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By David Rosenberg www.TheMediaLine.org

There is a new Gulf War underway, but be careful what you call it.

Google unwittingly sparked the conflict in early May when it dropped the name “Persian Gulf” from the body of water separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula. It declined to call it the “Arabian Gulf” or simply “the Gulf,” either, perhaps making its 250,000 square kilometers (97,000 square miles) the biggest landmark on Google Maps to go nameless.

Iran, the modern state of Persia, lost no time in launching an attack on Google. “Google[‘s] fabricating lies… will not have any outcome but for its users to lose trust in the data the company provides,” Bahman Dorri, Iran’s deputy minister of culture and Islamic guidance, told the Fars News Agency.

Google’s nameless decision is the latest in a controversy over the Gulf’s name that goes back to the 1960s and has ensnared everyone from the Asian Games, to the U.S. Navy, to National Geographic magazine. On one side is Iran, which has adopted the Gulf’s Persian name as a symbol of national grandeur; on the other are the Arab Gulf countries, who fear Iran is staking a territorial claim.

“The name of the Gulf has become a highly emotive controversy in the region, to an extent that can be difficult to understand,” Jane Kinninmont, senior research fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Program at London’s Chatham House, told The Media Line.

Google’s decision came only days after Iran’s “National Day of the Persian Gulf,” which is marked April 30 to commemorate the 16th-century battle in which the Iranian navy defeated the Portuguese. A spokesman for Google couldn’t immediately provide any comment on the decision or why it was taken now.

The dispute has taken on an added dimension as the two sides spar over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Saudi Arabia and most of the other Gulf Arab powers have sided with the West in seeking to rein in Tehran and have accused Iranian leaders of fomenting Shiite unrest in their Sunni-majority countries.

Analysts are not sure whether Iran is, in fact, stirring up trouble in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. But Tehran has certainly engaged in symbolic warfare. Last month, its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Abu Musa, an island whose sovereignty is disputed with the United Arab Emirates. Earlier in the year, it staged naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that connects the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, two bodies of water whose names have not attracted any controversy.

Iran framed the Persian Gulf name change as part of a bigger battle with the West and its Arab allies. “The efforts of the [global] arrogance and its Arab allies to remove the name of the Persian Gulf will result in its name becoming more durable,” said Dorri, using the government’s code word for the U.S.

Google Maps is no stranger to political controversy. It was forced to correct how it displays a microscopic island in the Strait of Gibraltar claimed by both Spain and Morocco after erring twice. A year-and-a-half ago, it created an international incident when a Nicaraguan army commander, relying on Google Maps, moved his troops into an area that was in fact in Costa Rica’s territory, taking down a Costa Rican flag and raising the Nicaraguan flag.

The name controversy over the Gulf, however, has no practical importance. To paraphrase Juliet, “What’s in a name? That which we call a gulf, by any other name would still be an international waterway.” Neither Iran nor the Gulf Arabs dispute that.

Nevertheless, history is on Iran’s side. As far back as the ancient Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy, it was known as the Persian Gulf or some variation of it. The 10th-century A.D. Arabic Christian writer Agapius did the same. In more recent centuries, mapmakers have employed the terms Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Basra, and Gulf of Qatif after a port now in Saudi Arabia.

Arab countries typically called it the Persian Gulf until the 1960s, but Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, riding a crest of Arab nationalism and unhappy about Iran’s then-friendship with Israel, lobbied for a name change. Arab nationalism has since receded, but the Arab Gulf has not budged on the issue.

“It’s useful for Iran to whip up nationalistic fervor against its Gulf Arab neighbors as a distraction from its internal economic problems and political infighting,” said Chatham House’s Kinninmont. “That said, the name Persian Gulf is well established in international usage — and the name of a body of water doesn’t have implications for sovereignty.”

The name-calling issue has put outsiders in an awkward position.

Tehran banned National Geographic from newsstands and barred its reporters in 2004 after it published a world atlas that called the waterway the “Persian Gulf” but added the words “Arabian Gulf” in brackets. Demanding a “correction”, Tehran promptly banned the American-owned magazine from Iran. The magazine surrendered.

