Sunni and Shia Hackers Battle it Out Online

Turki Al-Saheil
Asharq Alawsat

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Hackers, believed to be of Iranian origin have destroyed a number of Sunni Internet websites, including the alislamnet.com website, which belongs to Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni, a Saudi preacher, and another website that specializes in the prophet's Sunna [line of conduct] and its sciences, in addition to other websites. This campaign is believed to be in retaliation for a similar campaign that was led by Sunni hackers against Shiite website The hackers drew the Iranian flag on an unidentified face and wrote at the top of the website's main page in both Arabic and Persian the following Koranic verse: "If then anyone transgresses the prohibition against you, transgress ye likewise against him [Koranic verse, Al-Baqarah, 2:194]," which indicates that this campaign falls within the framework of "retaliation."

The Iranian hackers posted on each of the destroyed electronic websites an Israeli flag divided in half next to a picture of the Arabian Gulf on which they wrote: "The Persian Gulf." They also drew on the right cheek of the face, which is painted in the colors of the Iranian flag, a logo that is similar to that of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], which has often criticized Tehran for its no cooperation on the nuclear issue. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat over the telephone, Aaidh al-Qarni condemned the destruction of his website by Iranian hackers. He said that "alislamnet.com has been completely destroyed and has lost all its contents." The Saudi preacher described the destruction of Internet websites as "an odious and aggressive act." He said that "such behavior is inconsistent with all of Tehran's calls to build bridges of cooperation and peaceful coexistence between Sunnis and Shiites."

Al-Qarni had supported Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi's stand against the rising Shiite tide, which has started to invade countries with a Sunni majority. Preacher Al-Qarni believes that his Internet website was destroyed because he "defended Sheikh Al-Qardawi against those who accused him of being a Mosad agent on one of the television shows that are being broadcast during the holy month of Ramadan." He said: "I received calls from Iraq during the 'Our Life [Hayatuna]' program, which is aired on the MBC Satellite Television Channel, asking me about my position on what Al-Qardawi had said about the Shiite tide. This was before one of the callers accused the sheikh of collaboration with the Jews."

Dr Al-Qarni strongly defended Al-Qardawi. He said that "Sheikh Al-Qardawi is not against dialogue with Iran and the Shiites; instead, he supports such dialogue. However, he is against the ongoing attempts to turn Sunnis into Shiites in some Sunni Islamic states." He added: "I do not believe that anyone disagrees with Sheikh Al-Qardawi's view in this regard." He said: "Is it conceivable to turn Egypt, which stood firm in the face of the Fatimites who had ruled it and which confronted the triple aggression against it, into a Shiite state so easily?"

Al-Qarni spoke of "the continued dispute between the Sunnis and the Shiites, particularly at this stage, and the use of aggressive means in attacking one another." He said that "this will exacerbate wounds and please the followers of world Zionism."

Syria: The Player or the Game

Mshari Al-Zaydi
Asharq Alawsat

So far the identities of those behind the recent car bomb in Damascus which resulted in the deaths of 17 people are unknown.

The Syrian Interior Minister said it was a terrorist act and, undoubtedly, it was indeed a terrorist act. The Syrian [Arab] News Agency [SANA] announced that whoever perpetrated the bombing is a member of a takfiri [the ideas embraced by those that hold other Muslims to be infidels] organization. As usual, several Syrian journalists rushed to accuse Israel because it is not happy with Syria's rapprochement with France and the West. These journalists forgot or intentionally ignored the fact that the reason for Syria's rapprochement with France or the West - if we may use this categorization - is because it has started negotiations with Israel. So why would Israel be angry at a course that it started?

However, this is the traditional, silly, and ready-made accusation that is acceptable to the Arab recipient.

Even after the Syrian announcement accusing the so-called takfiris, there are three serious possibilities related to the bombing of the International Airport Road on the Al-Sayyidah Zaynab intersection:

The act could have been perpetrated by Al-Qaeda and jihadist salafi currents in general; or it could have been perpetrated by pro-Iranian parties because Iran is worried about Syria's openness on the West and on Israel and worried about the cost of this openness and its impact on Iran; or the bombing could be the result of internal settling of scores among the security organs as has happened several times in the past.

The prioritization of these possibilities is, as noted above, Sunni jihadist fundamentalists or Iran or the internal security organs.

In the following article, we shall pause a little at the first likelihood first because of its strength and soundness over the other possibilities and second, because of the shortage of space in dealing with the other two possibilities.

Regarding Al-Qaeda's possible involvement in this operation, we have several indications that we should not overlook. The relationship between the political and security regime in Syria with the Sunni jihadist currents is a strange and complex one. It is not a secret to any observer that the Syrian regime has been generous with the Al-Qaeda fighters that sneak into Iraq under the guise of the resistance. These fighters later joined fighting fundamentalist groups in Iraq under the command of [Abu-Musab] Al-Zarqawi or other Al-Qaeda commanders in Iraq. Many of those that have been handed over to Saudi Arabia and other countries have confessed that Syria had been a welcoming and rest station and a gathering point for those going to or returning from Iraq. A report published in the British newspaper The Guardian on 22 May 2007 and attributed to a military US source says: "About 80% to 90% of the foreign jihadist fighters in Iraq enter through Syria".

Naturally, Syrian officials continued to deny that Syria is involved in smuggling fighters to Iraq or even that it is closing its eyes to this fact. This is normal. Official Syria is not expected to admit this but the question that was always posed was: How could the fighters reach Iraq through Syria without the knowledge of the Syrian intelligence service that is notorious for exploiting all its senses to follow up on every whisper or hint that may disrupt the serenity of the regime? How could dozens or rather hundreds of entering and exiting fighters and suicidal bombers romp freely in the towns, neighborhoods and roads of Syria?

Even if we forget the above, how could a person like Abu-al-Qa'qa al-Suri or Mahmud Aghasi openly and publicly deliver resonating sermons in the mosques of Aleppo urging the youth to go and fight in Iraq and to actually send such youths there as he moved around in his robe and long beard? His sermons vie with those of Al-Zawahiri and are posted on the Internet. How could such a person move around so freely and with such agility? Was this a sign of the democracy of the regime and its patient acceptance of all viewpoints? Or was it an illicit collusion with Al-Qaeda along the lines of the common saying "I did not order it and it did not hurt me" even if it was said that Abu-al-Qa'qa was a mere tool that was cut off when its role was done. The man was killed in broad daylight in front of his mosque in Aleppo around the end of September 2007.

Perhaps the Syrian regime fell - as others have - in the famous illusion that they can toy with the terrorist fundamentalist bear at the beginning of the day and then get rid of it or put it back in its cage at the end of the day! This is an illusion that is repeated and always repeated in the Middle East region. No side wants to learn from the experience of others. Toying with religion and attempting to revolutionize religion or some of its aspects and then trying to benefit from this revolution on the political level without any repercussions or consequences is the biggest illusion of all. It is the first and last mistake because if you commit this mistake once it would be fatal and there will be no second time!

The regime saw with its own eyes the prelude of this fundamentalist agitation in the past few years. In June 2005, the Syrian Interior Ministry announced the dismantling of a terrorist cell that called itself "The Jund al-Sham" organization. This organization had prepared a scheme to carry out several attacks on several targets in Damascus and its outskirts, most prominently the Palace of Justice.

At this point, perhaps it is worth noting that Shakir al-Absi, the commander of the fundamentalist Fatah al-Islam group that clashed with the Lebanese army in the battles of the Nahr al-Barid [Palestinian refugee] camp used to travel around Syria merrily and with total freedom. He comes from Fatah-al-Intifadah that is run from Damascus by Khalid al-Umlah. The regime should also keep in mind that "Bilad al-Sham" [Greater Syria] that comprises most of Syria's territory is a strategic goal that should be reached in Al-Qaeda's imagination and thinking. "Bilad al-Sham" is the "Land of al-Ribat" that is blessed land and that was the center of the Umayyad Caliphate. It is the cradle of the Sunnis and the birthplace of Ibn Taymiyah, the symbol of symbols of the salafi currents. It is a land neighboring Jerusalem and, finally, it - that is Syria - is ruled by a sectarian and secular regime - according to the salafi fundamentalist currents - that should be fought. The fight against Syria is in the discourse of Abu-Musab al-Suri and others like him and it is the advice that Ayman al-Zawahiri gave to Al-Zarqawi before he was killed when he reminded him that the battle is not only in Iraq but in Greater Syria as well.

Some people say that President Bashar al-Assad is aware of this fundamentalist danger on him and that is why he deployed his troops toward Tripoli where the Sunni cauldron is seething. According to an analysis published in yesterday's Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar - that is close to Hezbollah and Syria - Bashar al-Assad has received the blessings of France, Turkey, the West, and those behind them to strike at these salafi currents. However, the adversaries of the Syrian regime in Lebanon argue that this is no more than instigation and a theatrical by Syria to fabricate an excuse to return to Lebanon anew, this time from the gateway of the fundamentalist peril that Al-Qaeda poses.

At any rate, the other two likelihoods that we said we would not discuss at length - the possibility of Iranian involvement through its cells that are planted inside the [Syrian security] organs or the possibility of internal settling of scores - have not yet disclosed to us all the names of the killed or the names of important people that were inside the security building that is close to the scene of the explosion. These two possibilities should not be ignored. Perhaps the target was a particular officer that knows some dangerous secrets - as was the case with Ghazi Kanan and Muhammad Suleiman - or perhaps the goal of the operation was to send a hot message from Iran from under the table to the one residing in the People's Palace in Damascus that maneuvering has limits and distancing from Tehran comes at a price and what a price!

