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A friend of mine raised a good point regarding the Spiegel/VOA claim that 5,000 Hizballah footsoldiers were on the streets of Tehran. 1) Hizballah had approximately 1,200 full-time fighters in 2006. So unless they have beefed up their ranks much more rapidly than anyone could have guessed and 2) have left southern Lebanon now completely defenseless, the odds that they have deployed 5,000 to Tehran to put down some popular revolt is just silly.
Spiegel is sooooo off on this. Maj Jr is reporting that there are 50,000 Hizbollah footsoldiers on the streets of Tehran.
As if the Iranians Security forces which I assume are pretty large numerically, have to resort to reinforcements from abroad. This seems highly improbable.
Not like those guys have an agenda or anything (or at least very susceptible to those who do), right? Jeffrey Gedmin, anyone?
Europe has been the site of an intense lobbying effort by concerned parties vis-a-vis Hizbullah, thus all the colorful stories in Die Welt, Spiegel, etc over the past few years.
It's actually been kinda fun to watch. Hilarious, in a pathetic kind of way. As usual, it is a bit ham-fisted because the financial backers of the information warriors are a bit undecided on the proper course for US-Israeli policy. Still such is not a barrier to throwing out whatever batshit ideas they can come up with. At the very least, it creates some stir. And that is probably the point of the whole enterprise.
Well we'll find out when they drop the hammer in 48-72 hours.
IMO, more evidence of people taking the "facts" they like and spinning them to their viewpoint, or some quality propaganda. If AM is right on the numbers. And considering Iran has population 70+ million, I'd think they wouldn't need the extra platoon of highly trained thugs.
And by the way, has anyone commented on the outstanding storm trooper outfits their riot police are wearing? Did they go out of their way for the Blade Runner Sci-fi look of jack-booted police or what? Oops.
Snli, any link to Major Jr.?
It's a joke, Fnord. "Major Junior" once describes a march of jackbooted Hizbollah thugs through the streets of Beirut that, unfortunately for him, never transpired.
LBN is completely defenseless?
That might be an opportunity for come interested parties …
:-P
I don't believe that there are 5,000 Hizbullahis in Tehran either, but you're wrong about the Hizbullah numbers. Hizbullah has a standing "army" of somewhere between 10-15,00 highly trained, full-time soldiers. It then has a militia force that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. These are not well trained in military affairs, but they are armed and organized. I don't know what the militia members would be doing in Tehran, though. The other reports of Hamas members being behind the violence are clearly the frothy mass imagination of the protesters. The only Hamas members in Iran are those getting highly specialized training--the regime would never risk them for the lowly task of crowd control. They've got hundreds of thousands of basijis to do that.
Speaking of their "outstanding storm trooper outfits". Can anyone tell me why some of their police actually have police in english written on their uniforms? I just found it strange.
I have been told first hand by people in Iran (such as Tabriz) that they have been beaten by individuals speaking Arabic, which would count them out as being from any ethnic group from inside Iran. Why is this so hard to believe, especially if you think that your own troops might not be reliable (and that your Basij are too old and fat, which many of them are?).
Can anyone tell me why some of the Iranian police have POLICE written in english on their uniforms?
Here is some information on the foreign militia:
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/
Go to June 16, 1238 pm for pics and information.
"Black uniform with no ranks on them and different metal helmets are either formal soldiers or from Sarullah Base in Tehran (IRGC security force for Tehran). Among these people often Lebanese Arabs or Afghans are found who serve the Sepah."
Sepah--Rev Guards.
So only 1,500 Hizbollah soldiers held off tens of thousands of well armed and armored Israeli troops? I think your numbers might be a little off...
Visitor 4:38. I thought there were ethnically Arab groups in Southern Iran.. who spoke Arabic? I'm not an expert though so fully admit i could be wrong. And in any way I find it simply non-credible that they would be desperate enough to use hezbollah.
You're saying the state didnt trust:
the army
the police
the Bsij
any of the millions who actually support ahmadinajid
and instead thought it would be better to trust people who dont live in the country and consequently have little at stake in the survival of the regime. That is hard to believe.
Fnord
Mate not even Debka would hire Major Junior to report on Hezbollah now.....
