speaking of Iran

There is this:

Iran’s president and supreme leader in rift over minister’s reinstatement
via World news: Iran | guardian.co.uk by Saeed Kamali Dehghan on 4/27/11

MPs call for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be impeached after his refusal to back Khamenei’s judgment

A rift is emerging between Iran’s president and its supreme leader, prompting several members of the parliament to call for the impeachment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has not been seen in public for days.

Ahmadinejad has refused to appear at the presidential palace since Friday in what is being seen as a reaction to Ayatollah Khamenei’s reinstating of a minister he initially “asked to resign”.

Under pressure from Ahmadinejad the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, a close ally of the supreme leader, stepped down on 17 April but was reinstated when Khamenei asked him in a letter to stay.

The president has not publicly shown his support for that decision and on Wednesday he refused for the second time to chair a cabinet meeting in which Moslehi was present. Ahmadinejad also reportedly cancelled an official visit to the holy city of Qom prompting reactions among conservatives that “the president was sulking”.

Under Iran’s constitution, the president is in charge of appointing cabinet ministers who will hold the ministerial office after the approval of the parliament but an unwritten law requires all officials to abide by the supreme leader.

Iran’s opposition has speculated that Khamenei is worried about the increasing power of Ahmadinejad and especially his chief-of-staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Khamenei is believed to be particularly concerned about two key positions in the cabinet, the ministry of foreign affairs and the intelligence ministry, where he traditionally has influence. Ahmadinejad’s administration is also accused of losing billions of dollars of Iran’s oil revenues in recent years.

Last December, Ahmadinejad sacked Manouchehr Mottaki without consulting Khamenei while the former foreign minister was in middle of an official visit to Africa. Mottaki was replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of the country’s atomic energy agency.

After the dismissal of Mottaki, Ahmadinejad’s assertion of control over Iran’s foreign policy became clear. By attempting to dismiss Moslehi, some analysts believe that Ahmadinejad is entering a new phase of extending his control over key positions in the run-up to the March 2012 parliamentary election.

Ahmadinejad enjoyed the full support of the supreme leader when Khamenei backed him in the disputed presidential elections in 2009. Independent commentators believe that Khamenei has realised “his mistake” by supporting a president who is seeking to surpass him.

Since the first signs of split emerged, several members of the Iranian parliament have called on Ahmadinejad to publicly support Khamenei’s decision over Moslehi, a request he has so far declined. Some prominent figures in the powerful revolutionary guards have also asked the president to comply with the supreme leader.

On Tuesday, Parliament News, a website run by Iranian MPs reported that “the plan to impeach Ahmadinejad has begun” in the parliament, with 12 MPs asking for him to be summoned before them.

Conservatives believe that the increasing tension between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei stems from the growing influence of Mashaei, who is being groomed by Ahmadinejad as his possible successor.

Mashaei, whose daughter married Ahmadinejad’s son, has become the most controversial figure in Iran, provoking harsh criticism from conservatives by favouring a greater cultural openness and opposing greater clerical involvement in the regime.

Mashaei, who champions a nationalist narrative of Iran’s history, was himself forced to step down as Iran’s first vice-president in July 2009 when Khamenei intervened in an unprecedented move and said in a letter that “the regime’s expediency” required Mashaei to go. Ahmadinejad, to the surprise of many, then appointed Mashaei as his chief-of-staff instead.

Khamenei has tried to play down his confrontation with Ahmadinejad in recent days. In an official visit to the southern province of Fars last Saturday, he praised the achievements made by Ahmadinejad’s government and told the crowd he only intervenes in the government’s affairs when he feels that “the expediency is ignored”. He added: “I won’t allow as long as I’m alive, an iota of deviation of this massive movement of the nation.”

she’s so small I didn’t even feel it

Look where she climbed while I was typing. I didn’t even feel it.

NY Times article on new Egyptian foreign policy muscle

Egypt brokers a Fatah-Hamas deal, will open the border to Gaza, and also elevate dealings with Iran.

Everything Egyptians are quoted as saying in THIS ARTICLE is true, not just smoke-blowing. If you’re going to have a democracy, you can’t have policies that are so disconnected with public opinion as they have been, or those who do it will be voted out of office. And Egyptian public opinion definitely favors a more confrontational stance with Israel on Palestinian issues. This will be a great inconvenience for Israel, but I still don’t see that Egypt is in a position to make Israel their main foreign policy issue again. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I’m not yet seeing how they can do it.

The Iran part is different. That’s just muscle-flexing diplomacy, not the sign of any deep sympathy among the Egyptian populace for the Iranian regime. Or at least I’ve certainly not detected any such thing.

Incidentally, here’s something I noticed some years ago… When India and Pakistan were at their most serious recent peak of tension, in around 2002, the Egyptian public seemed to react with a collective yawn. I was discussing this with a couple of my Saudi students, and they said that in Saudi Arabia, Pakistani security was a big deal. They hypothesized that whereas Saudi Arabia is pan-Islamist for obvious historical reasons, Egypt is more just pan-Arabist in its outlook. Along these lines, I’ve noticed relative indifference on the part of regular Egyptians towards countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. But they get very serious about Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, etc. These issues tend to be taken very personally in Egypt.

first faint signs of brattiness

I’m relieved to see Tamanya start to do some bratty things this morning for the first time. I take this to be a sign of health, comfort, and security.

What sorts of things? Oh, things like attacking my shoelaces and untying one of them. Wrestling with the lamp cord (luckily she’s too small to move the lamp itself and knock it on top of her).

Oh yeah, the worst thing is that she’s being a brat with the bottle-feeding now. She keeps trying to attack behind the bottle nipple and seize the reservoir of milk itself. There’s no way for that to work, of course, and I keep telling her that, but she keeps trying it to such an extent that our bottle-feeding days may almost be over.

Today for the first time she also thinks it’s funny to quit feeding right when she has a full mouth, so that a final mouthful of milk spills out onto me. She even seems to smirk a bit when this happens.

last night, on top of the nest

This one isn’t bad. She’s mentally preparing herself for the leap to the floor, which she’s fully capable of doing. Getting back up still requires my assistance, however.

The number 9 on the top is from when I moved the last time. The red Arabic writing over the little doorway at bottom tells us that this was originally a box for transporting tea.

best pose I can get from her this morning

an hour earlier than I thought

Apple apparently never heard that Egypt has cancelled daylight time. I thought it was almost noon, but really it’s almost 11:00. Last night was supposed to be the clocks moving forward, and my MacBook and iPhone, both of which are usually uncannily up-to-date on the smallest sudden shifts in timekeeping in the Arab world, completely missed that Egypt is no longer participating.

economists debate Star Wars

This is good for a few chuckles over your morning coffee. It’s this sort of thing:

“Back to the point re: trade surpluses, I don’t know if my original question assumes that every planet has a trade surplus. But to your point about how empires exploit resources from conquered territories, well, that’s what you see with Coruscant (trade deficit; takes from outer worlds–how can it not? The entire surface of the planet is developed) and places like Alderaan (trade surplus, has natural resources and commerce that are exploited by the Empire). Or am I missing something here?”

paw on the mouth

Around 1:50 AM I was awakened by the strange sensation of a tiny paw pressed against my lips.

I don’t really mind being awakened for food, since that goes with the territory. But sometimes she wakes me up just for the heck of it, and that’s not much fun. And speaking of mischief, she is sitting here pretending to try to tear the pocket off my shirt.

Her shock of the morning: being taken onto the balcony for the first time. Could hardly believe her eyes. But can’t let her out there alone, because parts of the railing are conceivably low enough for her to jump over.