Whether it was Al-Qaeda or the intelligence services of Tehran or the bears of the security regime [in Syria], the lesson that should be deduced by the decision-makers in Damascus that the time of calm has passed and that the fire that raged outside - whose flames and flying sparks pleased the regime - are now touching the hems of the Damascene robes. The most dangerous thing that the regime should fear is whether this fire is feeding on sectarian fuel.

War On Terror Hits New Front -- The First Amendment

Robert Spencer

British authorities arrested three Muslims in London on Saturday after fires broke out in the offices of the publishing house Gibson Square and at the home of the publisher, Martin Rynja. Gibson Square had been planning to publish The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, a trashy novel sensationalizing the marriage of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to the child Aisha (Muhammad was in his fifties, and Aisha was nine, when the happy union was consummated) Then on Monday the book’s American publisher, Beaufort Books, closed its offices, explaining that it had received no specific threats but was nevertheless taking a “precautionary action” -- and that it still planned to publish the book.

Meanwhile, over at Random House, they must be drawing a sigh of relief. That venerable house was originally planning to publish the novel but dropped it at the last minute after determining that it might offend Muslims -- even though its portrayal of Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha is favorable, never straying into territory that might violate the strict tenets of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ media guide. Nevertheless, it looks as if those who thought Muslims would find the book offensive were right -- at least as far as the three Muslims arrested in London are concerned.

But when he picked up the British rights to the book last month, Rynja said some things that Random House -- and the rest of us -- would do well to keep in mind. In “an open society,” he declared, “there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear. As an independent publishing company, we feel strongly that we should not be afraid of the consequences of debate.”

Now those consequences have come, however, and Rynja is wavering. According to Alan Jessop of Compass, Gibson Square’s sales representative, Rynja “is in good spirits, but has put publication in suspended animation while he reflects and takes advice on what the best foot forward is.”

I can tell you that right now, Mr. Rynja. The best foot forward is to stand up for the principles of free discussion and inquiry on which free society depends and not to show that violent intimidation works. Of course, neither Rynja nor the employees of Gibson Square probably ever thought that by publishing books they would be taking their lives in their hands, but these are perilous times for everyone. Some will no doubt say these fires could have been prevented; if Muslims have found the novel offensive, for whatever reason, it shouldn’t be published as a gesture of multicultural solidarity.

The fires themselves show that much more is at stake. Although The Jewel of Medina is a silly, stupid book, the prospect of its being deep-sixed by bullying Muslims and cowering infidels doesn’t bode well for the future of freedom in the West. The legal protections on free speech were developed precisely in order to protect speech that some groups may find offensive so as to prevent the creation of a privileged class that is beyond criticism. But that is just what the three men who firebombed Martin Rynja’s home and the Global Square offices were trying to create by frightening non-Muslims into conforming to Islamic sensibilities -- or else.

London author Kenan Malik recently observed, “In the 20 years between the publication of The Satanic Verses and the withdrawal of The Jewel of Medina, the fatwa [against Rushdie]…has become internalized. Not only do publishers drop books deemed offensive but theaters savage plays, opera houses cut productions, art galleries censor shows, all in the name of cultural sensitivity.” But if they continue down this road, how long will we continue to be able to speak openly about the jihad threat -- and indeed, how long will we continue to be able to dissent from the Islamic perspective on the world in general?

Beyond the issue of this novel, if the people in America, Britain, and elsewhere who are threatened by the global jihad and Islamic supremacism are not willing to stand up and fight for the ability to hold in conscience to views that differ from those that Muslims wish us to hold, then all is lost.

The jihadists are willing to go all the way -- to give up their very lives -- in their quest to control ours. For them, no price is too high.

What price is too high for us?

Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)", "The Truth About Muhammad" and the forthcoming"Stealth Jihad" (all from Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

Fitzgerald: Wilders, Obama, McCain

Neither candidate, nor many of their loyalists, grasps what Geert Wilders describes in his speech to the Hudson Institute. One of them has accepted the idea that Iraq is the "central front" in the war of self-defense against Jihad, and believes that the "surge" is "working" -- but to what end, and how "victory" in Iraq should be defined, he never says and cannot say. Instead, he simply takes it for granted that we will all understand that it is better that Iraq be left unified and prosperous rather than as a "failed state."

The other candidate tells us that the "central front" in the "war on terror" is not Iraq but rather Afghanistan, and we are supposed to be mightily pleased with his "realism."

The first candidate, however, does recognize that Islam is a threat, a mortal threat, to the non-Islamic world. This is true even if he still uses such words as “extremist” and “radical” and even if he continues, irrationally, to believe that “success” in achieving the stated or hinted-at American goals in Iraq can be attained.

Yet neither he nor any of those who now claim to admit that the “surge has worked” have been asked to explain the most important thing: how that supposed “success” in Iraq will weaken the threat of Jihad in the places that really count. And above all, right now, one of the most important arenas of Jihad is Western Europe. Next to Israel and India, it is the most immediately threatened part of the Infidel world. What happens in Iraq, if it stays together and prospers, cannot conceivably mitigate the threat in Europe. It will have no effect on the deployment of the Money Weapon, on campaigns of Da’wa, or on the most important weapon – the one which Wilders is consumed by -- that is, demographic conquest.

Wilders reminds us that we, focusing idiotically on Iraq, the “central front” for McCain, or on Afghanistan/Pakistan, the “central front” for Obama, ignore these instruments of Jihad, and are seeing the historic heart of the West slowly but inexorably slip away. One of the candidates, a military man all his life, appears to believe that “war” is made by military means alone, which is entirely insufficient when the major instruments of Jihad (Money Weapon, Da’wa, demographic conquest) have nothing to do with, and cannot be countered by, military means.

The other candidate is deeply invested in the idea that most conflicts are the result of misunderstandings or of “poverty.” From 9/11/2001 on he has continued to speak, or to prate self-assuredly, about how we must “reach out” to the Muslims rather than to do the more difficult, unpleasant, and indispensable thing, which is to take the contents of Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira seriously, to take Muslim beliefs seriously, and to understand that the division of the universe between Believers and Infidels is central to Islam, that the “struggle” or “Jihad” to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam is taking place wherever Muslims meet any resistance. And even in lands already dominated by Islam and ruled by Muslims, they continue to persecute, humiliate, and sometimes murder non-Muslims (see the southern Sudan, see Pakistan, see Bangladesh, see Iraq, see Egypt, see Indonesia) when it is felt that they are behaving with insufficient submissiveness, or can be blamed for whatever goes wrong. And in Muslim states and societies, a lot goes wrong.

For personal reasons, that candidate cannot possibly recognize Islam is not merely or mainly a religion, but also a politics and a geopolitics, and he cannot – his entire being goes against it – because of his background be fully trusted by leaders and peoples in Western Europe. They are unclear about where he stands and about whether they can level with him about the nature of the Muslim threat to the legal and political institutions, to the social arrangements, to the individual liberties, to the conduct of art and the enterprise of science, all threatened by the presence of large numbers of Muslims.

That large-scale presence of Muslims has created a situation, both for indigenous non-Muslims, and for other, non-Muslim immigrants (Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Christians from black Africa and the Caribbean, Latin American Catholics) that is more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous, than would be the case without such a large-scale Muslim presence.

Can the leaders of the Western world, those who manage to come to their senses in time, risk leveling about this with someone who bears a Muslim name and a Muslim father, even if he is, and we know he is, “not a Muslim”? Is not being a Muslim, under the circumstances, sufficient to allay fears? Barack Obama has had every chance to say something about the ideology of Islam; he has had every chance to meet with such famously articulate apostates as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He has not said a word about the ideology of Islam that gives one confidence; he has made not a single move to meet with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Wafa Sultan, or Ibn Warraq. In the past, in fact, he took tuition on the Middle East from Rashid Khalidi, a full-time PLO propagandist and professor (with a D.Phil. from the diploma mill for Arabs run out of St. Antony’s by the late Albert Hourani).

Nor has Obama chosen to express his opposition to the war in Iraq as one which is wrong because military invasions, occupations, and transfers of wealth to “solve” problems in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, the very problems that are caused by Islam itself, do not do a thing to weaken the Camp of Islam. He might have said that. He might have hinted at that. He might have done so. He might have asked McCain to explain, for example, just why keeping Iraq together, or keeping Afghanistan together, or keeping Pakistan intact, and pouring two trillion dollars into the overall effort, makes sense, when it might be far better to allow the sectarian, ethnic, and economic divisions or fissures within the Camp of Islam to work their inexorable way, dividing and demoralizing the Camp of Islam, and buying time so that the peoples of Western Europe can rouse themselves (“methinks I see a puissant nation” etc.) and save themselves, merely through new immigration and naturalization policies – policies that would allow for the halting of all Muslim migration, and for expelling those incapable of truthfully swearing allegiance to the Infidel nation-state, its legal and political institutions, and for constantly monitoring those who have obtained citizenship to make sure that they are not engaged in any activities that demonstrate that they perjured themselves when they took that oath, or have had a change of heart – “reverted” to the normal understanding of Islam – and so are no longer capable of being regarded as loyal citizens of any non-Muslim nation-state.

It is not wicked, but just, to take the minimum steps necessary to preserve the West, the culture and civilization of Europe. The last half-century and more of self-flagellation, by too many in the West, must come to an end. And it can come to an end if those whose task it is to protect and instruct us knew more about their own histories and the history of the West, and were able to describe it, and to defend it – not defend some transient thing, such as the untrammeled grotesque version of hyper-capitalism we have permitted, nor to defend the indefensible cheesiness of so much that goes on. Rather, they should be able to defend what is best and what is lasting and what needs to be preserved, and to preserve as well the conditions that permit more to be added to that civilizational store, despite everything, by others in the future.

