U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford, and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier earned the wrath of the Syrian regime after touring the restive city of Hama, a hotbed of protest activity. Assad’s goon squad responded by organizing a “demonstration,” in which rioters forced their way into the U.S and French Embassies, injuring personnel  and destroying property. Syria accused the United States of using its embassy personnel to violate Syrian sovereignty and foment protests.

Ironically, it is the Syrian embassy, which is violating the rules of accepted diplomatic behavior, as its personnel in the United States have been caught filming participants of anti-Syrian protests in American cities and using the information to threaten their families back in Syria. And these threats carry weight, when one considers the fate of Ibrahim Qashoush, a Syrian musician who wrote a popular protest song. He was found decapitated, floating in the middle of a river.

That, as EMET has repeatedly warned, is the reality of the Syrian regime that so many American officials and the Administration refuse to see.  The recent action against the U.S. Embassy has finally hardened the U.S. stance, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying, “Let me also add that if anyone, including President Assad, thinks that the United States is secretly hoping the regime will emerge from this turmoil to continue its brutality and repression, they are wrong. President Assad is not indispensible, and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power. Our goal is to see that the will of the Syrian people for a democratic transformation occurs.”

“Not indispensible” is an improvement over past rhetoric of Assad as “the reformer” and hope of the Syrian people. But it still remains a long way from “…must go,” the language which was applied to force the exit of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, where the body count never reached the bloody killings in Syria.

Changing opinion — and rhetoric — on Syria will require a conscious rejection by the Administration of their own policy and a rejection of their long-held, but mistaken, belief that Syria could be weaned from their Iranian ally, negotiate peace with Israel, and magically be transformed into a positive influence in the region. For our government to change course will requires an admission of error for a whole host of Administration officials, Federal departments and Washington policy gurus.

How likely is that? Not very, considering the popularity of Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha with reporters, pundits and even members of Congress on the D.C. cocktail party circuit.  His defenders are already prepared to assure us that the Syrian Ambassador believes in, “engagement and supports broad economic liberalization,” even as his embassy staff extends the range of the Syrian police state to spying on anti-government activists in our American cities.

Where is the Administration’s outrage as Syria murders its citizens in Hama, and spies on them here in Washington? How about outrage as Syria sacks our embassy in Damascus? When did the United States become like the old joke about the effectiveness of the unarmed English Bobbies? “Stop or we’ll say stop again!”

The American State Department’s version is, “Cease your brutality, or be prepared to listen to even more tough talk.” (“But don’t worry, it will not be too tough.”)

“Not indispensible” is just not good enough. It is time for America to say that Bashar Assad SHOULD go, and that the U.S. stands with the Syrian people. Not tentatively — not as encouragement to reach some kind of deal with a “reformed” Assad — but as American policy. Let Ambassador Ford return to Hama and stand with the protestors.  Such a move would improve U.S. standing in the world, and strengthen American diplomacy more than any amount of cocktail small-talk with the Syrian ambassador about the phantasm of “engagement and liberalization.”

The New York Times called Bashar Assad’s offer of amnesty to the protesters and his continuing shuffle of his ministers a “Mixed Message,” instead of reporting that while allegedly negotiating, this government is busy gunning down those who oppose it. Of course long-time Syria watchers recognize this as Assad’s way of dealing with every problem, whether internal protests, U.S. troops in Iraq or Israel. Offer to negotiate, while moving your forces in for the kill.

While the Syrian regime continues to open fire upon its own people, even bringing in Iranian muscle to crack skulls and gun down protestors, the Obama administration has turned down pleas for added diplomatic pressure, spurning the Syrian dissidents according to a leading Syrian dissident. For the administration, whose Secretary of State trumpeted claims of Assad’s role as a “reformer.”

The U.S. government and the Western press somehow manage to lose their healthy cynicism when it comes to examining the actions and words of dictators and tyrants. For some reason, the words of tyrannical regime officials are taken at face value, while even the most innocuous statement by a U.S. or Israeli spokesman are constantly picked apart to discover evidence of distortion or disinformation.

