FPI Overnight Brief

FPI Overnight Brief

December 28, 2009
Iran

Tens of thousands of Iranian protesters clashed with security forces nationwide, as a major religious holiday was convulsed by what appeared to be the worst street violence since antigovernment demonstrations broke out more than six months ago. In the capital of Tehran, security forces opened fire on crowds in the central neighborhood of College Square around 11:30 a.m., killing at least four protesters, according to opposition Web sites, eyewitness accounts and online videos. Opposition sites put the death toll as high as eight in Tehran by late Sunday… Among the protesters slain on Sunday was the nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran's top opposition leader, according to Mr. Mousavi's official Web site. The nephew, Seyed Ali Mousavi, was participating in antigovernment protests in Tehran on Sunday, the site said. Clashes broke out in many cities, including Isfahan and Mashad, according to witnesses and footage on Iranian Web sites. In a sign of widening public discontent, protests recently also flared in smaller, more conservative towns far from major urban centers like Tehran and Isfahan. – Wall Street Journal

Charles Krauthammer writes: On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not just reject President Obama's latest feckless floating nuclear deadline. He spat on it, declaring that Iran "will continue resisting" until the United States has gotten rid of its 8,000 nuclear warheads. So ends 2009, the year of "engagement," of the extended hand, of the gratuitous apology -- and of spinning centrifuges, two-stage rockets and a secret enrichment facility that brought Iran materially closer to becoming a nuclear power. We lost a year. But it was not just any year. It was a year of spectacularly squandered opportunity. In Iran, it was a year of revolution, beginning with a contested election and culminating this week in huge demonstrations mourning the death of the dissident Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri -- and demanding no longer a recount of the stolen election but the overthrow of the clerical dictatorship. – Washington Post

Editorial: John Kerry lost the Secretary of State sweepstakes to Hillary Clinton, but that hasn't lowered his diplomatic ambitions. The Journal reported Thursday that the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman is mulling a trip to Iran, and with the blessing of the Obama Administration. If the mullahs had any sense, they'd send him a government plane. Beset by almost daily demonstrations by a democratic opposition that has been growing despite beatings and arrests since the stolen June election, Mr. Kerry would arrive from Washington to show the Iranian people that at least someone still favors the regime. He would be the most senior American to visit Tehran in 30 years and his trip would convey legitimacy that the dictatorship is especially eager to have at the current moment. – Wall Street Journal

Six months after Iran's disputed presidential election triggered widespread demonstrations, the country's pro-democracy movement is as strong as ever, experts say. As this week's protests show, opponents of Iran's regime have taken to using officially sanctioned demonstrations to turn out in large numbers and publicise their message. But do not expect another revolution. "This is a civil rights movement working through self-propelling acts of civil disobedience," Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, says. "It will change the very political language of the region." – Al Jazeera

Afghanistan

Jim Hake writes: In Afghanistan, there is a meaningful way for every American to help, regardless of our political views. There are requests every day from our troops for things that will help them succeed and come home sooner and safer. Our servicemen and women need our help. We can provide the direct support they require and provide it on a scale that makes the difference. Now is the time to do it. – Wall Street Journal

The War

FPI Policy Advisor Christian Whiton writes: Why was someone [of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s] background and stated reason for visiting America granted a visa?... It is time for the U.S. to be more selective with those who wish to travel here from high risk areas and backgrounds. A visa should be a privilege, not an entitlement… To most people, this is common sense. But to critics on the left, it is the unacceptable act of “profiling.” … We should empower government officials to apply reasonable skepticism, statistical data and common sense in screening those who wish to visit the U.S… Congress should relieve the State Department of its role in issuing visas. This task should be given instead to the Department of Homeland Security, which is less eager to please foreign constituencies… We need to demand that senior officials not take the easy and politically correct route of grandstanding against “profiling” while failing to keep America safe. – Fox News

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked." – Politico

The father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old charged with attempting to bomb a US passenger plane en route to Detroit from Amsterdam, says he informed the US embassy in Nigeria as well as the Nigerian Intelligence Agency of his son's extremist views… Mutallab and other members of the family became worried when Abdulmutallab said he was dropping his post-graduate program in business administration and was pursuing another course in Yemen which he did not disclose. Mutallab finally decided to tell authorities about his son when Abdulmutallab sent a text message informing his family that he was severing all contact. – Deutsche Welle

Pakistan

A pair of bombings on Sunday killed at least 10 people, including a government official, and wounded scores more, Pakistani authorities said. The first blast hit the home of a local official in the Kurram area of Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region, killing Sarfaraz Khan, his 13-year-old son and three of his young nephews, an official said. The Associated Press reported that Khan's wife was also killed in the attack, but that could not be independently confirmed. – Washington Post

