The protests in Iran have entered a third week and the state media acknowledges that the death toll has reached 19 and that hundreds have been injured. Fareed Zakaria, a man not noted for idle leaps, proclaims, “we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.”

In an interview with CNN, he explains:

No, I don’t mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may — I certainly hope it will — but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime.

The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, laid out his special interpretation of political Islam in a series of lectures in 1970. In this interpretation of Shia Islam, Islamic jurists had divinely ordained powers to rule as guardians of the society, supreme arbiters not only on matters of morality but politics as well. When Khomeini established the Islamic Republic of Iran, this idea was at its heart. Last week, that ideology suffered a fatal wound.

When the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “divine assessment,” he was indicating it was divinely sanctioned. But no one bought it. He was forced to accept the need for an inquiry into the election. The Guardian Council, Iran’s supreme constitutional body, met with the candidates and promised to investigate and perhaps recount some votes. Khamenei has subsequently hardened his position but that is now irrelevant. Something very important has been laid bare in Iran today — legitimacy does not flow from divine authority but from popular support.

As for the United States,

I would say continue what we have been doing. By reaching out to Iran, publicly and repeatedly, President Obama has made it extremely difficult for the Iranian regime to claim that they are battling an aggressive America bent on attacking Iran. In his inaugural address, his New Year greetings, and his Cairo speech, there is a consistent effort to convey respect and friendship for Iranians. That is why Khamenei reacted so angrily to the New Year greeting. It undermined the image of the Great Satan that he routinely paints in his sermons. In his Friday sermon, Khamenei said that the United States, Israel, and especially the United Kingdom were behind the street protests, an accusation that will surely sound ridiculous to most Iranians. The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag.

I think a good historic analogy is President George H.W. Bush’s cautious response to the cracks in the Soviet empire in 1989. Then, many neo-conservatives were livid with Bush for not loudly supporting those trying to topple the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. But Bush’s concern was that the situation was fragile. Those regimes could easily crack down on the protestors and the Soviet Union could send in tanks. Handing the communists reasons to react forcefully would help no one, least of all the protesters. Bush’s basic approach was correct and has been vindicated by history.

One of those neoconservatives, columnist Mark Steyn, points out that the Iranian regime will interpret whatever Obama does or does not do however they see fit, noting that they’re already railing against American “interference” and saying we have no right to lecture them about human rights given, for example, the debacle with the Branch Davidians in Waco during Bill Clinton’s presidency.

There’s a very basic lesson here: For great powers, studied neutrality isn’t an option. Even if you’re genuinely neutral. In the early nineties, the attitude of much of the west to the disintegrating Yugoslavia was summed up in the brute dismissal of James Baker that America didn’t have a dog in this fight. Fair enough. But over in the Balkans junkyard the various mangy old pooches saw it rather differently. And so did the Muslim world, which regarded British and European “neutrality” as a form of complicity in mass murder.

And, of course, the United States, along with our NATO allies, ultimately decided we had no choice but to intervene, first in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

Like Zakaria, NYT op-ed columnist Roger Cohen thinks the situation permanently changed, observing that Khameini has “lost his aura.”

Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.

He has taunted millions of Iranians by praising their unprecedented participation in an election many now view as a ballot-box putsch. He has ridiculed the notion that an official inquiry into the vote might yield a different result. He has tried pathos and he has tried pounding his lectern. In short, he has lost his aura.

The taboo-breaking response was unequivocal. It’s funny how people’s obsessions come back to bite them. I’ve been hearing about Khamenei’s fear of “velvet revolutions” for months now. There was nothing velvet about Saturday’s clashes. In fact, the initial quest to have Moussavi’s votes properly counted and Ahmadinejad unseated has shifted to a broader confrontation with the regime itself.

Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner ss

For now, however, Obama is keeping his powder dry.  Yesterday, he issued his strongest statement yet:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler reports that “U.S. officials say Obama is intent on calibrating his comments to the mood of the hour. They say he is seeking to avoid having the demonstrators accused of being American stooges and is trying to preserve the possibility of negotiating directly with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, links to terrorism, Afghanistan and other issues.”  He adds that, “Despite increasingly intense Republican criticism, and the passage of resolutions in the House and Senate on Friday that were tougher than the president’s words, U.S. officials say they will stick to their current course.”

Is there a point at which waiting will become intolerable?  Perhaps.

They say there is not much the United States can do to influence the situation — except make it worse for the opposition — but they have begun planning for the administration’s response if the crackdown turns very violent.

“We have to watch every day to see what is happening, even while we anticipate several different possibilities and what to do in those circumstances,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Within the administration, officials say, Obama’s cautious stance has the support of key senior officials, with disagreements centered mostly on quibbles over a word choice.

It’s a frustrating balancing act that will please no one.  It’s not at all clear, however, that there are better options at this point.

Photo: Reuters Pictures.

I’m going to write up a longish piece trying to make sense of the Iranian elections for New Atlanticist later today.  Since comparisons to happenings in America seem to be the blogospheric rage de jour, however, I will just note that I have received the news that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the Guardian Council to “look into charges by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has said he is the rightful winner of Friday’s presidential election” almost identically to O.J. Simpson’s announcement upon acquital that he would begin a search for “the real killer.”

Photo: Getty Images

Former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher take to the op-ed pages of the NYT to call for a new War Powers Act.

A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to govern the decision to engage in war — the 1973 War Powers Resolution — should be replaced by a new law that would, except for emergencies, require the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the matter before going to war.

[...]

