via Damascus and Tehran: The war for military preparedness.

Previously I pondered as what Iran could do even if it possessed a nuclear bomb. Of course, it would not do anything even if it’s on brink of political craziness or becomes frightened of the regional and international changes.
Yet Tehran makes mistakes that can be a game changer. While Iran has dedicated all time and resources to gain military prowess, it failed to unify its social constituents. It suffers from an acute weakness that is a source of security concerns.

All international relations theories, diplomatic negotiations theories and winning cards are betraying Iran today and are putting Iran to face political, oil, and economic sanctions. Iran does not have many choices but messing with the regional and energy security. This is particularly true after it lost the capability of selling its oil.

To add salt to wound, other importing countries are trading the Iranian oil with commodities rather than with U.S. dollars. The decision to do this kind of tradeoff is a statement of the weakness of the political capabilities of Iran. All indicators show that Assad’s regime is over and the Iraqi prime minister is on retreat not in favor of Sunni forces but in favor of civil and democratic forces. In Syria, the choice is for the civil and democratic diverse society.

According to some Israeli intelligence information, Assad called the Russian leadership saying that he had a plan and pledged to prevail over the protesters within a couple of months. Assad decided to get rid of the military officers who started complaining of a lack of a solution. He gave them a leave provided that they stick to their houses.

In their place, Assad appointed the thugs ordering them to implement all force at their disposal to wipe out the protesters. Therefore, the coming months are expected to be bloody ones. And yet this will only mark the end of Assad and the beginning of a genuine political settlement.

Tehran, which loses some $80 million a day, is also facing a catastrophic reality caused by the political, oil, and economic sanctions. It also realizes that Assad is on retreat and that Moscow is negotiating with the Syrian opposition and the army.

Iran will only have the worse options and it will not resort to any of these options as its domestic affairs are deteriorating. Various ethnic and national groups within Iran are adopting wait and see strategy. They will decide their course of action once Assad’s grip on power ends. Not surprisingly, Tehran throws all of its power behind Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. It remains to be seen as to what would happen in case al-Maliki falls down and a civic state begins to take root in Syria.

Will Tehran close the Strait of Hormuz? Of course no. Iran does not dare do that in the first place even if Iran has the capability to affect this policy. Notwithstanding statements uttered by leaders of the Iranian revolutionary guard, Iran will unlikely close the strait. It is about time for Iran to realize that the stinging sanctions imposed by the West are a result of its policies rather than an act of war. The West has given Iran many opportunities and Iran failed to seize them. The way the west deals with Iran is the opposite of the way it dealt with Saddam Hussein.

Needless to say that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz will not hurt that Saudi Arabia. Riyadh can easily transport from 20 to 30 percent of its oil away from the strait. United Arab Emirates dealt with the situation by building a 380-kilometer pipeline with a capacity of transporting some 1.5 millions barrels a day out of 2.5 millions barrels that Emirates produces a day.

For this reason Iran adopts a bombastic and grandstanding attitude by threatening Turkey, the American presence in the Gulf, and wiping out Israel from the map. That said, Iran is looking forward to the Ankara meeting as a watershed in the dialogue with the west. The problem, however, will continue as the Iranian-European talks are not expected to lift sanctions on Iran.

Some sources confirm that Assad and his family themselves are under administrative detention and that a battalion of the Republican Guard control the President’s movement and his communication.

The authority is actually in the hand of his brother, Maher. Therefore, some sources confirm that placing high-ranking officers under administrative detention and instating thugs in their place is nothing but the plan for the end.

The international community will not keep silence this time. The Syrian media attempt to show Assad along with his wife playing sports will not deceive the rest of the people of the gravity of the situation. Still, the situation is difficult and the west is waiting from an internal coup in Syria especially after Moscow conducted dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhoods of Syria. Equally important, a national unity government means the exclusiveness of Assad from the political arena.

(The writer is a Saudi columnist. The article was published in Arab News on July. 07, 2012)

U.S. court fines Iran $813 million for 1983 Lebanon attack.

