The BBC reports that authorities in Iran have announced sweeping new restrictions on foreign media, effectively confining journalists to their offices:

The new restrictions on foreign media require journalists to obtain explicit permission before leaving the office to cover any story. Journalists have also been banned from attending or reporting on any “unauthorised” demonstration — and it is unclear which if any of the protests are formally authorised.

Press cards have been declared invalid. Our correspondent says they are the most sweeping restrictions he has ever encountered reporting anywhere. He says the clampdown comes amid surprise and fear among authorities at the show of defiance by opposition supporters who attended Monday’s huge illegal rally, insisting the vote was rigged.

The Guardian Council — Iran’s top legislative body — said votes would be recounted in areas contested by the losing candidates.

Should be a swell recount, since the regime has already announced that the results won’t change. (Reuters adds: “Reuters coverage is now subject to an Iranian ban on foreign media leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.”) It remains to be seen what, if any, impact the micro-P-to-P media will have in coming days.

Iran’s manipulated vote totals in 2005 showed some finesse and subtlety, as we observed at the time. This year the fraud was clumsy. Why? Forbes:

The final election result — 85% voter turnout and Ahmadinejad victory with 62.63% of the total vote and a modest 33.75% of the vote to the closest contender Mir-Hossein Mousavi not to mention ridiculously low number of votes of Rezai and Karrubi — shows that the Iranian leadership not even bothered to produce elegant fraud.

Unlike earlier elections there is still no detailed data on breakup of the vote in the provinces, but allegations of lack of voting forms in constituencies supporting Ahmadinejad’s rivals, prohibitions against presence of representatives of the rivals at many voting stations, and election results from native villages and towns of Mousavi, Karrubi and Rezai most surprisingly showing more than 90% vote for Ahmadinejad, demonstrate rather clumsy rigging tactics.

The question is why all the clumsiness? Ahmadinejad could have easily advanced to the second round of election against Mousavi at which point the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij with some manipulation of the vote could have secured him a second-term victory without the easily detectable fraud.

Fair enough. But we think that the most plausible explanation for the clumsy fraud and the over-the-top endorsements by Khamenei is that Ahmadinejad was losing the election very badly — and the last thing the regime wanted to see in the run-up to the run-off was vast areas of the country painted green.

Imagine just how dangerous to the regime this sort of visible and pubic protest (in a very politically correct color in Iran) would have been if two thirds of the population started wearing green scarves or driving green cars as the election campaigns stretched into a second round. The regime’s decision to cook the books in the first round of the election — and brutally suppress whatever protest erupted — was a gamble. No one knows how it will turn out at this point for the oppressed people of Iran, but it certainly has opened the eyes of nearly everyone as to the true nature of this mad dictatorship.

Final thought: for a different take on events, see Rafsanjani’s Gambit Backfires in the Asia times.

Amir Taheri says that many of the 70% of Iranians who are under 30 despise the current regime:

Barack Obama found it “exciting” and Hillary Clinton saw it as “a positive sign”. Others, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser, went further and praised it as a “vibrant democracy”. A variety of useful idiots at home and abroad expressed similar illusions about the Iranian presidential election on Friday.

Many had hoped the exercise would dislodge President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the maverick who has vowed to chase the United States out of the Middle East, wipe Israel off the map and prepare the ground for the hidden imam, Shi’ite Islam’s “end of times” figure of retribution. In the event, the election turned out to be a choreographed affair designed to reinforce Ahmadinejad’s position as the leader of “resurgent Islam”.

Officially put at 85%, voter turnout was the highest in Iran’s history. Ahmadinejad won with 63%…Whoever wrote the script also made sure that his three rivals, all veterans of the Khomeinist revolution, were roundly defeated even in their respective home towns…

the Khomeinist regime remains deeply unpopular, especially among young Iranians, who account for two-thirds of the population. Yesterday Tehran and other cities witnessed antiregime demonstrations, mostly young people shouting, “Shame on you Ahmadinejad! Quit the government!”…

Iran is also heading for economic meltdown, with a daily loss of 1,000 jobs and inflation of more than 20%. Ahmadinejad’s election slogan is “Ma mitavanim” (We can), like Obama’s “Yes we can”. Iran’s leader has been true to his slogan by showing he can fix the election results to the last detail. But can he cope with a restive population…

Iran is an unashamed police state, and was in the last “election” too. (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed the current phony election as a “divine assessment” and a “glittering event“.) In our view, a US President should be on the side of the young people who want freedom instead of the old guys who have the guns and instruments of repression. It’s too bad that Obama is apparently on the wrong side of this issue, at least so far.