Our proposed statute would provide that the president must consult with Congress before ordering a “significant armed conflict” — defined as combat operations that last or are expected to last more than a week. To provide more clarity than the 1973 War Powers Resolution, our statute also defines what types of hostilities would not be considered significant armed conflicts — for example, training exercises, covert operations or missions to protect and rescue Americans abroad. If secrecy or other circumstances precluded prior consultation, then consultation — not just notification — would need to be undertaken within three days.

To guarantee that the president consults with a cross section of Congress, the act would create a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees. These are the members of Congress with whom the president would need to personally consult. Almost as important, the act would establish a permanent, bipartisan staff with access to all relevant intelligence and national-security information.

Congress would have obligations, too. Unless it declared war or otherwise expressly authorized a conflict, it would have to vote within 30 days on a resolution of approval. If the resolution of approval was defeated in either House, any member of Congress could propose a resolution of disapproval. Such a resolution would have the force of law, however, only if it were passed by both houses and signed by the president or the president’s veto were overridden. If the resolution of disapproval did not survive the president’s veto, Congress could express its opposition by, for example, using its internal rules to block future spending on the conflict.

It should be noted at the outset that, were such a law on the books in 2002, the Iraq War would almost certainly have proceeded exactly as it did. President Bush in fact not only consulted with Congress but got authorization to commence military operations in Iraq at his sole discretion by rather wide margins from both Houses.

In terms of preventing “bad” wars, I’m dubious as well. A determined president can, as has been repeatedly been demonstrated, get legal advice showing him how to navigate the loopholes in the law. And, goodness, this one sounds to have loopholes you can drive a truck through. “Sorry, I couldn’t consult with you guys. Otherwise, the operation wouldn’t be covert, now would it?” “This mission was necessary for protecting Americans abroad. I mean, if Ayatollah Nutsojihad got WMD, American tourists in Israel wouldn’t have been safe at all.” Once hostilities are commenced and American troops are in harm’s way, a Rally ‘Round the Flag effect invariably happens and Congress would be hard pressed to then vote No.

Those rather large caveats notwithstanding, these reforms sound like good ones. First, even if we only established the Super Duper Joint Select Committee on Foreign Policy Stuff and ignored everything else, it would be a major step forward. Now, a dozen preening Committee chairman can easily claim that any given activity falls within their purview and then stage photo-op “hearings” to get their faces on teevee. A consolidated, bipartisan group might actually provide serious advice and gain the trust of the executive to make consultation more attractive.

Second, forcing Congress to vote Yay or Nay would give them skin in the game. As it stands, they can claim they supported a war if it’s popular and distance themselves from it the moment things start to go south. Or they can vote to support the war and then pull a Hillary, claiming that they were only supporting the authority to go to war, not going to war itself.

It’s worth remembering that the 1973 War Powers Act was vetoed by President Nixon and required a two-thirds override to pass. One imagines that the same will be true of this War Powers Consultation Act. Getting that degree of consensus for much of anything is going to be incredibly difficult in the current political climate.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his gang of mullahs are said to be “seriously considering” the latest EU 5+1 proposals on resolving the international standoff on the Iranian nuclear program and are telling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pipe down.

Warren Strobel:

Iran’s senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six world powers to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, and he praised the package as “constructive.” The unusually positive remarks by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to a small group of reporters raised hope that a negotiated solution can be found to defuse the crisis.

[...]

During a 90-minute luncheon at Iran’s United Nations mission, Mottaki dismissed the growing speculation that Israel or the United States will strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities during President Bush’s last six months in office. He described news reports to that effect as part of a long-running campaign of “psychological warfare.” The chance that Israel will attack Iran “is almost nil,” Mottaki said. As for a U.S. strike, he said there was little public support in this country for a new conflict. “The consequences of such an attack cannot be predicted,” he said.

Mottaki is a much keener observer of American politics than most Western observers, it would seem.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, conveyed the offer to Tehran two weeks ago. It essentially repackages a two-year-old proposal by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to give Iran political, economic and security rewards if it “verifiably suspends its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.”

Presumably, the passage of two years has made it plain that no better offer would be forthcoming. Mottaki’s colleague, Ali Akbar Velayati, who serves as the top foreign policy advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered some amusingly twisted logic as a face-saving explanation:

“Americans wanted Iran not to accept Solana,” Velayati told the hard-line daily newspaper Jomhuri Islami. “Therefore our interests imply that we should embrace Solana.”

Whatever works, I guess. This, though, is what got everyone’s attention:

In a sign of apparent high-level debate in Iran, a top aide to the country’s supreme religious leader made a veiled swipe Tuesday at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who’s used belligerent rhetoric to defend Iran’s nuclear work. “Officials … should avoid illogical and provocative sloganeering,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in published remarks, Reuters reported. His remarks seemed targeted at Ahmadinejad, although he didn’t mention the president by name.

While Ahmadinejad is the public face of the Iranian government, he’s by no means its most important player, despite the obsession with him by the media and some American politicians. As has been the case since the 1979 revolution, the clerics run the show with the Supreme Leader as the first among equals.

This, via Laura Rosen, strikes me as a fair read:

“What Velayati is presenting is a softening up of Iranian opinion as to why Iran might accept some sort of suspension without him going into that,” Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, interprets Velayati’s remarks. “And then Velayati goes on to say that under the current circumstances, Iran can do this because of the fact that the international community has recognized Iran’s right to enrich. So in effect, Velayati is saying, Iran can declare victory and compromise, and that if it doesn’t do this, there will be a stronger case for war against Iran and a continuation of economic sanctions, which it’s very clear are hurting Iran’s economy.”

