Post #256 - One Man's Terrorist...

Seymour M. Hersh, one of the most diligent – and therefore prescient – journalists when it comes to covering US-Iran relations, April 6 had this piece published in the  New Yorker.  A friend, Brad Hernlem, commented:

"I recall that prior to the war with Iraq, the Bush White House had put out a white paper setting forth the reasons for going to war; one of which was that Saddam Hussein was supporting the MEK terrorists. Of course, Pres. Bush also stated 'I've set a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists, and you're an enemy of the United States of America.'  It's sad that it has come to this." 

Our Men in Iran?

From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site’s security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing—accurately—that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Despite the growing ties, and a much-intensified lobbying effort organized by its advocates, M.E.K. has remained on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations—which meant that secrecy was essential in the Nevada training. “We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official told me. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications—coördinating commo is a big deal.” (A spokesman for J.S.O.C. said that “U.S. Special Operations Forces were neither aware of nor involved in the training of M.E.K. members.”)

The training ended sometime before President Obama took office, the former official said. In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada by an American involved in the program. They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months,” the retired general said. “They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror. “The JSOC trainers were not front-line guys who had been in the field, but second- and third-tier guys—trainers and the like—and they started going off the reservation. ‘If we’re going to teach you tactics, let me show you some really sexy stuff…’ ”

It was the ad-hoc training that provoked the worried telephone calls to him, the former general said. “I told one of the guys who called me that they were all in over their heads, and all of them could end up trouble unless they got something in writing. The Iranians are very, very good at counterintelligence, and stuff like this is just too hard to contain.” The site in Nevada was being utilized at the same time, he said, for advanced training of élite Iraqi combat units. (The retired general said he only knew of the one M.E.K.-affiliated group that went though the training course; the former senior intelligence official said that he was aware of training that went on through 2007.)

Allan Gerson, a Washington attorney for the M.E.K., notes that the M.E.K. has publicly and repeatedly renounced terror. Gerson said he would not comment on the alleged training in Nevada. But such training, if true, he said, would be “especially incongruent with the State Department’s decision to continue to maintain the M.E.K. on the terrorist list. How can the U.S. train those on State’s foreign terrorist list, when others face criminal penalties for providing a nickel to the same organization?”

Robert Baer, a retired C.I.A. agent who is fluent in Arabic and had worked under cover in Kurdistan and throughout the Middle East in his career, initially had told me in early 2004 of being recruited by a private American company—working, so he believed, on behalf of the Bush Administration—to return to Iraq. “They wanted me to help the M.E.K. collect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program,” Baer recalled. “They thought I knew Farsi, which I did not. I said I’d get back to them, but never did.” Baer, now living in California, recalled that it was made clear to him at the time that the operation was “a long-term thing—not just a one-shot deal.”

Massoud Khodabandeh, an I.T. expert now living in England who consults for the Iraqi government, was an official with the M.E.K. before defecting in 1996. In a telephone interview, he acknowledged that he is an avowed enemy of the M.E.K., and has advocated against the group. Khodabandeh said that he had been with the group since before the fall of the Shah and, as a computer expert, was deeply involved in intelligence activities as well as providing security for the M.E.K. leadership. For the past decade, he and his English wife have run a support program for other defectors. Khodabandeh told me that he had heard from more recent defectors about the training in Nevada. He was told that the communications training in Nevada involved more than teaching how to keep in contact during attacks—it also involved communication intercepts. The United States, he said, at one point found a way to penetrate some major Iranian communications systems. At the time, he said, the U.S. provided M.E.K. operatives with the ability to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran—which M.E.K. operatives translated and shared with American signals intelligence experts. He does not know whether this activity is ongoing.

Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated since 2007. M.E.K. spokesmen have denied any involvement in the killings, but early last month NBC News quoted two senior Obama Administration officials as confirming that the attacks were carried out by M.E.K. units that were financed and trained by Mossad, the Israeli secret service. NBC further quoted the Administration officials as denying any American involvement in the M.E.K. activities. The former senior intelligence official I spoke with seconded the NBC report that the Israelis were working with the M.E.K., adding that the operations benefitted from American intelligence. He said that the targets were not “Einsteins”; “The goal is to affect Iranian psychology and morale,” he said, and to “demoralize the whole system—nuclear delivery vehicles, nuclear enrichment facilities, power plants.” Attacks have also been carried out on pipelines. He added that the operations are “primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence.” An adviser to the special-operations community told me that the links between the United States and M.E.K. activities inside Iran had been long-standing. “Everything being done inside Iran now is being done with surrogates,” he said.

The sources I spoke to were unable to say whether the people trained in Nevada were now involved in operations in Iran or elsewhere. But they pointed to the general benefit of American support. “The M.E.K. was a total joke,” the senior Pentagon consultant said, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient?” he asked rhetorically. “Part of it is the training in Nevada. Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part of it is inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations that it never had before.”

In mid-January, a few days after an assassination by car bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hall meeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledged that the U.S. government has “some ideas as to who might be involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved.” He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”

Post #255 - How Many Times Does Opportunity Knock?

Nick Kristof, writing for the New York Times several years ago. (April 29, 2007) gave a good description of the lost opportunity that we are still paying for today.

Diplomacy at Its Worst

By Nicholas D. Kristof

In May 2003, Iran sent a secret proposal to the U.S. for settling our mutual disputes in a "grand bargain."

It is an astonishing document, for it tries to address a range of U.S. concerns about nuclear weapons, terrorism and Iraq. I've placed it and related documents (including multiple drafts of it) on my blog,

Hard-liners in the Bush administration killed discussions of a deal, and interviews with key players suggest that was an appalling mistake. There was a real hope for peace; now there is a real danger of war.

