Iran just test-fired some long-range missiles in response to warnings from the G8, reports the IHT:

The missile tests drew a sharp response Wednesday from the United States.

Gordon Johndroe, the deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Japan that Iran’s development of ballistic missiles was a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

“The Iranian regime only furthers the isolation of the Iranian people from the international community when it engages in this sort of activity,” Johndroe said.

He urged Iran to “refrain from further missile tests if they truly seek to gain the trust of the world. The Iranians should stop the development of ballistic missiles which could be used as a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon immediately.”

The missile tests were reported after the Group of 8 leaders urged Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Moreover, Iran displayed its military capability just a day after the United States and the Czech Republic signed an accord to allow the Pentagon to deploy part of its controversial ballistic missile shield, which Washington maintains is designed in part to protect against Iranian missiles.

Here’s a picture of their range, from the BBC:

There’s a new meme in town: namely, that things are improving in Iraq and in the GWOT.

WaPo:

While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Funny, but I just wrote about the fact that things seem to be looking up in Iraq! I guess others have noticed—but not the MSM, as Engram notes repeatedly in this post.

Of course Engram has been bird-dogging events in Iraq for a long time, creating graphs and explaining over and over in painstakingly that the reduction in casualties (both Iraqi and American) means that the tide is turning. Admirably and stubbornly, he has continued to make this unpopular case. How he ties it all together:

It seems that we may have already won this unwinnable war. In so doing, we have disconfirmed the world’s most dangerous theory. That theory, which was shared by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein alike, was that America’s powerful military was not a force to be feared because the will of the American public could be easily broken with just a bit of bloodshed. That was the lesson these tyrants learned from Vietnam, and the actions of Barack Obama and Harry Reid seemed to confirm that 9/11 did not change anything. The lesson I have learned is that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were, to my great surprise, mostly correct. As they thought, most Americans do not have the will to sustain a bloody fight. But I’ve also learned that if the president alone does show that resolve, then that’s all that matters. Now that al Qaeda in Iraq has been crushed, I suspect that they have learned this new lesson as well (well, bin Laden has).

As it turns out, it was al Qaeda, not America, that launched a misbegotten adventure in Iraq. Their great mistake in an otherwise brilliant plan was to think that even George Bush’s will could be broken once the will of the American people began to flag. It was a monumental error on their part. Now, they have lost in Iraq, and they destroyed their reputation throughout the Muslim world because of the strategy they used in their unsuccessful effort to evict American forces. That strategy was to slaughter other Muslims (Shiites) to break the will of the American people instead of directly taking on the U.S. military. It almost worked, but the gamble appears to have failed.

There’s more: because of Al Qaeda’s abhorrent massacres of Muslims, jihadism is losing favor among the world’s Muslims. Newsweek is the latest to report:

Important Muslim thinkers, including some on whom bin Laden depended for support, have rejected his vision of jihad. Once sympathetic publics in the Middle East and South Asia are growing disillusioned. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, “Fundamentally, no one really liked Al Qaeda’s vision of the future.” At the same time, and potentially much more important over the long run, a new vision of Islam, neither bin Laden’s nor that of the traditionalists who preceded him, is taking shape. Momentum is building within the Muslim world to re-examine what had seemed immutable tenets of the faith, to challenge what had been taken as literal truths and to open wide the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) that some schools of Islam tried to close centuries ago.

As Peter Wehner notes, this jihadism-is-on-the-wane meme has been building recently:

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a noteworthy interview to the Washington Post this week.

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership. …

…  Hayden’s assessment comes on the heels of important essays by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker and Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in The New Republic arguing that the tide within the Islamic world is turning strongly against al Qaeda and jihadism.

Wisely, Wehner cautions against excessive optimism [e.a.]:

Progress, like setbacks, can be reversed. Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman is surely right when he says “Al-Qaeda’s obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory. I agree that there has been progress. But we’re indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy.” And Hayden’s right to warn us that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training, and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents.

Indeed. This would be the “malign influence” that Iran casts over the entire region, according to Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony before Congress last week—a claim that was challenged by Sen Jim Webb, who apparently thinks we should go so easy on Iran that we should avoid using displeasing words like “malign. Petraeus disagreed [e.a.]:

WEBB: General Petraeus, there’s some language in response to questions that were submitted to you for the record that go to Iran that I would like to get some clarifcation or give you the opportunity to clarify. You use the word malign as an adjective, as someone who’s written nine books, I’m trying to struggle with how this fits in to what you’re saying here. You say ["]we will continue to expose you the extent of Iran’s malign activity in Iraq,” and then you say on the next page, “our efforts in regard to Iran must involve generating international cooperation and building consensus to counter malign Iranian influence,” and then you speak about its…”there are consequences for its illegitimate influence in the region.” Can you clarify for us…how are you using those words?
PETRAEUS: I can, Senator. What I’m talking about there I am characterizing that influence, it is malign and it is lethal and it is illegitimate. The arming, training, funding, and directing of militia extremists who have killed our soldiers…is very malign indeed it’s the same situation with what they’re doing…

But rather than get all caught up in Iran and other issues in the Middle East—Olmert’s extraordinary meltdown, anybody?—I’d like to reprint at length Peter Wehner’s conclusions about these extraordinary shifts in the geopolitics of the day, and the lesson we should all draw from them:

It’s worth recalling how widely the pendulum has swung in just the last two years. In 2005 and 2006, Iraq, it was said in many quarters, was lost; we either had to beat a hasty retreat or, as Joe Biden and Les Gelb counseled, we needed to separate Iraq into three largely autonomous regions (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd). For a time the Biden-Gelb plan was the “hot” one among commentators — the “third way” between leaving Iraq precipitously and foolishly attempting to repair a hopelessly broken and divided society. In fact, we are now seeing precisely the reconciliation and progress that many analysts believed was impossible to achieve.

