From "Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares" by Michael Slackman:

Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a "velvet" revolution
...
Atef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully "welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos."
....
Mr. Memarian said that even in 2004, his interrogators were most interested in several leading reformers, including Mr. Abtahi, who at the time was an adviser to the president. When he was finally released, and after his confession was published by Fars, he was asked to testify before a committee led by the reform government investigating confessions, which included Mr. Abtahi. Mr. Abtahi, who has not been heard from since his arrest on June 16, understood even back then just how vulnerable he was, Mr. Memarian recalled.

"Abtahi said, 'We cannot guarantee anyone's security,' " Mr. Memarian said. " 'We know what happened to you guys. When you leave this building we do not know will happen to you, or what can happen to us in this committee.' "

This just seems so Arthur Koestler. . .very dark.

We hope that Abtahi is soon released and has the opportunity to further work for reform inside the Islamic Republic of Iran despite the so-called "confessions" that the state has wrung out of him.

-- Steve Clemons

TWN invited Pinkerton to share this 'provocation' on the subject of health care reform in order to generate healthy discussion and debate here on the blog. We look forward to civil, informed discussion -- but be respectful.

Why the Health Care Debate Is Boring -- And How to Make It Interesting!

Is there a bigger snooze than "health care reform"? Any article that begins "A better plan to provide health care . . ." is likely to lose most of its readership in the first sentence.

But at the same time, few categories of news are more compelling than medical breakthroughs -- or medical calamities, or medical news in general. People like to learn about new treatments and cures, and they are also fascinated by epidemics, disasters, autopsy reports, environmental dangers, and information about defective products and recalls.

Thus the paradox: "Health care" is dull, but "medicine" is compelling.

To put it another way, "health care" is theoretical: Who finances it, and how? Who gets it, and how? Such a policy debate is obviously important; it is just not very interesting.

Discussions of health care policy are like discussions of economics. In fact, health care policy is a subset of economics -- the studying of the allocation of scarce resources. And while some find health care economics so interesting that they make it their life's work, to most people, it's just more dismal science.

But "medicine" is intensely practical. It's about you. What medical news should you click on? Or which medical drama should you watch on TV? Which medical thriller should you read? What medicines should you take? What advertisements should you consider and evaluate? Which doctor, or hospital, should you go to?

In other words, while only a tiny fraction of the population is really interested in health care policy, near 100 percent are interested in medical matters of one kind or another.

So the concept of "health care" has managed to do the seemingly impossible: It has drained away the flesh-and-blood fascination that people have for their bodies, and for other people's bodies.

It's almost as if the Washington wonks -- right as well as left -- have conspired to make "health care" boring, so that ordinary people, interested as they are in "medicine," won't bother them, the wonks, as they do their work on "health care." Could it be that liberal health-care experts wish to cook up schemes for rationing and cost-control far from the public spotlight--and that conservatives, wallowing in the minutiae of "medical savings accounts," wish for similar obscurity?

If so, then the policy experts have gotten their wish: "Health care" is too boring for most people to worry about; instead, people tune into "medicine."

But of course, this bifurcation of "health care" and "medicine" will not last for long, because soon health-care policy will impinge, in a big way, on medicine. And that's when, most likely, the wonks' policies will hit the fan, because it's unlikely that anything that health-care theorists come up with in Washington will prove pleasing to practical-minded medical consumers.

Indeed, there's a grand canyon between the tiny elite of health-policy-propounders and the masses of mere medicine-consumers.

Right now, politicians, reading from talking points provided by their nerdy staffs, can promise anything. But if and when medical consumption starts really to change, most likely for the worse, that will be a different story for previously apathetic Americans. "Controlling costs" is a great buzz phrase, but costs that are controlled mean real pain for real people.

