WarSclerotic

As Rial Slides, So Do Iranians’ Dreams – NYTimes.com.

By THOMAS ERDBRINK

TEHRAN — For months, since the imposition of harsh, American-led sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s leaders have sworn they would never succumb to Western pressures, and they scoffed at the idea that the measures were having any serious impact. But after a week in which the Iranian currency, the rial, fell by a shocking 40 percent and protests began to rumble through the capital, no one is making light of the mounting costs of confrontation.

In the Iranian capital, all anyone can talk about is the rial, and how lives have been turned upside down in one terrible week. Every elevator ride, office visit or quick run to the supermarket brings new gossip about the currency’s drop and a swirl of speculation about who is to blame.

“Better buy now,” one rice seller advised Abbas Sharabi, a retired factory guard, who had decided to buy 900 pounds of Iran’s most basic staple in order to feed his extended family for a year.

“As I was gathering my money, the man received a phone call,” said Mr. Sharabi, smoking cigarette after cigarette on Thursday while waiting for a bus. “When he hung up he told me prices had just gone up by 10 percent. Of course I paid. God knows how much it will cost tomorrow.”

While only a few people actually need to exchange the rial for foreign currency, its value is one of the few clear indicators of the state of the economy, and its fall has sharply raised the prices of most staples.

In Tehran, many residents spend their days calling on money changers and visiting banks, deliberating whether to sell their rials now or wait for a miracle that would restore the rates to old levels, or for even a modest rally from the panic-driven lows of the last week.

“The fluctuations are so large that nobody knows whether it is better to wait or to change now,” said Ahmad, 65, as he shared a taxi to the west Tehran neighborhood of Sadeghiyeh. “I am so fed up,” said Ahmad, a garment seller, who like others here did not want to be identified by his full name for fear of retribution from the authorities. “I want to have a normal life, but from breakfast, to lunch to dinner, everybody only nervously talks of hard currency.”

Like many residents of the capital, Ahmad had tuned in to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s news conference on Tuesday, hoping that he would offer some sort of solution.

Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad attributed most of the rial’s weakness to currency speculators and the sanctions, saying that it is only natural that the currency should suffer when it is possible to sell oil only in small quantities and when it is hard to make international bank transfers. His opponents say he is trying to avoid blame for his own mismanagement of the economy. He even went so far as to threaten to quit.

“He has made a mess, and now he wants to leave us,” Ahmad said of the president. But a passenger in the taxi named Mostafa interrupted. “No,” he said, “most of our leaders are at fault, but they are trying to blame everything on Ahmadinejad.”

Just a day later, on Wednesday, clashes erupted when riot police officers on motorcycles dispersed sidewalk money changers near Tehran’s main bazaar. The government has accused them of deliberately manufacturing the currency crisis. At the bazaar, an important trade hub, shopkeepers closed their shutters, and hundreds of citizens joined them in a protest against the bad economy.

While life seemingly returned to normal on Thursday, the outburst of public anger exposed the deep feeling of hopelessness that has taken hold among many Iranians.

Experts are divided about whether the crisis has been caused more by Tehran’s longtime mismanagement of the country’s economy or by the American-led sanctions, which have been imposed over Iran’s refusal to halt a nuclear program that the West suspects is a cover for developing weapons. Whatever the cause, members of the once-vibrant middle class have turned into cynics, many of whom say they might be alive, but are not living.

For Maysam, the son of a man who was killed in the Iran-Iraq war, a decade of relative prosperity and technological innovations had enabled him to travel widely and had turned him into a prominent blogger and critic of the system that his father had died defending. Instead of hoping to die on a battlefield, he had planned to run his own Internet start-up company.

But those dreams have been shattered. “We can’t even think of the future, of tomorrow, the day after, or the next week,” Maysam said. Foreign trips are out of the question, as even the price of a cup of coffee in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, or Istanbul — favorite destinations for Iranians — has tripled when calculated in rials. Parents of the legions of Iranians studying abroad are calling their children back to Iran, as rents and college fees in countries like the Philippines and Malaysia have become unaffordable.

