You’ve heard of “Blame America First” when it comes to the man-made problems of the world. Such may not usually be true but it sure sounds good if you’re a liberal - makes you seem smart and informed.

Bill Quigley writing in Huffington Post has taken this concept to an entirely new level; he posits the notion that what is happening in Haiti as a result of the earthquake is actually America’s fault:

In 2004, the U.S. assisted in a coup against the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide. This continues a long tradition of the U.S. deciding who will rule the poorest country in the hemisphere. No government lasts in Haiti without U.S. approval.

In 2001, when the U.S. was mad at the President of Haiti, the U.S. successfully led an effort to freeze $148 million in already-approved loans and many hundreds of millions more of potential loans from the Inter-American Development Bank to Haiti. Funds which were dedicated to improve education, public health and roads.

For much of 2001-2004, the U.S. insisted that any international funds sent to Haiti had to go through non-governmental organizations. Funds that would have provided government services were re-routed thus shrinking the ability of the government to provide aid.

For years the U.S. has helped ruin small farmers in Haiti by dumping heavily subsidized U.S. rice on their market making it extremely difficult for small farmers to survive. This was done to help U.S. farmers. Haitian farmers? They don’t vote in the U.S.

Those who visit Haiti will confirm that the biggest SUVs in Port au Prince are plastered with decals of non-governmental organizations. The biggest offices are for private groups doing the basic work of government - healthcare, education, disaster response. And all are guarded not by police but by private heavily-militarized security.

The government was systematically starved of funds. The public sector shrank away. Poor people streamed to the cities.

Thus there are no rescue units. Little public healthcare is available.

So when disaster struck, the people of Haiti were on their own. We can see them pitching in. We can see them trying. They are courageous and generous and innovative, but volunteers cannot replace government. So people suffer and die in greater numbers than necessary.

Is all of this the fault of the US?

Let’s examine what Mr. Quigley won’t tell you about much of that most helpful information he supplied. Little wonder, since if he had, he would have been forced to acknowledge that the US (with the agreement of the international community) was doing its best to assist Haiti in overcoming extraordinary hurdles just to keep the country from falling completely into an abyss of corruption and chaos.

You might immediately note that Mr. Quigley had little to say about the “democratically elected” leader of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide. If you are trying to blame the US for what is happening in Haiti, it is best not to supply too much information about the “little priest” whose thugs used to roam the streets of Port au Prince placing burning tires around the necks of his political opponents.

Aristide’s first chance at power in 1991 started out well, with the full backing of the United States. But a parliamentary crisis led to Aristide believing he could rule by decree and he was summarily ousted by the military.

Bill Clinton righted the situation by forcing the military out and reinstating him, backing the Haitian president with American troops. But all of this was simply prologue to what happened in 2000. Aristide’s campaign of massive violence against the opposition caused a boycott of the elections and when his opponents protested, they were arrested or, more often, simply killed. Aristide himself was a accused of ordering assassinations. The police were helpless as Aristide’s gangs wandered the streets with impunity.

The elections was pronounced fraudulent by the OAS, no bastion of pro-American sentiment. Finally, in 2004, Aristide angered enough people that a bloody coup occurred. He maintains to this day that he as kidnapped by the US and ended up in South Africa. If so, we did the Haitian people a monumental favor.

So much for the “democratically elected leader” of Haiti.

What about all that foreign aid we’ve cut off or funneled to NGO’s? Mr. Quigley’s screed is a little short on details. Allow me to remedy that.

In 2006, Haiti was named the most corrupt nation on planet earth. Any foreign aid sent to Haiti had a better chance of sprouting wings and flying than ending up helping any Haitians. The elites in Haiti and family cronies make sure of that, enriching themselves by siphoning aid into ventures they control or own outright.

One thing not mentioned by Mr. Quigley; that corruption contributed to the vastness of the disaster because most of the buildings in Haiti are so poorly constructed due to short cuts taken by contractors who then pocket the difference:

The death toll in the massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti Jan. 12 is expected to continue to rise in the coming days, likely in large part because of corruption and resulting shoddy construction practices in the poor Caribbean nation, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder seismologist.

[...]

Bilham said one of the chief causes of the high destruction and fatality rates in Haiti and other developing countries is due in large part to corruption in the construction industry. One of the problems is bribery, which often takes the form of corrupt awards of construction projects, corrupt issuance of permits and approval documents and corrupt inspection practices.

“It should be appalling to the people of the world that in 2009, more than 100 years after earthquake-resistant construction began to be understood and implemented by engineers, that it is possible to forecast large numbers of future earthquake fatalities from the collapse of cities,” said Bilham in his 2009 Mallet-Milne Lecture to earthquake engineers at The Society for Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics meeting in London.

Quigley probably didn’t bring this up in the article because there’s no way to blame America for it.

Yes, but what about all that foreign aid we’ve cut off? What about allowing NGO’s to distribute the aid?

Bush critics complain that Aristide wasn’t given enough aid. By the end almost all assistance to Haiti was being funneled through nongovernmental groups, because no one trusted the government. The OAS and the European Union, especially the French, didn’t want to hand aid over to a corrupt regime. The United States withheld certain aid, but didn’t cut it off entirely ($71 million in bilateral aid last year), continuing a stream of assistance that has been generous by any standard.

Since 1994, the United States has spent $850 million on Haiti. If you count money spent on U.S. troops in the country and on repatriation of refugees, the figure is roughly $3 billion. “If that’s not a commitment to a country, I don’t know what is,” says a senior administration official.

Quigley conveniently uses the year 2004 to complain about aid cutoffs to Haiti. In fact, from 2004-06, the US sent $230 million in developmental aid to that nation. The 2008 regular foreign aid appropriation was $287 million which doesn’t include another $45 million in food aid.

The idea that the only reason we withheld aid in 2001-2004 was because we were “mad” at the Haitian president is laughably childish. People were being murdered in the streets, chaos and corruption reigned in government, and Quigley wanted to continue business as usual? It wasn’t just America, either. The international community made most of these determinations based on the realistic notion that any money sent to Haiti would be used to enrich the ruling elite and not end up helping the people. That’s the bottom line, Quigley’s ignorance - or deliberate obfuscation of the facts - notwithstanding.

