Category: Iran

Turkish president arrives in Tehran

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has arrived in Tehran on a four-day official visit to discuss a whole range of topics with ranking Iranian authorities.

The Turkish president was received by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi upon arrival at Mehrabad International Airport Sunday afternoon, reported IRNA.

Gul’s trip comes at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

An official welcoming ceremony is scheduled to be held for the Turkish head of state on Monday morning.

President Gul is to hold official meetings with senior Iranian authorities and discuss the promotion of Tehran-Ankara cooperation plus pressing regional and international issues.

The Turkish president is also slated to visit the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Tabriz during his trip.

On the eve of his Tehran visit on Saturday, the Turkish president told IRNA that he would be accompanied by a host of Turkish investors and businessmen during the trip.

The Iran-Turkey Joint Economic Cooperation Commission is also planned to be formed during the trip, he added.

He described Iran and Turkey as two regional heavyweights, which “treat each other with mutual respect.”

“Common borderlines between the two countries have not changed since 1639 and this is a unique example in the world,” he went on to say.

“Various issues including political, economic, and cultural issues will be brought up between the two sides in this trip,” he further explained.

Press Tv

February 13, 2011
Standoff at Tahrir Sq.

by Kutluk Ozguven

29 January 2011

The rules of the game have been simple: Police trumps protesters. Masses trump police. Army trumps masses. If the army stands back, you have a revolution (Iran 1979, Romania 1989, Tunisia 2011), if not, then bloodshed (Hungary 1956, China 1989, Algeria 1992). I don’t recall any popular uprising successful over a fully functioning armed force determined to go all the way. That is why armed forces are always considered as backbones of corrupt dictatorships.

This weekend we shall see if the Egyptian armed forces, which the latest Wikileaks leak as US believes it to be unhappy, at least in the mid-ranking officers, but probably higher, will open fire to stop the masses or the masses will blink, or it will give way to the people. Egyptian army is a conscript army and there is no part of the Egyptian society that may be counted on apart from the westernised elites, whose children do not operate tanks during military service. The news is that the Egyptian army are already mobilised into urban areas and taken control of strategic points.

Egyptians I came to know during a series of visits for international projects were a very kind people, members of a polite and civilised nation, well known among the other Arabs with their humour and taking things lightly. This nation of gentle farmers has been easy to manage by foreign soldiers (the Hyksos, Ptolemeans, the Mamluke, Ali Pasha troops) or domestic warlords, perhaps exact opposite of Chechens or Afghans. They are patient, soft-spoken, happy in the face of any event, and cultured. In short, any megalomaniac tyrant’s dream population.

They have gone through a westernisation process predating Turkey, and a secularisation process of 50 years under socialist dictatorship. Save occasional and sensational terror incidents, there is no history of popular uprising or even any active political formation, except for the elitist Muslim Brotherhood, structured in 30s as a Muslim answer to Freemasonry, who wouldn’t even entertain the idea of going on the streets with sweaty youngsters. Americans and Israelis are all over the country, to the degree that five star Cairo hotels put on Hebrew-language TV channels for their guests from their northeastern neighbours. It has highest number of Internet access in the region with 20 million users and more advanced in some software technologies than, say, Turkey.

Therefore, one wouldn’t expect a popular uprising overthrowing one of the most entrenched dictators of the world. Most well-informed experts, political commentators or social analysts certainly did not expect that the events would have gone out of control to this degree where it is becoming more and more unlikely that Mubarak will survive. When he unplugged the Internet less than a day ago, I recalled another ridiculous caricature, Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham cancelling Christmas. He could have blocked social networks and slowed down the e-mail, but that would be too sophisticated to epitomise this wily little people who see it their birth right to enslave tens of millions of human beings. Which explains the situation better than any verbose expertise: it is the tyranny of stupid, primitive, incompetent minds over masses much more sophisticated and much deeper than them.

When one sees all these Middle Eastern or Central Asian rulers and their small social segments whom they depend upon to man their security forces or financial institutions, one cannot help but be only deaf to any economic analysis. Despotism is always a disaster for economy because meritocracy is not allowed and accountability does not exist. The small clique of rulers milks the real productive people and eventually kills their productivity long before they would expire naturally. This leaves society weak and inefficient. If we add to the two factors the global financial system, which get the lion’s share of the bounty and only leaving crumbs to the visible rulers, it is obvious that the dictatorship is not a long term stable solution. Either the nation is annihilated from within or without, or it throws its rider. The last military period in Turkey, 1997-2002, is a good accelerated example to despotic cronyism, when the rampant economy of 1997 was brought to bankruptcy in four winters. Imagine that being practiced 30 years or 50 years.