“I have told my son to come home,” said Shabaz, 60, who is part owner of a printing house, adding that he had spent his life encouraging his son and daughter to study abroad. “We are all losing. His future is gone; I won’t ever witness his graduation; and he won’t find a job.”

Among the country’s Afghan community, a mix of refugees and guest laborers, some were debating whether to leave Iran. Their currency, the afghani, had gained considerably against the rial, effectively slashing their already meager wages.

After risking his life to get to Iran from Afghanistan, Amin, 18, had thought he was lucky to find a job sweeping the floors of an expensive Tehran apartment building. Now, he said he felt as if he were working for free. “I can make more money working in Afghanistan,” he said shyly, turning his face away. “The people are good to me here, but I have to think of my family back home.”

Mitra, 47, had just returned from the dance class she teaches several times a week and was getting ready to head out for the dress shop that she runs with her husband. Her eyes welled with tears when she heard the rial’s latest rates.

“My only hope is to get my 23-year-old son out of this place,” she said. She had been trying to get him into Canada, where hundreds of thousands of Iranians live, but the Canadian Embassy closed last month. Now, she said, they would have to go to Ankara, Turkey, for his visa interview. “But if he manages to go, it will be worth every cent I have,” she said.

At Tehran’s currency market, traders quietly started buying and selling again after the raid on Wednesday, though few people were willing to part with dollars. While government officials announced that the rial would strengthen as soon as they had their own foreign currency exchange center up and running, many traders were skeptical.

“It all comes down to this,” said a trader named Akbar. “As long as sanctions continue, the rial will continue to lose value.”

Israel Alters Calculus on Tehran Due to Unrest – WSJ.com.

By JOSHUA MITNICK

TEL AVIV—Antigovernment protests in Iran linked to the country’s weakening currency have raised hopes in Israel that international sanctions are working to undermine Tehran, lowering the likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear targets in the coming months.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has frequently dismissed sanctions as ineffective in slowing Iran’s enrichment program. But, the unrest that erupted in Tehran on Wednesday—which subsided on Thursday—is causing Israeli officials to reconsider, analysts and officials said.

“Everything has changed” since the outbreak of the demonstrations on Wednesday, an Israeli official said. “You can’t say now that the sanctions are having no impact at all. It is self-evident.”

While the sanctions’ apparent effectiveness could undermine Mr. Netanyahu’s emphasis on the need for a credible threat of force, a faltering Iranian government would nonetheless enable him to take credit for pushing the international community for tougher sanctions.

The Israeli leader’s coalition allies said he is considering calling an election as early as February, from the originally scheduled October 2013. That would allow him to campaign on his hardline Iran position.

Iran’s turmoil is already giving enhanced credence to a report by Israel’s foreign ministry leaked to an Israeli newspaper last week that economic pressure could ignite turmoil in Iran similar to that seen in Arab countries around the region.

On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, known as a hard-liner on national security, said that Iran was seeing the first buds of a “Persian Spring,” and that Israel has an interest in lobbying the international community to encourage regime change by bolstering internal opposition groups.

Last week, before the unrest broke out, Mr. Lieberman predicted the spread of Arab Springlike unrest in Iran.

“I have no doubt that the Iranian regime is approaching a critical moment,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Israel Army Radio. “The big question is what will come first: the development of a nuclear weapon, or the Persian Spring…We have to be ready for both options.”

Mr. Netanyahu has been lobbying the White House to set a red line that would trigger military action against the country in an effort to convince Tehran to abandon progress toward what the U.S. and Israel believe is nuclear weapon.

Last week, the Israeli leader said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly that such a red line should set before Iran accumulates 90% of the uranium needed for a bomb—a milestone he predicted would be reached by next spring or summer. The U.N. speech prompted diplomats and experts to conclude that an Israeli military attack on Iran before mid-2013 was already unlikely.

A Netanyahu spokesman declined to comment.

The current unrest in Iran is likely to give more momentum to efforts by Western countries to increase sanctions on Iran, while reducing even further the likelihood of an Israeli attack. Meir Dagan, Israel’s former top spymaster, and other top foreign affairs officials have argued that a strike on Iran would strengthen domestic support for the regime and its nuclear program.