And Quigley may be the only lefty in America who begrudge poor people saving a few cents per pound on rice. An unfortunate by product of this is the flight from rural areas of farmers who can’t compete. We’ve seen the same thing in Africa and Asia as globalization makes its uneven and problematic journey around the world. There may be cause for criticism for subsidizing rice growers in the US. But to make the preposterous leap of logic that more people died as a result of US policy is a monumental stretch that even a high school debater wouldn’t make. It sounds logical but there is no empirical evidence that remotely supports it.

Perhaps Mr. Quigley wrote his article as satire. Morel likely, he’s simply an ignorant twit who cherry picked information that he thought would make his case that America is to blame for the large numbers of dead as a result of this tragedy.

Trying to draw attention to yourself by using a catastrophe to make an invalid, and ultimately silly point that you know will play well with those already disposed to believe the worst about their own country may be the height of cynical self promotion. Congratulations are in order for Mr. Quigley. He lived down to all the lowered expectations we’ve come to expect from most writers at Huffington Post.

Something huge is going to have to be done in Haiti and done quickly or there will be a humanitarian catastrophe bigger than anything most of us can imagine.

Here’s the situation; 3 million people are without food, without water, without proper sewage, without shelter, and without a government that can facilitate aid that is now pouring into the stricken island nation.

What’s more, the prospects that much of this situation can be alleviated in the near future are close to zero. The earthquake has absolutely pulverized the country, paralyzed an already weak and ineffective government, and shortly, will shatter the civil compact that all societies must have if the law of the jungle is to be prevented from taking hold.

President Obama is responding magnificently - but it is not enough. How can it be when so much is needed by so many in such a short amount of time? As always, the US Navy is being called upon to deliver thousands of tons of supplies to the decimated population. But the port where they will be unloading those supplies is unusable:

What little infrastructure Haiti had before the earthquake was badly damaged, complicating relief efforts.

Supplies couldn’t come in by sea because Haiti’s main seaport was badly damaged during the quake, with the main dock partially submerged and cranes that move containers partially underwater and listing badly.

The port “has collapsed and is not operational,” said Mary Ann Kotlarich, a spokeswoman for Maersk Sea Lines, a big shipper.

The airport is, if possible, in even worst shape:

Things at the airport weren’t much better. Haitian air-traffic controllers couldn’t handle the volume of flights arriving in Port-au-Prince, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, leading to a suspension of U.S. originating aircraft for at least a few hours on Thursday. The airport has also run out of aircraft fuel, so inbound planes have to carry enough fuel to be able to leave without refueling.

Planes from Brazil, Spain and Belgium lined up outside the airport terminal. A handful of American military personnel sitting on the grass abutting the runway served as air-traffic control.

Adding to the chaos, thousands of victims camped out at the airport, which was also without electricity for long stretches of time. On Thursday night, planes were still circling the airport for hours, while dozens of airplanes were reported to be scattered around the damaged tarmac. U.S. officials are analyzing whether other permanent or temporary strips can be opened up to provide additional places to receive airborne assistance.

Thousands of American soldiers are being deployed to help distribute the aid and act as security for aid workers.

The rest of the world is doing what they can but, as usual, when Mother Nature goes on a bender, the world looks to America to do the heavy lifting, spend the money, supply the manpower, donate the food, water, and supplies, and eventually, take the lead in rebuilding. Meanwhile, the extraordinary generosity of the ordinary American is once again being put on display as even in the midst of a punishing recession, the nation’s churches and charity infrastructure are mobilizing a gigantic private relief effort that will dwarf the $100 million pledged by President Obama.

If I may be allowed a small political aside;much of the world may wish for an emasculated America - perhaps even some in our own government - but a world without America as she is now, with all her faults and maddening inconsistencies, would be a world where those Haitians wouldn’t have a chance. There would be hundreds of thousands of dead before much help could reach the island without the US Navy and American generosity leading the way. That’s the bottom line and maybe someday, the rest of the world will take note of this fact.

As it stands now, there is still the frightening possibility that all of the world’s labors in trying to assist Haiti will simply be inadequate due to the scale of the disaster and the conditions in Haiti itself. Since it is generally believed that buried survivors in an earthquake must be reached within 72 hours for them to have much of a chance of survival, it would seem that the heartbreaking efforts of people to try and dig their loved ones out of the rubble with their bare hands will be all the help most of those suspended in a hellish limbo between life and death can expect. Too many collapsed buildings and not enough help in the form of professional rescuers means the loss of life from the quake and its aftermath will probably be even more stunning than figures coming from the Red Cross now.

And the topper to this disaster may be that tens of thousands of Haitians will be desperate enough to climb on to rafts and leaky boats, seeking succor from the US:

In Miami’s Haitian community, leaders say they fear that the earthquake’s aftermath and political unrest could prompt people to flee Haiti on rafts and in boats.

“A large wave of people taking to the sea, I worry about it,” says Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition. Political instability, even more than economic troubles, he says, is likely to lead to “a Haitian exodus.”

Officials say they aren’t gearing up to cope with a flotilla. “We’re not there yet,” says Philippe Derose, a councilman in North Miami Beach. But he and others complain that the Haitian government has failed to show leadership or organize even a morgue for the thousands feared dead.

It’s happened before. And the conditions that are forming in Haiti today probably means it will happen again.

It’s a helluva war when you can’t tell who your friends are.

That goes double for Pakistan. After creating the Taliban, they appear reluctant to annihilate them.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has resisted a direct appeal from President Obama for a rapid expansion of Pakistani military operations in tribal areas and has called on the United States to speed up military assistance to Pakistani forces and to intervene more forcefully with India, its traditional adversary.

In a written response to a letter from Obama late last month, Zardari said his government was determined to take action against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and allied insurgent groups attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan from the border area inside Pakistan. But, he said, Pakistan’s efforts would be based on its own timeline and operational needs.

The message was reinforced Monday by Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, who told Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, that the United States should not expect “a major operation in North Waziristan” in the coming months, according to a senior U.S. defense official. North Waziristan, one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border, is a sanctuary for the Afghan Taliban.

What do we get for tripling our aid to Pakistan?