It is true that the 2011 Domino events stem from people wanting to get rid of the despotic cronyism, with them seeing that it is no more to mind one’s own business anymore as there is no business being left. And this is why analysts keep calling them secular uprisings, emphasizing the difference between Iran, Algeria, Hama or others. But this distinction comes out of their own mental compartmentalisation rather than the field. There is no separation between three elements that are in force here: people’s dignity, economic development and return to Islam. In the middle-east, or any once-have-been Islamic nation, the three are inseparable.

Economic development is impossible without a level playing field and risk taking, bold, free, entrepreneurial players and accountable refereeing. That is impossible without popular social consent and social contract without privileged classes, aristocracies and caste systems. Perhaps in Hindu society, or in Confucian society. But not where Islam had been the source of social order with its egalitarian principles, holistic justice concept and personal freedoms. Once the verses of the Quran are practiced at some point by any society, it can never have another long-term working social system. That is why in any free election in the Middle East at any given time, Muslim-leaning parties have always won without exceptions. Therefore however secular the protests might have been, if there will be political freedom, reversal of de-Islamisation will be part of it.

This is why many in the Middle East look towards the Turkish experiment. Without oil and natural sources, and to confess, with little ingenuity, by simply doing things as they should be done, Turkey turned from the military-dominated status to a richer, functional democracy managed by Muslims.

The Tunisians, Jordanians, Algerians, Yemenis and Egyptians want this, no more. The talk of Turkey without oil is doing well with a free society, with secularised and religious people coexisting under a religious president, with none of the pretentious extravaganza is the greatest fairy tale to Arab ears. A fantastic dream which had been once ruled out as absurd. They just want the same. But when they get it, as they will, another fairy tale that was once ruled as absurd, will inevitably roll on: the cooperation and eventual unity of these independent states.

If the troops on the Tahrir Square open fire, the process will only be delayed. But not stopped.

January 29, 2011
America and the rise of middle powers
US foreign policy is stuck in a cold war mindset of imperial dominance. It’s time to listen to allies like Turkey and adjust
- Stephen Kinzer
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 January 2011
President Barack Obama, with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The US would do well, argues Stephen Kinzer, to foster closer ties with its longstanding Nato ally Turkey, a Muslim country with a strong democratic tradition, more reliably opposed to extremism than other US partners like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010. Iran‘s emergence as a serious regional power was another. They are harbingers of what will be one of the main trends of global power in coming decades: the rise of middle powers.

This era is an exciting one for rising countries. Their drive to assert themselves, though, poses an inevitable challenge to powers accustomed to dominating the world, chiefly the United States.

One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes. Thus far, however, the US shows little sign that it is willing to accommodate the rise of middle powers. American leaders are frozen into denial and caught in a straitjacket of policies shaped for another era. Unless they can become more nimble, the US risks losing both global influence and domestic prosperity.

In the Middle East, Washington is pursuing policies shaped to fit a cold war security environment that no longer exists. Saudi Arabia and Israel have been America’s closest partners there for the last half-century. Yet Saudi society has nothing in common with western societies, and some long-term Saudi security interests, like promoting radical Islam around the world, run counter to western interests. Israel gives signs of careening toward self-destruction, taking steps that undermine the regional stability that is its only guarantee of long-term security.

Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests. In the Middle East, the US should stop acting as if it, alone, knows what is best, and instead, seek a Muslim partner. Turkey is the logical choice. It is a longtime Nato ally and booming capitalist democracy, and has unique influence around the Islamic world.

Turkey has been urging the US to change its approach to Iran by abandoning its policy of threats and sanctions. It suggests an approach based on rational self-interest rather than emotion: offer unconditional talks, not limited to the nuclear issue but aimed at a “grand bargain” that would recognise Iran’s new role and give it a stake in regional security. India has recently made this same appeal to Washington. Yet the US, locked into outdated paradigms, continues on steady course even as global conditions change.

Iran bets on Middle East forces like Hamas and Hezbollah, which win elections. The US bets on the Saudi monarchy, the Pharaonic regime in Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and increasingly radical politicians in Israel. The future will require interest-based partnerships that meet the needs of a new age.

