Lost in Translation

Over at Tehran Post you can see a comparison between a Newsweek article by Fareed Zakaria and its translation into Persian by Rajanews. Here's a sample:

Newsweek: For a superpower, being involved in a military conflict somewhere is more the norm than the exception. Since 1945, only one president has not presided over combat that engaged American troops—Jimmy Carter.

Rajanews: All these [Bush’s] military campaigns have been an exception among U.S. presidents since 1945.

Iran missile test redux

Kamangir points out that a photograph published of the recent missile tests is from the same test that was photographed 2 years ago.

Check out his blog and compare the pictures for yourself.

Update: This just in from AFP:

Photographs published on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards website showed four missiles taking off from a desert launchpad.

But one of the missiles had apparently been added to the photograph using elements from the smoke trail and dust clouds from two of the other missiles.

After being shown the photograph by AFP, Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said: "It very much does appear that Iran doctored the photo to cover up what apparently was a misfiring of one of the missiles.

"The whole purpose of this testing was to send a signal so Iran both exaggerated the capabilities of the missile in their prose and apparently doctored the photos as well."

War, no war... part two

Part two.

He is on a scholarship trip in the Netherlands for a couple of months. I did not know he was here until a common friend asked me if I had seen Namver (not his real name). I call him right after I talked to our common friend.

We are both doing some research on two different projects. We agree to meet another friend of his who is a long-time university professor and researcher at a well-known institute in Amsterdam.

“You just have to agree with whatever he says; otherwise we will be here for couple of days.” Namver tells me. I agree and walk to meet his friend in that institute. Not even two minutes pass after we meet and start our conversation that I start scratching my head.

“There are a lot of power struggles in the Iranian government at this moment,” he says.

I think dinggggggggggggggggggggggg, you don’t have to be rocket scientist to know that. It is so simplistic to come up with this again.

Yes we do have a power struggles in Iran, and we have had them for a long time, since the first days of our recorded history. What is new about this? I think to myself.

Are any of those involved with this power struggle worthy of trust? Are they really so diffirent from each other? Or do they just want the same thing but have different ways of getting it?

“Maybe this power struggle will end up in war,” the professor continues.

Bush is getting ready for war I am thinking...




They are counting minutes



Ohhhhhhhhhh…War.

When I talk to my friends most of them, like I am, are against war (At least in public).

Not only because they think war is devastating, but also so that they can tell everybody later that “I told you so” when things go wrong. And you know, things always do go wrong.

Power struggle or no power struggle, Iran should get ready for a nasty war, I think by myself quietly. There will be war. I have been saying this for almost two years, but I don’t want to tell anybody, “I told you so.”

“Americans are seeing that the option of diplomacy is not getting them anywhere. You can see that clearly. There are still some people in the Iranian government who believe we should be more willing to work things out with the European negotiators, but those people are not inside the power lines,” the professor tells us. “Look at history, and you can get your answer. Those mullahs don’t make deals until things get really bad.”

I don’t think this any more. This time I don’t believe they will compromise. Ahmadinejad said, “We don’t need experts; we need believers.”

Believers in what?

We all agree that if Iran is attacked and there is the possibility of regime change that we would see months of horrific bloodshed in the streets of every big city in Iran. Mobs will go wild and tear apart Teheran. The regime must know this. Just look at these pictures Kamangir found.

We talk about what might happen: pardons, arrests, riots, etc.

“What about 125,000 revolution guards forces?”

“Will they target us?” my friend adds. “What will happen to the MEK? Can you imagine if they get power?”

We all decide not to think about it.

I don’t personally know any Iranians outside Iran who would openly say that he wants the US to attack Iran. I am sure there are many in US who are just jumping up and down waiting until the day the US bombers attack Iran. Most of those are not people who care about the lives of Iranians that may be lost in case of war as long as this regime gets the lesson they deserve. Those people are just waiting to take power for themselves and steal more of our resources and money.

In Iran I met many people who could not wait to be (freed) by America. In the last two years I heard many Iranians say that they cannot take it anymore and that living cannot be worse than what they have even if there is attack.

I hate to admit that most of those people who I spoke to felt I had a direct line to the white house and wanted me to tell Mr. Bush “please just don’t hit my house.” One guy said that he wanted to paint an American flag on the roof of his house. “America. Friends,” he said he would write under the flag.

I don’t think it is a question of if there will be an attack but more of when. One friend says, “If it’s war or the regime, maybe war is not so bad.” Then my wife says, “What if it is war and the regime?” We both look at each other, and we are just shocked.

