The Guardian: Ahmadinejad Allies Charged With Sorcery: an increasingly bitter power struggle .... a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached. ..... On Sunday, Ahmadinejad returned to his office after an 11-day walkout in an apparent protest over Khamenei's reinstatement of the intelligence minister, who the president had initially asked to resign ...... Ahmadinejad's unprecedented disobedience prompted harsh criticism from conservatives who warned that he might face the fate of Abdulhassan Banisadr, Iran's first post-revolution president who was impeached and exiled for allegedly attempting to undermine clerical power. ....... Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a hardline cleric close to Khamenei, warned that disobeying the supreme leader – who has the ultimate power in Iran – is equivalent to "apostasy from God". ....... the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus. ...... Ahmadinejad's obsession with the hidden imam is well known. He often refers to him in his speeches and in 2009 said that he had documentary evidence that the US was trying to prevent Mahdi's return.
This is how you know the regime in Iran is only months away from getting toppled. This rift is a sign the regime in Iran is feeling the pressure of street action elsewhere in the Arab world.
Image by PanARMENIAN_Photo via FlickrWhat has been going on in Syria has been breaking my heart. It is like these bastards who run the country have basically decided they will stop at nothing.
I am not saying the US needs to get involved in a fourth war. Libya is not war. Aerial military action is not war. It is more like police action.
We have to learn from Libya. The lesson from Libya is it is basically fruitless to just target the peddlers in the streets and let the big druglords go.
The NATO powers need to read that UN resolution a little more closely. NATO has been authorized to stop the brutality upon unarmed civilians. But that has continued unabated. And so NATO has to take out the command and control apparatus at Gaddafi's disposal.
The best way to do this is by taking the top guy out. We experimented in Libya. Now we have to revise our operations in Libya, and we have to do it right in Syria.
You freeze all foreign assets of all members of the regime. You issue interpol orders for their arrests. You get a UN resolution passed. You demand that all violent action against peaceful protesters cease. And if the guy does not comply, you take the top guy out through surgical aerial strikes. If it takes more than a week, you are not doing it right.
Some people are like oh no, you get rid of the dictator and there is going to be chaos. Chaos is now. Chaos is that hundreds of innocent civilians have been butchered, and there seems to be no end in sight.
The people in Syria are not lesser people. If people in Libya deserve protection so do the people in Syria.
Image via WikipediaI have pushed the thought that elements of the Pakistani army and intelligence played a role in creating and sustaining the safe house for Bin Laden. These are the same elements who attempted to kill Musharraf when he was in power - more than once. These are the same people who got Benazir Bhutto killed.
What if that is not true? What if Bin Laden did all this on his own? That would be the scary version.
He picked the right town, obviously. While America spent a decade launching drone attacks in the rugged mountains, he lived his quiet life in a fancy Islamabad suburb. If anything he had shown a knack for out of the box thinking. The 9/11 attack itself was the ultimate act of out of the box thinking. It was so unexpected.
He needed to move money to buy that plot of land, to build himself a fortress. He needed money to safely move in there. And I am pretty sure he had contingency plans in place to get him out of there. If he had had the slightest hint he was being watched, he would have gone elsewhere, somewhere he felt equally safe.
So this guy had resources at his disposal. He had a sophisticated network of well connected people. He had tons of money. He had donors. More than anything else he had his brain. He thought things through. It took America a decade to get him. The mightiest power in human history took 10 full years to zero in on him. You have to give the guy some credit.
And you have to ask, what did he leave behind?
My political instincts tell me the Al Qaeda thunder has rightfully been stolen by the Arabs braving the streets for democracy. I have long advocated draining the swamp instead of just going after mosquitoes. And the military details of this operation are not my specialty, but there is plenty of reason to believe vigilance has to be maintained. All it would take is one attack 1/10th the size of 9/11 to send all actors right back to the drawing board all over again.
Think about it, Bin Laden's final place of hiding was as out of the box and as bold as his most spectacular attack. The guy kept thinking to the very end.
9/11 happened. Madrid happened. London happened. Bali happened. Mumbai happened. It is not like 9/11 happened and that was it. This thing is not exactly over. Vigilance has to be maintained but the best foot forward is to support the democracy movements in the region to the hilt.
Image via WikipediaUltimately It Is About Iran, Because That Is Where It All Started
