January 31, 2007 12:34
Kiss of Doom
You can imagine the scare rippling through Israeli President Moshe Katzav's residence on hearing the news Wednesday that Justice Minister Haim Ramon was found guilty of sexually harassing a young woman soldier. He kissed her. Vigorously. Smotheringly. And for that Ramon is staring at a three year jail stretch.
For the Israeli president it could be a lot worse. Katzav is facing charges of being a serial rapist. That's a lot worse than a kiss. If Katvaz encounters the same kind of judgement, he's looking at a long jail sentence, 16 years maybe, or being choppped into sushi.
It must be a grim evening indeed at the Katzav residence.
What's fascinating is how Israeli politicians and soldiers react when their country is in peril. It turns out that on July 12, 2006, just minutes before the Israeli cabinet declared war against Hizballah, Justice Minister Ramon,56, was busy sticking his tongue down a woman soldier's throat. He was, perhaps, contemplating the thrust into Lebanon.
Meanwhile, when the Israeli Chief of Staff Danny Halutz (since resigned) heard that Hizballah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers --the event that triggered the summer war-- his reaction was to call his broker and sell off shares, anticipating a collapse of the stock market.
His financial judgment was as loopy as his battlefield strategy. It didn't take long for Israel's stock market to re-bound. Israelis may have confidence in their economy, but these days, they sure don't feel the same about their leaders.
--by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
January 30, 2007 7:54
Yikes! "The Clock is Ticking"
President Bush has been stepping up his focus on Iran. In last week's State of the Union address, he laid off the "axis of evil" talk but nailed Iran as the center of a growing threat from Shi'a extremists intent on dominating the Middle East. The President raised Lebanon as an example of this threat in a statement yesterday, in which he said: "While Lebanon's friends seek to help the Lebanese government build a free, sovereign, and prosperous country, Syria, Iran, and Hizballah are working to destabilize Lebanese society."
An anti-Iran industry of conservatives now seems to be cranking up a campaign to support a fight--if not a war--against the Islamic Republic. To some, it's a scary echo of the drumbeats we were hearing back in 2002 concerning that other big Middle East threat.
Last week as Americans watched the SOTU, a conservative think-tank called the American Foreign Policy Council, which runs something called the Iran Freedom Initiative (an echo of Operation Iraqi Freedom?), was airing ads promoting the Iran-threat idea. I received this press release from AFPC by E-mail:
AFPC LAUNCHES AD CAMPAIGN ON IRANToday, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) begins a week-long advertising campaign aimed at educating the American public about the growing threat posed by a nuclear Iran. The ad campaign consists of two 30-second spots that began running Tuesday on CNN, MSNBC, Headline News and the Fox News Channel in Washington, DC, Maryland and northern Virginia.
ADVERTISEMENT 1:
The nuclear clock is ticking... and time is running out.
Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism[1] - supporting attacks that have killed hundreds of Americans.[2]
An Iranian group boasts 25,000 members who are ready to become suicide bombers in the US and Europe.[3]
Now, in violation of the UN, Iran is developing a dangerous nuclear capability[4] and has threatened to share it with others.[5]
Stand up for peace. Call the White House and tell them to enforce sanctions against Iran today.
SOURCES:
[1] Pam O'Toole, "Rice: Iran is Terrorism 'Banker'," BBC News, February 17, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4722498.stm.
[2] "Iran Responsible for 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing, Judge Rules," CNN.com, May 30, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/30/iran.barracks.bombing/.
[3] Ahmad Rafat, "Europe a Target of Iranian Suicide Bombers," Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, May 26, 2006, http://daneshjoo.org/publishers/currentnews/article_6031.shtml.
[4] "Iran 'Ignores Nuclear Deadline,'" BBC News, August 31, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5303086.stm.
[5] "Iran Prez: I'll Share My Nuclear Technology," CBS News, December 16, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/16/world/main2274308.shtml.ADVERTISEMENT 2:
Iran's President denies the Holocaust[1], says he wants to wipe Israel off the map[2] and has supported attacks that killed hundreds of Americans.[3]
Iran sent thousands of children marching to their deaths to clear minefields, armed only with plastic keys to unlock the gates of heaven.[4]
Now, in violation of the United Nations, Iran is trying to go nuclear[5] and has threatened to share the technology with others.[6]
Stand up for peace. Call the White House and tell them to enforce sanctions against Iran today.
SOURCES:
[1] Karl Vick, "Iran's President Calls Holocaust 'Myth' in Latest Assault on Jews," Washington Post, December 15, 2005; "Ahmadinejad: Courting controversy," Al-Jazeera (Doha), December 14, 2005, http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/39AF3EA0-C8E9-456A-99D3-438045D4431F.htm.
[2] David Pryce-Jones, "A Particular Madness - Understanding Iran's Ahmadinejad," National Review, May 8, 2006.
[3] "Iran Responsible for 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing, Judge Rules," CNN.com, May 30, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/30/iran.barracks.bombing/.
[4] Matthias Kuntzel, "Ahmadinejad's Demons," The New Republic, April 24, 2006, http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060424&s=kuntzel042406.
[5] "Iran 'Ignores Nuclear Deadline,'" BBC News, August 31, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5303086.stm.
[6] "Iran Prez: I'll Share My Nuclear Technology," CBS News, December 16, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/16/world/main2274308.shtml.
I admired the way the AFPC brought the press in with the footnotes to support its arguments against Iran's regime; perhaps AFPC is assuming that the media can't be relied on to automatically jump on the bandwagon this time.
The same day, I received in the mail a review copy of a handsome book entitled, The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis (Palgrave MacMillan: New York)
I guess what this means is, Let the games begin.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 30, 2007 5:25
Return to Sender
In a somber Jerusalem twilight, I was taken to a rooftop by an Israeli friend. Everywhere we looked, there were walls --the 2,000 year old walls of the holy city, the high concrete wall running along the hilltops, dividing Arabs from Jews. I couldn't decide whether the intrusive, new wall actually looked futuristic or medieval. "The thing about walls," says my friend,Yehuda Levy-Aldema, "is that they don't last forever."
"What does?"I asked.
"Words. Faith," Yehuda replied. "Come, I'll show you."
Yehuda took me downstairs to the Hechal Shlomo Center for Jewish Heritage. It's a museum of Judaica, next to the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, and Yehuda happens to be its soft-spoken director. He sat me in a large room that was dark and empty. He flicked a switch, and a sound and light show began, colored orbs rushed towards and away from us, and the cosmos opened up with a roar. Then, on one of the walls, an image appeared of a man in his early seventies, speaking Hebrew.
