Make it 1979 all over again

[The worst was yet to come. The late Shah]



What the leaders of the free world can do to support the people of Iran



Looking back from the perspective of more than three decades, the exile of the Shah of Iran and the country's fall to Islamist tyranny in 1979 was arguably the West's worst geo-strategic setback in the second half of the 20th century and doubly disastrous for Israel.

Those who had hankered for change on the grounds that anything would be an improvement over the Shah and his Savak secret police were mistaken. Once in power, the revolution began consuming its own.

A coalition of middle-class reformists, students, intellectuals, leftists and Muslim hard-liners had created an enormous populist movement that forced the cancer-ridden Shah from the throne. But the religious extremists, galvanized by their forbidding leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were the organizational backbone of the revolution. By intimidating, torturing or killing anyone who stood in their way, they solidified their grip on power.

Today, however, this Khomeinist regime has squandered its popularity and is the target of widespread bitterness, for its suppression of freedoms once tolerated and for stealing outright an anyway rigged presidential election. The core of the opposition comes from disenchanted Islamists and has spread like wildfire to other sectors.

As if to replicate the fall of the Shah, the opposition - though fragmented and lacking a clear plan - has exploited political and religious holidays to send masses of its supporters into the streets. Many now risk being openly photographed.

In response, the Khomeinists have fired at protesters in Teheran, even as the unrest has spread to Tabriz, Shiraz and elsewhere. Despite the regime's best censorship efforts, the world is watching a blood-and-fire uprising in the streets.

On Sunday, an adult nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was assassinated. He was among some 15 killed by Khomeinist forces as Shi'ite Muslims marked Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein - and is the source of the schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

When a Shi'ite government shoots Shi'ites on Ashura, its legitimacy has reached a nadir.

The widespread rioting indicates that regime transformation - if not the outright change many Westerners want - is within reach. The regular police are unable (sometimes unwilling) to stop the protesters.

But Khomeinist shock troops can be expected to do whatever it takes to retain power. Leading opposition figures have been picked up by the secret police. Since the bogus elections in June, at least 400 dissidents have been killed (some sadistically tortured) and over 50 people are missing.

Still, the authorities must be loath to defend "Islamic government" with an uninhibited slaughter of believers by the thousands.

IN SOLIDARITY with ordinary Iranians who are risking so much, the minimum leaders of freedom loving countries ought to do is keep their Teheran-based ambassadors home beyond the Christmas/New Year holidays.

Moreover, why should we not see one Western leader after another interrupt their own vacations to personally speak out in support of the Iranian people's campaign to transform their political system?

As we were going to press, US President Barack Obama was scheduled to interrupt his getaway in Hawaii to speak to reporters. We are hopeful he'll talk about Iran because he said this to the mullahs in his inaugural address: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Those fists are more hatefully clenched than ever.

Will Japan's new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama raise his voice for the Iranian protesters? France's Sarkozy? Britain's Brown? Germany's Merkel? Not their foreign ministers or spokesmen, but the leaders themselves.

This is also the time for Western countries to accelerate clandestine backing for separatist forces in Iran. Selig S. Harrison, a renowned regional expert, writing in The New York Times, called the Kurdish, Arab and Azeri desire for autonomy the greatest threat to the Persian elite.

Since this regime cannot be usefully engaged, it needs to be destabilized - from every possible direction.

The more the Iranian people believe the free world is behind them, the more willing they will be to stay in the streets - and the harder it will be for the Khomeinists to muster the nerve to crush their overwhelming sentiment for change.

Nightmare for air travelers ...

Expect avoidable delays

Against the relentless menace of Islamist terrorism, Westerners need to find a middle ground between a state of permanent - and unsustainable - high-alert, and the reckless attitude of "What, me worry?"

The days when travelers could journey by air without fear of their planes being hijacked are history. So, too, are the days when Israeli authorities could reasonably think that removing security checkpoints in Judea and Samaria would have no fatal consequences.

First the West Bank: The security services are to be commended for an outstanding operation Saturday which liquidated three Fatah terrorists responsible for last Thursday's drive-by murder of Avshalom Chai, a 45-year-old kindergarten teacher and father of seven. One of Chai's killers had been released recently from an Israeli prison; another had promised to eschew terror in return for amnesty.

The killers were tracked to two dwellings in Nablus's Old City, part of a larger sector under Palestinian security control. The cell may have been Hizbullah-run, or overseen by extremist Fatah leaders, or may have acted autonomously. We know only that ballistic tests connected the three to the Chai shooting.

The European-funded advocacy group B'Tselem criticized Israel's failure to take the hardened terrorists alive. But from the data available, we believe that Israeli forces - operating for hours in a hostile environment - acted prudently. We note that B'Tselem did condemn the murder of Chai by reiterating its view that deliberate attacks against civilians are a war crime.