There apparently was an election in Iran. Guardian:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a crushing victory in Iran’s landmark presidential election, according to the country’s authorities, but his moderate challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi has warned of “tyranny” and protested that the result was rigged after a record turnout of 84%. As the official results were announced, baton-wielding riot police clashed with angry Mousavi supporters in some of the most serious unrest Tehran has seen in years…

Mousavi said this morning: “I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I’m warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade. The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny.”

But Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, called the result a “divine assessment” and called on all Iranians to support Ahmadinejad. Speaking on state television this afternoon, he said: “I assume that enemies intend to eliminate the sweetness of the election with their hostile provocation.”

We’ve seen this show before. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei enacted the same electoral charade four years ago, though with lower voter turnout. It appears that there is tremendous anger in Iran about the obviously stolen election, not that the Ayatollah cares.

How do President Obama’s words of yesterday look now? (“We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran and obviously, after the speech that I made in Cairo, we tried to send a clear message that we think there’s a possibility of change and, ultimately, the election is for the Iranians to decide but just as what has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well, is that you’re seeing people looking at new possiblities, and whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there’s been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.”)

Mark Steyn, whom we excerpted below, asserts that there’s method to the madness of the Obama administration:

The president’s general line on the geopolitical big picture is: I don’t need this in my life right now. He’s a domestic transformationalist, working overtime — via the banks, the automobile industry, health care, etc. — to advance statism’s death grip on American dynamism. His principal interest in the rest of the world is that he doesn’t want anyone nuking America before he’s finished turning it into a socialist basket-case.

This isn’t simply a matter of priorities. A United States government currently borrowing 50 cents for every dollar it spends cannot afford its global role, and thus the Obama cuts to missile defense and other programs have a kind of logic: You can’t be Scandinavia writ large with a U.S.-sized military.

Out there in the chancelleries and presidential palaces, they’re beginning to get the message. The regime in Pyongyang is not merely trying to “provoke” America but demonstrating to potential clients that you can do so with impunity. A black-market economy reliant on exports of heroin, sex slaves, and knock-off Viagra is attempting to supersize its business model and turn itself into a nuclear Wal-Mart.

Among the distinguished guests present for North Korea’s October 2006 test were representatives of the Iranian government. President Bush was much mocked for yoking the two nations together in his now all but forgotten “axis of evil” speech, but the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported a few weeks ago that the North Korean–built (and Israeli-bombed) plutonium production facility in Syria was paid for by Tehran.

It is only fair to note that the Bush administration responded weakly to the 2006 North Korea test, but at least Bush wasn’t threatening to add a completely unaffordable $10 trillion in new deficits that will, by their size, diminish the US as world power — and make it captive to its lenders such as China.

Saving the banking system was pretty simple if you understood the situation and could think clearly. An article in Portfolio makes the case that the inept Tim Geithner (and other members of the Obama economic team) are bureaucrats who don’t understand the real world of banking all that well. Just what you’d expect from an administration of philosopher kings opposing corporate villains. Normally we’d say that the worst is past for the economy at this point, but these guys could still find ways to screw things up.

The Keystone Kops spectacle of the auto company negotiations, with the government now on every side of the talks seems to be another example of ideology making a simple matter complicated. The real world solution has been clear for months — Chapter 11, possibly a pre-pack.

This unnecessary complicating of the inherently simple is exactly what you’d expect from a college professor president — ideology and a kind of clueless arrogance trumping real world experience and common sense. Now, after the Napolitano fiasco, and the incoherent as well as unpopular CIA memo policy, we have the added insult that the administration is going to release photos of some interrogations. Heaven help us!

It is no surprise that many in the media continue to love Obama, unhealthy as that is for democracy. It has been almost two generations now since reporters and editors had any real world experience. Is it any wonder that the utopians love their favorite prof?

Question: what happens if reality intrudes in a really nasty way over the next few years? What does the US do, for example, if Iran gets its bomb, threatens its Sunni neighbors and others, attempts a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and the US is still 70% dependent on imported oil and has a tiny strategic petroleum reserve? Quick, what’s the next move?