It was also said by many analysts that as a result of the President’s misguided policies, al Qaeda was growing more popular, terrorist recruitment was up, al Qaeda had been handed great gifts by the Bush administration, and that America was less safe than prior to 9/11. The conventional wisdom was that the “Bush legacy” would be that al Qaeda was much stronger and America was much weaker than before the Iraq war.

Today the pendulum is swinging very much the other way. The reality is that things are much better now then they were at the mid-point of this decade. The cautionary tale in all this may be that we need to resist the temptation to take a snapshot in time and assuming that those things will stay as they are. Two years ago there were reasons for deep concern — but there were not reasons, it turns out, for despair or hopelessness. Events are fluid and can be shaped by human action and human will. While commentators were busy writing obituaries on Iraq, Bush, in the face of gale-force political winds, changed strategies –and Petraeus and company took on the hard task of redeeming Iraq.

Recent events are reminders, too, that equanimity and the capacity for some degree of detachment are important qualities to possess–qualities which are often lacking among those of us who inhabit the world of politics and government and comment on events on a daily or weekly basis.

Indeed.

But detachment and equanimity are, of course, the opposite of what sells on television—which is why cable “news” is 24/7 hysteria.

We’ve been hearing a lot of empty but heated rhetoric from Obama and McCain on Iran. Now, listen to the words of a consummate diplomat and expert political operator—SecDef Robert Gates [e.a.]:

The top uniformed US military officer told Congress Tuesday that Iran is directly jeopardizing peace in Iraq, prompting fresh calls from senators that the US pursue diplomatic talks with Teheran. …

Gates said he supports sitting down with officials from Teheran, but only after the US has developed significant leverage. In such cases as Libya and North Korea, these countries were seeking to relieve economic pressures imposed by sanctions, Gates said.

“The key here is developing leverage, either through economic or diplomatic or military pressures on the Iranian government so they believe they must have talks with the United States because there is something they want from us, and that is the relief of the pressure,” Gates said.

See how easy it is to demand preconditions while sounding reasonable? Obama should pay attention.

On November 2, 2007, the New York Times, once known as the “newspaper of record,” published a story about Barack Obama’s intended foreign policy. The story was based on a lengthy interview with the candidate. It was headlined as follows:

Obama Pledges ‘Aggressive’ Iran Diplomacy

Here are the relevant excerpts, which detail in depth the kinds of things Obama said he was willing to offer Iran:

[H]e asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.

“We are willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith,” he said in the interview at his campaign headquarters here. “I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior.”

The reporters sought clarification about the “sticks.”

Mr. Obama declined to say if he would consider military action if Iran did not abandon its presumed nuclear weapons program or if he would settle for a strategy of deterring and containing a nuclear-armed Iran.

“My decision making, with respect to military options versus diplomatic options, a containment strategy versus a strike strategy, is going to be informed by how is that going to impact not just Iran,” he said, “but how is that going to impact the stability of the region and how’s that going to impact our long-term security interests.”

To underscore the point, Obama’s then-top foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, gave an interview to the New Statesman in which she confirmed Obama’s views about aggressive diplomacy:

The way to do it, according to Power, is “to be in the room with the bad guys but not to check your principles in at the door”. Obama would engage with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad. He would sit down with North Korea and Syria. Is there anyone he wouldn’t talk to? “Not among elected heads of state. He won’t talk to Hamas, but he would talk to Abbas.”

This morning, Jennifer Rubin described the Obama campaign’s efforts to blot out Obama’s words—and intentions—: to rewrite history and to cover up the truth with lies, as Bob Dylan once wrote (except that he was castigating the media, whereas I am castigating the slippery and increasingly untrustworthy and unreliable Barack Obama).

Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisor, is at it again. She is on a mission to save Obama from himself, insisting that he never promised to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad–and that he never said without preconditions.

The bizarre additional explanation this time is that it was some other unnamed leader of Iran he may have had in mind for a get together. Two problems :1) it is a lie and 2) huh? As to the first, there is ample documentation–from Obama’s own mouth–that it was Ahmadinejad he had in mind and that he would meet without preconditions (in the first year of his presidency, no less). The media has been reporting as much for a year and it was a prime source of disagreement with Hillary Clinton. If his campaign persists in this line of defense, he risks not just losing the foreign policy debate but his reputation for practicing the New Politics. (In other words he will, in the eyes of the public, not simply be a novice in foreign policy, but a liar.)

One commenter’s remarks are worth reprinting (almost) in full:

Its interseting that the Obama campaign is spinning out of control this early. Did we only have to scratch the surface? I thought it would take more.

James Rubin’s original claim that McCain was “smearing” Obama didn’t seem to take hold. It was about the 5th time I have seen a reporter or professor use the term “smear” to protect Barack Obama from analysis.

Obama doesn’t know if he should appeal to his liberal base, or start running in the general election. As he is getting his act together, these writers have invoked “smear” to anyone who would dare challenge his flip-flops. [Jamie] Rubin, of course, wants to ignore very simple facts. He used a partial quote!

Now, as Jennifer Rubin points out, Susan Rice claims Obama has been on the bandwagon the whole time. Except for the inconvenient truth called documentation. This is really getting strange. I wonder how the Obama campaign is going use the words “snippet” and “smear” to get out this mess. Well, it so happens that Ahmadinejad is another strange uncle that Obama can’t disown or never talk to.

Another commenter, considering today’s political climate and the fact that the media is now an open player in presidential (and even world) politics (which I wrote about here), offers a word of warning:

Obama has really backed himself into a corner here. Watching him try to get out of it is thoroughly enjoyable. When it’s all said and done, however, I don’t think he’s quite going to be able to do it.

