Interesting news about Mubarak and Mousavi

Russian TV is reporting that according to unnamed sources Mubarak is now in a coma.  As soon as I heard that, I began suspecting that he was killed by somebody in the security or military.  Indeed, on Thursday evening he categorically refused to leave power, and yet he stepped down the very next day, though unlike all the other announcement which he delivered personally, this one was delivered by Suleiman.  I mean - I know the man was sick, but still, this is one heck of a weird coincidence in timing don't you think?

Also, according to the BBC, Mousavi has finally been arrested by the Iranian authorities.  I have to say that literally from "day 1" I suspected that Mousavi was a puppet of anti-Iranian forces (please check my posts on that topic here and here written one and two days following the election in Iran).  But going after the puppet is not enough - the government needs to proceed carefully, of course, but it needs to finally hold Rafsanjani accountable for his role in destabilizing Iran and threatening the very existence of the Islamic Republic.  Here is what I wrote about this on the day following the election when Mousavi annouced that he had won without even waiting for the elections result:

Also keep in mind that the post of President holds no real power in Iran to begin with. Why bother with fraud?  No, the fraud accusation is an insult to everybody's intelligence. Either that or, which is far more likely, it is a carefully orchestrated destabilization operation against Iran. I say that this is the latter.  Mousavi is no idiot for sure (check out his resume here), and since he is not an idiot, he must know that he lost this election and that, in fact, Ahmadinejad won by an un-fakable landslide. Still, he choose the destablilize his own country at a moment when that country is facing a possible military agression from abroad. What does that tell you about Mousavi? It tells me that he is objectively the tool of yet another US backed destabilization campaign. It matters little whether Mousavi himself is a paid CIA agent, or whether his entourage is carefully using his ego to push him towards the kind of action he has taken now. The bottom line is still that Mousavi is now hurting his country and helping to destabilize it.

And as I predicted, Mousavi and his puppeteer Rafsanjani failed, completely.  But this is hardly a reason to let them continue their campaign.  It is quite clear that these two will now use any, and I do mean any, pretext, crisis or difficulty as a pretext to attempt to destabilize Iran again.  For them, the sole guideline henceforth will be "the worse, the better".  I do think that Iran is stable enough to neutralize such efforts, but to let the Guccis keep on with their campaign would be fundamentally wrong.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in the same situation has Hugo Chavez - by ignoring the very real threat of US-run destabilization campaign they do risk ending up in the same situation as Mossadegh in 1953 or Allende did in 1973.  This being said, both Chavez and Khamenei should not conflate any and all opposition movements with the ones controlled by the USA.  Thus, the crackdown should be very selective and not a pretext to turn Iran or Venezuela into dictatorships.  A difficult balancing act for sure, but a vital one nonetheless.

Iranian students offer $1.5m reward for Mubarak execution

The Guardian reports: Radical Iranian students have angered Egypt by offering a $1.5m (£1m) reward for the execution of its president, Hosni Mubarak, after accusing him of failing to oppose Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

The bounty has been put up by the Students' Justice-Seeking movement, which last week staged a sit-in at Tehran's Mehrabad airport demanding to be sent to Gaza as pro-Palestinian volunteers.

The group has labelled Mubarak an "international terrorist" and accuses him of collaborating with Israel by failing to open the Egypt-Gaza frontier at Rafah for humanitarian purposes. It also alleges that the Egyptian government has allowed Israeli planes to use the country's airspace to carry out raids.

Organisers distributed posters showing Mubarak with a fake bullet-hole in his forehead and scissor marks through his neck. The posters carry a proclamation in English offering a "$1,500,000 award for executing Mubarak" and an Arabic message from the Qur'an declaring: "Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a slaughter."

Iran's foreign ministry has dismissed the offer as not reflecting government policy after Egyptian officials called for its organisers to be prosecuted.

The students responded by increasing the reward from the original $1m sum. Money will be raised, they say, from the distribution of a documentary celebrating the 1981 assassination of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, who was killed by Islamists outraged by his signing the Camp David peace accords with Israel. Some students have also volunteered to sell their kidneys.

The issue threatens to further complicate attempts at restoring Iran-Egypt relations. Tehran severed diplomatic ties after Egypt sheltered the shah when he was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Recent efforts to renew links have foundered partly on Egypt's insistence that Iran rename a street in Tehran honouring Sadat's assassin, Khaled Islambouli.

Gaza: the Empire strikes back (and risks loosing Egypt in the process)

It was the be expected: the Pharaoh, who had been told by his masters that he was expected to "solve the problem" moved his stormtroopers in to attempt to close the border between Egypt and Gaza. Simultaneously, the Empire sensing that the situation might be getting out of control at the United Nations moved to prevent the adoption of a UNSC resolution on the blockade of Gaza. Lastly, Israel carried out to airstrikes close to the Rafah crossing and killed senior Hamas officials.

The USraelian Empire's response to the collapse of the Gaza Wall is now clear: put the burden of handling the political fallout from the clashes with the Palestinians on Mubarak and get the rest of the world to turn its attention away from the resulting violence. This was all very predictable. What will be interesting to observe will be Hamas' reaction to these developments.

So far, I have seen no reports of Hamas forces taking action to keep the border open or to protect the Palestinians from Mubarak's goons. Hamas needs to take a strategic decision to either a) get a secret understanding with Mubarak that the border will not really be shut down again, or b) to openly defy him and engage any force attempting to restore the status quo ante. But 'engaging' does not necessarily mean using armed force

The most effective tactic, a least for the time being, is probably get as many Gazans as possible to demonstrate and protest against Mubarak's betrayal. There should be a continuous presence of 100'000 Gazans ON the border 24/7.

The key here is to set up Mubarak politically *before* engaging his forces on the ground. Hamas will have to constantly keep in mind the following strategic factors:

1) Hamas simply cannot allow the border to be closed down again. Ever. It can allow a semblance of control and a "face-saving fig leaf" (-: Mubarak deserves no less :-) for the Pharaoh, but the blockade on Gaza should not be allowed to be reimposed.

2) Egypt is not the "Jewish state". Civil disobedience, non-violent protest and conventional rioting will have an impact upon Mubarak's ability to act. Hamas should only use guns in strict self-defense as the main 'weapon' in the hands of Hamas is a political one: the Arab public opinion.

3) Hamas should make full use of the fact that Mubarak is hated by the Egyptian street by coordinating actions of mass protest against Mubarak's collaborationist policies with the opposition forces throughout Egypt.

Ideally - Mubarak should be pushed in the exact same corner where the Shah of Iran was placed by the Iranian opposition: a political quicksand in which each movement of the regime brings it one step closer to death.

The boundless arrogance of the Empire whose leaders cannot even begin to imagine that a bunch of "bearded Islamists" could actually take control of Egypt (something truly apocalyptic for the Imperial policies in the Middle-East)

Conclusion: Ægypto Delenda Est (Egypt must fall)

From the Palestinian point of view Egypt is definitely the weak link the the Imperial chain shackling the Palestinians in general, and Gaza in particular. The latest developments have only made this fundamental truth more obvious. Consequently, the Palestinians need to use all their considerable political power in the Arab and Muslim world to push Mubarak to either follow Musharraf's example and become a de-facto buffer between the Empire and the Palestinians or the Shah's example and loose it all.

It is also crucial for Hamas never to forget, not for one second, that neither the USA nor Israel will ever be able to move in to protect Mubarak. All Mubarak has are his "security forces" and the corrupt cronies living off the billions his regime gets from the USA.

Egypt is a ripe (although "rotten" might be a better term) fruit, ready to be plucked by the Resistance forces and Gaza border might just be the place to make that happen.