The same Robert Zubrin who wants to go to Mars on a budget has some thoughts on the pernicious influence of the OPEC cartel, which he believes has been one major cause of many of the economy’s current problems. Excerpt:

This year, with OPEC-rigged oil prices averaging near $110/barrel, Americans will pay $900 billion for their oil supply, and the world as a whole will pay $3.6 trillion. These petroleum costs are up a factor of ten from what they were in 1999, and represent a huge highly-regressive tax on the world economy…

To see how this tax can destroy real estate values, it is only necessary to compare expenditures. In 2003, Americans paid $268 billion for new homes, and $197 billion for oil. In 2008, we paid for new homes at an annual rate of $134 billion, and $900 billion for oil…total net American investment in housing stock went from $785 billion in 2003 to an annual rate of $622 billion this year, a $163 billion decline that is dwarfed by the $760 billion rise in annual oil payouts over the same period…

in 2003 we spent 25% as much on oil as we did on houses. In 2008, we spent over 140%. This is why our housing market has collapsed. It is also why new auto sales have collapsed as well. Indeed the $760 billion increase in our oil payments is fifteen times the $50 billion decline in what we spent on new cars in 2008.

Reducing dependence on a cartel for an important commodity ought to be a no-brainer for a country with the size and resources of the United States. There is no shortage of interesting ideas on how to achieve that end. The repeated failures of the US government to act meaningfully on this issue amounts to gross negligence. It will be a better world when the phrase “strategic importance” ceases forever to appear in the same sentence with “Strait of Hormuz.”

We have said that criminalizing apostasy ought itself to be a crime against humanity. Here’s the latest installment. Telegraph:

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled “Islamic Penal Code”, which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

Imposing the death penalty for changing religion blatantly violates one of the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the European Convention of Human Rights. It is even enshrined as Article 23 of Iran’s own constitution, which states that no one may be molested simply for his beliefs.

And yet few politicians or clerics in Iran see any contradiction between a law mandating the death penalty for changing religion and Iran’s constitution. There has been no public protest in Iran against it.

David Miliband, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, stands out as one of the few politicians from any Western country who has put on record his opposition to making apostasy a crime punishable by death. The protest from the EU has been distinctly muted; meanwhile, Germany, Iran’s largest foreign trading partner, has just increased its business deals with Iran by more than half. Characteristically, the United Nations has said nothing.

Of course the United Nations said nothing. That’s not surprising. And after all this time, it should not be surprising to anyone that enforcing a death penalty for apostasy is taken for granted in countries that are said to be our allies, as well as among our adversaries.

Russia, which is pretty much an economic one-trick pony, said it will team up with OPEC. This would appear to imply that Russia intends to assist in keeping prices high, and raises once again the question of just how much oil played a part in Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia. Meanwhile, in another move that should have been bullish for oil, OPEC said it will trim production a bit. WSJ:

Russia upped the ante in its faceoff with the West by proposing “extensive cooperation” with the OPEC oil cartel, an idea that would stir concerns among big oil-consuming countries like the U.S. The Russian proposal came just hours before the group’s 13 ministers decided to scale back production by around 520,000 barrels a day, or less than 1% of world oil supply, over the next 40 days in the face of falling prices and slowing demand growth…

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries supplies around 40% of the world’s oil, while Russian output makes up another 11%…concerns already run high in the U.S. and Europe that Moscow is trying to increase its chokehold over Europe’s energy needs. Moscow supplies Europe with most of its natural gas and much of its crude oil and gasoline.

OPEC’s first formal gathering in six months was otherwise fraught with politics and posturing as factions tussled over whether to cut output even as oil still hovered above $100 a barrel. Some voices within the group argued that OPEC should exhibit restraint and lower its production. The decision to cut output over the next month means that Saudi Arabia will likely scale back its production to where it was earlier this year, before Riyadh began ramping up in a bid to drive down record prices.

Oddly enough, oil responded to all this by falling another 1.4% today; Brent crude closed under $100 for the first time since March. Whether this is due to the continuing liquidation of futures positions ($39 billion in the last few months) or other factors, such as an expectation of the cartel members’ cheating on quotas when prices decline, remains to be seen.

Iran’s OPEC governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi says that the oil market is oversupplied. Apparently he favors cutting production at OPEC’s next meeting in Vienna on September 9. WSJ:

“The market is oversupplied by at least 1 million barrels a day. If OPEC would like to remove this additional oil out of the market, then OPEC has to cut some production,” Khatibi said.