He told of being a boy in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and how, as a 13-year old, he was secretly prepared for his Bar Mitzvah by a rabbi. The Nazis would have killed them had they found out.
What does this old man's story have to do with scenes of the universe rushing by me? I wondered.
The story continued: on the night of his Bar Mitzvah, burlap sacks were hung over the windows so the Nazi guards wouldn't catch sight of the ceremony and execute them all. There was a rap on the window, and the rabbi told the boy, "Go see who it is." The boy peered out cautiously. It was his mother, holding a pair of socks she had knitted for him. She had just enough time to give her son his Bar Mitzvah gift and then sneak back to her section of the death camp. She and others had risked her life to reach the boy with his pair of socks.
The boy never saw his mother again.
After the ceremony, the rabbi gave a miniature Torah to the boy. He had hidden it in rags from the Nazis. "You keep it," the Rabbi told him, "I'll die here, but there is a chance you'll live. Take this Torah with you."
The Rabbi was right. The boy survived, and he didn't. An orphan, the boy came to Israel and brought the palm-sized Torah with him. He rose to become a professor of astro-physics at Tel Aviv University. His name is Yossef Yehoyachin. One of his students was Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, and he knew Yossef's story about the Torah. The astronaut asked if he could take the Torah into space. The professor didn't hesistate, and gave it to him. The professor wondered if that was the reason why the rabbi at Bergen-Belsen had entrusted it to him in the first place
The Israeli astronaut was on the Columbia Space Shuttle that exploded like a star, exactly four years ago. "I tried to calculate how much dust from the Torah might have sprinkled down over Israel," the professor said wistfully.
For my friend Yehuda, who had put together this exhibition (this story is only a small part of it), the upside of the Columbia tragedy was that the Torah had dissolved into the cosmos, into God; And this, Yehuda said, was proof that words and faith were far more indestructible than the labyrinth of walls, built by conquerors past and present, around Jerusalem.
--By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
January 30, 2007 7:00
Motorbike Mayhem
When Lebanon's political crisis erupted in an open gun battle in Beirut on Thursday, I was stuck in traffic. The Lebanese army was blocking the road ahead, leaving my driver and myself in a highway tunnel on the way south from the center of town towards where the skirmishes were taking place. After abandoning the car to get closer to the action on foot, I accepted a ride on the back of a motor scooter belonging to a total stranger. "This is Lebanese hospitality," I said by way of thanking him for the ride. "No matter how bad things are, someone always does you a favor."
In retrospect, I probably should have asked my new scooter buddy -- a man of about my age -- if he had any particular dog in this sectarian fight. At the time it seemed impolite, and in the rush of the moment, we didn't even properly introduce ourselves. But it soon became clear that he wanted to get a lot closer to the action than I did. We breezed through army blockades and back up onto the elevated highway that suddenly became the dividing line between two warring tribes.
On our right, young Shi'ite men, mostly dressed in black for the Ashura holiday, streamed in from their neighborhoods alongside the city's southern coastline. Many of them seemed prepared for a confrontation, having been bused in from mosques where members of the Amal Movement, a Shi'ite political party, had supplied them with construction helmets, broomsticks, small bats, and other makeshift clubs.
On the higher ground to our left amid a dense neighborhood of apartment blocks was Beirut Arab University, a largely Sunni school. Today's riots had apparently started there as a lunchroom quarrel between student members of the Sunni political parties that support the Lebanese government and the Shi'ite parties (Amal and Hizballah) which make up the bulk of the opposition that paralyzed Beirut the day before yesterday with a general strike that turned violent.
The student street skirmishes had by now spiraled into low-level urban warfare with the arrival of armed fighters from both pro-government and opposition political parties. Gunfire was coming from the BAU parking lot, which was filled with the smoke of burning cars. My companion looked down at the camera I was holding by his side. "Do you want to go take pictures?" But before I could answer in the vehement negative, I noticed that we were zooming towards a bristling bunch of men in black, one of whom raised an AK-47 assault riffle and fired it towards BAU. "Turn around!" I yelled, afraid not so much of this shooter but of the ones who would undoubtedly shoot back. When I jumped off the back of the motorbike and tried to run away, the Amal guys started throwing their sticks at me and were about to give chase until my friend shouted something to them and then to me: "Don't worry! I know everyone here. I am Amal."
Which at anther time or another place might have made for an interesting interview. But when, as expected, bullets began hitting a retaining wall on our side of the highway, I found my way to a side street near the Egyptian embassy and hid in the concrete entrance to a subterranean parking garage listening to the crack of high velocity bullets breaking the sound barrier overhead and bursts of heavy machine guns fired by the Lebanese army, which was now moving up the highway to quash the riot. Please forgive the rush to judgment, but at that moment it seemed that a new civil war was on its way to Lebanon. "Don't you want to take pictures?" asked my scooter friend, whose name I now learned was Abbas (a classically Shi'ite name) when he finally found me. "No $#@%# way," I replied. "I’m just a writer!" Abbas gave me a disappointed look then left.
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 30, 2007 12:55
Vote for the Pyramids!
C'mon, Zahi, lighten up a little. Nobody can take the Pyramids away from Egypt.
Our story begins eight years ago, when a self-styled Swiss adventurer named Bernard Weber hatched the idea of identifying the New Seven Wonders of the World. It's not as pointless as it sounds: Weber's aim is to promote greater awareness of world heritage sites and raise money to finance restoration. One of his projects is to recreate the 4th Century AD Buddha statue in Afghanistan destroyed by the Taliban shortly before 9/11.
In early January, Weber's New7Wonders Foundation narrowed 77 nominees down to 21 finalists, from which the New Seven Wonders of the World will be chosen by global citizens who log on to the foundation's website, or phone or text in their vote. The winners will be announced on 7/7/07 and Weber is currently on a world publicity tour of the 21 sites in part to drum up interest in voting.
On his stopover in Cairo last week, Weber got a chilly reception. Egyptian officials refused to meet with him, revealing surprising touchiness about putting the famous pharaonic tombs of Giza to the test. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, publicly scorned Weber's project as having "no scientific or official stature." The Pyramids, he added, are "living in the hearts of people around the globe, and don't need a vote to be among the world's wonders." Instead of presenting the contest's Certificate of Candidacy to Egyptian officials as he had planned, Weber symbolically buried it in the sand on the Giza plateau.