Scattered reports of the Iranian proposal have emerged previously, but if you read the full documentary record you'll see that what the hard-liners killed wasn't just one faxed Iranian proposal but an entire peace process.

The record indicates that officials from the repressive, duplicitous government of Iran pursued peace more energetically and diplomatically than senior Bush administration officials — which makes me ache for my country.

The process began with Afghanistan in 2001-2. Iran and the U.S., both opponents of the Taliban, cooperated closely in stabilizing Afghanistan and providing aid, and unofficial "track two" processes grew to explore opportunities for improved relations.

On the U.S. side, track two involved well-connected former U.S. ambassadors, including Thomas Pickering, Frank Wisner and Nicholas Platt. The Iranian ambassador to the U.N., Javad Zarif, was a central player, as was an Iranian-American professor at Rutgers, Hooshang Amirahmadi, who heads a friendship group called the American Iranian Council.

At a dinner the council sponsored for its board at Ambassador Zarif's home in September 2002, the group met Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi. According to the notes of Professor Amirahmadi, the foreign minister told the group, "Yes, we are ready to normalize relations," provided the U.S. made the first move.

This was shaping into a historic opportunity to heal U.S.-Iranian relations, and the track two participants discussed further steps, including joint U.S.-Iranian cooperation against Saddam Hussein. The State Department and National Security Council were fully briefed, and in 2003 Ambassador Zarif met with two U.S. officials, Ryan Crocker and Zalmay Khalilzad, in a series of meetings in Paris and Geneva.

Encouraged, Iran transmitted its "grand bargain" proposals to the U.S. One version was apparently a paraphrase by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran; that was published this year in The Washington Post.

But Iran also sent its own master text of the proposal to the State Department and, through an intermediary, to the White House. I've also posted that document, which Iran regards as the definitive one.

In the master document, Iran talks about ensuring "full transparency" and other measures to assure the U.S. that it will not develop nuclear weapons. Iran offers "active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization." Iran also contemplates an end to "any material support to Palestinian opposition groups" while pressuring Hamas "to stop violent actions against civilians within" Israel (though not the occupied territories). Iran would support the transition of Hezbollah to be a "mere political organization within Lebanon" and endorse the Saudi initiative calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Iran also demanded a lot, including "mutual respect," abolition of sanctions, access to peaceful nuclear technology and a U.S. statement that Iran did not belong in the "axis of evil." Many crucial issues,
including verification of Iran's nuclear program, needed to be hammered out. It's not clear to me that a grand bargain was reachable, but it was definitely worth pursuing — and still is today.

Instead, Bush administration hard-liners aborted the process. Another round of talks had been scheduled for Geneva, and Ambassador Zarif showed up — but not the U.S. side. That undermined Iranian moderates.

A U.S.-Iranian rapprochement could have saved lives in Iraq, isolated Palestinian terrorists and encouraged civil society groups in Iran. But instead the U.S. hard-liners chose to hammer plowshares into swords.

Post #254 - Iran's Neighbor to the Northwest

Alex Vatanka, fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, writing for PBS’ Frontline/Tehran Bureau, gives this analysis of  Iran-Turkey relations, in a piece called “Uneasy Reliance: Iran Frets about Turkey” (April 3,  2012):

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's high-profile visit to Iran last week demonstrated one reality more than anything else: that Iran is very uncomfortable to have to rely on Ankara as a mediator but equally short of suitable alternative partners at the moment. Erdogan left Iran after having secured his hosts' blessing that the next round of Iranian negotiations with the P5+1 should be held in Istanbul on April 13. Given the escalation in tensions during the last year between Ankara and Tehran, this was no minor feat for Erdogan. Still, the two large regional states are set to remain at loggerheads on a number of pressing challenges in the Middle East. The primary schism right now concerns the future of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus, but other regional rivalries -- including the Iranian-Turkish contest for influence in Iraq -- hugely complicate Tehran's dealings with Istanbul. The ambivalent feelings of friendship and rivalry were clearly visible throughout Erdogan's two-day stay in Iran.

Lackluster reception for Erdogan

From the get-go, speculation was rife about Iranian receptiveness toward Erdogan. The Turkish press highlighted the fact that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not receive Erdogan at the airport; in fact, the Iranian president did not see Erdogan at all on the day of his arrival, claiming to be sick. The Hürriyet Daily News pointed out that Ahmadinejad nonetheless met a lesser delegation from Turkmenistan that same day. Regardless of whether a snub was intended or not, there is little doubt that the Turkish premier's visit to Tehran in May 2010 prompted far more Iranian enthusiasm. Back then, Erdogan, together with then Brazilian President Lula da Silva, had helped draft the so-called trilateral agreement that was meant to solve Iran's nuclear dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations.

The trilateral agreement was rejected by the Western states, and in the interim the unfolding Arab revolutions have put Iran and Turkey in opposite regional camps. Whereas between 2009 and the end of 2010, Iranian officials spoke euphorically of Turkey joining the "resistance block," the period since early 2011 has seen Tehran increasingly consider Turkey as not only a primary regional rival but also a country that will happily stand hand-in-hand with the West or anti-Iranian Arab states such as Saudi Arabia if it serves to advance Ankara's geopolitical interests. Key advisers to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went so far as to publicly tout the idea that Turkey -- together with Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- was pushing an American-dictated anti-Iranian agenda in the Middle East at a time when Tehran declared itself the role model behind the wave of Arab popular uprisings, which it calls the "Islamic Awakening."

