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It’s the return of a readers’ favorite: Animated Fragments. These clips celebrate the briefest of the brief: short animated experiments, work-in-progress clips, advertising pieces, animated GIFs, trailers and and small pieces that otherwise wouldn’t have a home on Cartoon Brew. For more, visit the Animated Fragments archive.

“La zona blanca” by Reza Riahi (Iran/France)

“Louis” by Mathilde Parquet (France)

“Amoo Lucky” teaser for Riz Mouj Co. directed by Mohammad Kheirandish/Tuca Animation Studio (Iran)

“Cake” (WIP) by Anna P

“NoName Walk Cycle” by Ariel Victor (Australia)

These two pieces of animation from Iran caught me by surprise because they are so different from the rest of the animation I’ve seen from that country. The first is a commercial for Lina Luke snack food directed by Moin Samadi. It has been accepted into this year’s Annecy Animation Festival:

The next is an energetic and funny hand-drawn piece called Evolution by Mehdi Alibeygi.

“EVOLUTION” CREDITS
Director, Writer, Animator: Mehdi Alibeygi
Executive Producer: Moin Samadi
Sound and Music: Armin Bahari
Composite: Sare Shafipour
Logo Designer: Amin Maftoon
Produced by Raiavin Studio

Simon “Sion” Ebrahimi  is a retired Iranian Jewish accountant and author who was held hostage for many months in his office in Tehran during the Iranian revolution. Simon’s office was located across the street from the U.S. Embassy. In November 1979, when the embassy was taken over by armed revolutionary thugs, Simon and his partners were also held hostage inside their offices by his armed employees. Now in his seventies, he resides in Los Angeles and has penned a fictional, multi-generational family saga loosely based on his family’s life in Iran.

Please tell everyone a little about yourself, Simon

Simon: I was born and raised in Jewbareh, the Jewish ghetto of Esfahan, Iran. I studied management and finance in England before returning to Iran, where I was a partner to an international accounting firm. In 1979, I was taken hostage by my employees at the same time as the American Embassy compound was overtaken by the Islamic Republic. I left Iran with my wife and two daughters after the revolution to settle in Los Angeles, California. For over fifteen years, I was the editor of Shofar, a monthly magazine published both in English and Farsi by the Iranian American Jewish Federation, with an international readership of about fifty thousand. I have also had popular television and radio programs in the Persian media.

When did the writing bug bite, and in what genre(s)?

Simon: Although I was an economist by profession, writing had always been the passion of my life. I began with short stories and ended up writing a multi-generational family saga of five generations of Iranian Jews. Veiled Romance is the last of the five generations; the other four are waiting in the line.

When you started writing, what goals did you want to accomplish? Is there a message you want readers to grasp?

Simon: For as long as I remember, I’ve been writing. Once you commit your feelings and thoughts to paper and people read and appreciate it, you’ve already accomplished your goal. Iranian Jews have over 2500 years of history in Persia which is unknown to many. If you’re curious about the life stories of a Jewish minority in Iran, you are my reader.

Briefly tell us about your latest book. Is it part of a series or stand-alone?

Simon: The novel Veiled Romance begins as Leila Omid writes her memoirs from an Iranian prison. As she struggles to survive in hellish conditions, she sets down the story of  how she was educated in the United States, where she met and fell in love with Cyrus, a fellow Iranian Jewish student. Separated for years, they were reunited in Tehran and their love was rekindled, but when the revolution erupted Cyrus was taken hostage by Islamic fundamentalists and … Well, please go to my website (www.Simon-Writes.com), read the first two chapters of the book and if you’re interested, buy the book (either on the site or Amazon) and read the rest.

What’s the hook for the book?

Simon: An Iranian young, American educated, brilliant woman, in love, writing her memoirs from Islamic Republic jail.

How do you develop characters? Setting?

Simon: By making them learn from their experiences. Setting? What better than having been taken hostage during the American Embassy hostage taking in Tehran (which is what exactly happened to me.)

Who’s the most unu

Retold by Alexis York Lumbard, illustrated by Demi,
The Conference of the Bird
Wisdom Tales, 2012.

Ages:  7 +

Artist Demi has provided a lavish visual feast to illustrate Alexis York Lumbard‘s adaptation of a Sufi classic, The Conference of the Birds. Farid al-Din Attar’s 12th century Persian poem presents an analogy of the human spiritual quest through the quest of thirty birds (si morge in Persian) to find Simorgh, a phoenix-like enlightened being reputedly residing on a faraway holy mountain. They are led by a hoopoe, the long-beaked, apricot-crested bird with dramatic black and white markings that is legendary in desert countries for finding underground water.

Along the way, various birds suffer the same setbacks human beings do on their spiritual paths: in Lumbard’s text, the duck procrastinates; the parrot is attached to her gems; the finch fears a storm; the partridge becomes impatient; the hawk forges ahead and gets lost. With the hoopoe’s encouragement, presented in verse, each bird lets go of whatever obstacle is in its way.

“So do not let your many doubts
Destroy this golden chance.

Release their hold upon you now,
and to your King advance!”

Demi’s vivid water colors and lively lines reveal quirky individual bird personalities and egos as she renders the birds overcoming trepidation in response to the hoopoe’s admonishments. Her paintings, on pale or midnight blue washes, are framed with gold borders that depict in tiny images characteristic postures of the particular bird in question. Young children can intuit an inspiring story from the illustrations alone.

In traditional versions, the birds arrive at the holy mountain to find not Simorgh, but a reflecting pool in which they see themselves. The story subtly suggests that one finds the infinite in the particular, the holy in the very self that seeks the Other. Lumbard has appended a page to her version in which the sun on the water transforms the birds’ reflections into dazzling light. “In this moment of silence when no thoughts…passed before their minds, the birds found themselves in the loving embrace of God, their true King.”

Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr‘s introduction offers background on the original Persian poem. Parents and teachers who prefer that young readers realize for themselves the profound wordless insights of this enduring story may find, for example, Peter Sis‘ beautifully printed 2011 version more to their liking; but many others will appreciate Lumbard’s explication and look forward to her continued project of providing children with books of spiritual guidance.

Charlotte Richardson
August 2012

NB: Read our interview with Demi here and view our gallery of her work here.

Jolyon Mitchell

A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.