In return, the United States wants Pakistan to “move on our mutual interests, which includes the Haqqani network and includes the Taliban in Pakistan,” Vice President Biden said Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” His reference was to the North Waziristan-based faction led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Siraj, and the main Afghan Taliban organization, which are fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani counterinsurgency operations this year have primarily targeted separate but allied groups — the Pakistani Taliban based in South Waziristan and operating in the Swat Valley region — whose attacks are directed toward Pakistani government targets.

“We’re committed to this war, but we’ll fight it on our terms. . . . We will prioritize targets based on our interests. We don’t want them to be dictated to us,” a Pakistani intelligence official said. He added: “The Pakistani Taliban is the clear and present danger. They are what matters most. Once we are done with them, we will go after the Haqqani network.”

Considering the fact that for the last 7 years, they have failed to close off their own borders to Taliban incursions into Afghanistan - with enough evidence that they are if not facilitating such crossings, they are ignoring them - one might legitimately question their commitment.

And those questions include wondering whether Pakistan is being deliberately obtuse in their statements about the Afghan Taliban. After all, we are not going to be there forever. They know that now. The idea of the ISI keeping a connection to the Taliban so that they can shape a post US Afghanistan to their liking should not be ignored by the Obama administration. Bottom line: They don’t want to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan. And they certainly don’t want to do us any favors.

And remonstrances are legitimate when it comes to the way the Pakistani government has dealt with the Taliban in Swat as well as South Waziristan in the past. From Mushrraffs Faustian bargain with them in 2006 to Zardari’s weasel deal with them earlier this year that allowed the Taliban a free hand in Swat, our urgings for the last 5 years to crack down on these thugs were met with contempt. The Pakistanis thought they could ride the tiger and not get mauled.

Recent events would seem to show them the error of their ways.

Yes, they have their hands full now in the FATA. But we have every right to question their commitment to assisting us. They will be glad to take our $7.5 billion and, when we’re not looking, spend it on killing Indians rather than terrorists. Their objection to that caveat for the military aid was so strong, the brass almost started a coup against the government.

But, we need them - desperately. There is only one major supply line to our troops in Afghanistan and it runs through Pakistan. The Iranians aren’t going to help us. And Russia has been helpful at times but not to the extent that we could rely on Putin to keep the chow line open.

If we want to stay in Afghanistan we need Pakistan’s full cooperation. That, unfortunately is the way of the world at the moment.

What can you say? How often does the United States stake out a clear, unequivocal position on a major foreign policy event and then, over the course of a few months, slowly walkback from their original position to come around and embrace exactly the opposite point of view?

This is the Obama administration in all its amateurish glory. When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was invited to leave back in June, the administration took the same side as the thugs and dictators of the world, calling it a “military coup” even though the Honduran Supreme Court had ruled the action legal and the Honduran parliament had passed a resolution supporting it.

The administration then imposed severe restrictions on visas for Honduras and other punishments in order to prove to the leftist thugs in Latin America like Chavez and Eva Morales that the US was on their side in the crisis. And notably, as late as September, the US was saying that they would not support or recognize the Honduran elections which took place yesterday.

Back then, according to this Bloomberg piece by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, the United States stood against democracy in Honduras:

The U.S. won’t recognize a scheduled November election in Honduras without a resolution to the political crisis that began with a coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in June, a State Department aide said.The U.S. has told the “de facto regime that because of the environment on the ground, we will not recognize the election,” Philip J. Crowley, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said in Washington yesterday.

On Sept. 27, the de facto government led by interim President Roberto Micheletti banned protests and suspended other civil rights for 45 days and denied entry to an Organization of American States delegation seeking to negotiate an end to the three-month standoff in the Central American nation.

At an emergency meeting of the 35-member body of the OAS in Washington yesterday, both sides were criticized for their actions.

In case you were wondering, nothing has changed since this piece was written. Zelaya snuck back into the country and is hiding in the Brazilian embassy, but no “resolution” to the crisis by the “de facto” government has been realized.

Unless you want to say that free and fair elections in which 60% of the Honduran people went to the polls and voted to elect Porfirio Lobo, an opponent of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, by a landslide.

The BBC:

The poll was held five months after Mr Zelaya was forced out at gunpoint, with an interim government taking over.

Mr Lobo is seen as a unifying figure. He won 56% of the vote, with over 60% of registered voters taking part.

A clear winner and high turnout were what the interim government were hoping for to give the election legitimacy.

But regional powers Argentina and Brazil have said they will not recognise any government installed after the election, arguing that to do so would legitimise the coup which ousted an elected president, and thus set a dangerous precedent.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva also said that Mr Zelaya will remain in its embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa - where he has been living since he secretly returned to the country in September - until the government gave assurances for his safety.

The US, meanwhile, said it would accept the election results.

Funny how the Obama administration didn’t announce their change in policy. They allowed South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint to break the good news to the American people earlier this month. DeMint had just returned from a trip to Honduras and reported on the “de facto” government’s efforts to make the election inclusive, and fair.

From MercoPress:”

I am happy to report the Obama Administration has finally reversed its misguided Honduran policy and will fully recognize the November 29th elections” added Senator DeMint.

“Given this commitment, which Senator DeMint has requested for months, he will lift objections on the nominations of Arturo Valenzuela to be Assistant Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs and Thomas Shannon to be US Ambassador to Brazil”.

Several Latin American countries - including, disappointingly, Brazil - will not recognize the vote. But it appears that Honduras has survived the effort to delegitimize its government by the US and other leftist bullies in the region.

The real story, of course, is the unbelievably amateurish actions of the Obama administration in not supporting democracy in Honduras in the first place. Many said at the time that the almost off the cuff reaction by the White House to Zelaya’s ouster was mishandled from the start and based on incomplete information. This view was buttressed when, in August, the Law Library of the Library of Congress issued a report by the Congressional Research Service that declared the Honduran government’s actions legal and justified. Democrats were furious and tried to get the report withdrawn - and for good reason. It made the president and his advisors look like they didn’t know what they were doing.

So Honduras has a new president, elected by 56% of the voters, and Manuel Zelaya (whose term ends on January 27) will soon be a footnote in Honduran history. And as Mary O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal points out, it was the Honduran people and government - with no help from the US - who stood defiantly against most of the world and proved that they have what it takes to make democracy work.