At the moment, a critical issue dividing Iran and Turkey is Syria. Perhaps as a gesture of his commitment to friendly ties with Iran, Erdogan traveled to the holy city of Mashhad to see Khamenei, who likes to holiday in his hometown for the Persian New Year. There the Supreme Leader reportedly told Erdogan that Iran will maintain its support for Assad because Damascus "supports the resistance front against the Zionist regime [Israel]." Khamenei issued this declaration despite the fact that a key component in this so-called front against Israel -- Hamas -- has all but given up on the Assad regime.

Meanwhile, as Istanbul played host this past weekend to a "Friends of Syria" summit whose agenda was how to remove Assad from power, Iranian officials spoke in ever louder voices of their support for the Syrian Baathist regime.

In Beirut, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, said Iran "would not spare any effort to" back the Syrian leadership. At no time since the Syrian uprising began have Iranian officials been so vocal in expressing support for Assad's rule, most likely because the reading in Tehran is now that Assad will not, in fact, fall and that Iran no longer needs to keep its Syrian options open.

At the "Friends of Syria" summit, Erdogan probably had the Iranians in mind when he stated that in dealing with the Syrian crisis "geopolitical interests" should not set the agenda and drive regional policies. The Iranian side meanwhile dismisses such talk as high and mighty and aimed to disguise what it perceives as Turkey's Machiavellian plan to emerge as the geopolitical winner once the the Arab revolutions wind down.

Turkish shrewdness

The idea that Turkey is seeking regional dominance at the expense of Iran permeates almost all Iranian analysis about Istanbul's policies in the Middle East, not just Syria. Tehran sees a direct Turkish challenge to its interests in places such as Iraq, where the pro-Iranian government of Nouri al-Maliki was never Ankara's preference. Lately, the Iran-Turkey split has also began to resemble the kind of sectarian competition that has long characterized Iranian-Saudi relations. During his recent visit, the Iranian media lampooned Erdogan for voicing his support for (mainly Sunni) Syrian demonstrators but remaining quiet about the fate of the (mainly Shia) Bahraini protestors who face a Sunni ruling elite. One Iranian news outlet ran the sarcastic headline "Prime Minister, Anything Going On in Bahrain!"

Despite all these Iranian misgivings about Turkey, however, the simple fact is that Tehran needs Ankara -- probably more than vice versa. Turkey has become a key trading partner for Iran: the volume of trade between the two countries has risen from about $1 billion in 2000 to $16 billion last year. And from the Iranian perspective, Ankara plays an important role in backing its right to a nuclear program, by far the most important diplomatic challenge Tehran faces. This is a theme whose importance Erdogan recognizes, and he returned to it again and again during his visit, speaking out strongly against any military strike against Iran. The Iranian side recognizes that Turkish diplomatic support for Iran's nuclear program is self-serving, conditional, and finite but thanks to Iran's self-created isolation, the authorities in Tehran need to hang on to any token of support they can find on the international stage, regardless of how fickle.

Post #253 - Why Sanctions Are Not Helpful

Ivan Eland has been working on international affairs and national security matters for some time.  (He is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute and Assistant Editor of The Independent Review. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University, with an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office, and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. ) He reaches the same conclusion I do about economic sanctions.

Ratcheting Up Sanctions on Iran Is the Wrong Approach

March 26, 2007

The conventional wisdom for dealing with Iran is demanding repeatedly that the Iranians end their uranium enrichment program, and slapping on new sanctions. Although the December 2006 United Nations Security Council sanctions that banned countries from exporting nuclear and missile materials and technology to Iran probably were prudent, widening the sanctions outside the nuclear and missile areas is a mistake.

Broadening the sanctions changes their main purpose from being instrumental to being merely punitive. Although any kind of sanction is prone to evasion, an instrumental embargo which attempts to deny Iran the materials and technology needed to make a nuclear weapon and to deliver long distances via a missile could at least slow Iranian acquisition of such ingredients, or raise the price to do so. A comprehensive ban on weapons sales, cutting off loans to the Iranian government, and freezing the assets of important Iranian individuals and institutions have little to do with keeping Iran from getting nuclear and missile materials and technology. Thus, widening the measures beyond this narrow purpose turns sanctions into punitive symbolism.

Such punishment seems misplaced when no conclusive proof yet exists that Iran has an illegal nuclear weapons program. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Although there are reasons to suspect that Iran has an illegal nuclear weapons program, it has not been proven.

Unfortunately, permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—their own sizeable nuclear arsenals being their major qualification for membership in the body—seem in the eyes of many nations to be hypocritical for seeking to deny Iran a nuclear capability. The United States’ credibility was further reduced when it cut a deal to provide nuclear fuel and technology to India, a state with nuclear weapons which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Also, the United States provides billions in assistance to its allies Israel and Pakistan, both nuclear weapons states which have also spurned the treaty.

For these reasons, U.S. leadership in the U.N. Security Council to punish the Iranians for ostensibly legal activities creates a “rally-around-the-flag” effect in Iran. Although not as pronounced as it would be if the United States were to conduct air strikes against Iran, sanctions do allow the Iranian regime to create an external enemy in order to win more support from Iran’s restive, youthful population, which is disaffected with the Iranian government’s austere Islamic rule.

Moreover, any broader measures intended to commercially isolate Iran from the world would be a move toward shutting off the very ideas that could eventually topple the despotic regime. Ideas subversive to the regime’s hold on power accompany Western products and technologies into Iran.