You guys don't know crap about Hezbollah. Hezbollah has MANY wings, even nurses and doctors. The 1200 soldiers were their 'army' force. They have MANY people in Iran on an ongoing basis, coming through syria, training and going back. Likewise many Iranian Qods force members going to Lebanon's shi'ite region on an ongoing basis. Both iran and Lebanon have a hezbollah forice. It was created in Iran (later turing into mostly basij and more trained ones into sepah) and then exported to Lebanon. Subsequently the basiji hezbollah was incorporated into the regular Sepah forces and now it's called NOPO (after the regular IRI military branches were brought under the influence if not direct control of Sepah). NOPO has a special unit composed of foreigners who are trained under NOPO internally, but sent out on extra-territorial missions under the Qods Force, these two are highly coordinated. Sepah trains many foreign forces, similar to Al-Qaida, excep they train shi'ite and shi'ite sympathizing foreigners (i.e. Lebanense, Afghans, etc) During times when they want to crack down on the public (whether for their hijab or now for protesting), they use this wing and so YES they can easily bring out 5,000 Lebanese Hezbollah without having to take those from the active-duty army wing of Southern Lebanon. DO some freak'n research before you right off investigative journalism of Der Spiegel and others you fools.
Go see what the difference between Uniformed, Semi-Uniformed, and Non-Uniformed security and terror forces are in IRI
http://per.posterous.com/a-rough-guide-to-islamic-republics-uniformed
sorry that 4.56 was me. Keep forgetting to put my name in.
There are nearly 2 million people in Iran who use Arabic as their primary language. Western Fars also is riddled with borrowed words from Arabic.
There are all sorts of languages spoken monolingually within the borders of Iran. Sometimes, issues over language become questions of separatism -- see, for example, those who would prefer to retain dialects of Bakhtiari, Balochi, Domari, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Kurdish and Turkish tongues.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Fars word for police, rendered into the Roman alphabet, is "Polis."
That was my comment.
You guys don't know crap about Hezbollah. Hezbollah has MANY wings, even nurses and doctors. The 1200 soldiers were their 'army' force. They have MANY people in Iran on an ongoing basis, coming through syria, training and going back. Likewise many Iranian Qods force members going to Lebanon's shi'ite region on an ongoing basis. Both iran and Lebanon have a hezbollah forice. It was created in Iran (later turing into mostly basij and more trained ones into sepah) and then exported to Lebanon. Subsequently the basiji hezbollah was incorporated into the regular Sepah forces and now it's called NOPO (after the regular IRI military branches were brought under the influence if not direct control of Sepah). NOPO has a special unit composed of foreigners who are trained under NOPO internally, but sent out on extra-territorial missions under the Qods Force, these two are highly coordinated. Sepah trains many foreign forces, similar to Al-Qaida, excep they train shi'ite and shi'ite sympathizing foreigners (i.e. Lebanense, Afghans, etc) During times when they want to crack down on the public (whether for their hijab or now for protesting), they use this wing and so YES they can easily bring out 5,000 Lebanese Hezbollah without having to take those from the active-duty army wing of Southern Lebanon. DO some freak'n research before you right off investigative journalism of Der Spiegel and others you fools.
Go see what the difference between Uniformed, Semi-Uniformed, and Non-Uniformed security and terror forces are in IRI
http://per.posterous.com/a-rough-guide-to-islamic-republics-uniformed
Visitor 4:28: I'm not quite sure how Hizbullah has a force of "hundreds of thousands," since that would mean virtually every able-bodied Shiite male in Lebanon was an Hizbullah reservist! As the CIA Factbook notes, there are only 1.1 million military-aged males in the entire country (most of them, obviously, non-Shiites).
Visitor 4:56: You're right.. as I noted in an earlier thread, there are an estimated 2 million or so Arab-speaking Iranians.
Damn, you beat me to it, SNLII.
As for the (equally silly) rumours about Hamas cadres beating Iranian demonstrators, look for tell-tale camera phone pics of truncheon-wielding giant bees and mice...
visitor 5:11 and every1 elese talking about Iranian-Arabs...again you are not fully imformed. Iranian arabs would never crack down in this fashion just bcuz they are iranian-arabs. There has been iranian arabs in khuzestan region for millenia, long before Islam existed. They are no more likely to do this than baluchis, kurd, lurs, azeris, gilanis, etc. etc. All ethnic groups in iran (most of all Persians) have been oppressed by this regime. Why on earth would an oppressed Iranian-Arab of khuzestan come and brutally crack down on another oppressed Iranian-Persian of Shiraz or Tehran. This is simply not the case. Every ethnic group in Iran abhors this minority of ruthless security-terror aparatus.
