POLITICAL CHESS IN IRAN: IS AYATOLLAH KHAMEINI LOSING CONTROL? IS RAFSANJANI MAKING A POWER PLAY?

OK, so the answer to the first question may not be clear yet, but the answer to the second question is obvious: Yep, he is. The game is chess, political chess.

From the time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared runaway winner of the presidential election last week by Khameini, Iran has seen a daily wave of opposition demonstrations, police crackdowns and violence. The throusands of Mousavi supporters, and even some who voted for Ahmadinejad, have taken to the streets in defiance of Iran's recent attempt at voter fraud.

Just so you know a bit of the problem with the election thus far, not including the obvious fraud involved in the counting of votes (do you realize that according to the Iranian government Mousavi even lost his home town in the election results...come on, you seriously expected people to believe that? That's bold.) Well, here is a few fun factiods:
According to the Iranian constitution, the Guardians of the Constitution are supposed to monitor and sign off on election results.

After the votes have been counted and the winner announced by the interior ministry, the Guardians have the "responsibility to endorse the result within 10 days if there are no complaints from the defeated candidates".

The president-elect is then confirmed and later sworn in by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But last week's election did not follow these procedures.

Despite complaints by Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaei, the opposition candidates, Ayatollah Khamaenei congratulated Ahmadinejad in a public speech and pointed out that he had got 14 million votes more than the first time he was elected president four years ago.

Ok, now what. Enter the protests and fervor over the outcome and Khameini's involvement. Hence the chants of "Death to the dictator".

'Not impartial' PORTION:
Khamenei and Rafsanjani appear to be locked in a power struggle for influence in Iran [AP]Some influential moderate clerics privately admit that Khamenei has not done "justice" to the presidential candidates and has not treated them with impartiality.
This behaviour, they believe, could jeopardise his position as leader since one of the main qualities required of the supreme leader is "justice".

Recently, inside reports claim many moderate clerics, some of whom are believed to be members of the powerful Assembly of Experts, have questioned the wisdom of Khamenei in hastily endorsing Ahmadinejad's "victory". The Assembly, which selects the country's supreme leader, is chaired by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani who is considered by many as one of the pillars of the Islamic Revolution.

In theory at least, the Assembly has the constitutional right to question and even replace the supreme leader. So the chess question is where Rafsanjani will move his King.

It is a well-known fact that there is a lot of bad blood between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani whom the president accuses of corruption and aristocratic behaviour. Ahmadinejad angered Rafsanjani when in his presidential television debate with Mousavi, he alleged that all the three opposition candidates had been put forward by Rafsanjani to defeat him.

He further accused Rafsanjani of unlawfully accumulating massive wealth over many years and putting his cronies in the way of the president. The allegations prompted Rafsanjani to write a highly critical open letter to Khamenei, which the supreme leader ignored.

The result has been serious public rift within the establishment and many observers believe Rafsanjani may be encouraging the ferment among supporters of the opposition presidential candidates. This is all designed to favor Rafsanjani, who supposedly aspires to become the next supreme leader, and rumours are flying that he is trying to muster support among some influential clerical members of the Assembly of Experts to take Khamenei to task.

If this were a chess match, Rafsanjani has just done the political equivalent of moving is pieces within striking distance of Khameini's King. Soon he may be declaring check, followed swiftly by a checkmate. I think the question is not if, but when.

UPDATE: A very intelligent and well connected insider just called after reading my post and let me in on a secret. He stated, "if there is to be any change in Iran, the recent turnout of protesters, only numbering under 10 thousand, is not enough. They must come out in the numbers we saw in America's civil rights movement if they expect to make any headway. 3000 or so protesters will not be enough to incite change."

I agree. The Mousavi supporters must band together in the tens of thousands or more to have a viable chance at surviving the coming battle.

The Gassing at Bilin: A West Bank tale from surfin' the Casbah

So yeah, the Iranian election... guys, I just got tear-gassed! Yes, the West Bank can be a scary place. But all hysteria aside, it was truly a pleasure hookin' up with Abu Danger and traveling back to his home in Bethlehem, Palestine. No problems getting there, but on his first day back to work, Danger decided that it would be a good idea to take his old buddy (me) to a protest in the small northern village of Billin. Ironically there wasn't anything that was "abnormal." Just the same old same old: A bunch of pissed off Palestinians gathering on a Friday afternoon, chest beating for a while and then proceeding to where the “wall of separation” is annexing 60% of their village. Yup, a normal day on the West Bank.