Now if the Obama Administration and the Congress can control costs in just the right way -- if they succeed in implementing a fair health care plan that cuts only "waste, fraud, and abuse" -- they will, of course, be heroes to the voters. But if, maybe, a new health care plan causes shortages, or prevents the creation of new drugs and therapies, or shuts down hospitals, look out. An estimated 25 million Americans are members of disease-support groups; they might suddenly realize that "health care" has affected the progress of "medicine."

So how to make "health care" interesting?

Easy. Call it "medicine"; as marketers say, tangibilize the intangible. For instance, could Michael Jackson's life have been saved if an automated external defibrillator (AED) had been in his house? An AED costs about $1300. That's a lot of money, but the cost of these life-saving devices be brought down through volume production and discounts.

Or how about Steve Jobs and his liver transplant? We shouldn't begrudge him his new liver, but each of us should ask: "Where's mine, if I were to need one?" Yes, liver transplants are expensive, but how much cheaper would they be if new livers were grown from test tubes, and if the surgery could be robot-ized? Or if some new and cheaper technique for dealing with liver failure were created?

And then there's Barack Obama himself. During his June 24 ABC News "town hall" from the White House, the President was asked a pointed question by Dr. Orrin Devinsky, of New York University, and gave a revealing answer.

Devinsky observed that elites often propose health care plans that restrict options for the general public, knowing that they themselves will always have the personal wealth to buy the best possible coverage on the open market. And so Devinsky asked Obama if he would commit to social solidarity, and lead by example -- by pledging not to seek out extraordinary medical help for his family, beyond what his own proposed plan would provide. As reported by ABC's Jake Tapper and Karen Travers, Obama, a multimillionaire even before he became president, refused to make such a pledge, saying, instead, "If it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care."

Well, all right then. Now we are getting some human-interest drama. And are we perhaps getting a little bit of hypocrisy, a double standard or two? To Obama the political leader, "health care" is a policy prescription for the nation. To Obama the family man, "medicine" is personal--his own business, to take care of on his own.

But for advocates of sweeping health care "reform," the personal is political -- or at least it should be. If it's a good standard for him, then it should be a good standard for everyone else as well.

Yet for now, the debate over "health care" is too narrow--a battle between liberals enamored of central planning -- oops, I mean the "public option" -- and conservatives enamored of "market forces." And so regular people tune out, even though both the left and the right policy elites seem to agree that "medicine" is too expensive. But Americans will tune back in, with a vengeance, when the scrimping results of new health-care policy begin adversely to affect real medical care.

Thus the challenge to those of us who trust medical providers more than we trust health care experts: Let's get the focus on medical outcomes, now, before the policy-process people do real damage.

Medicine is not only more important than health-care policy -- it's a more interesting, more vital, story.

-- James Pinkerton

I don't know whether this is a July 4th gift -- or a warning of a nationally divisive presidential run. But the news is big and the date she has chosen for the announcement -- the initial punctuation point for America's democracy -- seems strangely appropriate.

For those who have been offering me great travel advice on my Italy excursion, many thanks. I have spent a few outstanding days in Rome -- though I never got to see the one time home of Augustus Caesar, one of my goals for the trip. Got close though -- and then watched the BBC video.

I want to offer a pre-introduction of Hugo Dobson, a friend from the UK I ran into in Rome who will be here next week covering the G-8 Summit. He will be issuing dispatches for The Washington Note from the G-8, so give him a warm welcome.

Today, I'm driving north up to a magnificent Umbrian estate outside Perugia with Helene Cooper of the New York Times, Elise Labott of CNN, and others on this trip. Cooper let the world in on what we were doing a couple of weeks ago in this piece by her in the Times' travel pages. I've not done anything like this before with a largish group and am looking forward to the break.

Tomorrow, in case any readers are in Spoleto, I may be up at this interesting tribute to Jerome Robbins thanks to one of his long time friends I met on the plane over here.

More soon -- and again, Happy July 4th!

-- Steve Clemons

The dispatch that follows appeared in Salonand at Juan Cole's Informed Comment.

A clip from Tehran Dispatch: Basijis Hang Around, Do Nothing. . .