But I admit he just might. I know the MSM isn’t as powerful as it used to be, but it is still formidable, and every drop of leverage and influence it can muster will be mobilized on Obama’s behalf for the next 24 weeks. That is a great advantage to have, and we who oppose Obama’s candidacy should not be naive about the MSM’s potential to make the difference for him.

Another commenter makes a funny:

The question of who speaks for the Obama campaign - supporters in the media, advisors like Susan Rice, endorsers like Gary Hart, or the candidate himself - is even more difficult to figure out than who speaks for Iran.

When all else fails, seek laughter. It helps.

Oh yes, and compare and contrast this kerfuffle with what is happening in the real world, where, the Jerusalem Post reports (and the White House strenuously denies), President Bush is considering attacking Iran’s nuclear installations before the end of his presidency.

See lots of interesting back-and-forth about the advisability (or inadvisability) of confronting Iran here and here.

This, in particular, is worth contemplating:

Nuclear capability will give Iran the kind of umbrella of impunity that will allow it to double its mischief in the region without fear of retribution. Do you like the way Hezbollah and Hamas behave in their respective domains? You will love it when Iran has nukes! Do you find it hard to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict now? Try when Iran’s nukes enable its proxies to up the ante. Are you worried about Shia unrest in Kuwait and Bahrain? Prepare for more trouble when Iran’s nuclear bomb casts a shadow on those countries. Do you think oil prices are too high? Save for a cold winter, when Iran’s speedboats swarm the Gulf and harass supertankers. Do you really think anyone will risk a nuclear showdown for any of the above?

Consider this as well: Iran might lend its nukes and ballistic missiles to friends like Venezuela, to get San Francisco within range. It would not be overstretching–Hugo Chavez will surely pick up the bill to pay the costs of the exercise. Unbelievable? Why?

The left, committed pacifists, and increasingly unself-confident and paralyzed liberals are embroiled in a massive failure of the imagination. Good people find it hard to imagine that real evil exists in the world. This kind of thinking needs to end. One way or the other, it will end.

I am a born fighter, and I want to nip it in the bud before it happens. Where do you stand?

(via the Georgetown Book Shop)

No, not from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their retarded supporters, who seem determined to play You’re Not Allowed to Say That for the next six months (to the merriment of Republicans and everyone else in America who is sick to death of the Church of Political Correctness).

Here’s my favorite punching bag, A’jad:

“Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place,” [said] Ahmadinejad,

Also, in case you were wondering:

“Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world,”

Hmmm. By by my lights, that makes Iran the frontrunner. Perhaps in that case they should get ready to be attacked. With rhetoric only, of course!

No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama’s pretty, meaningless, but inspiring words (the exact same unoriginal words used by Deval Patrick, offered up to him and to Obama by their mutual media strategist, David Axelrod, as I mentioned here yesterday).

I’m talking about the poison emanating from the mouth Ahmadinejad:

Also Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent verbal attacks against Israel were unacceptable. …

The meeting [with Israel's UN ambassador Dan Gillerman] followed yet another verbal attack against Israel by Ahmadinejad .. .

“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

In the hour-long conversation with Ban, Gillerman said it is “outrageous for a member state to use racial, Nazi like statements against another member state.”

He said that such expressions warranted the condemnation of Iran by the international community.

Ban, who agreed to meet on very short notice, said such statements are “unacceptable and unforgivable,” according to Gillerman. Ban vowed to deal with the matter soon but did not explain how he intended to do so.

Iran wants Israel to take the threat of military force off the table. Good luck with that!

Mismanaging impressions is a bad idea:

Russia warned Iran on Wednesday that its development of rockets and continued uranium enrichment was creating the impression Tehran was intentionally ignoring the concerns of the international community.

“We do not approve of Iran’s actions in constantly demonstrating its intentions to develop its rocket sector and continue enriching uranium,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian news agencies. …

I think it is advisable to refrain from steps, and especially from statements, that merely heat up the atmosphere and create the impression that Iran really has made up its mind to ignore the international community, the United Nations Security Council and the IAEA,” he said.

Interesting development. I wonder what’s going on. I suppose it’s hard being Iran’s only friend …

We might as well get used to it, because I think we’re going to be hearing stuff like this for a long time:

Egyptian FM threatens to break Palestinians’ legs if they breach border again

He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis and hardship that Gaza is experiencing, and for “responding to the Palestinian (Hamas) missiles with collective punishment.”

He also criticized Hamas for launching those missile attacks, describing the confrontation as a “laughable caricature” resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

Ridicule is not what Hamas wanted to hear:

Sami Abu Zuhri … called [the remarks] “inappropriate” and said he did not believe they reflected the official Egyptian stance.

We’ll see, I guess.

The Egyptian Sandmonkey is back to blogging, I see. He’s got a message for his government:

PLEASE

SECURE

THE 

BORDERS, 

BITCHES 

..before anymore bad shit happens!

That is all!

More from the Sandmonkey here and here.

From the Israeli perspective, things aren’t much better, of course. Ynet reports that the IDF has found evidence of Hamas having adopted Hezbollah-style tactics for using its rocket lauchers in Gaza to attack Israel indiscriminately.

Off in cloud cuckoo-land is Tony Blair, complimenting the Palestinian Authority for starting to get its shit together.

I guess he believes desperately in Fatah’s Abbas. Hamas, however, has a different message:

Hamas rejects Abbas proposal to broker cease-fire with Israel

And that’s because, at Iran’s urging, Hamas is now declaring all out war on Israel:

Israel can expect a wave of suicide bombings inside its 1967 borders, not just the West Bank, Hamas’ representative in Iran said Wednesday. The announcement came as Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip launched a barrage of Qassam rockets into Israel. …

[Israeli] Defense officials told Haaretz they view the announcement as a significant change because it comes from the organization’s representative to Tehran - which has in recent weeks been pressuring Hamas to escalate hostilities against Israel.

