As reported in today's WSJ Europe: "Iran has arrested the right hand man of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahri, an Iranian newspaper said." Strange how there were NO Al Queda people in Iran BEFORE the Axis of Evil speech. Now they've arrested in successive weeks 55 Al Queda members and today bin Laden's second in command. Coincidence???
That is very strange how one of the GW Axis of Evil members has begun rounding people up all of a sudden. Hey that is a HUGE deal. This guy is the one who's often called the brains of the whole operation. Somehow I doubt Iran will be handing him over.
Seems like this is huge news. Funny how noone is reporting anything about this. The Iranian newspaper could be wrong or just flat out lying. It doesn't seem like there is any outside verification at the moment and excuse the hell out of me if I don't take some Iranian newspaper's word for it.
Do I think that the pressure has caused a change in behaviour? Quite likely. Do I think that labelling them "evil" had anything to do with it? No. Do I think that this kind of inflammatory rhetoric could alienate the moderates and damage the long term possibility establishing better relations with this or a future government of Iran? Yes.
I heard this report early this morning......GREAT NEWS! I hope they do indeed have him. He has five million on his head so hopefully he will be handed over soon.
Consider two scenarios: (a) Iran hears through its contacts with Washington that the US President is 'quite concerned' about the reports of Al Queda members taking refugee in Iran. In addition, these contacts inform the Iranian leadership that the US is considering 'filing a most vigorous protest' in the UN with respect to their continued support of Hezbollah, an internationally acknowledged terrorist organization. (b) Iran hears a complete redneck cowboy President says he's gonna start stompin on 'evil' regimes unless they get with the program. He then names them as one of the 'evildoers.' They further hear that the President has been practicing saying 'who wants some and who's your Daddy' in Arabic in front of his mirror in the morning... Hmmm....
lol! That funny, but this approach is still not a good solution to the problem. I'm not suggesting your option a). The most important message is the one you send to the people of Iran, because they will ultimately have to support any future government, formally or informally. If we insult them by calling them and their country "evil," how are we helping ourselves? We're not. We're hurting ourselves. The US didn't use this kind of rhetoric with Afghanistan. They just said, "We have convincing evidence that these are the guys who committed the crime. (And they gave evidence) Hand them over by this date or we're coming to get them." No juvenile name calling, just straight up. Why not use the same approach this time? Using the same term that caused Reagan such ridicule was guaranteed to fail with the allies, and the people of Iran, so why use it?
We haven't had relations with Iran for 20 friggin years, you really think anything we say now is going to "damage" long term possibilities for relations? Iran has been linked to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in '83, the Khobar Towers attack in '96, and they actively support Hizbollah... frankly who gives a frog's fat ass about their alienation when they keep supporting terrorism against us? Speaking of Reagan, he called the USSR an evil empire and they began collapsing right after he left office. I guess that whole evil empire thing wasn't much of an obstacle for the USSR to ask us for help when they couldn't feed themselves.
You are talking about the actions of the radicals who have control. The people are quite moderate and want democracy. Talk to treeman on this. And if you don't give a **** about them, you can be sure that they won't give a **** about you, and we carry on the way we are. This is no solution.
i'm not certain...but hasn't the administration made some distinctions between the moderate govt and the hard line religious leaders who seem to have a LOT of control in Iran???
I'm not suggesting that Bush believes the people are evil. But I am suggesting this term was offensive to all Iranians. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1814000/1814659.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1813000/1813157.stm You're a lawyer, right? Are you criminal or civil? You must know that inflammatory remarks never aid in coming to a positive resolution. I think the same principle is true in this situation.
Hey you talk to treeman, he doesn't speak for me. It's not our job to kiss their ass and make them feel good about themselves. Iran has and does support terrorism, GW has put them on notice, and now the ball is in their court. It's about accountability. I suspect they'll give a **** when we have troops in Iraq glaring over the border at Iran.
Incidentally, this is pretty interesting. First they were, now they're not. http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/02/18/iran.arrests/index.html Iran: Detainees at border not part of al Qaeda February 18, 2002 Posted: 8:20 AM EST (1320 GMT) TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's foreign minister said Monday that 150 people recently detained at the country's border with Pakistan are not members of al Qaeda, contrary to earlier intelligence that indicated they may have had connections to the terrorist training organization. At a news conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said 40 of those detained were women and 70 to 80 were children, with the rest being nationals of European countries or Afghans. "So far, we have found no members of al Qaeda," Kharrazi said. Appropriate embassies have been informed so the detained people can be returned to their countries and their governments can deal with them as they see fit, Kharrazi said. Last week, the Iranian news agency, IRNA, quoted an official who did not want to be named as saying suspects taken at the border included Dutch, French, British, Belgian and Spanish nationals. It was not clear when they were detained, but the official said all were picked up in Iranian towns and cities close to the border with Afghanistan, and the number included women and children. The official said the detainees crossed into Pakistan soon after the start of the U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan and then crossed into Iran after traveling some 465 miles (750 kilometers) through Pakistan. At that time, the official said those detained were being interrogated to establish their backgrounds, but preliminary interrogations showed no prominent figures of the Taliban or al Qaeda were among them. U.S. information about members of the Taliban or al Qaeda trying to slip into Iran "was outdated, incomplete and devoid of any intelligence value," the official said. Iran has repeatedly denied U.S. allegations that it has helped members of al Qaeda escape Afghanistan. It has said that if any al Qaeda members were picked up in the country, they would be put on trial in Iran or returned to their countries. The arrests came after harsh criticism leveled by Iranian officials at President Bush for naming Iran as part of an "axis of evil" that supports terrorism. Bush also included Iraq and North Korea as terrorism sponsors in his state State of the Union address last month.
