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Baroness Deech, Parliament, United Kingdom, 29 January 2015
30 Friday Jan 2015
Category Archives: Middle East
Links – On Iran’s War by Proxy
28 Wednesday Jan 2015
In an interview that was broadcasted on Lebanon’s Murr TV that was translated into English by MEMRI, Ahmed Al Asaad, the chairman of the Lebanese Option Party and a member of the Shiite community, declared: “The Iranian regime still believes that things are like they were in the Middle Ages; it sponsors militias, here, there and everywhere, and these militias exert pressure from within on their countries. In this primitive manner, Iran tries to gain a foothold there.”
Related:
Mumford, Andrew. Proxy Warfare. Wiley (2013). (I haven’t read this volume yet, but have read a portion via the Google project that has put book data online. That didn’t show up on the latest search, so it may soon be a volume incoming for the library).
While the mainstream media has focused solely on Hamas and Israel in the current ongoing war, there has been less attention given to the major role that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been playing in ratcheting up the conflict with its military assistance to Hamas fighters, including Iranian-built Fajr 5 and M-75 with ranges of approximately 75 kilometers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/irans-proxy-war-against-israel/ – 7/29/2014.
The Houthis are trying to take advantage of Hezbollah’s experience, and the Houthi-affiliated Al-Maseera Channel broadcasts from Beirut’s southern suburbs with technical support from the Lebanese Shiite party. Recently, relations between the two sides have grown deeper. This comes amid repeated accusations from the Yemeni state that Iran is supporting the Houthis, and after the United States put in place new sanctions in August 2013 against some Lebanese who were accused of providing funds to the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis usually do not deny this strong link with Hezbollah, which is reinforced by common factors between the two sides, such as their presence in the same regional alliance with Iran at the political level. In addition, both groups have armed militias to support their political positions, which they use when necessary. Yet, for the Houthis, the militia is their most prominent — if not exclusive — tool and not the exception, as is the case with Hezbollah.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/yemen-houthis-differences-hezbollah-lebanon.html#ixzz3Q8V08ACR – 11/19/2014.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139643/akbar-ganji/who-is-ali-khamenei – September / October 2013.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/10/while-you-were-watching-isis-iran-took-yemen/ – 10/8/2014
In his resignation letter, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah said the cabinet did not want to be dragged into an “unconstructive political maze”.
Earlier this week, Houthi gunmen fired on Mr Bahah’s convoy and then laid siege to the presidential palace, where he was staying.
Then on Wednesday the home of President Hadi was shelled, shattering a ceasefire that had been agreed only hours earlier.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30936940 – 1/22/2015.
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Link – Yarmouk – Word of Torture and Execution – Regime and Opposition Blamed
25 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in Islamic Small Wars, Links, Syria
Tags
A man from the Yarmouk camp tortured to death in regime prisons. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic battalions executed a man in the Yarmouk camp in the charge of insulting “Allah”
http://syriahr.com/en/2015/01/shells-and-casualties-in-damascus-and-air-strikes-on-its-countryside/ – 1/25/2015.
What began in 2011 as an effort to hold a government accountable and to expand administrative power to the people, i.e., a true people’s revolution, has become by design, and one may think Putin-Assad-Khamenei for this, a civil war defined on both sides by despotic and sadistic personalities. Neither side appears to have an off button, or a noble humanitarian switch, for that matter, and between them, Yarmouk Camp has been played like a poker chip.
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Diminished Syria
20 Tuesday Jan 2015
The playing in Syria of a bloody chess match — or poker with three jokers wild — has produced a humanitarian catastrophe now coldly reflected in big numbers: more than 200,000 dead; more than 9 million internally displaced and refugee.
As a stalemate from the git-go — post-Soviet Russia vs NATO, the feudal world vs the modern — and held there by nuclear danger, Putin-Assad-Khamenei’s hands have transformed an authentic people’s revolution — call it a democratic socialist revolution, an anti-totalitarian revolution for classical liberalism — into an immensely tragic put-on featuring on the state’s side a tyrant and in much of the opposition the tyrants of the al-Qaeda-type organizations.
(On this blog, ISIS is a Khamenei proxy by way of direct bribes or subterfuge, and, one way or the other, its presence may be maintained as long as it serves Iranian diplomacy, war strategy, and the business that has been made of the want of infinite “narcissistic supply” — i.e., contemplated later glory).