Saturday, 07 July 2012

In 1983, 241 American soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed in a bomb attack in their barracks in Lebanon. (AFP)

The evidence shows that we have not succeeded in Syria, says Kofi Annan | The Times of Israel.

( Really?   You don’t say!  Wait till you read his solution… – JW )

UN envoy says Iran is a major player and should be part of the solution

Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria. (photo credit: AP/Hussein Malla)

BEIRUT (AP) — Special U.N. envoy Kofi Annan acknowledged in an interview published Saturday that the international community’s efforts to find a political solution to the escalating violence in Syria have failed.

Annan told the French daily Le Monde that more attention needed to be paid to the role of longtime Syrian ally Iran, and that countries supporting military actors in the conflict were making the situation worse.

“The evidence shows that we have not succeeded,” he said.

Annan, the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, is the architect of the most prominent international plan to end the crisis in Syria, which activists say has killed more than 14,000 people since March, 2011.

His six-point plan was to begin with a cease-fire in mid-April between government forces and rebels seeking to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad. But the truce never took hold, and now the almost 300 U.N. observers sent to monitor the cease-fire are confined to their hotels because of the escalating violence.

Activists reported at least 67 people killed on Friday alone, after some 800 people last week.

Annan defended the unarmed observers, saying it was not their job to stop the violence, but to monitor the sides’ adherence to the truce.

He offered few suggestions on how the plan could be salvaged, only saying that Iran “should be part of the solution” and that criticism too often focused on Russia, which has stood by the regime.

“Very few things are said about other countries that send arms and money and weigh on the situation on the ground,” he said, without naming any specific countries.

Iran is a longtime Syrian ally that has stood by the regime throughout the uprising. It is unclear what role Annan envisions for Iran. Tehran’s close ties could make it an interlocutor with the regime, though the U.S. has often refused to let the Islamic Republic attend conferences about the Syria crisis.

Russia provides the Assad regime with most of its weapons. No countries are known to be arming the rebels, though some Gulf Arab states have spoken positively of doing so. The U.S. and other Western nations have sent non-lethal aid, like communications equipment.

The Syrian uprising began in March, 2011, when people first took to the streets to call for political reforms. Since then, the government has waged a brutal crackdown, and many in the opposition have taken up arms, sidelining peaceful activists and changing the conflict into an armed insurgency.

Scores of independent rebel groups now operate in the country, regularly attacking regime bases and convoys.

Activists in Syria on Saturday reported fierce government offensives to try to retake rebellious areas outside of the northern city of Aleppo and near the capital Damascus, as well as government shelling across the country.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on an activist network inside Syria, called the bombardment of a number of villages in Aleppo province “the most violent” since the army launched a recent campaign to retake control of the area.

The group said that rebels in the area had killed many regime soldiers in recent months. It did not provide casualties figures for the recent fighting. It said two rebels and one civilian were killed in clashes in the northern city of Izaz. Five government soldiers also were killed when rebels blew up their vehicle.

The activist claims could not be independently verified. The Syrian government rarely comments on its military operations and blames the uprising on foreign-backed gangs seeking to weaken the country.

The violence has raised fears that the unrest will spill over into Lebanon, which has extensive sectarian and political ties to its eastern neighbor.

On Saturday, shells fired from inside Syria killed two Lebanese civilians and wounded 10 others, security officials said, in the latest incident of violence spilling across the border.

One woman was killed when a shell hit her home in the Wadi Khalid area of northeast Lebanon, also wounding five others. Another shell hit the nearby village of al-Hisheh, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding his father and four other children.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.

Despite mounting international condemnation, Assad’s regime has largely held together. On Saturday, however, France announced the defection of Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, an Assad confidant and son of a former defense minister who helped ease Assad into power.

Tlass is the highest ranking official to abandon the regime so far, and Western powers and anti-regime activists hoped his departure would encourage others to leave, too.

News of the defection largely overshadowed an international conference in Paris on Saturday attended by the U.S., its European and Arab partners and members of Syria’s fractured opposition.

The so-called “Friends of Syria” said they would provide means for the opposition in Syria to better communicate among themselves and with the outside world and increase humanitarian aid.