And on the 13th day Michael Jackson died. Voice of America and BBC Persian are back up, if intermittently, and we crowd around like the rest of the world for the latest news. It is almost a relief. Being a full-time revolutionary is hard work, difficult to sustain. Seeing the non-stop coverage, the obvious distraction of his passing, we grimly joke that Michael was a martyr for the cause. At least he had the decency to delay his death until the worst violence had already passed.

Things are going back to their regular marks. In the afternoons the parks fill up again with old ladies and young couples. There's badminton and soccer for kids to play at night. Well-dressed men in jackets and dress pants exercise on the cardio equipment provided by the city. The scenes around the squares, lately the places of so much celebration and trouble, are almost back to normal. Traffic is back. A car flies towards Ariashahr Square, a young man with slicked back hair and aviator glasses leans out of the passenger window chest first. He removes his shades and turns his palms upwards, beseeching the ladies in the car next to him to pull over. Unimpressed, or maybe they're being coy, the girls pull away and race ahead of their pursuers. The two boys give chase. Cops and basijis hang around the circle but do nothing, what do they care...?

Every young person I see I wonder, What were you doing three weeks ago? Who were you then? I look for signs of subversion. A girl wears a green headscarf. A kid shifts gears in his Kia Pride with an arm encased in a green cast. What does it mean? Together, in a crowd, the color green added up to something. Alone, spread apart and without context, they are just moments of coincidence.

-- Steve Clemons

Political journalist Robert Dreyfuss has a terrific survey piece on Iran's tumultous political scene in the aftermath of recent elections there. Dreyfuss was in Tehran and is now back in Washington.

Here is a clip from "Iran's Green Wave", cover story of The Nation this week (but do read the whole piece):

Several factors combined to make Moussavi a viable candidate. First, with organizational and financial support from the Rafsanjani family and wealthy mullahs and businessmen tired of Ahmadinejad's cronies running the economy, Moussavi built a formidable countrywide campaign machine. Second, the brilliant Green Wave strategy, designed by a 27-year-old whiz kid named Mostafa Hassani, caught fire, and soon green ribbons, armbands, headbands, scarves and flags festooned Iranian cities. "I wanted something simple, something that could be replicated even by poor people in remote villages," the long-haired, lanky Hassani told me, sitting in Moussavi's cluttered campaign headquarters during election week. And then, on June 3, Moussavi electrified Iran during an unprecedented televised debate with Ahmadinejad. With the president sitting across from him, Moussavi called Ahmadinejad a liar and accused him of pushing Iran toward "dictatorship." The next day, green-wearing crowds began chanting, "Death to the liar!" and "Death to the dictator!" Nothing like it had ever been seen in Iranian politics.

Moussavi had another not-so-secret weapon: his wife, Zahra Rahnavard. A noted intellectual and sculptor, Rahnavard campaigned alongside her husband, sometimes holding his hand. Clearly a liberated woman, she called for an end to the much-despised harassment of women by the cultural police and backed equal rights for women. At a vast rally in downtown Tehran, I watched her mesmerize the crowd. "We are going to make a revolution in the revolution!" she cried. "We are going to make it modern and up-to-date!" As one, tens of thousands of people chanted: "Moussavi! Rahnavard! Equal rights for men and women!" Women in pink lipstick and with blond highlights in partly uncovered hair shouted beside women in black chadors.

And then there was the Obama factor. Countless Iranians watched his June 4 Cairo speech, and its transcript was parsed word by word. By offering to respect Iran rather than locating it in the "axis of evil," Obama appealed to secular nationalists, activists seeking greater individual freedom and businessmen hungering for an end to the sanctions strangling Iran's economy. Nearly everyone I spoke with during the ten days I was in Iran brought up Obama, whether I asked or not. At a frenzied Moussavi rally in the city of Karaj, west of the capital, I met a campaign organizer, Hojatolislam Akbar Hamidi, 48, a distinguished cleric who's known Moussavi for more than twenty years. "I listened to Obama's speech, and it made me very happy," he told me. "But we're afraid that some Iranian authorities do not understand the positive message of Obama." In interviews at polling places on election day, dozens of voters praised Obama's opening to Iran. At a Tehran mosque where hundreds of people were lined up to vote, several dozen crowded around as I asked an older woman why she supported Moussavi. When I suggested, "Perhaps Moussavi and Obama might meet someday soon?" the crowd, translating for one another, erupted in cheers, laughter and thumbs-up signs.