Perhaps this way an endgame comes:
- US-NATO has cut the revenues of oil-dependent states and their proxies;
- US-NATO appears to have gotten Hezbollah consumed with striking Israel, which perverse shift in focus may signal gathering weakness in Assad’s military outlook (perhaps if he’s going down, he wants to see Israel hurt while he’s falling);
- US-NATO has laid some groundwork for rebuilding a moderate army for Syria, one capable of destroying both the fattened red-brown capitalists and the jumpy green meanies of jealousy’s jihad that have made Syria the world’s capital of limitless suffering.
By when?
Not so fast.
It takes time to assemble parts, build machinery, and move the machinery around — and not only for the “small war” — always: if it’s in your own neighborhood, it is all the war in the world! — but for greater and more dismal possibilities as well.
Excerpts and Reference
The consequences of missing oil revenue for IS are severe. IS is unlikely to decrease funding for its military operations so it will have to find ways to simultaneously cut costs elsewhere and raise new revenue — and both methods are likely to jeopardize popular support for the group.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-impact-of-the-oil-collapse-on-isis-is-severe-2015-1 – 1/15/2015.
But the good times may now be over for Hezbollah and its supporters. Iranian oil profits, which have lubricated the proxy group with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, appear to be drying up. Western sanctions, imposed on Tehran due to its nuclear program, coupled with falling oil prices, have emptied the coffers of the Islamic Republic.
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/23/hezbollah-going-broke-299139.html – 1/15/2015
Hezbollah’s fear is that all that weaponry will be lost if Assad falls. One wonders, lost to whom? The Muslim Brotherhood? Al-Qaeda operatives in Syria? Since both the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda are reported moving quickly into the mayhem and becoming part of the opposition mix, this strategic weaponry, including stockpiles of chemical weapons and long-range missiles, could fall into the hands of any of these terrorist groups, as the Syrian regime disintegrates.
http://www.maozisrael.org/site/News2?id=9174 “Why Syria’s Assad Can’t Stop Killing His Own People.” – March 2012.
With no American combat boots on the ground and limited intelligence, the U.S. is struggling to have an impact there against Islamic State militants or the Assad regime.
One of the biggest hurdles for the U.S. training program for Syrian rebels is identifying and vetting individuals to train. Defense officials said earlier this month that the U.S. is working closely with other U.S. government agencies as well as partner nations to find rebel fighters who would be candidates for the program.
Jihad Mughniyeh, son of former Hezbollah chief Imad Mugniyeh, as well as 11 others were killed in the airborne attack, including six Iranians, one of them a general. Iranian state sources confirmed the identity of the senior Revolutionary Guard officer, naming him as General Mohamed Allahdadi. Another key figure killed in the attack was identified as Mohammed Issa, the head of Hezbollah’s operation in war-torn Syria and Iraq.
Assad’s war against his people, attacks of terrorist groups, and the trauma of ordinary Syrians have gone unnoticed while the global leaders quickly gathered in Paris to condemn the killing of 12 journalists, which is of course an atrocious and condemnable act, but the same world is turning a blind eye and is not reacting to the daily killings by poisonous gases, explosions and missiles.
The inability of the international community to act has turned the Syrian issue into a huge humanitarian crisis.
http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/views/editor-in-chief/317263/the-suffering-of-syrian-refugees – 1/18/2015.
Additional Reading
http://nypost.com/2014/12/07/an-iran-russia-axis/ – 12/7/2014.
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Syria – False Picture – Irrelevant Praise
19 Monday Jan 2015
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Jan. 15 that the continued violence in Syria is a “disgrace” and that the Syria conflict is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.” Syrians have replaced Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population, with 7.6 million displaced and 3.3 million refugees, in addition to a death toll estimated at 200,000, and the return of typhoid, measles and polio to the country.
On Jan. 14, de Mistura got a boost from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who praised UN and Russian efforts to broker a settlement in Syria.
This blog has supported the notion that yesterday’s communist elite are today’s state capitalists backed and defended by security fascists motivated by money and a new fascist nationalism. That’s a complicated way of suggesting that “Old Red has met New Brown” — and the old Soviets are today’s New Nationalists.
Add the Old Red-Green Arrangement.
Along that line, and while scanning, collecting, posting, and commenting on news from journalism’s “second row seat to history”, one cannot help but note that certain relationships seem defined by common interest in “political absolutism”: Putin – Assad – Khamenei | Putin – Orban – Erdogan – (Khamenei). The dry outer skin of the onion wants another story: secular vs religious power; Sunni vs Shiite teleology; Iran vs Iraq. However, lo and behold, as the Internet helps political wonks tear back the layers of the onion, Iran is in Iraq in a large evident way (and given the malignant psychology involved in men who would be as if gods — or just one — themselves, the Russo-Syrian-Iranian alliance may be what was in back of Daesh, for if one is to be as God, one would naturally manage the entire battle, not just one side of it.