They also called on the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution that would force the regime to comply with the two peace plans that have been largely ignored by both sides in the conflict.

Syrian allies Russia and China would likely veto any resolution seen as too critical of the Syrian government, as they have in the past.

___

Associated Press writer Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris.

Gulf sabers rattle as Iran sanctions bite | Reuters.

(Reuters) – Iran and the United States might be talking up their readiness for war in the Gulf but beneath the rhetoric, all sides appear keen to avoid conflict and prevent accidental escalation – at least for now.

This week, a string of hawkish Iranian statements – including a renewed threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and destroy U.S. bases “within minutes” of an attack – helped push benchmark Brent crude oil prices above $100 for the first time since June.

Western military officials and analysts say Tehran does have the capability to wreak regional havoc. But the current saber-rattling, they believe, is more about moving markets and trying to give the West second thoughts over the ever-tightening oil sanctions aimed at cutting back Tehran’s nuclear program.

A European Union ban on trading Iranian oil announced earlier in the year entered force on July 1, while the United States is also tightening financial restrictions. Even Asian buyers such as China that had hoped to keep taking Iranian crude appear to be scaling back purchases, struggling to find shipping insurance or banking – leaving Iran increasingly isolated.

“What we tend to see is that rhetoric from Iran tends to peak when you have developments around the sanctions issue,” U.S. Deputy Chief of Naval Operations Vice Admiral Mark Fox told a naval conference at London’s Royal United Services Institute.

“We saw this in 2010, we saw it in January this year. They use rhetoric and military exercises to make their point … but it is always best to be prepared, and we always are.”

Washington has highlighted its own military buildup, pointing to new minesweepers, patrol craft and the assault ship USS Ponce joining its Fifth Fleet, which includes the USS Abraham Lincoln and Enterprise carrier battle groups.

Iran has often threatened reprisals for any Israeli or U.S.-led strike on its nuclear sites, whose activities it says are purely peaceful but the West suspects are geared to developing arms. But this week’s statements were more aggressive than most.

In one headline on its website, state-run Press TV described Western warships in the Gulf as “sitting ducks”. An Iranian parliamentary committee said it would pass a bill allowing Tehran to block passage through Hormuz, the conduit for all Gulf oil exports, to ships of any country backing sanctions.

“Iran is essentially reminding the U.S. and its regional allies that if it were attacked, it is capable of responding,” said Michael Connell, an Iran specialist at the Centre for Naval Analysis, which provides analysis to military and other clients as part of larger U.S. government-funded think tank, CNA.

“There is also a domestic component – reassuring their own populace that their armed forces are respected and feared.”

Four months before a U.S. presidential election in which the economy could prove the deciding factor, Iran probably sees the ability to influence global oil prices as a potent and much more usable weapon than actual military action.

“As the impact of European sanctions … begins to create some economic hardship for Tehran, the timing of this announcement suggests that Iran is trying to imply that it in turn can cause economic pain for the world,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

MIDDLE EAST “TINDERBOX”

Whatever the intent, the growing number of military forces in close proximity brings obvious dangers.

“The risk of Iran actually carrying out the actions they are threatening is low,” said Ari Ratner, a former Middle East adviser to the State Department earlier in the Obama administration and now a fellow at the left-leaning Truman National Security Foundation.

“However, there is an increasing danger that this rhetoric or the increasing provocative actions by the Iranian side … could result in a miscalculation … The Gulf is becoming a tinderbox and an accidental spark may come at any time.”

Military experts say the opening salvos of any such conflict could prove hugely damaging, with even sophisticated warships vulnerable to suicide speedboats, midget submarines or truck-mounted missiles. But the ultimate outcome, they say, would never be in doubt: a massive U.S.-led retaliation that left Iran’s military devastated.

For all the talk, however, naval officers say tensions in the Gulf between U.S.-led forces and their Iranian counterparts are if anything lower than several years or even months ago, with clear signals that Tehran itself is holding back.

Last week, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert told a news briefing that the Iranian navy continued to be “professional and courteous”. Confrontations with Revolutionary Guard naval units – in which they came too close to U.S. warships for comfort – were also down in number, he said.

