Of course, nobody really knows, but it is interesting to read how the gipper reacted to Israel's surprise bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, courtesy of James Bennet:

“I swear I believe Armageddon is near,” Ronald Reagan confided to his diary on June 7, 1981. He had just learned that the Israelis had bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Rather than consult with the Americans in advance, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had informed the United States only “after the fact,” Reagan noted tersely, and was insisting that “the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel.” Begin felt he couldn’t risk waiting until the French, who had sold Iraq the reactor, actually shipped uranium to power it, “because of the radiation that would be loosed over Baghdad.”

“I can understand his fear but feel he took the wrong option,” Reagan wrote. “He should have told us & the French, we could have done something to remove the threat.”

But there was no question of condemning the assault. “We are not turning on Israel—that would be an invitation for the Arabs to attack,” Reagan continued. “It’s time to raise Hell world wide for a settlement of the ‘middle-east’ problem. What has happened is the result of fear & suspicion on both sides. We need a real push for a solid peace.”

Finally, a considered take on the subject. The introductory paragraph:

For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.

Long ago at a university far away, I used to study neuropsychology. Most of my work focused on how individual voters make decisions about political candidates and how they adjust those decisions to in response to new information (that and how monkeys decide to throw poop--no joke). While the specifics have largely part faded from my memory I do remember this:

Human decision making is rational with two important caveats: First, rationality is based on access to information; without complete information, it’s impossible to be completely rational. Second, our emotions affect the way we initially process information which can later jade decision making.

While applications for behavioral neuropsych are generally limited in IR, I’ve seen this precept in action more times than I care to count.  All other things being equal, countries are rational actors. The problem is that rarely are those other things equal. More often than not, countries fail to understand each other’s motivations and thus regularly make decisions based on incompletely knowledge.

A prime example is Iran’s analysis of who is shaping America’s Iran policy. According to Jon Lee Anderson’s recent interview with Hossein Shariatmadari, a trusted adviser to Khamenei and editor-in-chief of Kayhan, a hard right publication associated with the Iran’s clerical establishment, our Iran policy is shaped by four guys:

The Green Movement, he said, was part of a grand conspiracy—conceived by, among others, Michael Ledeen (a veteran foreign-policy hawk), Richard Haass (the president of the Council on Foreign Relations), Gene Sharp (an authority on nonviolent resistance), and George Soros (the financier and philanthropist)—with the aim of overthrowing Iran’s government. The protests were not against Ahmadinejad, he explained, but “against the whole system.” Fortunately, “the people” had been mobilized and had stopped the conspiracy in its tracks.

(Check out the rest of Anderson’s New Yorker piece on the current Iranian political environment here)

As Daniel Drezner explains, Shariatmadari’s analysis is preposterous:

Seriously, Ledeen and Haass loathe each other, and Ledeen and Soros probably loathe each other even more.  None of these guys have any direct influence over Iran policy, and I'm willing to bet that Ledeen and Soros' indirect influence is exactly nil. Now, take a moment to imagine a world in which Ledeen, Haass and Soros  are secretly meeting to overthrow the Iranian regime, and I guarantee that the color of the sky in that world is not blue.

At least we can give the Iranians credit for consistency. The Iranian intelligence community has implicated Soros and Sharp in a wide variety of plots against Iran for years now. See the hilarious VEVAK propaganda video below for details.

-Evan

From John Richardson's recent Gingrich profile in Esquire:

You call Obama's Iran policy appeasement. But what's the alternative?

"Replace the government."

You're advocating war with Iran?

"Not necessarily. There's every reason to believe that if you simply targeted gasoline, and you maximized your support for dissidents in Iran, that within a year you'd replace the regime without a war."

That's it? After such an incendiary charge, your only solution is sanctions and speeches?

"The only thing you have to stop is gasoline," he repeats.

But that just seems like nuance, and only a minor difference with Obama's position.

"The difference between replacing a regime and appeasing a regime is pretty radical."

But you won't replace the regime that way. You're just tinkering with sanctions, which have never worked.

"I would cut off gasoline, and I would fund the dissidents," he repeats.

HT to Abu Muqawama

Or at least he thinks that it's an island off the coast of West Africa. Maybe he has it confused with the Canary Islands? In a bizarre day in which some people say a grenade was thrown at the Iranian President during a speech (news outlets closer to the leader say it was a firecracker), Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered this gem in the city of Hamedan, live on state television:

Look at this country of England — a small island in West Africa. These people made weapons and ships; they attacked people; they subjugated India, whose area is 10 times the size of England, whose populations is tens of times larger!