It gets stranger and stranger... Iran denies jailing bin Laden’s aide Newspaper linked to supreme leader had said al-Zawahiri held MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS Feb. 18 — In a strange turn of events, one of Iran’s top newspapers reported that Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man had been captured and imprisoned in a Tehran jail, only to deny the report a day later. The Hayat-e-Hou newspaper, which is run by the brother of Iran’s supreme leader, did not provide sources for its original report or its denial on Monday that Ayman al-Zawahiri had been captured. The report also was denied by Iran’s foreign ministry. THE FARSI-LANGUAGE newspaper said al-Zawahiri was in Tehran’s Evin prison, where well-known political prisoners often are held. Hayat-e-Nou is run by Hadi Khamenei, an influential legislator and brother of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is among Iran’s most reliable newspapers. “The news that has been published in Hayat-e-Nou newspaper is not true, we deny it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told The Associated Press on Sunday. The newspaper printed its own brief denial on Monday. Experts on bin Laden’s movements had assumed al-Zawahiri, a doctor and bin Laden’s spiritual adviser and potential successor as head of the terrorist network al-Qaida, would be with bin Laden in hiding. Hayat-e-Nou did not mention the whereabouts of bin Laden, the subject of an intense manhunt since being blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The report of Iran’s detention of a key al-Qaida figure comes amid signs Tehran is trying to defuse tensions with the United States, which has accused it of trying to destabilize neighboring Afghanistan by harboring al-Qaida militants. Iran shares long and porous borders both with Pakistan and Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based before a U.S. military campaign was launched to uproot the network and arrest its top leaders. Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported last week that authorities had arrested about 150 people, including a number of Arabs, for questioning over links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, the Afghan militia that had harbored bin Laden. Advertisement 150 HELD? CIA Director George J. Tenet said recently that Tehran had failed “to move decisively against al-Qaida members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan.” After the Sept. 11 attacks and until the recent U.S. allegations, relations between the estranged governments seemed to improve slightly as Iran condemned the attacks and told the world it was a vigorous opponent of the Taliban. But President Bush in his State of the Union speech lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” ATTACK WARNING Bin Laden’s al-Qaida network already is believed to have been stripped of the ability to pull off another complex attack like the Sept. 11 strikes, but it remains dangerous. The FBI last week issued a warning that militants linked to al-Qaida were planning an attack against the United States. If al-Zawahiri’s detention is confirmed, he would be the second top bin Laden aide to be taken out of action. Bin Laden’s second key lieutenant, military chief Mohammed Atef, was killed in an airstrike near Kabul in November, U.S. officials have said. The U.S. State Department included al-Zawahiri, bin Laden and 20 other men on a “most wanted terrorist” list issued last year and offered rewards of up to $25 million for information leading to the arrest of terrorists. In December, a Muslim activist in London reported al-Zawahiri’s wife and three daughters had been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. bombs, but al-Zawahiri was not believed to have been with his family at the time. A U.S. official in Washington had said the United States had credible reports that members of al-Zawahiri’s immediate family were killed in a U.S. airstrike. VISIT TO RUSSIA Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said Monday that Tehran had imposed strict security measures to prevent al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from entering the country. He repeated the report from last week that scores of suspected sympathizers would be handed over to their respective embassies, as well as the interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. But he denied that any of the more than 100 people detained were members of al-Qaida. He said most are women and children. Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported last week that authorities had arrested about 150 foreigners who entered the country, including a number of Arabs, and were questioning them about links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. At a press conference Monday, Kharrazi again berated the U.S. administration for designating Iran as part of the “axis of evil.” The foreign minister, who announced an upcoming visit to Russia, said Washington’s hard-line approach was aimed at diverting attention from the woes of the Palestinian people. “The Americans have shown they are not trustworthy. On the one hand, they talk about dialogue and on the other they keep threatening us,” he said.
<B>Nobody said Bush was smart.</B> HA! Seriously, though, here's where I think the Axis of Evil comment might actually hurt our cause. Ultimately, leaders want to look strong in front of their people. Bush boxed Iran in so they can't do that. If Iran helps us and actually does round up these people, their leaders are going to look like they are caving in to the evil US. That just discourages any help we might have gotten. Had we found a way to coerce them more privately (admittedly, I don't have a particular method in mind), then they might have been able to help us and claim victory for themselves. They might still help us out of fear (which was our intent, I assume), but that breeds more hatred which can come back to haunt us down the road. The way we got Pakistan to cooperate in dealing with the Taliban was to let them look good in the process -- basically, coersion but giving Pakistan an out-clause to look like they are partners and doing it by choice, etc, etc. I think an aggressive approach with Iran in this way would be more beneficial than anything else.
