Indigo Jo Blogs

Daniel Pipes: Unleash the Iranian Opposition

This is an article by Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post, plugging the so-called People's Mujahideen (or Mujahideen-e-Khalq), an organisation banned as a terrorist group in the US and the UK, but apparently not in France where its leader was able to rub shoulders with a US congressman (Bob Filner, D-CA) and the former Algerian PM Sid Ahmed Ghozali. Pipes's write-up mentions a few of the things that pleased him:

Simply put, the rogue oil state regime it opposes terrifies one half the West and tempts the other; and the MEK is itself accused of being a superannuated Marxist-Islamist terrorist cult.

These obstacles have not, however, prevented the MEK from trumpeting that Islamism is the new global threat, providing important intelligence to the West (for example, about Iran's nuclear program), terrifying the regime in Teheran, and putting on major displays of anti-regime solidarity. ...

[MeK leader Maryam] Rajavi's in-depth analysis mentioned neither the United States nor Israel, something extremely rare for a major speech about Middle Eastern politics. Nor did she even hint at conspiratorial thinking, a deeply welcome change for Iranian politics.

Finally, no other opposition group in the world can mount so impressive a display of muscle as does the MEK, with its thousands of supporters, many young, and a slate of dignitaries.

These factors, combined with the mullah's near-phobic reaction toward the MEK, suggest that the organization presents a formidable tool for intimidating Teheran.

I was put onto Pipes's article by a guest post at Harry's Place, a blog I don't link to or agree with often, but in this case they provide a number of references for why the MeK can't be trusted to deliver a "secular, democratic Iran", including one from the New York Times (not online, it seems) which describes how they force their members to divorce, deny them friendship and shield them from "corrupting" outside influences.

I find it amusing that the guest poster asks if Pipes has "lost his marbles". I think it's part of his usual agenda. After all, the MeK have not fought western forces for decades, and as long as they are only terrorising Muslim Iranians, that's OK by him.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Comment is free: Lost in translation

Jonathan Steele on how the president of Iran's notorious "wipe off the map" speech did not in fact contain the offending words at all:

The New York Times's Ethan Bronner and Nazila Fathi, one of the paper's Tehran staff, make a more serious case. They consulted several sources in Tehran. "Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say 'wipe off' or 'wipe away' is more accurate than 'vanish' because the Persian verb is active and transitive," Bronner writes.

The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."

Steele notes that even MEMRI, which "is headed by a former Isareli military intelligence officer and has sometimes been attacked for alleged distortion of Farsi and Arabic quotations for the benefit of Israeli foreign policy", also accepted that the real speech referred to time rather than place.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

In case anyone came in having recently read Melanie Phillips' diary where the writer has still not bothered to delete or amend her most recent entry which repeats a false report from the Canadian National Post about the Iranian government forcing Jews to wear yellow stars, corrections have been appearing all over the blogosphere from Harry's Place to Lenin's Tomb (whose author posted various news links and a few scans and screenshots; unlike Melanie Phillips, the NP has pulled the story). Even Robert Spencer has got around to acknowledging that there is doubt about the story. (More: Adloyada, TwennyTwo.)

The story seems to trace back to Amir Taheri, about whom "Lenin" has a bit of background, but you might also like to see my earlier post about his fatuous allegations regarding women's hijabs and what black and white hijabs respectively symbolise. Such accusations could only have been motivated by malice, and newspapers which reproduce them should be assumed to be at best negligent and at worst malicious themselves.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

Timothy Garton Ash has what is in many ways a rather tendentious future history on "what happened" after President Hillary Clinton bombed Iran's nuclear facilities in 2009, having won an election by demonstrating that she was tougher than Jeb Bush and/or John McCain:

Guardian Unlimited: The tragedy that followed Hillary Clinton's bombing of Iran in 2009

I tend to agree with those who doubt very much that Clinton will ever be chosen as a Democratic presidential candidate, much less get elected. (I doubt Barack Obama will either, for that matter.) Still, the notion that it will lead to a possibly catastrophic terrorist backlash isn't too far-fetched - it will only take a few people to carry off such an operation, after all. And the UK cannot afford a dirty bombing in London. If it hits a major tourist area, it stands a serious chance of making that part of town inaccessible for decades, with a huge knock-on as tourists stay away, and if they are not coming to London then many of them will not be coming at all. It's notable that Blair is now not ruling out participating (there's a surprise), and unlike Bush, is not up for election for up to four years.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)