Download (.pdf) Der (in)formelle Handlungsspielraum von Eunuchen am Hof der persischen Sasaniden
published in: Butz, Reinhardt/Hirschbiegel, Jan (eds), Informelle Strukturen bei Hof. Dresdener Gespräche III zur Theorie des Hofes. Ergebnisse des gleichnamigen Kolloquiums auf der Moritzburg bei Dresden, 27. bis 29. September 2007, veranstaltet vom SFB 537 "Institutionalität und Geschichtlichkeit" und der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, (Vita Curialis 2), Münster 2008, 93–119.
Ram’s Horns and Falcon’s Wings: Religious Symbolism in Sasanian Kings’ Crowns (in Russian)
Рога барана и крылья сокола: к вопросу о религиозной символике в оформлении царских корон Сасанидов // Проблемы истории, филологии, культуры. 2012. № 1 (35). С. 144 – 152. ISSN 1991-9484.
Ram’s Horns and Falcon’s Wings: Religious Symbolism in Sasanian Kings’ Crowns // Journal of Historical, Philological and Cultural Studies. 2012. № 1 (35). P. 144 – 152. ISSN 1991-9484.
Headgear (crowns) of ruling dynasty members in Sasanian Iran were decorated with ram’s horns and falcon’s wings. It... more
Headgear (crowns) of ruling dynasty members in Sasanian Iran were decorated with ram’s horns and falcon’s wings. It was connected with Iranian oldest religious notions of farr (divine entity of king’s power, glory, and victory) that was first and foremost embodied in a ram and a falcon. Yet, these animals were associated with most revered Zoroastrian deity – Verethraghna.
Comparative analysis of sources differing in origin and character makes it possible to conclude that Sasanian ceremonial crown had falcon’s wings as a symbol of both farr and Verethraghna. King’s battle diadem had ram’s horns.
UAE cancels soccer match amid mounting tension with Iran
By James M. Dorsey
Increasingly strained relations between Iran and oil-rich Arab Gulf states spilled on to... more
By James M. Dorsey
Increasingly strained relations between Iran and oil-rich Arab Gulf states spilled on to the soccer pitch this weekend with the United Arab Emirates cancelling a friendly match against the Islamic republic and recalling its ambassador in Tehran.
The move against the backdrop of a war of words between Iran and Qatar and a regional battle for influence with Saudi Arabia was in protest against a controversial visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to two disputed islands in the Gulf 60 kilometres off the UAE coast, Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Iran occupied the two potentially oil-rich islands as well as a third one, Abu Musa, located near key shipping routes at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in 1971 on the eve of the formation of the UAE as an independent state. The visit was part of tour by Mr. Ahmadinejad of the Iranian Gulf coast. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Iran or the United States were to attack its nuclear facilities.
The UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan denounced the visit as a "flagrant violation of the UAE's sovereignty'". His ministry said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman would meet on Tuesday, the day the match was scheduled to be played, to discuss the Iranian president's visit. The UAE immediately after cancelling the soccer match withdrew its ambassador from Teheran.
Iranian soccer officials said they would file a protest against the cancellation of the match that with world governing soccer body FIIFA. They noted that Nigeria was ordered to pay $300,000 to the Iranian football federation after cancelling in 2010 a friendly against the Islamic republic on political grounds.
It is not immediately clear why Mr. Ahmadinejad chose to provoke the UAE at a moment that Iran is engaged in six-party talks about its nuclear program in a bid to weaken international sanctions and reduce the risk of an Israeli and/or US military strike. A second round of the talks which resumed in Istanbul this weekend for the first time in more than a year is scheduled for May 23 in Baghdad.
The UAE last year emerged in remarks made by its ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, as the first Gulf state to publicly endorse military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, should peaceful efforts to resolve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program fail. The UAE at the time also restricted Iran’s use of Dubai to imports goods sanctioned by the United Nations and the United States. The ambassador's remarks reflected the Emirates' mounting frustration with Iran’s refusal to resolve the dispute over the islands.
Mr. Otaiba described a nuclear-armed Iran as the foremost threat to the UAE, and one that needed to be neutralized at whatever cost. His remarks suggested that in case of military action, the UAE would prefer a US to an Israeli strike because that was less likely to fuel popular anger, particularly among Shiites, at a time of widespread civil unrest in the Middle East and North AFRICA
Mr. Otaiba described the UAE as the country most threatened by Iran. Contrasting the threat against the UAE with the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the US, Mr. Otaiba said that a nuclear Iran would “threaten the peace process, it will threaten balance of power, it will threaten everything else, but it will not threaten you. . . . Our military . . . wakes up, dreams, breathes, eats, sleeps the Iranian threat. It's the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for. . . . There's no country in the region that is a threat to the UAE [besides] Iran."
Satellite imagery last year revealed Iranian installations on Abu Musa that included three missile launch pads, an elaborate underground market, and a sports field with the words “Persian Gulf” emblazoned on it -- a provocative reminder of Iran’s hegemonic view of a region the Gulf states describe as the Arab Gulf. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Zayed last year stopped short of comparing Iran’s occupation of the islands to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. “Iran refuses to allow us to send teachers, doctors and nurses. I am not comparing Iran to Israel, but Iran should be more careful than others,” Sheikh Zayed said.
