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I used to obtain much of my information on Iran from RegimeChangeIran. (I even donated money to the site.) Now that it’s inoperative, I’m looking for other sources of information.

Can someone suggest websites where I can go for Iran-related news?

Thanks

Is Mullahs’ regime collapsing silently?? Can we expect their total collapse under the current pressure?

ML:

Nobody can accurately predict the fall of a regime, but when it happens it is almost always a surprise. Even those (very few) of us who expected the Soviet Union to fall were surprised when and how it happened, so suddenly, so peacefully.

The new sanctions may help a bit. But I still believe that, in the end, the West–above all the United States–will have to give support to regime change in Iran.

Sir,
As a preamble, I must apologize. For, this comment does not exactly relate to the matter at hand but to a single phrase in your post.

I have to confess that your articles I appreciated the most on NRO have been those dialogues between JJA and you via the Ouija board. You’ll certainly find this immature but coincidence makes that I have read, I believe, all essays and fictions about JJA with the same devoted passion a teenager may read about the life of a fashionable singer. For, this man counts among the handful of persons who fascinate me, and, quite successfully I find, you make him living again each time you write your thoughts that way. I miss there is seemingly no available filmed or recorded interview of JJA, so as to really frame how was the man, his voice, way of looking and adressing to others, etc. Books have their limits.

As you suggested at some point, we may wonder where JJA should have go: heaven or hell? I have no idea too. For, and as far as the Cold Warrior of Tom Mangold may reflects a truth, the way he broke the career and life of several innocent people with so little evidence at hand casts a disturbing shadow on the image of this man. It is of my belief that his failure to frame who truly was his good friend Kim Philby is the cause of his ensuing eagerness to suspect too many people around him. He just missed the best opportunity of his entire professional career and, I guess, no one could fathom the depth and influence such an event did exert upon his behavior and his perception of others, eventually. What a shame for the best mole hunter ever!

Nonetheless, the fact that JJA never caught a mole within the CIA during his entire professional career doesn’t constitute, in my own opinion, a shame or failure of any sort. For, his job was to prevent such thing from happening and he was successful at it, seemingly. Would the Aldrich Ames’s case have ever existed if JJA had still been in position is a good question one may wonder?

Each and all times I read one of those dialogues you write I wonder how many people enjoy it the way I do, since they intend certainly less to make JJA be born again than to convey an opinion about a particular event, of course. But I admit, each and all of those times I fail to care as much about the message between the lines than about the melody, exactly like when I enjoy listening to a good song. You are a so talented keyboard player at it that the melody overwhelms the message.

From time to time I launch a request on my web browser about the name James J. Angleton, just to see whether something escaped my attention or be newly published about him. On a Newsweek article published during the late 60’s the following statement once caught my attention: “If John le Carré and Graham Greene had collaborated on a super spy, the result might have been James Jesus Angleton.”
And I thought: if there is somewhere a writer capable to write the best spy novel featuring James Jesus Angleton as main character, it might be Michael Ledeen.

Yes, it’s a suggestion indeed.

Best regards,

ML:

You’re very kind. I actually did write a novel about Angleton, called Teddy and Jesus, about Angleton and Teddy Kollek. It was serialized, a chapter a week, in the “Forward” when Seth Lipzky edited it. Of course I wrote it under a pseudonym, heh, and I don’t think it will win any literary awards.

In any case, the best piece on Angleton, at least to my knowledge, is the chapter in Robin Winks’s “Cloak and Gown” about Yale and the CIA…

just to let you know that there are huge protests brewing in tehran and kermanshah right now (8:30 am EST 17/3/07) and i m hearing that around 5000 police and security forces are on stand by in downtown Tehran to counter the teachers and workers.

Happy Norouz.
In the meanwhile, it is Norouz. Iranian New Year happens on Tuesday 3/20/07. Despite that Khomeinists tried so hard (starting with the Satan Khomeini himself) to get rid of this 2500 years tradition, people actually celebrating Norouz more than ever. People didn’t even budge during the war, when 1000s of died soldiers were brought to cities to damp the Norouz tradition. As recent as few months ago, Ahmadinejad tried rather unsuccessfully to reduce number of days people celebrating.

There are many traditions that go with Norouz. Mostly happy traditions and are there to make people to change their mood to rather a happy one. Most involve singing and dancing, the very acts that are prohibited by Khomeini and his Islamist followers. The last Tuesday night before the New Year, is of course 4-Shanbe Soori where the people jump from the fire to get rid of their paleness (as a result of winter sicknesses), and take the redness of the fire (as a sign of energy and happiness).

The most interesting of all traditions is the present of a clown signing and dancing (All against Islamists and Khomeinists ideas). His name is “Haji Firooz”. He wears a Red Out fit, and plays a tambourine while singing in a rather funny voice. The lyrics start with “Arbabe Khodam Sambale Aleykom,..”–Meaning My Master accept my greeting Please. And goes on to other silly things expected from a clown.

People in Iran now saying, Ahmadinejad is appearing in UN Security Council as “Ayatollah Haji Firooz”. People have added “Ayatoolah” title since the guy is an Islamist Presidente. With that title people want to say, he is not your usual easy going Haji Firooz but rather a nasty one.

With what Ahmadinejad has said in recent days, such as UN documents are like useless papers, his request for visa to come to NY and present his case seems really strange and can only come from a clown that he is.

Of course, BBC has compared his trip to of Mossadegh for oil. But that is BBC.