Hope is not a plan

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld made the then-questionable, and in light of his later behavior, ridiculous, claim that Al Jazeera was helping to violate the Geneva Conventions by airing images of dead or captive American soldiers. We later struck the al Jazeera transmitting station in Baghdad, also probably a questionable move.

As it happens, Tunisia now shares Rumsfeld's outrage.

The government of Tunisia closed its embassy in Doha, Qatar (al Jazeera's home office is in Qatar; it was also started with a grant from the Qatari government). They're protesting the airing of an interview with Moncef Marzouki, an opposition activist living in Paris who is calling for civil resistance against the government of Tunisia.

Of course, the reasoning is different here. This time, al Jazeera's in trouble for airing a call for civil protest by a human rights activist who wants change in a predominantly Arab, Islamic nation.

Which seems, all in all, like the kind of thing we'd want to support, and might expect to see on al Hurra.

Showing today (and then over and over again this week) on al Hurra, the American Arabic-language news station:

Messing With Heads

Think smoking pot is a harmless pastime? Think again. According to the latest scientific research, it can cause psychosis, schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders. And worryingly, teenagers - the people who indulge most – are those most at risk. In this eye opening documentary, young users now being treated for psychosis speak candidly about their experiences.

Good grief. Why are we wasting our air time trying to propagate American anti-drug culture into the Arab world? Is it all a clever ploy to convince radical Islamists that we, too, are a bunch of controlling fundamentalists?

Actually, I'd feel a lot of respect for the producers at al Hurra if that's the goal, as it's one area where official American national policy coincides well with radical Islamist beliefs.

If you're curious and speak Arabic (or just want to watch video in a language you don't understand), some of the programs produced by al Hurra can be downloaded from their website.

Added note: Unsurprisingly, the drug problem in Iraq is not centered on pot. Of all the things one might produce in-country or smuggle across the borders, pot would probably be the most difficult (that said, people are doing it). Instead, most of the abused drugs are either pills or non-pharmaceutical solvents (e.g. sniffing glue). I would think that the dangers of sniffing glue -- which definitely will cause brain damage -- would be good to publicize on al Hurra.

IRIN article
BBC article

I just emailed al Hurra to ask them about their choice of coverage in this case.

85-year-old dissident religious leader Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri made a fairly direct criticism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the current Iranian executive this week. He says that although nuclear energy is Iran's right, Ahmadinejad is going about it the wrong way, using belligerence rather than negotiations. In addition, he has complained about resource mismanagement, an unwillingness to admit that Iran suffers from inflation, and money spent aiding outside groups (unnamed, but one presumes Hamas and Hezbollah) rather than within Iran. In his words:

"Some countries don't have oil and gas. Yet, they run their country and stand on their own," he said, according to a copy of his words seen by AP.

He complained that people kept on shouting slogans about nuclear rights, but he asked: "Don't we have other rights too?"

It's good to recall that there are many like Montazeri, when one is tempted to paint all of Iran with the brush of radical foolishness. As we well know, the dangerous person in charge does not necessarily represent the will, ethics, morality, or value of the people.

BBC article

It's not just Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri rebuking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it seems. This week, past Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani criticized Ahmadinejad's economic policy, and apparently Iranian newspapers are printing critical editorials about his economic practices and his bellicose international stance. As this BBC article points out, this almost certainly means that those otherwise in power in Iran are starting to think of Ahmadinejad as a liability. They may not want him out of power, but they certainly want him to behave.

Again, the parallels with our executive are clear, even if "those in power" has a different meaning in the States than it does in Iran.

A State Department report on Israel's use of U.S.-supplied cluster munitions in Lebanon indicates that "terms agreed with Israel for the use of US-supplied munitions were "likely" to have been violated."

Perhaps State can remind the rest of us that Israel's self-perceived best interest is not guided at all by what is in America's interest. The only way to guarantee that weapons are used according to our agreements is to refuse to provide those weapons when the agreements are violated. No one should get an out on something that can cause us so many problems.

BBC article

"There are friendly nations, but no friendly intelligence agencies" should be amended to include "or militaries, either."

What do you do if you're Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and al Jazeera has started running pieces about how the Arab world has lost faith in Hezbollah following gloating television coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution and divisive political tactics used within Lebanon?