It's hard to know whether reinstating the roadblocks in the greater Nablus area, which the government recently removed at the behest of the Obama administration, will prevent future attacks against Israeli motorists in the northern West Bank. Checkpoints cause inconvenience to Palestinian commuters by extending journey times. But there is often no way to intercept terrorists without inconveniencing the general public - not on a northern West Bank road and not at international airports.

Those who defend freedom must make it hard for terrorists to disrupt the lives of innocents while minimizing the misery caused them in the process.

ONE way to reduce inconvenience and increase security at busy airports is by a greater use of profiling. Farouk Abdulmutallab should not have been free to try and blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 289 people on board over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Profiling would likely have identified the 23-year-old engineering student as a potential Islamist terrorist; he would have been methodically searched and stopped at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

Abdulmutallab, the privileged son of a banker, got his US visa in London in 2008. Family members told The Daily Telegraph that the bomber had been radicalized while a student in Britain. To his credit, Abdulmutallab's father recently warned American consular officials in Lagos that his son posed a danger. The young man was then placed on a catch-all anti-terrorism database, but not on the "no fly" blacklist that would have prevented him from boarding any US-bound airliner.

Mercifully, an alert passenger subdued Abdulmutallab just as he was igniting his explosive device. Those responsible for security in Lagos (which he may have reached from Yemen) and in Amsterdam (where he changed planes for Detroit) need to explain how they let him get on an airliner with a concealed syringe and the crystalline high explosive, pentaerythritol, sown into his underwear, reportedly, in a condom.

IN response to the Abdulmutallab affair, US and European authorities are initiating more stringent and time-consuming searches of all passengers. Absurdly, travelers headed for the US may be required to remain seated during the final hour of their flights - no toilet - and will not be allowed to keep anything on their laps.

Rather than adding profiling to security procedures, thereby identifying possible Islamist terrorists - protecting the rights of the many while infringing minimally on the rights of the very few - all passengers will be subjected to unnecessary, sometimes painful, inconvenience.

The alternative to profiling is requiring all passengers to go through whole-body imaging scanners that can reveal objects beneath a person's clothes. But these devices are pricy and raise all sorts of civil liberties issues.

Unless Western decisionmakers reverse course, their adamant and misguided refusal to utilize profiling will senselessly subject millions of air passengers to a form of collective punishment.

Does Kadima deserve to live?

[Profound ideological differences...not]


Netanyahu tries to throw a party


Hearken back to the great ideological divisions of the Zionist movement: Weizmann versus Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion versus Begin, Mapai versus Herut.

In stark contrast, the waning days of "the Naughties" will be remembered for Binyamin Netanyahu's thwarted machinations to entice Kadima Knesset members to quit their party and join his government - not out of principle, but for patronage.

While Israelis worried that Netanyahu was exhausting himself grappling with the emotionally draining Gilad Schalit affair (he kept rushing home to rest and take medication for a sore throat), it turned out he had the energy to oversee the final moves in a months-long behind-the-scenes scheme to dismantle Kadima by luring at least seven of its 28 legislators into joining his coalition. He offered cars, offices, budgets, even a golden parachute to nervous defectors.

The late Yitzhak Rabin similarly enticed Tsomet Knesset members Gonen Segev, Esther Salmovitz and Alex Goldfarb to defect his way in 1995. Their support proved critical in passing the Oslo II accords 61-59. Rabin's scheming ultimately shattered Tsomet, but at least he was inspired by principle - an ill-fated quest to make peace with Yasser Arafat.

In contrast, Netanyahu's desire to splinter Kadima involved no discernible matter of principle, merely a desire to widen his political base and a goodly measure of revenge.

Tzipi Livni put her interests first in March 2009, by refusing to join a Netanyahu-led government which could have been stable, centrist and reformist. Instead, she forced him to cobble together a coalition that depends on the Orthodox parties, thereby stymieing desperately needed electoral reform, a gateway to solving a range of systemic problems plaguing the political system. Livni haughtily predicted Netanyahu's government would fall within a year and deported herself as the premier-in-waiting. Meantime, she alienated many in her own Knesset faction.

YESTERDAY, Netanyahu finally held an oft-delayed meeting with Livni on national security issues and, citing "the security situation," unexpectedly invited Kadima to join a national unity government. Livni is suspiciously mulling the offer.

By raiding her party, Netanyahu was demonstrating that his grip on power was as solid as her's was shaky. Though he didn't gain any Kadima defectors, he did expose the party's fragile political condition. Under these circumstances, Livni's influence in a Netanyahu government would now be limited.

Even without an assist from Netanyahu, it had become increasingly clear that Livni's flash-in-the-pan popularity was not going to translate into political substance. She and her No. 2, Shaul Mofaz, despise each other. They waited until this week's defection crisis before meeting yesterday to discuss a way forward, but still could not agree. Neither appears to place the interests of Kadima at the top of their agenda, though a split will strengthen neither.