It was agonizing, just a few weeks before publication of Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, to discover that there was a minor mistake in one of the captions. Especially frustrating, as it was too late to make the necessary correction to the first print run, though it will be repaired when the book is reprinted. New research had revealed the original mistake. The inaccuracy we had been given had circulated the web and had been published by numerous press agencies and journalists too. What precisely was wrong?

To answer this question it is necessary to go back to Iran. During one of the demonstrations in Tehran following the contested re-election of President Ahmadinejad in 2009, a young woman (Neda Agha-Soltan) stepped out of the car for some fresh air. A few moments later she was shot. As she lay on the ground dying her last moments were captured on film. These graphic pictures were then posted online. Within a few days these images had gone global. Soon demonstrators were using her blood-spattered face on posters protesting against the Iranian regime. Even though she had not intended to be a martyr, her death was turned into a martyrdom in Iran and around the world.

Many reports also placed another photo, purportedly of her looking healthy and flourishing, alongside the one of her bloodied face. It turns out that this was not actually her face but an image taken from the Facebook page of another Iranian with a similar name, Neda Soltani. This woman is still alive, but being incorrectly identified as the martyr has radically changed her life. She later described on BBC World Service (Outlook, 2 October 2012) and on BBC Radio 4 (Woman’s Hour, 22 October 2012) how she received hate mail and pressure from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to support the claim that the other Neda was never killed. The visual error made it almost impossible for Soltani to stay in her home country. She fled Iran and was recently granted asylum in Germany. Neda Soltani has even written a book, entitled My Stolen Face, about her experience of being mistaken for a martyr.

The caption should therefore read something like: ‘A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.’ This mistake underlines how significant the role is of those who are left behind after a death. Martyrs are made. They are rarely, if ever, born. Communities remember, preserve, and elaborate upon fatal stories, sometimes turning them into martyrdoms. Neda’s actual death was commonly contested. Some members of the Iranian government described it as the result of a foreign conspiracy, while many others saw her as an innocent martyr. For these protestors she represents the tip of an iceberg of individuals who have recently lost their lives, their freedom, or their relatives in Iran. As such her death became the symbol of a wider protest movement.

This was also the case in several North African countries during the so-called Arab Spring. In Tunisia, in Algeria, and in Egypt the death of an individual was put to use soon after their passing. This is by no means a new phenomenon. Ancient, medieval, and early modern martyrdom stories are still retold, even if they were not captured on film. Tales of martyrdom have been regularly reiterated and amplified through a wide range of media. Woodcuts of martyrdoms from the sixteenth century, gruesome paintings from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, photographs of executions from the nineteenth century, and fictional or documentary films from the twentieth century all contribute to the making of martyrs. Inevitably, martyrdom stories are elaborated upon. Like a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, they collect barnacles of additional detail. These details may be rooted in history,unintentional mistakes, or simply fictional leaps of the imagination. There is an ongoing debate, for example, around Neda’s life and death. Was she a protestor? How old was she when she died? Who killed her? Was she a martyr?

Martyrdoms commonly attract controversy. One person’s ‘martyr’ is another person’s ‘accidental death’ or ‘suicide bomber’ or ‘terrorist’. One community’s ‘heroic saint’ who died a martyr’s death is another’s ‘pseudo-martyr’ who wasted their life for a false set of beliefs. Martyrs can become the subject of political debate as well as religious devotion. The remains of a well-known martyr can be viewed as holy or in some way sacred. At least one Russian czar, two English kings, and a French monarch have all been described after their death as martyrs.

Neda was neither royalty nor politician. She had a relatively ordinary life, but an extraordinary death. Neda is like so many other individuals who are turned into martyrs: it is by their demise that they are often remembered. In this way even the most ordinary individual can become a martyr to the living after their deaths. Preserving their memory becomes a communal practice, taking place on canvas, in stone, and most recently online. Interpretations, elaborations, and mistakes commonly cluster around martyrdom narratives. These memories can be used both to incite violence and to promote peace. How martyrs are made, remembered, and then used remains the responsibility of the living.

Jolyon Mitchell is Professor of Communications, Arts and Religion, Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) and Deputy Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. He is author and editor of a wide range of books including most recently: Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (2012); and Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (2012).

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image credit: A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan, used in full page context of p.49, Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, by Jolyon Mitchell. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

The post Making and mistaking martyrs appeared first on OUPblog.

By Alfred Rolington

Cyber attacks on Iran have been well publicised in the press and on Western television. General William Shelton, a top American cyber general, has now turned these attacks around saying that these events are giving Iran a strategic and tactical cyber advantage creating a very serious “force to be reckoned with.”

Since 2010, Iran’s infrastructure has been attacked hundreds of times by cyber viruses. To date the most documented and best known cyber attacks have been aimed at Iran and are known as cyber worms called Stuxnet. These electronic worms were used to attack Iranian nuclear power plants and connected systems. General Shelton, who heads up Air Force Space Command and Air Force cyber operations, gave a briefing to reporters in January 2013, where he said that the 2010 Stuxnet virus attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium processing plant had generated considered responses from Iran that have led to improved offensive and defensive cyber-capabilities.

In December 2012, the Stuxnet virus returned and hit computer and energy operations and companies in the southern Hormozgan region. Shelton claimed that Iran’s improved cyber defense capability had helped Iran protect it against subsequent attacks on oil terminals and other manufacturing plants. This new capability, he believed, will subsequently be used by Iran against its enemies in the near future. “They are going to be a force to be reckoned with,” said General Shelton, “with the potential capabilities that they will develop over the years.” At present he stated that America had over six thousand cyber specialists employed to monitor, analyse and counter cyber attacks, and he was intending to employ another thousand specialists over the next twelve months to improve America’s effectiveness in this vital area.

Moreover, assassinations and assassination attempts in conjunction with cyber attacks are thought to be part of an integrated plan of attacks on Iran’s nuclear research and manufacturing capabilities. A year ago on 11 January 2012, Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year-old Iranian scientist, and his driver were both killed when a motorcyclist attached a bomb to their car as they were driving. So far these attacks, which seem to form part of the broader cyber-related strategy aimed at Iran’s nuclear program, have successfully killed five Iranian nuclear scientists in the last two years according to FARS, a Tehran news agency. However, in January 2013, the Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi claimed that his organisation had stopped a number of attempts to kill nuclear scientists so it is uncertain which reports are accurate.