The UAE has worked to ensure that its security is closely linked to U.S. and European security interests. French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year inaugurated in Abu Dhabi France’s first military base in the region. The base, which comprises three sites on the banks of the Strait of Hormuz, houses a naval and air base as well as a training camp, and is home to 500 French troops. Alongside other smaller Gulf states, the UAE has further agreed to the deployment of U.S. anti-missile batteries on its territory. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are expected to spend up to $100 billion on arms procurement in the next five years.
With his remarks, Mr. Otaiba signalled further that the UAE was willing to pay a price for stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation, and could afford to do so now that Abu Dhabi had cemented its predominance among the UAE emirates following the financial crisis in Dubai.
“There will be backlash, and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and [being] very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” Mr. Otaiba said. “That is going to happen no matter what.”
But he added, “If you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,' my answer is still the same: We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.”
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
The struggle for Syria: Iran-Qatar Ties Come under Stress
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The struggle by Syrian opposition... more
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
The struggle by Syrian opposition forces to topple the Assad regime is sharpening tensions between Iran and Qatar and threatens sectarian fault lines elsewhere in North Africa and Middle East. Qatar increasingly becomes a potential target for retaliation should the US and/or Israel attack Iranian nuclear
facilities.
Commentary
RELATIONS BETWEEN Iran and Qatar, once the closest across the Persian Gulf next to Oman, have deteriorated in recent months to the point that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cancelled a planned trip to Doha in November 2011. Iran has also embarked on a campaign of anti-Qatari rhetoric usually reserved for its most bitter rivals, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
For much of the past decade, Qatar’s foreign policy aimed to maintain good relations with all parties by positioning itself as a mediator in multiple disputes including Iran’s troubled relations with the US and a majority of Gulf states as well as between rival Palestinian factions and warring factions in Sudan.
Fraying close ties
Qatar’s lead however in isolating internationally the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest Arab ally, and arming his opponents has broken the back of traditionally close Qatari-Iranian relations. It has ended years of Iran bending over backwards to avoid animosity with Qatar despite the Gulf state’s increasingly open backing of US and European efforts to force the Islamic republic to halt its nuclear enrichment programme and Saudi-led efforts to stymie Iranian influence in the Middle East and North Africa.
Among the smallest of the Gulf states, Qatar is particularly exposed because of its joint ownership with Iran of the South Pars/North Field gas field in the Gulf. Tehran has recently accused Qatar of pilfering the field and poaching Iranian skilled personnel to exploit the fact that it is far more advanced than the Islamic republic in developing its part of the field because of the debilitating impact of the UN sanctions. The accusation echoes Saddam Hussein’s justification for Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and recalls disputed occupation of three islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates.
A potential target for retaliation
Iran is unlikely to repeat Saddam’s disastrous adventure that sparked a US-led allied attack on Iraq. Nonetheless, the assertions raise Qatar’s ranking on the list of potential targets for retaliation should Israel and/or the US decide to use military force to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme. They also significantly undermine Qatar’s role as a back channel to reduce tension between Iran and its US and Saudi detractors.
Iranian media and political leaders have denounced Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his ruling family as illegitimate. They have accused the emir of being in league with the West and Saudi Arabia to ensure that pro-Western regimes emerge from the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. They have condemned him for allowing the sale of alcohol and pork to expatriates in violation of Islamic law. The allegations echo criticism of the emir’s policies by conservative segments of Qatari society but are unlikely to curry favour with regime opponents in a country that adheres to Saudi Arabia’s austere Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, even if it’s in a more liberal fashion.
Iran’s stepped up attacks on Qatar underline the importance it attributes to the survival of the Assad regime. The Islamic republic had consistently looked the other way in the past five years as Qatar realigned its policy toward Iran in line with US and Saudi pressure on Teheran.
Close Qatari-Iranian relations, only rivalled in the Gulf by those between the Islamic republic and Oman, date back to Qatar’s refusal to back Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s; its rejection as a member of the UN Security Council of a resolution in 2006 that imposed initial sanctions on Iran against its nuclear enrichment programme; and its 2007 invitation to Ahmadinejad to attend an Arab summit in Doha, to the consternation of some of its closest Arab allies.
Bending over backwards
As a result, Iran was willing to ignore Qatar’s subsequent support for ever harsher UN sanctions against Iran as well as its participation last year in the Gulf Cooperation Council’s intervention in Bahrain to suppress a predominantly Shiite Muslim uprising against the island’s minority Sunni Muslim rulers. In fact, the two countries went significantly further in cementing their relations with the conclusion of a defence agreement two years ago and a subsequent Iranian naval visit.
The reversal in Iranian willingness to indulge Qatar also underscores the rise of the country’s hardliners who last month won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. The voices in Tehran that continue to see virtue in Qatar’s ability to be a back channel are being drowned out by the anti-Qatari rhetoric.
Iran, squeezed by the damaging of Assad as an effective ally and increasing US pressure as manifested in President Obama’s decision to sanction buyers of Iranian crude, appears to be signalling that it sees offence rather than negotiation and compromise as its best chance to beat ever harsher efforts to force it to reverse course.
Mounting anti-Qatari rhetoric narrows Iran’s ability to keep communication lines open to its detractors and sharpens sectarian fault lines in the Middle East and North Africa at a time that Syria is increasingly becoming a proxy war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the region.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Iranian interference in soccer federation election puts FIFA on the spot
By James M. Dorsey
An effort by the Iranian government to force the resignation of recently re-elected... more
By James M. Dorsey
An effort by the Iranian government to force the resignation of recently re-elected Iranian Football Federation (IFF) president Ali Kafashian constitutes the second time in as many months that a Middle Eastern government defies world soccer body FIFA’s ban on political interference in the beautiful game.