As Putin was in the business of spending about $51 billion on the winter olympics in Sochi (the figure is disputed but still well into the tens of billions), he appears to have been thoroughly out of the business of tempering Assad’s response to a moderate, modern, and democratically updating revolutionary “Arab Spring” challenge or, Mr. Nice Guy, offering Russian aid to ameliorate the damage, displacement, and injury brought to millions of innocents. After all, it really wasn’t his concern, was it, whatever happened to Syrians.
The suggestion that Assad chose to bomb the daylights out of noncombatant zones while holding off on the al-Qaeda-types who came into theater of war may be borne out in the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures created in the monstrosity that is today the deeply polarized and globally signal “Syrian Civil War”, for while NATO and the western world press for classical liberal values in governance, it appears Putin, Assad, and Khamenei together press for immense systems of abuse, coercion, enslavement, and exploitation on the mighty piers of fear and patronage.
Call Syria an “axle of power” 🙂 — if the three dictators get away with driving over the state’s constituents to an inherently fascist conclusion, they might well drive the same anywhere else — and the end of that kind of power: the power to make others suffer capriciously, with impunity, without heart, without justice, without limits.
Still, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Wednesday that the United States welcomed both initiatives. He made no call for Mr. Assad’s resignation, a notable omission from Mr. Kerry, who has typically insisted on it in public remarks. Instead, he spoke of Mr. Assad as a leader who needed to change his policies.
“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.
Name the tyrants — communist, nationalist, Islamist (red-brown-green) — who have with grace backed away from or stepped down from power.
The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with Soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russia’s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218533/russian-footprints/ion-mihai-pacepa – 8/24/2006
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Link – Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – Cruelty, Injustice, Sociopathy
19 Monday Jan 2015
Posted in Saudi Arabia
The second story, and this is far more disturbing, is of a Burmese-origin lady, Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, who was dragged in the streets of the holy city of Makkah and brazenly beheaded for allegedly sexually assaulting and murdering her step-daughter. A charge the lady vehemently denied right up until her demise, with her screaming “I did not kill, I did not kill” and three police officers holding her down while the punishment was carried out in an extremely sadistic manner. According to The Independent, a video showing how the execution took place has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”. No evidence of her involvement in the death has ever been provided.
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/25814/saudi-arabia-the-holy-hypocrites-of-sharia-law/ – 1/17/2015.
“On Human Rights Day, Iran is Again Covered in Blood” – Maryam Rajavi
18 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iran
Tags
Update: September 12, 2016
The four-and-a-half-year-long process of relocating members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) to countries of safety was successfully completed on September 9, 2016 when the last 280 Camp Liberty residents left Iraq for Albania.
NCRI. “MEK resettlement from Iraq marks another blow for the Iranian regime.” September 10, 2016.
Displacement is not a “win”, but give the “People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran” its due: it appears to BackChannels as one of very few organizations that have moved from U.S. status as a terrorist organization to de-listing on that score. In the years tracked here, it has consistently spoken a democratic-egalitarian and peace line, so here it may be considered good that the people involved have found a less contentious and more secure home.
Posted to YouTube December 16, 2014.
Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani do not represent our nation Iran. The Iranian regime holds the record in the number of executions. It holds and is a symbol of bankrupt terrorism. It must be overthrown. This the verdict of history. This is what 120,000 martyrs of freedom have called for. This is the message of our gathering today: religious fascism must be overthrown.
Posted to YouTube June 27, 2014
And even though I want to believe that no Judiciary seeks to execute innocent people, the Iranian system makes the likelihood of unfair trials and arbitrary killings unacceptably high. Iranians are routinely subject to arbitrary detentions, beating and interrogations without the presence of a lawyer, vaguely worded national security laws, and prejudiced institutions that fail to protect them.
http://blog.iranrights.org/no-more-talk-its-time-for-iran-to-act-roya-boroumand/ – 10/16/2014.
HRANA News Agency – After seven months of Saeed Shirzad’s arrest, he is still kept as detainee and under uncertain condition. His attorneys are not permitted to review his case.
https://hra-news.org/en/saeed-shirzad-seven-months-evin-prison-without-trial – 1/13/2015.