None of this is good.

Nobody can say that Hamas isn’t determined. But this doesn’t look like an organization seeking justice for displaced people, does it?

Samantha Power, a distinguished and eloquent author and academic and supposedly a close adviser on foreign policy to Barack Obama, suggests that we “rethink” Iran. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering who she is advising (the King of Hope), her expert “advice” is also founded on hope—and nothing but,, as she herself admits in this pathetic, intellectually dishonest, and useless piece in Time magazine [e.a.]:

A new Iran policy should start with the premise that any country behind a problem can also be behind a solution. No aspect of the Iraq quagmire can be resolved without Iranian involvement. Washington has a better chance of modifying Iran’s influence in Iraq–and Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon–than of immediately halting it.

To do so, we need to broaden the range of policy tools we draw upon. That means refraining from redundant reminders that military force is still “on the table,” which only strengthen the hand of hard-line Islamists and nationalists. It means broadening cultural contacts with the Iranian people, bypassing the regime through Voice of America and the Internet. And it means trying high-level political negotiations, something the Bush Administration has so far shunned. Supporters of engagement should not equate dialogue with concessions. We should ask international negotiators to insist–as we did with the Soviet Union during the cold war–that Iran address human-rights issues as well as security concerns. It’s true that earlier attempts at engagement have produced few dividends. But what negotiations can do is diminish perceptions of U.S. arrogance and remind the world of the urgency of getting Iran to cooperate on issues of shared interest, from preventing state failure in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan to caring for Iraqi refugees.

Dear Samantha Power:

Your candidate repeats this cute phrase over and over again on the stump: that it is stupid to keep trying the same things over and over again and to expect a different result.

Let me remind you that

a) successful negotiators (like, for example, John Edwards) never take anything off the table before beginning negotiations.

b) recent cultural exchanges have led to Americans being jailed and then intimidated after their release

c) Iran has a tendency to change “negotiators” just as negotiations begin to get somewhere (i.e., just as Iran is tempted to make some compromises)

d) international “negotiators” are working against the businessmen in their own countries, who are writing contracts with Iran right and left, now that the NIE declared Iran kosher.

e) “diminishing perceptions” of U.S. arrogance, such as for example Bush’s recent Middle East trip, are a PR exercise in futility. Photo ops and talk are cheap. People the world over are not as stupid as you think.

The Iranians don’t want to deal. They want to rule, with an iron “Islamic” fist—over people who are not interested in their manner of governance.

Stop selling false hope. You are not doing your candidate—or our country—any favors.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants the United States to sit down and talk and negotiate and talk and negotiate some more with the lying sacks of shit who claim to speak for the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Contrast the position of, say, Rudy Giuliani—also a clever lawyer, and for my money a lot cleverer when it comes to negotiating from a position of strength than Obama—here.)

I just thought I’d remind you of Obama’s judgment that the United States should be serene in the face of bellicose provocation, that the United States should give, give, give, give, give, and get nothing in return.

All that is by way of introducing a link to pictures, the story, and a video of the highly provocative incident:

 

The U.S. Navy released dramatic video and audio of this weekend’s stand-off with Iran. The video shows Iranian speedboats swarming around three American warships going through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

At the chilling culmination of the tape, a voice can be heard over the radio, apparently from the Iranians, saying, “I am coming at you. You will explode after a few minutes.”

Go to the link, watch the vid, and marvel at the calm that prevails on board among the sailors of the United States Navy. And remember that Andrew Sullivan (Obama’s biggest fan) supports a fresh start in foreign policy.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Too bad that it’s the same old troubled world out there, with a lot of bad actors intent on doing harm to the United States and its people.

In one of my favorite episodes (it was a while back) of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry and Cheryl argue about whether it’s enough to say “I love you forever” or whether you have to commit to loving your spouse forever and beyond.

That’s what came to mind when I read this report about a study about the nightmare scenario of nuclear war in the Middle East (by the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies), in which it was predicted that Israel would probably survive*** in some form but that Iran would be obliterated: [e.a.]

Anthony H. Cordesman, explor[ing] just such a nightmare scenario, not[ed] that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis. …

Given certain conditions, Israel could potentially survive such a nuclear scenario, the study found. Iran, on the other hand, would be completely and utterly obliterated. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of term, though Israeli recovery is theoretically possible in population and economic terms,” wrote Cordesman, who compiled this study entitled “Iran, Israel, and Nuclear War”

And a happy Christmas season to you, too!

—————

*** Wasn’t I just saying yesterday that the Jews should be renamed? that they should be called the Survivors?

If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be grand entertainment to watch the unfolding of the growing counterattack on the NIE report.

Case in point—the WSJ ($$) reports that an “Iranian opposition group” says that Iran in fact resumed its nuclear-weapon-production program in 2004. This group also provides details:

Group Says Iran Resumed Weapon Program 

The Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran’s nuclear-fuel program said a U.S. intelligence analysis is correct that Tehran shut down its weaponization program in 2003, but claims that the program was relocated and restarted in 2004.

Read with a rain of salt—since the group, NCRI, doesn’t have a track record of reliability and its politics are characterized as Marxist—but here are the details:

“What the first part of the NIE says is right, that they halted their weaponization research in 2003,” said Mohammad Mohaddessin, foreign-affairs chief for the NCRI. “But the second part, that they stopped until at least the middle of 2007, is wrong. They scattered the weaponization program to other locations and restarted in 2004.”

