Fidel discusses anti-Semitism and nukes

This new post by The Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg about his recent conversation with former Cuban President Fidel Castro is very interesting. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

A couple of weeks ago, while I was on vacation, my cell phone rang; it was Jorge Bolanos, the head of the Cuban Interest Section (we of course don't have diplomatic relations with Cuba) in Washington. "I have a message for you from Fidel," he said. This made me sit up straight. "He has read your Atlantic article about Iran and Israel. He invites you to Havana on Sunday to discuss the article." I am always eager, of course, to interact with readers of The Atlantic, so I called a friend at the Council on Foreign Relations, Julia Sweig, who is a preeminent expert on Cuba and Latin America: "Road trip," I said.

I quickly departed the People's Republic of Martha's Vineyard for Fidel's more tropical socialist island paradise. Despite the self-defeating American ban on travel to Cuba, both Julia and I, as journalists and researchers, qualified for a State Department exemption. The charter flight from Miami was bursting with Cuban-Americans carrying flat-screen televisions and computers for their technologically-bereft families. Fifty minutes after take-off, we arrived at the mostly-empty Jose Marti International Airport. Fidel's people met us on the tarmac (despite giving up his formal role as commandante en jefe after falling ill several years ago, Fidel still has many people). We were soon deposited at a "protocol house" in a government compound whose architecture reminded me of the gated communities of Boca Raton. The only other guest in this vast enclosure was the president of Guinea-Bissau.

On anti-Semitism, Goldberg recorded Castro's thoughts this way:

Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.

He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a small boy. "I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? 'Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"

He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds. These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."

He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything." The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection. What's reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation." He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.

Read Goldberg's piece here

Iran's Assembly of Experts

The Assembly of Experts
TEHRAN BUREAU

The Iranian Constitution is a roadmap in which all roads lead to the Supreme Leader. He exercises control over all branches of the government and every division of the armed forces. He is appointed to the position for life, and his power is tied to age-old traditions of leadership in Shiite Islam. And yet, a single constitutional body can theoretically exercise ultimate power over the position of the Leader. That body is the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member council trusted with the responsibility to elect, and even dismiss, the Supreme Leader.

The first Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, never needed the Assembly, having gained his position through his role in the 1979 Revolution. It was the Assembly of Experts, however, that elected Ayatollah Khamenei, the current Leader, nearly two decades ago. It was a controversial choice, as Khamenei was not yet an Ayatollah, and lacking a major qualification for the position. Since then, the Assembly has existed as a virtually inactive body, meeting twice a year and releasing statements expressing satisfaction with its one, extremely important decision. Today, however, the Assembly once again is the center of attention, as it is perhaps the last governmental body not controlled by the supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the powerful faction that has led his ‘election coup’ in Iran.

To better understand the current role of the Assembly of Experts, some background information is required.

In 2005, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani lost a lack-luster election to Ahmadinejad, a little-known provincial governor who had recently become the mayor of Tehran. Rafsanjani and Mehdi Karrubi, another candidate in those elections, strongly implied that they had lost due to widespread electoral fraud. Karrubi, who a few hours into the counting of the votes seemed to be heading for a run-off with Rafsanjani, famously remarked that he had closed his eyes for a siesta and woken up to discover that Ahmadinejad was now leading him in the polls. Nonetheless, the election results were certified and the defeated candidates accepted the outcome.

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Israeli hardliners prefer Iranian hardliners

Why Iran's Ahmadinejad is preferred in Israel
By Joshua Mitnick
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Tel Aviv - If they were to follow the ancient proverb, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," one would think Israelis would be rooting for Iranian opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi and the hundreds of thousands of Iranian protesters who have challenged the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But even though Mr. Ahmadinejad has threatened the Jewish state with destruction, many officials and analysts here actually prefer the incumbent president because – short of the downfall of Iran's theocratic system of government – he'll be easier to isolate. Reformist leader Mr. Mousavi, by contrast, isn't expected to alter Iran's drive for nuclear power, but he would win international sympathy.

"Just because Mousavi is called a moderate or a reformist doesn't mean he's a nice guy. After all he was approved by the Islamic leadership," says Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin Sadat Center at Bar Ilan University. "If we have Ahmadinejad, we know where we stand. If we have Mousavi we have a serpent with a nice image."