But on the streets of Damascus, Aleppo, and Daraa, they have no doubts about what the regime founded by Hafez Assad, and perpetuated by his son Bashar, is capable of.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is trumpeting leaked cables identifying a Syrian opposition group as receiving $6 million dollars in funding to run an anti-Assad satellite TV channel. According to the report, under the Bush Administration, the money began to flow to Syrian opposition groups in London to help create the Barada channel, and it remains unclear whether funding has continued.  But even if the funds ($6 million over 4 years) played a role in the Syrian uprising, and Syrian activists are doubtful that they did, it is highly unlikely that the funds went to the right sources. Both the leaked State department cables quoted by the Post, and Syrian opposition interviewed by Radio Free Europe indicate that the recipients of U.S. cash may have close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Exactly the wrong sort of opposition for the United States to support, and another symptom of the clueless bumbling which passes for our Syrian policy.

It is time for the West to understand that the Assad regime is a deceitful, paranoid state, where the banality of evil is so deeply rooted that the regime casually initiates the killing of its own military and police forces as cover for its murderous crushing of  protests or rebellions.  A regime which loudly blames the eruption of protests on outside forces, even as it quietly brings in Iranians to open fire on its own citizens.

Today, we are living in a time when the entire free Western world, as we know it, is being threatened by a brutal, tyrannical regime in Iran with nuclear and hegemonic ambitions. They have been THE destabilizing influence in the Middle East, responsible for the equipping, recruitment and training of Hezbollah and Hamas. Southern Lebanon has now become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hezbollah, and Gaza has become an Iranian proxy state through the terrorist group, Hamas.

Ever since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime had declared war on America. Its first act was the taking hostage of 53 American embassy officials in 1979, In 1983, it bombed our marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen. No one doubts that it was responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing, commanded by the Blind Sheik Omar-Abdul Al Rahman. This regime is like a hydra , a many-headed monster, stretching  its grasp into Iraq and Afghanistan, where they have been responsible for the manufacture and shipment of IEDs, heavy arms, and advanced roadside bombs, and where they have been responsible for supporting elements of the  Iraqi insurgency, both Sunni and Shiite, alike.

This past Friday, February 19th, a report just came out from the International Atomic Energy Agency, that said it had discovered an additional 460 pounds of  low enriched uranium, one-third more than Iran has previously disclosed. According to a report in this Saturday’s New York Times, the amount of enriched uranium that the mullahs now possess is sufficient-with added purification-to make an atomic bomb.

This crazed, theocratic regime thinks it will bring the coming of the twelfth Imam-the Messiah- by using these weapons against America and its allies. They have made their intentions perfectly clear.

Yet: there are beautiful, freedom loving dissidents in the street who are crying out for our support to overthrow the mullahs and to replace the regime with a Western styled democracy. Since the fraudulent result of the June 12th elections have been announced, they have bravely taken to the streets, risking

everything, even their very lives. Many of these young freedom fighters are disappearing at the hands of the Basij, never to be heard from again. They are being tortured, raped and summarily executed.

Natan Sharansky has said that the basic lesson of his lifelong struggle for freedom was for the oppressed to find the inner strength to confront evil, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in freedom,  it is our obligation to find the moral clarity to be able to see evil.

We feel that there we have a moral imperative for America, once again, to obtain the moral clarity it once had, when Ronald Reagan had called us “the shining  city on the Hill”, a beacon for freedom loving people everywhere. If we cannot be that, then we have simply forgotten everything that America stands  for.

Sarah also had the honor of introducing two Iranian dissidents who spoke to congressional staffers about the many challenges currently faced by protestors, and what the U.S can do to further its supports for human rights and democracy in Iran.