These attacks on Iran’s electronic systems represent only a very small amount of the current cyber attack and threat capability. Increasingly, all governments and corporations must respond to the cyber reality. With an interconnected world, cyber attacks on infrastructure have become frequent and damaging. Cyber crime is costing businesses billions of pounds although they tend to keep quiet about the attacks. (The BBC reported that UK cyber crime costs £27bn a year.) Efforts to get a grip on the problem had been hampered by firms who don’t want to admit they had been the victims of attacks for fear of “reputational damage”. Baroness Neville-Jones, Prime Minister David Cameron, and Foreign Secretary William Hague met the bosses of some of Britain’s biggest businesses, including Barclays, HSBC, Tesco and BA, to urge them to take the problem more seriously.

In September 2012, a hacker called vorVzakone posted a message on a Russian online forum saying that a malevolent Trojan, called Project Blitzkrieg, was capable of attacking the American financial industry, that it had already critically affected up to five hundred American targets, and that it had stolen over five million dollars. “This attack combines both a technical, innovative backend with the tactics of a successful, organized cybercrime movement,” a McAfee report explained, adding that the next target would probably be investment banks.

Hackers, apparently working independently as criminal gangs, have grown in their specialization faster than most police and government intelligence organisations would have believed possible. Yet cyber hackers working for governments have targeted everything from computer systems to power plants from the US to Iran, Europe to China, Australia and beyond. These civil servant hackers are often employed by governments to help fulfill a strategy, to change information and publicity, or to gain information and bring systems down.

One example comes from Ray Boisvert, who recently retired from the post of Assistant Director of Intelligence for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He believes the current capabilities of most governments is not enough to counter the current cyber threats. He said that cyber threats were fundamentally undermining Canada’s “future prosperity as a nation.” He stated there is a lack of response on three levels. First from government and corporate policy-makers who do not, in his opinion, understand the technical complexities of digital telecommunications security. Second the government has not invested enough to protect Canada’s communications and electricity systems from cyber attacks. Third, he thought there was an inherent corporate shortsightedness regarding protecting Canada’s communications infrastructure.

The cyber issue is growing and will become a rising threat to governments and corporations. It may require a serious attack such as a massive electricity system shut down before a full government response is played out.

Alfred Rolington is the author of Strategic Intelligence for the 21st Century: The Mosaic Method, an industry insider’s assessment of current intelligence methods and offers a new strategic model, directed toward the police, military, and intelligence agencies. He was formerly CEO of Jane’s Information Group, responsible for such publications as Jane’s Defense Review and Jane’s Police Review, as well as CEO for Oxford Analytica. He has over thirty years’ experience of analytical publishing and media companies, producing information and intelligence for commerce, law enforcement, the, military and government. He has written about and given lectures on intelligence and strategic planning to Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard Universities, and to organisations such as Thomson Reuters, the CIA, SIS (MI6), NATO Headquarters, and GCHQ.

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Image credits: Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Ryan Allshouse uses the intrusion detection system to monitor unclassified network activity from the automated data processing workspace. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons;  Maps and charts are scanned from “Atlas of the Middle East”, published in January 1993 by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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By Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon

The Wikileaks trove of diplomatic documents confirms what many have known for a long time: Israel is not the only Middle Eastern country that fears a nuclear armed Iran and wants Washington to do something about it.

If Tehran was listening, the truth of this fear was apparent last month in Bahrain, where the International Institute for Strategic Studies organized a large meeting of Gulf Arab ministers, King Abdullah of Jordan, Iran’s foreign minister Mottaki, and top officials from outside powers including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The convocation was polite: no one said it was time to “cut off the head of the snake,” as Saudi Arabia’s King was reported, in one of the Wikileaks cables, to have urged in regard to Iran. But Arab anxiety about Iran’s power, and how it could be augmented by nuclear power, was palpable.

As one might also expect, the closer Arab capitals are to Iran, apart from Baghdad, the more fervently their rulers implore Washington to take vigorous action – up to and including military action – against Iranian nuclear facilities. Some, like Saudi Arabia, have offered to make up for Iran’s lost oil production in the event of war to limit the adverse effect of higher prices on a weak US economy. In those countries closest to Iran, moreover, the Arab street shares regimes’ worries. In a poll last year in Saudi Arabia, 40 % of respondents in three large cities said that the US should bomb Iran, while one out of four said that it would be OK with them if even Israel did the job. The governments of countries farther away but within range of Iran’s Shahab 3 missiles – such as Egypt – are also nervous. In an act of not-so-subtle messaging, Egypt has agreed to let nuclear capable Israeli warships through the Suez Canal, so that the Israeli Navy can get to the Persian Gulf quickly. These ships would not be going there for a port visit and shopping at the Sharjah souk.

It should be said that Wikileaks’ reckless disclosures threaten to box in both Washington and its allies in damaging ways. The purpose of secret diplomacy, as opposed to public throat clearing, is to allow governments to express views freely, experiment with positions, and bargain without creating pressures for rash action or causing paralysis. The problem with Wikileaks’ irresponsible revelations is that they complicate diplomatic coordination in matters, literally, of war and peace.

Yet, despite the muddle, there is no reason for Washington to change its basic course. A military option against nuclear facilities will not be ruled out in any event; yet the purpose of US policy should be to forestall the moment when the US must choose whether to disarm Iran or settle for a strategy of containment. The relative weakness of of America’s current position dictates this approach. The United States still has large numbers of troops committed to two wars, faces the possibility of conflict in Korea, and remains mired in the unemployment emergency created by the financial crash and Great Recession. European, American and Russian cohesion on Iran policy is still fragile. In the fullness of time, these debilities can be overcome.

And there is time. To be sure, among the new revelations was an alarming report of Tehran’s cooperation with North Korea to produce more powerful ballistic missiles. Iran now possesses 33 kilograms of uranium enriched to the 20% threshold for highly enriched uranium, as well

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By Ervin Staub

A few hours after the 9/11 attacks, speaking on our local public radio station in Western Massachusetts, struggling with my tears and my voice, I said that this horrible attack can help us understand people’s suffering around the world, and be a tool for us to unite with others to create a better world. Others also said similar things. But that is not how events progressed.

