Iran show trials lambasted

It appears that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his cronies think it is a good idea to put some protesters on trial for disputing the obviously rigged election.

The problem is that it will not stop the protests and if anything will harden opposition to him in the upper circles of power. The man is clearly having a laugh.

What is interesting is that despite putting some prominent people on trial, there is still prominent and open opposition to the result and indeed the trials.

This is not over, not by a long way. What is particularly daft is that it is possible that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad could have won fair and square but that does not matter any more as the result was so obviously rigged that even if a rerun were held no one would believe it if he did win fair and square.

The BBC has this.

No prayers for Iran's Angel of Freedom?

Neda Agha Soltan was just someone in a crowd in Tehran, yet a sniper took her life. All this is now on Youtube.

She has become a symbol, and so the Iranian government dare not let her have a memorial service.

Are they that scared?

Apparently, yes they are.

Protests continue in Iran, and now even the Iranian government admit there were some "irregularities". Those include at least two districts with over 100% turnout (Impressive, but Saddam never managed that!) 4 at pver 90% and a level of switching between reform candidates and Ahmadinajad that is simply not plausable.
The Telegraph has this.

Iran: Another call for a general strike!

From the twitter feeds, it looks as if things are gearing up again.

Mir Hossein Mousavi has called for a general strike if he is arrested.

What is interesting is that there were demonstrations today, and the demonstrators are gearing up for more.

My thoughts and prayers are with them.

Iran: Another day of protests?

So the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decread that the elections were fair, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won and protests must stop.

Well, today we find out if anyone is going to take any notice. It is clear that if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad busses in support he can muster quite a bit of it. On the other hand Mir Hossein Mousavi doesn't have to primarily because he has support in the big cities and his supporters are more motivated.

The Bassij are already about on the streets, but curiously there are not many reports of the Revolutionary Guard turning up. That said one of the defeated candidates was a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guard, and Mousavi was and still is quite well connected.

The odd thing though is that the twitter feeds seemed to have slowed down or dried up. We know that the regime in Iran is trying to arrest as many people as possible including bloggers. Perhaps they are getting to them or they have gone to ground a bit to avoid being captured.

My thoughts and prayers are with the protesters.

The BBC has this.

Iran:Why rig the election?

Protest over the rigged election continue in Iran. No surprise there, the rigging appears to have been obvious, inept and ridiculous.

However you do have to ask why it was rigged.

The thing is that the election was pre rigged. Only those candidates acceptable to the Guardian Council could stand. Mir Hussein Mousavi, as ManWiddicombe points out is no bleeding heart liberal human rights activist.

So if you have fixed the election by hand picking all the candidates, why not stop there?

Besides which, it is entirely possible that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have won the election in a fair election.

Instead of which what they have got is a potential revolution and a weakened state.

The BBC has this.

Protests continue in Iran

Protests are continuing in Iran over the stolen election.

Perhaps that is not news. However what might be news is that Admiral Shamkhani was going to be arrested but wasn't because Iranian Marines told the police where to go.

This comes from this twitter feed from Iranian Student.

I did hear that the admiral had been arrested on other twitter feeds earlier in the day.

What is clear is that nothing is clear! It seems the "ruling class" are split on what is going on. The brighter want to continue the Islamic revolution and recognise it needs to move forward, the perpetually thick think they can hang on to Ahmadinejad.

The BBC have this.

Mousavi rejects recount promise

According to sources in Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi has rejected the offer of a recount. Good call. The ballot boxes will have been well and truly stuffed by now.

Iran is in turmoil right now, demonstrators have been killed and the government is doing what it can to crack down on protests against the rigged election.

There are also rumours that Mir Hossein Mousavi has called off a demonstration today because of fears of staged violence.

See my previous post for twitter news.

The BBC has this.

Updates on Iran

You can get updates on Iran in various places.

Some twitter feeds are:

Here, here, here and here.

There is also a useful blog here.

You can be part of a denial of service attack on pro Ahmadinejad websites by viewing this blog though it will CPU hog until you click stop.

Twitter delays downtime to help in Iran

Twitter did have some downtime scheduled to happen around 9.45 AM Tehran time this morning. This was because their service provider needed to do some maintenance.

Thankfully they have had a rethink and recognised the importance of twitter in the Iranian election protests and have rescheduled the outage to occur in the night in Tehran.

Well done Twitter and well done NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services.

More here.

Hezbollah seen on the streets of Tehran?

Some twitter reports say that some of the security forces they are coming up against are Arabic speaking, presumed Lebanese and Hezbollah.

If true this is disturbing. It shows how desperate Ahmadinejad is getting for a start and desperate men do very bad things.

It is also quite startling. I had Sheik Hassan Nasrallah down as a clever politician who would therefore steer away from taking sides in such an issue. You can say what ever you like that is bad about him, but he knows how to play a power game, even if he does not always win. This strikes me as a lose lose, which makes Nasrallah a desperate man or a fool.

Looking on the bright side, if the protesters in Iran succeed, and Hezbollah are involved with Ahmadinejad then they will be badly damaged.