More prosaically, many plugged-in Iranians told me that nearly the entirety of Iran's business class is fed up with Ahmadinejad's bellicose rhetoric, and they want to put an end to sanctions. Saeed Laylaz, an economist and former official at the Ministry of Industry, said that as a result of sanctions critical sectors of the economy--including computers and information technology, oil and natural gas, and civil aviation--are suffering badly. "Ahmadinejad's is the first right-wing government since the revolution, and it has been a catastrophe," he said. "You cannot run the government with populism. You need experts. You need technocrats. You need planners." (Laylaz was arrested days after the election; he's still in detention.) To get a sense of what the business community thinks, during election week I attended a forum packed with executives at the offices of Etelaat, a liberal newspaper, where eight former ministers of oil, industry and mining slammed the government over its incompetence. Later, at Moussavi's campaign office, one of them, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, who was minister of industry under Khatami, told me that he'd put his business on hold to travel across the country working for Moussavi. "I'm a businessman, and I've been reluctant to get into politics," he told me over several cups of tea. "It's the desire of most of us in the business community to rebuild relations with the United States," he said. "It doesn't mean that we have to give up our independence or our dignity."

Besides reformists, students, women and businessmen, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are losing their core constituency: the clergy. And given that Iran is a state run by the priestly class, that might prove their undoing. I spoke to a dozen or so clerics, from low- to mid-ranking mullahs to a few who'd attained the rank of hojatolislam, just below ayatollah. There are hundreds of thousands of mullahs in Iran, perhaps a hundred or more who have attained the rank of ayatollah, and just two dozen or so who have developed sufficient reputation and following to be called grand ayatollah. And more and more of them, including many grand ayatollahs, have joined the opposition. "After the television debates with Ahmadinejad, a large number of mullahs who'd been undecided went over to Moussavi," one hojatolislam told me. They were offended, he said, by Ahmadinejad's insulting attitude toward Moussavi--particularly his rhetorical assault on his wife, Rahnavard, whom he accused of falsifying her academic credentials--and his accusations against Rafsanjani and Khatami. "A president should be polite," the cleric told me. "Impolite behavior and ugliness cannot be accepted."

Another cleric, who campaigned for Moussavi in dozens of Iranian towns and cities, said that the majority of mullahs had abandoned the president. "There is a big gap between Ahmadinejad and the clergy," he told me. "Many of the grand ayatollahs are angry, because the president has taken many actions without consulting with them. They are especially unhappy because he has shown an aggressive face of Islam to the world, and Islam is not aggressive. It is a religion of peace." Some three-quarters of the grand ayatollahs in Iran support Moussavi, he told me. Ten of them sent a joint letter to Ahmadinejad, but he ignored them, he said. Several others have openly castigated the regime for its treatment of protesters.

A very well-connected mullah I talked with said that he is a friend and follower of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. Back in the late 1980s, Montazeri was the designated successor to Khomeini as Iran's Leader, but hardliners--including Khomeini's son and a circle around Khamenei--ousted him, he told me, because of his liberal views and installed Khamenei. Through this mullah and several other intermediaries, both Moussavi and former president Khatami keep in close contact with Montazeri, as well as with many in the clerical establishment in Qom. In the wake of the election Moussavi and his supporters began organizing what they hoped would be a broad consensus among senior ayatollahs to force Ahmadinejad out or, if it comes to that, to replace Khamenei himself. "Khamenei does not deserve the position that he has," the mullah told me. "He has become a politician, and as a politician he has been corrupted." Describing Khamenei in these terms is extremely unusual, and indicates how much the Ahmadinejad-Khamenei axis has lost its legitimacy. "Khamenei has lost the support of many high-ranking clergy in Qom," declared Ibrahim Yazdi in my interview with him.