Our response to that attack led to three wars we are still fighting, including the war on terror. How we fight these wars and what we do to bring them to an end will shape our sense of ourselves as a moral people, our connections to the rest of the world, our wealth and power as a nation, and our physical security.  What can we do to reduce hostility toward us, strengthen our alliances, and regain our moral leadership in the world?

One of the basic principles of human conduct is reciprocity. As one party strikes out at another,  the other, if it can, usually responds with force. Often the response is more than what is required for self-defense. It is punitive, taking revenge, teaching the other a lesson. But the first party  takes this as aggression, and responds with more violence. Israelis and Palestinians for many years engaged in mutual and often escalating retaliation, sometimes reciprocating immediately, sometimes, the Palestinians especially, the weaker party, waiting for the right opportunity.

Many young Muslims, and even non-Muslims converting to Islam, have been “radicalized” by our drone attacks, and our forces killing civilians in the course of fighting. The would-be Times Square bomber has talked to people about his distress and anger about such violence against Muslims. While we kill some who plan to attack us, especially as we harm innocent others, more turn against us.

Of course, we must protect ourselves. But positive actions are also reciprocated—not always, but often, especially if the intention for the action is perceived as positive. Non-violent reactions and practices must be part of effective self-defense. Respect is one of them. Many Muslims were killed in the 9/11 attacks, and we should have specifically included them in our public mourning. Many Arab and Muslim countries reached out to us afterwards, even Iran, and we should have responded more than we did to their sympathy and support. Effective reaching out is more challenging now, and after the mid-term elections the world might see reaching out by President Obama as acting out of weakness. But the U.S. is still the great power, and both the administration and members of Congress ought to reach out to the Muslim world.

But even as we show respect and work on good connections, we ought to stop supporting repressive Muslim regimes. That has been one of the grievances against us. An important source of Al-Qaeda has been Egyptian terrorists, who fought against a secular repressive Egyptian regime. Then as Al-Qaeda was organized by the Mujahideen, who fought against and defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, they turned from such “near enemies” against the far enemy, the United States, which supported these repressive regimes.

Another important matter is dialogue between parties. Dialogue can be abused, used simply to gain time, or as a show to pacify third parties, or can even be a fraud as in Afghanistan where an “impostor” played the role of a Taliban leader in dialogue with the government . The Bush administration strongly opposed dialogue with terrorists—but then with money and other inducements got Sunnis in Iraq, who have been attacking us, to work with us. In persistent dialogue, in contrast to the very occasional negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the parties can develop relationships, gain trust, and then become ready to resolve practical matters.

To resolve our wars, we cannot simply bomb and shoot. We must also

Journalist Siamak Pourzand (pictured, via) has reportedly committed suicide after enduring years of house arrest in Tehran. He was 80-years-old.

Pourzand built his career over the past fifty years, criticizing the Iranian government regime in his work. He managed a cultural center for writers, artists, and intellectuals called “Majmue-ye Farrhangi-ye Honari-ye Tehran.” The PEN American Center inducted him as an honorary member.

PEN American Center president Kwame Anthony Appiah had this statement: “At a time when men and women are finding their voices and crying out for dignity and basic rights throughout the region, Pourzand’s despair offers a disturbing measure of how arrested and isolated the Iranian regime now seems.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The United States, preemption, and international law

By Professor Louis René Beres
Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney
General Thomas G. McInerney

For now,  the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath still occupy center-stage in the Middle East and North Africa. Nonetheless, from a regional and perhaps even global security perspective, the genuinely core threat to peace and stability remains Iran. Whatever else might determinably shape ongoing transformations of power and authority in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia, it is apt to pale in urgency beside the steadily expanding prospect of a nuclear Iran.

Enter international law. Designed, inter alia, to ensure the survival of states in a persistently anarchic world – a world originally fashioned after the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – this law includes the “inherent” right of national self-defense. Such right may be exercised not only after an attack has already been suffered, but, sometimes, also, in advance of an expected attack.

What can now be done, lawfully, about relentless Iranian nuclear weapons development?  Do individual states, especially those in greatest prospective danger from any expressions of Iranian nuclear aggression, have a legal right to strike first defensively? In short, could such a preemption ever be permissible under international law?

For the United States, preemption remains a part of codified American military doctrine. But is this national doctrine necessarily consistent with the legal and complex international expectations of anticipatory self-defense?

To begin, international law derives from multiple authoritative sources, including international custom. Although written law of the UN Charter (treaty law) reserves the right of self-defense only to those states that have already suffered an attack (Article 51), equally valid customary law still permits a first use of force if the particular danger posed is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.” Stemming from an 1837 event in jurisprudential history known as the Caroline, which concerned the unsuccessful rebellion in Upper Canada against British rule, this doctrine builds purposefully upon a seventeenth-century formulation of Hugo Grotius.

Self-defense, says the classical Dutch scholar in, The Law of War and Peace (1625), may be permitted “not only after an attack has already been suffered, but also in advance, where the deed may be anticipated.”  In his later text of 1758, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel affirmed: “A nation has the right to resist the injury another seeks to inflict upon it, and to use force and every other just means of resistance against the aggressor.”

Article 51 of the UN Charter, limiting self-defense to circumstances following an attack, does not override the customary right of anticipatory self-defense.  Interestingly, especially for Americans, the works of Grotius and Vattel were favorite readings of Thomas Jefferson, who relied  heavily upon them for crafting the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We should also recall Article VI of the US Constitution, and assorted US Supreme Court decisions. These proclaim, straightforwardly, that international law is necessarily part of the law of the United States.

The Caroline notes an implicit distinction between preventive war (which is never legal), and preemptive war. The latter is not permitted merely to protect oneself against an emerging threat, but only when the danger posed is “instant” and

By Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain (USAF/ret.)

In world politics, irrational does not mean “crazy.” It does mean valuing certain goals or objectives even more highly than national survival. In such rare but not unprecedented circumstances, the irrational country leadership may still maintain a distinct rank-order of preferences. Unlike trying to influence a “crazy” state, therefore, it is possible to effectively deter an irrational adversary.

Iran is not a “crazy,” or wholly unpredictable, state. Although it is conceivable that Iran’s political and clerical leaders could sometime welcome the Shiite apocalypse more highly than avoiding military destruction, they could also remain subject to alternative deterrent threats. Faced with such circumstances, Israel could plan on basing stable and long-term deterrence of an already-nuclear Iran upon various unorthodox threats of reprisal or punishment. Israel’s only other fully rational option could be a prompt and still-purposeful preemption.