Even many opponents of U.S. military action against Iran approve of broader sanctions as an apparent substitute for war. History shows, however, that sanctions can instead lead to war. Once the punitive road is selected, when sanctions fail—as they often do—to have the desired effect on the target country, pressure for military action can intensify. Two examples spring immediately to mind. When stringent financial sanctions against the Panamanian regime of Manuel Noriega embarrassingly failed to depose him, President George H.W. Bush then felt overwhelming pressure to oust him militarily—which he did, through an invasion of Panama in 1989. That same president went to war with Saddam Hussein in 1991, when the most comprehensive and grinding sanctions in world history failed to compel Saddam to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Thus, starting down the road of broader punitive sanctions may lead ultimately to war with Iran.

Instead, Iran should be given positive incentives to forgo its nuclear weapons program. If the Iranians forswear their uranium enrichment efforts, the United States should offer to reintegrate Iran into the world, economically and politically, and sign a pact pledging not to attack that nation. Given that Iran lives in the vicinity of a nuclear Israel, and has other potentially hostile neighbors, even this offer may not make the Iranians willing to give up their nuclear program.

As the United States accepted and deterred a nuclear China in the 1960s, when radical Mao Zedong was at its helm, it may ultimately have to accept and deter, with the world’s most potent nuclear arsenal, a nuclear Iran. History shows that when countries get nuclear weapons they usually moderate their behavior—for example, China, India, and Pakistan have become more responsible internationally after going nuclear. Like the governments in these other countries, the first aim of the Iranian regime is to survive and stay in power. Threatening a superpower with thousands of warheads would put that important goal at risk.  In sum, a strategy of negotiation with positive incentives, and deterrence if that fails, is superior to broad, punitive sanctions that only make the autocratic Iranian regime stronger.

Post #252 - For a change of pace...

Recently, on the BaliSpirit website there appeared the following article.  It was written by Shervin Boloorian, a former colleague of mine from the National Iranian American Council.  The piece was entitled “Spotlight on Nobieh: A Rare Glimpse of Yoga in Iran.”

Nobieh Kianyfard runs her own yoga studio and has practiced or taught Yoga for 16 years— training teachers for 5 years. She has taught in 3 different languages and has developed a signature style of dance-- "Dance of Life." Impressive by any stretch, but consider Nobieh's achievements as a woman based in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and you may be shocked.

Nobieh experienced her first ever BaliSpirit Festival this year and says she has fallen in love with Bali as a result. She is already planning to rejoin us for next year's Festival. We asked her about life in her homeland and some of the misperceptions about Yoga, Iran and Islam.

How did you start out? I was once a computer scientist and took my first yoga class in France in1998. I then practiced Iyengar Yoga in Iran and traveled to India to train as a teacher. My first classes were with children and I loved their ability to live in the present moment. I later studied child psychology and established my own Yoga for Kids teacher training program in Iran.

What's it like teaching yoga in Iran? Iranians receive yoga beautifully. Yoga is legal, popular and growing fast in Iranian urban centers like Tehran-- especially among women. There is a national Iranian Yoga Association and they do great work. They have festivals and conferences there too. You can feel the appreciation from just about anyone who gets involved.

What is Dance of Life? Sufism and Yoga are my two passions. I am from a country of Sufis, and I believe a Sufi is in the heart of every yoga practitioner. Dance of life is neither but it incorporates both. It's mostly about mindful release of energy—you start with yoga postures and end with finding your personal dance in your body. It's a blissful experience.

Is Iranian Islam compatible with yoga? Yoga is not a religion and I don't believe it conflicts with Iranian culture or Islam. Sufism and Zoroastrianism are present in Iran and fundamentally no religion is about going against your nature. I once debated an Iranian cleric about this point and told him, "I am a Muslim, but let me connect with God in my own way." He accepted me. More people could be open to respecting and understanding yoga rather than judging.

Do you encounter any misperceptions about life in Iran? All the time! Many internationals misjudge Iranians. First of all, Iran is not an Arab country. Women are liberated, college educated, and powerful there—they are the center of many movements. Also, Iran is not a dessert—we have many beautiful varieties of environment and a rich ancient culture.

How has yoga most benefited Iranians? The threat of violence and sanctions against Iran have made it impossible to live a comfortable life there. Unemployment and depression is prevalent, people cannot celebrate—but yoga gives us an opportunity to experience joy and vibrancy and to feel connected from the heart. I see the changes happen from person to person in my community of students—we can support each other through this community, even if it's with just a smile.

Post #251 - On the Outside Looking Back

Roshanak Taghavi, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor posted this article on April 17, entitled: "Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi speaks out against Iran sanctions." The subtitle read: "Shirin Ebadi, the first Iranian to win a Nobel Peace Prize, also spoke with the Monitor about her fight for human rights in Iran and challenged the supreme leader's role." [Note:  the piece is reproduced as it ran on-line, though you will notice that the heading following paragraph two seems inappropriate for what comes after it ~ I have no explanation, but thought a simple "sic" might be even more puzzling.]

Nobel Laureate and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi begins her book, The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny, with this famous quote from Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati.  It is also how Ms. Ebadi has chosen to live her life, even if it means self-imposed exile.

“In Iran, human rights activists are either in prison or they are incommunicado, meaning no one can talk to them and it's basically impossible for them to have any activity. Unfortunately at the present time, a lot of people ... are afraid to talk. This is why I've remained outside Iran, and work for Iran from where I am,” says Ebadi, who moved to London after Iran's contested 2009 presidential elections. “If something happens in the world, it has to be told so that others will find out about it. It must be known by the world.”

5 ways Iranians and Americans are surprisingly similar

Ebadi, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime, has lived abroad ever since accusations of fraud in the 2009 prompted unprecedented dissent, and the government cracked down hard.