Of course, as Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Iranian atomic energy organization, reminds us “as in everything in Iran, things could change tomorrow.”

Photo credit: Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty via TIME

Update (Dave Schuler)

I believe Iranian acceptance of this offer would be a benign development for all sorts of reasons of proverbial prudence including “jar-jar is better than war-war” and “half a loaf is better than none”. The offer should have a sell-by date or I see no reason that they’ll not deliberate it forever.

Unfortunately, it’s not nearly enough. The Iranian regime really needs to be more forthcoming about their past and present nuclear development activities for us to have any confidence that whatever nuclear development activity they cease is the nuclear development activity they have. Otherwise we’ll just be subsidizing their R&D.

The greatest danger I see in it is that European countries, blinded by a fog of Euro signs, will see Iranian acceptance of this baby stuff as big enough to take the pressure off Iran. 43% of Iranian imports are from the EU. That dwarfs China, the next largest vendor, by a considerable amount.

However, Iran’s import partners who are probably most able to influence the regime may well also be those necks are most on the line in the face of rising Iranian power in the region, Oman and Saudi Arabia (13th and 17th on the list, respectively). I don’t have detailed stats on the exports of these countries to Iran but I suspect their exports are mostly gasoline. Most of what Iran uses it does not refine itself.

When I first saw the headline “Brent Scowcroft Echoes Obama” at memeorandum, I read it as “Brent Scowcroft Endorses Obama,” which struck me as sufficiently newsworthy to immediately click the link. The actual story is markedly less surprising:

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, said on Monday that he agrees with the position, stated mainly by Sen. Barack Obama, that the U.S. would benefit from having direct talks with the leaders of its most distrusted adversaries.

“Absolutely,” said Scowcroft, when asked by The Huffington Post whether he thought the next president should meet with the likes of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “It’s hard to make things better if you don’t talk.”

Scowcroft, in addition to his more famous resume’ entries, is a former Chairman and current head of the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council of the United States, the organization that issues my paychecks. Thankfully, we’re in full agreement here. Indeed, what Scowcroft says is so axiomatically true as to not be in dispute in serious foreign policy circles.

My strong sense, however, is that the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain on this issue is one of posturing rather than substance. Obama wishes to present himself as a healer and conciliator, so he pronounces that he’ll hold summit meetings with the most bellicose dictators and try to work out our problems. McCain, by contrast, wishes to present himself as a touch guy who won’t cozy up to bad actors, so he says he won’t talk to these people without some concessions.

In reality, regardless of which president occupies the Oval Office, the United States will hold routine discussions with every international actor with which we have business. Which is to say, pretty much all of them. No president is going to hold summit talks with the Iranian ayatollahs without serious back channel ground work by his diplomatic people and without getting concessions ahead of time so that he can make some grand announcement at the end. Nor will any president refuse to talk to the Iranian regime, at least in back channels, given their incredible importance in a region vital to American interests. At the end of the day, this is a matter of style rather than substance.

Could the Mahdi Army and other key Iraqi “militias” disband? Signs are pointing in that direction.

Iraq’s top leadership council issued a call over the weekend:

A top leadership council called Saturday on Iraqi parties to disband their militias or risk being barred from taking part in elections and participating in political life. A statement by the “Political Council for National Unity” also urged parties that withdrew from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government to send back their ministers to the cabinet. The council is made up of President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, the two vice presidents – Sunni Arab Tariq al-Hashemi and Shiite Adil Abdul-Mahdi – as well as al-Maliki, parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and leaders of the parliamentary factions. The council’s decisions have no force of law but are significant because they represent powerful political interests.

In the statement, the council called on all parties “to immediately disband their militias and hand over their weapons to the government…as a condition for their participation in the political process and elections.” Since 2004, several attempts have been made to convince Iraqi parties to disband armed groups they sponsor, but with limited results.

Most Iraqi political parties are believed to maintain ties to armed groups although none acknowledges maintaining a “militia.” For example, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a powerful Shiite party, says it has disbanded its Badr Brigade militia and transformed it into a political organization. However, former Badr militiamen have joined the security forces and the militia is widely believed to maintain a clandestine command structure. At least one police commando unit is made up exclusively of members of al-Maliki’s Dawa party.

So, this call is logically not only futile but hypocritical as well, since the Badr Brigades aren’t going away.

James Hider of the Times of London, though, reports that the most important rival warlord may be prepared to step down.

Iraq’s largest and most dangerous militia will voluntarily disband if Shia scholars advise its leader to do so, officials said yesterday — a dramatic move that could quell much of the fighting in the war-torn country. Aides to Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr said that he would send delegations to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a moderate religious leader in Najaf, and to senior clerics in Iran to consult on whether he should stand down his 60,000-strong al-Mahdi Army.

The sudden announcement — the first time that the rebellious cleric had offered to disband his forces — came as US and Iraqi troops were poised for a key offensive into his Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City. Yesterday streams of refugees were pouring out of Sadr City as automatic gunfire and mortar bomb blasts ripped through the giant slum that is home to 2.5 million people. Terrified residents scuttled down side streets as tanks trundled along the main thoroughfares, shooting at guerrillas. A massive American and Iraqi security presence had ringed the area, with police and soldiers guarding every exit with many predicting a final, bloody showdown as popular support drained from al-Mahdi Army.

The position of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, whose fighters fought government forces to a standstill in Basra, was looking precarious. His former erstwhile ally Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister who personally led the Basra crackdown, saw his standing bolstered by his tough approach to the militias. Despite the inconclusive results of his Basra offensive, Mr al-Maliki has refused to back down and this weekend stitched together a rare consensus of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to back a law banning from future elections any party that maintains a militia.