“I don’t know if there will be a Persian Spring, but the fact that the Iranian government is under pressure, that is a sign that the sanctions are having an impact,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. “The legitimacy of the calls for immediate military action will be reduced by the recent events.”

‘NYT’: US rejected Iranian plan … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Photo: REUTERS/Stringer Iran

Defecting Iranian cameraman brings CIA priceless film of secret nuclear sites.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 5, 2012, 1:01 AM (GMT+02:00)

Hassan Golbankhan and Rev Guards chiefs

debkafile reveals one of the CIA’s most dramatic scoops in many years, and epic disaster for Iran. Our most exclusive Iranian and intelligence sources disclose that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal cameraman, Hassan Golkhanban, who defected from his UN entourage in New York on Oct. 1, brought with him an intelligence treasure trove of up-to-date photographs and videos of top Iranian leaders visiting their most sensitive and secret nuclear and missile sites. 
The cameraman, who is in his 40s, is staying at an undisclosed address, presumably a CIA safe house under close guard.
He stayed behind when Ahmadinejad, after his UN speech, departed New York with his 140-strong entourage. For some years, Golkhanban worked not just as a news cameraman but personally recorded visits by the Iranian president and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of top-secret nuclear facilities and Revolutionary Guards installations.
When he left Tehran in the president’s party, his luggage was not searched and so he was able to bring out two suitcases packed with precious film and deliver it safely into waiting hands in New York.
The Iranian cameraman has given US intelligence the most complete and updated footage it has ever obtained of the interiors of Iran’s top secret military facilities and various nuclear installations, including some never revealed to nuclear watchdog inspectors. Among them are exclusive interior shots of the Natanz nuclear complex, the Fordo underground enrichment plant, the Parchin military complex and the small Amir-Abad research reactor in Tehran.
Some of the film depicts Revolutionary Guards and military industry chiefs explaining in detail to the president or supreme leader the working of secret equipment on view. Golkhanban recorded their voices.
Our sources also disclose that, in late September, he took the precaution of sending his wife and two children out of Iran on the pretext of a family visit to Turkey. They are most likely on their way to the United States by now.

From his years as a member of the loyal Bassij militia, the cameraman earned the complete trust of Iran’s security services and was able to reach his professional pinnacle as personal photographer for the two most eminent figures in the country, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, with the task of recording their most confidential pursuits.
This was his second visit to New York. The first time, a year ago, US intelligence was able to make contact and persuade him to defect with his stock of priceless photos and film.
Although Golkhanban’s defection to the United States and request for asylum was disclosed to the media some days ago, Tehran has not made any comment.

Iran police on watch after currency protests – Yahoo! Finance.

Iranian police boost presence on streets, on watch after unrest over plunging currency

By Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran deployed riot police at key Tehran intersections on Thursday, after tensions flared over the nation’s plunging currency in the most widespread display of anger linked to the country’s sanctions-hit economy.

The show of force reflects the authorities’ concerns in the wake of sporadic protests Wednesday over the plummeting currency, which has sharply driven up prices. It has also put Iranian leaders under the most pressure from dissent since crushing the opposition movement after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Most shops in Tehran’s main bazaar were reopened on Thursday, the first day of the Iranian weekend, and no unrest was reported.

Many bazaar merchants had closed their shops the day before and authorities reported arrests amid efforts to clampdown on black market money exchangers, who effectively set the rates around the country. Trash bins were set ablaze during sporadic confrontations with security forces.

The Prosecutor’s Office in Tehran said 16 people have been detained for “disrupting” the currency — an apparent reference to speculators trying to take advantage of the rial’s declining value.

Iran’s rial has lost nearly 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in the past week. The rate Thursday — about 32,000 rials for the dollar — was a bit higher than the record low earlier this week.

The semi-official Mehr news agency reported that the heads of several business guilds in Iran — production, distribution and technical services — all agreed that shops will also reopen on Saturday, after the Iranian weekend.