But despite her animosity towards Iran's government, the Iranian human rights lawyer and activist says that the harsh economic sanctions currently imposed against Iran have been misguided. Intended to pressure Tehran into making concessions on its controversial nuclear program, the sanctions are achieving more harm than good and failing to weaken the Iranian regime, according to the Nobel laureate.

“I do not agree with sanctions that hurt people,” says Ebadi in a phone interview a day after April 14 talks between Tehran and the international powers known as P5+1 about Iran's nuclear program.

Though talks ended on a positive note, with negotiations slated to continue in Baghdad on May 23, Ms. Ebadi claims it's too quick to predict if and how Iran's nuclear negotiators will ultimately follow through.

“We have to see what the results are. Up to today, they've always used negotiations to buy time. In this regard, we have to wait for the second round of negotiations.”

No. 2 country for capital punishment; crackdown on dissent

But while the bulk of international attention on Iran is focused on its nuclear program, human rights violations in the Islamic Republic often go relatively unnoticed.

In 2011, Iran executed more than 360 people, making it the No. 2 country for capital punishment after China, with nearly nine times more executions than the US, according to the Guardian.

Since Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election, the Iranian government has engaged in a broad crackdown on journalists, political opposition figures, activists, and students. As of late 2011, 49 journalists and bloggers remained in prison, and lawyers seeking to represent rights activists have faced mounting pressure from security authorities, with a number of prominent lawyers currently facing stiff prison sentences or long-term bans from practicing law, according to a 2012 Human Rights Watch report.

Three of those lawyers – currently imprisoned on charges of acting against national security – co-founded the now-banned Defenders of Human Rights Center with Ebadi.

Ebadi is seeking to leverage her international credibility to increase American awareness of human rights violations in Iran during a tour of US cities she launched last week in Minneapolis.

Ebadi became Iran's first female judge in 1969, during the tenure of former monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After's Iran's 1979 revolution, the institution of the Islamic Republic brought with it the demotion of all female judges, including Ebadi. Rather than work in a lower position in a court she once presided over, she chose to retire early from the Iranian judiciary and did not practice law again until 1992, when she received a permit to open her own legal practice.

In 2003, she became both the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to win a Nobel Peace Prize for her legal work in advancing the rights of women, children, and refugees in Iran.

Women have limited rights in personal matters such as marriage and inheritance. A woman needs the permission of a male guardian to marry, and once married needs her husband's written permission to travel outside the country. She also has limited child custody rights.

Call for constitutional change

Today, the Iranian lawyer and activist says that for Iran to become truly democratic, both the Iranian Constitution and the country's judiciary system, which is heavily controlled by the clergy, must change.

Speaking by phone Sunday from Minneapolis, where she kick-started an eight-city lecture tour, Ms. Ebadi said the Islamic Republic's unique system of clerical rule, in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acts as “Guardian Jurist” with final say in all matters of state, must also be amended.

In a democratic, secular Iran, a Supreme Leader, would have no role in governance, says Ebadi. “The Constitution and the legal structure of the judicial system must be changed. When I speak about a secular democracy, naturally I am speaking of the separation of church and state and religion from government,” she says.

But she is quick to add that the decision to amend Iran's laws must be made by the people themselves in a free and fair vote, and expressed hope that Iran's transition towards democracy and free political participation can be achieved peacefully.

How Ebadi differs from Green Movement leaders

Ebadi's call for change in Iran's Constitution differs from the views of prominent affiliates of Iran's so-called Green Movement, such as former president Mohammad Khatami and opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who have all called for the Islamic Republic to “return” to Iran's post-Revolutionary Constitution, which they claim the current regime has violated.

But differences of opinion such as these is exactly the point of a democracy, says the Nobel laureate. “That is the way it is. People have different views,” she says.

“The Green movement isn't an ideological movement. It's a civil movement. And all of those who are unhappy with the present government can be part of it, even if they have different political views. They just want to improve the situation,” she says.

Post #250 - More Truth and Falsehood

Iran and the West

Quick Quiz

(answers below)

1. Which countries have utilized torture to gather intelligence:

A. Israel

B. United States

C. Iran

D. Iraq

E. Afghanistan

F. All of the above

2. The person who said, "Israel must be wiped from the face of the earth" was:

A. Ayatollah Khomeini

B. Ali Rafsanjani

C. Ayatollah Khamenei

D. Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad

E. None of the above

3. The first place where demonstrations were held bemoaning the 9/11 attacks was:

A. New York City

B. Tehran

C. London

D. Berlin

E. None of the above

4. Countries which have inspections under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty include:

A. United States

B. Pakistan

C. Israel

D. Iran

E. India

F. All of the above

5. During the past forty years, which country/countries have faced a true existential threat?

A. Israel and the United States

B. Kuwait and Iran

C. Kurdistan and Palestine

D. Egypt and Syria

E. All of the above

6. The country from which Iran first sourced nuclear technologies:

A. Pakistan

B. Russian Federation

C. United States

D. North Korea

E. None of the above

7. Saddam Hussein made the most extensive use of chemical weapons against:

A. The Kurdish

B. Sunni Muslim Arabs

C. Shi'ite Muslim non-Arabs

D. The Turks

E. None of the above

8. The country that gave the most support to the Taliban in their fight against the Soviets:

A. Pakistan

B. United States

C. Iran

D. Saudi Arabia

E. None of the above

9. The largest number of suicide bombers has been of which nationality?:

A. Sri Lankan

B. Saudi

C. Palestinian

D. Iranian

E. Afghan

10. The United States has military stationed in which country adjacent to Iran?

A. Afghanistan

B. Iraq

C. Turkmenistan

D. Pakistan

E. Turkey

F. All of the above

11. Which nation has invaded a country in the Middle East in the past century?

A. Iraq

B. United States

C. Israel

D. Turkey

E. All of the above

12. Match the countries and the estimated number of nuclear warheads held by each:

A. North Korea 1. 240

B. Iran 2. 0

C. Israel 3. 70-90

D. United States 4. 5 - 15

E. Pakistan 5. 1790

F. China 6. 200

Iran and the West

Quiz Questions

First, let me say that in selecting the questions, I tried to feature information of which most Americans are not aware. I realize that the points I've made are not balanced. They are intended to start a conversation among all of you.