Despite occasional talk of Iran refusing to allow U.S. carriers through Hormuz, U.S. naval officers say that in fact Iranian units appear to have had instructions to steer well clear when the giant ships transit the strait.

When foreign warplanes approach Iranian air space, they find themselves swiftly warned off with a simple but firm radio warning in English.

For its part, the U.S. Navy says it has rescued dozens of Iranian sailors from Gulf and Indian Ocean waters, including several from a dhow held captive by Somali pirates.

“I have never worked harder to prevent a conflict,” said Vice Admiral Fox, formerly commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. “We are going out of our way to send the message that we are not there to over pressurize (the situation).”

The current increase in forces in the Gulf, naval insiders say, was planned months ago – but tough choices lie ahead.

Washington says it plans to keep two carriers in the region for at least the next fiscal year and will shortly decide on the next. Maintaining those forces in the longer run, particularly given the planned U.S. “pivot” to Asia, may be harder to sustain.

But the focus on Hormuz, some suggest, may simply be missing the bigger picture.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED?

“Yes, we’re seeing another spike in saber-rattling from Iran and to a lesser extent from the United States,” said Henry Smith, regional analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks. “But neither of those countries has any intention of starting a war in the Persian Gulf. The country you need to watch as the protagonist is Israel.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has long said it reserves the right to strike directly at Iran if it does not believe Washington and others are doing enough – through diplomacy or sanctions – to stop it going nuclear.

Such action could still take place this year, despite doubts among many analysts that Israel has the capability to deliver a truly knockout blow and could simply end up motivating the Iranians to work faster to achieve nuclear capability.

But there are growing perceptions that this prospect may already be receding, with Israel and the United States likely instead continuing to rely on covert tactics such as the computer worm Stuxnet to slow Iran’s nuclear progress.

Netanyahu may himself already have decided to wait, hoping that a newly elected Republican president, Mitt Romney, would prove more supportive and at least give Israel the sophisticated bunker-busting munitions needed to reach buried laboratories.

With perhaps no one genuinely willing to risk escalation for now, the face-off in the Gulf is likely to continue largely unchanged, albeit with periodic market-moving bouts of high profile tension.

Even if an accidental clash were to down an aircraft or damage a warship, some believe all parties would find a way to swiftly de-escalate.

“This rise in tensions was to be expected,” said Reva Bhalla, head of strategy at U.S.-based geopolitical risk consultancy Stratfor. “But to an extent, both sides are indulging in theatre. They know what they are doing and they have too much to lose from an actual confrontation.”

Not everyone, however, believes that pattern is sustainable.

With Tehran believed to be moving closer to the ability to produce a workable nuclear device – most intelligence services believe Iran has not so far made a political decision to do so – and sanctions inflicting worsening economic hardship on ordinary Iranians, they say something must eventually give.

Pushed too far, the fear is that the Islamic Republic’s leaders might start a fight in the hope of uniting the people behind them against a common enemy.

“We’re essentially backing them into a corner,” said one veteran naval officer with much experience in the region. “As an old fighter pilot, we used to say: ‘When you are out of options, redefine the fight that you’re in’ … They’ll have to either capitulate or do something unexpected. I believe they’ll do anything if it comes down to defending the regime’s existence.”

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

US sends further reinforcements … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS

DUBAI – A US navy ship that had been slated for decommissioning has been sent instead to the Gulf to help mine-clearing operations, the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain said, the latest move in a gradual US build-up as tensions with Iran smoulder.

A fleet spokesman in Manama said the USS Ponce, described as an “afloat forward staging base” (AFSB), had arrived on Thursday after undergoing refitting for its new mission.

“Ponce’s primary mission is to support mine countermeasures operations and other missions, such as the ability to provide repair service to other deployed units,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Additionally, Ponce also has the capability to embark and launch small riverine craft.”

Vice Admiral John Miller, commander of regional navy forces, said the Ponce boasted “enhanced capability to conduct maritime security operations, and gives us greater flexibility to support a wide range of contingencies with our regional partners”.