It also spotlights FIFA’s systematic failure to impose governance on its members in the Middle East and North Africa, a part of the world where soccer has over the years become a political battlefield. As a result, governments openly flaunt FIFA’s authority.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a soccer fan who micro manages affairs of the Iranian federation in a failed bid to bolster his popularity, is using the judiciary in a blatant effort to nullify Mr. Kafashian’s re-election.
In a law suit, the attorney general asserted that Mr. Kafashian’s re-election is illegal because he is banned from holding public office as a retired public employee. The attorney general has further threatened to prosecute members of the IFF executive committee who voted in favour of Mr. Kafashian.
The state-owned Fars news agency reported that iran’s recently created sports ministry is pressuring Mr. Kafashian to resign so that it can get a government approved candidate elected.
In a separate report, Fars highlighted the importance of sports to the government in a report about support by prominent sportsmen including former national soccer team players Alireza Mansourian and Hassan Roshan, Teheran’s Esteghlal FC soccer academy chairman Faramarz Khodnegah and national body building federation deputy head Seyed Hassan Afzali for a global march to Jerusalem to demand an end to Israeli occupation.
Ironically, Mr. Kafashian’s retirement was not a legal issue when he was first elected four years ago with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s backing. Nor did FIFA complain about Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political meddling to secure Mr. Kafashian’s 2008 election two years after it had briefly suspended Iran for interference in IFF polling.
Mr. Ahmadinejad turned this year on Mr. Kafashian because the IFF president had failed to ensure that soccer would boost the Iranian leader’s tarnished image. On the contrary, Iranian soccer has gone from bad to worse under Mr. Kafashian’s leadership.
Mr. Kafashian defeat of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s manipulation in early March came in the same week that the Iranian president’s conservative opponents triumphed in parliamentary elections. The legal proceedings highlight the importance Mr. Ahmadinejad attributes to control of the soccer federation, particularly against the backdrop of his parliamentary setback. Mr. Ahmadinejad became this week the first Iranian president since the Islamic revolution 33 years ago to be forced to justify his performance to parliament.
A diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Tehran leaked by Wikileaks asserts that Mr. Amadinejad’s interest in soccer as a political tool has had limited success. The cable reported that he pressured the IFF to lift its 2008 suspension of star Ali Karimi so that he could play in 2010 World Cup qualifiers, engineered the 2009 firing of Ali Daei as coach, and ensured that Mr Daei’s successor Mohamed Mayeli-Kohan lasted all of two weeks in the job so that his preferred candidate could be appointed.
Mr. Ahmedinejad has justified his interference telling Iranian journalists that “unfortunately, this sport has been afflicted with some very bad issues. I must intervene personally to push aside these destructive issues.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s blatant meddling in this month’s IFF election constitutes the second time in as many months that a Middle Eastern government openly flaunts FIFA rules to benefit politically from the beautiful game. It highlights FIFA’s increasing lack of credibility in the region.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter last month unsuccessfully demanded that the board of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA), appointees of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, be reinstated after it was summarily dismissed by the government in the wake of the death of 74 militant soccer fans in the Suez Canal town of Port Said in the worst sporting violence in Egyptian history.
The government ignored Mr. Blatter’s demand and outmanoeuvred the FIFA president by ensuing that the board after its official dismissal announced its resignation without acknowledging that it was at the behest of the government.
Mr. Blatter’s failed effort put the world soccer body at odds with Egyptian fans and clubs who had been campaigning for the last year for the resignation of the EFA board. It also contrasted starkly with FIFA’s failure for years to protest against the Mubarak regime’s political interference.
FIFA has been similarly lax in imposing adherence to FIFA criteria in the Egyptian premier league, a majority of whose members would be disqualified if the soccer body’s rules were applied. The same is true for the top Iranian league.
The comparison between Egypt and Iran doesn’t stop there nor does the risk of FIFA finding itself on the wrong side of history.
One reason Mr. Ahamdinejad turned against Mr. Kafashian is the fact that the soccer pitch on Mr. Kafashian’s watch has repeatedly in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, turned into a venue for protest against the Iranian president’s government. The soccer pitch was an important incubator of the revolt that toppled Mr. Mubarak.
The IFF president is also the fall guy for the failure of successive national coaches to deliver performance even though Mr. Ahmadinejad took a direct interest in their appointment. The coaches failed to take Iran to World Cup finals or triumph in Asian Cups, dashing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hopes that the national team’s resulting prestige would rub off on him. Iran still stands a chance for qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Ahmadinejad loses not one but two elections with re-election of Iranian soccer boss
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s waning political fortunes suffered a double blow... more
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s waning political fortunes suffered a double blow this week: the conservative victory in parliamentary elections and the re-election of Iranian Football Federation (IFF) president Ali Kafashian in defiance of the Iranian leader’s efforts to ensure his defeat.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s candidate in IFF elections when he first ran for president four years ago, Mr. Kafashian’s performance has done little to ensure that Iranian soccer helped the hands-on, soccer playing Iranian leader polish his tarnished image. On the contrary. Iranian soccer has been going from bad to worse under Mr. Kafashian’s leadership.
The soccer pitch on Mr. Kafashian’s watch has repeatedly in Tehran and Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan, turned into a venue for protest against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government. The IFF president is also the fall guy for the failure of successive national coaches to deliver performance even though Mr. Ahmadinejad
takes a direct interest in their appointment.