U.K.: Jihadist threat "approaching critical" level

The threat level is at the "severe end of severe" according to sources who say the level of "chatter" among terrorist cells has increased in recent months.

The security services say they are now operating at full stretch to counter the elevated threat.Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert. "Terror threat in UK 'approaching critical'," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, October 2:

The threat level is at the "severe end of severe" according to sources who say the level of "chatter" among terrorist cells has increased in recent months.

The security services say they are now operating at full stretch to counter the elevated threat.

Britain's close relationship with the US has been particularly inflammatory after cross-border raids into Pakistan by American forces.

Security officials had considered downgrading the official threat level from "severe" but that plan has now been abandoned as a result of the increase in terrorist activity.

A senior counter terrorism source said: "We were looking at the threat level six months ago and asking how severe is severe? But it is October now and we are at the severe end of severe.

"Al-Qaeda's core exists on the Afghan-Pakistan border. The arrangement of people changes at a frighteningly rapid pace but they have enough people to replace them and there are people who are looking at us and at external operations, some at this country in particular.

"We are not chasing shadows. These are potential threats to security and life. Police and the security network are operating at full capacity."

The source said a review by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which looks at information from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, had considered downgrading the threat from "severe," meaning an attack is highly likely, to "substantial," meaning an attack is a strong possibility, but that move was abandoned after the level of activity increased.

The assessment, which has five levels, has been considered severe since the arrest of the men allegedly plotting to attack transatlantic airliners in 2006 but moved up to "critical," meaning an attack is imminent, during last year's car bomb alert which led to the attack on Glasgow airport.

It is now only just below that level.

MI5 is watching around 200 networks across Britain and MI6 and GCHQ are constantly monitoring communications on the crucial Afghan-Pakistan border area.

Although key commanders have been killed in air strikes, one of the particular concerns is the disappearance of Rashid Rauf from Birmingham, an alleged al-Qaeda mastermind who escaped from Pakistani custody last December.

Security officials are also worried about threats which may come from off the radar.

They are particularly worried by lone operators who "self-radicalise" over the internet and stock-pile chemicals from domestic sources.

"They are discreet from traditional networks and have a very small intelligence signature which makes them hard to pick up," the source said.

There is also a fear that some in the Somali community in Britain could have "potential connections" with al-Qaeda terrorists.

Last week's attack on the US embassy in the Yemen means security officials now consider the Arabian peninsular "particularly combustible."

"Over the past year, al-Qaeda has invested huge energy in outlying organisations," the source said.

That's not exactly "imploding."

But it is the lone operators who pose the biggest threat, particularly since attempts to cut off the supply of "kitchen chemicals" used in home made bombs, such as hydrogen peroxide and ammonium nitrate, have been unsuccessful because they are so widely available.

"We are doing a lot of research work into the detection of explosives at train stations and so on but this really demonstrates the importance of preventing radicalisation," the source said.

But as long as officials are unwilling to engage the ideology behind the "radicalization," they will not be doing everything they could to prevent attacks.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards - A Rogue Outfit?

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2008, pp. 37-48

There is a tendency in Western capitals to dismiss adversarial Iranian behavior as the work of rogue regime factions, which are not representative of Tehran's true intentions. Following a Baghdad press conference providing evidence of Iranian weapons shipments to Iraq,[1] U.S. officials raised doubts about Iran's actual culpability. The weapons shipments do "not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted the next day.[2] On February 14, 2007, President George W. Bush said, "What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Qods Force to do what they did."[3] Likewise, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized fifteen British sailors patrolling a waterway between Iran and Iraq, commentators suggested that responsibility may rest more with freelancing commanders than the Iranian government.[4] Identifying the true decision-makers in the Islamic Republic is essential not only for accountability but also to ensure that any Western diplomatic outreach is targeted at those who have the power to affect regime behavior. Unfortunately, as U.S. officials again debate negotiations with the Islamic Republic, they simultaneously embrace Iranian reformists and dismiss pariah behavior as the actions of isolated rogue elements. Such an assessment is backwards, though. The IRGC represents the core of the Iranian state, and Iran's reformists are those who, by acting on their own without either state support or any ability to deliver on promises are, in the Iranian context, the true rogue elements.
A Convoluted Power Structure

The Islamic Republic's overlapping and sometimes parallel power structures often confound Iranians, let alone outside observers. Since revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 death, Western officials have often focused their hopes for engagement and their anger at Iranian behavior on the president. Whether Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's advocacy of market reforms, Mohammad Khatami's call for a "dialogue of civilizations," or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial, the Iranian president frequently makes headlines in the West. Such attention is deceptive. Iranian presidents appoint cabinets but remain subservient to the Council of Guardians and the Expediency Discernment Council. Revolutionary foundations, which together may control more than half the state budget,[5] operate outside the purview of Iran's executive structure. The judiciary is also a power center, able to wield immense influence beyond even the confines of the court system.

Over all these, however, the "supreme leader" (rahbar) has ultimate control. Khomeini was the first supreme leader, but upon his death, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assumed the role. Article 107 of the Islamic Republic's 1979 constitution defines the responsibilities of the leader: "He is to exercise governance and all the responsibilities arising therefrom."[6] Article 110 makes the supreme leader "supreme commander of the armed forces" with the power to appoint and dismiss the chief of the general staff and the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In addition, the supreme leader forms the Supreme National Defense Council and appoints the supreme commanders of the army, navy, and air force. He also appoints the heads of the judiciary, the president of state radio and television, the editor of Kayhan daily, executives to oversee editors of nominally independent newspapers,[7] and Friday prayer leaders who act as his de facto representatives on a provincial or town level. Unofficially, myriad vigilante groups also enable the supreme leader and his followers to enforce domestic discipline outside constitutional parameters.[8]

On a day-to-day basis, the supreme leader exerts control through the Office of the Supreme Leader and a system of handpicked representatives who act as his commissars. Very little is known about the internal functioning of this office, but it probably controls at least 2,000 clerical commissars who permeate every bureaucracy and power center inside Iran and, quite possibly, a few Iranian embassies and cultural centers outside the Islamic Republic's borders. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's network of representatives allows him to manage the structure and trajectory of state policy without controlling every lever of power.[9] Should any political or policy problem arise, Khamenei's network warns him long before the news would reach his level through the formal hierarchy of power. Khamenei can, therefore, maintain control through veto.

If Khamenei's will is supreme, the IRGC is his Praetorian Guard. It emerged in the wake of the Islamic Revolution as a privileged counterpoint to the Iranian army, which the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, distrusted. Throughout the twentieth century, the Iranian army was subordinate to the person of the shah rather than acting as an institution charged with defending the state. Especially after the challenge from and, eventually, the coup against Mohammad Musaddiq, the shah became dependent upon the army to maintain his rule. He placed family members in key commands and lavished patronage upon senior officers to buy their loyalty. Junior officers and enlisted men felt no such loyalty, however, and as the tide turned ahead of Khomeini's return, many defected to the revolutionary mobs. Upon seizing power, Khomeini may have needed the army to ensure order and national defense, but he never trusted it. At best, he felt the army was comprised of opportunists who joined the revolutionary forces to save their own lives. At worst, he believed they had been loyal to the shah even if they did not choose to fight for him.[10] As Khomeini purged what remained of the senior officer corps,[11] he formed the Revolutionary Guards as the ideological guardians of his new theocracy and a trusted counterbalance to the army.[12]

The IRGC's structure suggests the organization adheres closely to the Islamic Republic's values and goals, if not outright to regime command and control. Initially, Khomeini incorporated the IRGC into the cabinet. Mohsen Rezai served as the group's first and only minister and continued his command after Khomeini made the IRGC a wholly separate entity. Throughout its existence, the IRGC has had remarkably stable leadership. Rezai helped stabilize the country after Khomeini's death and ensured a smooth transition to Khamenei's rule. Only on September 9, 1997, did the supreme leader relieve Rezai of command and, even then, in a manner to provide institutional stability, appointing Rezai's deputy, Yahya Rahim Safavi, as the IRGC's new commander in chief. Safavi, in turn, commanded the IRGC for a decade until September 1, 2007, when Khamenei replaced him with Mohammad Ali Ja'fari, the former director of the IRGC's Strategic Studies Center. In neither case did the leadership transition signal disgrace for the retired chief. Today, Rezai is secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council while Safavi serves as armed forces and security advisor in the Office of the Supreme Leader.
Are the Revolutionary Guards Rogues?

During the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the White House and State Department have often treated the IRGC as a loose cannon in the Iranian system, if not a rogue element. The IRGC's evolution and role, however, suggest that the group has seldom engaged in activities not sanctioned by the Iranian leadership.

Initially, the Guards functioned to ensure internal security only, but Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's 1980 invasion of Iran pushed the organization into national defense.[13] The Iran-Iraq war transformed the IRGC into a multifaceted organization. The Iranian leadership invested massively in the organization as the Islamic Republic fought for its very existence, and the IRGC resultantly developed not only traditional defense capabilities but also embraced its mission to enforce revolutionary values at home and export them abroad.