Human Rights

Editorial: The Obama administration's commitment to the traditional American cause of promoting democracy and human rights has been widely questioned, and not without reason. So some rights advocates were pleased by an address that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered at Georgetown University, in which she laid out "the Obama administration's human rights agenda for the 21st century." We're not so happy… [Clinton] did not limit herself to past principles. She offered an innovation: The Obama administration, she said, would "see human rights in a broad context," in which "oppression of want -- want of food, want of health, want of education, and want of equality in law and in fact" -- would be addressed alongside the oppression of tyranny and torture… This is indeed an important change in U.S. human rights policy -- but the idea behind it is pure 20th century. Ms. Clinton's lumping of economic and social "rights" with political and personal freedom was a standard doctrine of the Soviet Bloc... She made no mention of democracy. If the Obama administration believes that liberty is urgently needed in the homelands of al-Qaeda, Ms. Clinton still has offered no sign of it. – Washington Post

Thailand

Thailand sent soldiers to begin the forced repatriation of 4,000 ethnic Hmong to Laos on Monday, despite concerns that they might be persecuted by the Communist-run Laotian government and warnings from the U.S. that such action could damage military ties with Washington. Hmong hill-tribe members fought on the side of a pro-American government in Laos before it fell to the Communists in 1975. The Hmong claim to have been mistreated by the Laotian government since then, and many sought protection in Thailand before being resettled in the U.S. and elsewhere in the years after the Vietnam War. – Wall Street Journal

China

A senior Chinese police official has vowed "pre-emptive attacks" against threats to Communist Party control in a speech published days after the nation's most prominent dissident was jailed for criticizing the Party. Vice Minister for Public Security Yang Huanning said the government faced undiminished risks to control, despite fast economic growth, according to the official Xinhua news agency. In a speech on December 18 to security officials, published only on Monday, Yang singled out perceived threats from political foes of the ruling Communist Party, including separatist sentiment in the far-western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. – Reuters

The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted strong rebukes in the United States and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly self-assured on the world stage. By sentencing Mr. Liu to 11 years in prison for subversion, the Chinese government sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech. Mr. Liu, 53, a former literature professor who helped draft a manifesto last December that demanded open elections and the rule of law, was convicted after a closed two-hour trial on Wednesday in which his lawyers were allowed less than 20 minutes to state his case. – New York Times

Gulf

The United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against the Al-Qaeda terror network in Yemen, The New York Times reported. Citing an unnamed former top CIA official, the newspaper said that a year ago the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country. At the same time, some of the most secretive special operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, the report said. – AFP

North Korea

Leslie Forgach writes: Soon after President Barack Obama's inauguration in January, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il welcomed him in typical fashion by testing another nuclear weapon. Mr. Obama reacted firmly by suspending the six-party disarmament talks and imposing tough sanctions. But a year later the Obama administration is poised to begin the talks anew… Washington should let Kim fall. It's the best chance the U.S. has of achieving its twofold objectives: denuclearization in North Korea and the eventual unification of the peninsula. After all, the Kim clique has made it clear after decades of negotiations that no amount of aid will suffice to induce them to end their nuclear program… – Wall Street Journal Asia

Europe

An exit poll from Sunday's presidential elections in Croatia has indicated a leftist opposition candidate and a longtime mayor of Zagreb will face off in a runoff vote. Both candidates are considered pro-Western and friendly toward the U.S., and both will likely support Croatia's efforts to win entry into the European Union, possibly in 2011 or 2012. The poll, carried out by Ipsos-Puls, considered a reliable polling agency, and released just after polling stations closed, gave leftist Social Democrat member Ivo Josipovic 32.7% of the vote. It showed Mayor Milan Bandic -- an independent -- would win 14.1% of the vote. – The AP

Ronald D. Asmus writes: As Washington and Moscow zero in on a new strategic arms control treaty, it is time to look at what lies ahead in U.S.-Russian relations. The greatest gap between Western and Russian thinking today may not be on Afghanistan or Iran. It may well be on Europe. The first signs of the unraveling of the European security system built after the Cold War are evident. Almost unnoticed in the U.S. media, Moscow last month proposed a new draft treaty on European security -- thus making good on President Dmitry Medvedev's call after the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 for changes to the current system. In parallel, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brought forward a second and more worrying document in the NATO-Russia Council. This is the latest in a series of Russian moves to alter how European security is run, to constrain NATO and, above all, to stop any further enlargement of the Western alliance. – Washington Post

Somalia

The crew of a Chinese ship hijacked by Somali pirates in mid-October was safely rescued, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday, making no mention of a reported ransom payment. The De Xin Hai, owned by a unit of China Ocean Shipping or COSCO, was carrying coal and 25 Chinese crew from South Africa to India when seized by pirates east of the Horn of Africa, some 700 nautical miles east of Somalia, on October 19. – Reuters

ENDS

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