A friend described the situation thus:
"Speaking of Iran, the significance of the results of the recent presidential election have gone little noticed. But it is significant that this hitherto unknown, youngish-looking guy won, and it is significant that he was the mayor of Teheran ( like being the mayor of Mexico City, say). And of course it is significant that he won by a landslide against a fabulously wealthy and corrupt old "high mullah" (Rasfanjani, western liberal's favorite) by pulling the votes of the poor and working class of Iran. (I got to see video details of him and the Iranian elections on TV Japan (NHK) - they won't show this stuff here in Freedom's Land).
That does not mean he is a "good guy" - although this looks similiar to the left-populism seen in Latin America (and probably is at the mass level) - he is tied into the "lower mullahcracy", but it does mean that the Iranian regime can count on the support of the masses to defend their country against an American aggression. The result is bad news for the US, it now knows beyond doubt that there is no prospect for a pro-American mass faction taking power along the lines of Condi Rice's "worldwide democratic revolution" (a strategy that is nothing but a confession of military weakness, though it seeks to be an auxillary), and it also knows that any military action will be met by fierocious resistance, by which Iraq will pale in comparision, for Iran is not now a war-weary country exhausted by a decade of vicious, murderous Anglo-American bombing/sanctions.
But it will also light a fuse to Shia Iraq, now relatively quiet, and that is the significance."
Sounds good to me.
Joanna
Leigh Meyers wrote:
>On Thursday, June 30, 2005 11:03 PM [PDT],
>Mycos <mycos at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
>>There's just something about this story that has the sound of
>>another inflammatory set-up by the hawks....something that is being
>>pushed on the public to justify some kind of unusually aggressive
>>stance yet to be taken by the US administration, military or
>>otherwise, against the new leader. It's certainly possible that the
>>guy was there, and I hope I'm wrong about this but the track history
>>of the US is clear about this kind of thing.
>>
>>I think it would be prudent to check the backgrounds of the persons
>>making the claims. Check to see what kind of politics or the
>>intelligence services they might have behind them.
>>
>>
>
>Hmmm... I was just working on that.
>
>Roughly:
>
><...>
>
>Just so everyone's aware of who's accusing whom:
>
>At the time of their capture in Iran:
>
>Vice Consul William J. Daugherty, 33 - 3rd Secretary of US Mission.
>
>He's still got a foot in it:
>
>Statement of William J. Daugherty, Ph.D.
>Before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia and the
>Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation
>February 16, 2005
>http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:r431WZAi2zIJ:wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/109/dau021605.htm+William+J.+Daugherty&hl=en
>
>
>
>Cmdr. Donald A. Sharer, 40, Chesapeake, VA. Naval air attaché.
>
>Nothing definitive found... But Naval Air Attache usually = spy
>
>
>
>Col. Charles W. Scott, 48, Stone Mountain, GA. Army officer, military attaché.
>
>Still in it as of 1997, another attache', another spook.
>
>Former hostage to speak at Knife and Fork Club
>http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/042997/former.htm
>
>By RAY WESTBROOK
>Avalanche-Journal
><...>
>Scott, who is retired from the U.S. Army and now serves as a Mideast consultant,
>was held for 444 days by Iranian terrorists during President Carter's administration.
><...>
>
>
>Apparently, they've found new carrers as dis-information specialists
>targetting their own citizens (out of patriotism, I suppose).
>
>They remind me of the swift boat jokers, but the stakes are much much higher.
>
>
>
>The story according to Reuters:
>
>Bush says wants answers on Iran leader's past
>Thu Jun 30, 2005 08:42 PM ET
>http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8947647&src=eDialog/GetContent
>
>By Caren Bohan
>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday he wanted answers on whether Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a leader in the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as some former hostages have said but Iranians have denied.
>Several Americans who were held said they recognized the ultraconservative Ahmadinejad as a ringleader. But two Iranians who were leading figures in the storming of the embassy said he did not take part.
>Bush said he did not know whether Ahmadinejad was involved and officials were analyzing photographs and other information in what they said was a government-wide effort to get answers.
>"Obviously his involvement raises many questions, and knowing how active people are at finding answers to questions, I'm confident they will be found," Bush told reporters.
>Bush warned Ahmadinejad that he and European leaders would take a unified stance in their concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
>The U.S. president has said little until now about Ahmadinejad, the 48-year-old hard-line Tehran mayor who was elected president in a landslide on Friday and takes over from reformist President Mohammed Khatami.
>Ahmadinejad has struck a defiant stance on Iran's nuclear fuel program, and has dismissed calls for efforts to improve Iran's relationship to the United States.
>Involvement by the new Iranian leader in the 1979-1981 hostage crisis would send a chill through the U.S. government, which has not resumed diplomatic relations with Iran. Fifty-two Americans were held for 444 days.
>"We have not forgotten," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. He added that the Iranian government had a responsibility "to speak definitively concerning these questions that have been raised in public by these stories."
>'NO DOUBTS' SAYS FORMER HOSTAGE
>Retired Navy Capt. Donald Sharer and Bill Daugherty said they were convinced Ahmadinejad was one of their Iranian captors.
>"He wasn't a very nice fellow at the time. He called us pigs and dogs. He's very hard-line, he's a guy we are not going to get along with," Sharer told ABC's "Good Morning America."
>Daugherty, said he had "no doubts at all" that Ahmadinejad was one of his hostage-takers.
>"When your country is being humiliated and being embarrassed, the individuals that do that really stick in your mind. You don't forget people who do things like that to you and your family and your country," Daugherty said.
>In an interview on MSNBC, Sharer said he recognized Ahmadinejad from a recent picture of the Iranian president-elect printed this week in a newspaper.
>"I'm 99 percent sure that the picture I looked at Tuesday was one of my captors," he said. But Sharer said he did not believe that a man seen in a widely-circulated photograph taken during the hostage crisis is Iran's new leader.
>One U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Ahmadinejad seemed to have moved "through the same circle" as the hostage takers but added, "Was he a hostage taker? That's the open question."
>White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said no determination had been made on photographs that some hostages believe show Ahmadinejad taking part in the siege.
>In Iran, Abbas Abdi, who helped to orchestrate the raid, said Ahmadinejad "was not among those who occupied the American Embassy after the revolution." Mohsen Mirdamadi, another ringleader, said reports of Ahmadinejad's role were untrue.
>Bush, who in 2002 branded Iran as part of an "axis of evil," said he is speaking to the leaders of Britain, Germany and France about his concerns over Iran's nuclear program.
>The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons but Iran insists it want to produce nuclear energy for purely peaceful purposes.
>"My message is that it's very important at this moment for the EU-3 to send a strong message to the new person (in Iran), that the world is united in saying that you should not be given the capabilities of enriching uranium which could then be converted into a nuclear weapon," Bush said. (Additional reporting by Sue Pleming, Joanne Allen and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington and Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)
>
>Leigh
>http://www.leighm.net
>
>
>
>
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