Hider hasn’t been a cheerleader for the war, so I take his reports seriously. If this pans out, it’s welcome news, indeed.

Austin Bay, for one, isn’t surprised by any of this. He cites his personal experience and several media reports in support for an argument that the NYT and other “defeatists” simply aren’t grasping the major progress being made on the ground.

Obviously, I hope that’s right. We’ve had enough false hope over the years that curbing one’s enthusiasm seems warranted. But maybe David Brooks has it right: “There has been political progress. It just doesn’t look the way we expected it to.”

UPDATE: It appears that Sadr is off the hook: “Iraq’s top Shiite religious leaders have told anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr not to disband his Mehdi Army, an al-Sadr spokesman said Monday amid fresh fighting in the militia’s Baghdad strongholds.”

Photo: “Mahdi Army militiamen march in Basra” via Michael J. Totten. Copyright Nabil al-Jurani.

Anne Applebaum contrasts the treatment of two high profile critics of radical Islam and thereby highlights the question of how far Western governments must go in protecting free speech. She notes that Salman Rushdie is still alive nearly two decades after a fatwa was placed on him by Ayatollah Khomeini because the British government has protected him ever since. Meanwhile, Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has been living in fear.

Hirsi Ali has been under Dutch police protection since 2002, when her public comments about mistreatment of women in the Dutch Muslim community and references to herself as “secular” led to death threats in Holland. Though encouraged to remain in the country — and promised security protection — by the government then in power, the mood in Holland changed in 2004. That year, a fanatic named Mohammed Bouyeri infamously murdered Theo Van Gogh, the director of a film about the oppression of Muslim women — and then thrust a knife bearing a note threatening Hirsi Ali, who wrote the film’s script, into the victim’s chest.

[...]

Unlike the British, who have gotten used to the idea that faraway events can affect them, the Dutch, at least in this century, are more insular. That helps explain why, in 2006, the Dutch government tried to revoke Hirsi Ali’s citizenship over an old immigration controversy, and why her neighbors went to court that year to have her evicted from her home (they claimed the security threat posed by her presence impinged upon their human rights). But although she did finally move to the United States, the argument continued in her absence. Last week, the Dutch government abruptly cut off her security funding, forcing her to return briefly to Holland.

The reasons given were financial, but there was clearly more to it. To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud, too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn’t sound conciliatory, in the modern continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as “brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women” with the German judge who, citing the Koran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have “expected” her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she’s “brought her problems on herself.” Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

[...]

Whether or not the Dutch like it — and I’m sure most of them don’t — revoking her police protection will send a clear message to the world: that the Dutch are no longer willing to protect their own traditions of free speech. Resources will be found, and she will recover. But will Holland?

To put it mildly, allowing outspoken critics of Islam to be murdered or leave in fear of same would have a chilling effect on free speech. How far, though, must governments go in providing personal protection for controversial figures? Where does one draw the line?

The cases of Rushie and Hirsi Ali would seem reasonably clear: they’re very high profile figures and the death threats against them were made in a very high profile way and are quite credible, indeed. But, surely, everyone who says or writes inflammatory things that might make some lunatic want to kill them isn’t entitled to Secret Service protection?

University of Michigan Middle East scholar Juan Cole argues that the demonization of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is misguided and part of a right wing propaganda campaign to agitate for another war.

Critics have also cited his statements about the Holocaust or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as a Hitler figure intent on killing Israeli Jews, even though he is not commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, has never invaded any other country, denies he is an anti-Semite, has never called for any Israeli civilians to be killed, and allows Iran’s 20,000 Jews to have representation in Parliament.

There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy. Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran’s rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo. The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state.

The neoconservatives are even claiming that the United States has been at war with Iran since 1979. As Glenn Greenwald points out, this assertion is absurd. In the ’80s, the Reagan administration sold substantial numbers of arms to Iran. Some of those beating the war drums most loudly now, like think-tank rat Michael Ledeen, were middlemen in the Reagan administration’s unconstitutional weapons sales to Tehran. The sales would have been a form of treason if in fact the United States had been at war with Iran at that time, so Ledeen is apparently accusing himself of treason.

Ahmadinejad is being portrayed as an enemy head of state because, well, he’s an enemy head of state. It’s true that he’s not the head of government — the Supreme Leader and his council of ayatollahs are the chief policymakers — but he’s the public face of the country.

It’s technically true that he’s “never invaded any other country.” How could he given that the clerics control the military? But, again, he’s the public voice of the chief state sponsor of terrorism, a country supplying our enemies in Iraq with weapons used to kill Americans and supplying our enemies throughout the Middle East with weapons used to kill Jews.

Focusing our attention on Ahmadinejad as a somewhat sloppy shorthand for our troubles with Iran doesn’t pass scholarly muster. It’s close enough, however, for conducting the debate. After all, people debating American policies routinely focus on our president even though Congress, the Supreme Court, the fifty states, and even independent bodies like the Federal Reserve Board have a large hand in the process.

Pat Buchanan is a combative populist; Ahmadinejad is a powerful man stoking dangerous sentiments. That he denies being anti-Semitic is nice, I suppose, but somewhat obviated by his routine calls for their destruction.

The “at war since 1979″ meme is indeed rather shopworn. Still, it’s undeniable that the accession of the theocrats to power and then their seizure of our embassy radically changed our relationship. That the Reagan Administration nonetheless made back door deals with the regime in an ill-fated attempt to secure the release of hostages is unfortunate but hardly evidence that our relations weren’t hostile; we made all manner of deals with the Soviets during the Cold War.

