So She IS a Spy After All!

So She IS a Spy After All!

Now we find out that Roxana Saberi, who every news organization has proclaimed innocent" and that the charges that she was a spy against Iran were "ridiculous" and "completely unfounded" turns out to have been in possession of secret Iranian government documents after all.

Not that it surprises us that those who defended her had no idea as to her culpability, but this is really funny. I will not hold my breath waiting for anyone to offer a mea culpa on this one, but it did give me a chuckle when I read this item this morning. According to her own attorney, as posted on Yahoo News:

TEHRAN (AFP) – A lawyer for US-born reporter Roxana Saberi, freed this week from a Tehran jail, said on Wednesday the spy charges she had faced arose after she obtained a classified report on the US war on Iraq.

"She had a report about the US attack on Iraq prepared by the strategic research centre at the (Iranian) presidency," Saleh Nikbakht told AFP.

No matter what her motives were, or how these documents got into her lying hands, in Iran today you have to be either stupid or crazy - or a spy - to even speak to people who traffic in such stuff. Anytime you juggle with dynamite, sooner or later something will blow up.

Style Over Substance, Obama and Iran

In yet another show of cluelessness in the realm of foreign policy, Barry Obama has lofted a meaningless video into Iran. Of course, consistent with the amateurish debacle of Obama's gift of DVDs to Britain's Prime Minister Brown, the color blindness of Obama and his state department are again on display, and breathtaking in their naivete. Obama decided to broadcast a video message into Iran with no cooperation from Iran's government, just as he goes over the heads of the media establishment here with his appearance on The Tonight Show. But the Persian Empire and its government is not the equivalent of the American media establishment, and a beamed propaganda channel is not the equivalent of a guest spot on the most popular show on late night TV.

To compound the problem, the piece was broadcast during the Persian New Year, Nowruz, so it is unlikely that many people saw it anyway. You Tube is banned in Iran, but the Iranian government did see it, and Ahmadinejad commented on the broadcast. Predictably, he said that words with no change in policy will avail Obama naught. And since the change in policy that Iran seeks can not be delivered by an elected American leader, Amadinejad may have to wait for either his ascent to Mahdi, or Obama's ascent to dictator, for him to get the American foreign policy he likes. Neither outcome appears likely to happen, but we live in interesting times, so we will have to see how this plays out.