs.

Bush, in the 497-page Decision Points, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian in advance of its publication in the US tomorrow, writes of Iran: “I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike.” He adds: “This would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily.”

Such an attack would almost certainly have produced a conflagration in the Middle East that could have seen Iran retaliating by blocking oil supplies and unleashing militias and sympathisers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

…In a book largely lacking in personal insight, Bush says he is most angry at accusations that he was indifferent to the plight of the victims of Katrina because so many are black. “The suggestion that I was a racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today,” Bush writes.

Free Iran:  Let’s see his wrong decisions led to the death of tens of thousands of people and severely undermined America’s economy but the worst moment of his presidency was when someone accused him of being a racist.  How egotistical can a human being be?  I can’t believe what I am reading.

On Iran, some of his advisers argued that destroying “the regime’s prized project” – its nuclear facility – would help the Iranian opposition, while others worried it would stir up Iranian nationalism against the US.

Two other options under consideration by Bush were direct US-Iranian negotiation, which Barack Obama favours but Bush ruled out, saying talking to a tyrant seldom worked out well for democracies; and joining the Europeans in a mixture of sanctions and talks with Iran, the option he finally chose.

“Military action would always be on the table, but it would be my last resort,” he said. He added that he discussed all the options with Blair, who in his memoirs, published earlier this year, revealed he is now leaning towards military action.

Bush says: “One thing is certain. The United States should never allow Iran to threaten the world with a nuclear bomb.” Go to Guardian.

TEHRAN – Last year, Tehran’s writers, doctors and small-business owners formed the backbone of a grass-roots opposition movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now these middle-class urbanites feel they’re being singled out by a government plan that will soon cut off state subsidies and boost the prices of a wide array of everyday products.

Members of Iran’s middle class are already bearing the brunt of U.S. and European sanctions intended to curtail the country’s nuclear weapons program. But in the coming weeks they expect to be hit again, when the cost of gasoline, bread, electricity and other staples are set to increase to market levels, with some prices possibly rising as much as tenfold. While the rural poor will be partly compensated by direct cash handouts from the state, many in Iran’s cities will have to fend for themselves.

The subsidy overhaul lays bare a deep rift between the Islamic Republic’s leaders and the influential middle class over what kind of country Iran should be, three decades after the 1979 revolution.

“For our leaders we represent all that has gone wrong with the revolution, so they punish us” said Mehdi, a copper trader, as he steered his 2008 Toyota Corolla through Tehran’s chaotic traffic on the way to his office.

Mehdi’s father was a well-known revolutionary and a war hero who died on the frontlines of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. “I am proud of the revolution he supported,” Mehdi, 30, said. “But not of what has happened to it now.”

What Iran needs, he said, is a responsible government, more personal freedom and friendly relations with the rest of the world in order to move forward. “The middle class has updated itself to modern times,” said Mehdi. “Now I want out leaders to do the same.” Like most people interviewed for this article, he asked not to be identified by his full name out of fear of retribution. Go to Washington Post.

The most potent challenge to Iran’s ruling system may not be international sanctions or the homegrown political opposition, but something as simple as a shopping list.

When Sanaz, a 47-year-old Tehran mother, goes to market these days, she digs deeper into her purse for the basics: bread prices up more than fivefold, cooking oil more than double, cuts of lamb about triple from last year.

“How much can we stand?” said Sanaz, who gave only her first name because of security fears. “People are very angry and very worried.”

It is just the beginning of more expected price hikes, including for Iran’s cut-rate gasoline, as Islamic leaders start trimming an estimated $100 billion a year in government subsidies for fuel and food staples that many low-income Iranians consider a birthright. Go to original article.

Sweeping Republican Party victories in the 2010 congressional elections are likely to have a major impact on the course of U.S. foreign policy.

Experts predict, among other things, a harder line on Iran, a more complicated relationship with Russia, and a possible postponement of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Yet there could also be surprises in store for U.S. allies and foes alike in the months to come. The reason for this uncertainty factor is the new political prominence of the Tea Party, the conservative grassroots movement whose electoral appeal helped boost Republicans to control of the House of Representatives.