One could be a “power triangle” linking the US with Turkey and Iran. These two countries make intriguing partners for two reasons. First, their societies have long experience with democracy – although for reasons having to do in part with foreign intervention, Iran has not managed to produce a government worthy of its vibrant society. Second, these two countries share many security interests with the west. Projecting Turkey’s example as a counter-balance to Islamic radicalism should be a vital priority. As for Iran, it has unique ability to stabilise Iraq, can also do much to help calm Afghanistan, and is a bitter enemy of radical Sunni movements like al-Qaida and the Taliban. Contrast this alignment of interests to the dubious logic of western partnerships with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, so-called allies who also support some of the west’s most violent enemies.

Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they try to imagine how global politics will unfold. In the foreign policy business, however, inertia is a powerful force and “adroit” a little-known concept. Reconceiving entire regions of the world is not a pursuit at which government bureaucrats excel. Yet, this is not all that American leaders must reconceive. The new century requires them to question the assumption – central to American strategic thinking for generations – that that the world is a dangerous place in need of management, and that the United States must do the managing. A better course for the 21st century would be to withdraw from adventures and listen more closely to friends.

• Stephen Kinzer is giving a series of talks in the UK this week on these themes
January 12, 2011
The Mossad myth

By keeping anything and everything under wraps, the agency allows the rumor mill about its activities to grind on.

By Yossi Melman

Before it was permissible to say the words “Mossad” and “Shin Bet,” they would publish want-ads using euphemisms such as “a state institution …” Ostensibly, times have changed. Both the Mossad and the Shin Bet security service have websites; they can be called by name, and the names of the organizations’ heads are known. The Shin Bet even has a spokesperson, and she has a few assistants.

It can be assumed that the new Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, who will officially take the reins next week, will consider appointing a spokesperson for his organization. (His predecessors Efraim Levy and Meir Degan thought about such an appointment, but both dropped the idea. )

Next Mossad chief Tamir Pardo – Photo by: Moti Milrod

But openness in these organizations is an illusion. In essence, the Mossad has remained the same “state institution” that takes pains to classify and guard every shred of information relating to it, even if it is not a matter of operational secrecy or particularly sensitive information. The protection of secret and sensitive information is essential and clearly understood, but what the Mossad seeks to censor is information that could harm its image.

Whatever it does, the Mossad generally enjoys the across-the-board support from nearly all of Israel’s government.

Utilizing the euphemism “jeopardizing state security” , the military censors almost always ban publication of reports to which the Mossad objects. The courts are generally happy to assent to any request delivered by the Mossad, including issuing gag orders in the presence of one party only; the Finance Ministry does not disclose the Mossad’s budget, and the National Insurance Institute and the Justice Ministry are prevented from disclosing information about labor-related issues concerning the organization’s employees.

The Prison Service also surrenders to Mossad whims. In the past, security prisoners were incarcerated in its jails in total isolation. There were years when such inmates were called “prisoner X,” and confined to “cell X” in the Ramle prison.”The Third Man,” as Avraham Seidenwerg / Avri Elad was known, and Mordecai Kedar in the 50s and 60s, are prime examples of those dark days in Israeli democracy, in which security prisoners were made to disappear.

Only a handful of wardens had access to such prisoners, and even they did not know the inmates’ identities. For instance, in the 80s Prof. Avraham Marcus Klingberg, imprisoned on charges of spying for the Soviet Union, was known to the small group of guards in charge of him as “Avraham Greenberg.”

Ali-Reza Asgari, rumored to be in Israel. – Photo by: Reuters

The result of this unjustified and undemocratic policy of sealed lips is that rumors periodically circulate about the Mossad, most of them unfounded or inaccurate. The rumors make their way to internet sites overseas or to foreign journalists, quite a few of whom are completely clueless.

A good example of such rumor spreading is the veteran journalist Gordon Thomas, who wrote a bestseller about the Mossad. His book was classified as non-fiction but it should have been on the fiction shelf, since his stories and articles are full of fabrications, half-truths and baseless claims that even the most ardent conspiracy theorists would have trouble accepting.

For instance, he claimed that Monica Lewinsky was planted by the Mossad to entice U.S. President Bill Clinton, and stain his reputation. A few days ago, Gordon Thomas was sure that the new Mossad chief, Pardo, who has yet to take up his position officially, would soon apologize to the British for the Mossad’s alleged use of British passports.