1. Which countries have utilized torture to gather intelligence:

A. Israel

B. United States

C. Iran

D. Iraq

E. All of the above

Unfortunately, the answer is E.

I am on the board of the National Religious Campaign against Torture. This issue is one that threatens to obscure the line between responsible and compassionate governance of which we are supposed to be an exemplar, and the "rogue regimes" that we condemn. I hope we can work harder to stay on the right side of that line.

A question that must be asked is: who is responsible for these decisions? In our country, it was mainly President Bush and Vice President Cheney, aided by their legal advisors who made the case for permissibility. Congress could have passed legislation to stop such practices, but chose not to. The people could have stopped it, but elected to leave such decisions to our leaders.  We are all complicit.

In Iran, it is harder for us to know who calls the shots. The president is in charge of the government, but he clearly is reined in sometimes by the Supreme Leader, who is, in a real sense "commander-in-chief." The parliament is acting more and more independent of late, even recently summoning the president to testify (something that almost never happens here). The Supreme Leader himself, in turn, can be dismissed by the Assembly of Experts that appointed him. The Assembly, by the way, is elected by the people, but only from those candidates who have been approved by the Supreme Leader. Assessing accountability in Iran is really not a snap. To some extent, though, this is deliberate. "Constructive ambiguity" is the phrase sometimes used to describe the "keep 'em off-guard" approach to both domestic and foreign adversaries.

2. The person who said, "Israel must be wiped from the face of the earth" was:

A. Ayatollah Khomeini

B. Ali Rafsanjani

C. Ayatollah Khamenei

D. Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad

E. None of the above

Almost qualifies as a trick question, but the answer is E.

Let me be clear on two points: I think that questioning the historicity of the Holocaust is an abomination -- Ahmadinezhad is clearly guilty of that; and we must work out a solution to the Middle East situation that assures the possibility of Jews having a homeland where they can feel safe. However: truth does matter.

The press, politicians and pundits are quite fond of saying “President Ahmadinezhad called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth.” With slight variations, this has been repeated over and over again, so that virtually everyone in the West believes that the Iranian politician did, in fact, say that. There is one problem, though: he didn't actually say it. Not only did he not say it, but many of those who repeat the quote to such effect know that he didn't say it. It took months for the major news outlets to get their act together on it, and some still haven't issued retractions.

Here is the Persian: امام عزيز ما فرمودند كه اين رژيم اشغالگر قدس بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود (transliterated: “Imam-e-aziz-e maa farmoudand keh een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad as safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”) A more faithful rendering into English of what he said on the occasion in question would be: “Our dear Imam [Khomeini] offered that the regime occupying Jerusalem should pass from the pages of history.” I would say that "regime change" is a more reasonable take-away than genocide.

3. The first place where demonstrations were held bemoaning the 9/11 attacks was:

A. New York City

B. Tehran

C. London

D. Berlin

E. None of the above

Yes, it was Tehran. Which actually shouldn't surprise us. Every poll and every anecdotal report from some of the 500 or so Americans who have been to Iran over the past few years, and my own experience, all show that Iranians -- even now -- continue to have friendly feelings and admiration for the American people. Somehow, they manage to make a distinction between us, the people, and the policies of our government under several presidents from 1979 to the present. Do we make the same kind of distinction -- or do we tend to demonize "those people" -- whether they are Russian, Vietnamese or Iranian?

There are now about 600,000 blogs in Persian on the internet -- incredible! The problem? Almost no one in this country reads Persian. Even our State Department has virtually no real Iran experts; its expertise has degraded every year since 1980, when we ceased having diplomatic relations.

Fouad Ajami, a professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said:

“Iran was America's 'laboratory' in the region... But societies have mysteries of their own; we hadn't really known our Persian friends....At its core, this was a Persian drama, the pain of a society of pride and hurt, the attempt of a people of high learning long in the crosswinds of mightier powers – Russia, Britain, America – to find their footing in the world... Into this Persian struggle, there wandered Jimmy Carter... Carter had promised a moral foreign policy. In his inaugural address, he had proclaimed his commitment to the cause of human rights. Iran emerged as the brutal test case of this moralism. As a revolution of many discontents gathered fury, the Carter administration appeared uncertain of its aims. Human rights pulled in one direction, strategic necessity the opposite way. It was even hard for American officials to divine the depth of Iran's crisis. [The CIA reported] to Carter, as late as August 1978, that Iran was “not in a revolutionary or even pre-revolutionary situation." (I was in Iran then, and I could have told them they were wrong, but no one asked me.)

4. Countries which have inspections under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty include:

A. United States

B. Pakistan

C. Israel

D. Iran

E. India

F. All of the above

E - Iran. The US is a "have" nation under the NPT and thus not required to have inspections. The others are not parties to the treaty at all. As recently as this month, Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated that they do not have a bomb, haven't wanted to get one, and do not intend to do so in the future. Furthermore, an official Islamic fatwa has been issued saying that it would be "un-Islamic." Do I think they are making plans to make a bomb -- just in case? Yes. But who wouldn't, as threatened as they are?