Equipment was relocated first from Lavisan-Shian to another military compound in Tehran’s Lavisan district, the Center for Readiness and Advanced Technology, Mr. Mohaddessin said. Two devices designed to measure radiation levels were moved to Malek-Ashtar University in Isfahan and to a defense ministry hospital in Tehran, he said. Other equipment was sent to other locations the NCRI hasn’t been able to identify, he said.

“Their strategy was that if the IAEA found any one piece of this research program, it would be possible to justify it as civilian. But so long as it was all together, they wouldn’t be able to,” Mr. Mohaddessin said.

Meanwhile, however, the AP reports that Ahmadinejad has declared victory over the NIE and is losing no time in pressing his (perceived) advantage. He has renewed his invitation to Bush to debate him.

But he has also upped the ante. Now he claims that there are other issues besides the nuclear issue that must be resolved before Iran and the United States can make friends—namely, Israel:

The hard-line leader told reporters that an “entirely different” situation between the two countries could be created if more steps like the intelligence report followed.

We consider this measure by the U.S. government a positive step. It is a step forward,” Ahmadinejad said.

If one or two other steps are taken, the issues we have in front of us will be entirely different and will lose their complexity, and the way will be open for the resolution of basic issues in the region and in dealings between the two sides,” he said. …

“Regional nations have rights and want to fully use their rights. Respecting these rights is a serious change in strategy. This is the next step. If it is done, then you will see that … it is not that a 60-year issue can’t be resolved,” he said referring to an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Why would he choose to up the ante?

Because Iran’s leaders need to have external enemies in order to deflect the people’s attention away from the miserable, rotten, caged existence they are forced to live under those leaders—and away from their nonexistent future.

update: Jonathan Schell says that we’re screwed:

We are left in a situation that layers paradox upon paradox. A disastrous possible policy - military attack on Iran - has been headed off by a misguided, misinterpreted intelligence report …. But, report or no report, the danger that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons is real, and may even have increased. What’s missing is a policy to address it

The Brits are furious:

British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran.

The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.

The IAEA and the French are withering in their analysis:

An unnamed senior official described by The New York Times as close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN organization often derided as a soft on Iran by the Bush administration, scorned the U.S. agencies’ estimate as mushy.

“To be frank,” the official said, “we are more skeptical. We don’t buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran.”

In France, where the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, acting in coordination with Washington, has made vast efforts to enact separate European Union sanctions going beyond those of the UN Security Council, the report was characterized by an expert on nuclear proliferation as occasionally brushing close to the “hallucinatory.”

The expert, who requested not to be identified more specifically, said it was politically striking that the estimate began its “key judgments” section with its assertion that the Iranians halted work on weapons. This was described as notable since the report also acknowledged that “intelligence gaps” led two agencies, the National Intelligence Council and the Department of Energy, to question whether this conclusion had sufficient quality of information and corroboration.

Referring to the wide range of Iran’s possible weaponization activities (development of explosives and work on design, for example), those two agencies were only “moderately certain” that the entire Iranian weapons project came to a halt, the expert noted.

Whatever the fallout, though, it’s done now and can’t be undone—anotherb stellar performance from the Bush administration.

I don’t put a lot of stock in polls—they measure people’s opinions, fer chrissakes. So what if x % of Americans believe that Saddam was tied to 9/11? Not to put too fine a point on it, but that doesn’t make it a true proposition. Ya see where I’m headed with this?

At any rate, this poll result certainly did catch my attention:

Just 18% Believe Iran has Stopped Nuclear Weapons Development Program

Well, whaddaya know? Iran seems pretty much entrenched in the minds of the American public as a threat:

The Rasmussen Reports survey also found that 67% of American voters believe that Iran remains a threat to the national security of the United States?

I guess it’ll take a lot more than 16 U.S. government agencies hemming and hawing to persuade the public that this guy

comes in peace.

Wherever you come down on the endlessly intriguing question of what the hell is going on with Iran and the NIE, there’s a much more fundamental point about Iran that we shouldn’t overlook.

Jeffrey Herf addresses this question. Writing in Germany, Herf asks: “Where Are the Anti-Fascists?”

Occasionally one hears reassuring voices on both sides of the Atlantic. They say that Ahmadinejad is not the real seat of power in Tehran, or that he is simply making such threats to mobilize his supporters at home against domestic opponents, or that if he did possess nuclear weapons, he would certainly not be so crazy at to use them against a state such as Israel with its own nuclear deterrent. While I have heard such arguments from political scientists in the United States, many of whom tend to dismiss the causal significance of ideological fanaticism in international affairs, such reassuring tones sound particularly peculiar when voiced in this country. To put it mildly, German politics and intellectual life is not famous for sunny optimism.  …

Why do those who live in a country that was destroyed by the actions of a fanatic in power assume that Germany was unique, and that another country outside Europe could not produce a fanatic of a very different sort, and that Ahmadinejad does not really mean what he says?

[e.a.]

Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu (who’s been awfully quiet, by the way—have you noticed? what’s up with that?) made exactly this point about Iran a year ago:

“Believe [Ahmadinejad] and stop him,”

No one believed bin Laden either back in the early 1990s, when he was making all kinds of threats against the United States.

Given what we know now—that bin Laden meant every word he said—why would anyone rational choose not to believe Iran’s malign intentions, which it boasts about?

While we’re waiting for a John Le Carré -caliber*** thriller writer to emerge who is talented enough to address the war on terror, let me direct you toward two posts (and their comments sections) over on the Belmont Club.

Long live the blogosphere!

————-

*** Le Carré has turned into an anti-American political crank, but his Smiley novels were deeply satisfying entertainments. And The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is one of the most astute books ever written about the moral compromises foisted on people by Soviet-style totalitarianism.

Robert Baer claims that Bush walked away from his Iran mission because everything is going his way everywhere else and Iran is just too hard:

The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi’a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran’s surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran’s head.

Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they’re not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don’t even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can’t do.