Iran Update: Iranian students launch massive DOS attack on pro Ahmadinejad websites!

They have set up a blog here:

If you go to this link it will "crash" your browser until you hit stop as it contantly reloads the same pro Ahmadinejad websites. This is quite a clever way of organising a massive denial of service attack without stealing peoples bandwidth.

Go on, you know it makes sense, if you are off for a cuppa, open the link in another page and get a cuppa for a while!

Iran update: General Strike called for tomorrow!

Delving around on Twitter it seems that Moussavi has called a general strike called for tomorrow.

See here.

Iran is revolting!

And no, that is not a comment on Iran's people or indeed the country but the fact that so many people are in open revolt in the streets of Tehran and according to some reports other cities as well.

Estimates of the crowds in Tehran vary from the hundreds of thousands to 2 million. Reporters say that they have not seen anything like this since the revolution in 1979.

Protesters have, according to Channel 4 news have attacked a base of Bassij (militia) loyal to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, burning it down despite being shot at. Casualties have been reported.

The BBC has this, Channel 4 has this.

Is Iran about to have another revolution?

Iran held its presidential elections yesterday. They seemed to go well and people seemed to think things were a bit tight, and there would have to be a run off.

Now today we here that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a resounding victory.

I can't comment on whether he did or not, but what is now happening is there are many accusations of voting irregularities. A large number of Mir Hossein Mousavi supporters are young and feel stifled. In fact Iran is full of young people as it has been having a bit of a baby boom. If they get on the streets and protest about the result in large numbers then it will be interesting to see what happens.

The BBC has this.

Iran on the brink as the working class blame Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The fuel protests in Iran last week seem to be crystallising into a general feeling that president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is letting his core voters, the average working man in Iran down.

Not only do they have to face petrol rationing but also inflation that is much higher than it used to be largely caused by president Ahmadinejad's policies and sanctions.

It seems that he also has some madcap plan to build steel plants well away from the sources or Iron ore as well, which shows just how daft he is.

The regime does appear to be keeping intellectual dissent stifled and the reformists are divided but there is an increasing amount of grass roots discontent on the streets.

I expect Iran will try to pull some sort of stunt to get its people to unite behind it. It would be a mistake to help them out. What we need to do is quietly increase the pressure and avoid sabre rattling.

The Telegraph has this.

Is there going to be a Revolution in Iran?

For some time now I and many others have been hearing about rumblings on the streets of Tehran, and indeed other parts of Iran. The population of Iran is becoming younger by the day and frankly they are not happy.

Iran is a religious country full of traditions, but people do need jobs and frankly the economy stinks. Inflation is running at 20 to 30%. Not an issue that would bring about a revolution on its own, but it adds to the mix. Then there is unemployment which is high and growing, disaffection with the rules of the theocracy and last but not least the sudden imposition of petrol rationing.

Iran does not have much in the way of refining capacity so although it produces and exports a lot of oil, it does not produce petrol. The problem here is that it then has to import petrol, which it then subsidises, at immense cost to the treasury. Iran is running out of the cash to buy petrol.

Obviously the answer is simple, or at least it should be, Iran has some very clever scientists capable of building some test nuclear plant and clearly seems to think it has the money to do so, so it clearly can and indeed ought to develop its own refineries. It isn't. Instead it is spending vast amounts of money not only on its own defence, but a nuclear program which is causing the country immense problems and money on mucking about in other peoples countries as well, like hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah to fund the rebuilding the the Lebanon, a war which the average Iranian in the street did not ask for or want to be involved in.

Iran's economy is slowly collapsing when it should be reaching dizzying heights. It is doing so because Iran's government has grand plans of its own. The people don't care. They want jobs and security.

So what happened when petrol was rationed? Well the rationing was imposed without consultation or advanced warning to anyone, including the petrol station owners or the police. The result was riots and petrol stations being burnt down. The text messaging service has been closed down so that people can't organise protests and journalists are being ordered not to report any trouble. Clearly the government is under pressure.

What the Iranian government needs right now is some external threat to unite the people. It had that in the sabre rattling over its nuclear plans, and it helped. We need to remove the obvious threats to Iran so that it can't unite its people (as well as making sure they can a news service that tells them how bad things really are in Iran). In short we need to appear to take the pressure off.

That does not mean we stop working on its nuclear program, it just means we do so quietly and carefully so as not to give the Iranian regime ammunition to unite the Iranian people behind it.

The BBC has this on the fuel protests.

Nobody was responsible!

It seems that the report into the abduction of the naval personnel and subsequent media storm was unable to find the person responsible for giving the go ahead for the sale of the stories.

WHAT? YOU ARE HAVING A LAUGH?

We were told that a report landed on Des Browne's desk saying that they should be allowed to sell their stories, and that he did not approve them but did not disapprove either until all the rather obvious fuss kicked off. (see Iran Crisis passim)

Did some mindless typist think oh no I have got nothing to do, I ought not to waste my time playing solitaire or surfing the web, so must type a memo? Oh what should it be about? Oh what has been in the news?

