Riehl World View

Israel To Share Intel On Iran

Pundita has the details.

Shipment To Iran Halted

Banned cargo on the way to Iran is being held in the UAE. Resolution 1747 is here in pdf and concerns non-proliferation of nuclear materials. You can read about 1737 here, it too deals with nuclear proliferation.

In a further ratcheting up of the UAE's determination to curb misuse of its ports, an official there confirmed that the cargo, detained for testing last month, contained materials banned by UN Security Council resolutions 1737 and 1747, while the purchaser of the materials had also been barred by the same resolutions.

"The UAE wants to be seen to take action as they haven't been so proactive in the past on, for example, dual-use materials," says Neil Patrick, analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organisation.

Bolton On The NIE

Former ambassador John Bolton has an item on the recently released NIE in the Washington Post today. His main points being:

- the US Intelligence community seems more interested in playing politics and influencing policy, than they do in gathering intelligence

- the newly released NIE isn't much different than the 2005 NIE and it has always been the known civilian nuclear program in Iran that is of concern, as that could so easily be transferred to military use once the basic technology is mastered

- the NIE has only a moderate level of confidence in its conclusions and is also contradictory

- the NIE is based mostly on supposedly new intelligence, the veracity of which is far from clear, some of it from the IAEA, which most agree appears to be rather soft on Iran

- in part, the document was formulated by ex-State Department types who had these same views years ago

- and lastly, that the Bush administration doesn't appear to have a good handle on how this information is released to the public, or how to respond when it is

Frank Rich: Slapped Down On Iran?

Frank Rich seems to have worked himself into a bit of a tizzy over Iran and Hillary, suggesting Iran could help spell defeat for the Democrats in 2008. That aside, I decided to follow a link he provided to see if it matched his rhetoric. Perhaps he's caught Glenn Greenwald syndrome, linking things that substantively don't measure up:

... a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.

Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week.

First Newsweek's supposed slap down:

In at least one case the administration seems to be overreaching: Defense officials tell NEWSWEEK that evidence of the Iranian government's shipping arms to the Taliban remains tentative at best.

Anonymous Defense officials? Without knowing who they are, it isn't even clear if they'd be privy to any intelligence that exists. The Washington Post did a little better than that when they covered the subject in some depth. And one of their sources was Sec Def Gates, who Rich sites as a "saner military mind" in his column linked above. Note the quote from Gates in bold that both acknowledges the shipments and their size. You'd think Rich would know what a slap down is given his history of being kicked around the blogosphere. Apparently not.

Iranian Arms Destined for Taliban Seized in Afghanistan, Officials Say
'Large' Shipment Said to Include Armor-Piercing Bombs

An Iranian arms shipment destined for the Taliban was intercepted Sept. 6 by the international force in Afghanistan in what appears to be an escalating flow of weaponry between the two former enemies, according to officials from countries in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The NATO-led force interdicted two smaller shipments of similar weapons from Iran into southern Helmand province April 11 and May 3.

U.S. officials began to publicly accuse Iran of aiding the Taliban several months ago. R. Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said in June that there was "irrefutable evidence" Iran was using its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to arm the Taliban.

At the time, other officials were more cautious about earlier intercepted arms shipments. U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said there was no concrete evidence that the Iranian government was backing the Taliban. But he said it was possible that some elements in Iran were aiding the Taliban as a way of hedging their bets in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said then that it was likely that Iranian officials at least knew about the shipments. "I haven't seen any intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities that we're seeing, it is difficult to believe that it's associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it's taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government," he said in June.

The Iranian Women Rugby Conundrum

Okay, apparently "powerful" Iranian women have taken to playing Rugby ... in modest dress. I think this is just a clever ploy to keep them from playing softball, because lord knows what kind of women play softball ... and they certainly don't have any of those people there.

In early 2006, Gorgan University advised me to play rugby because of my physical power," said the well-built Shahsavari, who overcame objections from her family who worried about her travelling to training from a Tehran suburb.

Post Columbia: Iran Postures As Soldiers Die

Quite a sad juxtaposition in the headlines we have coming over the wires tonight. One from Iran and one out of Britain, not the US.

President (Ahmadinejad) says Iran has an int'l mission

Iran 'arming Taliban with roadside bombs'

I think back to the recent, supposedly brave and scathing denouncement of Iranian President Ahmadinejad by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, and I can't seem to recall any defining moment or statement meant to steel the world to confront a malevolent evil bent on imposing its theocratic vision upon at least the Middle East, if not the world.

In fact, with the Webb Amendment, co-sponsored by likely Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the candidate I'd wager Bollinger will most likely support, the American Congress led by the Democrat Party actually seeks to tie an American President's hands in that regard. And all this while brave young men and women with our coalition forces deploy, fight and sometimes die in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands reaching out from the long arm of Ahmadinejad. And make no mistake, he's boasting about it as it unfolds.

Words fail, just as it was a foregone conclusion that the words of Columbia's President would fail to make any difference in the grand scheme of this pending confrontation. Perhaps in the realpolitik of our less than ideal world it isn't quite yet time to militarily confront the known and now well-documented and already costly threat from Iran. Perhaps. But young lives will vanish in the interim, that's just the truth.

