Monday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 11.7.2005:

Bush's Great Middle East Gamble

Reuel Marc Gerecht,The Weekly Standard: Excerpts

The only way Iran is going to get better is for it to get a lot worse--and Ahmadinejad may just possibly be the man to galvanize a broad-based opposition to the regime. Right now, he and Sistani are the only hopes we've got for convulsions and evolution inside Iran's clerical class. If the Bush administration were wise, it would start to speak about religious freedom in Iran and the ruling clergy's oppression of the more traditional clerics of the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. If the Bush administration were serious, it would batter the CIA until it began the slow and difficult process of trying to make contact with the anti-Khamenei forces among Iran's mullahs. In all probability, irreversible evolution or regime crackup will be driven by clerical dissent, not by Iranian liberals, progressives, or others with whom counterrevolutionary American-Iranian expatriates are comfortable. READ MORE

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• SMCCDI reported that hundreds of protesters clashed with Islamic regime's security forces, once again after a soccer game.
• Dexter Filkins, The New York Times reported that Ahmad Chalabi met with senior Iranian leaders here on Saturday in what appeared to be an effort to distance himself from their Islamist government.
• Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting reported that Russian Ambassador to Iran Alexander Sadonikov said that the deepening relations between the two nations of Iran and Russia could solve or at least minimize political problems.
• Roee Nahmias, Ynetnews reported that in a leaflet published by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades expressed their identification with Ahmadinejad.
• Reuters reported that the EU foreign ministers will review the bloc's policy of engagement with Iran.
• BBC News reported that ethnic unrest has broken out in Iran's Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan.
• And finally, Mark Dooley, Irish Independent said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes that he has been divinely ordained to bring about the final drama in the struggle for the world's soul.