Does Dr. Hawass, who has spent his career exploring the mysteries of the site, really worry that the Pyramids would lose?
I can sympathize with his dilemma. The Pyramids are the only Wonder still standing among the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, first compiled by a 2nd Century BC Greek philosopher. Egypt, in fact, had two of the original Wonders, the other being the lighthouse of Alexandria, which is being excavated by French and Egyptian archeologists in the modern city's port. Why should the magnificant Pyramids, upon which Herodotus himself once gazed, be asked to compete with an erector-set toy like Paris's Eiffel Tower, a sound stage called the Sydney Opera House or the bunch of English boulders known as Stonehenge?
Well, for the fun of it, obviously! It's hard to believe that one of the original wonders would lose to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul or Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle much less to that American upstart, New York's Statue of Liberty. And if the Pyramids lost, who would have egg on his face, Egypt, or the contest's organizer? I fear that what Hawass is worried about is not losing the Pyramids--as he says, they will remain in our hearts-- but losing the balloting. The way to ensure against that is to mobilize Egyptians to get out there, support their beloved Pyramids-- and have some fun. They've got my vote.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 29, 2007 5:27
Spin Doctoring the Skirmishes
Lebanon's political parties are busy trying to blame each other for starting the violence that erupted here last week. This is producing some creative media coverage.
Here's a photo that was used at a press conference by one of the opposition's leaders -- General Michel Aoun of the Free Patriotic Movement -- that purports to show a member of a rival, pro-government Christian faction -- the Lebanese Forces -- firing an assault rifle during a riot between the FPM and the LF in the suburbs north of Beirut on Tuesday that was broken up by the army.
But even a quick look at the photo raises some interesting questions: why does light fall differently on the gunman than on the other figures? Why does the quality of his image appear to be so much better than the rest of the photo? And what kind of idiot fires into a whole platoon of soldiers when he's all by himself?
Apparently, the figure of the lone gunman is actually that of a Hizballah fighter lifted from a Associated Press photo taken in southern Lebanon during the war this summer with Israel, and Photoshopped onto a snapshot of Tuesday's riot with a LF cross added to his sleeve for good measure.
LF officials are indignant. But pro-govenrment partisans are not completely blameless themselves in the faux news department. Future Television, the Sunni loyalist station par excellence, was showing live footage on Thursday of young men throwing rocks whom the tut-tutting Future reporters identified as Shia rabble rousers from the Hizballah-led opposition. The ruse fell apart when some of the young men shouted impolite suggestions for things Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah could do to pass the time. Quick, cut to a commercial!
Again for the record, on Thursday I saw guys with guns on both sides of the battle. They were little green men from outer space, and as soon as I learn to use Photoshop, it will be a TIME exclusive.
January 29, 2007 1:04
Will Ayman Nour Go Free?
Is Mubarak's government getting ready to free Ayman Nour?
Condi Rice pointedly failed to publicly raise the case of the imprisoned opposition leader during her talks with Mubarak in Egypt two weeks ago. The Bush administration has clearly determined that high profile advocacy of the democracy agenda may be counterproductive, in that it angers allies like Mubarak, falsely raises expectations in the freedom movement and doesn't bring quick results. There is a sense among many pro-democracy folks in Cairo that democracy institutions, like civil society organizations and a free press, must be strengthened before you can achieve useful results in elections or even on the street. I wonder if now that Mubarak's government is intent on enacting constitutional changes this year, and the U.S. is laying off the democracy talk, whether the government is quietly preparing to release Nour from prison as a sign of its good intentions. TIME's Amany Radwan sent me the following E-mail, for example:
Over the past ten days, local appeals for the release of Ayman Nour have been mounting. Nour who was found guilty of fraud was sentenced in December 2005 for five years. The daily independent newpaper Al Masri Al Youm published a letter from Ayman Nour in which he details his deteriorating medical condition and expresses his urgent need for proper medical supervision which he says he is not getting in jail. Otherwise, he wrote, he could die. Several Egyptians commentators responded to that letter urging President Hosni Mubarak to pardon Ayman Nour. Following a visit to Nour in jail, his uncle and doctor also appealed on the pages of Al Masri Al Youm to Mubarak to transfer Nour to a hospital as he was suffering from a serious heart condition as well as complications from diabetes. That same evening, star TV presenter Amr Adeeb appealed to Mubarak through his Cairo Today Daily Talk show that is hugely popular all over the Arab World to release Nour because of humanitarian reasons. Adeeb said that it would be a great generosity if Nour is released and that such a gesture from the Egyptian leader would be welcomed and appreciated inside and outside Egypt. Adeeb alluded to the fact that as a consequence of his sentence and his deteriorating health, Nour's political ambitions are now over and that he should be given the chance to live in dignity with his wife and children.
Adeeb is correct. Handing Nour a five-year prison term for election fraud appeared dubious as well as mean. After all, Nour had the guts to challenge Mubarak in the 2005 campaign for president, he spoke his mind like candidates should in a democracy, and then got slammed with the legal case when he came in a distant second. As long as Nour is in prison, it will be a cloud over everything Mubarak does--a pity, if the 78-year-old ruler really does intend to go through with democratic reforms during his remaining years in office.
By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 28, 2007 5:49
Covering the Street Fights
For the moment there's lots of ink being spilled in local newspapers about the possibility that Iran and Saudi Arabia might be able to broker some kind of deal between Lebanon's government and opposition. More power to them. Though it's unlikely that Lebanon's internal problems can be settled for good without a full scale regional diplomatic agreement, anything that lowers the temperature in Beirut's streets -- even temporarily -- is for the better as far as Lebanon is concerned, and from a shallow and self-centered perspective, as far as journalists like myself are concerned.
That's because the pattern of these streets fights foreshadows a conflict that's going to be pretty tough to cover. Beirut is a beguiling city, and Western journalists who cover the Middle East from their home-base here wouldn't be the first foreign invaders to have been lulled into a false sense of security by the balmy Mediterranean lifestyle. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, one lives in Lebanon with ones' guard down. On Thursday, I was eating a fancy turkey sandwich at a business lunch in a California-style restaurant. Thirty minutes later I was trapped in a firefight, without a flack-jacked or helmet, without my notebook, and when the city's mobile phone network went down with the surge of phone calls, I also found myself pining for a satellite telephone.