The guilds have asked police to provide protection and security for the shops at the Tehran bazaar. According to Mehr, the guilds said “the main problem is government’s economic performance” and pledged loyalty to the ruling system.

Ahmadinejad critics say his government has added to the frenzy to dump rials with policies such as limiting bank interest rates — which led depositors to pull their cash in fear it wouldn’t keep pace with inflation.

But officials in Washington claim the plummet of the rial is a combination of Iranian government mismanagement and the bite from tighter sanctions, which have targeted Iran’s vital oil exports and cut off access to international banking networks. Both measures have reduced the amount of foreign currency coming into the country.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Iran’s leaders deserve responsibility for what is going on.

“They have made their own government decisions, having nothing to do with the sanctions, that have had an impact on the economic conditions inside the country,” Clinton told reporters Tuesday. She said the sanctions have had an impact as well, but that could be quickly remedied if the Iranian government were willing to work with the international community “in a sincere manner.”

The West suspects that Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Iran insists its program is peaceful and geared toward generating electricity and medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Robert Gates: War on Iran Would Be ‘Catastrophic,’ Make Tehran Nukes ‘Inevitable’ — News from Antiwar.com.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates said a US strike on Iran would ‘haunt us for generations’

A US or Israeli attack on Iran would “prove catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable,” former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a speech Wednesday night.

Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, Gates said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.”

Not only would Iran be likely to reconstitute its defunct nuclear weapons program, but Tehran might also respond by disrupting world oil traffic in the Persian Gulf and launching a wave of terrorism across the region, Gates claimed.

“The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.”

Gates was reiterating what has become an emergent consensus within the military and intelligence community in the United States, that  a war on Iran – which Israel and many hawks in Congress have been pushing for – would not only be entirely discretionary, but would have disastrous consequences for Iran, the region, and the United States.

A report released last month by former government officials, national security experts and retired military officers concluded also that an attack would motivate Iran to restart its weapons development, and that the ensuing war would end up being “more taxing than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.”

On the war strategists’ own terms, a war on Iran would backfire. But the human cost of such a war would also be immense. Even if a US or Israeli strike only targeted Iran’s nuclear sites and it didn’t result in larger land war, the toxic plumes released as a result of the strikes could kill or injure up to 70,000 civilians in nearby cities and towns.

Six Things the $450 Million Aid to Egypt Will Pay For | #1 News Site on the Threat of Radical Islam.

Attack on US Embassy in Egypt (Photo: Reuters

The U.S. government is about to add $450 million to its $16 trillion debt for the sake of Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt.

According to the New York Times, the emergency cash transfer is part of a $1 billion aid package pledged in May. The original plan was to provide $190 million as soon as possible, but the declining economic conditions of Egypt convinced the Obama Administration to more than double that amount.  Another $260 million will be delivered once Egypt secures a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

And it doesn’t stop there. The Times reports:

“In addition to the $1 billion in assistance, the administration is working with Egypt to provide $375 million in financing and loan guarantees for American financiers who invest in Egypt and a $60 million investment fund for Egyptian businesses. All of that comes on top of $1.3 billion in military aid that the United States provides Egypt each year (emphasis mine).”

Here are six things that American taxpayers’ money will pay for once it arrives in Egypt:

1. The Unraveling of the Peace Treaty With Israel.

The pledge by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi to honor the peace treaty with Israel means nothing. The Brotherhood’s line has always been that Israel is the one violating, and therefore nullifying, the treaty.

After a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, the Egyptian Foreign Minister said, “Mr. President [Morsi] has repeatedly reaffirmed, on all occasions, that Egypt continues to respect all treaties signed as long as the other party to the treaty respects the treaty itself.”

He then implied that Israel was in violation of the treaty. “…Egypt’s understanding of peace is that it should be comprehensive, exactly as stipulated in the treaty itself. And this also includes the Palestinians, of course, and its right to – their right have their own state on the land that was – the pre June 4, 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Secure America Now’s excellent new pamphlet about Morsi quotes him as saying on April 24, 2004 hat a parliamentary committee is needed “to draft a popular political program to restructure Egyptian-American relations and set a timetable to dispose the so-called peace agreement with the Zionist entity.”