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Iranian presidential candidates slam Ahmadinejad

Iran election: Rival candidates rip President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on foreign policy
Hopefuls bring up topics once considered off-limits, such as nuclear program, stance on Israel

By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim |
Tribune Newspapers
June 1, 2009

TEHRAN -- In a presidential campaign most analysts predicted would hinge on domestic bread-and-butter issues, foreign policy has emerged as a major battleground -- and a potential Achilles' heel -- for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

With campaigns in full swing ahead of the June 12 vote, challengers have publicly criticized Ahmadinejad on topics long considered off-limits for debate in Iran, such as his stance on the country's nuclear program and his vitriol about Israel.

Reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi accused the president of so sullying the nation that Iranian passports are now on par with those of Somalia, a hub of poverty, piracy and terrorism.

"Our people have not given you the right to disgrace them," he told supporters during a campaign stop in the city of Isfahan.

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British Troop Withdrawal from Iraq Appears Set for October

Britain is getting out, so why aren't we? This is the big question that Bush wants to avoid. And in his recent visit visit to Washington, new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared willing to help him avoid it as long as possible – at least until October. But Brown did tell Bush he would not delay British troop withdrawal.

British papers are reporting, that despite Brown's proclamations of unity with the Bush administration, Brown will announce the withdrawal of Britain's 5,500 troops from Iraq this October. The 5,500 British troops in Iraq represents a significant reduction by more than half of the highest level of the British contingent. In other words, Britain has been steadily reducing its presence in Iraq.

Brown faces a serious revolt from voters, who have already handed Brown's Labor Party significant electoral losses in the past few local and national elections, if he fails to make the right decision to withdraw troops. Public opinion in Britain, like the US, has turned sharply against the war.

The British withdrawal poses a serious problem for the Bush administration. It defies the claim that a timeline for withdrawal will "embolden the enemy." And because British withdrawal isn't based on "progress" in its area of operation – sectarian violence, political disunity, the lack of a coherent authority, and economic and infrastructural problems persist – it suggests that the US needs to pursue other means than military force and occupation to assist in solving Iraq's internal problems.

Will Bush denounce the British as emboldening the enemy? Will he claim they have caused greater sectarian violence and civil war? Nope. He'll save that for the vast majority of Americans and congressional Democrats who want to do the same thing Britain is doing.

The point is: if British troops get to leave, why not ours?

Pro-Bush Republicans have insisted on waiting for a September report from General Petraeus about "progress" in Iraq before committing to changing course in the war. Some Democrats even appear to have fallen for this political sleight of hand for delaying bringing the troops home. Just wait and let progress happen, they repeat over and over again. Wait until September. Next, we'll hear wait until November. Wait. Wait. Wait.

But we've been waiting for more than 4 years and more than 3,600 deaths. Military occupation has failed to help the US and the Iraqi government reach even limited goals for "progress" in Iraq. Sectarian violence has not, and cannot be eliminated by military force. Security problems in Iraq have been exacerbated by the presents of US troops, as ironic as that may sound.

It is clear that security in Iraq is an international political issue that the US, adopting its current posture, cannot resolve alone, if at all. Hostile postures toward Syria and Iran without serious high-level talks, the presence of a huge US military and civilian force (and unpopular domestic policies imposed on Iraq by the US), contradictory laissez-faire attitudes toward Saudi and Turkish interference in Iraq all combine to create a situation that makes the status quo seem to be the best thing to do.

In other words, hostility toward some of the regional players and the lack of real diplomacy work to enforce Bush's stay-the-course Iraq policy. Doing nothing seriously new appears to be a Bush tactic. If Bush were serious about bringing the war to an end, he would be serious about good-faith diplomacy and find out what it will take to end outside interference (including the US) and allow Iraq to develop its own sense of national cohesion and identity again. Only on this basis will Iraq move out of its ongoing civil war.

Bush isn't interested in this. and the result is an irresponsible and criminal waste of human life, treasure, and resources – our own and Iraq's. Thus, it is up to Congress to continue pressure for a change. But in addition to lining up a plethora of troop withdrawal plans, Congress should refocus the debate away from the jiggery-pokery of "progress in Iraq" and back onto responsible ending of the occupation through multilateral diplomacy, alternative measures for security, real reconstruction, and the struggle against terrorism.