This is from the Amnesty International Project Blog email list:

We’ve just had word that a young man in Iran aged only 15 at the time of his offence will be executed in the next 72 hours unless urgent action is taken.

Behnam Zare’ has been convicted of a murder committed when he was 15 years old. He’s now 18 and is being held in Adelabad prison, in the south-western city of Shiraz. The order to carry out his execution has now been sent to the prison.

Amnesty is urging people to take action to help save Behnam at www.amnesty.org.uk/deathpenalty

The murder reportedly took place on 21 April 2005, when Behnam Zare’ swung a knife during an argument with a man named Mehrdad, wounding him in the neck. Mehrdad later died in hospital. Behnam Zare’ was detained on 13 November 2005; Fars Criminal Court sentenced him to qesas (retribution) on charges of premeditated murder.

Behnam Zare’ is one of at least 71 child offenders currently on death row in Iran. The country continues to execute child offenders – people under the age of 18 at the time of their offence – despite the practice being strictly prohibited under international law. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has twice urged Iran to stop executions of child offenders, yet since 1990 Iran has executed at least 24 such offenders. You can find out more about the issue at the excellent campaigning website www.stopchildexecutions.com and link to our blog on this case (and other issues like the USA’s use of waterboarding) here.

This is a genuinely urgent case where our actions can make a real difference. Hope you can help.

Takes five minutes to send the letter via Amnesty’s website.

Here’s something to bear in mind should the bombs eventually hit the fan.

The United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany are due to discuss remaining differences on further UN sanctions against Iran.

There are already two UN resolutions demanding that Iran cease uranium enrichment - 1696 and 1747.

The thing is, with everybody running around screaming over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, certain other factors get overlooked. Have gander through those resolutions and see if you can see the words ‘human rights’. Take your time.

Anything? No. Indeed, the UN’s Human Rights Council saw fit last year to ‘discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran’. And apart from those of one or two bloggers, no one turned a hair, at least not the coiffures of the men meeting in Berlin today.

(I wrote about the Human Rights Council’s predecessor, the tawdry Commission on Human Rights, back in the day. Time to catch up with the less than sparkling offspring, I think.)

The thing is, as we’re probably all aware by now, human rights only really come in to play in high politics via expediency and the need to manipulate. When Saddam gassed the Kurds at Halabja in 1988, Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw weren’t interested in signing the Early Day Motions condemning the atrocity. Fifteen years later, when needing to build a case for war, they wasted no time in waving the corpses at us.

So, remember when the time comes and we’re asked to give a toss about the human rights situation in Iran to make us all feel better about bombing the place. Keep an eye out for the emotional appeals to our decency.

Remember that Gordon and George and the rest didn’t give a sod until the the time was right and they needed another page in the dossier against Iran. We’re not too bothered about the Iranian government enriching its society as long as its not enriching uranium.

Those of us who do give a sod should probably be doing something right now. If it has to take Gordon Brown or George Bush appealing to our consciences on such matters, it’s probably already too late.

I’ve been showing the kids some Tom and Jerry cartoons. I watched them with my dad when I was a kid and even though they’re hyper violent, they never had any adverse effects on me. Apart from the time I killed that cat by dropping an anvil on it, obviously.

Anyway, YouTube has loads and loads of Tom and Jerry cartoons. While I was searching out my favourite ones, I found this. It’s an Iranian ’scholar’ explaining how Tom and Jerry are part of the the Jewish conspiracy.

It’s a convincing argument, I’m sure you’ll agree. I knew there was something about that bloody mouse.

Anyway, here’s one of my (and my dad’s) very favourite T & J cartoons. It’s the one where Jerry drinks the blood of Christian children at his Bar Mitzvah.

I was going to do something about Tony Blair doing his Churchill circa 1935 bit the other day. But Flying Rodent’s done it so much better.

I’d just like to note this from Blair’s speech:

“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again.

“This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”

Hmmm. Sometimes analogies (like Blair’s) are never properly accurate but (like Blair’s) not easily misleading either. Blair says Iran = Nazi Germany. It’s as clear as Blair’s conscience. We’ve been here before and its an essential plank in the case for war: Step 1 - dehumanise your enemy.

You have to wonder if Blair isn’t even more dangerous now than he was when his was in power. His potential as a propagandist now that he’s free to say all kinds of whacky, ill-considered crap (well, whackier, even more ill-considered crap) now that he’s not PM is terrifying. An influential cross-section of American opinion and power clearly love him. He’s like David Icke with better contacts.