The coaches failed to take Iran to World Cup finals or triumph in Asian Cups, dashing Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hopes that the national team’s resulting prestige would rub off on him. Iran still stands a chance for qualifying for the 2014 Brazil World Cup.
Nonetheless, Iran’s Olympic women’s team was disqualified last year for wearing a hijab, a headdress favoured by observant Muslim women players, in violation of world soccer body FIFA rules. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Kafashian last year withdrew his candidacy for a seat on the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) executive committee..
As a result, Mr. Kafashian’s re-election campaign faced opposition from two candidates: one backed by the government, the other by the Revolutionary Guards, which has been taking in recent years an ever greater interest in Iranian soccer.
Ironically, the fact that Mr. Kafashian decided to stand as a candidate despite the loss of support of his former sponsors and his willingness to challenge the government publicly may have worked in his favour. In statements to the media, Mr. Kafashian made no bones of the fact that the government was interfering in the IFF election to engineer his defeat. Iran was briefly suspended by FIFA in 2006 for interfering in the federation’s elections.
Mr. Kafashian drove his newly found assertiveness home by vowing in his campaign to improve the financial and commercial position of clubs and ensure that the federation would enjoy greater independence in his second term. That is a tall order in a country in which the majority of clubs are owned by government-related entities, people close to the Revolutionary Guards have been joining boards and in which the president sees the federation as one of his soft power tools.
It would also mean ensuring that clubs meet FIFA criteria for membership in a premier league, which include financial independence, ownership of a stadium and the fact that its owners have only one club in the league – all conditions that would significantly reduce the government’s influence on soccer.
Last weekend’s decision by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which determines the rules of the game, to test a new headdress for women that complies with player’s cultural demand as well as safety and security standards poses a challenge for Mr. Kafashian. While it ensures that Iran will no longer be disbarred as long as it adheres to the new headdress rather than the hijab, Mr. Kafashian will still have to manage the issue that wearing the headdress is mandatory rather than voluntary not only for Iranian players but also for visiting foreign women’s teams.
All of this is hardly good news for Mr. Ahmadinejad, who according to a 2009 US diplomatic cable disclosed by WikiLeaks concluded that the president’s efforts to make soccer work to his political advantage had achieved only limited success.
The Iranian president went as far as in 2006 lifting the ban on women watching soccer matches in Iranian stadia, but in a rare public disagreement was overruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Documenting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s active interest in soccer, the US cable reported that he pressured the Iranian football federation to lift its 2008 suspension of star Ali Karimi so that he could play in 2010 World Cup qualifiers, engineered the 2009 firing of Ali Daei as coach, ensured that Mr Daei’s successor Mohamed Mayeli-Kohan lasted all of two weeks in the job so that his candidate would be appointed.
Mr. Ahmedinejad has justified his interference telling Iranian journalists that “unfortunately, this sport has been afflicted with some very bad issues. I must intervene personally to push aside these destructive issues.”
Like in other Middle Eastern nations, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s efforts to politically manipulate the beautiful game turned the soccer pitch into a platform for dissent for which the president wanted him to take the blame in this year’s IFF election.
The Iranian federation postponed league matches in Tehran in February of last year in a bid to prevent celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution from turning into anti-government protests inspired by the toppling of the Egyptian and Tunisian presidents by mass anti-government protests.
The funeral in May of last year of famous Iranian soccer player Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed defender and outspoken critic of the president in Tehran’s Azadi stadium turned into a mass protest against the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad.
Mourners chanted “Hejazi, you spoke in the name of the people” in a reference to Mr. Hejazi’s criticism of the Iranian president’s economic policies. Mr. Hejazi took Mr. Ahmadinejad in April publicly to task for Iran’s gaping income difference and budgetary measure, which hit the poorest the hardest.
Mourners in the Behsht Zahra cemetery where Mr. Hejazi was buried shouted “Mubarak, Bin Ali, now it’s your turn Khamenei!” in reference to ousted Egyptian and Tunisian presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine Abedine Ben Ali and Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mr. Hejazi tried to run for president as an independent candidate in Iran’s 2005 elections, but was forced by authorities to withdraw.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
The Oil City in Focus: The Cinematic Spaces of Abadan in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s Persian Story
by Mona Damluji
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Forthcoming, Spring 2013.
Schiitische Polemik gegen das Christentum im safawidischen Iran des 11./17. Jahrhunderts
“Schiitische Polemik gegen das Christentum im safawidischen Iran des 11./17. Jahrhunderts. Sayyid Aḥmad ʿAlawīs Lawāmiʿ-i rabbānī dar radd-i šubha-yi naṣrānī”, in Adang, Camilla / Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Contacts and Controversies between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire and Pre-Modern Iran (Istanbuler Texte und Studien 21), Würzburg 2010,
273-334.
Good & Bad Medicine
A working draft of a paper describing the problems and potentials of the drug ephedra, both today and thousands of... more
A working draft of a paper describing the problems and potentials of the drug ephedra, both today and thousands of years ago.
I look forward to your comments to help me improve this paper.
Anti-Syrian soccer protests in Iran position Azeris as potential pawn in Syrian strife
By James M. Dorsey
Stadiums in the northwestern city of Tabriz, capital of Iran’s predominantly Azeri... more
By James M. Dorsey
Stadiums in the northwestern city of Tabriz, capital of Iran’s predominantly Azeri minority, have emerged as a platform for protest against Iranian government policies and demands for greater rights for the country’s Turkic minority.