Blame someone else, naturally.

Nasrallah pulls a play out of Bush's playbook and badly misdirects blame for a war of choice:

"The one who fomented chaos in Lebanon, who destroyed Lebanon, who killed women and children, old and young in Lebanon, is George Bush and [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, who ordered the Zionists to launch the war on Lebanon," he said.

Of course, as that particular BBC article points out:

Hezbollah and Israel fought a fierce 34-day conflict in July and August, after Hezbollah killed and captured several Israeli soldiers.

Do they suppose Israel needed to be told to go to war, after that?

The laughable part comes next, though, when he claims that Bush is:

"...trying to defeat resistance movements in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq by starting civil wars".

See? The massive sectarian violence in Iraq isn't a bug of bad American policy, it's a feature.

All politics is local politics.

In his editorial piece Victory is Not an Option, retired Lt. General William Odon gives a sober, cogent overview of the failings of current policy and offers an alternative plan.

For the record, that's one more plan offered as an alternative to the President's warplan.

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

The full essay is in the extended as I don't know if the Washington Post will keep the link live, but I recommend clicking here to read it on their site, as it crosslinks to other good content, such as a breakdown of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

A bus carrying Iranian Revolutionary Guards was hit by a car bomb in southeastern Iran, killing eleven. The attack has been claimed by Jundallah, a Baluch Sunni group native to the area. The Iranian government claims that Jundallah are a bunch of rebels and drug runners, possibly with American and British support. After a similar claim was made in the Guardian, Jundalllah issued their own statement in response:

We do not have any sort of ties with the Talebans. As Moslems, we share Islam with all Moslems with moderate views. We believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all other conventions of United Nations. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of association. We also believe in self-defence as it has been recognised by many United Nations conventions. The right to self-defence has been also recognised in almost all countries and all cultures.

We are striving and campaigning to preserve our human dignity, human rights, national identity and religious beliefs.

There's more if you follow the link, including a denial of involvement in the drug trade.

al Jazeera article
CNN article

I check into, but do not really listen to, KPFA, for much the same reason I only check in with Fox. Reporting with bias I can deal with, but in listening to either, you have to work around chains of buzzwords that the speakers can't help but choke out every time they mention a topic.

That said, there's more value to be found in KPFA than in Fox, by far.

The KPFA program Flashpoints featured a story yesterday about a policy of strip-searching at checkpoints in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with an emphasis on this having been done to children. While I was doing some follow-up reading at If Americans Knew -- the site of the those who compiled that report -- I found an article they'd included that made an interesting point. The problematic yield of American support for Israel is not just a matter of antagonizing Arab nations. It's also a matter of funding industries that compete directly with ours, including arms sales to countries we won't deal with (and given our own armament promiscuity, that may be saying a lot).

In general, this entire line of thinking highlights the lack of good cost-benefit analysis for everyone involved. The checkpointing policies described in the report aren't particularly helpful, and, like many semi-punitive measures, may tend to generate enemies rather than control them. Similarly, we aren't doing a good evaluation of our role vis-a-vis Israel. A friend suggested that our policy would be sounder if we cut our military aid to Israel and replaced it witha promise that we would not fall to an attack from outside. If we then went on to spread some of that money around the area, that would help reduce key pressures that lead to violence, such as poverty and lack of hope. And that, in the end, would even help Israel.

A series of constitutional changes that will make it easier to exclude religious groups from government and that include a number of "anti-terrorism" measures were voted into effect in Egypt this week in what was, by almost all accounts, a tremendously shady voting process.

The Egyptian justice ministry placed the turnout at an already low 27.1%, but conflicting observations from various NGOs put the actual turnout at 3-9%. Rights-oriented groups were not happy with the outcome:

Amnesty International describes the changes as the greatest erosion of human rights in 26 years.

Human Rights Watch said the amendments "effectively remove basic protections against violations of Egyptians' rights to privacy, individual freedom, security of person and home and due process"

To clarify just how shady the actual voting was, consider the following:

Ayman Mohyeldin, an Al Jazeera correspondent, said he spoke to voters who did not understand why they were voting and even found people who voted though they were ineligible to vote.