RB, I guess I'm open-minded about the possibility of Shiite Lebanese or Iraqi visitors to Iran (for whatever reason) participating in the melees. People do all sorts of stupid things under the sway of the mob, even those who visit other nations.
Do I believe the Iranian security services have felt the need to import Hizbollah thugs to work with their own Iranian thugs? I very much doubt it. They don't need them.
Might Nahul, the kitten-torturing bumblebee, abuse protestors in Tehran? Oh, certainly! A bee who tosses kittens around probably is sociopathic enough to attack college students, too.
Come to think of it, I'll just start a new rumor: Michel Aoun was seen beating Iranian protestors in Tehran today.
Good gravy, I'm losing my anti-Iranian, anti-HAMAS and anti-Hizbollah street cred.
Although this is a bit off topic, it is important to note that Mousavi is neither an anti-regime candidate, nor any stranger to domestic repression--he was PM during the 1988 prison massacres, when an estimated 2,800 to 4,000+ Iranian political prisoners were executed.
Equally, the past success of Ahmadinejad has been due, in part, with his image among many lower-class Iranians as a humble reformer willing to stand up to elite corruption (the latter being exemplified in the eyes of many by former president Rafsanjani--who is backing Mousavi).
What is going on in Iran is interesting, and important. It is also, however, more complicated than black and white.
" I guess I'm open-minded about the possibility of Shiite Lebanese or Iraqi visitors to Iran (for whatever reason) participating in the melees."
Oh, I agree it might happen in small batches. Significant in the grand scheme of things? Not at all.
Oh, I agree, RB! I've been intrigued by the re-branding of Mousavi as the twin of Ibrahim Yazdi. People have read into him their own grievances against the bloc of Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guard, the longbeards in Qom, et al. At this point, Rafsanjani must assume he can be cleansed, too!
That said, I've been intrigued by Zahra Rahnavard. Can you imagine such a figure emerging in, say, Saudi Arabia? Kuwait, yes, to a certain extent.
But I tend to remain circumspect about internal Iranian issues because while I know Iranians (and members of Iran's ethnic minorities), I've never been inside the nation.
In the end, it's still not a democratic election, no matter who wins, because the people can't choose the candidates.
That was me, again.
I'm getting sick of agreeing with everyone, especially Mo.
I better say something nasty about Nasrallah, the fat-assed Monkey Sheikh, to restore my street cred.
Making comments on this new blog kind of sucks.
It's a real turn-off. I hate to say it, but I've started avoiding Abu M since it moved to CNAS. It just doesn't feel the same. It's like I'm trapped within a CNAS press release.
That's not Exum's fault, but it's how it feels.
It'll sound like whinging, but I sort of agree with SNLII here. And outside of this thread, it seems as though the dialog has been dead, too. Good to see some of the old favorites participating here.
I agree too--but why is it? The colour scheme alone? I've been puzzled why that would make as much difference as it has....
Seems highly unlikely to import lebanese when they have thousands of basiji.
Maybe Der Spiegel screwed up and confused the lebanese Hezbollah with the Iranian Hizbullah (aka Ansar-e Hizbullah) Though maybe related, they are distinct groups...
Check them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar-e_Hezbollah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
And there are more Hezbollah (Party of God) - Turkey, Mauritius, Iraq, etc...:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_(disambiguation)
Mario - Der Spiegel wrote of *Lebanese* HA members speaking *Arabic*, i.e. not the Iranian variety. They also sourced it to to a VOA Farsi broadcast & unnamed opposition leaders, so it's not entirely their fault, even if it would have been appropriate to point out to their readers that this must be wilful disinformation.
Got to love the sourcing of that Jpost article: Two anon demonstrators qualify as enough source for the Headline "'Hamas helping Iran crush dissent' " Doesnt seem like the Jpost is much of a paper anymore..