Questions: (a) how did we go from a permanent shortage of oil to a surplus in such a short time? (b) how is it possible for Congress and some Americans to want to be held hostage by the likes of Khatibi and his friends rather than using domestic resources that exist in abundance?

VDH has a few comments on Senator Obama:

many are beginning to notice how a Saint Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can’t speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don’t even put enough air in our car tires. In contrast, a lean, hip Obama promises to still the rising seas and cool down the planet, assuring adoring Germans that he is a citizen of the world.

We could provide links to each one of those dopey comments by the Messiah, but what’s the point? The Senator from Illinois, with all his nutty associates over the years, his strange policy initiatives, and his talking down to all of us from on high, adds up to a very consistent picture. You either want him as President or you don’t, but there is really very little room for confusion about where he’s coming from or what he thinks of you.

Political philosopher Brian Williams of NBC went to Teheran. Here he describes his impressions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he apparently thinks is all bluster:

He’s a Ph.D. He’s the former mayor of Tehran. He’s got an election next year, and, after all, at the end of the day, he’s a politician. And he may very well know that the religious folks who, some would argue, more in charge than he is, have perhaps decided that embracing the West, the US, while these talks are going on in Geneva, wouldn’t be a bad idea. You enter that country and you see what sanctions do. You see that the city streets remind you of a cross between Havana and Baghdad. Kind of a used-to-be Eastern Bloc nation that hasn’t had a cent invested in years…

we have very little human intelligence in Iran. And it was clear he had a message to impart. It was clear from the moment we were picked up at the airport when we learned where the interview was going to be. Ten minutes after he walked out I was on the Today show from his courtyard: absolutely unheard of…

He’s playing to his base like a politician in Cleveland. You can go through the transcript, and he, you were joking, he says all but “death to America.” At one point he said to me, and I’m paraphrasing very loosely, the atomic bomb is so 20th-century…

First time I go to Russia, I realize Tom Friedman’s theory, that the dirty little secret was they couldn’t build a light-bulb back during those years we were so worried about them. First time, I was in Saddam’s palace two days after the invasion. Went to drink from a faucet in his bathroom and realized the gold sink was paint, and the underside was just black metal. And that’s a perfect metaphor for so much of what these rulers build up. So maybe you could argue that a military-industrial complex depends on having enemies.

Maybe Williams is right and Mr. Ahmadinejad is a career pol who is playing to his base with elections coming up. That’s one possibility of course. But what if the President of Iran is something else entirely?

The Democratic presidential candidate talks about his actions regarding Iran. CNN (and video here):

just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.

But that committee is not “my committee.” Senator Obama is not on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. No big deal, of course, to the MSM. Undoubtedly there will be some explanation of what new meaning “my committee” really is. Perhaps “my committee” means any committee that wins the praise of the Illinois Senator. Then what might be the meaning of the phrase “my country”?

OPEC is warning that Iran, home of possibly real, as well as most assuredly recycled and photoshopped missile tests, should not be attacked by the US or Israel. Prices would go “unlimited.” IHT:

“We really cannot replace Iran’s production — it’s not feasible to replace it,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said…Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, produces about 4 million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels. The country has been locked in a lengthy dispute with Western countries over its nuclear ambitions.

In recent weeks, the price of oil has risen higher on speculation that Israel could be preparing to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The saber-rattling intensified this week with missile tests by Iran. That has further shaken oil markets because of concerns that any conflict with Iran could disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf region.

“The prices would go unlimited,” Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.” Analysts said the timing of Badri’s remarks was noteworthy, given that the idea of an attack on Iran has been around for years.

As is usual these days, oil prices went up $5.60 immediately upon Iran’s announcing that it had launched a few more missiles. So what’s going on? Is this about oil prices and market manipulation by OPEC? Is Iran sabre-rattling because things are going well in Iraq, and it would like to provoke some action that would help it destabilize that country? Is the bluster in service of an attempt to derail the “unavoidable” Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Or is there some obvious rationale that we are just missing?

We note that Mr. Ahmadinejad was helpful as ever in clarifying the situation. His comments seem from outer space lately. On one day he repeats he periodic threats to destroy Israel, which will “disappear off the geographical scene.” The next moment, the whole thing is a joke to him: “very funny show…These type of wars are considered as a funny joke.” And then the Iranian president starts claiming a fan club among US Generals: “Their first request was to have their picture taken with me…This official told me he holds a special place for me in his heart and said he had postponed his holidays in the United States to be able to meet me.”