At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column (6 August 1945).

Additionally, because of the prospect of Iranian irrationality, Israel’s military planners will have to identify suitable ways of ensuring that even a nuclear “suicide state” could be deterred. Such a perilous threat may be very small, but, with Iran’s particular Shiite eschatology, it might not be negligible. And while the probability of having to face such an irrational enemy state would probably be very low, the disutility or expected harm of any single deterrence failure could be very high.

Israel needs to maintain and strengthen its plans for ballistic missile defense, both the Arrow system, and also Iron Dome, a lower-altitude interceptor designed to guard against shorter-range rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. These systems, including Magic Wand, which is still in the development phase, will inevitably have leakage. It follows that their principal benefit would ultimately lie in enhanced deterrence, rather than in any added physical protection.

A newly-nuclear Iran, if still rational, would need steadily increasing numbers of offensive missiles in order to achieve a sufficiently destructive first-strike capability against Israel. There could come a time, however, when Iran would be able to deploy more than a small number of nuclear-tipped missiles. Should that happen, Arrow, Iron Dome and, potentially, Magic Wand, could cease being critical enhancements of Israeli nuclear de

Children's literature expert Turan Mirhadi honored

Turan Mirhadi, veteran researcher and co-founder of the Children's Book Council, was honored during a ceremony held at the Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia last week.

Organized by the Women's Association of History Researchers, a group of literati including the Iranian Children's Book Council director Nushafarin Ansari, library science expert Zohreh Qaini and professor at the University of Tehran Abbas Horri attended the ceremony held on Wednesday.

The 2012 Bologna Ragazzi Awards for the best children's books in terms of graphic and editorial design have been announced. Champagne, cake, confetti, coffee, and CONGRATULATIONS go to:

New Horizons - Mentions


Misunderstanding, written by Farideh Khalatbaree and illustrated by Ali Boozari (Shabaviz Publishing Company, Tehran – Iran)


Waterlife, written and illustrated by Rambharos Jha (Tara Books, Chennai – India)

Opera Prima - Winner


Tabati, written by Nadine R. L. Touma and illustrated by Lara Assouad Khoury (Dar Onboz, Beirut - Lebanon)

Opera Prima - Mention


Grimmie's White Canvas, written and illustrated by Hyunjoo Lee (Sang Publishing, Seoul – Republic of Korea)

Thanks to my friend Jules, one of the Ragazzi jurors, for this information!

The Hans Christian Andersen Award, considered the most prestigious international children’s literature award, is given biennially by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made lasting contributions to children's literature. The winners for the 2012 award will be announced on Monday, March 19 at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Among the five short-listed authors and five short-listed illustrators selected from 57 candidates submitted by 32 national sections of the IBBY is Iran's Mohammad Ali Beniasadi. Congratulations! :o)

The other Asian candidates were writers Masamoto Nasu (Japan), Sun-mi Hwang (Republic of Korea), and Sevim Ak (Turkey), and illustrators Satoshi Kako (Japan), Seong-Chan Hong (Republic of Korea), and Feridun Oral (Turkey).

Although the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online reading group, selects books that are written for children but can be enjoyed by adults as well, National Reading Group Month has brought to mind those books written for adults that younger readers might adopt as their own favorites, and that could launch impassioned discussions between parents and children, teachers and students, or older and younger siblings.

The books on this week’s list are books recommended for teenagers, with content that may be beyond the emotional grasp of pre-adolescents. All of them are available in paperback and in libraries.

1) Ricochet River by Robin Cody (Stuck in a small Oregon town, two teenagers find their world becomes larger and more complex when they become friends with Jesse, a Native American high school sports star.)

2) The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (Alice is twelve, growing up on a modern-day Wyoming ranch with a mother who rarely leaves her bed, a father who is haunted by the memory of Alice’s rebellious and gifted older sister who ran off with a rodeo rider, and an overly active imagination.)

3) Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen (The author of Hatchet tells the true story of how he raced a team of huskies across more than 1000 miles of Arctic Alaska in what Alaskans call The Last Great Race.)

4) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (This autobiography of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran and told in the form of a graphic novel is rich, original, and unforgettable.)

5) From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe (An amazing odyssey of a boy from the jungles of Burma who became a political exile and a Cambridge scholar, this Kiriyama Prize winner is a novelistic account of a life filled with adventures and extraordinary accomplishments.)

6) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (The Mirabal sisters were beautiful, gifted, and valiant women who were murdered by the Dominican Republic government that they were committed to overthrow. Their true story is given gripping and moving life by their compatriot, Julia Alvarez.)

As the weather becomes colder and the days grow shorter, find your favorite teenager, choose a book, and plunge into the grand adventure of reading and sharing!

Physicist turned science writer, Gordon Fraser, most recent book Cosmic Anger: Abdus Salam - The First Muslim Nobel Scientist, is a biography of Salam who despite wining the Nobel Prize was excommunicated and branded as a heretic in his own country. A staunch Muslim, he was ashamed of the decline of science in the heritage of Islam, and struggled doggedly to restore it to its former glory. Undermined by his excommunication, these valiant efforts were doomed. In the article below Fraser looks at the history of Muslim winners of the Nobel Prize.

Amid all the international reaction to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi has stirred up more controversy in Iran. In December the Iranian authorities closed the Tehran office of Ms Ebadi’s Human Rights Defenders Centre, saying it had operated for eight years without permission. Whatever the context, the perception of a Nobel Prize in Islamic countries often appears to clash with the traditional veneration in which it is held elsewhere.

The Iranian lawyer’s Nobel acknowledged ‘her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children.’ While people around the world applauded this recognition, others maintained that it was an insult to and part of a continuing conspiracy against Islam. In a statement carried by the Iranian Jomhuri Eslami newspaper, a group from a major seminary said ‘The decision by the Western oppressive societies to award the prize to Ebadi was done in order to ridicule Islam.’ How can what is supposed to be one of the world’s highest honours also be perceived as insult and ridicule?

Shirin Ebadi is one of the few Muslims to have been honoured by the Nobel authorities. The first was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who shared the Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 for their unexpected Middle East peace overture. In 1981 Sadat was assassinated by Egyptian hard-liners who condemned his rapprochement with Israel. So much for Nobel honor.

