Dispatch from Iran: Some Police Soften on Neda’s Day: Steve Clemons posts an email from an anonymous observer in The Washington Note. A protester describes trying to access the grave of the young woman who was killed during Iranian elections and the trouble that ensued.

Pressing Pyongyang On Rights: Roberta Cohen wonders whether a preoccupation with North Korean nukes is leading us to neglect human rights

He has survived insurrection on the streets of Tehran. But is President Ahmadi-Nejad in danger of losing the critical support of the Iranian establishment, for the most unlikely to reasons - he is not hardline enough on Israel?

This seems an odd charge to level against the Holocaust-denying president, who has spoken longingly of a day when Israel no longer exists. But his decision to appoint Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as his first vice-president and right-hand man has provoked a backlash among fundamentalists and hardliners. This morning’s FT suggest that Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader himself, may also be demanding that ADJ “make a U-turn on the appointment”. The reason that Mashaei has provoked such fury is because he has suggested that Iran “is a friend of the Israeli people.”

Of course, nobody is suggesting that President Ahmadi-Nejad appointed Mashaei because he agrees with him about Israel. Still, it would be satisfyingly weird if ADJ ran into political trouble for not being anti-Israeli enough. It also shows that any tendency to assume that the Israel-Iran problem would wither away with the downfall of Ahamdi-Nejad is well wide of the mark.

Meanwhile connoisseurs of left-wing intellectual contortions might like this letter from The Guardian, on why the Iranian demonstrations should give no succour to capitalists.

Gary Samore is the kind of sane, well-informed and low-key professional who makes me glad that Obama is now in control of US foreign policy. He works on the National Security Council and has a long and complicated title to do with arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, but he says the president refers to him as “my nukes guy”, which about sums it up. That means that Samore spends his days grappling with some of the most sensitive dossiers in US foreign policy - in particular Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Yesterday he was in London on his way back from the Moscow summit and he gave an on-the-record briefing at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Naturally there are limits to how frank you can be in such a setting, but I still thought he had several interesting things to say:

First, the nuclear-arms reduction deal agreed in principle in Moscow is essentially a modest first step. The START (strategic arms reduction) treaty runs out at the end of the year, and it is important to have an interim agreement on further reduction - if only to keep the mechanisms for mutual inspections and co-operation going. If they can nail down all the details on this initial relatively modest reduction in nuclear weapons, Samore hopes that Russia and the US will then be able to negotiate a deal for much deeper cuts in nuclear-weapons stock-piles. He says that at that point Russian concerns about missile defence will become more valid. The Americans argue that the system they are working on is so modest that it could only be effective against a country with a very small number of nuclear missiles - such as, potentially, an Iran that went nuclear. Continue reading "Listening to Obama’s nukes guy"

It is always interesting - and sometimes chastening - to have journalistic musings subjected to academic examination. Sean Safford has performed this service, by taking a look at the Miller-Rachman list of revolutionary pointers. He thinks we are both too optimistic about the potential for change in Iran.

What does it take to make a successful revolution? That question is clearly weighing on the mind of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In his long rant at last Friday’s prayers at Tehran university, Iran’s supreme leader accused foreign governments of trying to foment a revolt in his country. He claims that foreigners are using the uprisings in the former Soviet Union as a model. “They are comparing the Islamic Republic with Georgia,” he complained.

Mr Khamenei is right about one thing. The comparison between events in Iran and the “colour revolutions” in the former USSR is certainly suggestive. Andrew Miller, a journalist at The Economist who witnessed the colour revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan has come up with a useful “checklist” of some of the factors that can help a revolution to succeed .

● “Critical mass”: small demonstrations of 5,000 people can be ignored or suppressed. But half a million people in the streets is another matter.
● Weak or divided security services.
● Some independent media.
● Money.
● Serious corruption, which Mr Miller argues is “generally the main mass motivator”.
● Opposition leaders who have served a stint in government.
● A history of rebellion from which lessons can be learnt.
● Strong support in the capital city.
● A rigged election that provides a spark for the revolt.

 The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

The other night I saw Henry Kissinger on television arguing that the likeliest outcome in Iran is that the regime ultimately prevails. I’m afraid it’s beginning to look that way to me as well.

Khamenei’s hardline speech today underlined that the pro ADJ forces have no intention of backing down. The demonstrations in Tehran continue and more are scheduled for the weekend. But, if the demonstrators are getting nowhere, they might gradually lose their enthusiasm. And if the size of the crowds dwindle, so will the sense of momentum behind the protests. If the regime is “sensible”, they will just try and wait the opposition out now.

More violence by the security forces and militias, however, could destabilise things further. The opposition movement already has its martyrs. Withour risking people’s lives, the opposition has to find some new way to give the movement a focus - beyond the demand for a recount or a new election. Sit-down protests, hunger strikes and occupations, a la Tiananmen might be too risky.

The other thing to watch for, in these situations, is signs of division within the ruling camp. Iran’s clerical establishment is clearly divided. But if they start to manoeuvre against each other, that could open the way to change.

In the meantime, I recommend this splendid piece by Anna Fifield in the FT, about the mood among the under-30s in Tehran,

Thirty years after the Iranian revolution, could we be witnessing an Iranian counter-revolution? In the short term, events in Iran are depressing and alarming – a stolen election, violence in the streets, repression. In the long term, the weekend has provided heartening evidence that Iran, and the Middle East in general, need not be immune to the great wave of democratisation that has swept the world since the late 1970s.

Of course, there are those who think that – despite the turmoil in Tehran – President Mahmoud Ahamdi-Nejad may actually have won the election. Their line of argument is that western journalists and middle-class Iranians have been deceived by focusing too much on opinion in the capital city and amongst the educated elite. Iran might be like Thailand – a country that has recently been through political turmoil because the urban middle-classes are regularly out-voted by the rural poor.

These arguments are unconvincing. The Iranian election bears all the hallmarks of a stolen vote. The official count has Mr Ahmadi-Nejad winning even in the home town of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, his main challenger. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad is said to have won even in Azeri-speaking constituencies, despite the fact that Mr Moussavi comes from an Azeri background. The official tally gave Mr Ahmadi-Nejad 63 per cent of the vote, which is way out of line with most pre-election predictions. The Iranian regime has reacted to popular protests with all the instincts of a dictatorship – beating up protesters, locking up opponents, shutting down text messaging services and internet sites.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.