Unless something monumental happens in the Western Hemisphere in the next 31 days, the big regional story for 2009 will be how tiny Honduras managed to beat back the colonial aspirations of its most powerful neighbors and preserve its constitution.

Yesterday’s elections for president and Congress, held as scheduled and without incident, were the crowning achievement of that struggle.

National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo was the favorite to win in pre-election polls. Yet the name of the victor is almost beside the point. The completion of these elections is a national triumph in itself and a win for all people who yearn for liberty.

The fact that the U.S. has said it will recognize their legitimacy shows that this reality eventually made its way to the White House. If not Hugo Chávez’s Waterloo, Honduras’s stand at least marks a major setback for the Venezuelan strongman’s expansionist agenda.

The losers in this drama also include Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Spain, which all did their level best to block the election. Egged on by their zeal, militants inside Honduras took to exploding small bombs around the country in the weeks leading to the vote. They hoped that terror might damp turnout and delegitimize the process. They failed. Yesterday’s civic participation appeared to be at least as good as it was in the last presidential election. Some polling stations reportedly even ran short, for a time, of the indelible ink used to mark voter pinkies.

The American people will not be informed of this pitiful about face by our government. But the Honduran people don’t need our State Department’s blessing or condemnation to know what they have accomplished this day.

Steve Hynd over at Newshoggers has a post up that tackles the question of the nature of the Iranian nuclear program.

The post should be read in its entirety but Mr. Hynd has a 12-point rebuttal to those who believe the Iranian program is on a “parallel fuel cycle” whose ultimate goal is to develop at least the capability of constructing a nuclear weapon.

Let’s restate it: Iran has enough LEU to hypothetically further enrich into HEU and build a bomb…but:

1) As soon as they begin doing so, the IAEA’s inspection regimen will notice and raise the red flag.

2) Iran couldn’t finish enriching that HEU for a bomb until 2013 at the earliest…even if it started tomorrow.

3) There’s no indication Iran has a working design for a weapon to put that hypothetical HEU in.

4) There’s no indication that the Iranians have the know-how to make that hypothetical bomb small enough to fit on a missile.

5) There’s no indication the Iranians have a missile good enough to throw that hypothetical small-enough bomb even as far as Israel.

6) It would still be only one bomb. Israel has hundreds and the Iranian leadership are not suicidal.

7) DNI Blair has stated that Iran has shown no sign it wishes to do all this in any case and is probably looking for a “virtual capacity” to build a bomb as a deterrent factor against external aggressors rather than looking to own nukes in truth.

The next head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, has said that he sees no sign in IAEA official documents that Iran is trying to develop a bomb.

10) Mohammed El Baradei, the current IAEA head, has said:

Nobody is sitting in Iran today developing nuclear weapons. Tehran doesn’t have an ongoing nuclear weapons program. But somehow, everyone in the West is talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world. In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped.

11) All the documentation the U.S. has provided to the IAEA showing previous Iranian weaponization attempts is dodgy. Today, El Baradei said of that documentation:

If this information is real, there is a high probability that nuclear weaponization activities have taken place,’ he said. ‘But I should underline ‘if’ three times.’

12) The conclusion from this is that any Iranian pre-2003 experiments were all lab-scale or purely theoretical and designed to forward a strategy of possessing a “virtual deterrent” such as Japan’s - the ability to build a bomb within a fairly short time frame if and only if they are attacked first. In that case, I’m simply not worried - let Iran keep its secrets.

I responded in the comments:

You have made the case against an Iranian bomb program as well as it can be made.

However, your critique - as well as any analysis that seeks to prove the opposite - is based on reading intent. Our national technical means are not capable of doing so, hence the fog surrounding the issue.

You may not have seen the NY Times piece this morning on the tremendous internal row going on at the IAEA over Iranian intent and the evidence that they are, at the least, trying to secure the capability to construct a bomb within 6 months of withdrawing from the NPT and kicking inspectors out of the country:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/world/middleeast/04nuke.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Some excellent background on the internal politics of this via the wonks:

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2484/safeguards-v-expo

Apparently, some in the IAEA who belong to the faction who thinks Iran is wanting to build a bomb have been pressing for the release of this unfinished report because it buttresses the case that the facility at Qom is the tip of the iceberg of secret sites that give the Iranians a “parallel fuel cycle” capability:

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2483/parallel-fuel-cycles-revisited

I am no expert but when arms control and non-proliferation types are worried, I think we should at least pay attention to what they’re saying.

Specifically,as to your points above, a couple of observations:

1. Correct. As long as the LEU comes from Natanz. Your entire critique, in fact, is based on the logical notion that all major nuclear work is under inspection. I hope you’re right. But the existence of the Qom facility has set off a new search for all sorts of labs and plants (as well as additional sources of processed ore). That link above to the chance of a parallel fuel cycle posits the idea that the logic of a secret enrichment facility dictates that other secret facilities exist.

2. Heh - talk about iffy. Continuing the fuel cycle to achieve 85-90% enrichment would take a lot less than 4 years - more like 18 months if the current expansion of centrifuge capacity at Natanz continues. Of course, this presupposes the IAEA being kicked out and withdrawal by Iran from the NPT.

3. How much should be assumed of the Iranian program? We wouldn’t have a clue (unless we penetrated the Iranian program) whether they are modeling bomb designs or not. Should we assume they are? Should we assume that the close relationship they had with AQ Khan means they have a Pakistani design signed, sealed, and delivered?

4. Jackpot. They are years away from marrying any weapon with the Shahab II or III.

5. Yeah, but they are improving with every test.

6. This is true assuming there are indeed “rational actors” in Iran. All depends on this, actually - Israel’s calculations as well as the west’s. If true, then containment and deterrence can work. If not? If Israel comes to the alternate conclusion, they will bomb.In a nation the size of New Jersey, one or two nukes could literally destroy them. Yes Iran would also be destroyed - but if religious fanaticism enters into policy, all bets are off.

7. Japan has all but admitted a similar “virtual capacity” as you point out later. Question: Does that make Iran any less dangerous if true?

8-11: Read the wonks post above about the internal politics at the IAEA. ElBaradei has blown hot and cold about Iranian nukes for years - as he did with Saddam’s “WMD.” The consummate bureaucrat, he has had to deal with these factions for years. If I wanted to spend the time googling, I’m sure I could come up with a statement that contradicts the one you have above.