One year after Sadat’s award, in 1979 the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam (1926-1996) became the first Muslim to win a Nobel Science Prize, and the first Pakistani to win any Nobel. The achievement was greeted in the West with the customary apotheosis. But the accolade in Salam’s home country was very different. Salam belonged to the fringe Ahmadi sect of Islam, which was formally excommunicated in 1977 for its belief in a 19th-century promised messiah. Salam, once the Pakistan President’s chief scientific adviser, was ostracized. Revivalist Muslim voices criticized his Nobel award as a desperate attempt to restore Ahmadi credibility. In a grotesque eructation of prejudice and hate, the award was scorned as a deliberate insult to Islam.

After his funeral in 1996, Salam’s tombstone in Rabwah, Pakistan was inscribed ‘Abdus Salam, the First Muslim Nobel Laureate’ (innocently ignoring Sadat’s 1978 award). Soon the grave was visited by contemptuous outsiders and the inscription edited - and the error magnified - by an imperious hammer and chisel to read ‘Abdus Salam, the First … Nobel Laureate’. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, and the now absurd epitaph was daubed with black paint.

After Salam’s award, the 1988 Nobel Literature Prize went to the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), whose initial literary success in the 1960s and 70s created a new hub of Arabic culture. This became overshadowed by his controversial Awlad Haratina (Children of the Alley) which was banned in much of the Arab world after reactionary Islamic scholars declared its portrayal of religious figures to be blasphemous. In the darkness of such bigotry, writers who can still write are deemed more dangerous than what they actually publish. In 1994 Mahfouz almost died after being knifed in the neck, and was left unable to work.

In 1994 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shared the Peace Prize with Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for their resolute but eventually futile efforts towards resolving the perennial Israel-Palestine conflict. Such a pairing of names which not that long before had been sworn enemies soon created a new conflict of its own, and in 1995 Rabin was assassinated in his own country, a macabre reflection of the Sadat episode.

(On a less controversial note, in 1999, the Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail was awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize for his work in using laser beams to track chemical reactions, ‘freeze-framing’ their evolution. 2005, Mohamad ElBaradei, the Egyptian Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), and the IAEA itself received the Peace Prize for their efforts in preventing nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and for promoting its safe use for peaceful aims. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh received the Peace Prize for his idea of ‘micro-credits’ – mini-loans to help disadvantaged people haul themselves out of poverty.)

The world’s 800 million Muslims make up about ten per cent of the world’s population, but have garnered just a handful of Nobel awards, many of them generating more controversy than honour. Jews make up a small fraction of one per cent of the world’s population, but have won hundreds of Nobel prizes. This track record alone is enough to convince ultraconservative Muslims that the Nobel dice are loaded. But why such disparity and dissent?

The West has grown to view the Orient from afar through a thick prism which distorts the transmitted image. For more than a thousand years, the membrane between Islam and the West, inflamed by lack of understanding, has been rubbed raw by mutual hypersensitivity, and the ulcerated wound periodically erupts. It appears to be especially sensitive to Nobel Prizes.

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the election in Iran. Read his previous OUPblogs here.

Let me be the first to admit that I don’t know if the recent Iranian “election” was fraudulent, but the faith some pundits have placed on the “evidence” for their conviction that it was gives me pause.

The elections certainly weren’t free and fair, not least because the regime had hand-picked the slate of candidates, but we are unlikely to ever know that straight-up fraud was involved or if voting irregularities were of a higher frequency than those we have routinely taken for granted even in this country. Our failure to contemplate even the possibility that many a dictator has been democratically elected is a dangerous democratic hubris that has shaped and sometimes thwarted our foreign policy.

I am not asserting that the Iranian election was definitely legitimate, only that it is at least remotely possible that it was. At least two independent pollsters agree, and have offered the illuminating factoid from their poll that the only demographic group that found Hossein Mousavi leading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were graduates and those with high-incomes. (That is to say, they are people most likely to resemble western spectators still staring at the final vote tally in disbelief.) Yet Christopher Hitchens would have none of it and Steve Clemons has decided that there will be blood. But is the blood that Clemons not implausibly predicts will ensue the result of the subversion of democracy in the Iranian electoral process or its success?

Shutting down the media may be egregiously non-democratic, but it is different than creating ballots out of thin air. The reason why this distinction matters is that we must learn to contemplate why millions of people around the world would want to rally behind fanatical leaders who hold such spectacularly repugnant positions as denying the holocaust. This has happened so many times before that it makes our failure to accept its possibility even more revealing of the depth and scope of our mind-block: consider the cases of Gamal Nasser (Egypt), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Jerry Rawlings (Ghana), Slobodan Milošević (Serbia), and now, possibly, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Democracy is messy, and it is not naturally or dialectically inclined towards human rights, western liberal ideals, or the best candidate according to our standards. Neo-conservatives in America positing that the Iraqi people would welcome our troops as liberators back in 2003 have had to learn the hard way the costs of believing what they wanted to believe. In an analagous way, today’s pundits have been so quick to assert that the Iranian people in their post-election riots have exposed the charade of their recent “elections,” but maybe it is democracy itself that has outwitted the pundits. To understand the unpredictable and poigant path of democracy and democratization in the world, those of us who believe in democracy must urgently and honestly contemplate the number of times we have been hoisted by our own petard.

I've always been a fan of technology and its potential to help people learn and collaborate.  I've been thinking for a while about social networking and education, and how it's probably not such a great idea for schools to simply block sites like Facebook & Twitter and pretend they don't exist, rather than teaching kids how to use them responsibly.  I'm hoping to do some collective tweeting with my classes in the fall as a way to model effective, responsible use of social media.  I've been on Twitter as @KateMessner for a while, but I've set up a special account, @TweetK12, to talk with other educators interested in the concept of using Twitter in the classroom.  Feel free to follow & join in that conversation if you'd like.  I'm working on a proposal to present to our district technology coordinator for approval right now.

This past week, I've also been lamenting the fact that our regular classes are over -- and that I didn't have the opportunity to talk with my students about the way the world is changing right before their eyes...on Twitter.