Of course Mr. Ahmadinejad may be insane (he at least marches to the beat of a very different and bellicose drummer). But the real insanity is that over the last thirty years, the US government and corporations have permitted this nation to become 70% dependent on imports of its most vital economic and warmaking commodity. That is unilateral disarmament. Who is more nuts, him or us?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. AFP:

“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene…Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started….I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed…With the appearance of the promised saviour…and his companions such as Jesus Christ, tyranny will be soon be eradicated in the world.”

In a way, we would actually like to see a meeting between President Obama and President Ahmadinejad, as terrible an idea as that is — it might be worth it just for the absurdity of the joint press conference that followed. (And maybe Ahmadinejad might have the same religious experience that our media do in the presence of Mr. Obama.)

Good news appeared in the editorial pages of the Washington Post, albeit in the form of campaign advice to the prospective Democratic nominee. But good news is still good news:

There’s been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama…

the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable…

Of course, as Bruce Kesler notes, the NYT still backs the “this-war-is-lost” caucus. Which paper’s line will Senator Obama follow? (Or should he just forget the whole Iraq thing and head straight to Iran?)

Azadeh Moaveni is a reporter covering Iran for Time magazine. She went back for a visit recently, and found that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is apparently held in low esteem by his countrymen. WaPo:

On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran’s main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. “Let the Americans come,” she said loudly. “Let them sort things out for us once and for all.” Everyone in the women’s section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent…

I used to hear similarly pro-American sentiments frequently back in 2001, when Iranians’ romance with the United States was at its most ardent. A poll conducted that same year found that 74 percent of Iranians supported restoring ties with the United States (whereupon the pollster was tossed into prison). You couldn’t attend a dinner party without hearing someone, envious of the recently liberated Afghans, ask, “When will the Americans come save us?”…

I lived in Iran until last summer and experienced all the reasons why Ahmadinejad has replaced the United States as Iranians’ top object of vexation. Under his leadership, inflation has spiked at least 20 percent…My old babysitter, for example, says she can no longer afford to feed her family red meat once a week. When I recently picked up some groceries — a sack of potatoes, some green plums, two cantaloupes and a few tomatoes — the bill came to the equivalent of $40.

Inflation has hit the real estate market particularly hard. Housing prices have surged by nearly 150 percent, according to real estate agents. For most Iranians, previously manageable rents have become tremendous burdens. On one of my first evenings back in Iran, I watched Ahmadinejad on television as he addressed Iranians from the holy city of Qom. He blamed everyone — the hostile West, a domestic “cigarette mafia” — for the economic downturn, just as he had previously claimed that a “housing mafia” was driving up real estate prices. Many Iranians who initially believed this kind of conspiracy talk now admit that the president’s policies and obstinacy are actually at fault…

there are the interminable lines that have accompanied the government’s new gas-rationing scheme. During the busy early evening, it takes an hour to fill up on gas, and policemen are required to direct the snarled traffic. Ahmadinejad has insinuated that the unpopular plan was a precaution against possible Western sanctions, but most people I spoke with considered it another instance of his administration’s mismanagement…

Ahmadinejad has also resurrected unpopular invasions into Iranians’ private lives. On the second day of my trip, newspapers announced that police would begin raiding office buildings and businesses to ensure that women were wearing proper Islamic dress. One of my girlfriends, an executive secretary, told me that as a precaution, her office had set up a coded warning message to be broadcast over the intercom. On the third day, police swept our street to confiscate illegal satellite dishes.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the religious-revolutionary, warlike, and self-destructive side of Iran in its current identity crisis with the modern world. Exactly what would be accomplished by the remarkably foolish idea of meeting with the man and regime that are pushing that country to a precipice?

The US, European, and certain Middle Eastern countries have for years tried to sit down with Iran and come to agreements of various sorts, mostly without any success. Amir Taheri provides some very interesting historical context in a piece in the WSJ that should be read in its entirety:

Iran is gripped by a typical crisis of identity that afflicts most nations that pass through a revolutionary experience. The Islamic Republic does not know how to behave: as a nation-state, or as the embodiment of a revolution with universal messianic pretensions. Is it a country or a cause?

A nation-state wants concrete things such as demarcated borders, markets, access to natural resources, security, influence, and, of course, stability – all things that could be negotiated with other nation-states. A revolution, on the other hand, doesn’t want anything in particular because it wants everything.

