Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2009, pages 41, 72
European Press Review
“Old Revolutionaries Know When Revolutions Threaten,” Notes German Paper
By Lucy Jones
The European press voiced criticism of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following the country’s disputed June 12 election in which the two leading presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and incumbent Ahmadinejad, both claimed victory. The street protests which followed were unprecedented in their scale since the shah’s overthrow in 1979.
“Authoritarian regimes will see Iran as an example of what goes wrong when even a flawed form of democracy is allowed to flourish,” said Britain’s Sunday Times of June 21.
“The Iranian form of mass demonstration reflects a desire to escape the yoke of suppression and the economic failings over decades of incompetent, inward-looking government,” it added. “Regimes can try to put people power down by violent repression and censorship. But in the end, if there is anything we have learnt over the past 20 years—just think of the Philippines in the 1980s and Ukraine a few years ago—it is that people power can win out.”
“The curious position is that, if Khamenei persuades Mousavi to submit, the Supreme Leader will have undermined the authority of the regime even more seriously than is already the case,” editorialized The Guardian on June 20. “It would then become apparent beyond doubt that the supposedly democratic levers are unconnected to the machinery of power, and that even a man as identified with the Islamic revolution as Mousavi cannot be permitted to function as a popular leader.”
“Iran has arrested journalists and imposed media restrictions. But a massacre in Tehran would be impossible to conceal,” pointed out The Daily Telegraph of June 19. “If, heaven forbid, this were to happen, Ayatollah Khamenei should know that he would never be forgiven.”
According to award-winning Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, writing in the June 21 Independent, “Having refused any serious political dialogue with Mousavi and his opposition comrades—a few district recounts will produce no real change in the result—the Iranian regime, led by a Supreme Leader who is frightened and a president who speaks like a child, is now involved in the battle for control of the streets of Iran. It is a conflict which will need the kind of miracle in which Khamenei and Ahmadinejad both believe to avoid violence,” Fisk added.
The big loser thus far has been Khamenei.
“Old revolutionaries know when revolutions threaten to reach critical mass,” noted Germany’s center-right daily Die Welt on June 16. “Since the Islamic revolution, democratic conditions have never really been present” in Iran, the newspaper opined. “It seems [Iran’s] real leaders decided that 95 percent control was not enough—they wanted it all,” it added, concluding that Iranians “don’t want to put up with it any longer.”
The big loser thus far has been Khamenei, because “everyone in Iran understands that...an election could not be falsified without his say-so,” German-Iranian writer Bahmand Nirumand wrote in Germany’s Die Tageszeitung the same day. “Khamenei would be ruined” if, indeed, the election result was found to have been fixed, he added.
In France, Libération on June 15 quoted an expert as saying that, regarding the Iranian election, he has never before seen election fraud on that scale.
Financial Times Calls Obama’s Speech to Muslim World “Brilliant”
Barack Obama has “started a new conversation,” said Britain’s Financial Times on June 4, the day the U.S. president gave his historic speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds from Cairo University.
“While all now depends on what the U.S. does rather than what its president says,” it added, “Mr. Obama has changed the tone of relations between the West and the world of Islam. The speech was brilliant. With artful sensitivity he navigated through minefields littered with cultural explosive devices and politico-religious booby-traps, dodging ambushes without evading the issues.”
“It was a speech he was born to give,” enthused the Daily Telegraph the same day.
“If the United States and the Islamic countries eventually succeed in banishing their mutual suspicion and inaugurating a new age of understanding—a distant prospect, to be sure—Barack Obama’s bold efforts to make a new beginning, based, as he put it, on mutual interest and mutual respect, will deserve much of the credit,” editorialized The Independent the followng day. It went on to describe the speech as “a diplomatic and intellectual tour de force; a cool, logical and coherent argument for the ditching of stereotypes and the harmonious coexistence of two different, but not automatically conflicting, views of the world.”
“An intelligent guy, then, Obama. Not exactly Gettysburg. Not exactly Churchill, but not bad,” commented The Independent’s Robert Fisk on June 5.
“One could only remember Churchill’s observations: ”˜Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare,’” he continued. “There was one merciful omission: a speech of nearly 6,000 words did not include the lethal word ”˜terror.’ ”˜Terror’ or ”˜terrorism’ have become punctuation marks for every Israeli government and became part of the obscene grammar of the Bush era,” noted Fisk.
Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, was one of the few commentators who was critical of the speech. Writing in Britain’s Guardian the same day, under the headline “A Bush in Sheep’s Clothing,” he said Obama’s speech “shows little real change.” “Once you strip away the mujamalat—the courtesies exchanged between guest and host—the substance of President Obama’s speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in U.S. policy,” he warned.
Regarding Palestine, Abunimah said Obama “may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state ”˜vision’ aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end,” he argued.
The London Times was lukewarm on Obama’s speech. “He did not, sadly, address the issue of democracy. That must remain part of the agenda,” it editorialized in its June 5 edition.
In France the same day, Libération described the speech as “brave,” but said it was “not going to wipe out the weight of history.” “It could begin to shift attitudes and begin to marginalize those extremists of all persuasions who profit from the nonsensical idea of a ”˜war of civilizations,’” it acknowledged. “Peace in the Middle East is still a distant horizon, but Obama has shown one way forward. He now has to show the courage to accept the political repercussions of his stance,” it concluded.
“The most disappointing aspect of Obama’s speech was the lack of detail on how the White House plans to engage Muslim governments on human rights, and how the U.S. should pursue strategic and economic interests in Muslim countries,” wrote Rainer Sollich in Germany’s Deutsche Welle on June 5.
“Obama’s speech intended to build a bridge to the Muslim world. Now the words have been spoken, actions must follow—and not just from the United States,” Rainer added.
Libyan Leader Attacks U.S. During Italy Trip, Reports Corriere della Sera
During a controversy-ridden trip to Rome, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi attacked the U.S. for being “terrorists like Bin Laden,” Italy’s Corriere della Sera reported June 12.
“While claiming to firmly ”˜condemn’ terrorism, the president [on June 11] attempted to offer as an explanation for the phenomenon the need for ”˜defense’ against the encroachments of the Western world,” the newspaper said. “They call people with guns and bombs terrorists but what can we call the powers that have intercontinental missiles? What is the difference between Bin Laden’s actions and Reagan’s attack on Libya in 1986? Wasn’t that terrorism?” Corriere della Sera quoted Qaddafi as saying.
Speaking to around 1,000 prominent women in business, politics and culture, the Libyan leader said women in the Arab world were being treated as “disposable furniture,” Radio Netherlands reported June 12.
The station went on to say that “some of his public appearances were disturbed by whistling and several politicians openly criticized the Libyan leader’s views.”
After waiting two hours for him to appear, the Italian lower house canceled a high-level conference with Qaddafi, the BBC in Britain reported June 12. Calling the delay “unjustified,” Speaker Gianfranco Fini called the meeting off to applause from the crowd.
Observers said Qaddafi made a habit of failing to appear on time for his appointments while on his Italian visit, the BBC said, noting that he was half an hour behind schedule for his meeting with the Italian head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano; an hour late for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; an hour late for the Senate; and an hour-and-a-half late for La Sapienza University.
Berlin Accused of “Shabby Delaying Tactics” on Guantanamo Uighurs
The announcement by the tiny Pacific island nation of Palau that it will accept 17 of Guantanamo’s Uighur inmates marked the end of long negotiations between Washington and Berlin on the issue, Germany’s Der Spiegel said June 11.
For most of the year, officials in Berlin have been debating whether they should let the inmates resettle in Germany, the publication noted.
In 2004 the Uighurs, members of a mainly Muslim minority in northwestern China, were cleared for release by the U.S., but Beijing insisted the men are separatist terrorists, meaning they could be tortured if sent home.
The German government debated whether it should accept all or some of the 17 inmates as a goodwill gesture to help the Obama government close Guantanamo.
“But the conservative interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, had wondered why Germany should help solve America’s self-inflicted legal problems by accepting the detainees,” Der Spiegel reported.
Possible diplomatic trouble with China over hosting the Uighurs seemed to unsettle everyone in Berlin, it remarked.
“The idea of resettling them in the U.S. failed not because of any known facts but because of a hysterical campaign,” wrote Die Tageszeitung on June 11.
“Schäuble has based his rejection partly on the claim that the Uighurs had no personal connection to Germany. This isn’t true. Munich has the largest Uighur emigrant community in Europe. Uighur life prospers there. Uighur business owners in Munich have promised to help the inmates find jobs,” it said.
“Schäuble’s shabby delaying tactics can have only one source—the claim by the Chinese government that the Uighurs are terrorists. If that’s true, then why not send them home immediately?” the paper asked.
Lucy Jones is a free-lance journalist based in London.