Another problem is that no one wants coverage of their side causing trouble, no one wants to be blamed for starting a civil war, and everyone wants to play the victim. Your average Beirut street fighter (who may well be a finance or marketing MBA student) is pretty media savvy. He knows that he is going to have a tough time explaining why there's a picture of him on Time.com with a Molotov cocktail when he goes for his next job interview at the Price Waterhouse Coopers Dubai office. So when I trained my camera on some Sunni guys throwing rocks on Tuesday, one of them decked me. Not long afterwards he apologized (which was nice) but his buddies then tried to get me to take pictures of their Shia opponents making mischief on the other side of the street. "I can't believe you don't have a telephoto lens!" one of them practically screamed at me. "Are you sure you're a journalist?"
It was also hard to miss how many of the rioters on Tuesday and Thursday were so clearly enjoying themselves. Over and over again, I've heard how people in Lebanon don't want to go back to the bad old days, and that only outsiders agitators are the ones responsible for causing trouble. But there's a subsection of bored and underemployed young men who want to bring it on. Why else were they pouring into the neighborhood around Beirut Arab University from all over town to join a fight between students they didn't even know? I was hiding from gunfire behind a soda machine a couple of streets down from BAU on Thursday, when some alpha male street fighter with a submachine gun ran around the corner followed by a wannabe entourage of about seven cronies, one of them carrying an extra ammunition clip, like teenagers trying to get a turn on their rich friend's new toy. It was a scene from high school with small arms.
Obviously, the tragedy of what may happen here won't be its effect on the foreign press. And of course we'll figure out a new set of do's and don'ts to keep working. And it's true that anytime something bad happens in Lebanon, there's a lot of breathless stories about a new civil war being on its way. (I just wrote one myself.) But defending for a second a profession that is often accused of wanting disaster to happen to other people so that they can write about it, I just want to say right now that I'd much rather Lebanon stays as it is, with its ski slopes, and beaches, and lifestyle that appears to be as superficial as I am.
--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 26, 2007 5:13
What Next in Lebanon?
Here's at least one good thing that happened in the midst of yesterday's sectarian madness in Beirut. The Lebanese army got involved. When the quarrel between Sunni students and Shia students that broke out at Beirut Arab University turned into full-scale street fighting, the Lebanese army began sealing off surrounding neighborhoods. They made arrests. They disarmed many of the gangs moving in to join battle. And for the first time since 1996 (when Israel bombed the country in Operation Grapes of Wrath) they declared a curfew.
That was in marked contract to Tuesday's general strike when the army stood and watched as the Hizballah-led opposition set up barricades to shut down Beirut. The concern was that if they were seen to be taking sides in the country's political crisis, they would risk splitting the army along sectarian lines, as happened during the 1975-1990 Civil War. But by doing nothing on Tuesday, they opened the door for pro-government gangs to take the law into their own hands.
So there's still hope that Lebanon will avoid more mass unrest, especially if yesterday's riot pushes the rival sides in the political crisis back to the bargaining table. The country is so deeply -- and so evenly -- divided in their support of or their antagonism towards Prime Minster Fouad Siniora's Westernized government that for weeks many observers have been saying that it will take some tragedy or explosion to bring the country's leaders to their senses.
This could be that opportunity. Because the violence didn't occur as a result of a planned opposition protest, Hizballah-leader Hassan Nasrallah has enough face-saving room to return to talks without accepting responsibility for the chaos. He could play the statesman in order to avoid more of the same.
But the opposition in general and Nasrallah in particular will be ultimately responsible for any violence that occurs if the opposition continues its street campaign to topple the government. Their claims of democratic legitimacy, and it's use of the term "civil disobedience" to describe their actions, became void the day they prevented people from driving on the roads of their own country.
The concern now is Ashura, the Muslim holiday held especially dear by Shia, as it marks the day their ancestors were massacred by the armies of the Sunni Caliph in Karbala in Iraq in the seventh century. Tempers tend to flare on Ashura -- which is celebrated among Lebanon's young Shia men by ritually beating and cutting themselves. Earlier in the week, opposition leaders had said that the next stage of the street protests will take place sometime before Ashura, which is on Monday. If they stick to that schedule, it could be 1975 all over again in Lebanon.
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 26, 2007 4:10
Dennis Ross's Mythology (3)
After some background interviews in the Middle East this week, I'm now becoming persuaded that Condi Rice is cranking up the first serious peace initiative since Bill Clinton left office six long years ago. She spent four days in the region last week and won agreement by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas to hold exploratory talks with her next month on the endgame rather than merely on security issues. It won't be easy, but she deserves support for trying. If she hasn't learned that the U.S. has to play with a full deck in dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, however, then she won't get anywhere.
In his Haaretz article yesterday, Akiva Eldar had an anecdote which, if true, indicates that Clinton blamed Arafat for the "failure" of the Camp David peace talks in 2000 because Barak asked him to do so for political reasons--i.e., Barak needed to escape blame and put the onus on Arafat so it would help Barak's re-election as prime minister. Eldar says he heard the anecdote from Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat, who says he got it from Clinton himself in 2004.
Though his book The Missing Peace postulates that Camp David failed because of Arafat, Clinton's mediator Dennis Ross oddly fails to mention that Clinton broke what Ross termed an unfortunate promise made to Arafat prior to the summit that he would not be blamed if it failed to produce agreement. In his meticulous 840-page account, Ross glosses over the fact that Clinton did indeed blame Arafat immediately after the summit--in a White House press conference, when he praised Barak more than Arafat, and then more directly in an interview with Israeli television soon thereafter. Privately, Ross notes in The Missing Peace, he and Clinton regarded Arafat as "the skunk of the party."
Ross explains in his book that he felt Barak needed to be praised for domestic political reasons and, echoing what Clinton reportedly told Erekat in 2004, Clinton felt it was important to shore up Barak to keep the peace process alive. Ross doesn't say so, but it was a fatal mistake not to have had the same concerns about shoring up Arafat politically as well, given Arafat's well-documented struggle against Arab and Palestinian forces, from regimes that tried to kill him to potent Islamic fundamentalist opponents like Hamas.
In his desire to help Barak by making Arafat the skunk, Clinton effectively encouraged Arafat to take his own political cover in his old role as revolutionary rather than his new role as peacemaker. That certainly did nothing to prevent the intifadeh that was unleashed two months later, which was indicative of widespread Palestinian frustration with the lack of results from Arafat's peace efforts. Barely a year after Arafat's death in 2004, of course, Hamas swept his Fatah party from power. In Ross's logic, however, it's all Arafat's fault because he irrationally refused to agree to what Ross wanted him to according to Ross's preferred time-table. Palestinian public sentiment is irrelevant to the outcome, apparently, as are broken presidential promises. In prepping for the new peace talks, Rice and her team should check out accounts of what happened other than Ross's self-serving tome, such as Yossi Beilin's The Path to Geneva and Clayton E. Swisher's The Truth About Camp David.
