MONITORING CITIZENS PHONE & EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS EVOLVED BEFORE 9/11 & ENCOURAGED BY CHENEY. NYT COMPLICIT IN COVER-UP.

According to George Tenet’s memoir, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’, it was General Mike Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency, who first hinted at the idea of monitoring phone and email communications outside of the powers that were already available. Tenet writes:

“I remember reflecting on testimony Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of NSA, had given to a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in 2000. Mike created quite a stir when he said that if Usama bin Ladin had crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario, to Niagara Falls, New York, there were provisions of US law that would offer him [Hayden] protections with regard to how the NSA could cover him. Mike would late say that he was using this as a stark hypothetical. On September 12, 2001, it became real.”

Tenet then goes on to say:

“After the 9/11 attacks, using his existing authorities, Hayden implemented a program to monitor communications to and from Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks were planned. With regard to the NSA’s policy of minimisation, balancing US privacy and inherent intelligence value, Mike moved from a peacetime to a wartime standard. He briefed me on this and I approved. By early October 2001, Hayden had briefed the full House Intelligence Committee and the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

It was at this point that Cheney asked Tenet “if the NSA could do more”.

Tenet explains:

“Our ability to monitor al-Qa’ida’s planning was limited because of constraints we had imposed on ourselves through the passing of certain US laws in the late 1970s. I called on Mike to relay the vice-presidents enquiry. Mike made it clear that he could do no more within the existing authorities. We went to see the vice-president together. Mike laid out what could be done that would be feasible, prudent, and effective.
Within a week new authorities were granted to allow the NSA to pursue what is now known as the ‘terrorist surveillance program’.” (1)

Clearly it was Dick Cheney who instigated the action required to allow the NSA to conduct illegal wiretapping of phones and email communications and it was Cheney and Hayden who had gone to Cheney to fill him in on the details of what exactly what they wanted to do. According to Tenet, all this happened by November 2001.

It wasn’t until four years later that the world got to learn of what had been going on when The New York Times writers, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, exposed the illegal wiretapping in an explosive article that The New York Times published on 16 December 2005. In it Risen and Lichtblau say that Bush signed off on the order in early 2002 but, from the way Tenet calls it, it seems more likely that Bush signed it off closer to the end of 2001 after pressure from Cheney.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The exposé by Risen and Lichtblau only came about because James Risen was about to launch his book ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’, in which Risen writes a whole chapter on the illegal wiretapping affair.(2) However, according to Walter Isaacson who reviewed Risen’s book in The New York Times, Risen’s The New York Times article had actually been written about a year before it was eventually published but the Bush administration had asked the NYT not to publish and the NYT had obliged thus making themselves as complicit in the cover up as Bush, Cheney, the NSA and George Tenet of the CIA.

Cheney, Tenet and Hayden between them have a lot to answer to. Not only were their deeds immoral, they were also very illegal.


ENDNOTES
(1) George Tenet, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007.) p. 237.

(2) James Risen, ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’. (New York: Free Press, 2006.) Chapter 2. pp. 39-60.

THE SETTLEMENTS ISSUE: DON’T THE PALESTINIANS GET A SAY?

A headline article in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today blared ‘Emerging settlement deal will let US, Israel claim victory’. The article went on to explain: “According to senior government officials, under this type of solution, Israel would declare a moratorium of a few months on the settlement issue, possibly half a year, while the US would give Israel a green light to complete a still-to-be-determined number of housing units in the settlements that are in advanced stages of construction.”

It seems, however, that the Palestinian people, whose lands these settlements are being built on, don’t actually get a say on the subject. Somehow it’s now the US that decides where and when settlements can be built on Palestinian lands.

The fact is; the issue of settlements in the West Bank has nothing to do with the US. The Palestinian people have not asked the US to negotiate on their behalf, and have certainly not authorised the US to concede any lands whatsoever within the West Bank to the Zionist settlers. For the Palestinian people the issue is simply resolved: Every single settler on Palestinian territory should leave; it’s as simple as that.

The Palestinian people seem to have been completely forgotten in these discussions. It’s as though they weren’t there. It’s almost as though somehow the lands now belonged to the US and that they were now negotiating with Israel over its use.