.
The Tea Party coalesced around opposition to President Barack Obama’s signature domestic programs, like his health-care reform plan and economic stimulus program, but the movement’s position on most foreign-policy issues remains blurry. Christopher Preble, a commentator for the online edition of the conservative magazine “National Review,” summed up the prevailing view: “The many men and women running with Tea Party support agree on some obvious things — especially that taxes are too high and the government is too big — but they share no common foreign-policy vision.”

…Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. diplomat now working for the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank, says that the fresh prominence of such leaders will certainly lead to a “harder line” on U.S. efforts against Iran’s nuclear program. “I think there’d be a push for a hard line that says any negotiated deal would have to be with zero enrichment,” he says, referring to proposals that would allow Iran to enrich some uranium for ostensibly civilian purposes in return for accepting restrictions on military use.

“I think you’ll see very strong support for what the administration’s doing on economic sanctions against Iran.” He notes that Congress has a record of leading the agenda on sanctions dating back to the previous administration of George W. Bush — a trend that is unlikely to change under the new Republican leadership in the House. Go to Radio Free Europe.

…Khamenei’s real mission was to secure the blessings of Qom’s top ayatollahs, and he did meet some important ones: Loftollah Safi Golpayegani, Hossein Nuri Hamadani, Mohammed Hosseini Shahroudi, Naser Makarem Shirazi, and Mousa Shobeiri Zanjani.

But the most senior and influential grand ayatollahs stayed away in droves. Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili, Bayat Asadullah, Hossein Vahid-Khorasani, Mohammad, Muhammad Ali Gerami Qomi, Sadegh Rouhani, Yusef Sanei, and Seyed Hosseini Shirazi, among others, would not meet with Khamenei. One press account by the Tabnak website, closely associated with former Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai, noted that Khamenei met with the children of prominent cleric and Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid-Khorasani, but not with the ayatollah himself, a prominent critic. The supreme leader — a man who rose to his exalted position through political hardball, not religious scholarship — had clearly hoped to shore up his shaky religious stature during his trip to Qom. Instead, he only showed just how isolated he has become.

…Looking down the road, Khamenei’s future prospects for support from Qom are only growing worse. The clerics’ rejection of the supreme leader was not solely based on a thinly veiled contempt for a theological hack’s efforts to wrap himself in a mantle of unearned authority. Just as important is the philosophical difference that has evolved in post-revolutionary Shiite Islam about the proper role for a cleric in political life. After witnessing decades of abuses under a government helmed by clerics, Montazeri, one of the architects of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, reversed his earlier views and stated that clerics should serve only as advisors to the temporal ruler, not as the ruler themselves. This is a view shared by other ayatollahs, including Grand Ayatollah Dastgheib and the widely revered Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is Iranian by birth though now lives in Iraq.

Free Iran:  The above statement highlights why helping Iran’s democratic movement is so critical to changing the whole ethos of the Middle East.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration is completely oblivious to this critical development and is sacrificing lives and treasure on futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Go to Foreign Policy.

Free Iran: The Obama administration miscalculated last year after the elections by remaining silent and refusing to apply severe pressure on the regime for its human rights abuses all in the hope of engaging this regime.  Well, actions have consequences.  You reap what you sow.

Ayad Allawi, who won the most votes in Iraq’s general election eight months ago, has for the first time indicated he will take his bloc into opposition and walk away from western-backed efforts to form a power-sharing government that would free the country from a crippling political crisis.

…Maliki made a high-profile visit to Tehran last month, during which he referred to Iran as Iraq’s leading ally. Iranian efforts were instrumental in getting a key bloc of Shia Islamists, the Sadrist movement, to endorse Maliki, despite years of enmity between him and their exiled leader, Muqtadr al-Sadr.

The Sadrist move has enhanced Maliki’s chances of being returned as leader and made a solution for Allawi all the more difficult. It also appears to suggest that Iraq is shifting from a western sphere of influence to direct Iranian tutelage as the seven-year war winds down.

“Our rights and the will of the Iraqi people are being ignored and the fact that Iraqiya has the most seats is being ignored,” Allawi said. “There are no discussions about power-sharing, or devolution of power.

“The Iranian influence is the biggest factor in this country and we believe it is damaging to the country and in the future for the two peoples of Iraq and Iran, let alone creating tensions for the greater [situation] in the Middle East.”

Go to Guardian.