An informed source regarding Nahid Gorji’s condition, told HRANA’s reporter, “She used to have contact with her daughter every week, but since three weeks ago she has not been allowed to make a phone call and has had no visit with her family which has made her family and relatives worried.”
https://hra-news.org/en/nahid-gorji-contact-family-since-3-weeks-ago – 1/13/2015.
HRANA News Agency – Atena Dayemi, civil rights and children’s rights activist, is still being kept in solitary confinement after nearly three months.
According to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Atena Dayemi who was arrested on October 21, 2014 in her house and transferred to ward 2-A in Evin Prison which is controlled by IRGC, is still being kept in solitary confinement although the interrogation process has been finished.
https://hra-news.org/en/atena-dayemi-still-kept-solitary-confinement – 1/10/2015.
This abominable crime has a special character: the savage assassination of writers and journalists under the name of Islam. For this reason, on behalf of the Iranian people and Resistance, I condemned this crime in strongest possible terms and state as a Muslim woman that the religion of Islam and the conduct of its great Prophet reject such acts of barbarism.
Today, the people of France hold a great gathering of solidarity, which we also participated, and we express our solidarity with them.
Eric Shawn: You mentioned the nuclear issue and of course, July 20th is a deadline for the nuclear agreement. Do you think Tehran can be trusted?
Maryam Rajavi: Certainly not. The mu↑llahs are masters of deception, duplicity and charlatanism. For this reason they can in no way be trusted. You know full well that Rouhani, himself, acknowledged during the election campaign that he had deceived the West in order to continue the nuclear activities inside Iran while the West being misled that thee regime has engaged in negotiations in order to halt their nuclear program. Therefore, they cannot be trusted.
“Interview with Maryam Rajavi with Fox New,” July 4, 2014.
Where is the parade?
Am I standing where I am waiting for it?
Or has it already passed, and I am watching the stragglers?
I don’t think I am watching the stragglers, but I have been watching this parade for a while.
Additional Reference
My ears have been seduced, for Rajavi speaks well. However, the MEK past and perhaps her own present online behavior or encouragement of behavior carries forward a whiff of “KGB-itis” in the malignantly narcissistic signal of faith and investment in control of constituent perception through unsavory manipulations in information space.
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Of course, when on the internet, like-minded people, especially those who strongly support parties or causes, will naturally act in a like-minded way; changing their pictures to similar ones, using similar backgrounds and slogans, etc.
But these accounts are literally identical in almost every respect. Similar pictures, similar slogans, similar lack of any personal touch whatsoever, and all devoted to either retweeting or paraphrasing Mrs Rajavi’s every word.
https://unfetteredfreedom.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/rajavis-cyber-army-the-meks-twitter-legions/ – 12/2/2014.
Throughout the decade, the MEK orchestrated terrorist attacks against the state that killed several Americans working in Iran, including military officers and civilian contractors, according to the U.S. State Department. (By 1978, some 45,000 of the 60,000 foreigners working in Iran were Americans.) The MEK denies any involvement with these incidents, asserting that they were the work of a breakaway Marxist-Leninist faction, known as Peykar, which hijacked the movement after the arrest of Rajavi.
Some analysts support this. “Rajavi, upon release from prison during the revolution, had to rebuild the organization, which had been badly battered by the Peykar experience,” said Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute, in a CFR interview.
http://www.cfr.org/iran/mujahadeen-e-khalq-mek/p9158 – 7/28/2014.
Reprints
Iran – References to the Serial Murders and Related – From April 22, 2009
Note: Website Human Rights & Democracy for Iran is located today at the following address:
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Yesterday, I listed a few names, most from Morteza Abolalian’s list, and here, reporting and commenting in reverse, I’ve started to get to know them better–who they were, how they lived–if possible.
So far, I’ve found web material scant.
There’s something wrong, of course, when my page comes up top on a Google search for any of the persons murdered allegedly, an appropriate term one must use even if reluctantly, by the Iranian state.
Politically, each name affords a window into the history and machinery of the Islamic revolution in Iran, most past, some nearly present.
From an empathic standpoint, one would wish to know them better, and that whether they were bad in some way or remarkably good. Such work has been undertaken by Human Rights & Democracy for Iran (http://www.iranrights.org/english/) through its undertaking “Omid”, in translation from Persian, “Hope”:
“Omid’s citizens were of varying social origins, nationalities, and religions; they held diverse, and often opposing, opinions and ideologies. Despite the differences in their personality, spirit and moral fiber, they are all united in Omid by their natural rights and their humanity. What makes them fellow citizens is the fact that one day each of them was unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. At that moment, while the world watched the unspeakable happen, an individual destiny was shattered, a family was destroyed, and an indescribable suffering was inflicted.”
