We haven't heard from Paul Wolfowitz for a long time, but the plight of the Iranian people has brought him out of the woodwork.

Today he has a piece in the WaPo entitled "'No Comment' Is Not an Option", where he says

"Now is not the time for the president to dig in to a neutral posture. It is time to change course.".

Wolfowitz's piece is followed by another star of the neocon constellation Charles Krauthammer, who writes:

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

This is getting more obvious by the hour.

What I think is evident is that the USA, from its own point of view and interest, has no dog in this fight. The question, is what is moving this story, not in Iran, but outside of Iran.

What I think is obvious is that the internal undercurrents and tensions in Iran are being exploited by the foreign corporate media for their own interests... the neocons are piling on too. Reading through the Iranian cast of characters it is also obvious that America does not have a dog in this fight. Simply put, the situation is being used to weaken Obama's ME strategy. The question: qui bono? Answer: the usual suspects.

There are a lot of people who want the USA to attack Iran and many of them are the same people who wanted the USA to attack Iraq. Since very few people in the USA, including the president (take note that I am giving him full credit here) want to attack Iran, especially after seeing what a disaster attacking Iraq was, it is necessary to build public anger.

After the Cairo speech there are people on the Likud-AIPAC circuit that would like to derail Obama's momentum in the Middle East. The same people are very worried by the pressure from Obama on the settlement freeze. This Iranian opportunity could be seen like knocking over the table in a losing chess game. While everybody is picking up the pieces, the one who was losing gets some time to think and his opponents rhythm is broken. Or the corner cutting a groggy boxer's glove so that the fighter can get a chance to clear his head while the ref is inspecting the glove. Playing for time, changing the subject.

I am very impressed by the way that Obama is handling this one. He reminds me of Eisenhower: a practicing adult. If he doesn't cave into all the neocons on this, I may finally come to Jesus and become a fan of his.

I have found myself  getting more and more suspicious about the western media coverage of the Iranian elections and their aftermath.

As I wrote before, What I do know for sure is that there are two simultaneous stories:

1.) What is actually happening in Iran

and

2.) How it is being reported here.

What I see is that my point two is pushing Bibi Netanyahu and his version of a Palestinian "state" off the front pages.

It is a good thing to remember that while Iran, in reality, actually poses no threat to Israel's existence (Persians are not suicidal), a free, sovereign Palestinian state in "Judea and Samaria" does. or at least to Bibi's version of it. In my opinion the neocons are back at work.

The run up to Iraq made me a bit paranoid I'm afraid, and all those who whooped up that war, haven't folded their tents or committed harakiri either, they are still with us. I simply don't trust the intentions of the US media, not then, not now.

Just like during the run up to the war in Iraq, the US media is not checking the sources, they are just gushing over the twitters and their tweets. And that is professional negligence if there ever was, because they are quite fishy.

Have you noticed that you can read all these Iranian "tweets"? Are you aware that the language of Iran is Farsi, not English? Does this piece of information suggest anything to you? Perhaps, the world is like in Hollywood movies where all the exotic character speak English, albeit with charming foreign accents? Or maybe, the dial on a person's bullshit meter might tremble a bit?

But, unlike the run up to the war in Iraq, this time some amateurs have take the trouble to do the homework that the "professionals" seem too understaffed to do themselves.

A financial website, "Charting Stocks",  has taken the trouble that the MSM can't be bothered with and has exposed a very effective Israeli psy-op.

So, whatever is actually happening in Tehran, we now know that the Israelis are manipulating our perceptions.

Sit back and read this:

Read more »

With our 24x7 news cycle it is easy to miss the forest for the trees.

Right now the question for me in evaluating the situation in Iran is if the serious disturbances are spreading beyond Tehran. How about Moussavi's home town for starters? If the serious (read violent) protests begin to spread all over the country, then I will begin to think that this is all something 100% genuine, impossible to manipulate.

At the moment all I really see is a battle between two Ayatollahs: Kameini and Rafsanjani, using surrogates. At this point Kameini is ahead on points.

The best write-up of the whole thing that I have seen so far comes from the Asia Times.

What I do know for sure is that there are two stories here:

1. What is actually happening in Iran and
2. How it is being reported here in the west.

Josh Marshall asks the following question:

Bill Keller (editor of the whole operation) and Michael Slackman have a piece in Times arguing that Ahmadinejad and the hard line clerical establishment emerge from Friday's selection with a stronger hand than ever before. I'm curious whether others share that impression.

In this case, the answer is probably yes.

How so?

The first thing that someone who has grown up in a democracy has to get clear is the difference between a lone dictator and a regime.

A regime, even with an unquestioned, charismatic leader such as Mao T'se Tung can live and even thrive without the charismatic leader, while when the lone dictator like Uganda's Idi Amin Dada or the Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko disappears so does his entire ruling apparatus.

Obviously Iran, whether qualified democracy or iron fisted autocracy, is a regime; one which has handily survived the death 20 years ago of its über-charismatic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A regime that lasts this long under successive leaders, of necessity has a complex, multi-layered, organization and a wide popular base.

In the case of Iran the regime's popular base is made up of the  traditional peasants and urban poor and finds the body of its critics among the urban middle-classes: people who would have the education, money and the leisure time to enjoy freedom of speech, a more relaxed dress code and travel abroad.

How does the present situation re-enforce the regime?

The easiest example would be Mao T'se Tung's "Hundred Flowers" campaign, where he encouraged criticism of the party under the slogan;

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

When the flowers had "bloomed", when the intellectuals had spoken their minds, Mao lowered the boom on them. This is how Wikipedia describes the result,

The result of the Hundred Flowers Campaign was the persecution of intellectuals, officials, students, artists and dissidents labeled "rightists" during the Anti-Rightist Movement that followed. During this time, over 550,000 people identified as "rightists" were humiliated, imprisoned, demoted or fired from their positions, sent to labor and re-education camps, tortured, or killed.

That is  what I imagine is happening or going to happen in Iran right now.

Iran, certainly the regime, feels itself to be threatened by the USA and Israel and has every reason to feel so threatened: even a paranoiac can have enemies.

What they have done by encouraging a free and outspoken presidential campaign is to encourage any serious opposition to the status quo which might collaborate in any way with the west in time of war, to come forward and identify themselves. Now they will round them up or at least know exactly who to round up at a moment's notice in case Obama doesn't turn out to be quite so friendly as he'd like them to believe.

So yes, the regime is strengthened by all this dissent: all the rallies and the demonstrations have been filmed, the regime's dissenters  have taken the bait and all Khomeini's successor, Khameni has to do is reel them in.

In regard to the Iranian elections, I think it would be wise to pause before jumping on any bandwagon.

The western media reaction is beginning to remind me a bit of all those "(choose color) Springs", that the CIA organizes here and there, from time to time.

I am surprised at how much footage of police brutality is being freely filmed by western journalists and how freely they are allowed to beam this footage out of Iran. My experience of dictatorships tells me that this sort of thing is not typical of dictatorial behavior. (check Burma etc)

If I was going to make a "dark" reading of all of this, I might come to a tentative conclusion: that if someone wanted to start a war with Iran, this media frenzy would be just the sort of agit-prop to prepare western public opinion for something "surgical".

We lived through this same "Hitler of the month" thing with Bush and his neocons in the run up to the war in Iraq. This might be similar, only much better done this time.

In short, I don't trust US corporate media, or its "opinion makers" any more now than I did then.