The reality of the US-Israeli ‘deal’ is that, as usual, everything has been put off until some other time in the future. And then it’ll be just more talks that are likely to go on for years with nothing ever eventually transpiring.

But then, of course, this is just what the Israelis want; more time while they wait for an opportunity to do what they do best and that is to find some casus belli with which to simply take what they want.

This whole charade of ‘settlement talks’ is just another Israeli time-wasting exercise while they wait for the ideal moment to strike at their enemies. Netanyahu and his Zionist government have no intention of ever giving up West Bank settlements, indeed, their intentions are just the opposite; to eventually find a way to overrun, occupy and then eventually annex the entire West Bank to become part of a Greater Israel of the future.

The Israelis hope that ‘Irans nuclear weapons program’ will be the trigger they need to strike at their enemies and realise their dream of a Greater Israel. Meanwhile, what will the rest of the world be doing?

Nothing as usual.

THE IRANIAN ‘REVOLUTION’ HAS FAILED SO IT’S BACK TO THE ‘IRAN HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS’ RHETORIC TO BOMB THEM INTO ‘REGIME CHANGE’.

With the failure of the Western powers to foment a popular uprising after the 12 June elections in Iran that they hoped would lead to regime change, the West has now had to return to the ‘Iran has nuclear weapons’ meme in order to pave the way for an attack against Iran in the hope that regime change can be affected that way.

In an interview on Sunday, Vice-President Joe Biden, when asked, “…if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?” responded saying: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

Biden was then asked: “You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike”, to which he responded, “I'm not going to speculate… on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.”

Yesterday (5 July) ‘Timesonline’ reported that the Saudis had made it clear to Meir Dagan, Israel’s Mossad chief, that they would not object to Israeli overflights if they were on their way to targets in Iran. While a flight to Iran from Israel via Saudi Arabia would be much longer that a direct flight to Iran overflying Jordan and Iraq, a flight via Saudi Arabia would not require permission from any other country; not even the US to fly over Iraq. And if the Israelis can get permission from the Saudis to have support aircraft in the air in Saudi airspace to refuel the Israeli strike aircraft over, say, the Persian Gulf, then an Israeli strike against Iran is feasible.

It’s interesting that the report about the Saudi’s giving clearance for overflights to attack Iran were quickly denied by Netanyahu’s office. Clearly, the Israelis are anxious to bury this information though, one suspects, that it is now too late and the Iranians will now have their spies in Saudi Arabia scanning the skies and radio bands for high flying aircraft heading west to east across Saudi Arabia toward the Persian Gulf.

It may well be that Israel could be keen to take advantage of the unrest that has recently unsettled Iran but now seems to have died down. A strike now, they may feel, might just reignite the embers of insurrection that still glow especially if there was also a strike against Iran’s security forces and it’s military.

Even if Israel did strike against Iran via Saudi skies, Israel would still need to rely on the US for support. The fuel required for the mission would need to be supplied by the US as would most of the munitions. US forces would also need to be on standby ready to prevent any Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and the US. Israel would also need to have its troops on standby at home in preparedness for retaliatory attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas.

For Israel, a Hamas and Hezbollah strike against them would be what they want. It would provide the casus belli for Israel to invade both the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon – perhaps all of Lebanon – knowing that the Iranians would not be in a position to help them. And with Iran out of the equation, Syria would not dare move against Israel.

With the failure of the post-election Iranian revolution, Israel will now resort to its old rhetoric of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ to try again to get public opinion onside for when they launch their attack against Iran to effect regime change. With the US now clearly not standing in the way and the Saudis prepared to let the US off the hook with regard to being seen by the world as facilitating an Israeli attack by allowing the Israelis to overfly Iraq despite all the talk of pursuing a “diplomatic solution”, everything seems in place for the Israelis to feel free to attack Iran when ever they feel they are ready.

The prospect of a final confrontation between Israel and Iran is now off the back burner and back on to the front burner. The problem is, If and when it happens, it won’t be a simple make or break fight for Israel or Iran; the repercussions will reverberate around the world for years to come.


CHECK OUT THE ‘MURDOCH’S PROPAGANDISTS’ BLOG

THE NEW RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA: 'NAZIS WERE LEFT WING THEREFORE ANTI-ZIONIST LEFTIES ARE NAZIS'.