Iran employed the same tactics two years later when the British news magazine The Economist published an article and map that referred to “The Gulf,” a favorite compromise for those who are trying to steer clear of the controversy. A spokeswoman for the magazine wasn’t available for comment, but an informal search revealed it was using Persian Gulf frequently, including in a 2010 article on the controversy.

The Gulf Arabs have not been above symbolic gestures. Two years ago, they pulled out of the Islamic Solidarity Games, which were being hosted by Iran that year, after they found out that the medals and official logo called the body of water the Persian Gulf. The Iranians refused to back down.

Even the U.S. Navy has annoyed the Iranians. Before it dispatched the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to the area, the navy ordered all personnel in 2010 to call it the Arabian Gulf. When word got out, angry messages began piling up on its Facebook page.

Google seems to have taken a different tack on its Google Earth site, which shows the planet’s natural contours with an overlay of human borders and place names. As of Monday, the waterway was called both the Persian Gulf and the Arabia Gulf, the latter placed below.

By Elad Benari www.IsraelNationalNews.com

The United States is worried that Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima party’s joining a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could result in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities at any given moment, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 10 News last week.

U.S. government officials told Channel 10 News that they believe a Likud-Kadima joint government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran at any moment and perhaps even before the U.S. presidential elections in November.

The report said that when the Americans believed early elections would be held in Israel on September, they thought it meant the attack in Iran would be postponed at least until after the election. Now, with the stabilization of Israeli politics and the current government likely to end its term on schedule, the situation has changed and the Americans are concerned.

According to the Channel 10 report, in order to try and prevent or at least postpone the Israeli decision on the issue, the Americans recently held marathon talks with Israeli officials at all levels.

Israel – like the United States, its European allies, and Gulf Arab states – believe Iran is conducting nuclear work with military applications.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently warned that as long as Iran poses a threat to Israel with its nuclear program, all options are on the table.

“I believe it is well understood in Washington, D.C., as well as in Jerusalem that as long as there is an existential threat to our people, all options to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons should remain on the table,” Barak said.

“I have enough experience to know that a military option is not a simple one,” Barak added. “It would be complicated with certain associated risks. But a radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the world.”

By The Associated Press

Iran claimed Sunday that it had reverse-engineered an American spy drone captured by its armed forces last year and has begun building a copy.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, chief of the aerospace division of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, related what he said were details of the aircraft’s operational history to prove his claim that Tehran’s military experts had extracted data from the U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel captured in December in eastern Iran, state television reported.

Among the drone’s past missions, he said, was surveillance of the compound in northwest Pakistan in which Osama Bin Laden lived and was killed.

Tehran has flaunted the capture of the Sentinel, a top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.

U.S. officials have acknowledged losing the drone. They have said Iran will find it hard to exploit any data and technology aboard it because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.

Hajizadeh told state television that the captured surveillance drone is a “national asset” for Iran and that he could not reveal full technical details. But he did provide some samples of the data that he claimed Iranian experts had recovered.

“There is almost no part hidden to us in this aircraft. We recovered part of the data that had been erased. There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God,” Hajizadeh said.

He said all operations carried out by the drone had been recorded in the memory of the aircraft, including maintenance and testing.

Hajizadeh claimed that the drone flew over Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan two weeks before the al-Qaeda leader was killed there in May 2011 by U.S. Navy SEALs. He did not say how the Iranian experts knew this.

Before that, he said, “this drone was in California on Oct. 16, 2010, for some technical work and was taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan on Nov. 18, 2010. It conducted flights there but apparently faced problems and (U.S. experts) were unable to fix it,” he said.

Hajizadeh said the drone was taken to Los Angeles in December 2010 where sensors of the aircraft underwent testing at an aerospace factory.

“If we had not achieved access to software and hardware of this aircraft, we would be unable to get these details. Our experts are fully dominant over sections and programs of this plane,” he said. “It’s not that we can bring down a drone but cannot recover the data.”

There are concerns in the U.S. that Iran or other states may be able to reverse-engineer the chemical composition of the drone’s radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft’s sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.

There are also worries that adversaries may be able to hack into the drone’s database, as Iran claimed to have done. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.