There is no guarantee that the ballot will be tallied but the incident highlights major loopholes in the voting system, Mohyeldin said.

al Jazeera article

And I mean that seriously. In this article, al Jazeera repeats part of one of the coerced "confessions" given by British military personnel in Iranian custody. The Iranian government statement is as follows:

"All evidence, including the GPS carried by the British military and also the frank confessions of all 15 British personnel shows that they have entered Iran's territorial waters without permission," Iranian state television said earlier on Monday.

However, listen to what Captain Chris Air actually says, even though he's stuck in unfriendly custody and is doubtless subject to substantial off-screen coercion:

Captain Chris Air, one of the 15 naval service personnel, was shown saying: "At about 10 o'clock in the morning, we were seized, apparently at this point here, from their maps, from the GPS they've shown us, which is inside Iranian territorial waters.

"...from their maps, from the GPS they've shown us..."

That's not an admission, even if the Iranian executive wishes it were. Smart.

The British sailors and marines recently released from Iranian custody wasted very little time at all in recanting anything said under duress and confirming that they were, indeed, not in Iranian waters when they were seized:

"We were equipped with Xeres true navigational equipment and hand held GPS for backup. The helicopter in support provided continuous navigational confirmation and we were also linked to HMS Cornwall who were monitoring our exact position at all times. Let me make it absolutely clear, irrespective of what has been said in the past, when we were detained by the IRG we were inside internationally recognized Iraqi territorial waters and I can clearly state we were 1.7 nautical miles from Iranian waters."

Also:

"We were interrogated most nights, and presented with two options. If we admitted we had strayed, we would be on a plane back to the UK soon. If we didn't we faced up to seven years in prison. We all at one time or another made a conscious decision to make a controlled release of non-operational information.

And:

"When taken by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard we were well inside Iraqi territorial waters.

"We remain immensely proud of our team. Their courage and dignity throughout their illegal detention was in line with the best tradition of the service.

These quotes were taken from a statement read by Lieutenant Felix Carman and Royal Marine Captain Chris Air, as displayed on the CNN site.

Even as he was being held in isolation, Captain Air did a great job of indicating that the official Iranian claims were false.

CNN article
al Jazeera article
BBC article

The BBC's radio news roundup is reporting today that the Iranian government is considering easing off on its gas subsidies and limiting buyers to four liters of gas a day. Translating that into American, that's a gallon of gas a day. The Iranian government faces the basic problem that although Iran is awash in crude oil, it has comparatively little refining capacity. As a consequence, most of its refined gas is imported and subsidized to keep the price down -- the report cited a price of about 18 cents a liter, or 72 cents a gallon.

Actually imposing these limits, and raising gas prices, would both be spectacularly unpopular moves. So unpopular, in fact, that it's been nearly a year since anyone suggested such a move, and it still hasn't been done. There are real worries that if something isn't done, however, the damage to the Iranian economy could be profound.

(...and, in a quirky twist on the 1970s, the BBC reporter points out that western nations could actually put in place a gasoline embargo against Iran, perhaps as a means of punishing them for continuing their nuclear program.)

In a wholly different category of mismatch, the UAE has seized twelve Iranian divers, accusing them of violating UAE territorial waters. This is just another episode in a long-running dispute between the two countries over owneship of several islands in the gulf. These islands, comprising Lesser Tunb, Greater Tunb, and Abu Musa, were abandoned by Britain in 1971, seized by Iran, and claimed by the UAE.

All of this comes just ahead of Iranian president Ahmadinejad's visit to the UAE.

Finally, the Iranian parliament has banned al Jazeera from entering, pending a formal apology to Iraqi Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. al Jazeera's crime occurred when one of its show hosts questioned the legitimacy of al-Sistani's rule, which apparently was "...a plot of the enemies of Islam and Iraq and news networks like Al Jazeera committed this insult because of their influential role."

So even al Jazeera can't catch a break. Darned liberal media.

You may have missed this, but the Washington Post has recently covered the fact that our tax-dollar funded, theoretically American-propaganda-oriented Arabic-language news station, Al Hurra, has been broadcasting all sorts of fundamentalist rantings and ravings.