12.This is simply unknowable. Logic points to your conclusion being at least partly correct, but logic, while useful, cannot penetrate the hearts and minds of the Iranian leadership. I doubt we will ever see Iran conducting a nuclear test a la North Korea. But the real possibility of a parallel fuel cycle that we don’t know about with the secret infrastructure to make a bomb happen (and a fanaticism that might make logic of any kind moot) dictates that we must assume the worst and act accordingly.

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I would add for those unfamiliar with my stand on military action, that I oppose bombing for the simple reason that it would involve consequences that not justify any temporary benefit that would accrue from slowing down the Iranian drive to go nuclear. In short, the probability that we would have to go back and bomb them again in a matter of months because we weren’t aware of important targets is very high - which is the same conclusion reached by our own military.

Iran has graciously consented to obey international law and allow inspectors into their recently revealed nuclear enrichment facility while also agreeing to allow Russia to complete the processing of a large part of their nuclear fuel.

This is an “I told you so” moment for the left…or is it? The Daily Beast:

Who knew this whole “diplomacy” idea might actually accomplish something? Mounting pressure on Iran over its nuclear program appears to be paying dividends as the U.S. engages in multilateral and direct negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva this week. Already Iran has agreed to let U.N. inspectors into its recently revealed uranium enrichment plant and to send most of its uranium to Russia for enrichment, which would help reassure foreign powers that it is not on the path to produce nuclear weapons. The tentative arrangement could be enough to hold off a new round of sanctions on Iran, whose economy is suffering and whose government is still containing fallout from its dispute presidential election. Of course, the deal only works if Iran follows through on its word and some observers aren’t holding their breath. “This is only a start, and we shall need to see progress through some of the practical steps we have discussed today,” European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana told The Washington Post.

This “whole diplomacy thing” has accomplished nothing. Nada. Zipedee Doo Da. Iran had already assured the IAEA that they would allow access to the new site. And as for completing the processing of their LEU in Russia - that too, is not much of a concession. That would be the enriched uranium from the facility at Natanz - a place that the IAEA has been watching very closely so that Iran could never turn that enriched uranium from the 5% level to the bomb grade 90% level.

The fact is, that stockpile was never a problem It was too closely watched for Iran to carry out any funny business. The real problem is that we don’t know what other facilities Iran has built, nor do we know what other steps they have taken to build a bomb that we would never be able to determine. The fact that they were hiding an enrichment facility that was much too small to enrich uranium for commercial purposes, and could easily been used for military purposes, is the real problem with the Iranian nuclear program; it’s what we don’t know and what the Iranians refuse to tell us that makes this situation so dangerous.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk - an arms control advocate - lays out the logic of this argument:

For some time, a few of us - including Josh Pollack and Andreas Persbo - have been arguing (with little success) that the public debate is misguided in its singular focus on breakout scenarios at Natanz. Is Iran 18 months away? How much LEU does it have? These were interesting questions but, to my mind, distractions. Natanz is the most watched site in the world. If the Iranians build a bomb, they will do it someplace else. Like Qom.

Josh Pollack did a wonderful job of tackling these issues in his post, Why Iran’s Clock Keeps Resetting (August 19, 2009) and over at TotalWonkerr, where he noted “One of the shortcomings of breakout lit so far may be its emphasis on on a single site. A hidden site is also a possibility…”

The real risk was always that Iran would construct a covert site other than Natanz. As long as Iran remains under the current safeguards arrangements, I wrote to a colleague this summer, we have “no confidence that Iran is not simply trucking centrifuge components to another location, buried deep under some mountain.”

For example, we would never know (without human intelligence that would have penetrated their nuke program) whether or not the mullahs have been working on a design for a bomb. Computer modeling for such a design is impossible to detect. Nor do we know what progress the Iranians have made in warhead design so that a nuke could be married to one of their improving rockets - the Shahab II and III.

To spout nonsense about diplomacy “working” at this point is truly ignorant. Not even Obama has said anything except that this is a “constructive beginning.” And WaPo’s Glenn Kessler points out that this sudden “cooperation” by the mullahs is not unexpected:

The outcome, which President Obama in Washington called a “constructive beginning,” came after 7 1/2 hours of talks in an 18th-century villa on the outskirts of Geneva that included the highest-level bilateral meeting between the two countries since relations were severed three decades ago after the Iranian revolution. But the difficulties that lie ahead were illustrated when the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, held a triumphant news conference at which he denounced “media terrorism,” insisted that Iran has always fully met its international commitments, and refused even to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.

The sudden show of cooperation by Tehran reduces for now the threat of additional sanctions, which has been made repeatedly by the United States and others over the past week after the revelation of a secret Iranian nuclear facility. The United States will need to keep the pressure on Iran to avoid being dragged into a process without end.

Anyone who followed the EU3 talks that were carried out during the Bush Administration knows full well that the Iranians are experts at dragging negotiating partners “into a process without end.”

Meanwhile, no one can say if at some still undiscovered location in Iran - and indeed the evidence points to this being more than a possibility - centrifuges aren’t whirring away creating HEU that could be used to construct a nuclear weapon. That’s the bottom line and any celebratory nonsense about diplomacy “working” is simple, partisan blather.

Not even our own State Department is calling what occurred in Honduras over the weekend a “coup.” What’s more, Hillary Clinton’s refusal to brand the military’s legal ouster of President Zeyala a coup puts her seemingly at odds with the Obama White House.

Once again, our Keystone Kops foreign policy makes us look ridiculous when the president brands the action “illegal” while the State Department rejects that term “coup.”

Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post:

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a “terrible precedent,” but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

Clinton’s statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government’s caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the situation presented a dilemma for the United States and other countries. Zelaya is “fighting with all the institutions in the country,” Hakim said. “He’s in no condition really to govern. At the same time, to stand by and allow him to be pushed out by the military reverses a course of 20 years.”