Media reports claimed this week that Russia and China have asked Tehran to provide them with information on the drone but Iran’s Defense Ministry denied this.

… And Waiting For A Western Attack

F. Michael Maloof articles.BusinessInsider.com

WASHINGTON – The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.

Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran.

Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, warned against an attack on Iran.

“Iran is our neighbor,” Rogozin said. “If Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.” Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia’s defense sector.
Russian Defense Ministry sources say that the Russian military doesn’t believe that Israel has sufficient military assets to defeat Iranian defenses and further believes that U.S. military action will be necessary.

The implication of preparing to move Russian troops not only is to protect its own vital regional interests but possibly to assist Iran in the event of such an attack. Sources add that a Russian military buildup in the region could result in the Russian military potentially engaging Israeli forces, U.S. forces, or both.

Informed sources say that the Russians have warned of “unpredictable consequences” in the event Iran is attacked, with some Russians saying that the Russian military will take part in the possible war because it would threaten its vital interests in the region.

The influential Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper has quoted a Russian military source as saying that the situation forming around Syria and Iran “causes Russia to expedite the course of improvement of its military groups in the South Caucasus, the Caspian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.”

This latest information comes from a series of reports and leaks from official Russian spokesmen and government news agencies who say that an Israeli attack is all but certain by the summer.

Because of the impact on Russian vital interests in the region, sources say that Russian preparations for such an attack began two years ago when Russian Military Base 102 in Gyumri, Armenia, was modernized. It is said to occupy a major geopolitical position in the region.

Families of Russian servicemen from the Russian base at Gyumri in Armenia close to the borders of Georgia and Turkey already have been evacuated, Russian sources say.

“Military Base 102 is a key point, Russia’s outpost in the South Caucasus,” a Russian military source told the newspaper. “It occupies a very important geopolitical position, but the Kremlin fears lest it should lose this situation.”

With Vladimir Putin returning to the Russian presidency, the prospect that he again would order an attack on Georgia as he did in August 2008 also has become a possibility, these informed sources say.

The Russians believe that Georgia would cooperate with the United States in blocking any supplies from reaching Military Base 102, which now is supplied primarily by air. Right now, Georgia blocks the only land transportation route through which Russian military supplies could travel.

Fuel for the Russian base in Armenia comes from Iran. Russian officials believe this border crossing may be closed in the event of a war.

“Possibly, it will be necessary to use military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia,” according to Yury Netkachev, former deputy commander of Russian forces in Transcaucasia. Geography of the region suggests that any such supply corridor would have to go through the middle of Georgia approaching Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi given the roads and topography of the country.

In September, the Russian military plans to hold its annual military exercises called Kavkaz 2012. However, informed Russian sources say that preparations and deployments of military equipment and personnel already have begun in anticipation of a possible war with Iran.

These sources report that new command and control equipment has been deployed in the region capable of using the Russian GPS system, GLONASS for targeting information.

“The air force in the South Military District is reported to have been rearmed almost 100 percent with new jets and helicopters,” according to regional expert Pavel Felgenhauer of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.

In 2008, Felgenhauer pointed out, Kavkaz 2008 maneuvers allowed the Russian military to covertly deploy forces that successfully invaded Georgia in August of that year.

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov already has announced that new Spetznaz, or Special Forces units, will be deployed in Stavropol and Kislovodsk, which are located in the North Caucasian regions.

Russian sources say that the Russian military believes that if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, it may deploy forces into Georgia and warships in the Caspian Sea with the possible help of Azerbaijan, which since has stated that it will not allow its territory to be used by Israel to launch an attack on neighboring Iran.

There had been speculation that given the improved relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, the Jewish state may use bases from which to launch air attacks on neighboring Iran’s nuclear sites. Israel recently agreed to sell Azerbaijan $1.6 billion in military equipment.

A further irritant to Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili is the prospect that Russian assault airborne troops, or VDV units, with helicopters could be moved into Georgia’s two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These two provinces were taken by the Russian military during the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Initially they were declared by Moscow to be independent countries, but now the Kremlin is indicating they may be annexed to Russia.