WHATEVER else Netanyahu's gamesmanship foreshadows, it is testament to the end of ideology in Israeli politics. There are few philosophical differences between Netanyahu, Labor's Ehud Barak and Livni. It's all personal. They and their "lean and hungry" understudies agree on just about everything, from how to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians (assuming Israel had a peace partner) to the fundamentals of domestic economic policy.

This realignment of the body politic is, alas, unaccompanied by a mechanism to implement the will it reflects.

AMIDST all of this week's plotting and maneuvering, there is a larger good at stake.

Netanyahu has dragged the Likud kicking and screaming to the political center, sometimes employing methods not found in Roberts Rules of Order. The possibility that his party could yet be hijacked by the radical Feiglin camp cannot be ruled out. Labor, meanwhile, is moribund.

That's why it is essential there to be a viable "third way" party to serve as a potential vehicle for progress and reform. Kadima garnered the most votes in the last two elections. It still harbors a Sharon-esque sentiment for pragmatism that's worth salvaging. Were Livni and Mofaz to knock each other out, perhaps a consensus-building viable new leader would emerge.

The end of ideology should have meant an end to pointless polarization, not an end to principle. The Left cannot promise "peace now" and the Right cannot realistically preserve "Greater Israel."

Ariel Sharon's Kadima established an alternative view to such false either/or political choices - one that's now embraced by the four largest parties in the Knesset.

Despite its failings, Kadima and its legacy are worth preserving.

Pushing lovers of liberty to their limits

[One mullah left the Dark Side.]



A gesture for Montazeri

In the era before cable and satellite television, the news programs on America's three commercial broadcast networks carried a great deal more influence than today. Perhaps that is now beginning to change.

Veteran journalist Diane Sawyer marked her 64th birthday on Tuesday by debuting as anchor of the still popular ABC TV evening newscast. Her first coup - an interview conducted in Copenhagen on Friday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Trying to sway American public opinion is plainly important to him. Luckily, he's no master of public relations. Ahmadinejad gets bogged down in polemic and circumlocution when a straight answer would serve him better.

On sanctions - he said bring it on; I don't like being threatened while simultaneously being invited to negotiate.

He rejected a Times of London report, datelined Washington, which claimed Iran is testing a nuclear triggering device as "fundamentally not true." The story was based on "fabricated" papers "disseminated by the American government."

Ahmadinejad's message is that there is no Iranian bomb in the works. He told a home audience that if there was one he'd be "brave enough" to say so.

And when Sawyer asked point-blank: "Will you say to the American people, tonight, that Iran will never weaponize nuclear material?" Ahmadinejad replied: "We have got a saying Iran which says 'how many times shall I repeat the same thing?' You should say something only once. We have said once that we don't want nuclear bomb. We don't accept it."

Reassured? Neither are we.

Was he concerned that his bellicosity, his flouting of Security Council resolutions and International Atomic Energy Agency rebukes might prompt some country - or countries - to launch a military strike?

Ahmadinejad put on his best Dirty Harry expression: "We don't welcome confrontation, but we don't surrender to bullying either."

Asked about three youthful American adventurers who foolishly strayed into the Islamic Republic from the Kurdish region of Iraq and have been imprisoned, Ahmadinejad insinuated they were spies. When Sawyer said their parents were desperate to contact them, Ahmadinejad offered this non-sequitur: There are 3.5 million prisoners in America.

BACK IN Iran, the death, at 87, of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri - a founding father of the Islamic Republic, who crafted its judiciary system - has galvanized dissident politicians and clerics.

Montazeri's funeral in Qom on Monday brought out tens of thousands of frenzied mourners chanting "God is Great!" When a tepid letter of condolence from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was read, the crowd roared: "Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!"

May it be so.

Let's not fool ourselves; the Iranian opposition is not Western-oriented and certainly not agnostic on Israel. Still, it is significant that former presidential hopefuls Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, along with former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, have all latched onto Montazeri as a symbol.

Long ago, the revered cleric broke with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini over the regime's murderous brutality. Recently, Montazeri challenged a basic Iranian myth by calling the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Teheran "mistaken." Significantly, he issued a fatwa against investing in a nuclear bomb. After the contested elections in June, he called for the release of all political prisoners. He courageously criticized the post-election executions carried out by the regime as an affront to Islam.

Unfortunately, for those of us who'd like to see regime change, the opposition is not yet a cohesive movement and has no concrete strategy. Its limited goals are to overturn the rigged elections and increase freedom of expression.