As the Zionists of Israel drift further to the right and increasingly demonstrate how their racial and expansionist policies for Israel are parallel to the policies of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the extreme right-wing in the blogosphere seems to have become confused and increasingly unable to distinguish their left from their right.

The main cause of their confusion is rooted essentially in the irony of history whereby those peoples who suffered most at the hands of the Nazis are the same people that are now causing the most suffering – and for exactly the same reasons – to others.

The extreme right-wing is quite happy to call themselves right-wing because, even if for no other reason, it distinguishes them from their mortal enemies, the ‘Left’. The problem arises however, when it is realised that in calling themselves ‘right-wing’ they share the same ‘right-wing’ label as Hitler does and, because most of today’s modern right-wing are actually Zionists or Zionist supporters, they don’t, for obvious reasons, want to be associated with Hitler and the Nazis. Because there are still some on the outer fringes of the far right who really are Nazis inasmuch that they are white-supremacist style anti-Semites with an intense hatred of Jews – and, indeed, anyone else who isn’t white – today’s modern Zionists and their extreme right-wing supporters have constructed a new propaganda strategy to distinguish themselves from their Nazi look-alikes.

This new construct is designed for the rank and file dumb and gullible of the right. It argues that Hitler and the Nazis weren’t actually ‘right-wing’ because they were called ‘National Socialists’ and, according to the Zionist propagandists and their supporters, they had socialist ideals. The new propaganda further argues, because the name of Hitler’s party also included the word ‘Workers’ in it, (the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party), that this was further proof of the Nazis ‘left-wing’ roots. There is also a certain convenience in this new construct for the Zionists and their supporters because, not only do they think it disassociates them as right-wingers from the rather embarrassing and similarly labelled Nazis, but it now allows them to cast anti-Zionists, most of whom have a tendency to lean to the political left and who Zionists attempt to demonise as anti-Semites, into the newly constructed ‘Nazi is left-wing’ mould.

The new ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda construct is currently being pushed via the right-wing blogs. Andrew Bolt, a Murdoch propagandist and blogger at Melbourne’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper, a couple of weeks ago highlighted the new propaganda in his column in which he argues that Jewish groups in Europe who worry about the recent gains the anti-Semitic right made in European elections should be far more concerned about the left-wing anti-Zionists in Europe and that the right-wing that are not anti-Semitic are the ‘Jews real friends’. Bolt then allows his bloggies to launch into the ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda. Here are a few examples:

Bolt Bloggie ‘larrikin’ writes:
“it [sic] was the German socialists who formed the Nazi party that instigated the holocaust and it is the left that now demonise Israelis and act as apologist for the islamists [sic] threatening to annihilate Israel. own [sic] it, leftard [sic].” ‘larrikin’ goes on to comment elsewhere:
“…you can’t be ‘right’ and neo-Nazi because Nazism is a creature of the left. If by ‘right’ you mean the opposite of leftism then you are referring to someone who is, essentially, a supporter of the classic republic as a legal and political model. Therefore the ‘right’ is always opposed to dictators and oligarchs, whatever they call themselves and regardless of the form of goose stepping they practice. the left on the other hand ultimately and invariably support dictators and oligarchs.”

While another Bolt bloggie, Alan Mears, writes:
“Hitler was actually from the left, the NAZI party was the Workers Nationalist Socialist Party. What is it with the left? They always attribute the evils deeds committed by their own by using the word “Extreme” with the word Right.”

Regular Bolt bloggie ‘Verax’ responded to Mears’ remark that “Hitler was from the left” saying:
“You are wasting your time with this one, Alan. I have posted that there are two kinds of socialism, national socialism (often called fascism) and Marxian socialism (communism), here ad nauseam.”

And so it goes on.

The new right-wing propaganda has two aims; first, it attempts to cast them as the true right-wing by implying that the Nazis were really ‘left-wing’, and, secondly, in doing so, they think they have created a bin into which the left, because of their anti-Zionism, can now be thrown.

