Center for a New American Security

So a suicide bomber today killed "several top commanders in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards" and the Iranians blamed the US and the UK. So far, so predictable. But away from the grandstanding, it was a slightly different story.

One of the Pakistani news channels just reported that the Iranian foreign minister called in the Pakistani ambassador to complain that his country's territory was being used as a launch pad by terrorists to attack Iran.

I have several friends in the Israeli journalism community whose reporting I trust and admire, but when it comes to Hizballah, I am often wary of what is written from south of the Blue Line unless it focuses almost exclusively on Israeli operations. Sometimes the author is a little too sure of the conclusions he or she draws about Hizballah, something Beirut-based journalists like Nick Blanford and Mitch Prothero who report on Hizballah from north of the Blue Line and enjoy good contacts within the organization rarely do.

Iranian penetration of Latin America is a serious concern.  Except, you know, when it doesn't exist:

Watch this woman in a chador take a break from listening to Bikini Kill on her iPod long enough to wheel this dumpster into a barracade at :47 of this video. Just awesome, these Iranians.

First off, let me praise those bloggers -- Andrew Sullivan, Nico Pitney, Robert Mackey -- who have used Twitter feeds from Iran to tirelessly live-blog the uprising in Tehran. But all the same, I am happy that articles and analysis are now popping up that question the actual usefulness of Twitter as a tool of the revolution.

I am not a big fan of politically-motivated translation services, but this MEMRI clip of Ahmadinejad getting grilled by Max Rodenbeck (The Economist) and a visibly sober Robert Fisk (The Independent) is well worth watching. Rodenbeck, in particular, lets Ahmadinejad have it. And Ahmadinejad, playing his part, is reliably creepy.

[h/t The Arabist]

I suspect the critical op-eds by Paul Wolfowitz and Charles Krauthammer in today's Washington Post will merely serve to convince the president that he is doing the right thing after all. The op-ed by David Ignatius, meanwhile, will be read more carefully.

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. 

I simply do not think this claim that Lebanese Hizballah is on the ground in Tehran cracking skulls to be credible. In many domestic conflagrations, outside interferrence is alleged. So while the Iranian regime is trying to claim the Western media and the Americans in general are to blame for the events in Tehran, the "reformists" are alleging that Arabs in the form of Hizballah are some of the thugs delivering beatings to protesters. I simply do not buy this.

Is this good, or should he be back in New York trying to lose less money this quarter?