Anyway, for God’s sake, don’t think of Iranians as individual men, women and children trying to live under a totalitarian regime. That way madness lies. Instead, it’s much more comforting to think of them as a homogenous herd in willing thrall to evil. That way you won’t be put off your dinner when the bombs begin to fall.

Iran “doesn’t have the right to undermine the stability of its neighbours,” says Foreign Affairs supremo David Milliband.

Stability? Neighbours? Does he mean Armenia with its violent political demonstrations and border skirmishes with Azerbaijan? Or, indeed, Azerbaijan with its corrupt elections and politically motivated arrests? Or Turkmenistan (routine torture by the security services), Pakistan (military dictatorship), Afghanistan (post-T.W.A.T. basket-case) or Iraq (ditto)?

It must be like living in the same street as the Manson Family, Fred West, Skeletor and Alastair Campbell. You’d be worried which one is going to go tonto next, banging on the door and screaming obscenities through the letterbox in the middle of the night.

You yourself might be a religious fundamentalist wife-beater with little man syndrome and a degree in insecurity but you’ll still want to keep that pool cue by the bed.

‘I have expressed a degree of regret than can be equated to an apology‘

For God’s sake. Is there any other walk of life where that kind of talk wouldn’t get you punched in the face? The sooner these dickheads are gone the better.

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

read the rest

Upsetting as the vision of a distressed young mother certainly is, in the nuclear scheme of things the manipulation of LS Turney for propaganda purposes looks a fairly small step on the long, winding and disturbingly signpost-free road towards regional nuclear proliferation. The anguish expressed here by politicians and pundits stems less, one suspects, from any genuine fear for the officers’ safety - the Iranians may have become audacious, but they are not suicidally stupid and will release them unharmed, if traumatised, as in the similar incident of three years ago - than wounded pride that the naval officers of a once-dominant maritime power should be treated with such undisguised disdain.

read the rest

Conspiracy theorists, fire up your Google News Alerts for Ali Resa Asgari.

Asgari, a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, is missing. ‘Western sources’, according to the Times, insist he’s defected with ‘a treasure trove of his country’s most closely guarded secrets’. The Iranians say he’s been kidnapped.

Students of ancient history may remember Iraqi ‘defectors’ with information on WMD helping to make the case for war against Saddam Hussein. One ‘defector’, codename ‘Curveball‘, allegedly the brother of a senior aide to convicted fraudster and Iraqi president wannabe, Ahmed Chalabi, whose information was relied upon, later turned out to be peddling what is known in the intelligence community as a load of old cobblers.

It might be worth watching if Asgari starts singing for his supper and what, if any, parts of his testimony makes it into the public domain. Especially into any dossiers that might be drawn up. As Tony Blair would tell you, beware allegations coming from a single uncorroborated source. Tin foil hats on.

Good to hear US intelligence supremo and former scourge of the Sandinistas (back in the day when the Left kicked rather than kissed American foreign policy arse), John “Death Squad” Negroponte, being interviewed (RealPlayer required) on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning.

Afterwards, to fully enjoy the 1980s vibe he’d conjured, I skipped round the house to “Lucky Star” by Madonna while doing a Rubik’s Cube and machine-gunning some nurses and teachers.

I was particularly struck by his views on Iran getting The Bomb…

We don’t have a clear-cut knowledge, but the estimate we have made is [that] some time between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade they might be in a position to have a nuclear weapon, which is a cause of great concern.

…which struck me as very similar to Dr Fox’s authoritative statements about paedophiles on the Brass Eye Paedophilia Special:

Genetically, paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me. Now that is scientific fact. There’s no real “evidence” for it but it is scientific fact.

Not quite “45 Minutes From Doom” but good enough for a slow Friday.

This from the Prime Minister’s monthly press conference in April:

Question: On Iran, Prime Minister, last week at Prime Minister’s Questions you refused to rule out the possibility of military action, including targeted nuclear strikes against Iran. Can we therefore assume that should the diplomatic process fail to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programmes, and the US decided to pursue a military option, you would consider lending British support to that? And also given that the Foreign Secretary has described military action as inconceivable and unjustifiable, is there a split at the heart of government over this issue?