Eldar, by the way, mentions the blame-Arafat story in a column about Clinton's wife Hillary, who the Jewish left, Eldar says, accuses of a "flip-flopping attitude toward the Israeli-Arab conflict." Eldar recalls that while Hillary once upset the Jewish establishment for comments supporting a Palestinian state, she became cooler to the Palestinian cause when she ran for the U.S. Senate. "Senator Clinton stirred longings for First Lady Hillary" among her friends on the Jewish left, Eldar says.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 25, 2007 6:53
Sectarian Battles in Beirut
Beirut Arab University's parking lot, scene of heavy fighting
Lebanon's sectarian tension erupted in an open gun battle between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim neighborhoods of Beirut today, forcing the Lebanese army to intervene with heavy machine guns and moving the country closer to outright civil war.
At least four people were shot dead and 30 injured after street fights between students at Beirut Arab University spiraled into low level urban warfare with the arrival of armed fighters from both pro-government and opposition political parties.
Men with automatic weapons fired at each other from across the airport highway, while cars burned in the parking lot at BAU, a largely Sunni institution in a Sunni neighborhood.
Partisans on each side blamed each other for starting the conflict, though many members of the opposition parties, especially supporters of the Shi'ite Amal Movement, appeared to have prepared for a confrontation. Hundreds of young Shi'ite men -- many of them dressed in black in celebration of the Ashura holiday -- formed up at mosques in sounding neighborhoods where Amal party members passed out hard hats and batons, and sent gangs streaming towards the conflict. Sunni residents of Mazraa and Tariq Al Jedide, the scene of sectarian clases om Tuesday, also moved in to join battle, most of them armed with makeshift clubs and rocks.
These Shi'ite boys marching towards the skirmish were later disarmed and beaten by soldiers
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 25, 2007 6:41
Blood in Beirut
Horrible scenes on the streets of Beirut today. The clashes are certainly reminiscent of the sorts of disturbances that preceded the outbreak of the all-out civil war in 1975, but let's keep our cool.
Indeed there are worrying trends. These clashes that broke out among students at Arab University may become contagious and spark more of the same along Shiite-Sunni lines. The country is embroiled in a dangerous test of wills at the highest political levels--pitting Shiite Hizballah and its Christian ally Michel Aoun against the government of Sunni leader Fouad Siniora--and pitting Iran and Syria against the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It was inevitable that Hizballah's decision to push its demand for Siniora's resignation into the streets with moves like Tuesday's general strike would heighten tensions on the streets.
But there are indications that this will not escalate into a full-scale civil war. Both the government and Hizballah are already calling on their supporters to get off the streets. Both sides well know that they are not in a position of extending their power over the whole country at the expense of the other. While Sunnis and anti-Hizballah Christians are no doubt beginning to re-arm, there has been no sign that they want to take on Hizballah's military wing by force. So far, the Lebanese army remains very much intact, and is working toward restoring calm in Beirut. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah indicated yesterday that the group is back peddling on its intention of toppling Siniora--that may be his realization that things are getting out of hand.
Siniora is in Paris today, where he got substantial international aid for Lebanon's re-construction. He also needs to demonstrate national leadership and show some accomodation to Hizballah's concerns--it clearly represents a large section of Lebanese society. For his part, Nasrallah needs to back off his provocations and recognize the risks he is taking.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 24, 2007 8:32
Sex and The Presidency
Few perks come with the job of being Israel's President. You can't dismiss the elected government. You can't even declare war. All you do is cut ribbons and shake hands with a lot of visiting dignitaries and school kids. Still, it beats jail.
And that is what Israel's President Moshe Katsav may be facing: 16 years in prison if he is indicted by the attorney general and found guilty of rape. That's why Katsav's lawyers asked the Knesset on Wednesday to grant him "a temporary suspension from office". This would give the beleaguered president three months of immunity before he is formally charged.
But Israeli parliament is livid with Katsav. Already a petition is making the rounds demanding his impeachment; so far 27 legislators have signed up, and the list is growing. The president can be impeached if 90 of the 120 parliamentarians vote against him. Women members of Knesset, in particular, are fuming. Big-hitter Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, is among those demanding Katsav's resignation, and Education Minister Yuli Tamir says she's thinking of ripping down the president's portraits from classrooms. "The current situation makes it impossible to educate students to respect the office of the president," she said. "It's an uncomfortable situation. Students are asking 'what is rape?'"
What Israelis can't fathom is why the president alerted lawmen to his alleged sexual wrongdoings in the first place. It was Katsav himself who lodged a complaint against an employee in the presidency claiming that she was trying to blackmail him over a sexual matter. But the more Attorney General Menachem Mazuz started digging into the allegations, the more his probe began to hone in on the president himself. Other women stepped forward also alleging sexual harassment by Katsav. They are described in the Israeli media only by alphabet letters; their identities are being withheld to protect them from victimization.
For his part, Katsav, 62, married with five children, swears he is innocent and his lawyers say he will provide evidence to prove that his enemies are trying to frame him. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert must feel relieved by this scandal. It takes the heat off him; Olmert may face criminal charges for financial misdeeds. Not surprisingly, Israelis are pining for the days, long gone, it seems, of upright leaders.
by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem
January 24, 2007 7:30
Bush & Iran (2)
Maybe the Bush White House should just call it Operation Confront Iran. Gary Sick of Columbia University, who was the principal aide for Iran in the Carter White House during the Islamic Revolution and hostage crisis, has authored a new paper he titles America's Iran Strategy. Written well before Bush's State of the Union speech last night, it is a valuable analysis that is a must-read for anybody wondering whether the U.S. is going to attack Iran or not.
The professor and executive director of Columbia's Gulf/2000 Project believes an emerging U.S. strategy for the region seeks to build a tripartite coalition loosely comprising the U.S., Israel and Sunni Muslim Arab allies--predominantly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan-- to confront and contain Shiite Muslim and specifically Iranian influence in the region. Sick notes how U.S. policies since 9/11 unintentionally gave Iran "a strategic gift of unparalleled proportions," which put the Sunni Arab governments further on the defensive last summer when the Iranian-backed Hizballah group fought off Israel's onslaught in Lebanon. One of the appealing qualities of the tripartite strategy, Sick notes, is that it changes the subject and distracts public attention from the disaster of Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom. Another is that antipathy to Iran is still so widespread in the U.S. nearly three decades after the hostage crisis that a strategy of confronting Iran--if not attacking Iran-- is likely to win easy support from Democrats and Republicans alike. Well, you heard the congressmen and women applauding.