Similarly, Lt. General Vladimir Shamanov, commander of the VDV, has announced that Russian troops in Armenia will be reinforced by paratroopers, along with attack and transport helicopters.

“The Russian spearhead (from the Transcaucasia region) may be ordered to strike south to prevent the presumed deployment of U.S. bases in Transcaucasia, to link up with the troops in Armenia and take over the South Caucasus energy corridor along which Azeri, Turkmen and other Caspian natural gas and oil may reach European markets,” Felgenhauer said.

“By one swift military strike, Russia may ensure control of all the Caucasus and the Caspian states that were its former realm, establishing a fiat accompli the West, too preoccupied with Iran, would not reverse,” he said.

“At the same time, a small victorious war would unite the Russian nation behind the Kremlin, allowing it to crush the remnants of the prodemocracy movement ‘for fair elections,’ and as a final bonus, Russia’s military action could perhaps finally destroy the Saakashvili regime.”

Putin has made no secret that he despises Saakashvili and with his return to the presidency, he may consider taking out the Georgian president as unfinished business. Just as in 2008, Putin will not have much to worry about if he sends Russian troops into Georgia, since there was muted reaction from the U.S. and the European countries to the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation.

Probably Douglas Murray’s finest speech delineating the inane moral garbage emanating from Western academicians on the Iranian nuclear crisis. From January 2012.

By Max Fisher www.TheAtlantic.com

It’s not revolution, exactly, but wearing a Toby Keith t-shirt is more subversive than you might think.

In the mass theater piece that was Friday’s parliamentary election in Iran, one of the players showed up with an unwelcome prop. A young man voted in Tehran, as shown in the above photo, while wearing a t-shirt that would be considered ironic in the U.S., but seems downright rebellious in Iran. In case you can’t make it out, the shirt reads, “God Bless America / Toby Keith / Pre-Concert Party / October 8, 2004.” There’s an American flag on the shirt, which is a bold fashion choice any day in Iran, but especially on a day when the state-run media are out and the security services are likely to be even touchier than usual.

The photo is funny — this kid’s got chutzpah — but it’s also a reminder of the challenges of protesting Iran’s political system, and even of the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of cultural tension between Iran and the West.

This is Iran’s first election since the rigged 2009 vote that reinstated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and launched the “green movement” protests, and the government is taking them very seriously. We in the West often take Iranian elections as a farce, and it’s true that the country is not a democracy, but it does have some modest democratic features. Elected legislatures have actual powers (though not many), reformist parties are represented (though not well), and while the unelected Supreme Leader dominates the government, citizens do expect a say. After Iran’s global humiliation in the 2009 election, everyone is eager to see how Iran’s “democracy” functions.

Ahmadinejad called on Iranians to vote in order to “smack the face” of foreign “enemies,” an unintended admission that Iran’s autocratic backsliding is an embarrassment to the country and a sign of the regime’s weakness. Wouldn’t you know it, state media report 65% turnout, almost exactly the number that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated as his official goal. Meanwhile, an anonymous source in Tehran told PBS, and the BBC also found, that polling stations were deserted. So are the streets: unlike in 2009, the regime seems to have successfully deterred or prevented mass protests, most likely by a combination of imprisoning and intimidating activists and preemptively deploying security forces.

An Iranian democracy activist doesn’t have any good choices today. Protesting seems to be off the table, and after the violence many activists suffered in 2009, it’s not hard to understand why. Voting is an unattractive option, since the regime is clearly using today’s vote in an attempt to boost their own legitimacy, and participating would help them out. But boycotting is never an effective choice, since it only ensures the activists will further marginalize themselves. And, even if candidates range on the ideological spectrum “from pitch black to dark gray,” as Karim Sadjadpour told the New York Times, that’s still a chance to effect some tiny change. The dilemma seemed to trouble even opposition figure and former President Mohammad Khatami, who first called for a boycott and then ended up voting, enraging some activists who saw it as a betrayal.

So you’ve got to hand it to the young man in this photo, who seemed to figure out a clever way to protest the election — wearing the flag of his government’s #1 enemy — while still making sure his vote is included. It’s a small but brave way to thumb his nose at the system without excluding himself entirely, as boycotters did Friday.