(Palestinian protesters fleeing Israeli tear-gas in the village of Billin.)

To me, however, it was a bit much. I told Danger and his friend (who also works at the Ma'an news agency): "Look, I'm not getting paid to write about this on The Casbah, nor are my pictures getting vetted for the New Yorker, in fact, I'm not even Palestinian… Don't take offense when I hang towards the back on this one." Though I maintained my pledge to guard the rear, I still got a healthy dose of tear-gas up my nostrils. It was like having someone squeeze the most sour lime into your forced-open eye balls. If you've never been gassed, it's quite the experience.

(This man in the wheel chair was the first to be tear-gassed. This is a media war folks, that ones for sure.)

This is life on the West Bank. Not exactly an African refugee camp, but devastating in the fact that just seven years ago, before the Second Intifada, it was a relatively peaceful place. And just when I needed an epic closer, a Jewish Israeli who was standing next to me at the protest (gutsy for him to come eh?) said: "Isn't it ironic that it is now the Jews who do the gassing?" I was too stunned to reply.

(A cool picture of the boys going to the protest.)

Update: I am hearing gunshots out of Abu Dangers four-story apartment in Bethlehem as I write this post.

Update #2: I have been asked by the Ma'an news agency, the largest Palestinian news outlet, to write a 1,000 word feature about my ongoing story, "From Tel Aviv to Beirut."

But hot Hebrew's with machine guns are ok? Geez...

People will often ask: "So what kind of country/place is it?" And by this, I am confused. I mean, I never know how to answer this question. Do people want to hear about the culture, religion, or just the derelicts you meet on the ground? It seems that you would need a decent level of understanding of the person who is asking this question just to know where they are coming from--right?

Well, I hope yesterday's story illustrates just what kind of country Israel is (or at least can be).

Some of you remember my dear friend, Abu Danger. I met Danger in a Palestinian refugee camp in the summer of 2007, right when the Hamas/Fatah tension was starting to build. He is an admirable fellow who is one of the few Americans I have met who shares my same obsession with the Middle East. So, he took a few days off his job to meet me in Haifa, Israel.

As we walked down to the waterfront--so that Danger's day off could be spent at the beautiful beaches in Haifa--we approached the train station. I had been on this train the past few days and had conveniently placed my surfboard on the upper racks as to help me get from break to break. (This is always the major problem in surf travel. Getting around relatively cheaply and finding the waves can make or break the trip.) So as I walk through the security check at the front on the train station, I get into a passionate argument with the man working the X-ray machine. It went something like this:

X-ray guy: "Lo, Lo, Lo. You can not bring that (pointing at my board) on the train."

Abu G: "They let me do it the past few days man, c’mon. It's a surfboard."

X-ray guy: "Lo, it is not allowed. There is no... (pause)... insurance."

Abu G: "Insurance? What!?! This is a surfboard. Let me show you."

X-ray guy: "Stop. It is not allowed... For security reasons."

Abu G: "What? First it was 'insurance', now it is 'security.' What are you talking about? I talked to the supervisor yesterday and he said that it was fine (a lie, of course)."

X-ray guy: "I am the supervisor. It is not allowed for security reasons."

As I rather angrily picked up my foam surfboard and clumsily swung it around to leave the station, a dazzling young Hebrew women came charging through the metal detector with a fully loaded M-16--two clips of ammo, fully loaded.

Abu Danger to Abu G: "What a country: They'll let good lookin' women with a machine gun on the damn train, but not a Californian and his surfboard. The reason? Security... What a place..."

Surfin' the Casbah: The Haifa surf crew

Before I could walk in the door of the Port Inn--the cool guest house I'm staying at in Haifa, Israel--a man came up to me with a cell phone and his "buddy who surf's" on the line. "When can we meet up?" the voice on the phone politely asked. "It is not big today, but there are some fun waves out there." "Well," I said with a most eager voice, "let’s meet up at the huge hotel on the beach and go from there." And what a day it proved to be.

(This is of one of "the guys" making a nice Mediterranean style turn.)

It was not long till I became integrated into this northern Israel surf community. After a few hours of Mediterranean wave riding and surfboard swapping, we went to one of the guy’s houses for a nice cup of cold juice and an hour of profound relaxation. (The sea here is very salty--not to mention the sun is more intense than in Australia--so it is important that we all drink water and relish in the shade in between surf sessions.)

