Can't say that I blame them because when push comes to shove, they're gonna get the short end of the stick...
TEHRAN -- Iran's clerical and business establishments, deeply concerned by what they see as reckless spending and needlessly aggressive foreign policies, are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Within this context, many see the president's long-running confrontation with the United States and Europe over Tehran's nuclear program as an attempt to demonize the West and distract the Iranian public from pressing domestic problems.
A relatively small group of extremists "at the top of the government around the president" are seeking to benefit from a crisis with the West, because "that way they will be able once again to blame the West for all of their problems," said Mousa Ghaninejad, the editor of Iran's best-selling economics daily newspaper, Dunya Al-Eqtisad. |
We've got more money being put into inspiring the downtrodden masses in Iran to revolt. Hopefully this is indicative of the type of response we can expect as we arm those who would like to see regime change in Iran. And let's arm them with whatever they need, whether that's inspirartion, information or ammunition. Some of those weapons may find their way into the wrong hands (and then in Iraq against our soldiers there) but I think it's worth the chance. There's already talk of starting a new Cold War with Iran. Let's make it move a little faster than that, ok?
UPDATE: Michael Ledeen has a Vick/Finkel/Einhorn moment. Not of the Crying Game type, but of the shameless Bush bashing type...
Vick and Finkel go out of their way to tell us that there is no hope of popular insurrection in Iran today, and carefully quote a failed “reformist” saying that nothing good can come from outside help (even though it is hard to find a successful revolution, including our own, that did not have an outside base of support), and that, even if there were hope at one time, that moment has passed. The regime has won: “[T]he capacity for civil society is so depleted that homeowners cannot be bothered to protest the cutting of trees in an eastern Tehran park to make way for a freeway extension.”(I wonder if this refers to the thousands of trees cut down in order to hide any evidence of seepage of nuclear materials from an underground facility.)
It’s hilarious that Vick and Finkel would offer this tolerated ecological “violence” to show that resistance to the regime is weakened, when, as they wrote, thousands of workers were recently demonstrating against the regime, from Tehran to Khuzestan. Nor do we hear about the bravery of Iranian women, who just last week demonstrated in Tehran and were clubbed, slashed, and incarcerated. They knew it would happen, but were willing to sacrifice themselves to show their own courage and the regime’s ferocity. But such news would undermine the whole thrust of the Post’s latest effort at agitprop, so we don’t hear anything about anti-regime protests, even though they are the true background to all events in contemporary Iran.
The real story is in today’s New York Sun, increasingly our newspaper of record. Eli Lake interviewed one of the organizers of the workshop, who lays it out clearly: “[H]e fears that the state is trying to extract a confession through torture from Ali Afsahi [a journalist who attended two workshops in Dubai] to misrepresent the aims of the session.” And in fact, it seems that Afsahi approached the Post to help Vick/Finkel slime Bush and the dissidents. Like Baghi, Afsahi wasn’t exactly free to speak his own mind. As Lake tells us, Afsahi’s wife “only received a phone call from him on Sunday and...he was crying.” Lots of brave Iranians are crying, but lots of brave Iranians are now encouraged to see that at long last the United States is helping them. |
Finkel, Einhorn. Finkel, Einhorn. Finkel, Einhorn. Finkel is Einhorn. Ewwww. And they all hate Bush... |