Source: “Omid, a memorial in defense of human rights in Iran”: http://www.iranrights.org/english/memorial.php
Our World Wide Web becomes memory for all humanity.
A week or two back I added this from writer Milan Kundera to my blog (bottom of the column on the right):
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
I may perhaps owe my own some work, but I don’t wish to dwell too much on that.
At the level of mind, we are a rapidly evolving species, cross-communicating, sorting, crystallizing, and we know injustice in one place is felt and has meaning in other places.
I’ve started working down the list I’ve got, but I can see that in the way of the web or human-to-web-to-human interaction, I’ve obligated myself to spend some time at Omid and appreciate the stories there.
The common denominator for all listed in relation to state repression is all were cheated of their lives, their works, and their voices in their greater potential.
This morning started out as quest for references, but even on the web and reading swiftly, one may travel only so far in two or three hours.
Reference
Abdolalian, Morteza. List of those believed murdered by the Iranian government as part of “Ghtlhaye Zanjirehei” or “chain murders”. Iran Watch Canada, November 26, 2006: http://moriab.blogspot.com/2006/11/these-are-people-who-have-_116460629705367011.html
Absolute Astronomy. “Ahmad Tafazzoli”: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Ahmad_Tafazzoli
Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf. “Aristoo and Bahram, Martyrs.” Circa 2008:http://www.cypgulf.org/Prayer/January-June%202008/Aristoo-Bahram.htm
FarsiDictionary.com. Promotion or review of _The Spirit of Wisdom: Menog I Xrad: Essays in Memory of Ahmad Tafazzoli_ by Mahmoud Omidsalar, A. Tafazzoli, Touraj Daryaee, Mazda Publishers, 2003:http://www.farsidictionary.com/reviews-books-11568-1568591462-1-The_Spirit_of_Wisdom_Menog_I_Xrad_Essays_in_Memory_of_Ahmad_Tafazzoli.html . The review may be both telling and chilling:
“The book in essence is a memorial volume in honour of Professor Ahmad Tafazzoli (1937-1996), containing nineteen articles by prominent scholars in the fields of Iranology, Ancient Persian Studies and Onomastics, on topics of Zoroastrianism, Ancient Iranian Religions, History of Ancient Persia, Studies in Middle Persian, Pazand and Sogdian texts. Prof. Tafazzoli himself contributed scholarly works in Middle Persian and Classical Persian Studies. The book contains a frontispiece of Prof. Tafazzoli and a bibliography of his published works and it is indeed unfortunate that the editors have opted to omit his works in the Persian language from that bibliography.”
Forein Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran: http://ncr-iran.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/
Hatley, Karen. “Biography of Haik Hovsepian-Mehr.” Truett Journal of Church and Mission. Baylor University, Waco, Texas. January 24, 2005: http://www.baylor.edu/Truett/journal/index.php?id=20622
Iran Terror Database: “Partial List of Victims of the Mullahs’ Regime Terrorist Activity Abroad 1979 – 1999”. July 19, 2005: http://www.iranterror.com/content/view/37/55/
National Council of Resistance of Iran. “Brief on Iran, No. 545.” November 22, 1996: http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/boi/05451122.96
OMID: A Memorial in Defense of Human Rights. “Mr. Amir Ghafuri”: http://www.iranrights.org/english/memorial-case-29321.php
Rafizadeh, Shahram. “A Caricature of Justice: Contradictions and Inconsistences in the Cases of the Political Serial Murders.” Gozaar – A Forum on Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, November 20, 2007:http://www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=866&language=english
Rafizadeh, Shahram. “The Mystery of the Serial Murders.” CyrusNews.com, November 29, 2005:http://www.cyrusnews.com/news/print/?l=en&mi=1&ni=370
Wikipedia. “Alireza Noori”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alireza_Noori
Wikipedia. “Hassan Dehqani-Tafti”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Dehqani-Tafti
Wikipedia: “Ahmad Tafazzoli”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Tafazzoli
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From April 21, 2009 —
Iran – The Mute
Abdolaziz Bajd
Abdolaziz Kazemi-Vajd
Afkham Sadeghi
Afshin Shabanian
Ahmad Miralaei
Ahmad Mirin Sayad
Ahmad Tafazzoli
Amir Ghafuri
Anvar Samadian
Aristoo Sayyeh
Bahman Totonchi
Bahram Dehqani-Tafti
Bishop Husepian Mehr
Dariush Frouhar and Parvaneh Eskandari
Ebrahim Zalzadeh
