War Handwavium

So, an overview of the elections and protests going on in Iran at the moment.

The 2009 Iranian presidential race was between the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a reformist challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

During the campaign, Mousavi said he wanted to allow privately owned television stations (currently all state owned), to transfer the control of law enforcement from the Supreme Leader to the President (the president is elected, the Supreme Leader is not), to dismantle Iran’s “Moral Police”, to review any laws that discriminate against women, to boost Iran’s international standing by reducing tension with other nations.

Mousavi acknowleges the facts of the Holocaust while Ahmadinejad questions whether the Holocaust really happenend.

Ahmadinejad was first elected president in 2005. He is critical of the US and Israel, and is pushing Iran’s nuclear program. Human Rights Watch reports that human rights in Iran have deteriorated since Ahmadinejad became president. Prisoners are tortured. Prisoners are held in secret prisons. They also report that Ahmadinejad shows no tolerance for peaceful protests and gatherings.

In 2006, Ahmadinejad forced numerous scientists and professors to resign or retire. It has been referred to as “second cultural revolution”. In December 2006, students protested Ahmadinejad during a speech he was giving at a university, shouting “Death to the dictator”, burning pictures of Ahmadinejad, and setting off firecrackers.

Ahmadinejad has been accused of corruption, mismanagement, and discrimination.

This isn’t to say that Mousavi is the perfect candidate, but he seems to have the possibility of improving conditions in Iran. As for America’s immediate interest, Iran’s nuclear program, both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi support the nuclear program.

Probably more importantly, though, Iran’s President is not the policy maker in Iran, the Supreme Leader is. Iran has had only two Supreme Leaders. The first started in 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, and his name was Ruhollah Khomeini, with the title Ayatollah. The Ayatollah Khomeini was supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until 1989, when he died. Ali Khamenei was then appointed Supreme Leader of Iran, and has remained in that position ever since. The Supreme Leader is considered as the ultimate head of the Iranian political and governmental establishment, above that of Iran’s president. According to the constitution, he has the last say in internal and foreign policies, control of all of the armed forces, and control of state broadcast. The head of the Judicial branch is also directly appointed by him.

Anyone hoping that Iran will radically shift in its policies if Mousavi replaces Ahmadinejad may be having too high of expectations. So long as Iran is a theocracy with a cleric being it’s non-elected Supreme Leader, Iran can only change so much.

The 12 June 2009 Iranian presidential election results were 63% of the votes for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and 34% for Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Accusations of election fraud has been thrown about. Mousavi’s supporters have slogans including “Where is my vote”. On 15 June 2009, Mousavi made his first post-election appearance with hundreds of thousands of his supporters in a rally in Tehran, despite being warned by state officials that any such rally would be illegal.

Iranian police have been cracking down on protesters, arresting more than 100 prominent anti-government figures. The police have also opened fire on protesters. As of 16 June 2009, there have been 20 confirmed deaths. The government has tried to quell the protests by blocking internet sites, including facebook, youtube, and twitter. Text messaging has been blocked. Foreign journalists have never had much access inside Iran, but since the protests, Iran has arrested a number of foreign journalists and confiscated their tapes.

Al Jazeera has described the situation as the “biggest unrest since the 1979 revolution.”

Now, I’m not sure if Mousavi won the election and Ahmadinejad stole it through election fraud, or if Ahmadinejad really did win the election. The country is an Islamic theocracy. About 77% of the population is literate. Considering that America is 99% literate and there is still a strong religious political presence in the US that pushes for Creationism to be taught in public schools, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that a right wing hardliner like Ahmadinejad really did get a majority of the vote. I mean, America reelected Bush in 2004, so crazy people win elections all the time.

But I’m not sure if that is the deciding factor here. In fact, I’m pretty sure it has a good chance of being completely irrelevant. It was a student revolution in 1979, among other things, that brought about the Iranian revolution against the corrupt and evil Shah of Iran. If Ahmadinejad is viewed as corrupt and evil by enough Iranians, then the election results won’t really matter. The Iranian government cracking down on protests to the point of killing protesters, shutting down communications, and arresting and black-bagging critics, certainly won’t help their standing in public opinion.

The difference between this event and the 1979 revolution, though, is that there is no political power vacuum yet. In 1979, the Shah was out of Iran when the revolution happened, and the military and police did not oppose the revolution. As of now, the police are cracking down on dissidents, Ahmadinejad is still president, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is still the Supreme Ruler, and the theocracy is still in power.

The question is whether or not the current supporters of Mousavi can create enough of a sea-change in Iran to make any lasting change in Iran’s political landscape. I don’t have the answer to that question. It certainly looks like it is possible. At this point, I think all we can do is watch and cross our fingers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613181040285185.html

For all you ignorant folks who are mad at Obama for apologizing to Iran because you don’t think we did anything wrong:

It’s called Operation Ajax. Learn about it. Deal with it.

In 1950′s, Iran had a democratically elected government. At that time, they were also under a colonial relic with the British that gave all (no, really, ALL) of Iran’s oil to Britain, and Britain paid Iran a pittance. And the Iranians decided it was their oil and they should get the money for it.

The British responded by telling the US that Iran was turning communist, which plugged into the cold war fear that gripped America in the 50′s. So, the US sent the CIA over to Iran and they purchased a revolution and installed a puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran.