There is no reason to believe that his opinion has changed, especially when the Brotherhood openly states its objective as the destruction of Israel. The Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, said on June 14 that Muslims are required to perform “jihad of self and money” for the sake of “imposing Muslim rule throughout beloved Palestine.”

2. Supporting Hamas.

The charter of the Hamas terrorist group states it is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine.” In December 2011, Hamas even changed its name to “The Islamic Resistance Movement—a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine.” The Brotherhood has never condemned Hamas. On the contrary, it has endorsed the terrorist group at every turn and preached to the Muslim world that it is the “resistance” to Israel.

In June 2007, Morsi said, “Muslim Brotherhood support of Hamas is a support of the Palestinian resistance.” In 2011, he told CNN, “We do not use violence against anyone. What’s going on [in] the Palestinian land is resistance.”

At one of Morsi’s campaign stops, a musician performed a song with lyrics that included “brandish your weapons, say your prayers” and “Come on, you lovers of martyrdom, banish the sleep from the eyes of all Jews. Come on, you lovers of martyrdom, you are all Hamas. Indeed, all the lovers of martyrdom are Hamas.”

Hamas, with good reason, believes Egypt will end cooperation with Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas chief Khaled Meshal praised the “new era” in the Egyptian-Palestinian relationship after he met with Morsi in June. The next month, Morsi told Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh that “Egypt and Palestine are one entity.”

3.  Sharia Law.

Don’t be fooled by the Brotherhood’s adoption of popular terms like “democracy.” Its senior cleric, Sheikh Yousef Qaradawi, explains that their version of “democracy” is different than that in the West. To them, democracy means the level of freedom permitted within the confines of Sharia Law.

Consider the Muslim Brotherhood’s official motto: “Allah is our objective/The Prophet is our leader/The Quran is our law/Jihad is our way/Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

On April 21, Morsi pledged his commitment to “instituting the religion of Allah” because “every aspect of life is to be Islamicized.” He even promised the radical Salafists, who are even more radical than the Brotherhood, that he’d appoint a clerical council to review all legislation to make it is in compliance with Islam as they see it. Of the 27 members of the National Council for Human Rights, 9 are Islamists, including two Salafists and the Secretary-General of the Brotherhood.

On May 13, Morsi recited the Brotherhood pledge to an adoring audience.

“The Sharia, then the Sharia and finally, the Sharia…I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text [of the constitution]…Allah willing, the text will truly reflect [Sharia], as will be agreed upon by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic scholars, and by legal and constitutional experts,” he said.

Morsi’s government has arrested a Coptic Christian for allegedly posting the anti-Islam “Innocence of Muslims” film online. Another was sentenced to six years in prison for posting cartoons of Mohammed on Facebook. This is only the beginning. The Brotherhood follows a doctrine of “gradualism” where Sharia Law is implemented in stages. For example, Sheikh Qaradawi advised Egypt to wait five years before cutting off the hands of robbers.

On September 30, a Brotherhood preacher named Wagdy Ghoneim (who used to be an imam in California until he was arrested in 2004) called for prosecution secularists for apostasy. “If anyone tells you that he is a liberal, tell him directly that he is an infidel,” he said.

4. Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism

The Brotherhood views the U.S. and Israel essentially as one unit. To them, the U.S. is secretly controlled by the anti-Muslim Zionists. In July 2004, Morsi talked about the “crisis of the Zionist and American enemy.” In 2010, Brotherhood Supreme Guide Badi preached that “resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny.” The context of the statement clearly referred to violent jihad. He opined, “The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.”

Morsi has insinuated that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” on numerous occasions, claiming in 2007 that the U.S. “never presented any evidences on the identity of those who committed that incident.” This conspiracy theory almost invariably holds that “Zionist” elements within the U.S. government collaborated with Israel to carry them out.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s former Supreme Guide, Mohammed Akef, came to Ahmadinejad’s defense in 2005 about “the myth of the Holocaust.” Strangely, Ahmadinejad caused a furor in the U.S. and around the world when he said the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” and denied the Holocaust but not a word is said when the Brotherhood says the exact same things.