Ray Takeyh wrote, "From Tehran's perspective, the prospect of a radical Sunni regime coming to power in Pakistan with its finger on the nuclear button is nearly an existential threat." Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, former head of military studies at the Israeli Armament Devt. Authority, said, “exaggerated analyses of the Iranian threat capability played straight into Tehran's hands, and aided Iran's attempt to frighten Israelis.” Ravid said: "...the Iranian regime was struggling to produce a first generation-type nuclear bomb..." He argued that the Iranians faced a major challenge in attempting to fit such a bomb onto a missile that could carry the weight of a nuclear warhead to Israel. The analyst noted that an image of an Iranian 'missile' test, widely circulated around the Israeli media, were actually images of rockets, not missiles. "'Never in human history has more than one Shihab missile been successfully test fired," Ravid said. "And the Shihabs themselves are very limited. They are actually a scud-sized missile." Uzi Rubin, head of ballistic missile research for the Ministry of Defense said: "The Iranians are almost frantic in volunteering information about their weapons capabilities, sometimes to the point of incredibility… they mean to impress..." Dr. Martin van Creveld is an Israeli military strategist and professor of military history. In an interview in 2007, van Crefeld said: "We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. And I think we are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons. And it works beautifully: Thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from U.S. and Germany."

5. During the past forty years, which country/countries faced an existential threat?

A. Israel and the United States

B. Kuwait and Iran

C. Kurdistan and Palestine

D. Egypt and Syria

E. All of the above

Answer: B -- Israel & the United States have talked the most about being threatened, but 9/11 didn't come close to snuffing out our national entity. Israel has been threatened by its neighbors, by terrorists, by Scud rockets, but there still does not exist the "existential" threat that its leaders reference frequently. The Kurds & the Palesinians have been threatened plenty, but since they don't "exist" in any official sense, they can't be threatened with non-existence. Both Egypt and Syria may end this decade looking far different, but they will still be Egypt and Syria.

Kuwait could easily have become just a province of Iraq; Iran could have fallen to Iraq in the bloody Iran-Iraq War during the early '80s. Virtually no one was supporting Iran against the aggression of Saddam. Iraq had the support of the West. Moreover, we have 5 times the population of Iran and the GDP of the United States is 68 times that of Iran -- not surprising? But our expenditures on the military are 110 times those of Iran. Little countries often expend huge amounts of their national wealth on armaments -- for a while, some African countries were throwing about up to 50% of their treasure into fighting internal or cross-border wars or preparing for them. Iran is not in that category.

Official U.S. Government official documents (this is from a 1995 Pentagon policy statement) do not leave much doubt about what is driving our actions:

"The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President's National Security Strategy and the Chairman's National Military Strategy form the foundation of the US Central Command's theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM's theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States' vital interest in the region - uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil." (Keep in mind, also, that we do not just spend an enormous amount of money on military preparedness -- our military itself uses about 350,000 barrels a day of oil.)

6. From what country did Iran first source nuclear technologies?

A. Pakistan

B. Russian Federation

C. United States

D. North Korea

E. None of the above

That would be C. President Eisenhower first encouraged Iran to begin a nuclear energy program, and supplied the technologies to get it started.

The Washington Post reported that in 1976 the Ford administration “endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.” Noam Chomsky has pointed out that “the top planners of the Bush administration, who [in 2007 were] denouncing these programs, were then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.” Chomsky quotes Henry Kissinger as saying recently that Iran's seeking of nuclear energy capability would be "a wasteful use of resources." But, in the time of the Shah, when Kissinger was secretary of state, he said it would "provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals." Kissinger's explanation for the discrepancy?-- that before the revolution "they were an allied country."

A study of nuclear in the energy economies of thirty countries done by IAEA showed European countries heavily reliant on nuclear fission as source of energy: 78% of France's electricity, 72% in Lithuania, 54% for Belgium. Other countries have oil or gas, but still choose to have nuclear as part of the mix: Russia and Canada at 16%, the United States and the UK at near 20%.

Iran has crude petroleum to sell, but lacks refining capabilities to fill more than a fraction of its future energy needs through fossil fuels internally. Nuclear energy represents a diversification of its energy portfolio as a hedge against rapidly evolving technologies, changing energy markets and the vagaries of international politics.

If the premier economic powerhouse of the world, the US, can't solve the energy conundrum without splitting atoms, why is Iran expected to accomplish it, with an economy smaller than that of the State of Missouri? Given that some 60% of Iranians are under the age of 30, a population boom can be expected during the coming years, like the one America saw after the Second World War.

7. Saddam Hussein made the most extensive use of chemical weapons against:

A. The Kurdish

B. Sunni Muslim Arabs

C. Shi'ite Muslim non-Arabs

D. The Turks

E. None of the above

C -- in other words, Iraq's neighbors in Iran. There are still about 50,000 Iranians, even today, who are living with the effects of the chemical weapons, as pulmonary cripples, dealing with blindness or other conditions. There are lakes in western Iran that are still incapable of supporting life. The chemicals he used were coming from companies in the United States and Germany. The United Nations eventually confirmed their use (illegal under international law), but not until after the war had ended. A few business people in Germany were prosecuted, but none here. It is important, I think, to remember that Iran's leaders decided not to use their own WMD's during the Iran-Iraq War, even though Tehran and other major cities were being bombed daily and thousands lost their lives.