As facts begin to emerge about what Zeyala was up to, it becomes crystal clear why the military, the Congress, and the Supreme Court all felt the necessity to act. Fausta Wertz has been doing a fantastic job of translating Latin American press accounts and brings us information on the reasons for the military action:

Here is more information on Mel Zelaya’s move:

• Zelaya couldn’t get the ballots printed in Honduras since the referendum had been pronounced illegal by the country’s Supreme Court AND the electoral board. Therefore, the government couldn’t print them. No private printer was willing to break the law, either. So Zelaya had the ballots printed in Venezuela and flown in.
• The Supreme Court instructed the military (who would be the ones doing the job) NOT to distribute the ballots to the polling stations.
• Zelaya then
  

  led thousands of supporters to recover the material from an air force warehouse before it could be confiscated.

  His supporters broke into the military installation where the ballots were kept.

• Zelaya’s supporters started distributing the ballots at 15,000 voting stations across the country. This act placed him in outright defiance of the law, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.
• When the armed forces refused to distribute the ballots, Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez, and the defense minister, the head of the army and the air force resigned in protest. The country’s Supreme Court voted unanimously that Vásquez be reinstated.
• Tuesday last week the Honduran Congress, led by members of his own party, passed a law preventing the holding of referendums or plebiscites 180 days before or after general elections.
• The Honduran Congress, led by members of his own party, named a commission to investigate Zelaya. The Commission found (my translation: If you quote it, please credit me and link to this post)
  

  Zelaya acted against the mandates of legal and electoral laws, the Public Ministry, the National Congress, the Attorney General, and other institutions of the State, which had declared the poll illegal

• On Thursday (h/t GoV) the Attorney General requested that Congress impeach Zelaya
• The position of the Honduran Congress, the Supreme Court, and the attorney general is that the Constitution is to be strictly adhered to.

This is the story not being told by the White House, the State Department, most of the mainstream press, and liberal blogs who have their panties in a twist and are close to apoplexy because Obama isn’t sending in the Marines to restore the Chavez stooge to power.

Roberto Lovato at the Huffington Post manages to write almost 1,000 words without once referring to any of the illegal, extra-constitutional actions taken by Zelaya and instead, refers to “street demonstrations” that Fausta reports is being led by Nicarauguan and Venezuelan bully boys. And in a burst of surrealism worthy of Salvadore Dali, Lovato compares these staged street demonstration by foreign thugs with the demonstrators in Iran:

Viewed from a distance, the streets of Honduras look, smell and sound like those of Iran: expressions of popular anger - burning vehicles, large marches and calls for justice in a non-English language - aimed at a constitutional violation of the people’s will (the coup took place on the eve of a poll of voters asking if the President’s term should be extended); protests repressed by a small, but powerful elite backed by military force; those holding power trying to cut off communications in and out of the country.

These and other similarities between the political situation in Iran and the situation in Honduras, where military and economic and political elites ousted democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya in a military coup condemned around the world, are obvious.

But when viewed from the closer physical (Miami is just 800 miles from Honduras) and historical proximity of the United States, the differences between Iran and Honduras are marked and clear in important ways: the M-16’s pointing at this very moment at the thousands of peaceful protesters are paid for with U.S. tax dollars and still carry a “Made in America” label; the military airplane in which they kidnapped and exiled President Zelaya was purchased with the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid the Honduran government has been the benefactor of since the Cold War military build-up that began in 1980’s;

That’s quite an original spin. Zeyala “kidnapped?” Late word is that he resigned and asked for safe passage out of the country. This was granted and he was flown to Costa Rica. Don’t even bother with the laughable comparison with Iran. Those demonstrators in Honduras are not being shot down in cold blood, axed to death, or even beaten within an inch of their lives.

And the dark hints that the US is to blame because we supplied M-16’s to a friendly government is beyond ludicrous. It’s loony. Perhaps if Lovato made even a small attempt to explain Zeyala’s illegal actions, he might have a smidgen of credibility. But in true leftist fashion, he leaves out the facts to spin his anti-American diatribe.

Once more, with feeling: Zeyala was removed by the military who were acting under the orders of the Supreme Court. Zeyala’s own party in Congress has now helped impeach him. Zeyala’s extra-constitutional actions threatened Honduran independence and the rule of law.

What’s so hard to understand about that? What’s “illegal” about it? A leftist stooge of Chavez has been removed. This is an event that should be cheered by an American president. Instead, Obama subsumes American interests to curry favor with leftists in Latin America and Europe.

It won’t work. They despise us anyway, no matter what Obama does. The more he apologizes and sides with them in international disputes, the more they hold him and the US in contempt.

If Obama is seeking to make the world like us, the only way that will happen is if we completely disarm, withdraw our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere), and agree to abide by whatever the UN says we should do in any international crisis.

As Dirty Harry said; ‘That’s a high price to pay for being stylish.”

Does the fact that the coup is in the interests of the United States even matter to our president?

One less Chavez stooge - a designation that everyone agrees is correct and was the proximate cause of the coup to begin with - is very much in the interests of the United States in Central America. And yet here’s our president, hopping on the international politically correct bandwagon to condemn it.

Obama does not see the clown Chavez as a threat despite his attempts to meddle in Colombian politics by supporting narco terrorists to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Nor does Chavez exporting his “revolution” to other countries where his influence is magnified and where his stooges try to emulate his anti-democratic policies seem to bother  our commander in chief. And I guess the fact that the Lebanese terrorist group Hezb’allah setting up training camps in Venezuela has no connection to the geopolitical alliance between Chavez, Syria’s Assad, and the Ayatollah’s in Iran.

In fact, after swearing off “interferring” in Iran where demonstrators were getting shot, beaten, and axed to death, our clueless Chief Hypocrite worked frantically behind the scenes to save Honduran President Zelaya’s job, thus interferring on the wrong side while making himself out a liar on Iran.

Paul Kiernan, Jose de Cordoba, and Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal report on the attempt by the White House to save Chavez’s stooge:

The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.

The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.

The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn’t understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro posed.

Retired Honduran Gen. Daniel López Carballo justified the move against the president, telling CNN that if the military hadn’t acted, Mr. Chávez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy. It was a common view Sunday. “An official who was subverting legality and had violated the Constitution was removed,” wrote Mariela Colindres, a 21-year-old Honduran who is studying at Indiana University, in an email. “Everything was done legally and this does not imply a rupture in the constitutional order.”