Four US minesweepers arrived in the Gulf last month to bolster the Fifth Fleet and ensure the safety of shipping routes in a waterway through which 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil exports flow.

They arrived amid a flaring war of nerves between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s disputed nuclear energy program and Iranian threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, the slender oil shipping channel out of the Gulf, in retaliation for a new European Union ban on its oil exports.

The four minesweepers were ticketed for a seven-month deployment in an area of operations that includes the Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

Tensions have simmered in the Gulf with big-power diplomacy to ease the nuclear dispute at an impasse and Israel renewing veiled threats to attack Iranian atomic sites from the air if sanctions and negotiations fail to curb Iran’s nuclear advances.

A string of hawkish Iranian statements – including a renewed threat to close the Strait and destroy US bases in the region “within minutes” of an attack – over the past week helped thrust benchmark Brent crude oil prices above $100 for the first time since June.

Iran has repeatedly warned of reprisals for any Israeli or US-led strike on its nuclear installations, whose activities it says are purely peaceful but the West suspects are geared to developing the means to produce nuclear arms.

Security and Defense: The Ch… JPost – Features – Week in review.

A scapegoat for Syria? – The Washington Post.

By Editorial Board, Saturday, July 7, 2:17 AM

Why Russia Supports Syria – NYTimes.com.

MANY in the West believe that Russia’s support for Syria stems from Moscow’s desire to profit from selling arms to Bashar al-Assad’s government and maintain its naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. But these speculations are superficial and misguided. The real reason that Russia is resisting strong international action against the Assad regime is that it fears the spread of Islamic radicalism and the erosion of its superpower status in a world where Western nations are increasingly undertaking unilateral military interventions.

Since 2005, Russian defense contracts with Syria have amounted to only about $5.5 billion — mostly to modernize Syria’s air force and air defenses. And although Syria had been making its scheduled payments in a fairly timely manner, many contracts were delayed by Russia for political reasons. A contract for four MiG-31E fighter planes was annulled altogether. And recently it became known that Russia had actually halted the planned delivery of S-300 mobile antiaircraft missile systems to Syria.

Syria is among Russia’s significant customers, but it is by no means one of the key buyers of Russian arms — accounting for just 5 percent of Russia’s global arms sales in 2011. Indeed, Russia has long refrained from supplying Damascus with the most powerful weapons systems so as to avoid angering Israel and the West — sometimes to the detriment of Russia’s commercial and political ties with Syria.

To put it plainly, arms sales to Syria today do not have any significance for Russia from either a commercial or a military-technological standpoint, and Syria isn’t an especially important partner in military-technological cooperation.

Indeed, Russia could quite easily resell weapons ordered by the Syrians (especially the most expensive items, like fighter jets and missile systems) to third parties, thus minimizing its losses. And even if the Assad government survives, it will be much weaker and is unlikely to be able to continue buying Russian arms.

The Russian Navy’s logistical support facility at Tartus is similarly unimportant. It essentially amounts to two floating moorings, a couple of warehouses, a barracks and a few buildings. On shore, there are no more than 50 seamen. For the Navy, the facility in Tartus has more symbolic than practical significance. It can’t serve as a support base for deploying naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea, and even visits by Russian military ships are carried out more for demonstrative purposes than out of any real need to replenish supplies.

Russia’s current Syria policy basically boils down to supporting the Assad government and preventing a foreign intervention aimed at overthrowing it, as happened in Libya. President Vladimir V. Putin is simply channeling public opinion and the expert consensus while playing his customary role as the protector of Russian interests who curtails the willfulness of the West.

Many Russians believe that the collapse of the Assad government would be tantamount to the loss of Russia’s last client and ally in the Middle East and the final elimination of traces of former Soviet prowess there — illusory as those traces may be. They believe that Western intervention in Syria (which Russia cannot counter militarily) would be an intentional profanation of one of the few remaining symbols of Russia’s status as a great world power.