Even if you aren't on Twitter, you've probably heard the news reports of how protesters in Iran are using it to overcome government censors, to organize and share news and images of the demonstrations with one another and with the world.  If I were still teaching this week, we'd be talking about the history of uprising, thinking back to Thomas Paine and our reading of Laurie Halse Anderson's CHAINS and how Isabel had to hide her illicit copy of Common Sense.  We'd talk about the efforts that those in power have always made to control the flow of information.  Totalitarian regimes, in particular, use isolation as a weapon against their people. 


Only now it's not working.  Iranian protesters are using 21st century communication tools to circumvent government filters, and people around the world are using those same tools to help them - changing the time zones in their profiles to Tehran to help shield those tweeting from Iran, even showing support by tinting their avatars green, the color that's come to symbolize the Iranian opposition.



John Green talks about all this much more eloquently today at his blog, Sparks Fly Up, summing up with this:

Twitter is not about what you had for breakfast, or Khloe Kardashian, or me. It's about evening the playing field.

Exactly.  How the story of #iranelection will end is anyone's guess, but I believe the world is a different place than it was just a week ago. A place that's a little less safe for governments that deny human rights, and a place where people living under those governments feel a little less alone.

Ray Takeyh is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  His new book, Guardians of the Revoltion: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs, he traces the course of Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution.  In the excerpt below we learn about the relationship between Iran and Syria.

Among the most enduring yet anomalous alliances in the Middle East is the Syrian-Iranian relationship.  On the surface it may seem improbable for a Shiite regime determined to redeem the region for the forces of religious virtue and a secular state devoted to pan-Arabism to come together.  Yet a series of shared antagonisms led both sides to overlook the incongruity of their alliance and collaborate on a range of critical issues…In the end, a strategically opportunistic Hafiz al-Asad would find the fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini an uneasy partner.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution came at an opportune time for the Syrian regime…  The Camp David Accords had led Egypt’s defection from the struggle against Israel and left Syria to face a strengthened Jewish state on its periphery.  In Damascus the fear was that the Reagan administration was hoping to facilitate additional peace treaties…  In the meantime, the perennially bad relations between the two Ba’athist parties governing Syria and Iraq had only worsened amid charges of interference in each other’s internal politics.  Through its willingness to oppose Syria’s Israeli and Iraqi nemeses, Iran’s revolution altered the Middle East’s political configuration.  The Islamic Republic’s embrace of anti-Americanism as a core element of its foreign policy distanced Tehran not only from the United States but also from the conservative Arab states, which were wary of Syria.  In one fell swoop, the Middle East’s balance of power changed, leading Damascus to escape its insularity and become a more critical player in Arab politics.

For an Islamic Republic determined to both wage war against Iraq and pursue a harsher policy toward Israel, the alliance with Syria proved particularly valuable.  The Asad regime’s willingness to supply arms to Tehran came at a time when the American-led embargo was depleting Iran’s arsenal.  Moreover, an alignment with an Arab state fractured the wall of Arab solidarity and diminished Saddam’s ability to portray his war as a contest between Arabs and Persians.  The alliance also offered Iran a reach beyond its borders, as Tehran suddenly had access to Lebanon and could more vigorously pursue its anti-Israel campaign.  In perverse manner, in order for Iran to wage its Islamist crusade against Israel and displace Saddam’s regime, it had to forge a relationship with a state whose internal composition must have been anathema to the mullahs.

The ensuing association with Syria reflected the Islamic Republic’s propensity to prioritize its ideological antagonisms.  The contradictions between an Islamist regime predicating its policy on pristine religious values and a secular, Ba’athist state became starkly evident during the 1982 rebellion in the city of Hamah, when Asad viciously decimated his fundamentalist opposition…Iran’s response to the massacre was to denounce the Muslim Brotherhood “as a gang carrying out the Camp David conspiracy against Syria.”  A theocratic state ostensibly devoted to propagating its divine message not only stood by as fellow fundamentalists were annihilated but offered words of support to the offending regime as well.  …this was a question of priority.   Waging war again Iraq and weakening Israel ranked higher than the fate of Syria’s beleaguered Islamists.

The strategic tensions underlying the Syria-Iran alliance became evident in Iraq.  For Iran, the alliance proved nothing but beneficial.  Beyond gaining an important source of weaponry, Syria’s closure of Iraq’s oil pipeline, which traversed its territory, inflicted an economic penalty on Baghdad.  The support of a major Arab nationalist state allowed some of the Persian Gulf sheikdoms to hedge and not sever their ties to Tehran…It is arguable that, without the Arab cover provided by Damascus, these sheikdoms could not have disregarded the nearly uniform Arab consensus for isolation of Tehran.  As Rafsanjani recalled with gratitude, Asad did not disassociate “himself from a country that advocated Islam because this country is not an Arab country.”

As the war dragged on, the Syrian regime found it had to reconsider its approach to its problematic ally.  In Damascus, the initial justification for supporting Iran was that Saddam’s invasion had diverted the resources of an important Arab country from the main struggle against Israel.  Thus, Baghdad’s opportunistic designs were actually damaging the Arabs and constituted yet another defection from the main anti-Israeli cause.  Saddam’s invasion was even more egregious give that the state he targeted was willing to devote its national power to battling Israel.  It was Saddam who had destroyed the “eastern front” and prevented both Iran and Iraq from concentrating their resources on Jerusalem.  Beyond such assertions, Syria sought to further rationalize its alliance by suggesting that its close ties to the Islamic Republic gave it sufficient credibility to mediate the conflict and even impose restraint on the theocracy.