Whatever the truth of Hezbullaha and Hamas; whatever the truth about the legitimacy of the election, whatever the outcome, one thing IS true:
The present events in Iran would not be occurring if a certain Mr S Hussein and his certain regime were still in place. That is, if the late Mr S and his Baath regime, army and all, had not been removed by the United States and replaced with a representative democracy which empowered a (majority) shia led government?
Has this occurred to you guys who fought it? How do you feel about it?
i dont know if somebody mentioned this already, but iranians used to complain (i dont know if it was true or not) that the regime used iraqi refugees there (of the sciri/badr variety) as their hired thugs in demonstrations like this. much less likely that they would be lebanese
Yeah, I don't know why everyone assumes Lebanese instead of Iraqi.
Now that's interesting (so much for Western bias - but of course is guy is biased against Ahmadinejad as well ...) :
"No one in their right mind can believe" the official results from Friday's contest, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said of the landslide victory claimed by Ahmadinejad. Montazeri accused the regime of handling Mousavi's charges of fraud and the massive protests of his backers "in the worst way possible." ...
Montazeri's pointed public comments provided fresh evidence that a serious rift has opened at the top of Iran's powerful religious hierarchy after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei endorsed the official election results and the harsh crackdown against the opposition.
A leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution who's often feuded with Khamenei and once vied with him for the supreme leader's position, Montazeri accused the government of attacking "the children of the people with astonishing violence" and "attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and scientifics."
"He is questioning the legitimacy of the election and also questioning the legitimacy of (Khamenei's) leadership, and this is the heart of the political battle in Iran," said Mehdi Noorbaksh, an associate professor of international affairs at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania. "This is very significant. This is huge support for Mousavi and the demonstrators on the reformists' side."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iran/story/70155.html (long article)
But then, it must be weird being a neo-con - constantly turning around trying to catch the Hezbollah you just saw out of the corner of your eye.
Der Spiegel has form for running weird disinfo-licious stories about the Middle East, rather likethee FAZ did about the Balkans in the 90s.
Those in the know feel free to shoot me down.
The motive for Lebanese Hizbullah to help is obvious, as the Islamic Republic is the main source of Hizbullah's funding. There is a Lebanese branch of Hamas, although its largest branch by far is in the West Bank. I'd treat rumors of that with a much bigger grain of salt (say, SUV-sized).
There are reportedly training camps for Hizbullah (and I'm guessing other foreign militants) within Iran, so you presumably have a few hundred foreign militants on hand at any given time.
Hizbullah's full-time army is perhaps 1,500 or so soldiers. On the other hand, they have a 'reservist' force that might approach 10,000 in number (according to Wikipedia). Presumably they are divided between 'close to the regulars' and 'break glass and give a rifle if you see Sunnis or Israelis' in terms of quality, but I have no way of knowing the breakdown. Of course, some of these have to stay behind in Lebanon.
On the other hand -- how much help would 1,000-5,000 Hizbullah fighters be in crowd control? Then again, I'd imagine most 'crowd control' training is about treating the crowds with a modicum of respect. It probably wouldn't take much training to go through a crowd on a motorcycle and bash people's heads in.
They would be invaluable in stiffening the resolve of the regular police, the Baseej, or the Ansar (if they send in the RGC, or to sit around a central area and do head-bashing on request. Remember, the Baseej are needed everywhere in Iran, although most Twittering, foreign media, and the such are focused on Tehran. So it is in the IRI's interest to keep Tehran under more control than the rest of the country. OTOH, if the opposition can seize radio/TV stations in Tabriz or some other non-ethnic Iranian city, it would be a tremendous propaganda coup.
Whoever pointed out many of the Baseej are too old/fat to be doing much head-bashing is correct. I have no frigging idea how many Baseej are fit enough and committed enough to engage in head-bashing, nor how many Baseej/Ansari/etc. are involved in the head-bashing in Tehran.
So even 1,000 Hizbullah men would help if head-bashing is the sole goal here, and it might help to have some as an 'Innermost Guard' to Khameini and other IRI leaders if they do not trust their own men 100%. The risk, of course, is alienating fence-sitters that don't really like Arabs. But the that risk is far lesser than playing the RGC card, because if they play that and lose, it seems the game is over for Khameini -- maybe he can get the villa next door to Bani-sadr's.
My understanding is that the regular police have ceased to be a player in this crisis, that the regular Army and RGC are staying on the sidelines, and that the head-bashing is being done by the more competent parts of the Baseej, the Ansar-e-Hizbullah, and possibly Lebanese Hizbullah.