Prime Minister: No, there is just a very, very obvious thing, which is Iran is not Iraq. Nobody is talking about military invasion, people do however want to send a very strong signal to Iran because some of the comments made by the President of Iran are totally unjustifiable, Iran is supporting terrorism in the region to the detriment of democratic governments, it is in breach of its nuclear obligations and people want it to comply. And so the real issue for me in respect of Iran is well what are you going to do about it? And all I am saying, as I said at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, is that it is not very sensible at this moment in time to send a signal of weakness, we want to send a signal of strength. But I repeat, Iran is not Iraq and people are very, very well aware of that here and over the water.

Notice how Blair changes the “military action” in the question to “military invasion” in his answer. The thing is, I don’t recall hearing anybody seriously talking about an invasion of Iran. “Nobody is talking about military invasion,” seems about right. The topic of conversation, rather, is of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities with (nuclear or not) bunker buster weapons.

So far, so weak case. Flimsy evidence of the Prime Minister trying to distract observers away from a bombing campaign by denying something completely different, that is, an invasion. (Although it is classic New Labour to deny something of which they aren’t being accused in order to deflect from the question being asked.)

The thing is, he did it again today at his May press conference:

Question: Why has Jack Straw gone? Is it because he ruled out bombing Iran and you want to keep that option on the table? What did he do wrong?

Tony Blair: He was my campaign manager to become Leader of the Labour Party, and what he will do as Leader of the House is far more than the traditional Leader of the House role. He will effectively oversee what is a difficult programme being carried through Parliament (party political content) and any notion that it is linked to a decision about invading Iran - which incidentally we are not going to do - any notion that it is linked to a such a decision is utterly absurd.

Who asked about invading Iran? The question was about bombing.

Anyway, it’s an interesting evasion but it’s doubtful we’ll ever see him pinned down on it. “Has bombing Iranian nuclear facilities with conventional weapons been discussed?”, for instance (the use of nuclear weapons in such an attack having been ruled out as “absolutely absurd” by the Prime Minister). We’ll all get to read that plans to bomb Iran were well advanced in early 2006 when the top secret briefing papers are leaked in a few years time anyway. No point in asking about it now.

America broke off diplomatic relations after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah and the hostage-taking in the US embassy in Tehran. Now is the time to send an ambassador to Iran - why not Bill Clinton for the first 12 months? - and initiate a new policy of trade, travel, tourism and mass contact between the people of Iran and the West.

more…

A dispute has developed over a claim by Britain last October that Iran had provided the technology for bomb attacks on British troops in southern Iraq.

Two British newspapers - The Times and The Independent - now say that British officials have dropped the claim.

more…

(Times articles here and here. Independent article mirrored here. Blair’s remarks on the matter here.)

Bush, State of the Union, Feb 2 2005: “Today, Iran remains the world’s primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve.”

Blair, to the Commons liaison committee, Feb 8 2005: “It certainly does sponsor terrorism, there’s no doubt about that at all.”

And all buried under the Abbas/Sharon handshake for good measure.

He’s not even trying to be subtle is he? A third term with a decent majority is really going to put lead in his pencil. He can see his historical legacy finally materialising: not the Euro, not narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

No. It’ll be “democratising” Iraq and Iran.

“I think we should take Iraq and Iran and combine them into one country and call it Irate.” - Denis Leary.

BBC News - Rice: No US role in Iran talks

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she sees no need to get involved in European efforts to persuade Iran to drop its nuclear programme.

Well, it’s always best to have someone else to blame, the UN or Hans Blix for example, if or when the diplomacy goes wrong.

And never forget how horrible the Iranian leadership is:

Ms Rice also criticised Iran’s human rights record.

“The Iranian regime’s human rights behaviour and its behaviour toward its own population is something to be loathed,” she said.

“I don’t think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for the Iranian people and for the region,” she added.

Just don’t look over here.

Or here.

And certainly not here.

The Guardian: Iran nears nuclear ‘point of no return’

The Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, warned yesterday that Iran will reach “the point of no return” within the next 12 months in its covert attempt to secure a nuclear weapons capability.

October 11 2001: BBC News - Straw denies split with US over Iraq

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has denied there is any split between the US and the UK on whether military action should be extended to countries outside Afghanistan.

January 25 2005: The Guardian - Straw emollient on Iran rift after US talks

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, played down a rift with the US about possible military action to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon after talks yesterday with the incoming secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

2001: “There is no such action on the agenda at present,” he told a news conference in central London.

2005: “I think it was indicative that in the discussions I had, the issue was not raised once by either side. It was not on the table,” Mr Straw said.