Nov 5

Whew! Busy few weeks finishing up two projects and attending a funeral. Sorry for the delay, but interesting things have been shaking out in the past week, primarily in Iran and Afghanistan.



First, on the Iranian fron, they got caught red handed supplying massive amounts of aid to terrorist organizations again.



http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799087344&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull



The practical upshot of this is its effect on moderate Israeli leaders. Some fence sitters on whether or not Israel should schwack Iran believe Iran wouldn't be foolish enough to give Hezbollah or Hamas WMD. Catching Iran shipping this much advanced weaponry is apretty effective counter argument to the dove-ish position within the Knesset and Netanyahu's cabinet that Israel will just have to learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran. It will also probably swing some of Netanyahu's cabinet who favored limited strikes towards supporting broader, more crippling strikes design to cause economic collapse and regime change.



At the negotiating table, Iran did basically what I thought they would do: they made a counterproposal which was completely unacceptable.



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/nuclear/analysis-iran-in-no-hurry-to-cut-nuclear-deal-18981.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091102/ts_nm/us_iran_nuclear_6



At the same time, Iranian leadership has been taking a hard line stance.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04iran.html



At this point, I would put the odds of a deal happening as just about zero. Iran was angling to ship small amounts, and then stop after a few shipments and ask for renegotiation. Now they are just stalling for time as they try to keep thhe negotiations open. Additionally, don't pay attention to what their diplomats say at this point. They are mid-level functionaries hand picked by Amadhinejad (he purged the Iranian Foreign ministry after he took office in 2005), so I do not believe that there is a shred of difference between their own views and what is coming out of Teheran.



As a side note, they don't want sanctions because they are a hassle, but they also believe any actions taken by the rest of the world will have a negligible impact on Iran (in other words, they believe their position is so strong and the west so weak that they can shrug off anything we can realistically do to them diplomatically).



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/iran-general-/ahmadinejad-irans-enemies-a-mosquito-18977.html



Iran's leadership is going full blown North Korea / Stalinist state. The Revolutionary Guard has taken over most electronic media in Iran, and are making it well know those who step out of line will be in deep trouble.



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/iran-general-/revolutionary-guards-extend-reach-to-irans-media-18999.html



Additionally, Imams and Revolutionary Guard minders will henceforth be posted in every classroom to ensure that no Western ideas are being imparted to children...ever.



http://www.iranfocus.com/en/iran-general-/iran-to-appoint-clerics-in-all-schools-report-18978.html



This is going to play out badly initially for the regime. Iranians are not like North Koreans. They have a very porous border with Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey, all of which have access to world media. Details will leak out and in.



The Imams in classrooms is the more unnerving of the two. Iranians are actually very well educated comparatively, with women having a 95%+ literacy rate. China has already demonstrated it is possible to produce lots of highly educated AND indoctrinated people who question absolutely nothing regarding the world around them. There's a great quote out there, that a repressive government doesn't tell people what to think, it shapes how they think. In the long run, this approach to creating thought police will be ultimately more effective than simple control of all media within Iran.



By now, most people have seen that Karzai's challenger (Abdullah Abdullah) dropped out a few days ago. This is good in the short run, very bad in the long run. Afghanistan and the allies were very poorly equipped to run another election, particularly with the Taliban controlling vast swathes of the landscape. We would have lost a lot of people for a very low voter turnout which would not have doused questions regarding the legitimacy of the Afghan central government. Unfortunately, this result even further de-legitimizes the Government of Afghanistan and makes our job of waging a successfull counter-insurgency even more difficult. The ultimate goal of COIN (counter-insurgency) is to put in place a legitimate, stable central government by getting the populace to "buy into" it. Getting people to put their faith in a clearly corrupt and illegitimate organization is a tough sell to begin with. Add in Taliban fanatics who torture to death anyone who participates in the process or appears to be even remotely sympathetic to the government, and I don't think you'll find many takers.