First of all, it should be pointed out at the outset that the Honduran military has already handed power back to the civilian authorities - an almost unprecedented action in these banana republic coup d’etats. The Honduran legislature named Roberto Micheletti, the nation’s Congressional leader and member of Zelaya’s own political party to replace the ousted Chavezista - another almost unprecedented act.

Further, the military was acting under the orders of the Honduran Supreme Court although they apparently exceeded their authority by whisking him away to Venezuela. And finally, it was Zelaya’s actions in violating the constitution, ignoring a ruling by the Supreme Court that any referendum be put on would be illegal, and the universal belief in Congress, the military, and much of the populace that eventually, he would little more than a stand in for Chavez if he was allowed to carry out his illegal referendum that sealed Zelaya’s fate.

And yet our president, acting contrary to American interests, chose the route of least resistance and condemned what many Hondurans believe was a restoration of constitutional order. The president will find himself in familiar territory with this condemnation - Castro, Ortega, and other Latin American leftist thugs also condemned the coup. Maybe someone could look it up but when was the last time we were on the same side with Cuba on any international issue?

Way to go Barry. Like, we should listen to the Castros when they complain about democratic procedure not being followed?

This was always the biggest risk in electing Barack Obama president with his mushy headed belief that we must subsume American interests to those of the rest of the world so that we could be popular again. That he would fail to stand up for American interests when the chips were down should not surprise us. He said as much during the campaign and he is simply carrying through with that promise.

What will he do if Chavez decides to use the military he has purchased from Russia and China with his oil money to invade Honduras and re-install his stooge Zelaya? How could we possibly intervene when the president has gone on recrord agreeing with Chavez that what happened was “illegal?”

Chavez has proven in the past to be more bluster than anything but he is so unpredictable, such action would not be impossible.

Then what, Mr. President? When Honduran democrats are crying for help, will you dismiss them as you have dismissed the protestors in Iran? It would seem Obama would have little choice now that he has sided with the enemies of democracy in the region.

The world Obama is creating - one with a supine and pliant America who bows to the wishes of every thug, every dictator who struts across the stage, threatening their neighbors or their own people - is a more dangerous world, a less free world, and a world where our traditional advocacy for stability and democracy is lost amidst the pious platitutdes of this starry-eyed leftist ideologue.

What happened in Honduras is a good thing for America and for the Honduran people. Given Obama’s rhetoric during the presidential campaign, it should come as no suprise that he refuses to recognize this and instead, curtsies to Hugo Chavez and other thugs in the region whose policies are inimicable to US interests.

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker.

You have all probably seen the dramatic video of the young Iranian female protestor who died bloodily on camera. If you haven’t seen the graphic and disturbing slice of life from Iran on Saturday, it can be found here.

We now have a name to go with that bleeding, lifeless face. Allahpundit at Hot Air fills in some details:

Word on the street via one Iranian tweeter is that her name was Neda Agha Soltan. That’s also the name circulating on a few websites and now being attributed to her in a hastily arranged Wikipedia bio. The rumor - and it’s all rumor until some newspaper tracks down her family - is that she was 27 years old and a philosophy student. I hope to god this isn’t really her photo because the thought of her being so beautiful and dignified makes the murder somehow that much more obscene.

[...]

Update: A Farsi speaker tells HuffPo that this blogger is claiming that Neda was at the protest with her professor and several other students and that the fatal shot was fired by a Basij driving by on a motorcycle. No rhyme or reason; I wonder if he even aimed. The burial, reportedly, was today - and her memorial service was ordered canceled by the regime.

Robin Wright in Time Magazine (whose writings on the unrest have surpassed brilliance) fills us in on why Neda’s death may be a catalyst that will bring the regime down:

For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat - a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran’s rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah’s security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles.

The first clashes in January 1978 produced two deaths that were then commemorated on the 40th day in mass gatherings, which in turn produced new confrontations with security forces - and new deaths. Those deaths then generated another 40-day period of mourning, new clashes, and further deaths. The cycle continued throughout most of the year until the shah’s ouster in January 1979.

The same cycle has already become an undercurrent in Iran’s current crisis. The largest demonstration, on Thursday of last week, was called by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to commemorate the deaths of protesters three days after they were killed.

Shiite mourning is not simply a time to react with sadness. Particularly in times of conflict, it is also an opportunity for renewal. The commemorations for “Neda” and the others killed this weekend are still to come. And the 40th day events are usually the largest and most important.

The way this woman’s death has galvanized the Iranian protestors (and will no doubt get big play in the rest of Iran as well) means that even if they arrest all the opposition leaders, reformers, as well as break the heads of demonstrators in the streets - this revolution is not over. Not by a long shot.

The question is will other clerics with influence recognize this and, in order to save something of the Islamic state, throw Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to the wolves?

Nazila Fathi and Michael Slackman in the New York Times write about the powerful former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his efforts to form a coalition of clerics in the holy city of Qom to force Khamenei’s resignation and revamp the office of Supreme Leader:

But he remains a major establishment figure, and the detention of his daughter, albeit briefly, was a surprise. In Ayatollah Khamenei’s sermon on Friday, in which he backed Mr. Ahmadinejad and threatened a crackdown on further protests, he praised Mr. Rafsanjani as a pillar of the revolution while acknowledging that the two have had “many differences of opinion.”

Last week, state television showed images of Ms. Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of people to rally support for Mr. Moussavi. After her appearance, state radio said, students who support Mr. Ahmadinejad gathered outside the Tehran prosecutor’s office and demanded that she be arrested for treason.

Mr. Rafsanjani, 75, heads two powerful institutions. One, the Assembly of Experts, is a body of clerics that has the authority to oversee and theoretically replace the country’s supreme leader. He also runs the Expediency Council, empowered to settle disagreements between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.

The Assembly of Experts has never publicly exercised its power over Ayatollah Khamenei since he succeeded the Islamic Revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. But the increasingly bitter confrontation between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr. Rafsanjani has raised the prospect of a contest of political wills between the two revolutionary veterans.

Such a move by Rafsanjani would be unprecedented. But these are unusual times in Iran and the day may arrive when many long time critics of the regime among the clerical establishment will finally band together in order to save something of the old order - save something from what Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have apparently tried to bring down themselves by way of vote fraud.