There are also some subtle, though perhaps unintended, cultural factors at play in this photo. Yes, the Iranian government regularly and consistently depicts America and all things Western as the most severe mortal threats to Iran. It’s not enough to hate American foreign policy: Western music, Western literature, even Western hairstyles are treated as tentacles of the great American menace. And, yes, Iranian nationalism is a real cultural force, including among reformers and democratic activists, and that nationalism often includes a certain hostility toward the U.S., which is after all destroying their economy with sanctions. Wearing an American flag on election day suggests a rejection of the anti-Americanism that undergirds Khamenei’s narrative of the Iran-West conflict, and that conflict after all undergirds much of the regime’s legitimacy.

Or maybe he just thought it would be funny to wear a Toby Keith shirt on election day. Because foreign media in Iran were even more restricted than usual Friday, and because Iran’s repressive laws and cruel security services make honest public discussion so difficult, we can’t really know.

By Matthias Williams and Manoj Kumar

(Reuters) – Iran has turned to India for wheat supplies as other sellers divert grain cargoes away from the Middle East country because of sanctions-related payments problems that have caused palm oil imports to grind to a halt.

Indian tea was also added on Thursday, Feb 9, to a growing list of Iran’s food imports that are being disrupted by U.S. and European Union sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to scrap a suspected nuclear weapons programme.

India’s Trade Secretary Rahul Khullar said a private Iranian buyer is interested in importing “a very large quantity” of wheat, which the world’s second-biggest producer of the crop has in surplus.

Khullar, the most senior official in the ministry, suggested India was considering the sale. India wants to step up exports to Iran in a range of goods to settle part of its oil due to Tehran.

“There are UN sanctions which India honours, those don’t cover the export of vast range of products which India can export to Iran,” Khullar told reporters.

“If the EU and the U.S. both want to stop exports to that country, please tell me why I should follow suit? Why shouldn’t I take up that business opportunity?”

“If Europe and the U.S. believe they wish to sanction exports of a large number of items to that country that is their choice. But for us we shall continue business,” the trade secretary said.

In recent days more evidence has emerged showing that Iran is having problems buying rice, cooking oil, and other staples for its 74 million population.

U.S. financial sanctions imposed since the beginning of this year and targeted at Iran’s central bank are playing havoc with the OPEC producer’s ability to buy imports and receive payment for its oil exports, commodities traders said.

Trading sources said that Singaporean firms have stopped supplying Iran with Indonesian palm oil on concerns over the country’s ability to make payments, a day after traders said Malaysian exporters had taken a similar action.

Indonesia and Malaysia account for 90 percent of the global production of palm oil. Most deals for Indonesian palm oil are conducted in Singapore.

“I can confirm that Singaporean firms have stopped. We don’t want to go anywhere near Iran at this moment, it is too risky,” said a trader with a listed Singaporean firm that ships Indonesian palm oil cargoes to the Middle East and Iran.

A trading source from Saudi Arabia whose firm runs a 16,000 tonne a year edible oils refinery in Iran said the refining sector was barely operating.

The halt in palm oil supplies comes on top of Iranian payment problems for Indian rice and European grain to Iran.

Iran imports around 4.5 million tonnes of grain a year, including about 3.5 million tonnes of maize, which is mainly used in animal feed.

It relies on imports to meet more than 60 percent of its maize needs, about 45 percent of its rice demand but only 3 percent of its wheat, figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed for 2010-11.

However, wheat could be used by Iran to replace maize as animal feed, which may explain the approach to India, especially after news last week that Ukrainian maize shipments had been cut in half.

India is expected to harvest a record 88.31 million tonnes of wheat in 2012, while government stocks on January 1 stood at 25.7 million tonnes, more than three times the official target for the quarter ending March 31.

Khullar said Indian tea exports to Iran face payment problems as well. India exported more than 15 million kilograms of tea to Iran worth over $50 million, India state-run Tea Board figures show.

That adds to news that Iran had defaulted on rice payments worth $144 million.

“There were just handful, or a clutch of rice payments which are stuck … more important than the rice payment is the tea payment,” Khullar said.