In the latest protest, supporters of Tabriz’s Traktorsazi Tabriz Football club, a flashpoint of East Azerbaijan Provinces’s identity politics owned by state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company (ITMCO), unfurled Azeri nationalist banners and burnt images of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Sahand Stadium during a Pro League match against Mes of Sarcheshmeh.
The embattled Syrian leader is Iran’s closest ally in the Arab world and alongside Russia his most important supporter despite Iranian and Russian calls on Mr. Assad to find a negotiated solution to his country’s eight-month old crisis. Protesters have displayed remarkable perseverance with almost daily protests against Mr. Assad’s regime in the face of a brutal military crackdown that has so far killed some 5,000 people according to
United Nations estimates and wounded thousands more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ib8vMsd1tM&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIIVKgeRiiI
The anti-Syrian protest followed nationalist and environmental demonstrations in recent months in Tabriz’s Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums that have raised the spectre of ethnic strife in the Islamic republic and make the Azeris a potential pawn in any escalation of tension between Turkey, Iran and Syria.
Turkey has repeatedly hinted at intervening in Syria but has so far shown no real appetite to do so in part due to concern that a post-Assad Syria would descend into even greater chaos because of the lack of unity among the president’s opponents and fears that escalated conflict could send hundreds of thousands of refugee across its border in a replay of a decade ago, when some 500,000 Kurdish refugees from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein fled to Turkey in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
Underlying Turkish concerns is the fact that the Syrian opposition has so far also not been able to bridge the country’s multiple sectarian fault lines and that increased sectarian strife could spill over into Turkey, where Kurds constitute an estimated 20 percent and Alevis, a Shiite Muslim sect, another 20 percent of the population. Insurgents of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which waged a 16-year long war against Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s have stepped up attacks on Turkish targets in recent months.
Turkish officials believe the PKK enjoys Syrian and some degree of Iranian support. They note that strident Turkish criticism of Mr. Assad and demands by Turkish leaders, including President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he step down as well as tacit Turkish support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have prompted Syria and Iran to halt their cooperation with Turkey aimed at curbing Kurdish militants. The FSA made up of primarily low level defectors from the Syrian military have attacked Syrian targets in what they say is a campaign to protect the Syrian protesters.
The Azeris would be Turkey’s card in any escalation that would spark a tit-for-tat proxy war between Turkey, Syria and Iran. The soccer protests in Tabriz signal a rise in Azeri nationalist sentiment and suggest that Turkey could retaliate against Iranian support of the PKK by fueling that sentiment in Eastern Azerbaijan which borders on the former Soviet Turkic republic of Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally.
Supporters of Traktorsazi wore shirts with the Turkish and Azerbaijan flags and raised the Azerbaijani flag during their club’s match in November against Fajr-e Sepasi of Shiraz, according to Iranian Azeri nationalists and various Iranian blogs.
“The main (Iranian concern) is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,” News.Az, a pro-Azeri news website, quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World Azerbaijani’s Congress, last month as saying. Mr. Rahimli was referring to Eastern Azerbaijan by its nationalist Azeri name. A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, accused the soccer fans of employing “separatist symbols,” shouting separatist slogans and of promoting “pan-Turkish” and “deviant objectives during the match.
Last month’s protests followed similar demonstrations in September and October sparked by a refusal by the Iranian parliament to fund efforts to save the environmentally endangered Lake Orumiyeh.
Anti-government protests also erupted in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and at a ceremony in May to commemorate that late Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Fake soccer websites used to mislead Iran during cyber-attack on its nuclear program
By James M. Dorsey
Two fake soccer websites helped the creators of the Stuxnet computer virus that last... more
By James M. Dorsey
Two fake soccer websites helped the creators of the Stuxnet computer virus that last year attacked computers used in Iran’s nuclear program mislead authorities as they launched their assault as part of a covert campaign involving assassinations of nuclear scientists and mysterious blasts at Iranian nuclear and military facilities.
The creators used the websites, www.mypremierfutbol.com and www.todaysfutbol.com, as fronts to communicate with Stuxnet-infected Iranian computers in a bid to make Iranian authorities believe that related traffic originated with soccer fans, according to a Reuters news agency story.
The story discloses details of how Stuxnet was developed and deployed based on research conducted by cyber warfare expert John Bumgarner, a retired U.S. Army special-operations veteran and former intelligence officer, who is chief technology officer of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit group that studies the impact of cyber threats.
The Stuxnet virus created havoc in computers that control Iranian centrifuges designed to enrich uranium in the Islamic republic’s underground Nantaz nuclear facility and is believed to have set the program back by several months. It reportedly affected 1,000 of Iran's estimated 8,000 centrifuges.
In a second cyber war incident, Iran said last month that it had discovered traces of the Duqu virus on which Stuxnet was based but had developed software to stop it before it created damage. Security software company Symantec Corp said in October that it had noticed a virus with a code similar to that of Stuxnet.
Unlike Stuxnet, which is designed to take out control systems, Duqu is intended to collect data in advance of a cyber-attack.
Stuxnet is widely believed to have been developed by Israel and the United States as part of a covert effort to prevent Iran from acquiring the capability to build nuclear weapons. An enhanced upgraded version of the virus is reported to be close to completion.
It is difficult to see the virus attack on the Iranian computers independent of the assassination of at least three key Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years as well as a series of explosions in Iran.