Trying to pull together this opposition is Rafsanjani, who so far has stayed behind the scenes but according to numerous reports from Iran is playing a critical role in efforts to counter both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. The former president is chair of the Assembly of Experts, a group of more than eighty clerics who have the power, under Iran's Constitution, to appoint or dismiss the Leader. "Rafsanjani has convinced the majority of the Assembly of Experts and several dozen clerics in Qom to support an effort to overturn the election results," a well-connected Iranian told me. According to Yazdi and several other Iranian activists and analysts, at least some of the clergy want to replace Khamenei with a far more moderate, less political council of ayatollahs as a way of restoring consensus in the leadership [see Sarfaraz, "Iran's New Revolutionaries," in last week's issue]. It would in effect be the end of the Khomeini doctrine of velayat-e-faqih ("rule of the jurisprudent"), which is the underpinning of the notion of a Supreme Leader, a concept invented by Khomeini that is far outside mainstream Muslim, and even Shiite, thinking.

And I very much agree with Dreyfuss' kicker on engaging Iran and ignoring the John Bolton types who want to launch a new war. Drefuss, in fact, includes a quote from Richard Dalton who I interview in the blog post below:

If Ahmadinejad and Khamenei retain their iron grip on power, both Iran and the United States will face inevitable pressure to resume diplomacy. "On both sides, the interest in pursuing a dialogue will emerge intact," says Sir Richard Dalton, who served as Britain's ambassador in Tehran until 2006. The start of such talks might be "slightly delayed" in the aftermath of the crisis, he says, but that's hardly a tragedy.

But Obama will have to ignore calls to set a short deadline on such talks. They could easily drag on, well into the middle of next year and beyond. If talks fail to produce immediate results, the president will have to resist arguments from Israeli hardliners and their US allies to take harsh measures against Iran--including military action. Obama's earlier outreach undercut the hardliners and gave a psychological boost to Iran's reformists and to millions of Iranians who saw Moussavi as a vehicle through which to improve US-Iranian relations.

If Obama wants to support the opposition, the best thing he can do is to continue to extend his open hand to Iran.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is a several minute long clip of a short discussion I had with Sir Richard Dalton, former UK Ambassador to Iran from 2002-2006 and editor of a new Chatham House report, Iran: Breaking the Nuclear Deadlock.

Despite Dalton's clear concerns about the unprecedented eruption we have seen recently in Iran, he believes that engagement with Iran's regime should be a top priority.

-- Steve Clemons

(Credit: Jonathan Guyer)

Jonathan Guyer is a Program Associate for the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force.

-- Jonathan Guyer

Caroline Esser is a Research Intern at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.

The unfolding political crisis in Hondruas reminds me of a statement that Imran Khan, world-class cricket player and current member of the Pakistani Parliament, gave at a recent New America Foundation event: the United States can best promote American ideals and positively influence other countries by supporting the democratic process rather than sponsoring one "chosen" leader (or American puppet), as the Bush administration did for years in supporting former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

It seems that Obama has surprised many by doing as Imran Khan advised in Honduras - he has demanded the reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya in the name of democracy.

Daniel Larison, a blogger for the American Conservative, attempts to show a contradiction between the Obama administration's criticism of the coup in Honduras and its support for the protesters in Iran.

Larison claims that in both cases the dissenters rightfully objected to the violation of their countries' democratic institutions. He asks, "Isn't it the case that the response of Honduran political and military institutions to presidential illegalities is exactly the one that most of the Western world has been openly desiring in Iran?"