Falah Yazdi
Fakhrosadat Borgheei
Farough Farsad
Farzin Maghsudiou
Fatemeh Ghaem-maghami
Father Michallian
Father Mohammad Bagher Yusefi
Firouz Nima
Foroud Burbur
Freidoon Frouhari
Gholam Ali Pishehkolah
Ghafar Hosaini
Hadi Taghizadeh
Haj Ghasem Shafiei
Haj Hossain Fatahpoor
Hamed Masiha
Hamid Hajizadeh
Hossein Barazandeh
Hossain Sarshar
Hossain Shahjamali
Hossain Sharifi
Jalal Mobinizadeh
Jamshid Partovi
Javad Sarkhosh
Javad Emami and Sonia Alyasin
Javad Safar
Karim Jeli ad Fatemeh Emami
Karoon Hajizadeh
Kazem Sami
Khosro Besharati
Majid Sharif
Manuchehr Saneei
Maryam Motaghi
Masumeh Mosadegh
Mohammad Jafar Poyandeh
Masoud Tafazzoli
Mehdi Dibaj
Mehdi Khanipoor
Mohammad Mokhtari
Mohammad Reza Safaei
Mohammad Taghi Zehtabi
Mojtaba Mehrasbi
Mola Mohammad Rabiei
Morteza Alian Najafabadi
Parviz Khaksar
Pirouz Davani
Rahmatolah Dadashi
Reza Ziaeinia
Rostami Hamedanian
Said Gheidi
Said Sirjani
Seyed Ahmad Khomeini
Seyed Ebrahim Beizaei
Seyed Mahmoud Maydani
Seyed Mahmoud Taleghani
Shabnam Hossaini
Shahpoor Zandnia
Shamsodin Amiralaei
Shamsodin Kiani
Sheikh Mohammad Ziaei
Siamak Sanjari
Zahra Eftekhari
Zahra Kazemi
Zohreh Izadi
—
Tell how they lived.
Tell how they are living.
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There are more resources online today than when the above list, culled from online, was compiled.
There are also more victims for the regime. In one of the above clips, Maryam Rajavi put the number of regime executed political martyrs at above 120,000, with 30,000 killed shortly after the taking of power in 1988.
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Ali Khamenei and the Letter from Near Mosul – A Speculation
16 Friday Jan 2015
Tags
Governorate of Ninava
Number of copies 751
Dated June, 06, 2014
To all departments of the governorate
Prevention preparations
Due to critical circumstances in the governorate and since we are convinced that army is not capable to face and confront the mujahideen we order all departments and governmental establishments within the governorate to follow below instructions and advices:
1- destroy all contracts and documents relevant to procurements within your department
2- burn all documents with governor’s name or signature
3- employees must not confront the mujahideen and they have to run away
4- don’t move away or hide vehicles, machineries and heavy equipments
5- in case of facing mujahideen it is prohibited to confront them in order to save lives and properties
6- it’s prohibited to have mobile phone under all circumstances
7- minimize night shift surveillance in order to save lives
Those who will not strictly follow instructions will be severely punished, expelled and followed by security committee of the governorate
For immediate execution
Atheel Abdulaziz Alnujaifi
Governor of Ninava
“Mujahideen” is not a word used to describe an enemy. It’s rather like “freedom fighter”, a word glorifying men at arms. In the vicinity of Mosul, which is where the above letter was promulgated by Governor Atheel Abdulazziz Alnujaifi, “enemy” would be referred to, as they are elsewhere, as “terrorists”.
The mid-January attempted assassination of Iranian spy chief General Qassem Soleimani, Commander and Chief of the Al Qods Brigades reported by Debka today may have some relationship to the above “stand-down” letter issued to military personnel by the mayor of Mosul shortly before the Islamic State’s lightning assault on Iraq.
Working on the red-brown-green theme and related political psychology in this blog has been like watching a sea monster rise from the deep. At first, the waters are obviously troubled and for apparent reasons — the middle east conflict, anti-Semitism, related Solidarity organizations, the calumny of the UN, and so on — but then the black mass of alliances starts to appear — that International Club of Bad Little Boys: Putin-Assad-Khamenei; Putin-Orban; Putin-Erdogan — and then a little later more data starts pushing up through the roiled surface:
In the eyes of most Iraqis, their country’s best ally in the war against the Islamic State group is not the United States and the coalition air campaign against the militants. It’s Iran, which is credited with stopping the extremists’ march on Baghdad.
http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-has-never-been-more-influential-in-iraq-2015-1#ixzz3Ooudrg10
Of course: Iran’s despot may have been holding the reins not only on Shiite extremist interests, like those of Hezbollah, but Sunni extremist operations as well, like those of Hamas, al-Nusra, and the Islamic State.