From Joel Mowbray's opinion piece in the Post:

Al-Hurra was intended to cut through the anti-West and anti-U.S. propaganda that permeates even mainstream Arab media. Stories in that vein no longer see significant airtime, and nowhere is this more apparent than Al-Hurra's new approach to the Holocaust--the treatment of which in Arab society embodies so much that is wrong in that critical region of the Muslim world.

Also broadcast unchallenged were the remarks of the infamous French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who informed Arab viewers: "Gas chambers and mass killings of the Jews, in the way that it is pretended (by the Jews), is completely untrue, and an historical lie."

Al Hurra also broadcast all of an hour-long speech by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Yes, that's the Hezbollah that we've classed as a terrorist group.

Should it seem peculiar that new Al Hurra programming director Larry Register would do such a thing, consider the fact that he speaks no Arabic. In fact, most of the upper echelon folks currently overseeing the channel speak no Arabic. This may be quirky of me, but I think if I were in any way responsible for a broadcast station meant to foster good public relations with a hugely critical part of the world, I'd bust my ass trying to learn the language.

Mowbray closes his editorial with this message:

But that's not enough. The people who already monitor the network--its employees--need to be empowered to report dubious decisions without fear of reprisal. Transparency will allow concerns to be investigated swiftly. Employees simply won't come forward, though, if they believe no one in power cares. For that reason, a clear signal must be sent by firing Mr. Register.

After all, if you can't get fired for using U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide a platform for Islamic terrorists and help further Holocaust denial, then wouldn't Congress and the Bush administration be communicating that pretty much anything goes?

I agree. Write a letter to the fool we have in the executive now, as well as your Senators and Representative. The trickle-down pattern of rank incompetence costs us money and lives, and now it's promoting radical terrorism on our dime.

The full opinion piece
Another opinion piece, reprinted on Representative Steve Rothman's site

Here's a template, if you'd like to write to the President and your Senators and Rep about the travesty of Al Hurra promoting terrorist messages using your money.

[Politician's name] -

I am writing to express my deep dismay at the fact that Alhurra, a news station funded by American taxpayers, has been broadcasting extremist messages by known terrorist leaders. This negligence and disregard for the safety of the many American soldiers and civilians working in the Middle East is intolerable, and must be stopped immediately. Programming director Larry Register must be fired, to be replaced by someone who understands the driving purpose of Alhurra, and who also has the basic competence to speak the language the station broadcasts in. Alhurra itself must also be completely reviewed, especially the levels of upper management. This includes the Broadcasting Board of Governors, who have been derelict in their duty as the true directors of Alhurra.

We need quick, decisive action on this topic before any American lives are lost as a result of continued incompetence.

[My name]

In case you missed it, Gaza has gone to hell recently. President Mahmoud Abbas has sacked the Hamas-led government by declaration, but they're having none of it, given that they've routed the Fatah security wing and overtaken the Palestinian Authority's official buildings.

For an American perspective, al Jazeera turned to Shelly Smith, a 42-year-old high school teacher who lives and works in Gaza. Her account is grim:

Our neighbour Waseem Arafat had gone to the Shifa hospital in Beit Hanoun to visit someone and when he came out a gunman shot him four times in the head.

Shortly after Ronald Reagan came into office, Iran released the sixty-six hostages it had held for over a year.

Hamas is now following Iran's example, trying to mark a political shift with a hostage release. According to a Hamas spokesman, they're calling for the release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston.

This is a clear sympathy play by Hamas, who've spent much of the last week killing random civilians as they pushed Fatah out of power. Doubtless, they do have the power to lean on Alan Johnston's kidnappers, the self-styled "Army of Islam". They almost certainly had that power two weeks ago, too -- but they didn't need to make up for deaths and mass destruction two weeks ago.

On effectively taking power in Gaza last week, Hamas promised to free kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston, in a face-saving gesture of goodwill from a group that was, until recently, shooting random bystanders in the head during their fight with rival group Fatah.

Johnston's kidnappers, a day club referring to themselves with no sense of irony as the "Army of Islam," issued a quick declaration that they were, under no circumstances, handing Mr. Johnston over.