Syria’s claims became more difficult to justify as Iran appeared dogmatic in its pursuit of the war and seemed prone to expand the conflict into the Persian Gulf.  As a champion of Arab nationalism, Damascus could ill afford a prolonged alliance with a country that disregarded Arab sensibilities and was determined to dispatch its armies into Iraq and disrupt the Gulf commerce…Moreover, Asad’s reliance on aid from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait meant that he could not always ignore the estrangement of the oil-rich sheikdoms…The tensions between supporting Iran and sustaining a place in the Arab system led Damascus to oppose certain Iranian measures.  After 1982, when Iran successfully evicted Iraq from its territory and took the offensive, Syria disapproved of extending the war to the Gulf states and went so far as to promise to support Kuwait against Iranian aggression.  By the mid-1980s, Syria had come to oppose Iran’s appropriation of Arab lands, a policy that was articulated in a variety of Arab summits and emphasized to Iranian emissaries.  Had the war continued beyond 1988 or had Iran triumphed in the conflict, Asad might have been forced to make some fundamental choices and reassess his ties to the Islamic Republic…

…Nonetheless, the fact that the alliance has persisted for so long should not surprise us.  Indeed, it reflects the Middle East’s basic inability to resolve its conflicts, the continuance of which often serves Iran’s larger strategic ends…

David L. Bosco is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University.  A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a former Senior Editor at Foreign Policy and has been a political analyst and journalist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a deputy director of a joint United Nations – NATO project in Sarajevo.  His most recent book, Five To Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of The Modern World, tells the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation, illuminating the role of the Security Council in the postwar world, and making a compelling case for its enduring importance.  In the original post below, Bosco reflects on Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly today.

President Obama accomplished some important objectives in his speech to the UN General Assembly today. He emphasized how much has already changed under his administration, mentioning torture, Guantanamo, climate change, and Iraq in particular. But he also tried to to call the broader UN membership to task for what he called “reflexive anti-Americanism” and a tendency to always point at others when discussing international problems. As has often been the case internationally, the president is trying to both acknowledge American missteps but also convince the world to follow its lead.

Obama did some finger-pointing of his own. He identified Iran and North Korea as threats that might take the world down “a dangerous slope” of regional arms races and unchecked nuclear proliferation. He demanded that these countries face consequences if they continue to ignore the Security Council. But the language here was much more tempered than that used by President Bush in 2002 when he was trying to rally the world to confront Iraq. He did not even hint that the U.S. might work around the UN if that becomes necessary.

One notable absence in his speech: he did not mention reform of the Security Council, which has been a staple of other speeches at the General Assembly, particularly from developing world leaders. In general, the Obama administration has been quiet about the question of whether and how the Council should be expanded. It will be interesting to see whether he mentions the subject tomorrow, when he chairs a Council meeting on nonproliferation.

Saïd Amir Arjomand is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and Director of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies at Stony Brook University.  He is the founder and president of the Association for the study of Persianate Societies and the editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies. His new book, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors, is a subtle portrait of contemporary Iran.  Taking a chronological and thematic approach, Arjomand traces the emergence and consolidation of the present system of collective rule by clerical councils and the peaceful transition to dual leadership by the ayatollah as the supreme guide and the subordinate president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In the excerpt below Arjomand looks at Ahmadinejad’s nuclear policy.

Leader Khamenei’s promotion of the hardliners and their takeover of the Majles in 2004 and of the presidency in 2005 made the military-intelligence cartel dominant in foreign policy, setting the stage for a return to an aggressive foreign policy.  The United States’ invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in the destruction of Iran’s strongest regional enemies, created unparalleled opportunities for Iran to expand its regional power.  Exaggeration by revolutionary leaders of the foreign threat to strengthen their internal position is the typical pattern after revolutions.  In the case of Ahmadinejad, he did not have to try very hard.  The Bush policy of regime change gave Iran the incentive to push for nuclear development as a defense against the short-term regime change and the long-term U.S. nuclear threats.

In his first few months in office, Ahmadinejad launched an aggressive foreign policy in place of Khatami’s Dialogue of Civilizations.  He firmly rejected the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accepted by his two predecessors.  In October 2005, as we have seen, he affirmed: “As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,” and in December he made his bid to capture the Arab street for IRI by declaring the Holocaust a myth fabricated for the creation of Israel.  The hardening of Iran’s opposition to Israel was fully in line with the Leader’s continued championship of the Palestinians to bolster his own bid to be the Leader of the world’s Muslims.

Ahmadinejad’s failed attempt to follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad in the “Year of the Prophet, “2006 to convert the world leaders was due to his idiosyncratic initiative and cannot be considered a hardliner policy.  Nor did it enjoy the support of the hardliners.  It was otherwise with his nuclear policy, however.  The hawks in the Bush administration, after advertising a series of “covert” CIA operations against the IRI, officially announced their doctrine of regime change in 2002, hinting at times at Iran as the next in line in the months between the “axis of evil” speech and the invasion of Iraq.  (The call for regime change in Iran was routinely repeated in 2003 after the Iraqi invasion as well.)  Then came President George W. Bush’s baseless linking of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in his open-ended war on terrorism, and the justification of the invasion of Iraq based on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  It had at least one unnoted but disastrous consequence.  The Iranians, in a state of heightened alert for their nationa

A few weeks ago, we were joined by two wonderful new publicity assistants, Nick and Bobby. Now that they’re settled in, I decided it was time to harass properly introduce them to you. Hopefully this (incredibly interesting) Q&A will show how lucky we are to have them on board.

Do you speak (or pretend to speak) any other languages?

Nick: Yes, Farsi. My parents were born and raised in Iran. They came to the US to continue their studies at college. They met here in the States and a few years later I entered the picture. My first language was, in fact, Farsi. I grew up in a house where my parents and grandparents both spoke to me in Farsi. I did not learn English until I was in early elementary school. Looking back, this now explains so much…

Bobby: I studied Spanish up until sophomore year of college, but I can’t really call what I do with the language “speaking” it.  I also studied some Japanese when I studied abroad, and I can now ask where the train station is, I think.

What is your favorite book that was not originally published in English?

Nick: War and Peace. I read it for the first time a few years back after my brother continuously insisted on my commitment to finishing the behemoth of a book. Finally, I gave in and I am now forever indebted to him. This book is my bible and is undoubtedly this best piece of literature ever created. It is both a beautiful story as well as a deep philosophical piece that proves to be a perpetually modern novel that will never lose its relevance in society. This is the only intellectual answer I will provide, promise.

Bobby: Labyrinths by Borges, which might not count since it’s a collection of short stories.  No other author has inspired so many moments of disturbed awe and wonder for me.  I like when a book freaks me out enough that I have to leave the room.

Fill in the blank: Don’t stop _____________.
a) believing
b) ’til you get enough
c) the music

Nick: ’til you get enough.

Bobby: Believing, duh.

What’s your favorite viral video?

Nick: Does Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video count?

Bobby: Stalking cat.

Which is more awesome: a Jesus Christ lizard, or a 0 Comments on Meet the New Assistants! as of 1/1/1900