In order to gauge Thomas’ reliability, suffice it to note that he stated in this report that Pardo served for the past three years as deputy Mossad chief. In fact, Pardo left the Mossad two years ago.

Claims have recently been made according to foreign reports that the Iranian general Ali-Reza Asgari, former head of the Al Quds division of the Revolutionary Guards and former Iranian deputy defense minister, is in Israel. Asgari disappeared in December 2006 under mysterious circumstances, during a trip to Turkey; since then, there have been a number of media reports suggesting that he sought asylum in a Western country, and relayed important intelligence information to it and to allied intelligence organizations.

Anyone who knows something about these subjects, and is familiar with relevant precedents, could conclude that the chances of Asgari finding asylum in Israel, or being forcibly brought here, are negligible. Defectors from Arab countries, such as the Iraqi MIG pilot Munir Redfa, or the Egyptian pilot Hilmi Abbas in the 60s, or the KGB station chief Yuri Lomov, who defected to Israel, chose, after being debriefed, to leave and remake their lives in a Western or South American country. The chances of a senior Iranian defector finding asylum here are close to nil.

The Mossad has neither the interest nor the ability to respond to such rumors. Sometimes it seems as though the organization enjoys rumors that bolster its image, depict it as an omnipotent entity, and thereby indirectly enhance its, and Israel’s, deterrent capability. The extent to which the Mossad’s reputation captivates imaginations globally is reflected by the fact that designers from a well-known international sports shoe company recently called a new brand “Mossad.”

However, the creation of a mythos and the ignoring of rumors has negative aspects. There are always credulous types who believe inaccurate reports and draw conclusions that could damage Israel in the future.

It would be better were Israel to realize that in some cases the release information, no matter how inconvenient and painful it might be, is preferable to concealing it and allowing an irresponsible, damaging rumor mill to grind on.

And now, the movie

It was only a matter of time. This week the family of Ashraf Marwan, who owns a television channel, announced it would be producing a film and a television series about his life, to be released in 2011. Marwan was a Mossad agent who warned Israel about the Yom Kippur War in 1973, but in recent years former Military intelligence chief Eli Zeira claimed that Marwan was a double agent. Thus, in 2007 he was murdered in London, likely by Egyptian security agents. The family’s aim is to clear Marwan’s name and present him as an Egyptian patriot who misled Israel and fed it false information.

Some two decades ago, Egyptian television did exactly the same and screened a documentary series about an Egyptian agent who penetrated Israel as a Jew named Jacque Biton. The series presented him as a hero, but in fact, he betrayed Egypt and became a valuable Israeli intelligence agent.

https://www.haaretz.com/2010-12-30/ty-article/the-mossad-myth/0000017f-e652-df5f-a17f-ffdebac50000, 30.12.10

[2]

Iranian ‘Mossad agent’: I was trained in Israel

Iranian state television shows interview with man who claims he was trained in espionage by Israel and participated in the assassination of a nuclear scientist in Tehran last year.

https://www.haaretz.com/2011-01-10/ty-article/iranian-mossad-agent-i-was-trained-in-israel/0000017f-eccf-d4cd-af7f-edffb3e60000

[3]

Iran claims to have smashed ‘Mossad spy ring’

Iran claims it has broken up a ‘Mossad ring’ allegedly behind the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran last year.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8250787/Iran-claims-to-have-smashed-Mossad-spy-ring.html

January 12, 2011
Full: Missing Iranian general may have ‘died in Israeli jail’

Missing Iranian general may have ‘died in Israeli jail’

Maryam Sinaiee and Michael Theodoulou

Last Updated: Jan 2, 2011

TEHRAN // An Iranian former deputy defence minister, who mysteriously vanished during a trip to Turkey four years ago, may recently have died in an Israeli prison, according to unsubstantiated reports.

But others insist that Gen Ali-Reza Asgari is alive and living safely in a western country – and argue that Iran is exploiting claims of his death to refute the embarrassing possibility that he defected to West.

Gen Asgari travelled to Turkey with his family in late 2006 or early 2007 via Syria, where he had private business interests in trading olives or olive oil. After checking into a hotel in Istanbul, Iran claims he was snatched by Israel’s external security service, Mossad, or the US.

Since then the trail went mostly dead, although there had been unconfirmed reports he had defected and was living in the United States.

In recent weeks, however, there was a flurry of Israeli press reports that a “Prisoner X” had committed suicide in an Israeli jail.