A blast last month at the Bid Ganeh Revolutionary Guards base 48 kilometers west of Tehran killed 17 people, including General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a key figure in the Islamic republic’s missile development program. Iran’s assertion that the explosion was an accident has widely been greeted with scepticism. Iranian officials acknowledged that the explosion happened as scientists were working on weapons that could be used in an attack on Israel.
Iranian officials however denied that a second blast in Isfahan days after the Bid Ganeh incident involved a nuclear facility in the city where raw uranium is believed to be converted to uranium hexafluoride, the gas used in centrifuges in the initial phase of the process to enrich yellow cake.
The officials initially said the blast was related to a military exercise but later denied that any explosion had occurred. At least two more unconfirmed explosions are reported to have happened at facilities that host Iranian Shahab-3 medium-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Two Iranian nuclear scientists, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davan and Majid Shahriari, were targeted in bombings in Tehran late last year in separate attacks. Mr. Abbasi-Davan survived the attack and was subsequently appointed as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization while Mr. Shahriari was killed. The modus operandi in both attacks was the same: a motorcyclist who attached a bomb to the vehicles that they were travelling in.
In related incidents, nuclear scientist Darioush Rezaie was killed in Tehran by gunmen in Tehran in July of last year while Massoud Ali Mohammadi died in a bombing in the Iranian capital in January 2010. A Tehran court convicted in August Majid Jamali Fashi to death on charges of having been involved in the murder of Mr. Mohammedi on behalf of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
The incidents are believed to be part of a covert campaign designed to complement ever tougher sanctions imposed on Iran and make a military strike against Iranian nuclear targets less likely.
Cyber warfare expert Mr. Bumgarner told Reuters that the fake soccer websites were part of a far larger effort to create a smoke screen behind which the Stuxnet virus attack could be launched undetected. Mr. Bumgarner said that an earlier virus, Conficker, that infected millions of computers in 2008 and was still dormant in many of those computers across the globe enabled the creators of Stuxnet to launch another attack with an improved version of the virus whenever they were ready.
While such an attack is likely, it is less likely to employ soccer as a deception.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
Iranian Azeri soccer protests raise spectre of Turkish-Iranian-Syrian proxy war
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Nationalist and environmental soccer protests in... more
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Nationalist and environmental soccer protests in recent months in the Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums in Tabriz, the capital of the Iranian province of Eastern Azerbaijan, have raised the spectre of ethnic strife in the Islamic republic and a Turkish-Syrian-Iranian war using ethnic proxies.
The sporadic protests come as regional tension is mounting over the crisis in Syria as a result of President Bashar al-Assad’s eight month-old brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters.
With increasing pressure on Turkey to intervene in Syria, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutuoglu on Tuesday appeared for the first time to leave the door open for possible Turkish military intervention, Mr. Davutuoglu warned at a news conference that Turkey was "ready for all possible scenarios" but had as yet not considered military intervention and didn’t want to.
Mr. Davutuoglu appeared in statements at his news conference and interviews with Turkish media to be deliberately creating confusion about Turkish intentions. The foreign minister told private Turkish television channel Kanal 24 that Turkey may create a military buffer zone inside Syria should tens of thousands of Syrian seek refuge in Turkey. At his news conference, Mr. Davutuoglu said that a buffer zone was "not on the agenda."
The prospect of greater Turkish involvement in the Syrian crisis coupled with Turkey’s decision this weekend to impose economic sanctions on Syria alongside the Arab League raises the spectre of a tit-for-tat proxy war that would involve not only Syria and Turkey but also Syria’s main backer, Iran. Turkish officials are concerned that Syria and Iran, both of which have effectively halted their security cooperation with Turkey, will step up support for Turkish Kurdish guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) that in recent months has increased its attacks on Turkish targets.
Fears of a war using proxies are fuelled by Turkey’s tacit support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) formed by Syrian military defectors who have been seeking to protect Syrian protesters and have attacked Syrian military targets. Some 1,500 of the 8,000 Syrian refugees in eastern Turkey are members of the FSA. Turkey has denied supporting the defectors but has facilitated media interviews with FSA commanders whose troops have their own camp on the Turkish side of the border.
The soccer protests in Tabriz signalling a rise in Azeri nationalist sentiment suggest that in an escalating war by ethnic proxies Turkey could support secessionist sentiments among its Turkic brethren in predominantly Azeri Eastern Azerbaijan that borders on the former Soviet Turkic republic of Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally.
In the latest soccer incident in Tabriz, fans of Tabriz soccer club Traktor Sazi FC, a flashpoint of Iranian Azerbaijan’s identity politics that is owned by state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO), wore shirts with the Turkish and Azerbaijan flags and raised the Azerbaijani flag during last week’s league match against Fajr-e Sepasi of Shiraz, according to Iranian Azeri nationalists and various Iranian blogs.
The “Iranian regime will … charge them with separatism and even arrest them. The main (Iranian concern) is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,” News.Az quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World Azerbaijani’s Congress, as saying. Mr. Rahimli was referring to Eastern Azerbaijan by its nationalist Azeri name.
A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, confirmed the incident, charging that the soccer fans had employed “separatist symbols” and shouted separatist slogans during the match, according to The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Raja News accused the fans of promoting “pan-Turkish” and “deviant objectives”. It urged authorities to ban nationalists fans from entering soccer stadiums.