Perhaps the good news, if there is any, is that the strategy does not necessarily entail a U.S. military attack on Iran, in Sick's view. Ironically, Sick cites knowledgeable observers who believe that despite Ahmadinejad's hard-line rhetoric, Iran may be ripe for a deal that would entail understandings about Iraq as well as its nuclear ambitions. But, Sick suggests, the coalition to confront Iran is more about politics than genuinely seeking changes in Iranian policies much less finding a negotiated solution with Tehran.
Take a good look at what Sick has to say about things. Few Americans have spent as much effort studying Iranian politics or knows them better. As I viewed the SOTU last night, Bush practically announced the formation of OCI and validated Sick's analysis of what his administration is up to. Bush shifted the U.S.'s focus to Iran, warning of the "escalating danger from Shia extremists...determined to dominate the Middle East." He spoke of "working with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the Gulf states" to bolster the Iraqi government. Bush didn't mention Israel in this regard, but maybe he didn't have to: Israeli leaders, who bear the scars of battles with Hizballah in Lebanon, have been sounding the alarm about Iranian influence in the region for years. Some people believe that Israel rather than the U.S. may even launch a preemptive strike to take out Iran's growing nuclear program.
By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 24, 2007 3:44
The Morning After in Lebanon
For a while yesterday evening, it appeared that the Hizballah-led opposition might continue with the forced general strike that paralyzed Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. Protesters were reinforcing several of the barricades that had cut off the main roads into the capital. When the call finally came to suspend the strike, at least three people had been killed, and over 130 wounded in the day's clashes.
By this morning, as street crews cleared rubble road blocks and as metal scavengers collected the steel wire from charred car tires, it had become clear that the country has moved closer to outright sectarian confrontation than anytime since the 15-year Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990. "We are at a dangerous crossroads," said Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. "Either we are heading to a civil war, or we are heading to a dialogue."
Unfortunately, dialogue appears for now to be the less likely of the possible outcomes. The opposition has vowed to continue their actions. "This was a warning to the government," according to a joint opposition statement read by a Hizballah MP to local papers. "Expect even greater escalation, far worse than today's."
It is also now clearer how future confrontations might occur. Both Hizballah and the army are unlikely to engage in open clashes. Hizballah's regulars are too disciplined, and the Lebanese army is too weak. (The army, which mirrors the country's sectarian make-up, would risk breaking apart if it acted against one side in the crisis.)
But other opposition parties (such as the Shia Muslim Amal movement) that lack Hizballah's organizational discipline have been less able to control their angry young men. And in the absence of action from the army to keep Lebanon from being forced shut by protests, pro-government groups are likely to take the law into their own hands. Already, some pro-government leaders have made statements that appeared to give the green light to their rank-and-file to stop what they are calling a coup attempt. "We vow that such a toppling in the street will not take place, no matter what the consequences," said Lebanon's Sunni Grand Mufti, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani.
And the sectarian fault lines are also clear. The line-up is intra-Muslim (Shia against Sunni) and intra-Christian (between two factions that fought each other during the Civil War and who now find themselves on opposite sides of the political crisis. ) Such is the sense of deja vu that Beirut's Daily Star ran a photo essay of the sectarian fighting titled: "A Reminder of the Bad Old Days."
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 24, 2007 2:23
Bush & Iran
Observations on Bush's 2007 State of the Union as watched in Cairo:
Bush shifted his Middle East focus away from Iraq to Iran. The speech issued a strong renewal of his de facto declaration of war on the Islamic regime in Tehran. Readers will recall Bush's post-9/11 "axis of evil" SOTU speech in 2002 that spoke of Iraq, North Korea and Iran "and their terrorist allies...arming to threaten the peace of the world...by seeking weapons of mass destruction." The President said that "in any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic." Fourteen months later, Bush initiated the war in Iraq that toppled Saddam's regime. As for South Korea, the U.S. is now "pursuing intensive diplomacy," as Bush said last night. But Iran remains in Bush's cross-hairs. Starting off saying that "to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy," Bush was at pains to explain that Al Qaeda's Sunni extremists "are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement." He said "it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists...determined to dominate the Middle East [and] known to take direction from the regime in Iran."
Bush didn't seem inclined to actually attack Iran. Despite the tough talk, Bush didn't provide many details about his strategy to "take the fight to the enemy." He talked about removing "the conditions that inspire blind hatred" behind terrorism. He said U.S. troops needed to remain in Baghdad to prevent a war involving Iranian-backed "Shia extremists" that "could spill out across the country [drawing] the entire region...into conflict." He talked about working with Arab states to support the Iraqi government and with the U.N. to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. No threats or promises of U.S. military action, however, as when Bush categorically warned in his 2003 SOTU that the U.S. "will lead a coalition to disarm [Saddam].
Bush seemed confused about how to handle Iran. That may help explain why he is not inclined to start a war with Tehran just yet. In fairness to Bush, the situation is confusing and complex. A little more than a month ago, in an effort to calm the crisis in Iraq, Bush was actually hosting at the White House Abdul Aziz Hakim, leader of what is arguably the most powerful armed Iraqi Shiite faction, which has received strong backing for decades from--you guessed it--the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Bush didn't mention, of course, the irony that it was his destruction of Saddam's secular, militaristic, Sunni regime, which the U.S. long used as a bulwark against Iran, that nicely facilitated the "escalating danger" he now sees from the Shiite Islamic Republic.) Bush's speech also suggests that somehow Iran is working toward chaos in Iraq. No doubt Iran wants to influence events there, perhaps even indirectly control the country. But few experts believe that Iran wants chaos in Iraq or that it would serve Iran's interests. For a start, an ethnic breakup of Iraq would threaten to spill over and destabilize Iran's own ethnic mosaic. Bush's simplistic equating of Iran's regime with Al Qaeda also either showed an ignorance of Middle East politics or reflected a propaganda effort to demonize Iran. To what end? If he is not going to adopt "intensive diplomacy" as he did with North Korea, what is holding up another U.S.-led "coalition to disarm," this time directed against the ayatullahs? Bush's confusion, apparently.