These rumours were picked up by an American journalist and blogger, Richard Silverstein, who has followed the case. He speculated that the unidentified prisoner was probably Gen Asgari – and suggested that he may not have killed himself but was murdered.

Israeli journalists swiftly countered that Prisoner X was not Gen Asgari.

Nevertheless, Tehran promptly accused Israel of “state-sponsored terrorism” and on Friday urged the United Nations to help clarify Gen Asgari’s fate.

In a letter to the UN secreatry general, Ban Ki-moon, Iran’s caretaker foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said: “Without a doubt the release of these reports further strengthens suspicions that Asgari was abducted by the Zionist regime.” Israel, he added, is “directly responsible for his life”.

Other Iranian officials joined in with cries that “the Zionists have assassinated” Gen Asgari, and dismissed as “totally illogical” any notion that he could have taken his own life.

Kazem Jalali, the spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said that Gen Asgari must have been tortured and killed.

Other officials said he had been “martyred”. Gen Asgari’s sister, meanwhile, told Iranian state media that he would never have committed suicide.

Some analysts suggest the Iranian regime has seized on reports of his death because Gen Asgari was due to testify at the special tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. The tribunal is expected to implicate members of the Iranian-backed Hizbollah movement in that murder, which had far-reaching regional repercussions.

Iran will now attempt to discredit any such testimony by arguing Gen Asgari is dead and that anyone claiming to be him is an imposter, an Iranian friend of his wrote on his blog.

Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, who lives in Europe, insists that Gen Asghari is living safely in a western country.

He claims that the general called him for advice after he arrived with his family in Damascus where he had been either on a pilgrimage or a business trip.

Mr Ebrahimi claims that Gen Asgari acted on his advice to hire a car and flee to Turkey to defect. Once in Istanbul, he asked the UN and US for asylum and finally left Turkey for the US in February 2007. Gen Asgari, he says, later contacted him from Washington DC and Texas.

“There is no reason why Asgari should have been kept in jail, because he left Iran on his own free will and defected to the West,” Mr Ebrahimi wrote in his latest blog posting.

When Gen Asgari disappeared in Istanbul, US media lost no time in claiming that Gen Asgari, who had served under Iran’s reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, had fled Iran of his own volition and was providing sensitive information on Iran’s ties to Hizbollah.

Gen Asgari is said to have been a commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Al Qods force in Lebanon in the mid-1990s.

The Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, claimed at the time of Gen Asgari’s disappearance that Mossad had orchestrated his defection.

Politico, a US-based political news website, on Friday quoted an Iranian-American pro-democracy activist knowledgeable about the case insisting that Gen Asgari was never in Israel and the story that he died there – or died at all – is untrue.

“The news is a complete fabrication and a fantasy,” Pooya Dayanim told Politico.

Meanwhile, Yossi Melman, an intelligence correspondent for Israel’s daily Haaretz newspaper, wrote this week that Israeli security services should publicly deny the rumours about Gen Ashgari.

“Anyone who knows something about these subjects, and is familiar with relevant precedents, could conclude that the chances of Asgari finding asylum in Israel, or being forcibly brought here, are negligible,” Melman wrote.

In March 2007, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that Gen Asgari, who is in his mid-50s, had been spying on Iran since 2003 when he was recruited on an overseas business trip.

He fled, it said, with the help of western intelligence agencies when he realised his cover was about to be blown. After being spirited out of Turkey, his first stop was a Nato base in Germany where Gen Asgari, “a very wealthy man”, underwent debriefing, the newspaper said.

He carried documents disclosing “Iran’s links to terrorists in the Middle East”, but it was not thought he had details of Iran’s nuclear programme, it added.

via Full: Missing Iranian general may have ‘died in Israeli jail’ – The National.

January 2, 2011
tehran times : ‘Regional cooperation can stop foreign interference’

Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN – An expansion of ties between regional countries can stop certain foreign countries that interfere in regional affairs, Iran’s deputy interior minister for security affairs said on Saturday.

Ali Abdollahi, who was talking to the Azerbaijani deputy interior minister in Istanbul, said regional cooperation is essential for promoting security in the region.

Therefore, it is necessary that all the nations in the region increase their interactions, Abdollahi added.

The Azerbaijani official, for his part, said Baku is really interested in expanding cooperation between Iranian and Azeri police forces.

He expressed hope that cooperation between the two countries will increase in the future

December 26, 2010