Are there people agitating for war with Iran? Sure. All indications thus far, though, point to the Bush Administration preferring a different path. Not only does virtually every expert on the subject agree that there is no viable military solution to their nuclear program, but almost every public utterance of Bush and his team dating back to the 2000 campaign pointed to optimism that regime change in Iran would happen peacefully and naturally.

Phil Carter draws my attention to a report by Lawrence Korb and colleagues on the logistics of troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The study’s working assumption, that the Surge will inevitably fail and that withdrawal must commence immediately, is a political question that’s hotly contested. The military-logistical questions, though, are interesting in their own right.

Those who argue for a rapid and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces have often been accused of adopting an unrealistic approach. This, we believe, is a misplaced critique. It is certainly possible to conduct a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, in perhaps as short a time as three months if the U.S. military (in the words of Iraq war veteran and military analyst Phillip Carter) were to effectively conduct an “invasion in reverse.”

If the U.S. Army was ordered to withdraw to Kuwait, they could do so quickly and relatively safely. Such an exit, however, would sacrifice a significant amount of equipment and create an instantaneous political and security vacuum similar to that created by the initial overthrow of Saddam Hussein. While this option is certainly feasible, we do not believe that it is the best course of action.

Yet we must also caution that if the United States does not set a specific timetable our military forces and our overall national security will remain hostage to events on the ground in Iraq. Worse still, a startling new development such as the assassination of the Ayatollah Sistani or a large sectarian attack leading to an all-out civil war could well compel our forces to withdraw in as little as three months. We need to start planning now for redeployment.

Those who argue that a withdrawal will have to take place over a number of years, perhaps as many as four, base their analysis on the time it takes to complete a meticulous extraction and dismantling of all U.S. equipment and facilities. As this report will demonstrate, we believe that such an extended timeline increases the danger to U.S. forces and is not cost-effective from a logistical standpoint even though such an approach would presumably result in a complete extraction of all U.S. equipment.

The essential logistical point of disagreement between these approaches centers on the value placed on the equipment that is to be withdrawn. We believe that all essential, sensitive, and costly equipment must be safely withdrawn, but taking out non-vital equipment and the meticulous dismantling of certain facilities with no military value should not be an obstacle to redeploying our troops out of harm’s way in Iraq and back into the fight against terrorism, which national security experts from across the political spectrum agree threatens the United States more than at any time since 9/11.

A phased military redeployment from Iraq over the next 10 to 12 months would begin extracting U.S. troops from Iraq’s internal conflicts immediately and would be completed by the end of 2008. During this timeframe, the military will not replace outgoing troops as they rotate home at the end of their tours and will draw down force and equipment levels gradually, at a pace similar to previous rotations conducted by our military over the past four years. According to a U.S. military official in Baghdad involved in planning, a withdrawal could take place safely in this time period.

The report envisions a small constabulary force left behind in the Kurdish region as well as Navy and Marine assets offshore.

The relatively short timeframe is one scoffed at by many other experts, including some who opposed the war from the outset like Anthony Cordesman.

“The faster you move out, the more you have to leave behind or destroy,” said Mr. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s no ideal.”

Voters and political candidates, he says, are looking for a quick-exit “fantasy.”

“If you blow everything up, take the critical vehicles and get the people out, you can do it in a month. But why?”

With individual missiles costing $100,000 or more and armored Humvees about $380,000, the staggering value of materiél demands a longer, more complete withdrawal, Mr. Cordesman said. “You can leave an awful lot of things behind. But that borders on the insane.”

Here’s an even more pessimistic assessment:

Troops concentrated in convoys that are transporting huge quantities of supplies out of Iraq make tempting targets. In the south, British forces have been attacked by militants as they pull back.

“We’re probably going to get stuck fighting our way out,” said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, especially in a rapid withdrawal. Mr. Biddle gives the current increase in troop levels a limited chance of successfully stabilizing the country, but it will take perhaps two years, with more casualties in the meantime. Hence the calculation: Withdraw with casualties now, or risk a better exit in a few years? How great is that risk?

And how likely is that outcome?

Phil had an interesting piece in Slate back in May discussing some of these issues. He points that the Army is already planning to replace the older, unarmored Humvees and that the cost of some of the other equipment is an acceptable write-off. I would agree on that score, especially since one would have to factor the enormous additional cost of an extended presence in Iraq into the cost-benefit analysis.

The main questions remain political rather than logistical: What can we accomplish if we stay? What effects will a rapid versus slow withdrawal have on the internal dynamics in Iraq? How many Iraqis do we take with us when we leave?

Update (Dave Schuler)

Another perspective on withdrawing from Iraq from Baseline Magazine:

If the U.S. decides to pull out of Iraq, its military forces won’t exit immediately—they can’t. Moving 160,000 troops and tons of equipment is a logistics process that, even if done right, will take two years.

A lengthy, detailed exploration of the subject. This battleship ain’t stoppin’ on a dime.

Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq declared that terrorism was “justified” in response to Salman Rushdie being awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth.

Pakistan demanded on Monday that Britain withdraw a knighthood awarded to author Salman Rushdie, as a government minister said the honour gave a justification for suicide attacks by Muslims.

Angry protesters in several cities torched British flags and beat them with their shoes in protest at the accolade for the Indian-born writer of “The Satanic Verses” and chanted “Death to Britain, death to Rushdie.”

Rushdie, 59, was forced to go into hiding for a decade after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 issued a death sentence over his book “The Satanic Verses,” claiming it insulted Islam. Iran has already accused British leaders of “Islamophobia” after Rushdie — now Sir Salman — was awarded the knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II on Saturday to mark her 81st birthday.