More protests were called for today to honor the dead from Saturday. There ares still tens of thousands of security personnel deployed throughout Tehran to prevent it. We will have to see if the demonstrators - using modern tools of communication - can outsmart the authorities and gather in some strength to demonstrate that they are not finished - not by a long shot.

With tens of thousands of police, Revolutionary Guards, and paramilitary Basij’s on the streets of Tehran, mass protests of the kind we saw earlier in the week are, for the moment, not possible.

Demonstrating very effective crowd control techniques - along with a brutality that shocked the world - the regime’s strategy apparently worked fairly well. Any area where people began to mass, they sent a flying wedge of riot police (probably Rev Guards dressed in police gear) straight into the people and beat as many as they could, as hard as they could, as long as they could. In this way, they prevented tens of thousands from forming in order to protest.

Estimates of police and Guards deployed range from 25,000 to 60,000 in Tehran alone. And the Basij were busy overnight, keeping the pressure on reformists by carrying off several high profile home invasions in richer neighborhoods while scouring hospitals for people injured during the clashes.

That latter activity is being enthusiastically carried out as there have been reports that they are dragging people out of the hospitals and taking them to the notorious Evin Prison where, as one wag put it, “waterboarding will be the least that they do.”

Hossein Mousavi has issued another letter, asking people to go on strike if he is arrested. He says he is “prepared for martyrdom” which, given Khamenei’s threat during his speech on Friday to hold him directly responsible for any blood spilled, might be a prescient statement.

So with no mass demonstrations possible at the moment, what next?

Look for a shocker coming out of the holy city of Qom where former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani has reportedly been holed up with what we might loosely refer to as a kind of Shia “college of cardinals” since early this week. (I admit it is not the best analogy but the I am trying to impart a sense of the religious influence these mullahs have on Shias.) This from Nico Pitney who has been doing a bang up job at Huffpo in liveblogging events:

6:00 PM ET — Where is Rafsanjani? “According to an online reformist news source Rooyeh, Rafsanjani has been in Qom meeting some members of Council of Experts and a representative of Ayatollah Sistani.

According to the source that asked to remain anonymous, during this meeting they recounted memories of the days of the Revolution.
A reasonable purpose of these meetings, according to the source, is that Rafsanjani is looking for a majority to possibly call for Ahmadinejad’s resignation.

As one reader points out, Sistani is “one of the most respected Grand Ayatollahs within Shia Islam in the world. He’s Iranian (from Mashhad, same city as Khamenei), but spends most time in Najaf/Karbala in Iraq.”

The Shia clerics are not a monolithic bloc. And the clerics in Qom may hold the key to breaking this situation wide open.

There is no love lost among many of the clerics in Qom and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. The sticking point is the “Grand” designation for Khamenei’s clerical position. There are many clerics in Qom who believe the idea that Khamenei has that title - which denotes a piety and scholarly achievement that few attain - to be nonsense . Author and scholar Kamil Pasha points us to veteran Middle East reporter Robin Wright’s article up at Huffington Post:

The position of supreme leader has been controversial since it was created in the chaotic early days of the revolution to deal with internal squabbling. After his return from exile, revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khameini had originally returned to the religious center of Qom, but was forced to move back to Tehran as disputes among the fractious coalition that ousted the last shah began to fall apart.

Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran’s revolution represented not just a political upheaval. It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics. With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state.

The current crisis has effectively revived that debate — and deepened the divide between the government and the Shiite clergy as well as with the public. The government includes many clerical institutions, including the 12-member Council of Guardians, the 86-member Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council. But not even all of its members are happy with the election.

More importantly, senior clerics in Qom have noticeably failed to either endorse the election results or embrace Ahmadinejad, while long-time critics within the clergy used the crisis to encourage resistance to the supreme leader’s dictates.

The fact that Rafsanjani is in Qom could mean many things. He may be hiding out there, waiting to see which way the wind is blowing before leaping. Or, as Pitney reports, he may be trying to get these respected clerics in Iran’s holiest city to speak with one voice on the election fraud and Khamenei’s role in government. A strong, unified statement coming from Qom might spell curtains for both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

While Rafsanjani himself has been absent from view, his daughter spoke out strongly for the reformists. He even rated some heavy criticism from his old friend Khamenei on Friday, although he stopped short of warning the powerful Rafsanjani.

A couple of Grand Ayatollahs in Qom have already come out in favor of the protests. Robin Wright:

Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, who was originally designated to become supreme leader until he criticized the regime’s excesses in 1989, dismissed the election results and called on “everyone” to continue “reclaiming their dues” in calm protests. He also issued a warning to Iran’s security forces not to accept government orders that might eventually condemn them “before God.”

“Today censorship and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth,” said Montazeri. “I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.”

Others have also bestowed legitimacy on the protests. Grand Ayatollah Saanei — one of only about a dozen who hold that position — pronounced Ahmadinejad’s presidency illegitimate.

Neither man weilds much political influence. But if Qom’s clerical leadership calls on Khamenei to resign (thus delegitimzing his role as “Supreme Leader” even more), this would cause a crisis in government - a near civil war - as the clerical establishment would likely be ripped in two. It would paralyze the government and perhaps even split the security forces.

Because of that - and because many of the clerics in Qom have shown a great reluctance to involve themselves too heavily in politics - such a strong statement might not be forthcoming. But don’t count Rafsanjani out. He has a lot of friends in very powerful places. If he decides to risk a confrontation with Khamenei (him being a candidate to replace him although the reformers would take a dim view of that), anything is possible.

So I would look to Qom for the next big story in the Iranian revolution. Whether the blood spilled yesterday is enough to convince the religious in Iran to replace Khamenei is a question that will probably be answered shortly. They will either issue a call for his resignation, or Rafsanjani will emerge empty handed.  The old revolutionary and kleptocrat will try to trim events to fulfill his ambitions. But in the process, he just may free Iran from the grip of the fascists.

UPDATE: RAFSANJANI’S DAUGHTER,  FOUR  OTHER RELATIVES, ARRESTED

AP is reporting the arrest of Rafsanjani’s daughter (mentioned above) and 4 other relatives of the powerful former president.

Um…they’re not being very subtle, are they? They know full well what Rafsanjani is up to and are making it clear to him that there will be consequences unless he ceases what he is doing.

No, these are not very nice people.