Iran, Syria, Obama-Bush and... Alan Grayson

If you read Ken's preview of the Iranian presidential election Friday night, you probably got the impression Hasan Rowhani was the guy we should be rooting for. By this morning he seemed to have a wide lead in the vote count, 51% against the 15% of his closest rival (hardliner Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, the Iranian equivalent of Ted Cruz or Louie Gohmert)-- enough to avoid a run-off next week. USA Today's coverage was even more upbeat about Rowhani than Ken was.

The man poised to take the Iranian presidency is a moderate-conservative known for his negotiating skill over the country's nuclear weapons program and a reformist some hardliners in Iran previously saw as too liberal and conciliatory, analysts say.

As a result, analysts predict Hasan Rowhani, who took a wide lead in early returns from Friday's election, might take the country's top political post and bring hope to the country's liberal classes but not wield any real power, especially on the nuclear issue.

"A president Rowhani would probably try to persuade the supreme leader that a deal on the nuclear issue would be in the interest of the Islamic Republic, especially if Rowhani believes that it is the only way to avoid a war," said Bruno Tertrais, a senior researcher at Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique (Foundation for Strategic Research) in Paris. "But (Supreme Leader) Khamenei will remain the ultimate decision-maker."

...In a sea of hardliners, a victory for Rowhani would be a win for reformist sentiment in Iran, observers say. During his candidacy, he attracted thousands to his rallies over his calls for an end to the repressive atmosphere prevailing in Iran-- including the lifting of economic sanctions that have crippled the economy and led to a spike in food and fuel prices-- and his pledge to open the door to more individual liberties and better relations with the West.

"We won't let the past eight years go on," Rowhani told crowds attending a pre-election rally. "(President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration) brought sanctions for the country and they are proud of it. I'll pursue a policy of reconciliation and peace, we will also reconcile with the world."

Still, even as his words lean liberal, Rowhani's background is firmly based in the political establishment of Iran.

A cleric, Rowhani first studied religion before graduating with a law degree in 1972, eventually earning a master's degree in law at Caledonian University in Glasgow, Scotland. He was swept up in the 1979 Iran's Islamic Revolution as a firm opponent to the shah and became an ally and part of the inner circle of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, serving in various roles in the government following Khomeini's ascension to power.

Regardless, some Iranians hold out hope that he will fulfill his promises due to his background as a skilled negotiator and conciliator. Rowhani served as head of the Supreme National Security Council during the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997. Following that, he was the country's top nuclear negotiator with the West from 2003 to 2005 during the administration of reformist leader Mohammad Khatami as the U.S. and other European allies grew concerned over Iran's nuclear program. He negotiated a temporary suspension in Iran's uranium enrichment activities.

When hardliner Ahmadinejad-- who is barred from seeking a third term-- took office in 2005, Rowhani resigned after arguments with the new leader.

Since then, Rowhani has remained in the background of reformist causes until earlier this year when the Guardian Council approved his candidacy and he earned the backing of Khatami and Rafsanjani who represent the liberal strain of Iranian politics.

Some Iranians remain hopeful that a Rowhani win could sway Iran to become more open and liberal.

A hopeful sign? Not everyone agrees. Alireza Nourizadeh is an Iranian scholar based in London. He warns that Rowhani "has always pretended to be a moderate, played the game really well and convinced voters he is a reformist by promising a different kind of conversation and behavior in the future. But I know this man-- he's the same man that served in the Supreme National Military Council for 24 years and called for the execution of student protesters (during the 1999 protests)." If the Supreme Leader allows Rowhani to become president-- and he did allow him to run-- then his first big test is sitting on his doorstep already: Syria... with a deadly little note from Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Hussein Obama.

I'm not going to start hyperventilating or speculating about Obama's motives or ambivalence. According to the Washington Post, though, the decision to involve the U.S. in a war to topple Assad, Iran's ally in Syria, was made some time ago, and the "evidence"-- probably trumped up evidence-- was just the kind of bullshit excuse they were waiting for, like the nonsense the Bush Regime presented to the American people to justify toppling Saddam Hussein and invading and occupying Iraq.

President Obama’s decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels followed more than a year of internal debate over whether it was worth the dual risks of involving the United States in another war and seeing U.S. weapons fall into the hands of extremist groups among the rebels.

The White House said the final push came this week after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with “high certainty” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against the rebels.

But U.S. officials said that the determination to send weapons had been made weeks ago and that the chemical weapons finding provided fresh justification to act.

As Syrian government forces, with the help of Hezbollah and Iranian militias, began to turn the war in Assad’s favor after rebel gains during the winter, Obama ordered officials in late April to begin planning what weaponry to send and how to deliver it.

That decision effectively ended the lengthy disagreement among those in the White House-- primarily Obama’s political advisers-- who argued that providing arms would be a slippery slope to greater involvement, military leaders who said it would be too risky and expensive, and State Department officials who insisted that Syria and the region would collapse in chaos if action were not taken, officials said.

If you're wondering why many people who are not the Three Stooges (John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar) argue that Obama's excuses about starting a new war are pure bullshit, keep in mind that when Bush was pulling the same magic trick, it was McClatchy-- not the cheerleaders at the NY Times and Washington Post-- who saw through them and called them out. And McClatchy is reporting the distinct smell of another rat.

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”

Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.

“In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was  taped by someone, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t see videos, that we don’t see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected,” he said.

Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

White House foreign policy adviser Benjamin Rhodes gave dates and places for the alleged attacks-- March 19 in the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal; April 13 in the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud; May 14 in Qasr Abu Samrah in Homs province, and May 23 in Adra, east of Damascus. But he provided no details of the fighting that was taking place or the number of dead in each incident. He said the United States estimated that 100 to 150 had died in all.

“Ultimately, without more information, we are left with the need to trust the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community in arriving at its ‘high confidence’ judgment,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said in an email. While he said that “my guess is they have it right,” he also noted that the White House statement was “carefully and prudentially worded” and acknowledged the lack of a “continuous chain of custody for the physiological samples from those exposed to sarin.”

“It does not eliminate all doubt in my mind,” he said.

Philip Coyle, a senior scientist at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, said that without hard, public evidence, it’s difficult for experts to assess the validity of the administration’s statement. He added that from what is known, what happened doesn’t look like a series of sarin attacks to him.

“Without blood samples, it’s hard to know,” he said. “But I admit I hope there isn’t a blood sample, because I’m still hopeful that sarin has not been used.”

Even a proponent of the United States providing military assistance to the rebels raised doubts about the possible motive for announcing the chemical weapons conclusion.

In a passionate argument for U.S. involvement in Syria, Anthony Cordesman, a security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote Friday that “the ‘discovery’ that Syria used chemical weapons might be a political ploy.” The phrase was in an article that described strong strategic and humanitarian reasons for involvement in the crisis, particularly the recent involvement of the Lebanese group Hezbollah on the side of Assad.

I know I promised to not hyperventilate but I just want to say one more thing about this catastrophic blunder Obama is making. The folks making the case that we need to provide arms to help prevent more deaths are virtually all bloodthirsty warmongers who would like nothing more than to see every Syrian dead. Likud-backers like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Eliot Engel. and if you think you can ignore what President Eisenhower said about how the Military Industrial Complex would take over the country if we weren't vigilant (which we haven't been), I want to beg you to watch this video of Alan Grayson on the floor of Congress Friday afternoon. Big Brother flipped out. (By the way, most Members of Congress have NOT read the reports exposed by Glenn Greenwald and are virtually clueless about what the NSA has been up to-- yes most members of our watchdog Congress we're counting on to keep 'em on the straight and narrow.)