For this latter responsibility, the Office of Liberation Movements played a key role. Charged with supporting revolutionary movements abroad, the office was, until 1982, part of the Revolutionary Guards and helped catalyze the rise of Shi‘i terrorist and revolutionary movements in Lebanon.[14] Led by Mehdi Hashemi, a well-connected revolutionary, the office continued after its separation from the IRGC as an independent entity coordinating not only operations in Lebanon but also aid to the Afghan mujahideen. While the office had lost its official status—giving the Iranian leadership plausible deniability from its activities—it based itself in Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's office in Qom and so, clearly, enjoyed state sanction: Montazeri at the time was Khomeini's deputy.[15]

As Iranian casualties at the front increased, Tehran's diplomatic priorities shifted. Khomeini sought to reach out to the Gulf Cooperation Council states, which were financing Iraq's war machine, as well as other adversaries, including the United States. Hashemi, however, did not believe the Islamic Republic should compromise its revolutionary principles. In 1986, he allegedly sent Iranian operatives disguised as pilgrims to the hajj in Mecca. Saudi authorities arrested more than one hundred Iranian pilgrims, many of whom had arms and explosives.[16] Soon after, Hashemi allegedly orchestrated the kidnapping of Syria's chargé d'affaires in Tehran.[17] On November 3, 1986, by coincidence the day before the anniversary of both Khomeini's 1963 arrest and the 1979 U.S. embassy seizure, Ash Shira‘a, a pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, broke news of the secret contacts between U.S. and Iranian officials that would come to be called the Iran-Contra affair.[18]

Hashemi and the Office of Liberation Movements had become a liability. What had once been sanctioned had now become a rogue operation. On October 12, 1986, the Iranian government arrested Hashemi and his followers; he was executed at dawn on September 28, 1987, by a firing squad at Tehran's Evin prison.[19]

The Mehdi Hashemi affair is instructive: It demonstrated that while the Iranian leadership holds revolutionary values closely, it is also pragmatic and chooses when and when not to export them. Hashemi had crossed a line; when sanctioned activities became rogue operations, the Iranian leadership reacted swiftly and without mercy. By comparison, then, Tehran's failure to act in a like manner to constrain other instances of revolutionary export suggest that such violence, incitement, and support for insurgency have the supreme leader's support.

From the ashes of the Office of Liberation Movements rose the Qods Force, an elite corps of several thousand soldiers within the IRGC charged with export of the revolution and liquidation of opponents, both inside and outside the Islamic Republic. The supreme leader personally appoints the head of the Qods Force, making him, in effect, the equal of the IRGC head.[20]

While some Western diplomats and intelligence analysts—indeed, President Bush himself—have questioned whether the Qods Force is a rogue operation, there is little doubt that the group enjoys the support of the Islamic Republic's leadership. The chief aim of the Qods Force is the export of revolution. Across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum, officials see this as an unalterable pillar of regime policy, any questioning of which merits a harsh response. In a May 3, 2008 speech at the University of Gilan, former president Khatami addressed not whether the Islamic Republic should export revolution, but how. He asked,

What did the Imam [Khomeini] want, and what was his purpose of exporting the revolution? [Did he wish that] we should export revolution by means of gunpowder or groups sabotaging other countries? … He [Khomeini] meant to establish a role model here, which means people should see that in this society, the economy, science, and dignity of man are respected … This was the most important way of exporting the revolution.[21]

By proposing that Tehran should expand its influence more by soft power than by insurgency, Khatami tacitly acknowledged that the sponsorship of militias, insurgency, and terrorism enjoys state sanction and does not constitute rogue behavior.

The reaction of various Iranian officials to Khatami's speech underlines such a conclusion. Seventy-seven members of parliament demanded the Intelligence Ministry investigate the former president for his comments.[22] Iranian officials disapproved of Khatami's acknowledgment of activities for which the Islamic Republic tries to maintain plausible deniability. Tehran might use proxy groups and assassination squads to strike at enemies and liquidate dissidents, but it does not wish to be held accountable for such actions on the international stage.

As the controversy over Khatami's remarks faded, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the powerful judiciary chief, enunciated Tehran's continued commitment to exporting the revolution. Speaking to armed forces in Iran's northwestern Kordestan province, he said, "Know your worth since today we are in a position that you are the hope of Islamic national and Islamic liberation movements."[23]
From Buenos Aires to Berlin

The Iranian debate about exporting the revolution is not theoretical and limited only to theological seminaries or political speeches. In the Islamic Republic's first twenty-nine years, regime officials have assassinated more than 160 regime opponents outside Iran's borders.[24] While many of these killings occurred in the tumultuous years after the revolution as hit squads tracked down the shah's chief aides and revolutionary defectors, assassinations of dissidents have continued through, at least, the 1990s. While in many cases the perpetrators escaped or evidence was inconclusive, in the aftermath of several high-profile attacks, investigations uncovered official regime involvement.

On July 13, 1989, gunmen assassinated Abdol-Rahman Ghassemlou, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), along with a KDPI representative in Europe and an Iraqi Kurdish mediator as the three met with an Iranian delegation in a Vienna apartment. The Iranian delegation reported the shooting to the police but denied any responsibility. After taking statements, the Austrian police released the Iranian government representatives present in the apartment at the time of the assassination, Mohammad Ja'fari Sahraroudi, Iranian Kordestan provincial governor Mostafa Ajoudi, and Amir Bozorgian.

Only in subsequent days did questions about the Iranians' statements arise. Oswald Kessler, the head of the Austrian Special Anti-Terrorism Unit, noted that there had been no forced entry into the apartment, two of the victims were shot as they sat, and that each victim had received a coup de grâce to ensure death. He concluded that the murders were an intelligence operation. Subsequent forensic evidence supported Kessler's conclusions; shots had been fired from the position of the Iranian delegation and not from the door. Shell casing positions also suggested the Iranian delegation's complicity.[25] Three months after their deportation, Austrian police issued warrants for the three Iranians, but Tehran refused to extradite any of the wanted men. In sharp contrast to the manner in which the regime treated Hashemi in the wake of his 1986 rogue operations, the IRGC promoted Sahraroudi to brigadier-general and appointed him to head the Qods Force Intelligence Directory.[26]

The Ghassemlou affair was not the last Iranian operation against Kurdish dissidents in Europe. On September 17, 1992, shortly after the German government began its critical dialogue with Iranian leaders in order to end Tehran's isolation, two Iranian hit men assisted by four Lebanese Hezbollah operatives murdered three KDPI leaders and a supporter at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin. While one of the gunmen, Abdol-Rahman Banihashemi, and a getaway driver fled the country, German police arrested Hezbollah operative Abbas Hossein Rhayel—the other gunman—and several accomplices. The subsequent trial lasted more than three years, heard 176 witnesses, and gained access to intelligence files. On April 10, 1997, the court found Rhayel and Kazem Darrabi, an Iranian intelligence agent, guilty of murder and two other Lebanese as accessories to murder. The court also concluded that a Special Affairs Committee, headed by the supreme leader and including Rafsanjani, former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, and former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, had ordered the hit and that Fallahian had put Banihashemi in charge of organizing the operation.[27] Fallahian may have rejected the verdict, but shortly before the assassination, he had bragged on state television about the Intelligence Ministry's success "dealing vital blows" to the Kurdish opposition outside Iran.[28]

As instructive as the case was about state sponsorship of terrorism, so, too, was the aftermath. The next day, approximately 1,000 Ansar-e Hezbollah activists gathered in front of the German embassy in Tehran. Hossein Allah-Karam, the head of the hard-line vigilante group, warned, "One of our followers will strap a bomb to himself and blow up the embassy if Germany continues its accusations and hostile attitude against our leaders."[29] Three days later, a group of 250 students clashed with police in front of the embassy. The students issued a statement warning, "If ever the guide [Khamenei] orders us, we will wage a holy war against the infidels … We are conquerors of spy nests [a reference to the U.S. embassy]."[30] Iranian authorities promised to protect the embassy. German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel noted wryly, "Since suicide commandos only seem to act on orders from the government … we will take the Iranian government at its word."[31]

Kazem Darrabi (in cap), sentenced to life imprisonment for murder by a German court, was released after serving fifteen years. Here, he arrives in Tehran to a hero's welcome, December 11, 2007. He had been convicted of involvement in the murder of three leaders of the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party (KDPI) and their translator in Berlin. The German government freed Darrabi as part of its effort to engage Tehran.
Despite his life sentence, Berlin freed Darrabi on December 11, 2007, as part of its effort to engage Tehran. He immediately flew to Tehran where he was greeted by Ali Bagheri, the acting head of the Iranian foreign ministry's European affairs department, and received a hero's welcome.[32]

The allegations of top-level regime involvement in terrorism again surfaced after a July 18, 1994 suicide truck bomb attack leveled the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing eighty-five people and wounding almost twice as many. While terrorists had also attacked the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital two years before, investigations kicked in after the 1994 attack. After years of inconsistent Argentine attention to the investigation, Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral found guilty and issued an arrest warrant on November 9, 2006, for Rafsanjani, Velayati, Fallahian, the IRGC's Mohsen Rezai, IRGC officer Ahmad Reza Asgari, who served as third secretary of the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires, and Qods Force commander Ahmad Vahidi, subsequently Iran's deputy minister of defense for procurement.[33] Crucial to the case was Ahmad Rezai, son of Mohsen Rezai, who defected to the United States in February 1998. He acknowledged that "the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was planned in Tehran" and said that then-president Rafsanjani had decided to order the attack after an August 14, 1993 meeting in Mashhad at which Ahmad Rezai was present.[34] The Iranian government continues to deny the charges,[35] but after conducting an investigation of its own, Interpol found them credible enough to publish "red notices" for five of the implicated Iranians.[36]
Rogue Actions in Iraq?

The U.S. military commitment in Iraq has made the question of rogue Iranian behavior literally a matter of life and death for U.S. servicemen and a topic of intense discussion among diplomats and policymakers. In 2003, as Operation Iraqi Freedom neared, Western diplomats scrambled to win an Iranian pledge of noninterference. British foreign secretary Jack Straw elicited such a promise from Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, repeated this pledge to Zalmay Khalilzad, who supervised the Iraq portfolio on the National Security Council.[37] Even if Kharrazi and Zarif were sincere in their pledge, however, Iran's diplomacy was a diversion.