Hamas has now indicated that if the handover doesn't happen soon, they're going to free Johnston by force. The "Army" replied that it will kill Mr. Johnston if this happens. Their own set of demands revolves around Abu Qatada, who is currently facing deportation from the UK on the grounds that he's a terrorist. Of course, given their declarations about how killing Mr. Johnston will bring them "closer to God", it's clear what their real motivation is.

Hopefully, Mr. Johnston will emerge safely from the care of this cadre of losers, regardless of what happens with Hamas or anyone else.

As I discussed in May, the government of Iran has spent the last year trying to figure out how to solve its gas problem. Despite its large oil reserves, Iran has very little refining capacity, and thus is forced to import gasoline. For years, the government has been subsidizing these imports, keeping the prices very low and doing great harm to the national treasury. Since sometime in 2006, they've been thinking of easing off on these subsidies while simultaneously putting in place a gas purchasing cap.

This week, they enacted a cap.

It did not go well.

With less than two hours notice, the government or Iran announced to its citizens that they are now limited to 100 liters of fuel (26 gallons) per month.

Riots broke out soon after, and twelve gas stations were torched in Tehran.

"Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed," chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.

Some Iranian members of parliament are calling for a relaxation on the cap, citing the improbably short notice the government gave. The government of Iran is, in turn, presumed to be trying to cut down on its fuel imports before someone (like, say, the US) decides to cut off the gas supply by way of applying pressure against Iran about its nuclear program, interference in Iraq, funding of Hezbollah, or anything else that strikes their fancy.

BBC article

As reported in this BBC article, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was freed today. Mr. Johnston was kidnapped about four months ago during his regular press work in Gaza. His kidnapping sparked more than the usual round of outrage, as his was seen as a fair voice that could publicize Palestinian needs and concerns to the world at large. After months in captivity, things sped up considerably when Hamas forcibly took control of Gaza and promised they'd secure his freedom. Despite initial threats to kill Mr. Johnston should Hamas try a rescue, the self-styled "Army of Islam" finally gave in and released him and a number of other captives, unharmed.

The BBC has a timeline of the process, which began on the third of July when Hamas flooded the Sabra district of Gaza, where Johnston was being held, with gunmen. The BBC and other sources describe Hamas's negotiation process in fairly vague terms, but I would not be surprised if the leverage they used on the "Army" involved some manner of threats not just to its members, but to their families.

The final words, from Mr. Johnston:

Johnston praised Hamas for winning his freedom. "If it hadn't been for that real serious Hamas pressure, that commitment to tidying up Gaza's many, many security problems, then I might have been in that room for a lot longer," he told the news conference later during the day.

Asked if he would return to Gaza, Johnston said: "After many months of kidnapping, I think I need a break."

One of the "upshots" of a totalitarian government is the ability make radical policy changes very quickly. This may occasionally result in the violent overthrow of your government, but that's the risk you generally take when the options are "violent overthrow" or "business as usual." One imagines elections let off some of this pressure.

Last week, the government of Iran announced sharp fuel rationing, resulting in much public complaint and a number of riots.

This week, the government of Iran announced that within two weeks they'll stop making gasoline-only cars, instead switching over to dual-fuel vehicles that can run on both gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). This is so obviously an unworkable schedule, it's hard to see why "two weeks" was chosen, rather than a realistic-sounding time frame.

"The automobiles which have been supplied to the market prior to this will gradually be converted to dual fuel too," Mr Tahmasebi added.

But it is not clear the infrastructure is in place yet, either to produce enough gas or to provide enough filling stations, our correspondent says.

Notice how that's over a million vehicles manufactured last year alone? There are a lot of vehicles needing conversion, not to mention the need to rebuild fueling centers, and so forth.

The thing to watch in the coming months is whether this gradually transitions into a realistic policy, or joins the ranks of many other totalitarian train wrecks of days past.

BBC article

Sixteen Saudia national were transferred from the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabian custody this week, following a review process at Gitmo. They follow in the footsteps of sixty-one other Saudis who were previously released from American custody. According to Saudi officials, most of the prisoners who were previously transferred from our custody were subsequently released by the Saudis.

al Jazeera article

The government of Iran just released from custody two Chinese nationals who were arrested for taking pictures of a military complex in the town of Arak.