The protests during the match against the Shirazi club follow similar protests in September and October sparked by a refusal by the Iranian parliament to fund efforts to save the environmentally endangered Lake Orumiyeh as well as anti-government protests in Tehran Azadi Stadium during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and at a ceremony in May after the death of Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Last week’s protests in Tabriz were the sixth time this year that anti-government sentiment spilled onto the soccer pitch, one of the few places that strength of numbers and moments of intense passion encourage expressions of dissent. The Azeri protests are fuelled by an Azeri sense of being discriminated against.
A decision by security forces in early October to bar fans entry into the stadium during a match against Tehran’s Esteghlal sent thousands into the streets of Tabriz shouting “Azerbaijan is united" and ““Long live united Azerbaijan with its capital in Tabriz.” Scores were injured as security forces tried to break up the protest. Cars honking their horns choked traffic.
“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are historically derided as stupid and stubborn. I remember incidents going back to the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standing observer of Iranian soccer.
Iranian soccer pitches are battlefields for Mr. Ahmadinejad, a soccer fan who sees the game as a way to polish his tarnished image, and fans who view it as a venue to express dissent.
A 2009 cable from the US embassy in Tehran disclosed by Wikileaks describes how Mr. Ahmadinejad has sought with limited success to associate himself with Iran’s national team in a bid to curry popular favor.
The Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) postponed in February league matches in Tehran in a bid to prevent celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution from turning into anti-government protests inspired by the anti-government protests in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled presidents Zine el Abedine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
The Legs of the Throne: Kings, Elites, and Subjects in Sasanian Iran
Uncorrected Proof. “The Legs of the Throne: Kings, Elites and Subjects in Sasanian Iran (c. 220–651 CE).” In The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by J.P. Arnason and K.A. Raaflaub. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
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Cynicus Americanus: a blog on American policy toward MENA
A blog on U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Africa, why it must be radically reformed to support the Arab Spring, Iran's opposition, and minorities in the region, and how to do it. Focus on the history of U.S./MENA relations, connections between MENA and Western civil society, human rights, women's movements, political economy, the dangers of American Islamophobia, U.S. responses to Islamist political movements, and the use of social media in fostering democratization.
My goal is to develop a forum on American policy toward the Middle East and North Africa and its influence on the... more My goal is to develop a forum on American policy toward the Middle East and North Africa and its influence on the prospects for democratic transition in the region. I use my background in the humanities, including political philosophy, history, and literature, to get a fresh view of what’s happening in MENA and how America can help.
The Art and Ritual of Manichaean Magic: Text, Object and Image from the Mediterranean to Central Asia
In Objects in Motion: The Circulation of Religion and Sacred Objects in the Late Antique and Byzantine World. Ed. H. Meredith, 73-88. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2011.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the global phenomenon of Manichaean magical practice. Studies of magic in... more The purpose of this study is to investigate the global phenomenon of Manichaean magical practice. Studies of magic in the Classical, Semitic, Iranian and South Asian cultural spheres have, to a large extent, ignored the parallel traditions of Manichaean magic that grew up alongside these more dominant traditions. While an impressive body of literature has accumulated around pagan, Jewish, and Christian magic in the antique Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, since 1947 only a handful of articles have been published dealing with Manichaean magic. This is in part because of the small corpus of Manichaean magical texts that survive and because of the formidable challenges that the material’s array of languages and cultural influences presents. In this study I look globally at the different manifestations of magic in Manichaean communities from the earliest traces of evidence in late antique Egypt and Mesopotamia, to the last manifestations on the early Medieval Silk Road. In doing so I hope to understand what was a constant in Manichaean magic throughout this expanse of time and cultural and linguistic alterations and analyze how these cultural goods traveled and transformed across Eurasia
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Is Iran Turning its Back on Syria?
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s staunchest ally, Iran, is hinting that its support for the embattled leader is not unconditional. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is preparing for the likelihood that Assad will fall.
By James M. Dorsey
THE ONGOING popular revolt in Syria against President Bashar al Assad is putting... more
By James M. Dorsey
THE ONGOING popular revolt in Syria against President Bashar al Assad is putting strains on his relations with Iran’s theocratic ruler Ayatollah Khamenei. Syria’s relationship with Iran has been based on political opportunism rather than a shared common good. Unlike the Islamic republic, Syria has been ruled as a secular country even if its Shia-related Alawite sect dominates the Arab nation’s Sunni Muslim majority.
Nevertheless the alliance with Khamenei puts Assad at odds with his Arab brethren, many of whom see Iran as a subversive power seeking to undermine them with the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. But it gave Assad political clout and allowed him to position himself as the one Arab leader who had not bowed to the West.
Safeguarding Iranian interests
In return Assad was Khamenei’s wedge in the Arab world and his conduit to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Lebanon on Israel’s northern border. Syria was the only Arab state to back Iran in its eight-year long war against Iraq in the 1980s. The Arab League that groups the region’s 22 Arab states has condemned Assad’s brutal crackdown on the anti-government protesters; Saudi Arabia and most other Gulf states have withdrawn their ambassadors from Damascus. The Syrian military’s violent crushing of the protesters in the past six months has isolated Assad internationally. Turkey, and even his staunchest non-Muslim friends, China and Russia, are pulling back and demanding that he halt the bloodshed against his own people.
As the international community anticipates that Assad’s ouster is just a matter of time, Iran’s Khamenei is not about to become the only leader to back a loser. However Khamenei is unlikely to declare his change of heart publicly, for that would make the Islamic republic look like a fair weather friend.