But what were previously legitimate and progressive efforts to challenge Zelaya's referendum became regressive and anti-democratic when the opposition used military force to expel their democratically elected president from the country. Larison is correct that the people of Honduras had every right to protest their president's violation of the constitution; however, U.S. support cannot and should not extend to military violence.

And there is another distinction between Hondruas and Iran. Honduras has a genuinely democratic system worth supporting, whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran's democracy is largely a facade.

A review of past U.S. policy in Latin America demonstrates the wisdom of Obama's policy. It cannot be forgotten how many times in our recent past we have supported this sort of military coup, covertly facilitating the replacement of a leftist Latin American president in the hopes of expanding our sphere of influence.

The most well known example of this type of thoughtless American foreign policy is the 1973 American-backed coup d'état that removed Salvador Allende from power in Chile and replaced him with General Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who committed countless human rights violations and played a large role in Operation Condor - a brutal effort to eliminate socialist dissenters from the Southern Cone.

Though democratically elected, Allende was ousted because the United States feared his allegiance to the Marxist party. Of course there are less extreme and more recent examples of this sort of American meddling, including President Bush's support of a Venezuelan coup to displace Chavez in 2002.

As Faith Smith has pointed out on this blog (here and here), choosing the side of democracy was no simple matter in the Honduran case because although Zelaya was democratically elected he has recently attempted to alter the Honduran constitution and reform the presidential term limit (never an indicator of a democratically inclined leader).

But Obama is correct to support the democratic process rather than any individual or political party.

On June 28th, Obama made the following statement:

I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

Thus President Obama has simply and wisely stressed the unconditional importance of constitutional law and democratic elections.

Along with the Senate's unanimous decision to pass the Kerry-Lugar Bill which declares "the consolidation of democracy, good governance, and rule of law" as the United States' number one policy commitment Pakistan - President Obama's response to the situation in Honduras indicates that the United States may be carving out a refreshingly modest, principled approach to democracy promotion.

-- Caroline Esser

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's discussion of President Obama's upcoming visit to Russia strikes a cooperative, friendly tone.

But toward the end he quotes John F. Kennedy, who said during the Cuba Missile Crisis that "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."

I think this statement captures the difficulty of getting U.S.-Russian relations on a better footing. It is not easy to have an honest, respectful dialogue when the two sides have opposing national interests on many of the substantive issues that define the relationship.

As I noted yesterday, Robert Legvold provides one of the best explanations I've seen of how we might be able to get there.

-- Ben Katcher

I have the privilege of chatting with many political, economic and foreign policy journalists from around the world. I generally like almost all of them and appreciate their interest, but some stand out above the others on occasion -- and Hoda Husseini of Asharq Al-Awsat was one of these.

My interview with her ran in Arabic, and I can't read it (yet) -- but some of you may be able to handle it.

Now, back to Rome -- where I was just blocked from visiting Octavian's home (Augustus Caesar) on Palatine Hill by some uncreative and unresponsive bureaucrats running an otherwise great archaeological site of one of the world's key ancient power sites.

-- Steve Clemons

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

But now, I have been hearing more and more from senior Obama economic team members about the jobs they hoped for coming at the very tail end of an economic recovery. Others are talking about a GDP recovery -- but not a jobs recovery. They are admitting as well that they underestimated the severity of this recession and its impact on unemployment levels.

And all this while Goldman Sachs and other financial houses have seen their balance sheets get cleaned up and bonuses surge.

Hindery writes:

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the "labor force reserve" because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are "part-time of necessity" (i.e., 8,989,000) or "otherwise marginally attached" (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers - 13,290,000 - have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

It's important to see the entire picture of America's jobs profile -- no matter how unpleasant.

I recognize that credit bubble related recoveries are hard to work out and are usually quite slow -- with job growth at the back end. This all makes sense -- but with Christina Romer out raising expectations again with giddy talk predicting a V-shaped recovery and given the "jobs, jobs, jobs" mantra of President Obama himself -- the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential.