Bush stated an apparently new belief that terrorism has roots. In his 2002 SOTU, Bush referred to "enemies," "terrorist underworld," "terrorist cells," "terrorist training camps" and "terrorist parasites" opposed to "freedom." In the 2003 SOTU, Bush spoke about terrorism as "a man-made evil," "an ideology of power and domination," practiced by "shadowy terrorist networks," "a brutal dictator" and "outlaw regimes." But last night, he expressed a more nuanced understanding, referring to "the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us." What conditions? Bush was a little vague, probably so as not to upset American allies. But he implied that the conditions included a lack of freedom and human rights in the Arab world. He's emphasized that before. He implied that another condition was the lack of a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That would be in line with what Arab leaders have long been stressing to Washington. Bush said the U.S. has a "diplomatic strategy...in the fight against extremism," adding four sentences later: "we're pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land, and pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state..."
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 23, 2007 10:33
Hizballah-Led Opposition Shuts Beirut
The one-day general strike enforced today by Lebanon's Hizballah-led opposition turned out to be much more aggressive and effective than expected. Not that the majority of Lebanese necessarily wanted to stay away from work. They just didn't have a choice. Opposition activists cut the country's major highways and the main roads into Beirut with an array of rubble ramparts and burning barricades that covered the paralyzed capital in a blanket of black smoke.
Starting last night, Lebanese security forces fanned out to major intersections with the stated aim of keeping the country open for business and protecting would-be strike breakers. But by dawn today, gangs took over the the streets with little resistance from the army and police. In central Beirut, soldiers stood idly by as black-clad Hizballah supporters torched tires and at least one car.
Without the mass participation of average Lebanese, today's demonstrations were no longer the family-friendly events that they've been in the past. Angry young men of no clear party affiliation tried to storm a government finance building, only to be stopped by Hizballah regulars. Lebanese television showed pictures of an angry confrontation between a Christian opposition party that had shut the north-bound road from Beirut, and a rival Christian loyalist group that wanted the road open.
But the most troubling aspect of the day's events was the sectarian amimostity -- ever a concern in Lebanon since the country waged a bloody civil war from 1975 to 1990 -- coursing through Beirut's neighborhoods. In one area in the city's southern district, crowds of Shi'ite and Sunni young men fought a two-hour skirmish, throwing stones and building tiles at each other across a street that separated their two neighborhoods. Fighting only ended when the Lebanese army drove armored personnel carriers between them.
Each side blamed the other for starting the melee, but what became startlingly clear was the extent to which Beirut's Sunni Muslims have been seething over the almost two-month long campaign by Hizballah -- the pro-Syrian Shi'te political party led by Hassan Nasrallah -- and its allies to bring down the pro-American government of Fouad Siniora, a Sunni. "We look at Iraq and see how they are slaughtering Sunni, and we know that Hassan Nasrallah is the same as Muqtada Al-Sadr," said Mahmoud Hashem, 32, a Sunni security guard who had been in the scrum. "Narsallah is on America's big terrorist list. Why don't they do something about him?"
The Sunni residents of Tariq Al Jedidah said that the fighting started when Shi'te protesters came into their neighborhood and tried to set up blockades and threatened to burn down stores that stayed open in defiance of the general strike. Malek Mahdi, a 29 year-old laser and sound engineer said he came out to fight after a gang beat up his younger brother to prevent him from going to school. "They are a militia and we have nothing but rocks," he said. When soldiers shot tear gas grenades into the Sunni crowd, housewives and children in the upper floors of nearby apartment buildings began throwing onions -- a home-remedy for tear gas fumes -- to the young men stricken below.
Elsewhere, there seemed to be a concerted effort between the army and the opposition to avoid confrontation. At one point, Hizballah activists bulldozed their own barricades to allow an army troop convey to pass through towards the airport. A few Hizballah members applauded the army, then quickly replaced the barriers.
The opposition had meant for today's strike to highlight its populist economic resentment towards what they see as a corrupt government that has sunk the country deep in debt. One of the most common signs read: "Strike for one day so the country won't be out of work forever."
But the strategy could be backfiring. The country is feeling a deep economic burn not only from the past summer's war with Israel, but also from the ongoing political crisis that has played havoc with the the country's tourism economy. After seeing pictures of mobs cutting of the airport road, tourists aren't likely to return any time soon. And today's display of coercive force by the opposition is likely to have scared many Lebanese as well.
By Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut
January 22, 2007 10:55
Party of God: winning the war, losing the peace?
As Hizballah steps up its maneuvers to oust the Lebanese government Tuesday (see Nick Blanford's exclusive interview with defiant Hizballah No. 2 Naim Qassem), I noticed an interesting statistic in the latest poll of Arab public opinion by Shibley Telhami with Zogby International: while nearly 70% of Lebanese Shiites had a more positive view of of the militant group after last summer's war with Israel, Hizballah's negatives were way up with everybody else. Roughly 45% of Sunnis, Druze and Christians viewed the group more negatively in contrast with the hero status Hizballah attained in the Arab media. Only about a quarter of non-Shiites in Lebanon thought more positively about Hizballah in the mid-November survey. Roughly half of non-Shiites thought the "Lebanese people" rather than Israelis were the "biggest loser" in the war.
True, Lebanese united during the conflict, but even in the thick of the war, it was clear that not even all Shiites were pleased with Hizballah's provocation. The poll illustrates why Hizballah's confrontation against Fouad Siniora's democratically elected government, which Qassem told Blanford is "illegitimate," poses dangers for the future of Lebanon and for Hizballah itself. While we need to be careful to avoid exaggeration, Shiite-Sunni tensions are clearly on the rise in Lebanon as well as throughout the region.
Check out Marc Lynch's parsing of the poll on his blog www.abuaardvark.com, one of the most interesting and useful sites about the Arab world in English.
By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 22, 2007 2:59
Arabs Go Nuclear
There's a lot of talk these days about President Bush scrambling for a win in the Middle East to improve the prospects for his legacy--hence Condi Rice's tour of the region last week. As things look now, it's not a pretty sight: Osama's still on the loose; the Taliban is regaining ground in Afghanistan; post-Saddam Iraq is lurching into civil war; Israel-Palestine is hopelessly deadlocked; Lebanon is stirring fresh fears of civil war there. Of course the U.S. can't be blamed for everything, but Bush's presidency has been intensely focused on making the Greater Middle East a better place and it's hard to find any positive results. When the big achievement of an American secretary of state's tour is just an announcement that two Middle East adversaries (Olmert and Abbas) will hold a meeting at an unspecified time and place in the future, you know you're in trouble.