And in their mourning, we will need more words. I wonder, were Bollinger enlisted to eulogize just some few of our best that will die at the end of a long Iranian arm in the interim, would he sound so brave, so noble standing over their graves?

Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I think his words would simply fail, again.

Shows Over - Let The Games Continue And The Eventual Fireworks Begin

Hot Air has edited video of Ahmadinejad at the UN. The New York Times writes it up here. Observers of this sort of an international affair know what's coming next, even if it will be interminably long in the coming.

Barring some sudden, unexpected turn, we'll hear talk, much of it bluster from Iran. ElBaradei at the IAEA will strain to have his weak voice heard, making it all the more difficult for the civilized world to eventually get around to dealing with the thugs in Iran seeking nuclear weapons.

That France is already using such strong rhetoric is a good thing, but only in as much as it keeps America from having to do that very thing. The two most frequently used expressions over the next couple of months will be all options are on the table and we want to solve this diplomatically. And they'll be about as meaningful as re-reading a boring book for the fourteenth time while not quite recalling the ending, though knowing that only the ending is actually worth the read.

Everyone has and continues to go through the motions - Columbia, the UN and its various members. And so we'll go on until one day most likely in late Spring when Matt Drudge gets to haul out his flashing light and announce that someone, America, Israel, a coalition? has begun bombing Iran.

So, let the games continue and wait for the fireworks at the end. Not much else to do, really.

This Is Freaking Awesome

I just realized something after clicking through an Insta-link to Classical Values.

Greenwald: All of the hysteria over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speaking at Columbia University is so tiresome for so many reasons....

CV: So says Glenn Greenwald, who despite the topic, can't seem to find the space to utter a single word about the savage executions of gays in Iran (much less their overall plight.)

Expanding upon Ahmadinejad's logic, there's no need to click CV's link to Greenwald, so I left it out. I mean, I shouldn't feel obligated to read someone who doesn't even exist, right?

More seriously, as I recall, Greenwald's big thing was always eliminationist rhetoric. It's actually pretty sad to see Greenwald and so many others on the Left remain mostly silent in the face of what is probably the most eliminationist form of rhetoric one can utter. Iran's theocracy doesn't simply rob certain gay individuals of their life through hanging. Denying the existence of the entire community is so beyond what one will find from even the most puritanical of Andy Sullivan's Christianists, it should be recognized as precisely what it is - it underpins the Iranian state's ability to execute homosexuals at will until Ahmadinejad's statement is actually true. And it isn't only Iran:

A UN vote on homosexual human rights was yesterday derailed at the last minute by an alliance of disapproving Muslim countries.

The UN had been due to vote on the matter for the first time in its almost 60-year history, but five Muslim countries delayed the vote until today and introduced amendments designed to kill it off.

The amendments remove all references to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and render the resolution meaningless.

The Corner Misses The Point, Badly

Good grief. This from NRO. Schiffren goes on about the gay meme based upon some other observations. But it might have been nice had she been really paying attention and applying some reason over and above what one might expect from a prime time TV fan.

I got a little bored during the science and technology part of the blather and wandered across Amsterdam Avenue over to the well guarded main campus.

Anyone listening closely should have been able to comprehend that Ahmadinejad's discussion of science and technology was about the search for truth and it was based upon the notion that to discern truth one must be free of ideology and bias due to a pure understanding of Islam via The Koran. That was why he preceded all that science and technology stuff with the little intro on divine wisdom. And the particular truth he was riffing around had to do with the Holocaust.

It's precisely that point, which the Left and apparently some on the Right miss that makes Iran and Ahmadinejad so dangerous. They don't call it a theocracy for nothing, babe.

Mahmou-mou At Columbia

Update: The no homosexuals in Iran video. No homosexuals, no Holocaust, no human rights issues, maybe Ahmadinedjad just has a problem with his H's?

Update: Ahmadineedaclosetjob? There are no homosexuals in Iran?

Update: I'm watching via CBS - would someone tell the windbag from Columbia this isn't about him? Geesh. He's gone on so long in his intro, however demeaning to Mahmou-mou, it'll be that much easier for him to dodge.

h/t Hot Air - I listened to the NPC broadcast via C-SPAN, could the moderator have been just a bit more of a simpering fool? What was it he found so funny throughout the entire thing? Could it be his reporter's detachment prevents him from appreciating the gravity of this entire situation? It sure sounded like it. And Mahmou-mou screwed up at least once, basically conceding that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq. Don't wait for the journalists in attendance to point that out too much.

According to Hot Air CBS is going to carry Mahmou-mou's address at Columbia via the Internets. What fun. More volume for the delusional Imightneedajob, who can't seem to answer a single question honestly. Every time he steam-rolled the NPC moderator, the moderator moved on with a hearty laugh, or polite chuckle. What a jerk joke. No wonder he runs the association, as opposed to working as an actual reporter somewhere. He wouldn't last five minutes, such a total light-weight he was