Soon, however, one of the Israeli surfers said, "Hey, I saw an old British-looking anchor a few hundred meters out to sea the other day. Wanna go get it?" And because none of us had anything better to do, we barreled down to the sandy shores of the Mediterranean with paddle boards and rope to fetch this iron object.

(At least we thought it was British. Does anyone have academic authority Mediterranean anchors? Hehe.)

Perhaps my favorite part of this day was when I was sitting on one of my new friends rooftops drinking some more of this strange yet delicious fruit juice. I had noticed earlier in the day that this young man, likely in his twenty's, had an Arabic accent. I asked him about it and he said, "Nam (yes in Arabic), my father is Palestinian Catholic and my mother is Dutch. In fact, we've always wanted to write a surf story about our 'mixed community' here in Haifa. Both Jews and Arab are friends and surf here together." I gasped at his remark, this is exactly the kind of story I want to write for The Surfers Journal! “So,” he said, gesturing with his welcoming hand, “take good notes and make sure to write our story so Americans can read it.”

(Lee, the Baghdadi Jew on the left and Rafuf, the Palestinian-Dutchman on the right. To the untrained eye, one might not even be able to tell who is who in this picture. Haifa is one of the few cities in Israel where Arab and Jew live (and surf) side by side.)

As we left the hospitality on the kind Arab’s rooftop, one of the Jewish Israeli guys gave me a ride back to my cheep guest house. Stopping suddenly somewhere along the road, I asked my Jewish friend what we were doing. He, a tall, strong, Baghdadi Jew looked at me with his deep-set eyes and said: "Do you see that mound of grass? During the Second Lebanon War a Hezbollah rocket landed right there and blew a hole in the ground. See that building over there? That is the house I ran next to after the rocket came. This is why we surf here; the fuckin' stress of this place wears on all of us."

Abu's Haifa rant on Iran, Israel and whatever's clever

Now that your favorite Abu (me) has finished his Israeli Birthright trip--and let me now say with certainty that Arabs and Jews in the Diaspora are much radical than ones who live here--I am catchin' up on a bit of rest in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. There is a saying in among Israelis: "You pray in Jerusalem, you party in Tel Aviv, and you sleep in Haifa." And that, my friends, is the plan.

But there are no plans in the Middle East and there is too much going on to sleep. Iran, for example, is facing a level of civil unrest that has not been seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. If you turned on the news someone would likely be saying something like, "This is Iran's chance to right itself." While I don't explicitly agree with this statement, I do echo a former Israeli commando I met the other day who said, "I would almost rather Ahmadinejad win. He is rhetoric. Mousavi, on the other hand, has been instrumental to the nuclear program. Though he may condemn the Holocaust, unlike Ahmadinejad, he may in fact be more dangerous." Keep in mind guys that the Supreme Leader--and the Islamic regime--are not changing in this election. Nevertheless, such organic civil unrest over this election is likely be good for Iran in the long run. Lets just hope it does not cost to many lives.

Another issue that I would like to address is Netanyahu "response speech" to Obama. Remember how I said I was going to get a ticket to see Bibi deliver his speech? Well, I didn’t make it. Mostly because I wasn't going to be in the main hall, meaning I would have to watch it on TV like the rest world. But also, the damn thing was in Hebrew—a language I do not speak. So, I watched it from my comfortable guesthouse in Haifa, Israel. What did I think? Well, what can you say? He said what he had to. Appeasing the Obama Administration was his main objective. Anyone remember reading anything like this in the past few weeks?

“If and when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to kindly appease Obama’s demand, citing politics, the Bible and security, Americans should back their president if and when he threatens to “reevaluate” Israel’s military aid. In Junior High, they call it “tough love.”

The key to this speech was not what Netanyahu said, but rather how and what leverage Obama will be willing to use to make the Likud leader realistically compromise.

So before you wander out of this Casbah, I would like to share that I just did another one of those radio shows that I'm doing for a local NPR station in Northern California. They, as I understand it, are editing it right now and I will put a link to the show once I get it. And finally I would like to give a cheers to the intellectual guerrillas' of the world: “May the spirit of travel, politics and culture tickle our spines into feeling the rapture of being alive...”