The sanctions and the talk of war are pushing Iran closer to Russia and China, some may think, but most Iranian don’t believe that Russia is there to help us. Russia is like poker player who is holding his cards close so that he has more options. Later they can say, “we were the only friend you had in those hard days when you were under attack from all over the world.” Or they can say to the US, when we realizes the danger of Iran with the N weapon, we took the right side. (Listen to this interesting interview with Steve LeVine on Fresh Air)



A couple of months ago when I met a friend here in Amsterdam who just married a nice Iranian girl, I was shocked to hear a different story. He told me that there are a couple of other possibilities. “Imagine Khameneie would get really sick from whatever he has and die in the next couple of months and there is a fight for his replacement and a lot of people are putting Rafsanjani forward since most of the people believe Ahmadinejad is not able to deliver what he promised two years go. He would be in power, and he would make a deal with US. End of story,” he told us with a small smile but self-confident face.



(http://pedramweb.blogspot.com/)

I told him, “Imagine Rafsanjani would die long before Khameneie.” When I told him this scenario, he was not happy. He told me, “You Iranians are always unpredictable.” I shook my head and told him that is the problem with the west, you only see things in black and white.

He was clearly frustrated with me. Yes there are a lot of options out there, but none as effective as a military attack.

His boss, a professor at a university in Amsterdam, told me a couple of months ago during a dinner, that there is 3rd option: the West could find a way to live with a nuclear Iran.

“Like they live with Pakistan?” I asked. “What about if things change in Pakistan, and you don’t have a president like Mosharaf who changes his polices in one night from not worried about terrorists at all to commando in chef of the war on terror in the region?” The professor had to leave after my question, so I never heard his answer.

……….

“Dadash jan Khoobi?” I asked my brother when I called him yesterday.
I can’t wait to ask him how he and his family is doing, but I asked him first, “Are the people getting ready for war?”

“Which war” he asked.

“Here in the west everybody thinks there will be a war or better put: an attack.”

“Na dasash jan (No my dear brother ) don’t worry, there would be no attack. Nothing will happen,” he is confident. Why? I don’t know. “Na dadash jan, nothing would happen,” he changed the subject. I don’t know if he does it because he is worried he is being recorded or he just wants to make feel better.

“Iran said that they would fire 11,000 rockets in the first few minutes if they are attacked.”

“How many?”

“11,000.”

“What would they do when those are finished?”

“Fire 11,000 more?

“How is your wife?”

“I miss you too.” This time there is no way I can change the subject

I hung up the phone, stretched, flexed my muscles like a bodybuilder would, looked out the window happy to have heard his voice but worried very much about whether he and his family would be okay when and if an attack starts.

I would never forgive anyone who would attack and harm my family and friends. That is why I hate and can never forgive the Iranian government for killing and imprisoning and torturing of a lot of my dear friends. They killed the dreams of millions.

To war or not to war

I was walking in the park with an Iranian friend who prefers to remain anonymous, so let’s call him Reza. Reza just returned from several years in Iran. We argued about the benefits of war. “Things are just getting worse. People have all the hope sucked right out of them. You just cannot believe the corruption and the government – what government? – can you really call it a government? – they are just a bunch of criminals. Sometimes I think the only thing to do is bomb them.”

Reza is serious. We have argued this point so many times. Reza wants the US to attack Iran. I think it is a mistake. Reza has family in Iran. He loves them. But he is just so fed up with what he sees as the destruction of Iranian culture and society. Reza thinks it’s worse and getting worse. “It’s not that I think that Iran will actually use a bomb,” he tells me. “I think they’ll just use it as blackmail.” He goes on to tell me that anyone who thinks that the current government of Iran is not pursuing a bomb is living in a dream world.

We argue a bit. I tell him that while Iranians may not greet war as an attack on Islam the rest of the world will. I argue that it will lead to increased radicalization and terror. “Maybe,” he admits. Then he goes on:

“What if you had a husband who beat you? You try to reason with him. For a while he stops. You think things are better. You have children. He beats you again. You try to do things his way, get him to stop. Then he beats your children too. Now this is too far, so you go to his family and friends to get them to help you, but they do not want to hear this about your husband. They don’t want to believe it. You take him to court. The court tells him to leave you alone, but he follows you. He threatens you. He threatens your children. What would you do?”

“Kill him.”

“Write that in your blog,” Reza says.

“Iran is different.”

“How? These guys now, if they get anymore power, they are like Stalin.” Reza speculates that the opposition in Iran will get completely shut down. “They are even arresting mullahs,” he says. The reformists are going to find themselves harassed, arrested, dead: that’s how little opposition the hardliners will tolerate. Reza tells me.

It’s hard not to believe him. It’s hard not to despair.