“If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet, then it is justified,” Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq told the national assembly. The minister, the son of military dictator Zia-ul-Haq who died in a plane crash in 1988, later retracted his statement in parliament and said he meant to say that knighting Rushdie could spark terrorism. “I was explaining that if the British government awards a knighthood to Salman Rushdie — whose only credibility is that he wrote a blasphemous book — then such action with encourage extremism,” he told AFP. “If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?” he said.

He said Pakistan should sever diplomatic ties with Britain if it did not withdraw the award, adding: “We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims.

I’m not sure what Rushdie has done to merit a knighthood and it’s hardly surprising that Muslim fanatics have been sparked to riot over this; after all, we saw weeks of rioting and several deaths over some newspaper cartoons. Still, it goes without saying that the Brits have every right to decide which of their artists to honor in this way.

This is further evidence, if any were needed, that Pakistan is a poor ally, indeed, in the battle against Islamist extremists. We’ll see if Pervez Musharraf expels ul-Haq from his cabinet and disavows these remarks. My guess is that he won’t.

Fred Thompson (or, more likely, a staffer) made his blogging debut at Redstate yesterday afternoon, warning of the dangers of the propaganda victory Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got from taking 15 British marines hostage. He is disgusted with the weakness shown by the international community in this affair: “The UN Security Council summoned its vaunted multilateral greatness to issue a swift statement of sincere uneasiness. The EU, which has pressured Britain to rely on Europeans for mutual defense instead of the US, wouldn’t even discuss economic sanctions that might disrupt their holidays. Even NATO was AWOL.”

Yet, despite tough words about “pirates” and “Islamo-fascism,” Thompson offers little in the way of concrete policy.

We need to understand this and use every means at our disposal, starting with serious and painful international sanctions, to prevent Iran’s rulers from becoming the nuclear-armed blackmailers they want to be. Unfortunately, we are hearing demands that we abandon the people of the Middle East who have stood up to Islamo-fascism because they believed us when we said we would support them.

If we retreat precipitously, the price for that betrayal will be paid first in blood and freedom by the Iranian people, the Kurds, the Afghanis, the secular Lebanese, the moderates in Pakistan and the Iraqis themselves. And America’s word may never be trusted again.

Of course, nobody of any consequence on the American political scene is advocating the abandonment of Israel. Further, “serious and painful international sanctions” will harm Iran’s “educated and freedom-loving people” much more than the ruling regime. There are already a pile of UN resolutions making it illegal to aid the Iranian nuclear program, so it’s far from clear what help more would be.

The plain truth of the matter is that there are no good options here. Iran’s nuclear facilities are scattered and buried deep enough to make their destruction from the safety of a B-1 bomber virtually impossible. A military invasion would likely have more negative consequences for the region than a nuclear armed Iran.

So, beyond railing about how bad it would be if Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs got nukes, what to do? I’ve not yet heard or read anyone who has any good ideas. Fred Thompson included.

Judging from the reaction in the Right Blogosophere, though, tough but vague words are apparently quite appealing.

• Ed Morrissey asks rhetorically, “could he have picked a better way to enter the race, as far as the conservative blogosphere is concerned?”
• Kathryn Jean Lopez gushes that “you can’t help but be struck by how much like one of us Fred Thompson sounds.”
• Don Surber: “Apparently, Fred Thompson is trying a novel approach to the 2008 presidential race: He’s actually going to stand for something. . . . Finally, someone in the race is saying what needs to be said: Ahmadinejad endangers the world. “
• Kim Priestap has a long tribute to Thompson’s skills as a communicator.
• Emperor Misha swoons, “Just imagine how inspiring it would be to have somebody in the White House with a pair. It’s been 19 long years since the last time that happened.”
• Even the ostentatiously moderate Joe Gandleman is impressed, say “His post … needs to be read IN FULL.”

As a bonus, he’s making the other side mad. Mark Kleiman summarizes Thompson’s post: “He thinks it’s just awful that the latest hostage crisis was resolved without anyone getting killed.”

I realize that it’s still over a year and a half until the election and that Thompson isn’t even officially exploring his candidacy yet. Still, it’s impressive to get this much buzz out of a column that says so little. Red meat without any actual meat, as it were.

Iran has stepped up its rhetoric in its ongoing clash with the international community over its nuclear program.

Iran’s top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Wednesday the country will pursue nuclear activities outside international regulations if the U.N. Security Council insists it stop uranium enrichment. “Until today, what we have done has been in accordance with international regulations,” Khamenei said. “But if they take illegal actions, we too can take illegal actions and will do so.”

Iran’s program is in violation of any number of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.N. Security Council resolutions, not to mention the Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus threats to “pursue nuclear activities outside international regulations” or “take illegal actions” are laughable.

These, much less so:

Iran’s top leader also issued a stark warning to the United States, saying Iran will “use all its capacities to strike” its enemies if his country is attacked. “If they want to treat us with threats and enforcement of coercion and violence, undoubtedly they must know that the Iranian nation and authorities will use all their capacities to strike enemies that attack,” Khamenei told the nation in an address marking the first day of Nowruz, or the Persian New Year.

There’s not much doubt about that.

UPDATE: Ray Takeyh makes an interesting argument in the current Foreign Affairs. His thesis:

If it hopes to tame Iran, the United States must rethink its strategy from the ground up. The Islamic Republic is not going away anytime soon, and its growing regional influence cannot be limited. Washington must eschew superficially appealing military options, the prospect of conditional talks, and its policy of containing Iran in favor of a new policy of détente. In particular, it should offer pragmatists in Tehran a chance to resume diplomatic and economic relations. Thus armed with the prospect of a new relationship with the United States, the pragmatists would be in a position to sideline the radicals in Tehran and try to tip the balance of power in their own favor. The sooner Washington recognizes these truths and finally normalizes relations with its most enduring Middle Eastern foe, the better.