It has been a complaint out of the Syrian Revolution (2011) cum Civil War (afterward) that while Assad was barrel bombing the hell out of assorted noncombatants — not to mention sniping babies in the womb — his air force was standing off the positions of the al-Qaeda-type organizations, essentially removing the moderate middle from the field and leaving on the field to fights in its place “the terrorists” — the real ones (reference for that thought: Aboud Dandachi‘s The Doctor, The Eye Doctor, and Me, published early in 2014).
Debka has posted another article already this month combing over the Islamic State’s targeting of Iranian top officers in its area of contest and control:
The Al Qaeda-ISIS force was made up entirely of Saudi jihadis.
When these three episodes are examined in context, the Islamic State’s current modus operandi takes shape, as outlined here by DEBKAfile’s military analysts:
It starts with the detailed tracking of the movements of targeted commanders and staff, followed by the penetration of spies, usually locals converted to the jihadist philosophy, to their staffs. These moles keep their bosses in ISIS abreast of the targeted commanders’ movements, time tables, staff aides and the forces assigned to their security.
If one is a child of the public left scribbling with crayons, “Saudi jihadis” conflates Baghdadi’s operation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but all who track these wars know that “Saudi jihadis” are as much after the Saudi king as anyone else who gets in their way, and with that in mind, they are leagued naturally with the Ayatollah. One then might ask, what keeps them, if anything, from taking Ali Khamenei’s money when offered? And in the medieval mode: they may not know where the influence and money are coming from if the same presenting before them are agents provocateur.
While in a healthy society, the sacrifice of one’s own officers would be anathema — and cause for revolution, bloody housekeeping, or dissolving of an entire army — in a state commanded by a piratical malignant narcissist, such a sacrifice for the greater cause of the leader’s aggrandized image — objective: glorification and immortality — might seem but a small thing, another little bit of political theater and show business.
Over the past year, Iran sold Iraq nearly $10 billion worth of weapons and hardware, mostly weapons for urban warfare like assault rifles, heavy machine-guns and rocket launchers, he said. The daily stream of Iranian cargo planes bringing weapons to Baghdad was confirmed at a news conference by a former Shiite militia leader, Jamal Jaafar. Better known by his alias Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, Jaafar is second in command of the recently created state agency in charge of volunteer fighters.
Some Sunnis are clearly worried. Sunni lawmaker Mohammed al-Karbuly said the United States must increase its support of Iraq against the extremists in order to reduce Iran’s influence.
“Iran now dominates Iraq,” he said.
http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-has-never-been-more-influential-in-iraq-2015-1#ixzz3Ooudrg10 – 1/12/2015.
Again: I know it sounds absurd: why build or control an enemy?
However, if and as one ventures into the bizarre and perverse aspects of political behavior as tyrants display it — why child soldiers? Slavery? Trafficking? — then one may turn on the lights and raise the curtains on the Theater of Realpolitik — and doesn’t this look glorious and good?
Arab commentators believe that recent attacks attributed to Iran against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) positions in Iraq show a significant strengthening of Tehran’s efforts to help its allies in Baghdad and Damascus and maintain its regional influence through the fight against the threat of radical Islamists.
Images of Iranian air strikes in eastern Iraq provided the first concrete evidence of direct involvement by the Iranian air force in the military campaign against ISIS. The US military believes that Iran has conducted air strikes against Isis targets in Diyala province in recent days, although the Defense Department insists that it is not co-ordinating any military action with Tehran.
http://www.thetower.org/1354-iran-attacks-isis-in-iraq-to-protect-its-regional-influence/ – 12/8/2014.
What’s being argued is control — not God, not the fate of humanity, not good deeds: control — and what power greater than that to bring out the chessboard, invite a friend to play — provide him with hospitality and sweets or other reward for the pleasure of doing some combat — and play with and against the same at the same time?
Of course, what’s going on with “Daesh” ain’t chess.
At about this place, the appropriately leisured reader — you’re here — may wish to look up “VEVAK, Iraq, Mumford”.
Worlds may be moved from behind curtains and by staged plays – and what is a leader of a totalitarian mission and system if not a master storyteller and producer?