According to RFE/RL, each of the new government-approved haircuts will be named after an Iranian city. Not surprisingly, the youth of Iran are not impressed:

RFE/RL spoke to a 14-year-old boy in Tehran who confirmed what we might suspect: that he doesn’t think any of his friends would want a hairstyle that's named “Shiraz." ”It doesn’t sound cool and why would they want a haircut that's approved by the government," he said.

Check out an old school "Shiraz" above. Something tells me that even before the ban, these guys weren't exactly popular.

From the Economist's eulogy for Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah:

"Once damned by Westerners as a mentor to hostage-takers and suicide-bombers, he was viewed by his own flock as the most open-minded of ayatollahs. He boldly championed women’s rights. He preached the duty of Muslims to fight foreign invaders but counselled Iraqis to be patient with the Americans who had rid them of Saddam Hussein. He immediately and unequivocally condemned the 9/11 attacks on America, the first leading Muslim cleric to do so. [...] The ayatollah will be hard to replace. No one of his stature can now gently counter Hizbullah’s claim to represent all Lebanese Shias or question its fealty to Iran. And there is one less ayatollah to challenge Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in his claim to lead all the world’s Shias."

Anyone who pays attention to the news knows that Iran’s record on human rights is less than stellar. From orchestrating violent crackdowns against protestors to denying the Holocaust, the government in Tehran has systematically spurned almost every norm of international law. Yet its latest attack on individual expression and autonomy deserves accolades, rather than recrimination.  

The government’s culture ministry recently published a catalogue of acceptable hairstyles. These guidelines are intended to rid the country of Western influence, meaning that the mullet and male ponytail did not make the cut. Men who continue to wear these ‘immodest’ and ‘un-Islamic’ styles will run afoul of the Iranian morality police and could theoretically face prison time.

Although no one has said it publicly so far, this law is likely part of the country’s on-going battle against earthquakes. Several prominent clerics believe that Iran’s seismic activity comes from immoral actions such as adultery. Without men prancing around in “decadent” mullets and pony tails, Iranian women will be much less tempted to violate chastity, and the regime will not have to worry about Tehran’s dilapidated infrastructure. Talk about two birds with one stone!

Now, if only the US could get similar laws passed in the South…

The man in the video above is allegedly Shahram Amiri, a missing Iranian nuclear scientist.  In the four-minute clip, he claims that he was kidnapped by Saudi intelligence while in Medina and then put on a plane to the US where he was tortured for information about Iran's nuclear program. From Golnaz Esfandiari's translation of the video:

"[The main aim] was to make me take part in a televised interview conducted by an American news agency and claim that I was an important figure in Iran's nuclear program and I had sought asylum in America by my own will -- and [to say that] while seeking asylum, I took some very important documents and a laptop with classified information on Iran's military nuclear program in it to America from my country,” the man says.

So far nothing too extraordinary. Iran is running psych ops against the US days before a critical UNSC vote on another round of sanctions. Shocking.

Shortly after the first video aired, things got weird. A second video appeared on YouTube (see below). Clearly the same guy, but this time he claims (rather unconvincingly) that he remains in America of his own volition and is currently pursuing higher education. Confusion ensues.

Speculating about anything to do with espionage is a fool's task, but it's late here in Azerbaijan and I'm putting off other work so here's my two cents:

The guy in the videos isn't Amiri but instead a semi-convincing look-alike and his two-act performance was engineered by Iranian intelligence. Why the double video whammy? Release one video, the US can easily write it off as Iranian propaganda. Release a second video that looks like a forced response and not only do you make the US look bad, but you get double the press coverage. Pretty clever, Iran.

-Evan

P.S. Does anyone actually think that even if the CIA was holding Amiri against his will in Tucson, Arizona (?!!) they would release such a dubious video? Yes, Mr. Amiri lookalike, we get it. You're reading lines someone wrote for you. Did they also turn the globe behind you so that America would be facing the camera? A+ idea, C- execution.

According to Meir Javedanfar, Iran stands to be the biggest winner in the aftermath of Israel's latest blunder:

The recent developments are likely to boost Iran’s status in the Middle East, especially when it comes to its emerging alliance with Turkey. They will also be a much welcomed distraction from the troubles at home.

More after the jump --->