Right! American can’t do it so we should just forget about it.

We should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.

Norman Podhoretz, while revising his paranoid suspicions from yesterday (which were pointed out not by his son, as I incorrectedly suggested yesterday, but rather by Gabriel Schoenfeld; and let me extend my apologies to my readers for the error), still sees Armageddon:

even if the President is still intent on keeping the military option alive, and even if the fine print in the new NIE gives him room to do so, it will now be infinitely more difficult to persuade the Iranian leadership that military force remains a possibility.

I have for some time now been predicting that before leaving office George W. Bush will order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. I have made that prediction with what the NIE would describe as “moderate confidence,” but the best I can do now is offer it with “low-to-no confidence.” For despite the President’s evident resolve to keep the military option on the table, the effect of the new NIE here at home will almost certainly make it politically impossible for him to take military action even if it becomes clearer than it already is that nothing else can prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb, or even if further investigation should reveal that the intelligence behind the NIE is faulty. Already, indeed, serious questions have been raised about the reliability of this intelligence.

In any event, there is one set of judgments I have made to which I am sticking: that neither diplomacy nor sanctions nor an internal insurrection can prevent the Iranian mullahs from getting the bomb, and that if they should get the bomb, deterrence would not work to keep them from using it.

I think Podhoretz has the right instinct about Iran—that it is unstoppable and udeterrable. (The pseudonymous Spengler at Asia Times has also been saying this for years.) I just don’t know if he’s got the right prescription for dealing with Iran’s attitude.

However, even Matthew Yglesias, who is allergic to unilateral military action, says that there’s still plenty of reason to be worried about Iran.

So I guess the Dems can’t quite take their eye off that ball yet.

One very popular Republic sure has been caught flat-footed , though.

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday …

Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Pathetic.

I’m as stumped as everyone else about the NIE report on Iran’s nuclear status. Essentially, our intelligence agencies have done a 180 since 2005.

What could account for such a turnaround? Right now, there are too many variables to consider to make sense of it all. Most interesting to me has been the reaction abroad, reported by the NYT’s Elaine Sciolino:

Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … The French Foreign Ministry said there would be no comment until Tuesday….

Then there’s Israel:

In Israel, officials said there would be no official response on Monday.

But a senior Israeli official said that “the Israeli government is familiar with the report,” and that Iran was a major topic of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s meeting with President Bush last Wednesday, after the Annapolis meeting.

The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said Israel remained extremely concerned. “We think there is enough information in the report to give a strong factual basis to our very real concerns about the Iranian nuclear program,” the official said.

And a new report from abroad, published this morning at 8:30 here in New York, indicates that everyone is skeptical and proceeding with caution:

Iran Welcomes U.S. Report While Paris Wants More Sanctions

The remarks of one European are the most interesting of all, revealing cui bono[e.a.]:

A European security source familiar with intelligence on Iran said the change of American stance was welcome, and would undermine the position of U.S. hawks.

“The American agencies have in essence come closer to the position of the European ones,” the source said.

“I think a political process (in dealing with Tehran) is more of an option than what we’ve perhaps been seeing from the hawks in the United States, the positioning for a military attack on Iran and so on.”

The official said there was “no definitive proof either way” as to whether Iran had halted a nuclear arms program in 2003. “And … we keep seeing (Iranian) procurement attempts in Europe … to acquire proliferation-relevant material.”

So: No one is saying that Iran hasn’t halted its nuclear ambitions. In fact, there’s ample evidence they’re very energetic on behalf of their larger program. The question is: why release this report now? cui bono?
Obviously: those who want to take military action against Iran off the table, and to thoroughly discredit Iran hawks. So it looks like a massive political hit job.

But there are so many other possibilities: maybe Iran did shut down its “nuclear arms effort” in 2003, as the NYT says in its headline–and that it did so out of fear, in reaction to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and that it has simply been doing a lot of chest-pounding for a couple of years as a diversionary tactic. There’s also the possibility, of course, that the NIE is dead wrong.

There are other loose threads in this story: Yesterday, the Commentary blog Contentions reminded us about the Iranian defector from last summer. (And today on Contentions, it’s Podhoretz vs. Podhoretz!)

Upshot: I’m stumped but deeply suspicious. This doesn’t pass the smell test. Occam’s razor (the simplest answer) would indicate that the NIE was wrong in 2005 and is right in 2007. It just doesn’t wash, though.

Is anyone surprised that Iran’s new nuclear “negotiator” turns out to be … well, to say he’s “intransigent” would imply that he could eventually be moved off his position in order to advance the West’s ”dialogue” with Iran. But that’s not the case:

The first hour-and-a-half of the London meeting was described as a monologue, with Jalili speaking about the will of the Iranian people to support uranium enrichment, theology, God, even his doctoral thesis, according to several officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

“Jalili said, ‘Everything in the past is past, and with me, you start over,’ ” an official said. “He said, ‘None of your proposals has any standing.’ ”

When Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that he was under the assumption that there would be continuity in the talks, Jalili told him that was wrong. After the meeting, Solana abandoned his habitual optimistic stance, telling reporters that he was “disappointed.”

Remember that quote from a year ago—that dealing with Iran was like playing chess with a monkey, because he wouldn’t follow your rules?

Well, here we are a year later, says the NYT:

Iranian Pushes Nuclear Talks Back to Square 1  

The hard-line position from the Iranian side was clear confirmation that Iran would not compromise on this issue, the French official said, adding, “We have in front of us the real Iran.”

An official involved in the talks put it even more bluntly, “We can’t do business with these guys at this point.”

This lesson about Iran is being learned the hard way by the Europeans, who, unlike certain hot-tempered Americans, are predisposed to dialogue.