That’s likely the least bad option.

The U.S. military yesterday presented a de-classified version of their case that Iran is supplying explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) to our enemies in Iraq. How persuasive that case was likely depends on one’s view of the Bush administration. Some excerpts from the major reporting below, with judgments and qualifiers emphasized in boldface.

James Glanz for the NYT:

After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence of the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war. They said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.

Never before displayed in public, the weapons included squat canisters designed to explode and spit out molten balls of copper that cut through armor. The canisters, called explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s, are perhaps the most feared weapon faced by American and Iraqi troops here.

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

That inference, and the anonymity of the officials who made it, seemed likely to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq, and perhaps even trying to lay the groundwork for war with Iran.

Iran on Monday rejected the American allegations. “Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. Mr. Hosseini said Iran’s top leaders were not intervening in Iraq and considered “any intervention in Iraq’s internal affairs as a weakening of the popular Iraqi government, and we are opposed to that.”

While the Americans displayed what they said was the physical evidence of their claims about Iran’s role in Iraq, they also left many questions unanswered, including proof that the Iranian government was directing the delivery of weapons.

The officials were repeatedly pressed on why they insisted on anonymity in such an important matter affecting the security of American and Iraqi troops. A senior United States military official gave a partial answer, saying that without anonymity, a senior Defense Department analyst who participated in the briefing could not have contributed.

The officials also were defensive about the timing of disclosing such incriminating evidence, since they had known about it as early as 2004. They said E.F.P. attacks had nearly doubled in 2006 compared with the previous year and a half. “The reason we’re talking about this right now is the vast increase in the number of E.F.P.s being found,” one official said. American-led forces in Iraq, the official said, “are not trying to hype this up to be more than it is.”

Whatever doubts were created about the timing and circumstances of the weapons disclosures, the direct physical evidence presented on Sunday was extraordinary. The officials said the E.F.P. weapons arrived in Iraq in the form of what they described as a “kit” containing high-grade metals and highly machined parts — like a shaped, concave lid that folds into a molten ball while hurtling toward its target.

For the first time, American officials provided a specific casualty total from these weapons, saying they had killed more than 170 Americans and wounded 620 since June 2004, when one of the devices first killed a service member. But then the officials went much further, asserting without specific evidence that the Iranian security apparatus, called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force controlled delivery of the materials to Iraq. And in a further inference, the officials asserted that the Quds Force, sometimes called the I.R.G.C. – Quds, could be involved only with Iranian government complicity. “We have been able to determine that this material, especially on the E.F.P. level, is coming from the I.R.G.C. – Quds Force,” said the senior defense analyst. That, the analyst said, meant direction for the operation was “coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

At least one shipment of E.F.P.s was captured as it was smuggled from Iran into southern Iraq in 2005, the officials said. Caches and arrays of E.F.P.s, as well as mortars and other weapons traceable to Iran, have been repeatedly found inside Iraq in areas dominated by militias known to have ties to Iran, the officials said. One cache of antitank rocket-propelled grenades and other items was seized as recently as Jan. 23, the officials said. The precise machining of E.F.P. components, the officials said, also links the weapons to Iran. “We have no evidence that this has ever been done in Iraq,” the senior military official said.

Josh Parlow, reporting for WaPo, provided a much more straightforward reporting of the presentation, with no editorial commentary until the eight paragraph:

With so much official U.S. buildup about the purported evidence of Iranian influence in Iraq, the briefing was also notable for what was not said or shown. The officials offered no evidence to substantiate allegations that the “highest levels” of the Iranian government had sanctioned support for attacks against U.S. troops. Also, the military briefers were not joined by U.S. diplomats or representatives of the CIA or the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

AP’s Steven Hurst also plays it straight, merely reporting what was said at the conference, not even hinting at any controversy until the 23rd paragraph, well after throwing in several paragraphs that were so tangentially related to the story that most would have long stopped reading:

The allegations against Iran were made briefing which had been set for last week. But U.S. defense officials said it was postponed so that the Pentagon could review the information.

That appeared aimed at avoiding the embarrassment suffered when evidence of Iraqi unconventional weapons presented by Secretary Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 proved to be wrong.

Cernig has excerpts from several other sources (with emboldened text of his own) and comes away far from persuaded: “As expected, it falls far short of a ’slam dunk’ case. The anonymous briefing at which no recording devices were allowed involved a lot of claims and not a whole lot of actual evidence.”

Kevin Drum is similarly unimpressed: “Golly. I wonder why no one wanted their name publicly attached to this stuff? I mean, it’s ironclad, right?” Of course, he admits the threshold is high:

The current gang in the White House would have to provide videotape of the Ayatollah Khamenei himself attaching tailfins to one of these things and putting it in a box labeled “Baghdad — ASAP” before I’d be willing to take any action based on this latest dog and pony show. With any luck, in a couple of years we’ll have a president I don’t have to feel that way about.

There’s also anger over the mere fact that reporters agreed to the ground rules of the meeting. Ezra Klein guest Ankush thinks they should have collectively refused to go unless it was fully on-the-record. Greg Mitchell thinks that, notwithstanding the qualifiers, these “media outlets have joined in suggesting a slam dunk case for Iranian weapons killing Americans in Iraq.”