The Brotherhood’s anti-Semitism is just as vulgar as anything that has come from Ahmadinejad’s mouth. In November 2004, Morsi said the “Quran established that the Jews are the ones with the highest degree of enmity towards Muslims” and “there is no peace with the descendants of the apes and pigs.” In July 2007, he talked about the “way to free the land from the filth of the Jews.”

The charter of Hamas is explicit in its anti-Semitism, quoting an Islamic verse that reads, “The time will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind the rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”

5. Building the Caliphate

This isn’t an exaggeration. The Brotherhood and its allies won the elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Somalia. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. In Yemen, the Brotherhood’s Islah affiliate is the strongest party as the country undergoes a transition. The Brotherhood is a major force behind the rebels in Syria and the Brotherhood is gearing up to destabilize Jordan. The Sudanese regime says it is instituting full-blown Sharia Law and if it doesn’t, the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliate may overthrow it. The Brotherhood suffered a major setback in Libya’s elections, but it remains a potent force in that country.

Resurrecting the Caliphate sounds like a fantasy but the Brotherhood is certain that it is destiny and, if you look around the region, it’s easy to see why they are confident that it will happen soon. At one of Morsi’s campaign rallies, a cleric proclaimed, “We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate come true at the hands of Mohammed Morsi” and “the capital of the Caliphate and the United Arab States is Jerusalem.” Morsi nodded.

6. Keeping the Brotherhood in Power

If American money helps the Egyptian economy succeed, it helps the Brotherhood succeed. It’s as simple as that. If Morsi succeeds in improving the economy, even if it’s because of international assistance, he gets the credit.

At the same time, Morsi is doing whatever he can to preserve the Brotherhood’s hold on power. There was an argument to be made in favor of U.S. financial assistance when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces were the real power-brokers and served as a check on the Brotherhood’s power. That is no longer the case. Morsi was able to depose the top leaders and replace them with Brotherhood supporters.

At the same time, Morsi is issuing administrative orders to shut down independent television stations. About 50 editors of state newspapers have been replaced with his allies. The state television is giving him positive coverage. The individual who was arrested for posting “Innocence of Muslims” online was also charged with insulting the President and a newspaper that criticized Morsi was confiscated, the best examples attacks on free speech you could ever ask for.

This is what Americans are paying $450 million for. And there’s no money-back guarantee if they are unsatisfied.

Israel Hayom | Finish what you started.

Dan Margalit

Liberman: West must be prepared to aid Iranians in ‘Persian Spring’ | The Times of Israel.

With presidential elections approaching, regime faces ‘critical moment,’ says foreign minister

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Thursday that Israel has a deep interest in supporting those calling for a regime change in Iran and should press the international community to aid dissenters. Liberman made the comment a  day after protesters clashed with police in the streets of Tehran over increasing economic hardships and the steep drop in the country’s currency value.

“The Foreign Ministry has long pointed out that we are on the way from the Arab Spring to the Persian Spring. What we are seeing now is just the first buds,” said Liberman in an interview with Army Radio. “As we approach presidential elections in Iran, in June 2013, we will see much more of this.”

Liberman said that the West made a mistake when it didn’t take a more active role in supporting the reformist protesters during the last elections in 2009 and that the international community must be prepared to assist with money and institutions.

When asked by the interviewer whether US President Barack Obama had made a mistake by not fanning the flames enough during the 2009 protests and subsequently perhaps cutting off Iran’s nuclear rush, Liberman said the mistake was not Obama’s but that of all Western nations.

Addressing Israel’s role vis-a-vis the popular protests in Iran, Liberman said, “The best help Israel can offer is not to disrupt things by interfering. I don’t think we have a special status that forces us to lead initiatives, but we should definitely follow matters closely and encourage the UN Security Council, the EU, the world powers and others to take action.”