As most true German socialists of the day would attest, or would if there were any actually left, there was absolutely nothing at all ‘socialist’ about the Nazis beyond the word being used in the title of the Nazi party; indeed, it was socialists in the main with whom Hitler’s Brownshirts battled in the streets of Germany prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1933 and rounding up most of the socialists in Germany, and wherever else he could find them, before trying to exterminate them along with everyone else that didn’t fit their political, cultural and racial mould of his Greater Germany.

In the early days there were some Germans deluded enough to actually believe that the word ‘socialist’ in the Nazi party’s name actually did mean that Hitler’s party had socialist leanings and for a while Hitler was quite happy to allow the myth to continue as he built up the party’s numbers and strength using its following to give the party an air of popularity. The delusion was shattered and the myth was dispelled in July 1934 when Hitler and his SS and Gestapo purged the ranks of the massive Brownshirt movement which was the SA. In part this was done more than anything else to appease the extremely un-socialist German military that were beginning to see the SA rabble as a rival to their own power. In short, for Hitler, the SA had fulfilled their role and what few ‘socialists’ had found their way into the Nazi party soon found themselves purged from it or converted to Nazism.

But here’s where the propaganda really back-fires on the right-wing Zionists and their supporters in the West. This early history of the Nazi party to which some deluded socialists, and even communists, initially flocked to, actually reflects much of the early history of Zionism as it established itself in Israel. The early rank and file Kibbutzim movement was made up predominately of those that thought of themselves as socialists, communists and generally left-wing. Many leftish Europeans and Americans, both Gentile and Jewish, made the ‘pilgrimage’ to a Kibbutz in Israel for a year to experience a taste of socialist life. Israel’s early economic and domestic and social policies were essentially left-wing and, indeed, to a certain extent, still are.

Essentially, the new propaganda is really just another attempt to prop up the ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’ meme which the Zionists have been trying to push with vigour in an effort to counter the influence that Mearsheimer and Walt’s best-selling book ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’ had on the anti-Zionist movement since it was published.

The new propaganda, in the end, does nothing except demonstrate how desperate the right-wing have become in trying to protect Zionism from its inevitable collapse.

IRANIAN UNREST: REVOLUTION OR COUP D’ÈTAT?

It seems odd that the neoconservatives seem to be backing an Iranian that, for all intents and purposes, has been their mortal enemy for around three decades, but it is the case that throughout history that international politics has turned out some strange bedfellows. It reminds me a bit of what happened in the last century: In order to kick off World War Two, Hitler found it necessary to get into bed with Stalin. The situation today isn’t quite as dramatic as that but, nonetheless, there are distinct parallels – or at least so it seems.

Even before all the votes had been tallied in Iran toward the end of a long election day on Friday, 12 June, Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, claimed victory, as, indeed, had Ahmadinejad. But then, unlike Mousavi, Ahmadinejad had good reason to claim early victory; with votes being counted throughout the day, it soon became apparent that Ahmadinejad was a clear leader and way in front of Mousavi. Ahmadinejad had every reason to claim an early victory while Mousavi had none at all. Then, on Saturday when it was officially announced that Ahmadinejad had in fact won the election, and by around the same margin that the pre-election polls had predicted, Mousavi immediately cried ‘foul’ and, almost on cue, seemingly spontaneously, the massive demonstrations began on the streets of Tehran and by nightfall Saturday rioters supposedly supporting Mousavi were setting fire to dumpsters and vehicles.

Instantly the Western right-wing media were on to the turmoil and backing Mousavi’s claim that the elections had been rigged. The media began to talk up a ‘popular revolution’ in Iran concentrating their efforts on highlighting the pro-Mousavi demonstrations and ignoring entirely the equally massive demonstrations being held in support of Ahmadinejad. So keen were the Western media to support the Mousavi camp they even used a picture of a massive Ahmadinejad rally and claimed it was of a pro-Mousavi rally.

But all was not as it seemed. Rather than seeming to be spontaneous, the demonstrations and rallies had all the hallmarks of being highly organised. Placards had been professionally produced in large numbers and written in English as well as Farsi. They were distributed through the crowds and clearly made for Western consumption. Some serious money was behind the effort and it was obvious that many of these had been produced before the elections and readied for post-election protests that were clearly organised prior to the election.