For more on war and propaganda read:

Zakaria in Newsweek:

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/57346

Jahanshah Rashidianon the roots of the current problems on campuses all over Iran:

Under the IRI, nobody is allowed to claim that students’ rights should override any religious and ideological considerations. Actually, the issue of whether Iranian students have the right to have modern and secular universities stands against the Islamic philosophy of IRI’s constitution.

Entertainment is the new propaganda...

...and the old propaganda...


Slightly Off Religious Path, Iranian TV Finds Viewers

They say the government appears to have realized that political programs, such as those showing confessions extracted from democracy advocates in prison, have not achieved its goal of building domestic unity at a time when the country is under intense international pressure for its nuclear program.

“They have learned that if they want their programs to be effective, they should send the message indirectly,” said Abol-Hassan Mokhtabad, a journalist and news media expert. He added that “it is very natural” that the government would “pursue its political goals through them, too.”

One popular mini-series, called “Zero Degree Turn,” depicts the Iranian Embassy in Paris during World War II, when employees forged Iranian passports for European Jews to flee to Iran. The series is built around a love story between an Iranian-Palestinian man and a Jewish Frenchwoman he helps escape to Iran.

BS is BS in any language

Turned on the satellite and **click** Bill O’Reilly:

“I am not worried about North Korea because I think China can contain them. Iran, on the other hand, I do worry about. If they get nuclear weapons they *will* give them to the terrorists and POOF Cleveland goes up in smoke.”

It was the last minute of Oprah.

POOF Cleveland goes up in smoke.

Every time I see these FOX news pundits I am reminded of the regime: They use the same tactics: bs, hyperbole, fear, and ignorance (their own and ours).

Sometimes the regime gets it right. Sometimes FOX news gets it right. Most of the time both depend on our lack of critical thinking skills and, in the case of FOX, our inalienable right to be entertained to numb us into inaction.

15 sailors, 10,460 news items

Last night, while Al Alam and western news organizations were showing the latest confessions from the British soldiers, Iranians were watching Buster Keaton unfold a giant newspaper...


Why is Iran losing its case in international public opinion and why doesn’t the Iranian government care about this?

It is no secret that governments and corporations around the world spend millions, even billions, of $s to improve their public relations. When governments or corporations are under attack or when they see their policies or actions are not received well at the national or, as in this matter, international level, they try to present their side of the story in a compelling and coherent manner. They also seek help or guidance from the partners that they count on to come to their side in times of need. Looking at events surrounding the capture of 15 British sailors in the past 10 days proves that Iran does not care about its public image and does not know how to gain the support of the international community. Iran is speaking with too many voices and has too many different agendas. Iran will come out of this crisis the big loser.

Just a few months ago it seems that the people in the Arab world were supportive of Iran’s policies such as in the case of so-called peaceful nuclear energy and standing up to the west. Now it seems that they are increasingly nervous that Iran might provoke another war. Some guy on the BBC said about this that Iran scored an own goal. (sorry, can’t remember his name)

What Iran needs at this time is a brand new political calculation machine that can better analyze situations both tactically and strategically. If anyone knows of such a machine, there’s a market in Iran.

Why am I saying this? This morning when I got up, I went through all of the comments people left on this blog since the 15 British sailors ware captured on March 23. There is a storm of news articles and opinions about it around the world. I can see very clearly that Iranians writing inside and outside Iran take a similar approach: were the 15 sailors in Iranian waters or not, and if they were, was that right or wrong? I think this shows how black and white we Iranians tend to see international events. I bet there are incidents of foreign ships entering a nation’s territorial waters all the time: these breaches do not become international incidents because they are rationally dealt with and solved. Usually, as I wrote earlier, with a megaphone.

Here I want to give you guys a few statistics regarding a couple of issues Iran is dealing with or needs to deal with. I am hoping to prove to you that whatever Iranians had planned or not planned that the result of their actions is more damaging than the UN resolution against the country. You might say that Iran was good at taking the attention away from the UN resolution, but may have brought extra and more damaging sanctions upon itself through its actions.

Here we go:
If you search for 15 British sailors on Google News, you get 10,460 news items/articles.


Search for subject United Nations Resolution 1747 will deliver 208 hits.

Combination of United Nations Resolution 1747 + 15 British sailors will ONLY deliver 37 hits.

US + 15 British sailors delivered 7,366 hits. In the same time deployment of 21,000 new soldiers in Iraq add only 90 hits

We Iranians should look at what people are saying about us: they say that we have a tradition of taking hostages: there were the Americans taken hostage in their embassy at the start of the resolution, the British sailors that we took a few years ago, and that in the 1800s we killed the Russian ambassador when we attacked his embassy.