Just how on earth did a note turn up on Des Browne's desk, for him to make a decision (by law it was him and only him who could make it) without anyone taking responsibility for authoring it?

Have New Labour really gone that far that there is no responsibility in government at all? Anywhere?

The BBC has this on the reports into the hostage scandal.

Brown evades question over Iran?

According to the BBC Gordon Brown has "evaded" questions over whether he would rule out military action over Iran's nuclear program.

What?

What is he supposed to do? Announce an invasion right now or rule out military action altogether?

That is just plain bonkers.

I suspect many people in government, the military and the public would rather not attack Iran, but ruling it out won't help. I don't think sabre rattling will help resolve the issue but not having options other than diplomatic ones is a sure fire way to fail.

The only question is why is the BBC taking this obviously judgemental line in its choice of headline. The article itself is not as bad.

You can read what the BBC has to say here.

So should Swiss Toni, aka Des Browne resign?

My view is yes, and here is why.

There are three separate areas of failure.

The first is the capture of the service personnel in the first place. As I have commented before, during the first gulf war our forces did not stray into this area and the Foreign and Commonwealth office had a desk to monitor positions of inbound shipping and say which ones could and could not be intercepted, based on position. This procedure seems not to have been followed, and Des Browne and others have failed here.

Also worthy of note is that the helicopter providing air cover had to return to the HMS Cornwall because it was running out of fuel. Clearly it is daft to have forces exposed in or near disputed waters, near a country that has form for taking our Marines hostage, without adequate protection.

There will be an inquiry into this, but ultimately Des Browne has not secured enough funding to carry out the task at hand. Had he done so then there would have been more hardware in the areas.

The second area of failing is the nature of the training for the personnel involved. They were clearly in a front line role, with the risk of capture, without the necessary training to survive it. This is doubly concerning in the Royal Marines involved as they definitely should have been so trained.

Lastly there is the fiasco surrounding the sale of the stories. Des Browne appears not to have known or inquired what the rules were on the sales of stories. Had he done so he would have none that the circumstances must be exceptional, and He was the only person who could have approved them.

Now it is true these circumstances were exceptional. They were so because as far as I can remember never has a member of Her Majesty's forces nipped on telly so fast to apologies quite so fast. The rest of the circumstances are not exceptional.

Newspapers regularly wave cash under peoples noses for stories, it has happened before in MOD cases and will happen again. The stock reply in the past has been no. What for example happened to our captured marines who were held for 3 days? Did they get such permission.

We have had soldiers captured before and released before. Nothing exceptional there.

In fact the only thing that is exceptional is how easy it was for the Iranians to get the captives cooperation. It has been said by many commentators that they had a hard time. Compared to what? A walk in the park? Well yes a much harder time than that. Compared to Flight Lieutenant John Nichol who was shot down over Iraq in the first Gulf war and physically tortured over months? I don't think so. Indeed the Iranians have there own just released captive who claims to have been tortured over months. So the reality is that for the line of work, they did not have that hard a time.

So what were the Admirals who hatched this propaganda plan thinking? They allowed the stories to be sold and according to some reports encouraged it, to counter Iranian propaganda, by showing that the sailors and marines only broke after appalling treatment. Clearly they did not debrief either Faye Turney or Athur Batchelor properly, because had they done so, and realised what they were going to say to the press they would have denied permission.

Now not only is there the embarrassment that some of our service personnel are so ill disciplined that they carry iPods, and think it noteworthy that they are taken when captured there is the rather obvious effect on the morale of all our other service personnel who bear their situation with much more fortitude. No one seems to have asked how they would feel upon hearing that people were being paid for being captured, and crying like a baby? I can tell you that they are more than a tad upset!

There may be inquiries, but as Liam Fox, Conservative Shadow Defence minister said in today's House of Commons debate, Des "Swiss Toni" has shown a lack of political judgement.

Tony Blair doesn't want a with hunt. Well that is just tough. I want heads to roll, both in the Admiralty and the MOD, including Des Browne. I can't agree with Iain Dale who thinks that he survives for now. he should have gone already.

For more on the hostage crisis see here.

Defence Chiefs backing Browne

Apparently the defence chiefs are backing Des Browne, according to this article on the BBC's website.

He has done some good for the military such as get them pay rises for example.

Seems to me that is missing the point. The Admirals, Generals and Air Chiefs don't fight wars, it is the sailors soldiers, and air crew who do. It seems that many of them are deeply unhappy about the whole Iran hostage thing, and have no confidence in Des Browne. So unless the defence chiefs fancy getting in the front line themselves, perhaps they should consult more widely.

I was listening the the Today program on BBC Radio 4 this morning and caught an interview between two people, one of whom was Lewes Page, author of Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs, and formerly of the Royal Navy . He thought that Des Browne resigning would be pointless, but did say that Admirals could as the Navy has more than a few.

One of the curious things about our armed forces is that we still have roughly the same number of chiefs as we did in the Second World War. Clearly this costs a lot of money, because these people not only have salaries, but they also have staff. In short in needs looking at.

For more on the Iran Hostage crisis see here.