Looking back in a few years, history may curse Bush's eight-year presidency for a Middle East disaster that makes all the others pale in comparison: a nuclear arms race out of control. It's not that Bush is oblivious to the danger. The problem is that he believes that superior American power can eliminate the nuclear proliferation threat in the Middle East, while thus far the record shows that American power can't bring calm to a single Baghdad neighborhood.
The Middle East nuclear arms race is rooted in the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Bush administration--despite its promotion of the Road Map-- has preferred to settle by diktat rather than through negotiations. Israel acquired the bomb first, out of a sense of insecurity, and Bush's failure to drive the peace process has made other nations increasingly anxious to have nuclear weapons if Israel has them. True, American chest-thrusting helped convince Gadhafi to abandon his nuke program, but Iran is another matter. Rather than find a way to engage Iran after the Islamic Republic supported U.S. efforts against the Taliban, Bush lumped the mullahs into the "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea. If bullying Tehran had worked we could rest easier, but Bush's destruction of Saddam's regime has in fact been a bonanza for Iranian influence throughout the region.
The turning point occurred last summer in the Lebanon war. The Iranian-backed Hamas and Hizballah groups provoked Israel, which in turn pummeled Lebanon for more than a month without any intervention from the Bush administration. Feeling isolated by a rising Iranian/Shiite threat and an American government ambivalent about diplomatic solutions, the Arabs started looking for nukes. Peaceful nukes, mind you, but once you have enrichment capability, you can build a bomb, too.
The interesting--and worrying-- thing is that the talk is coming from a new generation of Arab leaders, whose policies will go a long way toward shaping the Middle East of 20-30 years from now. Gamal Mubarak, viewed by many as being groomed to succeed his father in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, announced the resurrection of Egypt's nuclear program at the ruling party's conference last fall. Now in an interview with Haaretz comes the revelation from King Abdullah II that Jordan, too, is seeking a nuclear program. "The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region," Abdullah says. "...After [the] summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs."
By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 22, 2007 3:06
Ahmadinejad vs. Iran (2)
In Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's internal struggle to keep the initiative in Iran's foreign policy, keep an eye on Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council.
Ahmadinejad was speaking loudly again Sunday, dismissing U.N. Resolution 1737 as being "born dead," adding, "Even if they issue 10 more such resolutions, it will not affect Iran's economy and politics." Larijani, meanwhile, was typically pursuing diplomacy on a quieter level. He arrived in Damascus suddenly for talks with Bashar Assad, in part to demonstrate Iran's regional influence as Syria hosted talks between feuding Palestinian leaders, U.S.-backed Mahmoud Abbas and Iran-backed Khaled Meshal. Larijani's visit is also part of Iran's efforts to cool down Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region and thwart what Iran sees as Washington's efforts to get Sunni Arab countries to isolate Iran in the region.
While Ahmadinejad is the ideological face of Iran's foreign policy, Larijani is the pragmatic face. Supreme Leader Ayatullah Khamenei has the ultimate say in foreign policy, which is made in the Supreme National Security Council that Larijani heads and of which Ahmadinejad is but one member. Larijani and Ahmadinejad both hail from the conservative camp of Iranian politics, but they are markedly different in their approaches as well as their styles as they tussle for dominance over Iran's foreign policy. Whereas Ahmadinejad minimizes the damage done to the country by confrontation with the West, Larijani is keenly aware of it and tries to avoid it. (Read my interview with Larijani last February, Part I and Part II.) Larijani was in the forefront of efforts to force Ahmadinejad to backpeddle on his threats to wipe Israel off the map, for instance. But in his determination to control Iran's foreign policy, Ahmadinejad undercut and embarrassed Larijani last year by saying Iran would never suspend uranium enrichment--just after Larijani suggested to EU negotiator Javier Solana that Iran would consider doing just that.
Ahmadinejad is whipping up nationalist sentiments again as he battles an array of domestic critics; he is promising Iranians something to celebrate for next month's 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution--it is expected to be an announcement that Iranian nuclear technicians succeeded in linking six centrifuge cascades in their work to enrich uranium. That will bring further international condemnation just as Iran faces a U.N. deadline under Resolution 1737 to halt enrichment activities or face further sanctions.
But some Iranians are expecting that Larijani will use the occasion to make his own move to regain the upper hand. Larijani favors negotiations as a means of convincing the world that Iran has no intentions of making a bomb and as a means of limiting diplomatic fallout. A leaked Iranian government report published by Le Monde Saturday frankly admits the negative effects of sanctions on the country. The Europeans, Russians and Chinese also prefer to negotiate, granted that Iran can offer practical solutions and not just talk for the sake of buying time.
If Larijani manages to elbow Ahmadinejad out of the way and get the broad Iranian foreign policy establishment behind him, it will constitute an important opportunity for the Bush administration, which has labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil," to test whether Iran is willing to be a constructive player in sorting out the multiplying crises in the Middle East. The question then may become whether the pragmatists can overcome the ideologues not only in Tehran but in Washington, too.
--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo
January 21, 2007 9:21
A Modest Middle East Proposal
Sadly, the streets of Beirut are not packed with naked women as suggested by the title of this flyer that I picked up on Friday at the Omari mosque. First of all, it's winter. Secondly, Lebanese women do wear clothes. Tight clothes. But clothes nonetheless.
The flyer is actually concerned with the city's over-the-top billboards and shop displays, which are in fact full of underwear and blue jeans ads of dubious taste. (My favorite gross-out poster is for a nightclub north of town called "Virus" with the slogan: "Get Infected!")
Still, sexy billboards are hardly the new phenomenon that this modesty campaign makes them out to be. Beirutis have had an appreciation for the human form ever since the Greeks and Romans were here, and sexy advertising -- in ever escalating degrees of tackiness -- came with modernity. In fact, this flyer is the new phenomenon. True, in conservative rural areas, billboards of bikini models are often defaced with a splash of paint. But this is the first time I've seen discontent expressed in the capital.
That said, it's hard not to sympathize with the view that Lebanon's mass-media is mindlessly monkeying Western culture's commercialized objectification of women. As Britney Spears and her ilk take over the planet with their cartoonish reduction of female sexuality, Lebanon is producing its own version of the species. Here's a fairly tame example: a magazine covered with a picture of Marwa, a local celebrity. She's actually a singer, not a stripper, despite the fact that she seems ready to rip off her bod