Q: "To what extent is Iran’s current political upheaval catalyzed, or even instigated, by sharply deteriorating economic and financial conditions inside the country?"
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/06/does-irans-political-crisis-st/
Michael Totten has "dozens of reports" (wich he fails to cite) about Hezbollah, and he credits the jpost as well. hoho, anyone remember Georgia?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/70282
I know Iranians who swear up and down that they have relatives who had personal encounters with security forces who could not speak with them in Persian. Let's not laugh this off. It's much less outlandish than the idea that the Shah was importing Israeli commandos to attack Iranian demonstrators. (At the time, Iran's relations with Israel were declining as the Shah was integrating Iran into the conservative Arab regimes.)
Here's a simple scenario: Say you have Lebanese Hezbollah (say) forces already in Iran for special training. What's to keep the Islamic Republic from using them to help crack heads?
Evan: The question is the composition of those forces. If I was Ahmadinejad, I would have deployed bullies from across my organization. Its basic military crackdown ABC, you dont use local forces. So some imported loyal arabs who have to prove their loyalty by bashing heads, sure. But 5000 hezb? And Hamas cadres?
I would guess for Sadrists if I had to guess for foreigners, but the sources are still just not verified: SPiegel, J post, Michael Totten, with all due respect, its the Georgia team once more. It smells like a meme.
P.S.: "Here's a simple scenario: Say you have Lebanese Hezbollah (say) forces already in Iran for special training. What's to keep the Islamic Republic from using them to help crack heads?"
Because they are much too valuable assets to risk being exposed to cameras/crowds?
rumours like this are a symptom of inability to come to terms with the extent of polarisation within one's own society, iranians inflicting brutality on other iranians. in 1979 there were rumours israeli snipers were responsible for the deaths of protesters shot by the shah's troops. even in calmer times iranians will sometimes casually assert that the unpopular mullahs aren't at all iranian, they're all arabs.
all these theoretical explorations of whether it could be ahwazis, iraqis, lebanese etc and what their motives might be are fascinating, but still lack any solid confirmation beyond "a protester said he heard someone speaking what sounded like arabic as he was being cracked over the head". not a situation conducive to clearly distiguishing language, accent etc of one's assailants with any sort of reliability.
As much as I hate posting at the new (and scarcely improved) Abu Muqawama site, I should suggest that Eric Hooglund wrote an interesting essay for Harvard's Nieman Foundation today.
http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/17/irans-rural-vote-and-election-fraud/
While I concede upfront that I've never had the chance to visit Iran, no one would say that Eric hasn't. He's spent decades studying rural Iran. RB, you probably know him.
Regardless, check out his piece.
Visitor 10 25: Its the same parameters. Perhaps there was one Israeli snier team there at the time, and it gets blown into propaganda.
Here's a simple scenario: Say you have Lebanese Hezbollah (say) forces already in Iran for special training. What's to keep the Islamic Republic from using them to help crack heads?
Because Hizbullah has always had good relations with Mousavi--indeed, he was PM when Iran first deployed IRGC trainers to Lebanon—and they don't particularly want to compromise their relations with Iran by backing one candidate over the other?
Also, Hizbullah (and even more so Hamas) cadres are not in Iran in large numbers at any one time. As noted before, its possible some individuals are involved.. but I doubt large formed units (since they don't exist).
Nir is correct in underlining that there were many, many times more (Iraqi Shi'ite) SCIRI/Badr forces in Iran in the past, attached as large formed units to the IRGC (and with SCIRI/Badr officers often holding IRGC rank). I assume those numbers are way down as Iraqi Shiite refugees returned to Iraq post 2003, but after 20 years in Iran it would be reasonable to assume that a great many would have settled down, had families, put down roots—and had careers in the Iranian security establishment.
SNLII—yes, Eric Hoogland's piece is a valuable one. So too has been Nate Silver's statistical analyses at FiveThirtyEight, including this one on rural voting patterns. On the other hand, when I was in Tehran two years ago, almost every Iranian political scientist I spoke with on the issue insisted that Ahmadinejad's support was, at that time, much stronger in rural areas (although it must be said that many Iranian academics suffer from North Tehran bias too).
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