Spook86 and Bill Roggio, on the other hand, think the case was as good as it could be without compromising our intelligence gathering capabilities.

I’m far from an expert on weapons manufacturing but find the evidence that Iran manufactured and smuggled the weapons in question into Iraq incredibly convincing. Given the nature of the society we’re dealing with and the relationship of the Iranian government with the Shiite militia’s, it also strikes me as highly probable that the transfer was made with their approval if not on their orders. At the same time, I share Drum’s skepticism that the only ones getting these arms are the militias we happen to least like.

UPDATE: TPM has the PowerPoint slides from the brief. The last two pages (15 and 16) are the most interesting.

Click on thumbnails for full-sized slides.

I still haven’t found an official release on the military action that occurred in Najaf but, if you’re confused about what happened there, you’re not the only one.

Iraqi blogger Zeyad of Healing Iraq has collected more than a dozen different descriptions of what happened, ranging from an unprovoked attack on harmless pilgrims by Americans and members of the Iraqi military and police to a massive attack on an Al-Qaeda camp, some with lurid details. Zeyad characterizes the account I’ve been hearing lately, an engagement with a Shi’ite sub-sect, the Army of Heaven, as “the Sadrist account”. In his analysis of what happened (something did, apparently, happen) he characterizes the accounts that have been published in the Western press including the New York Times as “complete nonsense”.

Check out the linked posts for valuable backgrounders.

Update: Curiouser and curiouser. This morning the New York Times is reporting that American ground forces were involved in the action, not just providing air support:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 —Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia in a weekend battle near the holy city of Najaf and needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

They said American ground troops — and not just air support as reported Sunday — were mobilized to help the Iraqi soldiers, who appeared to have dangerously underestimated the strength of the militia, which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven and had amassed hundreds of heavily armed fighters.

Iraqi government officials said the group apparently was preparing to storm Najaf, a holy city dear to Shiite Islam, occupy the sacred Imam Ali mosque and assassinate the religious hierarchy there, including the revered leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, during a Shiite holiday when many pilgrims visit.

“This group had more capabilities than the government,” said Abdul Hussein Abtan, the deputy governor of Najaf Province, at a news conference.

That would seem to lend more credence to the reports yesterday that American tanks were involved in the action. But that, too, is very baffling.

If both a) American forces were mobilized to re-inforce the Iraqi military and b) American tanks were involved, you might see the source of my confusion.

Najaf is one of the provinces in which the Iraqi military has assumed responsility for security. I’m no expert in these matters but I would think that would mean that there weren’t armored units just standing around, in case. Bringing up an armored unit that wasn’t nearby sounds to me a little like growing a beard in a moment of passion. So I’m confused.

BTW, Juan Cole has pointed out that, if indeed the enemy force engaged was a Shi’ite splinter group, it’s likely they weren’t being supported by Iran:

The buzz in the Right blogosphere that the Mahdawiya is somehow linked to Iran is a profound falsehood. Sadrist splinter groups in Iraq generally are Iraqi nativist and deeply distrust Iran. These cultists wanted to kill Sistani (an Iranian).

That’s what the Iraqi bloggers have been saying, too.

CSM’s Dan Murphy writes about the origins of Sunni-Shiite split and its impact on the Iraq crisis.

The Shiites were the eventual losers in a violent struggle for mastery that lasted decades, a fact now reflected in their minority status within global Islam. But while the civil war now raging between Shiite and Sunni in Iraq is sometimes cast as an extension of this age-old religious struggle, today’s conflict is about something slightly different. While religious differences are real and remain important, the breakdown over Shiite and Sunni in Iraq is about group identity as much as it is about disagreements over proper worship.

In Iraq, many Sunnis and Shiites who are not particularly devout are participating in the bloodshed, fighting to advance group interests. “I think that Sunni and Shiite group identifiers have become more important in a lot of ways that are not essentially religious,” says Barbara Petzen, an expert at Harvard University’s Middle Eastern Studies Center.

Nevertheless, there are some key religious differences. Shiite veneration of the holy family, that is, the descendants of Muhammad, has contributed to a much more centralized and hierarchical clergy than in the Sunni world. All religious Shiites nominally observe the advice of an ayatollah on how to follow the law of Islam, or sharia, in the modern context. For many in Iraq, this role is fulfilled by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

[...]

Though a majority in Iran and Iraq, Shiites make up just 15 percent of the world’s Muslims. Their history of defeat and frequent subjugation has also led to a cult of death and martyrdom within Shiism.

The major Shiite holidays celebrate the glorious defeats and martyrdoms of Imam Ali and Imam Hussein, Ali’s son, as typified by the preeminent Shiite holiday of Ashura, which marks the slaughter of Hussein and his followers outside the Iraqi city of Karbala by a Sunni caliph in 680. In Iraq and Iran, the holiday is marked by elaborate processions of men reenacting their own passion play, many of whom self-flagellate with chains to the beat of drums.

Such expressions of piety are looked at with disgust by hard-line Sunnis like the clergy in Saudi Arabia, who view the veneration of Hussein and other members of the prophet’s family as a violation of monotheism. This view has frequently led extremist groups like Al Qaeda to attack Shiites as heretics.

The publication of this evergreen piece so many years into the conflict is rather puzzling but, as repeated stories of even key decision-makers being clueless on this subject make clear, a refresher is always useful.

This is apparently part of a new series CSM is running entitled “Sunni vs. Shiite.” It is accompanied by an interesting quiz about the sectarian leanings of various Middle Eastern newsmakers, similar to ones that many policymakers have failed. Thankfully, I scored 8 of 8.