“Private traders are not dumb. They stop exports when the payment system run into trouble. The actual shipments of rice to Iran are much lower than they had been in previous years,” Khullar said referring to rice exports.

“There are a handful of guys … who have actually exported, whose payment settlement has got stuck in transit.”

While some Asian buyers have cut crude imports from Iran due to payment issues, the sanctions have prompted a plunge in the rial and raised costs of imports for Tehran. The sanctions have also made it more difficult for Dubai-based middlemen to process payments.

A senior lawmaker says Iran is considering a plan to cut off the country’s economic transactions with South Korea’s Samsung. This commercial is from an Israeli cable company offering new subscribers a Samsung Tablet with apps. The Mossad agents in disguise (veils), arrive at the Isfahan nuclear facility and meet up with another Mossad agent who shows them his new Tablet with apps. When one of them pushes the wrong app, the nuclear facility in the distance explodes.

Video sound: The sound doesn’t kick in until the actual ad begins at 0:50.

A comment on the YouTube website protests with this explanation: “The bug is nicknamed khumeni (NOT Khomeini). Its nickname derives from the Hebrew word ‘khum’, which means ‘brown’. Its similarity to the Iranian name Khomeini is a mere coincidence.” The explanation doesn’t detract from the humor at the end as an agent swats a buzzing khumeni.

By J. David Goodman http://TheLede.blogs.NYTimes.com

To celebrate last week’s 33rd anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s triumphant return from exile, Iran re-enacted his arrival at a Tehran airport, using a cardboard cutout to stand in for the late Iranian leader.

Photographs of the ceremony published on Tuesday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency seemed to lend themselves to parody, with Farsi and English Internet satirists treating them as bizarre authoritarian kitsch.

The photos showed a band playing welcome music as dozens of men in dress uniforms clutched roses and lined up on a tarmac for the staged arrival of the cardboard Ayatollah Khomeini.

Also on the tarmac, propped up behind the lines of stone-faced celebrants was another cardboard cutout of the former leader, the father of the modern Iranian state who is revered as divine. This one was a black-and-white image from his Feb. 1, 1979, arrival back in Iran.

The anonymous creator of Cardboard Khomeini has taken part of one of the photographs, the ayatollah’s oversize likeness being carried by two security officers in sunglasses, and pasted it into a variety of iconic images like the Beatles “Abbey Road” album cover, the moon landing and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inauguration. (see selected images below)

Shortly after the airport arrival, another cardboard cutout made an appearance in southern Tehran at Refah School, which served as Ayatollah Khomeini’s base of operations. There, it was joined by officials, including the education minister, who sat in a large circle with the silent version of the revered leader and awkwardly drank tea.

Other satirists online posted the photos with cartoon bubbles of imagined conversations between the nearest official and the inanimate ayatollah.

As translated by The Times, the caption above reads:

Ayatollah Khomeini:
I’m gonna punch this government in the mouth!
I’m gonna create a new government!
My government will provide free water and electricity!
I am going to accomplish many things!

Official:
Go to sleep, piece of cardboard!

In another, the cardboard Khomeini complains that he was not served a glass of tea. “I’m the Supreme Leader! Where is my tea???”

But in a comment on PBS’s Tehran Bureau blog, the writer Jasmin Ramsey worried that her mocking reaction to the images obscured the historical events they symbolized and discredited the sacrifices of other Iranians during the 1979 revolution.

“By laughing at these photos, am I disrespecting the sacrifices of people like my parents who risked everything for their dream of self-determination and sovereignty? By asking that question, am I ignoring the suffering of Iranians who are forced to live with a government they don’t want?

“I have made no sacrifices for Iran. I am not one of the thousands of innocent people who were tortured by the Shah’s forces. Unlike hundreds of thousands of Iranians, I have been spared injury and death from the cruel and bloody Iran-Iraq War.

“By that same token, I was not raised in Iran as a middle-class woman, educated and full of potential, but constrained by the Islamic Republic’s heavy hand. I have only passing experience of how suffocating daily life in Iran can be for young adults with dreams. Perhaps I don’t have the right to laugh at revolutionary ceremonies or question the meaning of laughing at them.

