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.

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Barack Obama is a soft power president. But the world keeps asking him hard power questions.

From North Korea to Guantánamo Bay, from Iran to Afghanistan, Mr Obama is confronting a range of vexing issues that cannot be charmed out of existence.

The problem is epitomised by the US president’s trip to the Middle East this week. Its focal point will be a much-trailed speech in Cairo on Thursday June 4, in which he will directly address the Muslim world.

The Cairo speech is central to Mr Obama’s efforts to rebuild America’s global popularity and its ability to persuade – otherwise known as soft power. The president has been trying out potential themes for the speech on aides and advisers for months. He is likely to emphasise his respect for Islamic culture and history, and his personal links to the Muslim world. He will suggest to his audience that both the US and the Islamic world have, at times, misjudged and mistreated each other – and he will appeal for a new beginning.

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The Darul Aman palace is a huge neo-classical pile with hundreds of rooms, set against the backdrop of the snowy mountains that surround Kabul. From a distance, it is an imposing sight. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I visited a few weeks ago, it is also a ruin. The palace was all but destroyed in the Afghan civil war of the 1990s.

Darul Aman was built in the 1920s by Amanullah Khan, a reformist king who also promoted women’s rights and discouraged the wearing of the burqa. Ninety years later, the king is long dead, his palace is a wreck and the burqa is ubiquitous in Kabul.

I thought of King Amanullah’s reforms this week, as debate flared over a law recently passed by the Afghan parliament. The statute, which applies to the country’s Shia minority, would require women to get their husband’s permission to leave the home and make it illegal for them to refuse to have sex with their husbands.

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And so it was that Barack Hussein Obama visited Europe. In London, he rescued the world economy. In Strasbourg, he healed the Nato alliance. In Prague, he rid the world of nuclear weapons. In Ankara, he reconciled Islam and the west. And on the seventh day, he got back on to Air Force One and disappeared into a cloudless sky.

Was it all a dream? I fear so.

On many levels, the new US president’s first tour of Europe was indeed a triumph. Mr Obama was articulate, ambitious and charming. His personal style has a touch of the emperor and a touch of the rock star – but with an appealing humility that is common to neither profession.

While his manner was relaxed, Mr Obama also consistently displayed an instinct for bold action that seems to be beyond the European leaders he mingled with. He wants to abolish nuclear weapons, shock the world economy back into recovery and redouble efforts to win the war in Afghanistan.

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You might expect a general election conducted just weeks after a war to be a tense affair. But, as Israel prepares to go to the polls this week, the country does not feel on edge. The joggers on Tel Aviv’s beaches pound up and down in the surf, oblivious to the anarchy and violence an hour’s drive away in the Gaza Strip.

Nobody seems to expect anything much to change as a result of Tuesday’s vote. Israeli politicians like to talk about “existential” threats to their country, but they are still avoiding existential choices about the future of Israel. Anybody looking for something that might break the bloody deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians needs to look outside the colourful, but dysfunctional, world of Israeli politics. The best hope – slim though it may be – is the Obama administration.

It is not yet clear whether Israel’s next prime minister will be Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the rightwing Likud party, or Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party. But all the pre-election polls suggest one clear trend: a distinct move to the right. The Labour party, the traditional standard-bearer of the left, is in danger of being pushed into fourth position behind a radical, rightwing party, Yisrael Beiteinu. Meretz, the peaceniks’ party, will be an also-ran.

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I am in Israel this evening. Election posters are everywhere and there is lots of excitement ahead of the vote on Tuesday. But visiting Hebron market on the West Bank this afternoon, I didn’t find any Palestinians who seemed to think the result would make much difference to them.

Even though the Palestinians are studiously indifferent to the Israeli elections, their own politics are on the move. Hamas have always been strong in Hebron - and the general opinion seemed to be that the war in Gaza had strengthened support for them in the West Bank as well. One woman trader I spoke to didn’t seem too happy about it. “If Hamas take power in the West Bank”, she said, “it will be very bad for women. They will make me close my stall down.”

I’ve never seen anywhere on the West Bank where Israeli settlers and Palestinians live so close together as in Hebron. The town is now effectively divided by check-points, walls and metal gates - all policed by a very heavy Israeli military presence. The Israeli side seemed comatose this afternoon, a combination of the fact that it was the Sabbath and that there are only 400 settlers, guarded by hundreds more troops. I saw one extravagantly bearded man out for a stroll with his family - a charming scene, apart from the fact that he had a machine-gun strapped across his chest. Continue reading "In Hebron market"

By sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip, Israel has crossed a line that brings it perilously close to strategic failure.

Just as with the Lebanon war of 2006, an air bombardment has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel – and has been followed by a ground invasion. The Israeli government says it has learnt the lessons of its stalemated war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia. Gaza is more hospitable terrain than southern Lebanon; Hamas is militarily weaker than Hizbollah; Israel is better prepared and is using new tactics.

Maybe so. But what are Israel’s strategic needs? The first is the protection of Israeli citizens; the second is the re-establishment of Israel’s deterrent power; the third is the preservation of international support; and the fourth some prospect of durable peace. Each one of these objectives is now in peril.

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I am on holiday this week. This has the advantage, from my point of view, of meaning that I didn’t have to write a newspaper column on Gaza for yesterday’s FT. It is a depressing subject - to put it mildly. And it is hard to find anything to say about the Israel-Palestine conflict that is either original or constructive.

But my respite will not last. I am back at work next week. And given the likelihood that the fighting will still be going on, I may be writing about Gaza.

So while the world appeals for a ceasefire, let me appeal for some insights from blog-readers. I realise that this too might be a foolhardy endeavour since - in the past - discussions on this subject have tended to bring out the worst in everyone. If this particular thread degenerates into abuse, we will just shut it down. Anyway, here are my questions: Continue reading "Questions about Gaza"