Who knows what will come of these “negotiations” with Iran. “Talks” are going nowhere fast.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing chorus of calls for Israeli engagement with Hamas.

That proposal is shot down here by Noah Pollak.

Agence France-Press reports thatA’jad scolded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for consorting with the enemy:

“I wish the name of Saudi Arabia was not among those attending the Annapolis conference,” Ahmadinejad told the king late Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

“Arab countries should be watchful in the face of the plots and deception of the Zionist enemy,” he added.

Focusing on “the Zionist enemy” of course detracts attention from the actual state of affairs that has Iran in a tizzy:

The Islamic republic — which has made non-recognition of Israel one of its main ideological themes — has been left isolated by the attendance at the meeting of its chief regional ally Syria as well as Saudi Arabia.

This is the second time in two years that the major Sunni players in the Middle East have signaled their intense displeasure with Iran and its acolytes and clients. An interesting development.

update: I note that Eric Trager is rooting around to find out what the sudden turn of events running up to Annapolis means.***

As I write, at

9:45 AM ET, November 26, 2007

this story is nowhere to be found on Memeorandum, and it’s buried on p. A 11 of the dead-tree NYT, but it’s could signal a turn of fortune in the Middle East, too.

It looks like Condi Rice has managed to land not only Saudi Arabia but now also Syria for the heretofore mirage-like conference at Annapolis:

The Annapolis meeting, a major initiative pressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will begin negotiations on a peace treaty to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while simultaneously committing Israel and the Palestinians to carry out long-postponed obligations contained in the first stage of the 2003 peace plan known as the road map.

The presence of major Arab countries, now including Syria, is meant to provide Arab sanction and support for the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to make the concessions required for peace.

The NYT’s Steven Erlanger doesn’t allude to the implications, but this is huge. This means that Syria is allowing itself to be “peeled away” from Iran, leaving Hamas minus one sponsor.

The Israeli spokesman clarify what’s at stake here:

Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, said, “The Saudi and Syrian presence is very important and is an American success.” While the Syrians are not sending the foreign minister — a diplomatic distinction that has meaning — Ms. Eisin said that from Israel’s point of view, the rank of the representative was much less important than the Syrian presence.

“Hamas is appalled, which is why we have reason to be satisfied,” Ms. Eisin said.

About the results of the meeting, Ms. Eisin said, “We’re hopeful but not optimistic.”

Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, noted that Syria had agreed to cancel a planned “anti-Annapolis summit” meeting and attend instead. “If the idea of the meeting is Arab-Israeli dialogue, Syria matters,” he said. “It would be even more positive if this were an indication of a change in Syria’s orientation” — away from Iran and toward the Saudi- and Egyptian-led Sunni Arab consensus.

There is a steaming pile of bullshit about Rice’s supremely important role in this accompanying article in the NYT,  but even if you can believe only a tenth of what’s in the piece, there’s no question but that this is a coup.

I hate to sound optimistic, but I begin to see on the horizon a loose but fully international alliance that includes Muslims, Christians, and Jews—and it so happens that it’s a disruption of the so-called “Shia arc.”

At the very least, it seems as if a page is being turned.

————-
*** Trager writes:

Over the past few weeks, consensus has continually held that little should be expected from the Annapolis conference, which opens tomorrow. Op-ed after op-ed and poll after poll have dictated that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are too weak, if not too far apart in their positions, for any meaningful progress towards peace to take place.

Yet it’s hard to reconcile the notion that Annapolis is little more than an impressive photo op with the serious diplomatic capital that Arab states have invested in it. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia announced that it would send Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, marking the first time that the Saudis are participating in talks with Israelis present. Representatives of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen will also participate. Indeed, the Annapolis conference has achieved such profound legitimacy that Syria—believing that it risked regional isolation by not attending—announced that it would send its deputy foreign minister.

Norman Podheretz takes time out of his 24/7 job counseling that the U.S. bomb Iran to answer a charge brought by Andrew Sullivan and now spread further by The Economist:

Linking to the Economist post, Sullivan accuses me of intellectual dishonesty for failing to admit that I have made an “error” in relying on a “bogus quotation” to bolster my argument that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would not be deterred from using them by the fear of retaliation.

I do not usually bother responding to Sullivan’s frequent attacks on me, which are fueled by the same shrill hysteria that, as has often been pointed out, deforms most of what he “dishes” out on a daily basis. But in this case I have decided to respond because, by linking to a sober source like the Economist, he may for a change seem credible.

The Economist concludes its piece by challenging Amir Taheri to produce “the original source for this quote.”

In response to a query from me, Mr. Taheri has now met that challenge.

Sullivan responds by casting doubt on Taheri:

Taheri, whose reliability has come under suspicion before, says the remark was purged or censored or removed in subsequent editions of the book. I have no independent way of confirming any of this. Taheri, it should be noted, was the source of the story that Iran had recently required that Jews wear yellow stars in public, a story that was subsequently debunked.

Well, I hate to say it, but The Economist ’s counter-translator, Shaul Bakhash of George Mason University, also seems compromised—not at all an disinterested party. He’s the husband of the Iranian American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained in Iran this past year and, under great international pressure, released. I wouldn’t be surprised if Iranian agents haven’t put tremendous pressure on both Esfandiari and Bakhash to toe the line.

His comments in The Economist certainly sound different than these impassioned words, published in May 2007:

Once Haleh was arrested, however, silence was no longer an option. It is preposterous that she is accused of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government by organizing conferences and encouraging dialogue between Iranians and Americans. The Wilson Center issued a fact sheet; Lee Hamilton, its president and director, held a news conference; and I began to speak openly about Haleh’s frightening predicament.

The extraordinary media attention, as well as the support for Haleh from presidential candidates and political leaders, from scholars and academic associations, from the students at Princeton University who she taught to love the Persian language, from women’s groups, human rights organizations and people everywhere have astonished and gratified her family and friends.