8. The country that gave the most support to the Taliban in their fight against the Soviets:

A. Pakistan

B. United States

C. Iran

D. Saudi Arabia

E. None of the above

As we know, eventually, we thought better of that! Haleh Esfandiari (director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who was a prisoner in Iran a couple of years ago) wrote in 2005: “In 1997, when [Shi'ites in Hezara] were massacred and a number of diplomats were killed [by the Taliban] in Mazar-i Sharif, Iran massed its troops at the border with Afghanistan.” She contrasts the situation of the two neighbors at that time: "While Pakistan had relations with and condoned the actions of the Taliban, Iran condemned the Taliban’s treatment of women and the excesses that were perpetrated under the name of Islam." In the same Wilson Center report, Dr. Vali Nasr (at the time, Associate Chair of Research in national security affairs at the U.S. Naval Post-Graduate School) was quoted by Esfandiari as saying:

"After 9/11…Iran’s objectives included…rekindling a dialogue with Washington based on cooperation in Afghanistan…Iran would benefit from a stable Afghanistan and a central government that can control the flow of drugs into Iran and entice Afghan refugees in Iran to return to Afghanistan…Iranians found the U.S. to be in no mood to mend fences with Iran; in fact, the U.S. was buoyed by its victory in Afghanistan and became keen to challenge Tehran’s policies. This realization changed Iran’s strategic objectives in Afghanistan. Iran began to view long-term U.S. presence in Afghanistan, a pro-American government in Kabul, and more generally a centralized Afghanistan state as strategic threats."

9. The largest number of suicide bombers has been:

A. Sri Lankan

B. Saudi

C. Palestinian

D. Iranian

E. Afghan

Iran should not even be on this list; there have been no Iranian suicide-bombers that I know about. Sri Lanka likely leads that list, being the first to use this tactic, in their long-running civil war; the last time I was in Colombo, there were troops on every single block of the downtown area, and the hotel where I stayed was bombed the week after I left . Palestinians and Afghans would come next. Saudis have certainly been implicated in the recruitment of many such bombers, in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Also left off the list: Iraqis, who might even come in first.

The "martyrs," or "suiciders" in Iran were the young men who plunged into the frontlines of the Iran-Iraq War, literally "laying down their lives for their friends and countrymen." A huge cemetery outside Tehran is full of them -- 14-year-olds who will never get any older, 17-year-olds who never had a chance to raise a family.

10. In which country adjacent to Iran does the United States has military stationed i?

A. Afghanistan

B. Iraq

C. Turkmenistan

D. Pakistan

E. Turkey

F. All of the above

The answer is F. It is important to remind ourselves how the world looks when you are in Iran, looking out. Rather like being in a circled wagon train, with the Indians massed on the edge of the buttes on all sides. But, more important even than the military presence is the impact of sanctions on the people of Iran. Asne Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist reporting from Baghdad in early 2003 gave this analysis in her book A Hundred and One Days: Fear and Friendship in a War Zone:

"Sanctions were aimed at enfeebling the regime but have actually made people more dependent on it. Sanctions have isolated the country from the outside world and have made it easier to reward loyalty and punish deviation. It is virtually impossible to operate on any large scale without the regime keeping track…

A physician friend of mine at the G.W. University Medical Center, Dr. Nader Sadeghi, found, using UNICEF figures tracking child mortality rates since the 1960’s, that infant mortality in Iraq increased from 40 per 1000 live births to over 100 between 1991 and the beginning of the U.S.-led Iraq War; mortality in children between the ages of 1 and 5 increased from 50 per 1000 (in 1990) to 125, while the comparable figure in the United States or Canada was less than 10. The instances of serious malnutrition and chronic diarrhea in the first sixteen months of occupation were above levels found in Haiti, where I have done some medical outreach in poor villages and have seen the levels of deprivation that are prevalent there. A humanitarian aid group, Save the Children, estimated that by 2005, one Iraqi child out of every eight was not making it to his or her fifth birthday. Sadeghi extrapolated from the historical data in Iraq to the potential impact in Iran, under such a sanctions regime: "There are 1,171,000 live births in Iran per year... [Under similar sanctions] 80,000 more infants will die each year. 100,000 more children between 1 and 5 will die per year."

11. Which nation has invaded a country in the Middle East in the past century?

A. Iraq

B. United States

C. Israel

D. Turkey

E. All of the above

The answer is E, all of the above. Notice who is missing?

Speaking of Israel, lets not forget that the former Iranian government, under the Shah of Iran, had significant interchange with Israel, further complicating the way Iranians view that country. In fact, some of this extended even into the post-Islamic Revolution era. A book by Trita Parsi, PhD, published in 2007, presents a superb summary of this period. Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States lays out the schizophrenic overt/covert interface between post-revolutionary Iran and Israel, which included exchange of intelligence, commerce in technology and weapons, migration from one country to another and joint training exercises -- while the public rhetoric on both sides was often abrasive and derogatory. On both sides, broad geopolitical interests have seemingly meant far more than ideology when dealing with the other nation. The height of this pragmatism was the Iran-Contra affairs, when the U.S. used Israel to supply weapons to Iran, during the Reagan presidency. Such a rapprochement could happen again, once leaders are convinced that it is in their national interest.

12. The countries and the estimated number of nuclear warheads held by each, unscrambled:

A. North Korea 4. 5 - 15

B. Iran 2. 0

C. Israel 6. 200

D. United States 5. 1790

E. Pakistan 3. 70-90

F. China 1. 240

I left off the list Number One, in terms of numbers: the Russian Federation -- as well as the US allies such as France and the UK. Our country alone has bombs that are the equivalent of 200,000 Hiroshimas. Annually, the US and its allies spend about a trillion dollars on military -- 20 times the cost of K through 12 public education in our entire country. What are we so afraid of? Clearly, just having the world's strongest military power and the widest presence is not enough to keep us safe, so you'd think we would try a different way.