A Gentleman’s agreement. A Handshake agreement. A Deal. A Memorandum of Understanding. A non-binding Political Commitment. A Treaty. An Arrangement.
Consensual intercourse. Rape. “No means No.” “Yes means Yes.” Real Estate Development. Diplomacy. An honest Broker. A Mobster. A Gangster. A Bazaari. Haggling. Bargaining. Negotiating. Cheating.
Continue readingAfter yesterday’s post about President Trump threatening Iran with hitting it very hard, his plans to take Kharg island once more, and even mentioning nukes, he abruptly backpedaled, canceled his plans and announced,
Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening. Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.
DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Then Elon Musk’s SpaceX officially went public, with shares debuting on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX. It is the largest initial public offering (IPO) in Wall Street history. The successful launch made Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Hard to imagine what a new, possibly nuclear, attack on Iran would have had on Nasdaq and the global economy. Weasle-like Trump was fully aware of the fall-out (literally and metaphorically).
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Today, President Donald Trump’s placed again the record with the skip on the turntable. In a cameo appearance on Fox & Friends today, Trump gives another example of his delusions.
Iran is “dying to make a deal” and “is being decimated,” the president says. “They’re really in submission,” he says. “The just don’t know that.”
The president said his “preference” is to next to take Kharg Island, but he’s not sure Americans have the “stomach” for it as they likely want a quicker end to the war.
“My preference would be that. I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest with you. You’re going to make a fortune. But I don’t t know that American has the stomach. I think they’d like to see us come home,” he said.
The Iranian oil hub, Kharg island, is most probably to be attacked from near-by U.S. bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Although official deployment plans are classified, analyses and recent events point to various factors that make Kuwait a central component of a complex operation—an operation that undoubtedly also requires the use of ground troops. The Kuwaiti airbases, such as Ali Al-Salem are already being utilised for American operations and have recently been attacked by Iran in retaliation for U.S. strikes.
If Trump decides to take Kharg, Kuwait will definitely been dragged into the war.
On Truth Social Trump threatened Iran this afternoon explicitly.
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Can the lives of people in Iranian villages in the late 1970s and 1980s be compared with what ordinary people in rural Iran experience these days?
I have come across the work of ethnographers/anthropologists Erika Friedl and her husband’s Reinhold Loeffler, both retired Professors at Western Michigan University, when the latter’s book of 1988, Islam in Practice – Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village, was quoted in late Professor Patricia Crone’s last book, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran – Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012).
I have written about their work here.
Loeffler’s account of what he calls World Views, interviews with men in the village in the Boyer Ahmad region in southern Iran at the foothills of the Zagros mountains, was already an ethnographical classic. A most fascinating insight of a surprising mix of Islamic, pre-Islamic and superstitious believes which I had not really expected when having visited Iran many times in the 2000s.
Loeffler’s book made me aware of Erika Friedl’s works on women and children in Deh Koh (a fictional name of the village where the couple did their research) as well (etiquette demands that Friedl could become friendly with just women and children, and Loeffler could only interview men).
Erika Friedl and her husband visited the mountain village many times over a period of twenty years, and even later until 1994, both during the reign of the Shah as well as after the Islamic Revolution.
A rereading of Erika Friedl’s Women of Deh Koh of 1988 evokes mixed feelings. The book consists of a large number of episodes in the life of numerous women, describing their social interaction mostly with other women and, rarely, men. I got the feeling that it is, in fact, an in-depth probe into rural life which could probably also be expected in Alpine mountain villages in the 19th century. Has she actually perceived a difference? (A comparison would have been mandatory nowadays in ethnographical studies.)
I always experienced when in Iran (9 times in the 2000 years) among common or ordinary people deep religiosity. Not in Erika Friedl’s account. I get the impression that there is much superstition and a certain religiosity at the surface. But no deep understanding of Islam in general. Maybe “saints” are invoked every now and then (quite often Abbas ibn Ali, half-brother of Imam Husayn). So I asked myself, is Erika Fried’s account authentic?
Continue readingNarges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr have outlined a remade Islamic Republic emerging from the unprovoked war by Israel and the United States, respectively, President Donald Trump. A war out of aggression in violation of international law.
The Islamic Republic has already undergone dramatic molt. While Trump is still bragging, in interviews (see an especially ridiculos on Pod Force One), that Irans first, second and maybe third line of leaders are gone (after the “decapitation” strike on 28 February), so is its navy, its airforce, etc., Bajoghli and Nasr focus on remarkable lessons learned after the first US/Israeli attack in June last year which led to decentralizing from Tehran to provincial capitals its many executive decisions on trade, agriculture, and management of economic and social services from Tehran to provincial capitals. (Remember: last autumn, the water crisis had sparked the idea already to relocate the entire capital to the underdeveloped Makran region on the southern coast along the Gulf of Oman.)
While official statements and intelligence briefings indicate that approximately 40 senior Iranian leaders and security officials were killed in the strikes including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran managed to keep its governing institutions more or less intact. Together with nominating the surviving son of the Ayatollah, Mojtaba, his successor, a new generation took charge, all having been fighting in the war with Iraq in the 1980. The new leadership now is comprised of current or former members of the Revolutionary Guards.
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