Imagine the dismay when attending a policy seminar earlier this week, in a prominent, right of center think tank in Washington. The subject had been “Iran’s Nuclear Challenge: U.S. Options”. I had brought up dealing with the issue of using this moment when there are hundreds of thousands of brave dissidents on the streets, who now have the advantages of the Internet, Twitter and Facebook, and when there is a fissure in the ruling theocracy. The response was “We have to be realistic…That’s not realistic.”

Meanwhile, the wise and learned participants in this illustrious panel offered the same tired, old, stale formulations of diplomacy, sanctions and military action, talking about the many negative consequences of each. One of the “counsel of wise and aged men and women” even blamed America for not having had an embassy in Iran for the last thirty years, (as though the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy and the hostage crisis of 1979 was an American initiative).

They went even further to scratch their collective brilliant heads, saying: “First we have to determine what it is that Iran wants.” What it is that Iran wants? Hasn’t Ahmadinejad made his genocidal and hegemonic intentions clear enough?

I would certainly agree that there are many negative and sensitive consequences to each of the three standard options. Yet, there is a tiny window of opportunity that is open now, to be a little creative and to think outside of the box, in order to help the freedom loving dissidents in their struggle for a revolution away from the pugnacious, brutal theocratic regime.

However “regime change” has become the new dirty word in Washington. We have all become so cynical that we have become deaf, dumb and blind to the beautiful sound of freedom-loving dissidents on the streets craving democratic change. There are subtle ways to help the dissidents, both overt and covert.

Since the election on June 12, when the results had been announced in perhaps the tiniest unit of time ever recorded, a mere millisecond from the time of the closing of the polls, there has been a steadily increasing tidal wave of an outpouring on the streets stretching now from Tehran into the rural outposts.

These people on the streets are rational actors. The ruling mullahs, who harbor an apocalyptic, eschatological fantasy of hastening the “coming of the twelfth imam” through the elimination of Israel can never be described with that adjective. Containment might have worked with the former Soviet Union, because they did not believe in an afterlife, let alone seventy two brown eyed virgins.

Although the acquisition of nuclear weapons is a point of Iranian national pride that cuts across all segments of the society, the demonstrators on the streets are rational actors who do not buy into self-serving Messianic delusion.

There are reasons to be hopeful: If and only if we work fast. When Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri, the highest ranking Shiite cleric who was a leading voice of dissent, died this past December, there were throngs of thousands upon thousands of mourners on the streets of Qum, where he lived. Furthermore, the reigning mullahs have yet to certify the results of the election last June, indicating a real fissure among the theocracy. In June, shortly after the elections, relatives of President Rafsanjani were suddenly arrested. Since that time, people have suddenly disappeared from the streets, no one knows how many of these dissidents have been taken from their cells and summarily executed. The threatened, insecure mullahs are acting as the Nazis did at the end of World War II, sending Jews on their notorious “death marches”.

The fact is that America has abandoned its rhetorical philosophy of “hope and change” to the people out there, on the streets of Tehran, who are really struggling for “hope and change” for this new “realism”, (read: selfishness and apathy). In the meantime, the wonderful example of American exceptionalism, as that “shining city on the Hill” for all oppressed people in the world to aspire towards, has been reduced to a collective sense of diffusive guilt, self-imposed ignorance and helplessness, and we are abandoning those who are crying out for our help at a time when we can be so easily helpful in bringing freedom and democracy.

In the age of the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, we can certainly get through to the Iranian dissidents. Certainly, if somehow our words of support managed to reach Natan Sharansky in his lonely prison cell in the Gulag.

On Tuesday (Janurary 12) afternoon four agents of intelligence ministry went to our home in Qom and arrested my father Mohammad Taqi Khalaji. They searched the home and collected hundreds of his notes, books, personal letters, computer and also our satellite receiver.They also took the passport of whole family and said that all members of family are banned from leaving Iran. My parents along with my daughter were planning to come to United States on March to visit me for two weeks. My family does not know where my father is held and Iranian officials do not give them any information.