MEANWHILE, Western leaders are arriving, glacially, at the realization that Iran's duplicitous determination to manufacture nuclear weapons - and perfect the means to deliver them - is not going to be reversed by diplomacy. The Chinese and Russians are likely to enfeeble any effort at a robust sanctions regime; Germany and Italy will find it hard to reduce their dependency on Iranian lucre.

But there is something that's doable right now and doesn't require financial sacrifice or very much diplomatic daring: To signal support for the Iranian opposition, countries which value liberty should opt to indefinitely extend the vacations of their ambassadors now on home-leave for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Is that too much to ask in honor of Montazeri's memory?

Schalit Case: Between Emotional Blackmail & a Heavy Heart

Fateful decision

A portentous decision on whether to trade Gilad Schalit - who has been in Hamas captivity for an excruciating 1,275 days - for a thousand imprisoned Arab terrorists is now being finalized. The raw anguish of Gilad's parents, Noam and Aviva, has been imprinted on the Israeli consciousness since their son fell into enemy hands on June 25, 2006.

Our hearts tell us to pay Hamas's price.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his top ministers, however, have the terrifying responsibility of acting with both their hearts and minds. Their deliberations cut to the essence of what it means to be Israeli.

Israelis do not want a second Ron Arad affair; Gilad is now so close to freedom, he's virtually touchable. For him to slip away now would be devastating.

Paying Hamas's price, though, would constitute a second "Jibril Deal." That 1983 prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saw 1,150 Arabs exchanged for three Israeli soldiers. One of those Arabs was Ahmed Yassin; others would become his lieutenants. Together they created Hamas.

There are doubtlessly men of Yassin's "caliber" among the 1,000 Hamas seeks. After his release, Yassin was re-arrested, only to be released in 1997 by Binyamin Netanyahu - during his first term as premier - in yet another prisoner exchange.

Beyond the moral bankruptcy of rewarding past evil, with history as our guide - and with heavy hearts - we assert that Israelis will die if the government obtains Gilad's freedom by acting only with its heart.

Things were not supposed to get this far. Days after our Gilad was taken, Hamas demanded the 1,000 prisoners. Ehud Olmert responded: "We won't let anyone believe that kidnapping is a tool to bring Israel to its knees." Privately, however, the then-premier gave Egypt the green light to commence bargaining. Those talks are culminating now under Netanyahu.

Israel concurrently tried pressuring Hamas. The IDF quickly rounded up 64 Hamas "parliamentarians" in the West Bank; it launched Operation Summer Rains sending tanks and commandos into Gaza in search of Gilad. (When this affair is over, Israelis deserve to know why a soldier held within driving distance of the Ministry of Defense could not be rescued.)

By early July 2006, dozens of Palestinian gunmen had been killed, others taken prisoner, to exact a price for Schalit's continued captivity. Israel temporarily re-took parts of Gaza - for the first time since the 2005 disengagement. Hamas absorbed these blows and responded with intensified shelling against Sderot and Ashkelon.

Relentless Hamas rocket attacks ultimately led to Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. All in all, since Schalit was taken, Hamas's recklessness has cost the lives of well over a thousand Palestinians and left a trail of devastation in Gaza. Yet Hamas remained steadfast in its demands certain that Israel would ultimately capitulate. Indeed, within days of Schalit's capture, then-internal security minister Avi Dichter said publicly what Hamas wanted to hear: that Palestinian prisoners should be released for Schalit's freedom.

NOW, Israelis will be assured that the most lethal of the freed prisoners will be confined to Gaza or exiled abroad; as if there is no two-way traffic in Gaza's tunnels.

And with the absolute sincerity of an alcoholic having one final drink before going cold turkey, the government will assert that the Schalit deal will be Israel's last lop-sided prisoner exchange.

A deal will buttress what Palestinians already believe, that Israelis understand only force. Tomorrow's Palestinian leaders, therefore, will be that much more obdurate. It will become still harder for a credible Palestinian leader - no matter how ostensibly moderate - to abjure violence.

Stopping on a dime will mean that the pundits and politicians who orchestrated the campaign that took matters this far will have some explaining to do. If Netanyahu does pull back, it will be because Israelis were bluffing ourselves as much as we were bluffing Hamas.

A "no" now would take Hamas down a peg. Netanyahu could directly address the Islamists' disappointed constituents, emphasizing that meeting Hamas's rapacious demands would have dishonored him and caused Israel to lose face. Palestinians will understand that. So will Israelis.

He should frankly acknowledge that he was ready for an honorable deal. Indeed, he must stress that he remains ready for an honorable deal.

THE HARROWING ordeal of Gilad's selfless parents touches us all. Their son has become our son.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu must reverse course. The killers should remain incarcerated; if they don't, more Israelis will surely die.

####

A new survey that came across my desk this morning conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between December 9-15, 2009 found that a slim majority (52%) believes Israel should pay almost any price to return prisoners of war. I thought the figure would have been much higher. Interesting.