It is easy to feel powerless in the face of a state’s overweening power — especially a state that arrests, incarcerates and accuses its citizens at will. But the events of the last few weeks — the universal condemnation Iran has earned by imprisoning Haleh and others — have taught me that people also have power when they condemn injustice and stand up for wronged individuals. Is the Iranian government listening?

Americans are too naive about Iran, and about the Middle East. It’s time to get with the program.

This, from Arianna Huffington, is only slightly less embarrassing than Obama’s cringe-inducing announcement that he’s going to get tough sometime soon:

The president took a preemptive shot across the bow on Monday, playing the funding-equals-troop-support card, and placing the ball squarely in Congress’ court. Democrats can’t afford to sit back on their heels and wait until next year to take on the president (or worse yet, have a replay of the 2007 supplemental funding fight and cave to the president’s phony “before the holidays” demands).

They need to begin reframing the funding fight now — hammering home the message that it’s the president’s obstinacy that is jeopardizing the well-being of our troops and the safety of our country.

This is not the time for caution and playing it safe. This is the time to force the president’s hand.

It’s rare to find Arianna behind the curve, but that’s where she is. Hasn’t she heard? Iraq is pacified, no longer the featured story (or even in the headlines), and for all intents and purposes, according to Reason’s Brian Doherty, the war is over:

Just as public perception of whether the war was worth it didn’t shift toward “no” until May 2004—the first month U.S. troop deaths broke 100 in a month—a continuing decline in Iraq violence seems likely to calm down American dudgeon over a war that, after all, in a draftless world, most of us are affected by only as tragic TV entertainment. It could well be the standard accepted opinion a year from now that Iraq, while perhaps not always managed best every step of the way, has turned out well enough in the end, or so far.

Yes—time marches on.

Iraq is yesterday’s war. Today and tomorrow are about Iran, and “World War III,” as Caroline Glick writes (alarmingly):

It goes without saying that if and when a decision is made in Jerusalem or Washington to carry out an attack against Iran’s nuclear installations the public will only learn of the decision in retrospect. All the same, over the last few weeks, it has been impossible to miss the fact that the Iranian nuclear program has become the subject of intense and ever increasing international scrutiny. This naturally gives rise to the impression that something is afoot.

Indeed.

This message has been approved by Committee to Clarify That We Have Identified the Enemy:

The New York Times wants to make sure you know, however, that some of the protesters were bused in for the occasion.

Protesters, including students bused in from other schools, swarmed Columbia University to demonstrate against the speech.

This is the same New York Times which claims:

U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians

Q&A highlight: Bollinger, having graciously offered AJad a platform, denounced him to his face as a “petty and cruel dictator.”

Biggest laugh line from AJad: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

Right. Maybe this has something to do with it:

William Kristol on Columbia University:

Ahmadinejad Yes, ROTC No
Lee Bollinger’s choice

Unlike Kristol, I think that this is in fact an excruciatingly difficult decision for Bollinger and that the exercise of freedom of speech certainly is involved. For that reason, I say: let the monkey speak.

Kristol does make one crucial point, however—the one that gives this situation such a nasty edge:

In fact, the introduction with “sharp challenges” by Bollinger makes the situation even more of a disgrace. Now there will be the appearance of real dialogue, of Ahmadinejad answering challenges, which further legitimizes the notion that Holocaust denial, say, is a subject of legitimate and reasonable debate.

This is the sick-making part—that an American naif like Bollinger will be conducting the “dialogue.” Bollinger is fine for the American audience. but Ahmadinejad will be playing to the audience at home, and across the Muslim world, too. For that reason, he should be confronted with questioners who understand how he thinks.

Sophisticated Iranian American expats should have at Ahmadinejad. That would be a sight to behold.

I first posted about BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in mid-March, when he was kidnapped in the streets of Gaza. I had expected his abduction to catch the attention of the MSM, since he was one of their own. Instead, except for many, prolonged protests held by Palestinian and British journalists, there has been a troubling silence. (You can follow all my posts about Johnston here. You can read a few posts about kidnapping as the terrorist tactic du jour here, here, and here.)
Until today. The group holding Johnston released a propaganda video:

He is wearing a red sweatshirt and reading out what appears to be Palestinian propaganda denouncing Israel and the Middle East policies of Britain and America. He appears calm and without any visible injuries.

His voice, familiar to many BBC listeners and viewers from his 16-year career with the corporation, is measured. He says he is “in Gaza”. …

During a three-minute speech, Mr Johnston accuses Britain and the US of causing suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and for “occupying Muslim lands against the will of the people in those places”.

He starts to give a message to his family but is cut off. Subtitles then appear on the video, saying: “The BBC refused to take this message to his family”.

Naturally, the family is relieved to have this sign of life from Johnston, although no one can say when the video was shot. But this isn’t anything like relief for the family—it’s extended agony:

Norman Kember, 76, a British peace campaigner held hostage for more than four months in Baghdad in 2005, said the video was designed to cause “maximum stress” to Mr Johnston’s family and the Government.

He drew comparisons between the orange suit he was given to wear during videos and Mr Johnston’s red sweatshirt. He said: “I think the idea was to show the parallel to Guantanamo Bay and put the maximum stress on the Government and relatives.”

The British government is well aware of that:

The video was condemned by the Foreign Office for the distress it caused the family and Tony Blair used a press conference at the end of his African tour to call for the kidnappers to release Mr Johnston, who passed his 45th birthday in captivity.

Also calling for the release of Johnston is Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian “prime minister” of Chaos and In-fighting.

“We are renewing our demands of the men, the abductors of the British journalist, to protect him and not to harm his life and to immediately release the journalist,” Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza City.

“This is an action th