Annapolis: Peace In Someone Else's Time : November 26, 2007 It's all about who shows up...

On the face of it, the Annapolis peace parley that starts today looks like a colossal waste of time, says Jules Crittenden. Neither Ehud Olmert nor Mahmoud Abbas are currently in a political position to make real concessions or deliver on them. Still, this gathering will make clear who in the Middle East seeks peace and who does not - and that’s worth something.
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IRAQI SECURITY FORCES, U.S. SPECIAL FORCES DETAIN 3, UNCOVER 18 IEDS IN SEPARATE OPERATIONS
COALITION FORCES CAPTURE CRIMINAL ELEMENT LEADER, TWO OTHERS DETAINED

Iranian Regime Fears Its People : 23 November 2007

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Vice President Dick Cheney says that the Iranian people “are living in a climate of fear and intimidation”: “With secret police, arbitrary detentions, and a hint of violence in the air. In the space of a generation, the regime has solidified its grip on the country and grown ever more arrogant and brutal toward the Iranian people. Journalists are intimidated. Religious minorities are persecuted. A good many dissidents and freedom advocates have been murdered, or have simply disappeared. Visiting scholars who’ve done nothing wrong have been seized and jailed.” Consider the case of French-Iranian filmmaker Mehrnoushe Solouki. Ms. Solouki went to Iran in December 2006 to make a film about the burial traditions of Iran’s religious minorities. In a telephone interview with Radio Farda, Ms. Solouki said that in the course of her work, she happened upon a section of Khavaran cemetery south of Tehran which was “totally different” from other parts she had seen. It was the section where some of the thousands of political prisoners summarily executed by the Iranian clerical regime in 1988 were interred in a mass grave. In February of this year, police stormed Ms. Solouki’s Tehran apartment. She was arrested and thrown into Evin prison. After a month in Evin, Ms. Solouki was released, but she has not been allowed to leave Iran. On November 17 she was questioned by a judge at a closed-door hearing. A trial was postponed to a yet-to-be determined date. Reportedly she is being charged with the so-called crime of intending to spread propaganda against the Iranian government. Ms. Solouki says she feels as if she is in limbo, “between life and death.” Others who have gone to Khavaran cemetery have also been arrested. They include six people who took part in an August ceremony marking the nineteenth anniversary of the “prison massacres” of 1988. A seventh person, twenty-two-year-old Masoumeh Mansouri was arrested after making inquiries about her father, who had attended the commemoration ceremony. All seven are being held in Evin prison.The Iranian clerical regime seems frightened of both the dead and the living. But as Vice President Cheney says, “The Iranian people have every right to be free from oppression. . .and tyranny in their own country.”

ONCE A TERRORIST - ALWAYS A TERRORIST

Iran May Seek to Lure Europe with Gas - Iran wants to use its massive gas reserves to wield influence over Europe. But if offering to supply Europe with gas via a pipeline through Turkey doesn't work, then the Revolutionary Guards may resort to plan B.

Iran's huge gas reserves, Europe's energy needs and the US's hard line on Iran's nuclear program all add up to an explosive mixture.Iran is planning to leverage its massive gas reserves to increase its influence in Western Europe -- by fair means or foul. If selling gas to Europe doesn't work, then Iran's Revolutionary Guards may resort to violence in the worst-case scenario. According to intelligence sources in the Middle East, Iranian leaders are considering making an unusual offer to supply Europe with large quantities of natural gas. The gas would be supplied via the planned Nabucco pipeline, which will run from Azerbaijan to Austria via Turkey. The offer would be attractive to European leaders as it would allow Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas. Germany currently gets about a third of its natural gas requirements from Russia, and demand is expected to increase in the coming years. There are major concerns in Europe about the continent relying too heavily on Russia for its natural gas, particularly after a series of recent disputes in which Russia cut off energy supplies to Ukraine and Belarus.According to minutes of a meeting obtained by SPIEGEL, a representative of Iran's Revolutionary Guard presented the proposal to Iran's National Security Council. The order to prepare the plan apparently came directly from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the intelligence sources. Construction work on the Nabucco pipeline is expected to begin in 2009 and to be finished by 2011. The pipeline, which is being built by a consortium headed by the Austrian company OMV, will have a total length of 3,300 kilometers and cost around €5 billion. However the pipeline is controversial within the European Union and Moscow has already made its opposition to the project clear.The planned Nabucco pipeline could be used to pipe Iranian natural gas to Europe.The project only makes economic sense if the pipeline is used to full capacity -- and Azerbaijan's natural gas reserves are not sufficient to guarantee that. Hence Iran, which has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, is the obvious natural partner for the project. Tehran has yet to make an official offer, however. And any overture could cause political friction between the US and Europe: The US government has demanded that Berlin and Paris take clear diplomatic and economic action against Tehran over its suspected nuclear weapons program. German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently assured US President George W. Bush that Germany would apply strong economic pressure on Tehran (more...). Increased sanctions could make Iran's economy vulnerable.

However if a carrot doesn't work, then Iran might resort to a stick. Other alternatives were apparently also discussed at the meeting in Tehran. Iran's elite Quds force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards, are reported to be charged with looking into possible ways to disrupt Berlin's energy partnership with Russia -- for example through terrorist actions against the planned Baltic Sea pipeline (more...) between Russia and Germany.

Iran's Response to Western Warnings: 'First Strike,' 'Preemptive Attack,' Long-Range Ballistic Missiles, 'Asymmetric [Guerilla] Warfare' : By: Y. Mansharof and A. Savyon

Introduction
As the Iranian nuclear crisis escalates, Iranian officials have stepped up their threats against the West. Although regime spokesmen have stressed that Iran's security doctrine is defensive,(1) the threats issued by senior Iranian leaders and officials indicate that Iran's actual strategy for responding to a Western attack is taking on increasingly offensive and deterrent characteristics.
While in February 2003, then-defense minister Ali Shamkhani stated, "Iran has a deterrent defensive doctrine, which means that it will in no way take an offensive measure... Iran's objectives are of a defensive nature,"(2) - the new strategy is gradually revealed in both deeds and statements by regime spokesmen.(3) .The offensive elements of this doctrine include a "first strike" and "preemptive attack"; the development of long-range ballistic missiles (the Qadr and the Ashura(4)) with ranges of up to 2,000 km; and the development of an "asymmetrical [guerilla] warfare" tactic – that is, suicide bombings in the Persian Gulf, whether to close off the Strait of Hormuz or to hit targets in the Gulf countries.
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