Khamenei, however, will want to salvage what he can by positioning himself for the post-Assad era so that he can safeguard Iran’s strategic interests in Syria. He is conscious that support for Assad erodes Iranian credibility in the Middle East and North Africa. A recent poll conducted in six Arab countries by the Arab-American Institute showed that Iranian popularity had dropped dramatically, while there are reports by defectors from Assad’s security forces that Iranian military personnel and snipers have been deployed alongside the Syrian leader’s acolytes to fire on protesters. Khamenei is said to be signalling that their alliance may not be eternal.
Writing on the wall
Going by the Iranian state-run media Khamenei and other Iranian leaders are for the first time starting to prepare for a world without Assad.
To be sure, the Iranian press continues to give loud support to Assad and denounce the protesters as foreign agents backed by the United States, Britain and Israel. Iranian news agencies still allege that millions are on the streets of Syrian cities to express their support for Assad. But for the first time, the media are also reporting on Syrian military attacks on unarmed protesters, quoting human rights activists, and not just echoing Syria’s official version that it is battling armed Al Qaeda-inspired gangs operating on behalf of foreign powers.
In fact, the Iranian media have started to go further, calling on Assad to engage the protesters and embark on a road of reform rather than rely on military might to resolve his domestic problems. "Assad's salvation is in reforms and not in the barrel of the gun," read a recent headline in Jomhouri Eslami, a newspaper with close ties to Khamenei.
The newspaper reported that the Syrian military had killed hundreds of civilians in the cities of Homs and Dera’a. "A question which Assad and his advisers have to answer is: how long can they continue with armed confrontation and violence? Can they use more violence than Gaddafi and bombard demonstrators like him? Did Gaddafi's use of violence return the people to their homes?" Jomhouri Eslami asked in reference to Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gaddafi’s bitter war against rebels seeking to overthrow him. The paper’s comments are remarkable given the United Nations-authorised no-fly zone in Libya and NATO backing for the rebels.
Losing Iran would leave Assad completely isolated – especially in the wake of Turkish warnings that Ankara can no longer stand idly by as the killing in Syria continues. The writing is clearly on the wall for the embattled Syrian president.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.
Iranian soccer fans protest government’s failure to rescue Lake Orumiyeh
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian authorities have arrested scores of soccer... more
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
By James M. Dorsey
Iranian authorities have arrested scores of soccer fans and protesters demanding during a match this weekend that the government take measures to prevent Lake Orumiyeh in the predominantly Azeri northwest of the country from drying up.
The protest followed an Iranian parliament vote against allocating funds to channel water from the Araz River to raise the level of the salt lake that lies between the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan near the border with Turkey. Parliament suggested instead that Azeris living near the lake be relocated.
The protest was the third time this year that anti-government sentiment spilled onto the soccer pitch, one of the few places that strength of numbers and moments of intense passion spark expressions of dissent.
The protest erupted during a match on August 25 in the city of Tabriz between storied Iranian top league team Tractor Sazi SC, a flashpoint of Iranian Azerbaijan’s identity politics that is owned by state-run Iran Tractor Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO), and another local team, Shahrdari Tabriz SC.
“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant insulting slogans. They imitate the sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are historically derided as stupid and stubborn. I remember incidents going back to the time that I was a teenager,” says a long-standing observer of Iranian soccer.
Thousands of fans chanted "Lake Urmia is dying, the Majlis orders its execution" during Tractor Sazi’s match against Shahrdari.
VIDEO: http://youtu.be/9TfXmHS2O3Q
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported that at least 30 ethnic Azeris had been arrested because of the protests, some of them during an iftar, the evening meal when Muslims break their Ramadan fast. Protesters were also reportedly arrested in Ardabil and other Iranian Azerbaijani cities.
RFE quoted Azeri human rights activist Vahid Qaradagli as saying the arrests were designed to prevent further protests. Mr. Qaradagli said tha some 10 million tons of salt would be exposed and pose a risk to the environment and public health if the lake dried up.
Iranian soccer pitches are battlefields for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a soccer fan who sees the game as a way to polish his tarnished images, and fans who view it as a venue to express dissent.
A 2009 cable from the US embassy in Tehran disclosed by Wikileaks describes how Mr. Ahmadinejad has sought with limited success to associate himself with Iran’s national team in a bid to curry popular favour.
Mr. Ahmadinejad went as far as in 2006 trying to lift the ban on women watching soccer matches in Iranian stadiums, but in an early public disagreement was overruled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The funeral in May of a famous Iranian soccer player in Tehran’s Azadi stadium turned into a mass protest against the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad.
Tens of thousands reportedly attended the ceremony for Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed defender and outspoken critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad.
In a rare occurrence, some 1,000 women were allowed to be present during the ceremony. Iran bans women from stadiums in accordance with its strict segregation of genders in public places.
Mourners chanted “Hejazi, you spoke in the name of the people” in a reference to Mr. Hejazi’s criticism of the Iranian president’s economic policies. Mr. Hejazi took Mr. Ahmadinejad in April to task for Iran’s gaping income differences and budgetary measures which hit the poorest the hardest.
The mourners also shouted "Goodbye Hejazi, today the brave are mourning" and "Mr Nasser, rise up, your people can't stand it anymore".
The Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) postponed in February league matches in Tehran in a bid to prevent celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution from turning into anti-government protests inspired by the anti-government protests in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled presidents Zine el Abedine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.