“I have no doubt the Iranian regime is approaching a critical moment. The only question is what will come first — the fruition of its nuclear program, or the Persian Spring. We must be prepared for both possibilities.”

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran on Wednesday as public anger over economic problems in the sanction-hit country erupted violently. The protests were the most dramatic in Iran since bitter demonstrations erupted after the 2009 presidential elections: Approximately 150 people were arrested.

TV footage showed the protesters shouting slogans of “Death to the corrupt regime” and “Get out of Syria, and start taking care of us” — a reference to Iranian involvement in helping President Bashar Assad repel the Syrian-rebel efforts to oust his regime.

Police reportedly used tear gas to disperse about 100 people who had gathered outside the capital’s central bank and were chanting anti-government slogans.

Washington on Monday pointed to the drop in the rial’s value as proof that sanctions on the country were working.

The West has leveled restrictions, described by the US State Department as “punishing,” against Iran’s oil and banking sectors in a bid to halt the country’s nuclear program.

The rial’s sharp decline is attributed to a combination of Western sanctions and government policies — such as fueling inflation by increasing the money supply, while also holding down bank interest rates. That prompted many people to withdraw their rials to exchange for foreign currency over the past months.

On Tuesday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters that the country would overcome the sanctions, but that restrictions on the banking industry were taking a toll.

Continuous Turkish artillery barrage cuts out 10-km buffer strip inside Syria.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 4, 2012, 1:29 PM (GMT+02:00)

Turkish artillery barrage against Syria

Constrained from a substantial military incursion into Syria by US President Barack Obama’s veto and Saudi and Qatari refusals to help pay for it, Turkey’s government and military decided to make do with carving out a buffer strip 10 kilometers deep into Syria by continuous artillery barrages.
Thursday morning, Oct. 4 at 0300 GMT, Ankara ordered the Turkish army to keep up its cross-border shelling of Syria after the first bombardment Wednesday night in response to the deaths of five Turkish civilians and eight injured by Syrian mortar shells which exploded in their village.

debkafile‘s military sources report the artillery squads were told to aim primarily at Syrian military targets inside this strip, including bases, outposts and Syrian forces on the move.
Several Syrian bases and outposts have been hit so far and a large number of Syrian soldiers killed or wounded. Neither Ankara nor Damascus is offering information on casualties. They have imposed a heavy blackout on events so as to keep them under control and avoid the risk of a full-blown war.
It was the first time in the 18-month Syrian uprising that Turkey had staged military action against Syria.
The first Turkish barrage was fired as NATO foreign ministers met in emergency session in Brussels and the UN Security Council in New York condemned Syria.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also harshly condemned the Syrian shelling but did not commit to any action against Syria except to state that Washington stands behind Ankara

According to our sources, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s hands are tied. When he asked Washington in the last 48 hours whether the Syrian attack would serve as the pretext for imposing a no-fly zone over northern and central Syria with US Air Force participation, the Turkish prime minister encountered a flat refusal.
He was told by administration officials that the president would not change his mind about withholding US military intervention in Syria – especially after US intelligence briefed him last week that, according their latest assessment, Syrian President Bashar Assad would not hold out more than another six months. That is, until February-March 2013 at latest.

At the same time, say debkafile‘s Washington sources, the White House did not rule out a limited Turkish border operation for forcing Syrian troops to go on the run and giving the Syrian rebels greater freedom of movement to cross back and forth for arms supplies and medical treatment.

We reported in September that Turkish officers had taken command of two Syrian rebel brigades, the North Liberators and the Tawhid Brigade, which operate mostly in Aleppo. Turkish officers orchestrate their operations without crossing into Syria themselves.
By the saturation bombardment of the 10-kilometer strip inside Syria, Turkey plans to drive the Syrian military presence out and enable the two rebel brigades to move in and start establishing a 50-kilometer long protected corridor from Aleppo up to the Killis region of southern Turkey.
The big question is how long will Syrian President Bashar Assad tolerate Turkish artillery control of this border strip without fighting back. This decision is not only up to Assad but also to Tehran and Hizballah, both of which are deploying large-scale military strength in Syria in his support.