Such attitudes are further buttressed by widespread pessimism about the eventual outcome of the Arab Spring, and the Syrian revolution in particular. Most Russian observers believe that Arab revolutions have completely destabilized the region and cleared the road to power for the Islamists. In Moscow, secular authoritarian governments are seen as the sole realistic alternative to Islamic dominance.

The continuing struggles in Arab countries are seen as a battle by those who wear neckties against those who do not wear them. Russians have long suffered from terrorism and extremism at the hands of Islamists in the northern Caucasus, and they are therefore firmly on the side of those who wear neckties.

To people in Moscow, Mr. Assad appears not so much as “a bad dictator” but as a secular leader struggling with an uprising of Islamist barbarians. The active support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey’s Islamist government for rebels in Syria only heightens suspicions in Russia about the Islamist nature of the current opposition in Syria and rebels throughout the Middle East.

Finally, Russians are angry about the West’s propensity for unilateral interventionism — not to mention the blatantly broad interpretation of the resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council and the direct violations of those resolutions in Libya.

According to this view, the West, led by America, demonstrated its cynicism, perfidy and a typical policy of double standards. That’s why all the Western moralizing and calls for intervention in Syria are perceived by the Russian public as yet another manifestation of cynical hypocrisy of the worst kind.

There is no doubt that preserving his own power is also on Mr. Putin’s mind as his authoritarian government begins to wobble in the face of growing protests that enjoy political approval and support from the West. He cannot but sympathize with Mr. Assad as a fellow autocratic ruler struggling with outside interference in domestic affairs.

But ideological solidarity is a secondary factor at best. Mr. Putin is capitalizing on traditional Russian suspicions of the West, and his support for Mr. Assad is based on the firm conviction that an Islamist-led revolution in Syria, especially one that receives support through the intervention of Western and Arab states, will seriously harm Russia’s long-term interests.

Are Israeli Agents Assassinating Iranian Scientists? A New Book Argues – The Daily Beast.

Jul 7, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

In an excerpt from their new book, Spies Against Armageddon, Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman argue that Mossad special agents are behind the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. But will it be enough to stop Iran from getting nukes?

Executions are just a matter of time, as Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) is out to show that it is not completely helpless in the face of four assassinations and one failed attempt in the streets of the capital, Tehran, over the last two years. Israeli officials refuse to comment on who specifically might be guilty or innocent, but they publicly expressed their joy that “God’s finger” had acted against Iran’s nuclear program. They also indicate that no credence should be placed in the “confessions” that will doubtless be televised by Iran.

Iran Nuclear Program Should Be Abandoned, State TV Viewers Say.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A television poll conducted by Iranian state television backfired on Wednesday when 63 percent of respondents said they wanted to abandon Iran’s nuclear program, according to a report by The Telegraph. The results led the channel to hastily shut down voting and accuse the BBC of manipulating results.

The poll, which was conducted online by state broadcaster IRIB, asked viewers how Iran should respond to a new oil embargo imposed by the European Union. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has criticized the new sanctions, calling them “the strongest ones that have ever been applied against a country” and vowing not to cave to Western pressure.

“Our enemies assume that they are able to corner Iran in a weak position with these sanctions,” he told IRIB earlier this week.

But contrary to Ahmadinejad’s defiant stance, Iranians overwhelmingly backed the poll’s option for “giving up uranium enrichment in return of the gradual removal of sanctions.” Only 20 percent of respondents said they supported closing the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for oil shipments from the Persian Gulf, in retaliation.

IRIB blamed the results on Western interference, accusing the BBC of having hacked into their website to alter the poll. The Daily Telegraph reported that “the Iranian broadcaster insisted the true figure supporting uranium enrichment suspension was only 24% while the rest backed retaliatory measures.”

The BBC issued a statement on Thursday calling the accusations “both ludicrous and completely false.”

The channel also claimed that the poll did not represent the views of Iranians because only 2000 people had participated.

However, the aftermath of the poll seemed to suggest otherwise. According to the Telegraph, the channel pulled down the poll on Wednesday, but suffered more embarrassment when a follow-up question on closing the Strait found 89 percent of voters against the move. The polls then disappeared in favor of an article on Persepolis, a popular Tehran soccer club.