Along the axis I’ve referred to as “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” bring to this story Karen Dawisha’s analysis of the “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (in Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who owns Russia?): inside job, KGB manipulation of public perception, useful “false flag”.
News outlets report broadly attacks against two Iranian generals: Mehdi Norouzi on January 12, 2015 and Hamid Taghavi around December 28, 2015.
How does that happen — two in a row?
How does Daesh (IS, ISIS, ISIL) know who is going to be where and when?
The Debka article also says, “According to our military and intelligence sources, ISIS forces have been able to wipe out 555 Iranian officers in the four months since last October, most of them by means of jihadist hit squads.”
Holy moley!
The news has been disseminated widely but not recapitulated: would another western intelligence service publication please weigh in?
If the figure is not near to true, one may think that Daesh got lucky twice with perhaps an expected complement of “moles”, those untrustworthy others with access to operational plans.
If it is true and Daesh has made casualties of “555 Iranian officers in the four months since last October”, that sounds to BackChannels like ducks in a shooting gallery: the information on their whereabouts has been loose and broad — has to have been — and the moles could be anywhere, possibly everywhere, even at the top.
Additional Reference
The fall of Mosul, allegedly to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is not the military victory it has been made out to be. For a start, as the New York Times and Agence France-Presse report, ISIS gunmen (who faced an army outnumbering them fifty-to-one) were able to occupy strategic positions around the city only after Iraqi commanders ordered their troops to stand down and retreat . . . ISIS, it must be understood, is a nebulous entity with three distinct faces. The first face belongs to the ISIS that exists solely in the media, propagated by a scaremongering Iraqi government on the one hand and a grandstanding ISIS on the other. The second is that of ISIS proper, the very real and ultraviolent successor to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The third is no face at all, but reportedly a mask worn by the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
http://clarionproject.org/analysis/three-faces-isis-who-behind-war-iraq – 6/17/2014.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/08/inside-chechnya-putins-reign-terror – 8/29/2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheel_al-Nujaifi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usama_al-Nujayfi
Choose which to trust: the closed information system or the open one:
“Major General Suleimani is in Iran and in good health and the news that he is wounded is false,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was quoted as saying on Thursday.
The Iranian statement was in response to a report about Suleimani’s injury that first surfaced in the Israeli website DEBKAfile, citing reports from military and intelligence sources in the Gulf. Ya Libnan published a report on the same issue on January 14.
http://yalibnan.com/2015/01/16/iran-denies-that-major-general-suleimani-was-injured-in-iraq-by-isis/ – 1/16/2015.
The Islamic Republic has, for all the blood and treasure shed to date in Iraq and Syria, invested heavily in the managed instability of both countries. Even the meteoric rise of ISIS cannot not significantly alter Tehran’s policy of forging both unity and disunity simultaneously, depending on the local context.
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2015/01/12/two-brigadier-generals-in-death/ – 1/12/2015.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday announced the death of Brig. Gen. Hamid Taghavi, who had been training the army and Iraqi volunteers in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
One jihadi forum posted an image of the officer standing next to three others, with a red circle around his head and the caption: “A photo of the miscreant Hamid Taghavi who was killed by the men of IS in the region of Samarra.”
Update – February 26, 2015
The more powerful ISIS grows, the more they are useful for the regime
The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has long had a pragmatic approach to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), says a Syrian businessman with close ties to the government. Even from the early days the regime purchased fuel from ISIS-controlled oil facilities, and it has maintained that relationship throughout the conflict. “Honestly speaking, the regime has always had dealings with ISIS, out of necessity.”
Baker, Aryn. “Why Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS”. Time. February 26, 2015.
Update – August 7, 2015
Westcott, Lucy. “U.S. Accuses Assad of Aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes”. Newsweek, June 2, 2015.
Update – October 15, 2015
Sumeri, Haider. “The Speicher Massacre and Its Legacy in Iraq”. 1001 Iraqi Thoughts, June 12, 2015:
Other survivors swear that they were betrayed. Several theories have risen from the ashes of the catastrophic Speicher episode, many of them pointing to collusion between commanders at the base and local Tikriti tribes. Survivors say that officers at Camp Speicher told recruits to leave the base and head back home on a short vacation, reassuring them that the area was safe and dispelling any doubts they had.
Down the road, local Sunni tribesmen and Da’ish militants were waiting.
The “Speicher Massacre” piece was reblogged — WordPress shares a teaser plus a link back to the article cited — on BackChannels on June 18, 2015. The citation belongs here as the field reports synch with the “stand-down” letter from near Mosul.
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