My father is a prominent cleric who was close to Ayatollah Montazeri. He is one of closet clerics to Ayatollah Sanei who was recently attacked by regime.

My father was an outspoken cleric who supported the green movement and criticized the regime for its policy in his recent speeches in Tehran and also in Qom.

His photos as well as the audio file of his speech on Ashoura eve in the house of Ayatollah Sanei are available. I believe spreading the news is better than keeping silent. I deeply appreciate any effort to disseminate the news of my father arrest and I am ready to discuss it this with media.

Best
Mehdi Khalaji

Information and Internet Freedom in Iran

Senators Pledge to Strengthen Broadcasts to Iran, Help Iranian People Find Freedom Online

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced today that they will introduce bipartisan legislation after the July 4 recess to expand television and radio broadcasting into Iran and prevent the Iranian regime from slamming shut the virtual door to the rest of the world provided by the Internet.

Over the last two weeks, the Iranian regime has worked aggressively to stop its citizens from getting uncensored information about what is happening inside their country, and to prevent them from exercising their fundamental rights to free speech and free assembly online.  The Iranian regime continues to jam satellite and radio broadcasts, disrupt cell phone service, monitor Internet use, and block websites.

The legislation that Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham announced will help counter the regime’s efforts by increasing support for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty’s Farsi-language radio station, Radio Farda, and the Voice of America’s Persian News Network.  The legislation will also provide the Iranian people with access to other information technologies to ensure Iranians access to the Internet, including social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and cellular phone networks.

The Senators expressed their hope that such funding would help facilitate greater engagement and direct dialogue between ordinary Iranians and Americans.

“This legislation has a clear and simple purpose,” said Senator Lieberman.  “We want to give the Iranian people the chance to stay one step ahead of their regime by gaining access to information and exercising their right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online.”

“Over the past two weeks, we have witnessed extraordinary courage of the Iranian people, millions of whom have taken to the streets of their cities in peaceful protest.  But we’ve also witnessed the sheer thuggery of the Iranian regime, which has unleashed a campaign of violence, intimidation, and a crackdown in cyberspace on the airwaves against these peaceful demonstrators,” said Senator McCain.  “In the weeks ahead we look forward to working with our colleagues on developing legislation to help ensure the Iranian people can get access to the unbiased, uncensored news, information, and communications technologies that they obviously want, and that the Iranian regime so obviously wants to deny them.”

“This is a regime that will rig elections, kick out the media, shut down the Internet, shoot young girls in the streets, send IEDs to Iraq to kill coalition forces, and fund Hezbollah and Hamas which are bent on the destruction of Israel,” said Senator Graham.  “This legislation increases the chances the truth will penetrate Iran. The truth will set the Iranian people free. I hope that we can, as Republicans and Democrats, understand not only the limitations we may have as a nation, but the obligations we have as the leader of the free world.”

“Dictatorial regimes and their behavior are a phenomenon that must be confronted constantly… It is very important to explain and stress over and over again that people fighting for human rights are not doing this just for themselves, but they are opposing the humiliation of individuals wherever they may be”—Vaclav Havel, Former Czech President

At this point, we are still unsure whether or not the beautiful dissident struggle for increasing freedoms under the Iranian theocratic boot will flower like the orange revolution of the Ukraine in 2004 to 2005, or will be squelched like the pro-democracy movement of Tiananmen Square, China in 1989.

We know that the Iranian government has a Revolutionary Guard and the Basij Militia, as well as a vast army, and an arsenal of missiles, bombs, and guns. The demonstrators have simply their consciences, their deep yearning for freedom and their tweets.

We also know that the leader of the free world should be standing on the side of those who are struggling on the side of freedom. President Obama has begun slowly, after seven days of the dissidents courageously putting their very lives on the line, to utter some words of encouragement.. But if we do not stand on the side of freedom from repression, what is America all about? What sort of values do we represent if we descend to the least common denominator of governance, as though those who rule with an iron whip for a despotic theocracy are on the same moral plane as those who struggle for democracy?