The Chinese foreign ministry said: "In early July, two people from Chinese companies mistakenly took some pictures of some sensitive buildings when they were helping local owners to conduct field measurements in Iran.

"They were detained by Iranian police and now they have been freed. The foreign ministry and Chinese embassy in Iran have warned Chinese citizens in Iran to behave so as to prevent misunderstandings."

Indeed. It's always good to prevent these misunderstandings.

BBC article

A little shy of a week ago, a group of Israeli jets apparently transited across Syria, possibly hitting a target in northern Syria before exiting across the Turkish border and heading home.

The Syrian authorities are livid. They say that the aircraft were driven off but that they fired their weaponry into a deserted area.

Outstanding theories about what the Israelis would have hit range from the reasonable (a Hezbollah arms factory) to the less credible (a stash of nuclear weapons program material being held for North Korea). Notably, the Israeli government apparently told the Syrian government it was scaling back Israeli forces in the Golan just ahead of the action, possibly to signal that the impending strike wasn't a prelude to war.

The clearest upshot of the entire incident, for now, is that American-made aircraft still beat Russian-made air defenses. Caveat emptor.

BBC article

If you've been following the news, you should have heard that a recent National Intelligence Estimate says that Iran dropped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. George Bush has countered by claiming that this recent NIE is a "warning signal" -- rather than, say, seeing the positives that apparently international pressure can put a nation of nuclear arms.

You can download and read the public version of the NIE by clicking here. Here's the relevant section heading bits:

A. We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

H. We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so.

Notably, this public version of the NIE was (naturally) not released at the request of George Bush. You can click here to read Dr. Donald Kerr's statement about why they released the information. Here's the punchline, in his words:

The decision to release an unclassified version of the Key Judgments of this NIE was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available. While the decision to release the declassified Key Judgments was coordinated in discussion with senior policy makers, the IC took responsibility for what portions of the NIE Key Judgments were to be declassified.

"...we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available."

"...doing so was in the interest of our nation's security."

The office of the DNI is, perhaps, not as compliant as George Tenet was.

This has been a busy week for Iran in the news. Let's take a look.

In a typically ranting speech of the kind that may soon get him censured by the actual power in Iran, President Ahmadinejad has suggested that Iran is approaching the "summit of our nuclear path." In more material terms, Russia recently finished delivering nuclear fuel for Iran's first nuclear power station.

As I talked about last June, Iran faces a fundamental fuel issue that won't be solved by nuclear power -- gasoline. Although Iran is an oil exporter, it lacks refining capacity and has been hemorrhaging away its oil profits in the form of gasoline subsidies to keep fuel prices low inside the country. Last year's attempts to fix this situation by limiting fuel use went poorly. It's unclear to what extent nuclear power will lift this kind of cost pressure, but it's possible that the discovery of a massive gas field off the coast may help by providing even more capital to pay for all that fuel. However, as the article notes:

Iran has the world's second-largest proven gas reserves after Russia and it has ambitions to export gas to a host of countries including Armenia, Pakistan and Syria.

However, it has failed to become a major international exporter because of a lack of foreign investment and slow progress in exploiting its fields.

Despite its export plans, Iran had recently been forced to import gas from neighbouring Turkmenistan because of high domestic consumption.

Switching from resource management to social management, government spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi announced the arrest of fifty-four members of the prohibited Bahai faith. The officially allowed faiths in Iran are Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism was presumably grandfathered in, as it precedes Islam in the area, and Judaism and Christianity get the special "religions of the book" exception. Bahai is in the unfortunate position of suggesting that it's a later (and better) successor to all these other faiths (you can read more about Bahai at the official website). Fifty-one of the convicts were given suspended sentences, provided they take "courses by state propaganda officials."

In the same press conference, Jamshidi indicated that a customs official was recently executed for corruption and bribery, while admitting that, yes, they don't usually execute people for corruption. On that note, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi ordered a limitation on public executions, and publication of execution photos.

Correspondents say it appears Ayatollah Shahrudi wants to lower the profile of executions as Iran has been widely criticised by Western countries and international organisations.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking, apostasy, adultery and male homosexuality.

Good to know.

Israeli helicopters continue missile attacks within the Gaza strip even as Hamas launches the occasional missile over t