Iran: keeping our eye on the ball

David Seaton's News Links
With our 24x7 news cycle it is easy to miss the forest for the trees.

Right now the question for me in evaluating the situation is if the serious (read violent) disturbances are spreading beyond Tehran. How about Moussavi's home town for starters?

If the protests begin to spread all over the country, then I will begin to think that this is all something 100% genuine, impossible to manipulate.

At the moment all I really see is a battle between two Ayatollahs: Kameini and Rafsanjani, using surrogates. At this point Kameini is ahead on points.

The best write-up of the whole thing that I have seen so far comes from the Asia Times.

What I do know for sure is that there are two stories here:

1. What is actually happening in Iran
   
   and


2. How it is being reported here in the west.
   

What I see is that my point two is pushing Bibi Netanyahu and his version of a Palestinian "state" off the front pages.

It is a good thing to remember that while Iran, in reality, actually poses no threat to Israel's existence (Persians are not suicidal), a free, sovereign Palestinian state in "Judea and Samaria" does. or at least to Bibi's version of it.

In my opinion most the furor over Iran in the western press, now and before, can be explained by this simple fact. The whole "Iran is a threat to the world", could easily be a massive red herring. DS