“But I do.”

selected images from CardboardKhomeini.blogspot.com

By Anne Gearan AP National Security Writer

WASHINGTON – Additional U.S. sanctions on Iran are more significant for their timing than their immediate effect on Iran’s economy, coming as the United States and its allies are arguing that Israel should hold off on any military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities to allow more time for sanctions to work.

The U.S. ordered tough new penalties Monday to give U.S. banks additional powers to freeze assets linked to the Iranian government and close loopholes that officials say Iran has used to move money despite earlier restrictions imposed by the U.S. and Europe.

Like previous economic penalties, these are intended to persuade Iran to back off what the West contends is a drive to build a nuclear bomb. Israel increasingly is concerned that sanctions will never be enough to make Iran drop what has become a national priority for a clerical regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

The faster and more effectively the sanctions can be seen to work, the better the case to shelve any plan by Israel to bomb Iran, a pre-emptory move that could ignite a new Mideast war. Taking this initial step against the Iranian Central Bank, the first time the U.S. has directly gone after that major institution, is one way the Obama administration can show momentum now.

Israeli officials have been open about their worry that Iran could be on the brink of a bomb by this summer and that this spring offers the last window of opportunity to destroy bomb-related facilities [before they go deep underground]. Many Israeli officials believe that sanctions only give Iran time to move its nuclear program underground, out of reach of Israeli military strikes.

Israel considers Iran to be its most dangerous enemy and has vowed to prevent it from going nuclear.

Israel’s hawkish foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was in Washington this week and will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday. He refused questions following a meeting on Capitol Hill on Monday, and an Israeli official in Jerusalem said the country’s prime minister has told Cabinet members not to be so outspoken about the possibility of attacking Iran.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a closed meeting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself often has commented about keeping all options on the table in dealing with Iran.

The new, stricter sanctions, authorized in legislation that President Barack Obama signed in December, will be enforced under an order he signed only now.

The U.S. and Europe want to deprive Iran of the oil income it needs to run its government and pay for the nuclear program. But many experts believe Iran will be able to find other buyers outside Europe.

The European Union announced last month it would ban the import of Iranian crude oil starting in July. The U.S. doesn’t buy Iranian oil, but last month it placed sanctions on Iran’s banks to make it harder for the nation to sell crude. The U.S., however, has delayed implementing those sanctions for at least six months because it is worried about sending oil prices higher at a time when the world economy is struggling. Iran exports about 3 percent of the world’s oil.

White House spokesman Jay Carney denied that Monday’s unexpected announcement of new banking sanctions was a sign of heightened worry about an Israeli attack.

“There has been a steady increase in our sanctions activity and this is part of that escalation,” he said.

Carney said U.S. sanctions on Iran already are squeezing Iran’s economy and have exacerbated tensions within the Iranian leadership.

“There is no question that the impact of the isolation on Iran and the economic sanctions on Iran have caused added turmoil within Iran,” he said.

Iran is the world’s third-largest exporter of crude oil, giving its leaders financial resources and leverage to withstand outside pressure. Last year, Iran generated $100 billion in revenue from oil, up from $20 billion a decade ago, according to IHS CERA, an energy consulting firm.

If Iranian oil is prevented from getting to market, other suppliers could make up the difference. The U.S. has been pressuring other Middle East and African nations to step up production for sale to Europe. Saudi Arabia has said it could increase production to make up for any lost Iranian crude.

Iran’s disputed nuclear program became a global concern more than five years ago, when the extent of the country’s research and uranium enrichment began to be known. Since then, a web of international economic and other sanctions have failed to stop Iran’s progress toward a point when it could build one or more nuclear devices.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran is indeed close to that ability but has not yet decided to go ahead. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and denounces sanctions as aggression.

The White House previously had said it would take months to evaluate the likely effect on the fragile global economy before taking the next large steps, including new penalties on the Central Bank.

Now, U.S. institutions are required to seize any Iranian state assets they come across, rather than rejecting the transaction involved.

The value of Iranian assets affected by the new order was not clear. Iran does almost no direct business with the United States after three decades of enmity, but its money moves through the world financial system and its oil is sold in dollars.