Part of the reason why it has seemed so difficult for President Obama to have been able to throw his support behind those who truly yearn for freedom is that the academy has had a pernicious influence on the feeling of security with the American project.

American exceptionalism, being what President Reagan had stated was “that shining city on the Hill” is difficult to for those who have been products of our educational system for the last several decades where much of the academy has been imbued with a sense of American guilt over much exaggerated stories of colonialism and Western imperialism.

It is this sort of knee-jerk reaction that has led many liberals, who, ironically once represented the party of the little people and the under-dog, to try not to offend the very worst despots and dictators on the world stage. This impulse inhibits them from clearly being able to distinguish between good and evil. In an attempt to understand the world view of those who are clinging onto the reins of power today, they are imbued with a sense of moral ambiguity at best, or insecurity and guilt over America’s past “sins” at worst. What has occurred therefore is a tacit affirmation of the status quo and a tepid and tardy display of support of those who represent the American truly core values of peaceful dissent and a hunger for democracy and freedom.

However, today, Friday June 19th, in an astonishing bipartisan act of political courage, the US Congress overwhelming passed a resolution in support of the Iranian Dissidents in a vote of 430 to 1. Chairman Howard Berman, (D-CA), and Ranking Minority Leader, Ileana Ros-Lehitnan, (R-FL), are to be applauded for their wisdom in the language and for their successful stewardship of this through the House. This is a sure sign that the our American legislators have cast their lot with those who represent human rights and freedom over those who represent the crushing boot of oppression.

An Iranian dissident has just emailed me that he has had a call from inside Iran, pleading that the West know that this pouring out onto the streets is not about a mere election dispute. It is no longer about simply ballot counting and rigged elections. Mousavi has become an icon of their general yearning for equality, freedom and democracy.
This whole revolution would not be possible had it not been for the generation who is using Twitter and Facebook and other devices to escape the brutal scrutiny of the authorities of the dictatorial Middle Eastern regimes.

One of my close Syrian friends, Ahad Al Hendi, had used the internet to blog against the government, but was discovered and turned in by the owner of the internet café. He was imprisoned and tortured, and upon release, our State Department helped him to gain political asylum within the United Sates. However, many of his friends have not been quite so lucky and are still rotting away in Syrian jails
In EMET, we have made it a cornerstone of our philosophy to deal with brave Arab and Muslim dissidents ever since our inception. We nurture and value the friendships of those who have the wisdom to speak out against the dictatorial regimes where many of them have been raised. They have had the intelligence to penetrate through the hateful anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic propaganda that they had been schooled upon. We honor them on Capitol Hill, bring them into our homes to break bread, laugh and cry with them over personal events in their lives, and bring them to briefings with staffers on the Hill, so that they can relate to the human faces behind their suffering.

We are now working to strengthen the voice of the dissent inside Iran and the other repressive regimes of the Middle East, through the Cyber Dissident Project. Similar to the devices which have escaped the watchful eye of the Iranian regime, EMET will begin using twenty-first century technology to work in partnership with other NGO’s to promote and amplify the message of dissent, and to penetrate through the Middle Eastern Iron Curtain of hatred.

I thought this interview with Henry Kissenger (H/T Hot Air)  regarding the subject of Iran’s protests was worth watching. He does make the point that Mousavi was not pro-western when he was prime minister under Khomeini, but that these protests are very much striking at the confidence of the theocratic regime. It only runs about five minutes, so it’s worth listening to.

I also wanted to link this reuters video, of protesters struggling with Regime security forces. The accompanying article discusses the role being played by bloggers and cyber-dissidents in distributing information from inside Iran, now that Foreign news agencies have been banned from reporting.

The Internet site Boing Boing earlier this week published this “cyber-warfare” guide regarding how best to assist Iranian bloggers who are using Twitter and other internet sites to distribute news. So far it has fallen entirely upon private individuals to support brave cyber-dissidents in Iran (and throughout the middle east).