While the vast majority of the protestors and demonstrators from both camps were peaceful, there were among the Mousavi protestors provocateurs determined to provoke violence by running riot and setting fire to vehicles and buildings while wearing the green colours representing the Mousavi camp. The Western media have been portraying these violent and destructive elements as somehow being the vanguard of a revolution or brave freedom fighters confronting the police and security forces.

However, lurking beneath the superficial Western presentation of populist Iranian discontent are far more complex issues that govern what is really going on in Iran today.

Essentially Iran remains an Islamic state which the vast majority of Iranians, regardless of whether they’re for Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, still support. Rather than being a battle between Islamist-style government supporters and secular western-style government supporters as the Western media is trying to portray the unrest, it is actually about a class struggle between the ‘have-not masses’ that generally support Ahmadinejad and the young modern well-to-do, but still Islamic, ‘haves’ that support Mousavi.

The Western media would like to present to the Western peoples a picture of the beginnings of a popular uprising and revolution in Iran and have relentlessly used all of its propaganda resources to achieve this belief even down to the filming of the attractive young Iranian girl who lay dying in the streets; killed, at least so we are told, by brutal Iranian security forces for no other reason than she was protesting. No matter how or why she died, there can be excuse for her death; but to assert that her death represents the spirit of revolt against the government is to cynically abuse her death for purely propaganda purposes. And the West has not thought twice about so doing. Even President Obama has used her death for propaganda purposes

However, it is not just Obama that has used the young girl’s death for propaganda purposes. While the Western media would like to portray the unrest in Iran as the beginnings of a populist revolution against the Mullah’s, what may turn out to be the real reason for the unrest has emerged.

This last week has seen the claimant to the Iranian throne appear from the wings. All but forgotten, the son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has finally shown himself. At a Press Club gathering in Washington last Monday, Pahlavi produced a photo of the dead girl and, with tears in his eyes, told the world, “I have added her to the list of my daughters. She is now forever in my pocket”. One can take ones choice as to which metaphor is appropriate with the remark: ‘She is now forever in my pocket’. The point is; Reza’s late father, deposed in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, was one of the world’s most ruthless and brutal dictators who, like his father before him, detested the very idea of ‘democracy’. Reza Pahlavi is unlikely to be any different despite all his talk of ‘democracy’. To top it off, demonstrations in the US by Iranian expatriates, have been flying the old Iranian flag of the Shah. These flags have clearly been recently made and stored and have been distributed for use in carefully orchestrated pro-Shah rallies outside of Iran. The question one now needs to ask is: Since it is clear that the idea of a ‘popular revolution’ is merely a figment of the propagandists imagination, is there a possibility that Israel, the US and the UK could bring on a coup d’état that would see Reza Pahlavi restored to power leading a quasi-democratic pro-Western puppet government?

It’s doubtful this would happen, but one can almost hear the right-wing Western political mind ticking as it mulls the idea over and read between the lines of what neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht is trying to say in his ‘Weekly Standard’ article.

IRANIAN UNREST: THE WEST DOESN’T CARE WHO WINS OR HOW MANY DIE JUST AS LONG AS IT RATTLES THE MULLAHS.

For the right-wing Western media it is really unimportant who won the election in Iran; the important thing is that the resulting turmoil, chaos, and deaths works against the ruling Mullah’s and in favour, no matter how little, of the right-wing of Israel and the US and their supporters in Iran. Greg Sheridan, a Murdoch propagandist with The Australian newspaper, sums it up: “In many ways, a savagely weakened Iranian regime is the best result Israel and the US could have wished for.” Democracy per se, as far as the right-wing are concerned, actually has very little to do with it as long as it’s a good ‘result for Israel and the US’.

It’s quite clear that the reaction to the announcement of the results of the election were planned in advance well before the election took place. Some pre-election polls had Ahmadinejad well in front by some 2-1 so the outcome, contrary to what the Western media would have us believe, wasn’t exactly a surprise to anyone.