This is another disaster for us. It will take years for us to recover from it. It isn’t only the Iranian government that will suffer, it is the Iranian people as well. We need to stop being such losers and so short-sighted. Iranians need to see that we are losing big time in international public opinion. Our image is as important to defend as our territorial borders. Right now the world sees us as out of control. That is a very dangerous image to present to the world.

For the record, these televised confessions that the Iranian government keeps showing on its Arabic channel Al Alam are a big joke and they only serve to make us look stupid. I, like other Iranians, know of many people who were forced into making confessions for television.

People may form an opinion of us in ten minutes that it will take us decades to undo.

Telegraph | News | Suicide bombers on Iran kids' TV

"Ahmadinejad is not a shrewd political operator," said Dr Ansari. "Most Iranians want to focus on domestic problems and this [his anti-Israeli stance] is alarming the international community and creating huge anxiety in Iran."

A British diplomat in London said: "The increase in anti-Israeli propaganda and Ahmadinejad's dangerous rhetoric will only serve to alienate him from his people and further isolate Iran. For the West, as well as Israel, the prospect of this man having his finger on a nuclear button is truly horrifying."">Telegraph | News | Suicide bombers on Iran kids' TV: "'Ahmadinejad is not a shrewd political operator,' said Dr Ansari. 'Most Iranians want to focus on domestic problems and this [his anti-Israeli stance] is alarming the international community and creating huge anxiety in Iran.'

A British diplomat in London said: 'The increase in anti-Israeli propaganda and Ahmadinejad's dangerous rhetoric will only serve to alienate him from his people and further isolate Iran. For the West, as well as Israel, the prospect of this man having his finger on a nuclear button is truly horrifying.'"

Eid is tomorrow…

Update: Welcome to View from Iran...If you feel like it, stay and read a bit.

I know that a lot of people are coming to this site for info on Eid 2007 in Iran... Eid-eh Shoma mubarak. I heard that there will be only one day of Eid this year, but who can be certain? Last year's 2-day celebration was a complete fiasco!

In Amsterdam, where we are now, the streets are filled with Muslims eating ice cream and sweets. Hope you are enjoying yourselves everywhere.

Woke up to stripes of snow on the mountains, rain-charged air, and fantastic after-rain light. It was the happiest I’ve felt in ages.
The end of Ramadan has been announced.
Rumor has it that AN is recalling ambassadors. Will they actually come back? Time will tell.
I do not have a clue about what is going on. The Iranian stock market is crashing. People are not making purchases. Iranians are preparing for sanctions. The regime is preparing for war.
No one wants sanctions… except, perhaps, the hardliners (which hardliners? I am sure there is a faction of hardliners that would prefer not to have sanctions.). Sanctions will be a boost for the hardliners who get stronger on depravation than they do on plenty.
AN promised economic reforms. How will those promises be met with sanctions? I was riding in a taxi when 20% pay raises were announced. “The prices have gone up 40%, but our pay is only going up 20%,” the driver told me. “You need 1 million tuman a month to have a life in Tehran, but all I make is 200,000.”
It’s hard to believe that the rial was ever worth anything.

Jee zuee, what the f***?

Tagged as Iran: politics

The differences between the reformers and the conservatives seem tiny when compared to the differences between the hardliners and the hardliners. The reformers just wanted a kinder, gentler Islamic government. What do the hardliners want? You tell me.
I’m serious. Tell me.
I was riding downtown when I saw the giant posters “World Without Zionism.” A couple of days later, AN makes his firebrand speech. I am so sick of anti-semites (you know I don’t mean Arabs, right folks?) pretending that they are just anti-Zionists. Jezuee, you do business with the Russians for f***’s sake. Oh yeah, and the Chinese.
The weird thing is that most Iranians would be shocked to discover that the rhetoric of their various leaders makes me, at times, physically ill. They would never take it as seriously as I do.
They laugh it off. And I do not want to find out more. I do not want to know if they find AN brave (like a friend told me that many do) or honest or whatever. The Iranians I have met rarely make any connections between their hatred for Israel and anti-Jewishness. Jews are, after all, people of the book. The children of Ibrahim. Right?
Of course, many of the Iranians I have met have never heard of the holocaust. They still appreciate the Germans for fighting those evil Brits. They know next to nothing about World War 2.
Ramadan should be a spiritual time for Muslims. Right? But every fucking year, all over the world, it is used as a time for increased holy violence and vitriolic speech.
This year I stayed away from all Iranian media. I knew that if I watched it, I would be subjected to too much casual hatred.
But, like last year, I am sure that the day after Ramadan, everything will be back to normal. The vitriol will get watered down. Rafsanjani claims that the leader agrees that Israel should not be wiped off the map. If that’s true… what’s next from here?