“No Interests Section for You”

There was  talk  that a US Interests office might open in Tehran at the end of the Bush Administration, perhaps paving the way for a larger rapprochement between the US and Iran.  Will  (who has serious Iran credentials) at Friday in Cairo  reports– not likely to happen

Seems like, as hard as they try, the Bush administration can’t get out of the punitive, diplomacy=appeasement framework it views Iran through.   It would have been a real help to have a foot in the water before Obama takes office, but it looks like that wasn’t in the cards…..

Check out the post.

The Unintended Consequences….

of Sayyid Imam’s New Revisions:   Egypt’s Al-Dostor  (page 5)  newspaper reports that Egyptian Security forces have broken up a cell named after Anwar Sadat’s assasin, Khalid Islambouli,  in the city of Damiut.  Of the details provided, the books the group followed:  Mohamed Faraj’s 1981 Jihad: The Missing Obligation, another by Ayman Zawahiri, and both of Sayyid Imam (Dr Fadl’s) pre-revisions books. 

More importantly, the article interviews Montasar Al-Zayat, a lawyer and a  former militant who now  serves as a sort of self-appointed middle man between the Government and former militant groups.  He made what I think is an important point:    Zayat said that because of Sayyid Imam’s new book,  the Revisions process has lost some of its value.  Whereas before, the discussions were serious and were based on legitimate Islamic scholarship, Sayyid Imam’s Revisions have turned into an exchange of personal insults between Zawahiri and Imam.   Not seeing anything of value in the latest Revisions, “this will push the  youth to revert to the  Internet and the traditional Jihadist sources which justified the use of violence.”