-- Steve Clemons

Roberto Micheletti, the new, temporary, or illegal (take your pick) president of Honduras was interviewed on Univision last night and calmly, but firmly defended the actions of his nation's military which he insists was under the direction of the Supreme Court. With hardened resolve Micheletti vowed to arrest Zelaya upon his return for his flagrant crimes against the constitution.

I'd like to offer a quick recap of the crimes Zelaya is charged with committing against the Honduran Constitution. The current version of the Honduran Constitution was written just as the country emerged from twenty years of dictators and military rule and it includes an article (374) specifically prohibiting any attempt to alter presidential term limits. Zelaya's referendum was an attempt to gain popular support for constitutional alteration of term limits. Article 373 of the Honduran constitution lays out the way in which the constitution can be altered and that is through the National Congress, not through referendums. When Zelaya's referendum was declared unconstitutional by the Congress and the Supreme Court he ordered the head of the army to assist him in carrying out this election. The head of the army refused and was immediately fired by Zelaya; unfortunately for Zelaya the head of the army can only be removed from office by Congress (article 279).

Despite these charges Zelaya is encouraged to reclaim his presidential position by a unanimous UN resolution condemning the coup d'état and demanding Honduras unconditionally reinstate him as president. The OAS issued a similar statement this morning in which they threatened to suspend Honduras' membership if Zelaya wasn't reinstated in 72 hours.

And so the showdown begins. On one side we have Zelaya backed by the international community and on the other is the government of Honduras backed by the majority of its 7.5 million citizens; an unfair fight for sure. According to Honduras' new president, the country will not reinstate Zelaya unless pressured by military force. The only party to have threatened said force is Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who has happily injected himself into the center of the Honduran crisis playing the role of champion for democracy. Would Latin America allow a Venezuelan military invasion to re-seat an unpopular lame duck president? Doubtful.

That leaves economic and political pressure as the strongest negotiating tools. The resolve of the Honduran government may be able to withstand temporarily losing its membership in the OAS, but their economy is in no condition to withstand harsh economic sanctions. The Obama administration has condemned the coup, but they have yet to impose economic sanctions or withdraw U.S. ambassadors from Honduras as other regional leaders have. Latin America waits to see if President Obama will apply the added pressure to Honduras and I'm sure Obama wishes he didn't have to take a stand for a leader such as Zelaya.

I'll be following the situation in Honduras as it unfolds.

-- Faith Smith

As President Obama prepares to visit Russia next week, Columbia University's Robert Legvold has a thought-provoking article on the state of U.S.-Russia relations in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

Legvold helpfully identifies current U.S. policy as "selective engagement and selective containment," while advocating a new framework for the relationship that includes ambitious goals on nuclear non-proliferation, regional security, and energy security.

Legvold explicitly places himself alongside Anders Aslund, Andrew Kuchins, Thomas Graham, and Steven Pifer within what I would call the "realist" camp of Russia analysts, who believe that a new strategic relationship with Moscow based on mutual interests is possible. (I would include Dimitri Simes, Dmitri Trenin and Nikolas Gvosdev in this group as well.)

Legvold offers two reasons why the time is ripe for a renewed effort to improve relations: new leadership in Washington and the onset of the economic crisis, which he suggests is likely to lead to more restrained Russian behavior.

The idea that a sustained economic slowdown will limit Russia's foreign policy options certainly makes sense, but I would be curious to know what Legvold thinks of arguments made by Stephen Sestanovich and others that Moscow's aggressive posture toward Washington is such an essential part of the Putin-Medvedev-led oligarchy's legitimacy that it cannot be abandoned.

On the issues at the heart of the U.S.-Russia relationship, Legvold's argument in favor of collaboration is most persuasive when he addresses the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. This is an area in which both sides have a real and stated interest in working together both to reduce their own arsenals and to prevent proliferation.