On September 9, 2002, Khamenei convened the Supreme National Security Council in Tehran, which concluded, "It is necessary to adopt an active policy in order to prevent long-term and short-term dangers to Iran."[38] Soon after Saddam's fall, the IRGC, with the acquiescence of the Islamic Republic's leadership, moved to infiltrate Iraq with thousands of fighters, militiamen, and Qods Force personnel replete with radio transmitters, money, pamphlets, and supplies.[39] Seized Iranian intelligence documents corroborate such IRGC movements.[40] IRGC officers also helped organize Shi‘i firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.[41] The very size and scope of such activities, as well as their continuity, suggest that Iranian involvement in Iraq was state-sanctioned and not the result of rogue operators; the latter involve small cells, not large scale deployments.

It was not long before the White House acknowledged concerns about the infiltration.[42] By October 2003, coalition forces had detained more than one hundred Iranians in Iraq.[43] While Hassan Kazemi Qomi, the Islamic Republic's ambassador in Baghdad, declared that "Iran will not accept anything that destabilizes Iraq,"[44] his very appointment suggested the opposite. Within the Iranian hierarchy, ordinary diplomats hold little power. Indeed, when conducting serious policy discussions, both diplomats and terrorists meet with the supreme leader or his office. On July 2, 2008, Velayati, now a special advisor to the supreme leader, acknowledged the subordination of Foreign Ministry personnel within Iranian diplomacy when he reminded officials that the supreme leader remains the ultimate foreign policy decision maker in the Islamic Republic.[45] Sadeq Kharrazi, a former ambassador to Paris and the brother of the former Iranian foreign minister, has also spoken of the subordination of foreign policy to the Supreme Leader's Office.[46] Qomi, however, is not an ordinary diplomat. He is a Qods Force officer specializing in working with militias and local forces.[47] Prior to his appointment to the Baghdad post, he coordinated Iranian aid to Afghanistan and served as the Islamic Republic's chief liaison to Lebanese Hezbollah.[48] Tehran's choice of Qomi for its Baghdad post suggests that far from rogue status, the IRGC coordinates Iranian policies toward Iraq with the full sanction of the Iranian leadership.

Ample evidence underlines the fact that Iranian destabilization efforts in Iraq are state-directed and that U.S. and coalition leadership would be naïve to accept as plausible Iranian denials of destabilization as official policy. An August 8, 2004 editorial in Jomhuri-ye Eslami, the mouthpiece of the Iranian intelligence community, declared that "the time for such a decision and call [for Iran to fight in Iraq] is fast approaching."[49] The call was heeded. Within days, Iraqi forces captured thirty Iranians fighting alongside Sadr's militia.[50] Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the powerful Iranian Guardian Council, praised Sadr's resistance. "I should really thank and praise those who are resisting the bloodthirsty wolves," he said while giving the official state sermon, the Islamic Republic's weekly statement of priorities and policies, on behalf of the supreme leader.[51] In addition, seized IRGC documents showed that Tehran was paying 11,740 members of the Badr Corps, the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).[52] The U.S. secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, confirmed that Iran was fueling the insurgency.[53] While diplomats and analysts may question official sanction for small-scale weapons smuggling or infiltration, the presence of an organized payroll suggests a widespread bureaucratic support network.

Iranian duplicity continued over the ensuing years. On March 23, 2006, Khalilzad said that as Iranian authorities professed support for the Iraqi political process, the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian intelligence ministry both sought to train and supply Iraqi insurgents and terrorist groups, both Sunni and Shi‘i.[54] The Qods Force and Lebanese Hezbollah established camps to train Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi army) and other militiamen.[55] What had been a ragtag and unprofessional band transformed quickly into a professional and lethal force. Tensions increased in 2007 with the discovery in Iraq of Iranian-manufactured explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs)—capable of piercing advanced U.S. armor, as well as Iranian mortars, rockets, and sniper rifles.[56] Qods Force members maintained some deniability: They did not place the EFPs themselves but supplied them, trained Iraqi militiamen in their use, and in some cases, had employees of an Iranian charity operating in Iraq pay locals to place them.[57] Again, the coordination between Qods Force and other Iranian entities suggests a greater degree of coordination than possible during a rogue operation.

The sheer continuity of Qods Force operations further undercuts the idea that the IRGC or its elite units operate as rogues. On December 30, 2006, U.S. forces intercepted senior Qods Force operatives at the Baghdad headquarters of SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz Hakim with documents pertaining to weapons and their shipment.[58] Twelve days later, U.S. forces detained five alleged Qods Force operatives in Iraqi Kurdistan,[59] and on March 20, 2007, U.S. forces arrested a Lebanese Hezbollah operative with two Iraqi "special group" members; each spoke of Qods Force support and coordination in a January 2007 kidnapping and murder of U.S. servicemen in Karbala.[60] By contrast, rogue operations are usually limited in both location and time. The sheer breadth of activities some diplomats and commentators dismiss as rogue undercuts such a conclusion.
Case of the British Sailors

Since its seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, the Islamic Republic has embraced unconventional actions and flouted international diplomatic norms as a means of furthering state policy. Here, again, the IRGC plays a crucial role. What many diplomats may see as rogue action appears part of a comprehensive Iranian strategy to bolster negotiating positions. In the poker game of diplomacy, if Tehran feels its cards are weak, it will not hesitate simply to seize new cards. This was the case on March 23, 2007, when, as diplomatic tensions surrounding the Islamic Republic's nuclear program rose, two IRGC speed boats seized fifteen British sailors on an anti-smuggling mission in disputed waters between Iran and Iraq. After several hours of silence, Iranian foreign ministry officials issued a statement accusing the British sailors of violating Iranian territorial waters.[61] Over subsequent days, Iranian officials paraded their captives on television, elicited forced confessions, and threatened to try their captives for espionage.[62]

Some diplomats and many commentators sought to isolate blame on the IRGC alone or its radical backers rather than hold the Iranian government accountable as a whole. "This was deliberate, no kidding," a senior U.S. official told The Washington Post, "the radicals are particularly under enormous pressure."[63] Bruce Riedel, former Clinton administration National Security Council Middle East director, also blamed the IRGC alone rather than the Iranian government.[64] Riad Kahwaji, an analyst for the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, described the operation against the British sailors as the actions of a rogue IRGC naval commander.[65] Alan Bock, a columnist for The Orange County Register, dismissed the incident as the action of one "overzealous local commander."[66] But context undercuts the rogue action theory. The incident came just two days after Khamenei declared in a Iranian New Year's speech, "If they take illegal actions [such as sanctioning Iran's nuclear program], we, too, can take illegal actions and will do so."[67] Subsequent Iranian behavior makes clear the operation's high-level support. First, on February 12, 2008, during Revolution Day festivities, Iranian authorities rolled the three British naval boats on truck beds during a Tehran parade.[68] Then, on April 14, the IRGC featured Col. Abolqasem Amangah, the mastermind of the operation, in an article on the IRGC website.[69] Finally, on July 1, the IRGC decorated Amangah for his actions.[70]

Tehran has made clear who speaks for it and who it supports. Unwillingness to accept reality can be costly. In June 1941, as the Nazi army drove full steam into the Soviet Union, Soviet premier Josef Stalin remained convinced that the attack was the result of rogue German elements. He wasted precious hours in futile diplomacy, unwilling to accept either Adolf Hitler or the Panzer Units for what they were.[71]
Conclusions

The question of what constitutes rogue activity in the Islamic Republic is crucial to policy formulation and diplomacy. Three U.N. Security Council resolutions, among other targets, have singled out senior IRGC officials for financial sanctions.[72] On October 25, 2007, both the U.S. State and Treasury departments designated the IRGC and Qods Force for their rogue behavior.[73] Such actions are counterproductive, however. Singling out the IRGC or Qods Force for their activities effectively exonerates the remainder of the Iranian government. It is the diplomatic equivalent of excusing a person guilty of murder because only his fingers pulled the trigger.

Even a cursory look at the structure and personnel of the Iranian government and its history of involvement in terrorism and insurgency demonstrate that the IRGC and Qods Force are in fact the opposite of rogues—they are deliberate creations of the Islamic Republic's government, are tightly controlled by the government, and exist to serve the government's policy objectives in Iran and abroad. Many of the Islamic Republic's current leadership—at least the nonclerical portion—spent their formative years at the front serving with the Revolutionary Guards.[74] As they enter politics, these IRGC members operate not only according to official hierarchy—directors-general reporting to deputy ministers, who in turn report to ministers, and deputy governors reporting to governors, for example—but also according to the extensive networks they developed during their IRGC service. Veterans of the same military unit, for example, may invoke back-channel connections to skip levels of bureaucracy or transcend ministerial bureaucracies. Political figures—the governor of Qom, for example[75]—may connect directly to IRGC companions still serving in the military. Perhaps this runs afoul of the bureaucratic process, but it does not suggest rogue activity. After all, it is common to all governments: Before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Secretary of State Colin Powell bypassed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to coordinate policy with his former subordinates from his time as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[76]

What is clear is that both the IRGC and its elite Qods Force represent the core of the Iranian state and enjoy the full support of its supreme leader and his all-powerful office. This does not mean that rogues do not exist within the Iranian political system. As the Islamic Republic has evolved, the supreme leader has narrowed the bounds of acceptable political discourse. What was acceptable in the revolution's first months—Mojahedin-e Khalq, Tudeh (the Iranian communist party), and Iran Freedom Movement—have today become movements outside the bounds of acceptable political debate. With their substantive purge from office, it appears that the reformists, too, are outsiders in the system. U.S. and European diplomats may like these reformers' approach, especially when compared to the current leadership, but desire does not change the reality that the reformers do not operate the levers of power. Indeed, if rogue behavior is defined as operating without state sanction, it is increasingly clear that Mohammad Khatami and his reformist minions are the Islamic Republic's true rogue actors, not the IRGC and Qods Force. These, unfortunately, represent and are indivisible from the regime.

Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.

[1] The New York Times, Feb. 12, 2007.
[2] Associated Press, Feb. 13, 2007.
[3] Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2007.
[4] Time, Mar. 23, 2007.
[5] Salam, Aug. 17, 1994, as cited in Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? (Washington: Washington Institute/Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000), p. 73.
[6] Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), p. 66.
[7] On control of independent newspapers, see Arash Sigarchi, "The Battle for Cyberspace: Blogging and Dissidence in the Middle East," American Enterprise Institute conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2008.
[8] For a history of vigilante groups in Iran, see Michael Rubin, Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001).
[9] Buchta, Who Rules Iran? pp. 47-55.
[10] Kenneth Katzman, The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 26-8.
[11] Mark J. Roberts, Khomeini's Incorporation of the Iranian Military (Washington: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1996), p. 51.
[12] Katzman, The Warriors of Islam, pp. 30-6.
[13] Roberts, Khomeini's Incorporation of the Iranian Military, pp. 52-3.
[14] Katzman, The Warriors of Islam, p. 3.
[15] Baqer Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 264.
[16] United Press International, Aug. 25, 1986; Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA, Tehran), Aug. 27, 1986.
[17] Associated Press, Oct. 3, 1986.
[18] The Washington Post, Nov. 4, 1986.
[19] Associated Press, Sept. 28, 1987.
[20] Buchta, Who Rules Iran? p. 69.
[21] Emrooz (Tehran), May 3, 2008.
[22] Asr-e Iran (Tehran), May 6, 2008.
[23] Iran Student Correspondents Association (Tehran), May 22, 2008.
[24] No Safe Haven: Iran's Global Assassination Campaign (New Haven: Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, May 2008), p. 3. For a chronological list of assassination victim and location, see Appendix 1.
[25] Ibid., pp. 25-9.
[26] Ibid., p. 28.
[27] Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination (New Haven: Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, 2007), pp. 2-20.
[28] Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Tehran), Aug. 30, 1992, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Sept. 2, 1992.
[29] Agence France-Presse, Apr. 11, 1997.
[30] Agence France-Presse, Apr. 14, 1997.
[31] Agence France-Presse, Apr. 19, 1997.
[32] RadioFarda.com (Prague), Dec. 11, 2007.
[33] The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2006; The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 16, 2007; Newsweek, Nov. 26, 2007.
[34] Associated Press Worldstream, Sept. 16, 1998; The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 16, 2007.
[35] Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (Tehran), Oct. 28, 2006; "Amia Case," IRNA, accessed July 14, 2008.
[36] "INTERPOL General Assembly Upholds Executive Committee Decision on AMIA Red Notice Dispute," INTERPOL media release, Nov. 7, 2007.
[37] Ash-Sharq al-Awsat (London), June 20, 2003.
[38] Time, Aug. 15, 2005.
[39] Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, Apr. 25, 2003.
[40] Time, Aug. 15, 2005.
[41] Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, Apr. 9, 2004.
[42] Ari Fleischer, White House news briefing, Apr. 23, 2003.
[43] Agence France-Presse, Oct. 23, 2003.
[44] Hambastegi (Tehran), Apr. 18, 2004.
[45] Alef.com (Tehran), July 2, 2008.
[46] Etemaad-e Melli (Tehran), July 7, 2008.
[47] Time, Apr. 12, 2006.
[48] The New York Sun, Apr. 12, 2004.
[49] Jomhuri-ye Eslami (Tehran), Aug. 8, 2004.
[50] The Guardian (London), Aug. 13, 2004.
[51] Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio (Tehran), Aug. 13, 2004.
[52] Time, Aug. 15, 2005.
[53] The Washington Times, Sept. 8, 2004.
[54] The Washington Post, Mar. 24, 2006; The New York Times, Aug. 11, 2006.
[55] Brig.-Gen. Kevin Bergner, news briefing, Combined Press Information Center, Baghdad, July 2, 2007.
[56] The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2007; Daily Telegraph (London), Feb. 13, 2007.
[57] Kimberly Kagan, "Iraq," in Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, and Danielle Pletka, Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 2008), p. 20.
[58] The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2006.
[59] The New York Times, Jan. 12, 2007.
[60] Bergner, news briefing, July 2, 2007.
[61] CNN.com, Mar. 24, 2007.
[62] Sunday Times (London), Mar. 25, 2007.
[63] The Washington Post, Mar. 23, 2007.
[64] The Washington Post, Apr. 7, 2007.
[65] Al-Jazeera English (Doha), Jan. 9, 2008.
[66] Antiwar.com, Apr. 7, 2007.
[67] Associated Press, Mar. 22, 2007.
[68] Asr-e Iran, Feb. 12, 2008.
[69] Sepahnews.com, Apr. 14, 2008.
[70] Agahsazi.com (Tehran), July 1, 2008.
[71] James P. Duffy, Hitler Slept Late, and Other Blunders that Cost Him the War (New York: Praeger Books, 1991), p. 72.
[72] UNSCR 1737 (2006); UNSCR 1747 (2007); and UNSCR 1803 (2008).
[73] "Designation of Iranian Entities and Individuals for Proliferation Activities and Support for Terrorism," Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, Oct. 25, 2007; "Statement by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., on Iranian Designations," U.S. Department of the Treasury, Oct. 25, 2007.
[74] Ali Alfoneh, "Iran's Parliamentary Elections and the Revolutionary Guards' Creeping Coup d'Etat," AEI Middle Eastern Outlook, Feb. 2008.
[75] I am grateful to Ali Alfoneh for tracing the IRGC membership of current Islamic Republic officials.
[76] Multiple discussions by author with members of the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2004 and 2005.

Netanyahu: My Policies Worked

Hillel Fendel

Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu, currently favored to become Israeli Prime Minister after the next national elections, says Israel is doing relatively well financially because of the policies he set in place as Finance Minister three years ago. Netanyahu, who served as Finance Minister from 2003 until 2005, brought Israel towards a more liberalized economy, while slashing social benefits in the process. Israel's GDP growth rate increased as a result, and Netanyahu has said that social benefits can now be restored to some extent.

"The reason why we are where we are and are taking this world crisis relatively well," Netanyahu said in a special pre-Rosh HaShanah interview, "is precisely because of the economic revolution I brought about." He was speaking with the Hebrew news site Walla.

"Before I was appointed Finance Minister," he said, "we faced collapse. You have to think what would have happened to us had I not carried out that economic plan. The reason we are in a good position now is because of the growth of the last five years, the rise in wages and the help to the weak. All these things made the Israeli economy more stable."

Analyzing the world economic crisis, Netanyahu, who earned the equivalent of an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, said, "The crisis stems from a certain problem [in the free-market economy] that must be fixed - but this doesn't mean to throw out the baby with the bath water. We must institute improvements just like they did after the collapse of Wall Street in 1929; all the talk about abandoning the free economy are totally baseless."

"What allows the U.S. government to intervene is because it is a free government," Netanyahu added. "Would it be better to be like North Korea, which can't put down even one dollar? Only dynamic and free economies can fix and improve themselves, and that's what will happen this time as well. We must take advantage of the crisis to strengthen our growth and to become among the best-placed economies in the world market."

New Leaders and Rosh Hashanah Reflections

Isi Leibler
October 2, 2008

After struggling through yet another annus horribilis, we enter the New Year (5769) facing dark clouds and girding ourselves for all sorts of eventualities, including a possible war. However, there is cause for comfort in the demise of the dysfunctional Olmert government under whose tenure our public image and self esteem sank to an all time low. We must at all costs resist pessimism and pray that, once ensconced, a new government will display forcefulness and restore our weakened deterrence - the strongest barrier to averting war. We should also remind ourselves that we overcame far greater challenges in the past and that in the event of a real war, the restructured IDF represents one of the most potent military forces in the world.

It is beyond belief that even on the eve of his departure in disgrace, Olmert still persisted in his obsessively vain efforts to reach agreement with the Palestinian Authority at any price. He offered the PA 98.1% of the West Bank, released additional terrorists and provided the PA with weapons, despite the fact that arms previously provided were employed against Israelis. Olmert also reiterated his "sorrow" about the status of the Arab refugees without explaining who was responsible for their creation in the first place, or how the Arabs deliberately maintained the refugee camps as a weapon against Israel. The PA's response to this appeasement was to demand additional concessions without reciprocity. To top it off, the American Consul General in Jerusalem disclosed that Olmert had been lying when he repeatedly assured the Knesset that the division of Jerusalem was off the agenda in the secret negotiations with the PA.

After the unsavory Kadima primaries, we now ask ourselves: Is the inexperienced Tzipi Livni, who only defeated an unpopular Shaul Mofaz by a slither of a margin, fit to lead the nation? Will she become a harbinger for reform and positive change or simply indulge in Knesset musical chairs and provide us with more of the same?

During the primaries, with the exception of Mofaz who irresponsibly recommended "bombing Iran" in order to strengthen his credentials as a "tough" leader, neither Livni nor any of the Kadima candidates made any effort to discuss policy. All they did was to trumpet their own virtues and condemn their opponents.

To this day, Tzipi Livni behaves as though the State of Israel was her personal fiefdom and refuses to disclose, even to her close party colleagues, what she offered to cede to the Palestinians in the course of her secret negotiations. Now, she talks about "bringing about change" but stresses that her objective is to create a new coalition without "changing the guidelines". We are totally in the dark as to what her vision for the future is. For all we know, she may intend pursuing even more radical policies than those undertaken by Olmert, which by no benchmark could be deemed "centrist".

Clearly, the vast majority of Israelis seeks to have some input and is loath to blindly entrust to Livni or any politician, life and death issues such as how to deal with Iran, the Palestinians and Syria. Nor can they rely on Kadima as a party per se because beyond misleadingly describing itself as "moderate" and "centrist", the scandal ridden entity has no policy of its own. Labor is in shambles and disintegrating even more rapidly since Olmert effectively hijacked its policies. Shas has its one dimensional objectives and is preparing to leverage the next government. In a word, the country is rudderless.

Benjamin Netanyahu does have clear cut policy proposals, the first one being no further unilateral concessions to the Palestinians without absolute reciprocity. He is also adamant that the unfulfilled recommendations of the Winograd Commission be implemented; in particular the urgent need to protect the civilian population in the event of another war. For understandable reasons, he is less specific about handling the Iranian nuclear threat although he is adamant that the hitherto botched efforts to introduce international sanctions be pursued with ruthless energy.

Beyond security there are other pressing national issues. Largely due to Netanyahu's reforms during his term as Finance Minister, our economy hitherto has miraculously sustained itself. However as a consequence of the Wall Street crash, we must now prepare for the global backlash which will inevitably reach us.

There is the future of our children, the educational system, which in the absence of radical reform will continue eroding towards Third World levels. To his credit, Netanyahu has made educational reform a central pillar of his policy.

Where I regrettably fail to see a more specific Netanyahu initiative, is in the area of electoral reform which is crucial to our nation's public hygiene.

There is the question of Jerusalem, the soul of the Jewish people. It would be tragic if the capital of the State of Israel falls under the mayoral control of non Zionists. Even worse, at a time when we are finally overcoming corruption in the public arena, Aryeh Deri emerges as a primary contender to be mayor of the Holy City. That Deri was treated more harshly by the courts than his successors does not detract from the fact that he was convicted of bribery. To visualize such a person becoming Mayor of Jerusalem is truly chilling and would have immensely negative national repercussions.

In this context, there is also a need to grapple constructively with the breakdown of relations with haredim in relation to issues such as conversion, the role of the Chief Rabbinate, national service, education and employment.

The only way to force politicians to relate to these burning issues is by holding elections. Besides, it would make a mockery of the democratic process if Livni formed a government without providing the electorate with an opportunity of reviewing her policies.

Despite the above, I remain upbeat about the future. I remind myself that most of our recent problems were inflicted upon us by leaders acting in their own interests and not that of the people. Yet, it is ultimately we the people, not the politicians, who will determine the destiny of our nation and I am convinced that people power will yet triumph in this country.

Truth to tell, every time I become despondent or angry, I look around with awe at the outstanding achievements of a nation founded principally by Holocaust survivors and Jews seeking refuge from oppression from all corners of the world. Israel remains the greatest success story of the 20th century and we are still the most blessed generation of Jews in 2000 years of exile and persecution.

My wish for this coming New Year is that Tzipi Livni recognizes that the Kadima primaries are not a mandate from the people to once more indulge in horse trading with the same failed leaders to form a new government. I also hope that Israeli citizens will become more heavily committed to their core obligations and take it upon themselves to exert greater pressure on their leaders to behave ethically. Above all, I pray that capable and idealistic young people are persuaded to enter the public arena and assume the reins of leadership.

Original article available at: http://www.leibler.com/article/362

Memo to McCain: Take the Gloves Off

Larry Elder
Thursday, October 02, 2008

McCain loses -- the first debate, that is.

Blown opportunities? Let us count the ways: Obama says, without rebuttal, that his plan lowers taxes on "95 percent of working families." This is flatly impossible because 32 percent of income tax returns filed (some 43 million Americans) pay absolutely nothing in federal income taxes. Obama makes his claim by offering a $500 "Making Work Pay" tax credit to everybody ($1,000 per family), by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and creating other credits. If your tax credit is more than your tax liability, you receive a check from the Treasury and you pay no taxes. That is not a "tax cut." McCain, too, offers a tax credit -- a $5,000 tax credit for health care. Yet neither the media nor McCain calls it a "tax cut."

Obama says, without rebuttal, that his tax hikes only affect those earning more than $250,000. Yet when you consider his spending plans, and the amount of money he expects to raise by "closing corporate loopholes" and taxing the rich, it simply does not add up. Moreover, he calls raising taxes a) good economic policy, and b) a matter of fairness. Obama, pointing to the sluggishness of the economy, recently said he might "defer" the tax hikes. Hold it, McCain should have said. If raising taxes on the so-called rich makes good economic policy, why "defer" it? Doesn't the economic sluggishness create even greater urgency in order to, as Obama claims, "jump-start" the economy?

Obama recently said, without a debate response from McCain, that because of the faltering economy, he may cut back on some of his proposed spending. Again, didn't Obama call the spending an "investment" in education and health care, job training and "volunteering"? If "investing" means a more productive and dynamic economy, doesn't an economic slowdown cry out for more spending?

Obama claims, without rebuttal, that he "pays for" the increased spending. If "closing corporate loopholes" and increasing taxes on the rich pay for more social spending, why put those off simply because of an economic downturn? Obama's latest backtracks on taxes and spending say one thing, loudly and clearly -- they hurt the economy. And by his own admission!

Missed opportunities on foreign policy:

Obama calls, without rebuttal, the Iraq war a blunder. Is it? By an almost even margin, 39 percent of Americans call Iraq a failure, while 41 percent say that history will judge it as a success. The numbers considering it a future success increased from 29 percent last August, while the it-will-be-deemed-a-failure crowd fell from 57 percent.

Obama still claims, without rebuttal, that while the surge succeeded, it failed to bring about the "political reconciliation" intended. This is patently false. In addition to meeting or making progress on nearly all of the 18 political benchmarks set by Congress, the Iraqi government, just last week, set a time for provincial elections -- perhaps the most important benchmark. McCain never mentioned it. Instead of a fledgling democracy and a potentially strong Muslim ally in the Middle East in the war on terror, Obama wanted a precipitous withdrawal. As former Secretary of State James Baker said, "If we picked up and left right now, you would see the biggest civil war you've ever seen." Even the liberal, anti-Bush Washington Post recently published an editorial pointing to Iraq's continuous improvement, and criticized Obama for his insistence on a timed withdrawal: "Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise. Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible."

Obama claims, without rebuttal, that he consistently opposed the war. Did he? Obama, after his anti-war speech in 2002, later said he understood why senators voted for the Iraq war and admitted he was "not privy to Senate intelligence reports"; that it "was a tough question and a tough call" for the senators; and that he "didn't know" how he would have voted had he been in the Senate. More than a year after the war began, Obama said, "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." Given Obama's 97 percent record of voting with his party, why accept the idea that this cautious get-along, go-along "present"-voting former state senator, now U.S. senator, would have defied the majority of his party -- including all of his fellow senators running in the presidential primaries -- and voted against the war?

McCain foolishly "suspended" his political campaign to go to Washington and deal with the economic crisis. But when the polls show the other guy ahead, and he leaves the debate with no blood, no ambulance -- you lose.

McCain wants to "put his country first." The best way is simple: Get aggressive and win the election.



Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Culture of Debt

Ken Blackwell
Thursday, October 02, 2008

How did we get here? Only when we answer that question can we try to prevent it from happening again.

When your house is on fire, all you care about is putting out the fire. You call the fire department, get the kids out of the house, and do whatever you can to stop the blaze. After that, you ask who started it. But there is a more fundamental question to ask: How did it start? How could it have been prevented? Much has already been said about putting out the fire that started on Wall Street and that now threatens to engulf Main Street. We must realize that the fates of Wall Street and Main Street are inextricably linked. You cannot watch one collapse and expect the other to stand strong.

That is the point that some have not grasped with their condemnations of corporate greed. Yes, many financial executives exercised poor judgment, making reckless decisions. And these knuckleheads ought not to be rewarded for their failures and mismanagement.

Accountability is key. Bankers who made irresponsible loans must be held to account, as should investment managers who chose to peddle instruments that included those loans. So should federal regulators who were asleep at the switch, as well as congressional leaders who chose to not crack down on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be held accountable?

But we must look to the root cause. It is not the loosening of regulations from the Clinton years, or the push for home ownership by the administration and certain congressional leaders, or the corrupt practices at Fannie and Freddie, or the greed of financiers. All of those played a role. But those factors could not cause a collapse by themselves.

We have become a culture addicted to instant gratification and a fixation on the material. Increasingly, concepts such as duty, self-denial, hard work, delayed gratification, and patience have been swept away.

We have a twenty-four hour news cycle that provides us with immediate news. We no longer wait for the evening news, to say nothing of tomorrow's newspaper.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in our finances. We have become a culture addicted to debt. It starts with 18-year-olds, where everyone getting a job is offered a credit card and everyone going to college is offered several, with the expectation of profits from interest accruing on balances.

The economic expansion of the past fifteen years has been built on a mountain of debt. Millions spend today with no thought of how they can pay tomorrow. Whereas you used to save and invest and wait for big purchases such as a new car, now you get it today and pay massive sums in interest as you finance it.

That is what happened with housing. This gets tricky, because unless you are wealthy, few can buy a decent home without debt. Therefore the rule of "no debt" cannot apply. Instead, the need is for responsible debt, gauging what an appropriate amount of debt is, given your paycheck and your obligations.

But it takes two to tango. For years, people have sought more house than they could afford. But the banks would say no. Until now.

The instant-gratification culture that has run rampant at the consumer end of the equation has now seeped into the lending end. Suddenly, when people apply for a loan for twice as much house as they could afford, the bank says yes.

Over a million people have found themselves unable to make those mortgage payments. And so the banks find themselves overextended. And the investment houses using those mortgage notes as investment assets found their asset values plummeting, resulting in the massive wave of losses that has caused the damage we have seen thus far. And the worst may well be yet to come.

There is much blame to go around. The president and Congress are trying to put out the fire. But once they do, we should not allow the house to catch fire again. It may not be exciting to talk about teaching and following sound principles regarding debt management and prudent planning. It is even less exciting to talk about finding contentment and happiness in ways other than always needing to lunge after something newer, better - and more expensive.

But we must, in our schools and in our homes, and by our actions.

This financial crisis is the result of the culture we have created. And it will happen again and again if we don't address the root cause. We must do better.



Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Comment: Amen, enough said!!

The Blame Game

Cal Thomas
Thursday, October 02, 2008

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the floor of the House on Monday to blame Republicans for the financial turmoil and charge them with a laissez-fare attitude toward regulation, it seemed like a calculated effort to shift attention and accountability from what Democrats have done to create the current conditions. Fortunately, we have YouTube so Democrats can run from their records, but they can't hide At a 2004 hearing of the Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee, then-Chairman Rep. Richard Baker, Louisiana Republican, predicted the collapse of Fannie Mae if nothing was done. Baker called for more regulation, something Democrats claim Republicans never wanted. In an editorial Tuesday, The New York Times got it wrong when it accused Republicans of engaging in "free markets-above-all ideology." That just isn't true. President Bush was calling for more oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in his first year as president, though he also praised efforts to expand minority home ownership at a time when bad credit risks were straining the system.

Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, said in a Sept. 25, 2003 hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services, "We do not have a crisis at Fannie Mae and in particular Freddie Mac under the outstanding leadership of Frank Raines." It was Raines who took close to $100 million in "compensation" from Fannie Mae during his tenure as its chief executive officer. In the 2004 hearing, Rep. William Lacy Clay, Missouri Democrat, called the investigation that found illegal activity at Fannie Mae a "lynching," an incendiary word, as both Clay and Raines are African American. Watch this eight-minute video and see who wanted to fix the problem and who did not.

There was something fishy about the Democrats' concern that the bailout process would be drawn out. Democrats and the Bush administration wanted to rush a bill through to avert further damage to Wall Street. As Rush Limbaugh noted on his Tuesday radio program, Democratic leaders claimed President Bush "rushed" the United States into war with Iraq, though Bush spent months building his case with Congress and the United Nations, both of which approved military action against Saddam Hussein.

Now, noted Limbaugh, Democratic leaders want to rush through a "rescue" bill to "bailout" those who made wrong decisions and now want to escape accountability. It is a good point. Many noted economists are opposed to the bailout plan, as are significant numbers of the American people, and even a substantial number of House Democrats. Never has "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," sounded emptier. If there is such urgency in avoiding financial Armageddon, does the Rosh Hashanah holiday necessitate that non-Jewish members stop working toward a reasonable compromise? Would they quit for Christmas if another war broke out?

Before Democrats and some in the left-wing media add this fiasco to their list of indictments against Republicans, they might consider what Bill Clinton said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Sept. 25. About his party's reluctance to place more restrictions on Fannie and Freddie, Clinton said, "I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress, or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

As for the claim by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank that the Republicans are to blame, The Wall Street Journal correctly noted in a Sept. 10 editorial, "(Frank's) record is close to perfect as a stalwart opponent of reforming the two companies, going back more than a decade. The first concerted push to rein in Fan and Fred in Congress came as far back as 1992, and Mr. Frank was right there, standing athwart. But things really picked up this decade, and Barney was there at every turn."

This mess has afforded conservative Republicans an opportunity to ask the public to throw out the Democratic majority and start over with a chastened and hopefully wiser Republican Party in the majority. But that will take leadership, a commodity that seems in short supply, like bulls on Wall Street.



Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

Fitzgerald: Dubai's pleasure palaces

Those who used to sing the praises of the Arabs, of the vast starlit desert, and the presumed effect of that vast starlit desert on the leather-faced noble Bedu, hawk on hand, standing barefoot on an outcrop of rock (see Freya Stark, see Wilfred Thesiger, see Lawrence, see them all) did not live to see what the children of those noble Bedu have done with the unmerited wealth that came from an accident of geology. They never imagined what the Arabs have managed to do -- in Riyadh, in Jiddah, in Dubai -- with their vulgar pleasure-palaces out-topping one another, the xanadus that mimic Western buildings, and then some.

Dubai, by the way, is full of Iranians and hundreds of billions of dollars in Iranian investments. It is, in atmosphere, much above the other, entirely Arab-controlled sheikhlets of the Emirates. While the Sunni Arabs have had to worry about the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and about Bahrain (where the Sunni ruler worries about the 75% of his subjects who are Shi'a and don't much care for the present governing arrangement -- so much so that he is trying to give instant citizenship to 50,000 Iraqis, as long as they are all Sunni Iraqis), they didn't worry about Dubai.

After all, wasn't this Iranian capital in flight from the Islamic Republic? And aren't the kind of Iranians who live and invest in Dubai the good kind, the kind who only want to make money? In other words, Sunni Arabs make the same mistake with Shi'a Iranians as Infidels do when they swallow the akyolish nonsense about the swellness of Erdogan et al. because of "economic growth" -- or when they swallow the d'souzaish nonsense about the swellness of those law-abiding, straight-as-Mitt-Romney "traditional Muslims."

Dubai may be an offense to Muslim sensibilities, both Sunni and Shi’ite, but for other reasons. It is an offense to good taste and a sense not only of aesthetic, but moral proportion. The whole project of modern, empty Dubai, hollow Dubai, nothing Dubai is offensive. Each building represents an attempt to outdo another with gimmicks: this building turns with the sun, and that one can stand on stilts, and this one prostrates itself five times a day. The most grotesque and unappealing luxury (Warren Buffett won't be impressed) merely puts on display all the comic bad taste of the Arabs and Iranians who, with the money they do not spend on mosques and madrasas around the world and on weapons purchases and weapons projects, and on buying armies of Western hirelings, build the kind of thing, more or less, on display in the picture here.

In the rich Muslim states, the best of the West -- which has nothing to do with money, but with intellect and the imagination -- is not being emulated. Instead, much as they denounce that West, it is the worst of that West that in the rich Arab and Muslim states is being sedulously aped.

The luxury of Dubai is nauseating to contemplate. There is nothing there but that. No art, no science, no thought. Luxury, money, gold in the souks. Perhaps the locals will rent some paintings for display from the Louvre, or rent a succursale or two of Western universities looking for loot, in order to pretend there are minds to be cultivated and something like civilization to be found in Dubai. But it's not to be found. All of Dubai is not worth a single star in your personal Michelin. Dubai is merely a cheesy holiday resort with elephantiasis, the result of the hundreds of billions that are so freely spent because they have been not earned, but merely accidentally acquired.

That photograph (here it is again) tells you all you need to know not only about Dubai, but about all the other pleasure-towns that the Arabs have built up with the oil money lavished upon them.

Civilizationally, they remind me of the story -- a true story, told to be by a former member of the staff -- about the famous London bookseller Hatchard's. One day a rich Arab entered the store. It seems he had bought a country estate with a large library, and he asked that that library now be filled -- he motioned around the vast bookstore -- with "one of each."

"Secularism is as foreign to Islamic theory as is Sharia law to Americans"

Jihad Watch

A good reminder that, with Jesus' "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, unto God what is God's," Christianity can survive, thrive even, in a secular society; whereas in the Islamic world, where there is absolutely no separation between mosque and state, modernity and globalization, both practically synonymous with secularism, are always going to be on hostile territory. "Secularlism foreign to Islam," by Peter Johnston for Yale Daily News, September 26:

The distinction between the City of God and the City of Man laid the foundation for the Catholic Church’s cession of temporal power to the emerging European state, which in turn placed limits upon the Church’s temporal response to the Reformation...

Now it may be true, from the point of view of Christianity, that the modern understanding of secularism has taken the distinction between the City of God and the City of Man too far. Thus the continuous debate in America on the proper role of religion in the public sphere. But at the very least, Christians have a history that requires them to grapple with secularism as something of their own kin. Secularism cannot be completely rejected as “other,” as an imposition of a rival faith.

The situation is much different for Muslims. Islamic theory describes a proper ordering of the civil community. Secularism is as foreign to Islamic theory as is Sharia law to Americans. Thus it was surprising when Prime Minister Blair, at his talk last weekend, suggested a parallel between tensions relating to Ireland in Great Britain and the tensions in the Middle East. Tensions in the Middle East are only partially caused by internal sectarian conflict. They are also caused, and perhaps to a much larger extent, by the prospect of globalization.

Globalization does not simply mean the development of third-world countries, the spread of efficient communication and transportation systems, or the increasing mobility of capital. Rather, globalization also entails the progress of Western ideals, secularism foremost among them. While it is possible, therefore, that globalization will strengthen Christian faith, it is not possible for it to strengthen Muslim faith.

Because Muslim "faith" is simply the first, and only, "pillar" of Islam -- simply saying the shehada (no god but Allah, Muhammad his prophet), whereas the other four, including the whole of sharia law, revolve around works, deeds, what a person does in the now, and which often contradict "Western ideals."