In 1802, when Bonaparte embarked on his campaign of world conquest, the threat did not come from France as a nation-state but from the French Revolution in its Napoleonic reincarnation. In 1933, it was Germany as a cause, the Nazi cause, that threatened the world. Under communism, the Soviet Union was a cause and thus a threat. Having ceased to be a cause and re-emerged a nation-state, Russia no longer poses an existential threat to others.

The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.” The following statement by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme leader” of the Islamic Republic – who Mr. Obama admits has ultimate power in Iran — exposes the futility of the very talks Mr. Obama proposes: “You have nothing to say to us. We object. We do not agree to a relationship with you! We are not prepared to establish relations with powerful world devourers like you! The Iranian nation has no need of the United States, nor is the Iranian nation afraid of the United States. We . . . do not accept your behavior, your oppression and intervention in various parts of the world.”

So, how should one deal with a regime of this nature? The challenge for the U.S. and the world is finding a way to help Iran absorb its revolutionary experience, stop being a cause, and re-emerge as a nation-state.

Whenever Iran has appeared as a nation-state, others have been able to negotiate with it, occasionally with good results. In Iraq, for example, Iran has successfully negotiated a range of issues with both the Iraqi government and the U.S. Agreement has been reached on conditions under which millions of Iranians visit Iraq each year for pilgrimage. An accord has been worked out to dredge the Shatt al-Arab waterway of three decades of war debris, thus enabling both neighbors to reopen their biggest ports. Again acting as a nation-state, Iran has secured permission for its citizens to invest in Iraq.

When it comes to Iran behaving as the embodiment of a revolutionary cause, however, no agreement is possible. There will be no compromise on Iranian smuggling of weapons into Iraq. Nor will the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps agree to stop training Hezbollah-style terrorists in Shiite parts of Iraq. Iraq and its allies should not allow the mullahs of Tehran to export their sick ideology to the newly liberated country through violence and terror.

As a nation-state, Iran is not concerned with the Palestinian issue and has no reason to be Israel’s enemy. As a revolutionary cause, however, Iran must pose as Israel’s arch-foe to sell the Khomeinist regime’s claim of leadership to the Arabs.

As a nation, Iranians are among the few in the world that still like the U.S. As a revolution, however, Iran is the principal bastion of anti-Americanism. Last month, Tehran hosted an international conference titled “A World Without America.” Indeed, since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, Iran has returned to a more acute state of revolutionary hysteria. Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to truly believe the “Hidden Imam” is coming to conquer the world for his brand of Islam.

Yet another set of reasons that Senator Obama’s proposal to sit down with Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrible idea. Question: does Senator Obama really understand the history of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting he refers to all the time, and does he understand the terrible consequences it led to, up to and perhaps including the origins of the Vietnam War?

We noted that rising oil inventories and falling demand have no effect on oil prices, which have now risen to $126 a barrel. They still don’t matter in this current frenzy. Glenn Reynolds notes this hoarding and withdrawing from the market of oil supplies by none other than Iran:

Iran has chartered an armada of supertankers to act as floating storage for as many as 28 million barrels of crude oil that is backing up on them. Analysts are blaming worldwide refineries yet to recover from maintenance programs. It’s not the first time that Iran has had trouble finding buyers; they temporarily floated 20 million barrels in 2006. No, I can’t explain this in light of record oil prices and continual cries for more release of OPEC crude oil.

So Iran is apparently now keeping oil from the market while continuing to produce it. Parking it offshore would appear to create some hidden inventory that might not show up in some official figures, possibly damping prices. Who else might be up to similar shenanigans? (Of course with Iran, there’s always a possibility of a super-secret war explanation.)

Meanwhile, an AP story said that analysts “struggled to explain” the continued rise in the price of tulip bulbs, er, oil. No kidding. “‘Crude oil is currently held up in a tug-of-war between the Goldman reality and the physical reality,’ said Olivier Jakob of Switzerland’s Petromatrix in a research note, adding that the investment bank’s prediction made for ‘a great story to support pension funds piling more into commodities’.” And a few years ago Moody’s and S&P said that subprime mortgages were just dandy for pension funds. So it goes.

Senator Obama criticized Senator Clinton’s position on attacking Iran in the wake of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. He did so on on MTP, according to AP:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran,” Clinton said April 22 in an interview with ABC. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”…On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Obama said: “It’s not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling and tough talk and in the meantime have made a series strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

No wonder Hamas endorsed this fellow.