On Iran's nuclear program, he suggests that Washington should seek a deal that either allows Tehran to have a nuclear-cycle capability under strict IAEA inspections or an arrangement by which Iran joins an international fuel-service center. Either way, Legvold makes a good point that Russian cooperation is vital and depends on Washington proposing a deal that Tehran can accept. Russia is not going to help Washington coerce Tehran, but may use its leverage as Iran's primary supplier of nuclear equipment to help Tehran get to "yes" on a broader deal.

His calls for a dialogue on the future of Afghanistan and cooperation on transnational threats such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and cyberattacks also make sense.

But while Legvold's argument is dispassionate and cautious in tone, I find his analysis a bit optimistic at times. For instance, he says that

There is no logical reason why the two countries with the lion's share of the world's nuclear weapons cannot create a tighter regime to shrink their own arsenals and pave the way toward arrangements that render safer the programs of other nuclear powers, why the world's largest energy producer and its largest energy consumer cannot fashion a genuine energy partnership, why they cannot work together to mitigate the instability in and around the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, or why they cannot collaborate to ease the integration of rising powers such as China and India into a revamped international order.

This is an ambitious agenda indeed - and to be fair, Legvold cautions that "these goals may not be imminently attainable." Still, some level of cooperation in these areas is necessary if these issues are to form the basis of a strategic partnership, as Legvold proposes.

On the energy issue, it is true that both Russia and the United States benefit from a predictable flow of energy at stable prices, but Legvold fails to tell us what a bilateral strategic energy partnership could accomplish. Energy security is an issue that cuts across many of both Washington's and Moscow's strategic relationships and seems like an area where Moises Naim's concept of "minilateralism" applies.

And while both Washington and Moscow certainly have an interest in a stable post-Soviet space, I am curious whether Legvold would recognize (implicitly) a Russian sphere of influence in that space. If he would not, then it seems that competition rather than cooperation is likely to characterize this aspect of the relationship for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, the issue of how to incorporate China and India into the international system deserves to be addressed between Moscow and Washington at the highest levels, but this seems like an issue where the two sides' interests might diverge at least as much as they converge.

Finally, it would be interesting to know how Mr. Legvold views Russia's likely trajectory over the medium to long-term. Whether Russia's dysfunctional political and economic systems can evolve to meet the needs of the Russian people and provide the resources necessary for an active international security role remain questions to be answered - and surely the answers have profound implications for what Washington's policy toward Moscow should be.

(For a fascinating Russian perspective on Russia's medium-term outlook, reference "The World Around Russia: 2017.")

Overall, Legvold's analysis is refreshingly even-handed and his suggestion that dialogue on these difficult issues can lead to trust and incremental progress over time is persuasive - but he is most certainly correct when he says that achieving real substantive progress will be difficult.

-- Ben Katcher

Center for a New American Security Co-Founder and CEO Kurt Campbell has finally been sworn in today as Barack Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs, the position most recently held by the newly appointed US Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill.

Senator Sam Brownback had a hold on Campbell for a very long time -- and I was working on a blog post preparing to blast the Kansas Senator for his irresponsibility in holding up this nomination and for allowing a simmering cauldron on the Korean Peninsula to near dangerous levels without an Asst Secretary of State in place to focus attention on what was going on there.

Fortunately, I no longer need to do this -- and Campbell, whose spouse is the Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs nominee Lael Brainard, can now give the misbehaving North Korea leadership some of the American attention it craves so much.

North Korea will continue to be a mess -- but it is vital to have someone focused on what is really happening there. I have been a fan of some of our Korea handlers in the past -- like Evans Revere who now heads the Korea Society in New York, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth who heads the Fletcher School at Tufts and is now a part time North Korea envoy, Christopher Hill who is now in Baghdad, and now Kurt Campbell.

This is a vital region that more than anything else needs high level American attention and involvement -- and until this swearing in ceremony today of Kurt Campbell, the Obama administration was not giving enough of either.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman has just given short, but gracious, concession remarks issuing greetings to Minnesota's next US Senator, Al Franken.

Congratulations Al! This is a nice bit of news to get before flying off to Rome.

-- Steve Clemons