Mustafa Qadri

As protests and celebrations marked the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution in Iran, international pressure on the world’s newest nuclear state is increasing, writes Mustafa Qadri

Thirty-one years ago this week a coalition of religious and secular Iranians ousted the pro-US Shah. The move from the Shah’s superficially modern, Western-centric monarchy to an independent Islamic theocracy in 1979 marked one of the biggest geopolitical shifts in the Middle East in recent history.

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Ordinary Pakistanis still suffer from energy shortages – and are unlikely to benefit from their country’s rich natural resources

· Mustafa Qadri
· guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 August 2009 17:00 BST

Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

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All Eyes On Iran

The fallout from its controversial presidential election has left Iran in a similar position to that faced by Iraq in the lead-up to the US-led invasion, writes Mustafa Qadri

At no point in recent memory has the Islamic Republic of Iran dominated headlines as it has these past four weeks. Virtually all Western governments and mainstream commentators have rushed to condemn the Iranian Government’s violent crackdown on opposition protesters.

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Did Ahmadinejad Steal The Election?

Five days after the election, Iran is still in the grip of massive protests. Now the offer of a partial recount isn’t going to put the genie back in the bottle, writes Mustafa Qadri

Did Ahmadinejad steal the election? That is the question being asked by so many in Iran and around the world.

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Loewenstein delves into the ‘Blogging Revolution’

Reviewed by Mustafa Qadri

Hot on the heels of his last book, My Israel Question (a history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine from the perspective of an anti-Zionist Jewish Australian), freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein delves into the ‘Blogging Revolution’ with a book of the same title.

The greatest virtue of this book is that it is written not from the distant comforts of the West but on the ground in six fascinating and misunderstood countries. In Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China, the reader is taken on a journey through the lives of a variety of people, including but not limited to activists, seeking to engage their society in a social debate on a range of topics from sex to religion and popular culture.

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Israel might choose to attack Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East said today.

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At an international conference on Afghanistan at The Hague, in the Netherlands, the Iranian delegate, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh, responded positively to Barack Obama’s new strategy for winning the war against the Taliban.

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Here is my analysis of the Obama Administration’s new ‘AfPak’ policy for newmatilda.com:

Not All Terrorists Are The Same

Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is much more nuanced than Bush’s “war on terror”, writes Mustafa Qadri. As a starting point, it recognises that al Qaeda and the Taliban are distinct groups

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My first piece in a series on Iran was posted on NewMatilda.com today:

What did Iran ever to do to us?

In the first of a series of articles leading up to the Iranian presidential elections in June, Mustafa Qadri looks at how Iran became the pariah of the West…

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The official, who was not named by local media, said two Iranian AIDS specialists, whose arrests last year sparked concern in the West, are part of a group of four “ringleaders” who were recently convicted of involvement in an alleged U.S.-funded plot to overthrow the Islamic government. Dozens of others have been arrested and interrogated, [...]

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Meanwhile, NATO is looking to protect its supply lines and might have found assistance from Iran, which would reduce its dependence on Pakistan, where supply lines have come under heavy attack.

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The unlawful raid by Iranian security forces on the Tehran rights group run by Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi on December 21, 2008, raises concerns of a broader attempt to silence Iran’s human rights community, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Watch said today.
See also this.

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“That means bringing in the neighbouring countries: Iran, India, and the five Central Asian states, and then resolving some of these regional problems — like the disputes between India and Pakistan, between Iran and the Americans, between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

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“Nobody is seriously concerned about Iranian aggression. There has been no sign of any. But they are upset about Iran’s influence in the region. Also in the background is the concern that Iran might turn East. That’s not discussed very much but that’s certainly a policy concern,” the feisty US political dissident added.

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Lost in the contrived debate over whether Islam is compatible with democracy is a far more important set of questions: what does democracy mean to different societies - not just Westerners or Muslims, but to the Chinese, Tibetans and so on?

Does it matter that no Western government offered material support to the people of Pakistan as they sought to depose their dictator over the past several years?

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The relative lack of critical analysis of the United States’ military aid package to favoured Middle East nations reveals a great deal about contemporary measures of peace and security (Report, August 1). How, exactly, does a $20bn military aid package foment peace? The US offers yet another golden handshake to regimes, Jewish and Arab alike, [...]

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In June of this year I had a letter published in The Guardian regarding the British sailors caught by Iran in disputed waters. A friend has just told me that the letter was also published in The Australian. The version in The Australian goes like this:

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Imagine if a bunch of Iranian sailors were captured between the high seas and British territorial waters (A peculiar outrage, March 30). The media would say they had no right to be there in the first place. They would certainly be paraded on TV. The prime minister would condemn this act of aggression by Iran. And Iran would profess that it was unlawful for Britain to detain its sailors, who were merely undertaking a routine exercise on the high seas. This scenario appears absurd because one cannot think of a circumstance where the Iranian military would be roaming around waters in western Europe. And that absurdity is at the heart of the present situation.

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