However, since the likely outcome was not entirely unexpected, it gave the opposition an opportunity to plan a false claim to election victory, a claim which they voiced as soon as the polls closed. And then when the results were announced, they simply cried ‘foul’. All of this has been helped along by the right-wing Western media who supported the opposition’s claims by focusing the news on the opposition’s rallies and demonstrations against Ahmadinejad and ignoring the pro-Ahmadinejad rallies which were on some occasions much bigger than those of the supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi. So desperate were the Western media to push the pro-Mousavi cause they even, on at least one occasion, actually claimed that pictures of a massive pro-Ahmadinejad rally were of a pro-Mousavi rally.

It’s quite clear that agent provocateurs have been employed to push along the oppositions agenda. They have encouraged the violence on all sides by provoking the police and by setting fire to buses, cars, motorbikes and buildings. The Western media have claimed that the authorities have violently cracked down on dissenting demonstrators when in fact they have been cracking down on those that have set fires and been running riot. The vast majority of both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi demonstrators have been peaceful. It is only the anti-Mullahs professional agent provocateurs that have stirred up the trouble by running riot and setting the fires and claiming to be supporters of Mousavi.

For the right-wing of the US and Israel, as Murdoch propagandist Greg Sheridan infers, it doesn’t matter whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi end up getting the nod, nor does it matter how many Iranians have to die in the process, the important thing is that it stirs up trouble for the Mullahs.

For the Israelis it’s just another step along the road toward their final confrontation with Iran.

IRAN’S POST ELECTION PROTESTS: WESTERN MEDIA BEAT-UP OR PRELUDE TO REVOLUTION?

Ever since last Friday’s election in Iran and the announcement that President Ahmadinejad was the clear winner, rumours have been flying that the elections were rigged. Over the last four days since the announcement, demonstrations by Iranians who supported the opposition candidate, the comparatively ‘moderate’ Mir Hossein Mousavi, have been on the streets of Tehran in force setting light to buses, trucks and buildings and engaging in running street battles with the police that have resulted in the death of at least one demonstrator.

As yet, however, there has been no actual hard evidence of any vote tampering or irregularities though the Mullahs have authorised an investigation into the claims. The big question is; how does one ‘rig’ such a massive election? With over 39 million people casting votes, there are so many people involved in the tallying process that any fraud as massive as that being claimed by the opposition would have been spotted instantly by the election authorities and, more importantly, the thousands of volunteer and temporary staff that were working for them around the country on the day. There would have been no way that frauds that massive could have been kept quiet so, one wonders, why bother attempting it?

The Western media have made the most of the post-election turmoil in Iran having backed a Mousavi win in the hope of triggering a ‘regime change’ that would see a government more friendly toward the West and Israel come into power and possibly even overthrowing the Mullahs from their peak power positions or, at least, putting a severe dent in their power. Some Western mainstream media are now even pushing the idea of another ‘revolution’ in Iran.

However, while the opposition rallies and protest demonstrations are extremely well organised and are clearly not at all spontaneous as some have reported with placards and flags being well-designed and professionally mass produced and obviously aimed at a Western audience with many of the placards written in English as well as Farsi, all may well be not what it seems.

The Western media generally, after years of demonising Ahmadinejad, have little option but to support his slightly more moderate opposition, Mousavi. But how much more ‘moderate’ is he?

If the US and Israel think that Mousavi is going to be any the less supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah or more tolerant toward Zionism and Israeli aggression toward the Palestinian people than Ahmadinejad then they are in for rude awakening. Furthermore, Mousavi is as much a supporter of Iran’s nuclear program as Ahmadinejad is – and is as equally insistent that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program. In short, from Iran’s foreign policy point of view there is no difference between the two. Their differences are in their domestic policies with Mousavi being a little more tolerant of women playing a greater part in the affairs of Iran.

The Mullah’s probably care little which of them become president, but, because the Mullah’s are promising an enquiry, some time has time has been bought which might well be enough to see the backlash against Ahmadinejad simply run out of steam.

There has been at least one death in the protests since the elections and the demonstrations have been massive but when weighed against the kind of violence India has every time it goes to the polls where hundreds routinely die in riots and demonstrations, Iran’s post election demonstrations and protests have been relatively tame.

The Mullah’s will continue to run Iran and either Ahmadinejad or Mousavi will help them. The regime will not change. It’s still on Israel’s agenda regardless of who gets up in the end.