The Shah ruled Iran for a quarter century. He stayed in power because America made certain that he had money and military equipment to crush any opposition. By the 1970′s, the Shah’s secret police had tens of thousands of Iranians in secret prisons and was torturing them to force their compliance and make the rest of the Iranian population think twice about opposing his rule.

In 1979, the Iranians had had enough and overthrew the Shah’s government while he was out of the country. The Iranian Revolution was supported by many Iranians across the political spectrum. The Iranians demanded that the Shah be returned to Iran to stand trial for his crimes of torture and murder. But the United States offered to host the Shah, which incensed the Iranians and reminded them of who had put the Shah in power in the first place. It was at this time that Iranians stormed the Embassy and took the Americans there hostage.

The Iranian students who stormed the embassy had three demands. The return of the Shah to Iran. That the US apologize for the 1953 overthrow of the democratic government of Iran. That the US release Iranian assets currently frozen in the US.

The US did none of those things.

The US overthrew the democratic government of Iran in 1953 and installed the ruthless dictator the Shah of Iran for 25 years. This dictator radicallized the Iranian people and eventually sparked the Iranian Revolution which overthrew the Shah. The resulting power vacuum was eventually filled by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the radical religious extremists that followed him.

This is what America did. This is the mess that America created. If you don’t think America should apologize for these actions and you don’t think Iran should need an apology, just imagine if our worst enemy came into America in 1953, overthrew our goverment, installed a dictator who tortured tens of thousands of people over 25 years. Just imagine that the Soviet Union somehow sent KGB spies who managed to overthrow Eisenhower and install a puppet government. Do you think Americans might be a little mad after 25 years of oppression? Do you think Americans might be a little mad if some foreign country was taking all our oil and paying us nothing for it?

The founding fathers fought the British back around 1776 because they were taxing our tea. Originally, there was a large portion of “loyalists”, people loyal to Britain, in the colonies. In earlier times, the “revolution” against the British was called “Boston’s fight” by colonialists in other parts of the land who wanted to remain British subjects. The Boston Massacre, an incident in which British troops killed 5 colonialists, radicalized a huge swath of the colonies against Britain.

The difference was that we were luckier than the Iranians after our revolution. The original constitutional convention was mostly a fight between state’s power and federal power. The constitution is mainly a functional document about who has power and how they get it. The Bill of Rights wasn’t added until later when some states refused to sign without it. There were some mention of our first president, George Washington, becoming the next “King George”. And our constitution wasn’t exactly the great document of freedom that we like to think of today: white male land owners had the political power. Women couldn’t vote. Blacks couldn’t vote. The instutition of slavery was codified into the Constitution as “other persons”.

It took America another hundred years to finally face the immorality of slavery, and even then, it took a civil war because half the country didn’t want to give it up. It took another hundred years before blacks had anything resembling true equality. Women didn’t get to vote until 1920.

America had a direct hand in overthrowing the democratic government of Iran in 1953. If you think the Iranian’s were supposed to just roll over and accept that, you don’t even know how our own nation began.

Someone is trying to Tonkin the Iranians.

This article is an example: “U.S. forces may be close to unlocking the mystery of who is behind a deadly innovation in Iraqi insurgents’ weapons, a ‘lob bomb’”

What’s a ‘lob bomb’? It’s a rocket, most commonly 107mm in diameter, with a range of around 8,500 meters (5 miles), a total weight of 19 kg (41 pounds), and an explosive charge of 1.3 kg (3 pounds) of TNT. This article contains some specs on one common example of these rockets.

What’s so different about a “lob bomb”? Iraq insurgents commonly use mortars. 60mm mortars have a range from 1000 to 3,500 meters (0.5 to 2.0 miles), and a total weight of 1 to 2 kg (2 to 4 pounds). Both motars and rockets are unguided, so generally only work against large targets, like an entire base. Mortars can be fairly consistent, though, from one shot to the next, so an insurgent might fire a mortar round from a distance, and then another insurgent might act as forward observer using a radio or cell phone and dial the rounds in. However, if the US forces have Counter Battery Radar, then radar can pinpoint the position of the mortar and send troops to counter attack.

Rockets are different in that they can be set up to fire several shots at once, such as four to twelve rockets. And they can be set up to fire either by remote control or by timer. But they’re still unguided, and since they’re fired all at once, or if they’re fired by timer or remote, there is no “dialing in” as with a mortar. This means they’re only about as effective as mortar rounds are, just applied differently.

So the article says there is a mystery as to who is behind the “innovation”. First of all, it isn’t an innovation. Insurgents have been using rockets for a while. And there isn’t much mystery as to where they come from. As this article points out, “A U.S. explosives expert, Maj. Marty Weber, confirmed in April 2007 that most 107mm rockets found in Iraq were Chinese-made.” So, insurgents have been using rockets since before April 2007, and most of those rockets are made in china.

So, why does the article call it an “innovation” when it’s been around from the beginning of the insurgency? Why do they say it is a “mystery” as to where these rockets are coming from when they knew the source over a year ago or more?

Later on in that same article: “American officers said in interviews that the group is Shiite and may have links to Iran.”

Well, it’s no mystery that Bush Jr. has been beating his little war drum to fight Iran for some time, and it seems that now someone is trying to Tonkin the Iranians so we can bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb bomb Iran.

Just remember, the Administration that is telling you now (2008) that Iran is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents to be used against US troops, is the SAME Administration who lied to you in March 2003 that Saddam had a massive stockpile of WMD’s, was linked with al Queda, and was behind 9/11.