An ominous sense of deja vu. The US invasion of Iraq and rift with France immediately preceded new oil deals between Saddam and the French giant Total. (Seee WW4 REPORT #56) Now, just as Bush is rattling the sabre and hurling WMD accusations at Iran, comes this:

LONDON, March 14 (IranMania) - French state-run Gaz de France is in talks with French oil giant Total and Iranian authorities over participating in a huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) project there, Les Echos daily reported Tuesday.

From Human Rights Watch, March 9:

Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women's rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women's Day, Human Rights Watch said today.

Pejman Akbarzadeh, a member of the Tehran chapter of Artists Without Frontiers and the author of a two-volume work on Persian music, writes in response to Melody Zagami's review in our March issue of Nasrin Alavi's book We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs. Akbarzadeh takes issue with Zagami's use of the word "Farsi" rather than "Persian" to denote the language of Iran. He points us to a piece he wrote in December for the Iranian news and culture website Payvand.com entitled "Farsi" or "Persian"?:

Boy, things are really getting out of hand. Here's how the European double standard on free speech paradoxically legitimizes and strengthens Holocaust revisionism. Europe defends Islamophobia in the name of freedom of expression, while denying that same freedom to the anti-Semites. In juvenile retaliation, Iran demands access to Auschwitz to conduct lugubrious pseudo-scientific "experiments" of the kind the professional deniers ("revisionists") have already surreptitously carried out, and which they love to cite with great glee. How comforting that this once-marginal crowd is now emulated by a regionally powerful government with a seat at the United Nations. From Italy's AKI, Feb. 20:

From Haartez, Feb. 19:

Jewish group: Try Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) is set to file a complaint in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide, EJC president Pierre Besnainou told Haaretz.

From the UK Telegraph, Feb. 12:

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites
Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

How does this square with the fatwa against nuclear weapons reportedly issued by Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year (which predictably failed to accrue any media attention in the West)? From the neo-conservative Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Feb. 17:

Gee, we sure wish this was getting more headlines! The first paragraph is annoyingly sarcastic (the global protests he refers to, of course, have unfortunately not occurred). But the last paragraph is spot on! Why do so few on the supposed left "get it"? From Nick Cohen in The Observer of Feb. 12: