{"id":41839,"date":"2014-11-25T18:20:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T18:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=41839"},"modified":"2014-11-25T18:20:21","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T18:20:21","slug":"give-me-that-old-time-nuclear-fatwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=41839","title":{"rendered":"Give me that Old Time Nuclear Fatwa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; when is a tweet not quite a fatwa? when it&#8217;s a tweet! ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>Ayatollah Khamenei&#39;s decree on Banning WMDs <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/xsTIenb4rJ\">http:\/\/t.co\/xsTIenb4rJ<\/a>&#10;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Iran?src=hash\">#Iran<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/IranTalksOman?src=hash\">#IranTalksOman<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/01VwBjjnoY\">pic.twitter.com\/01VwBjjnoY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/khamenei_ir\/status\/532445502173097984\">November 12, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>A day or two ago <strong>Tim Furnish<\/strong> pointed me to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.memri.org\/report\/en\/0\/0\/0\/0\/0\/0\/8222.htm\">recent MEMRI post<\/a> titled:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Tehran Again Offers Khamenei&#8217;s Nonexistent Fatwa In Negotiations As A Guarantee That It Is Not Developing Nuclear Weapons<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can pretty much imagine the content by means of its title, but the piece also contains a lead to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/khamenei_ir\"><strong>Khamenei<\/strong>&#8216;s Twitter feed<\/a>, and thus to the tweet with which I&#8217;ve opened this post.<\/p>\n<p>What to make of it?<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that there are two obvious possibilities &#8212; <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>the Ayatollah is lying, there is no such fatwa\n<li>the Ayatlloah is telling the truth, there is such a fatwa<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Those who are prone to hope may well take the Ayatollah&#8217;s word for it &#8212; whether or not that trust is justified &#8212; while those who are prone to doubt are liable to distrust the Ayatollah&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And so we&#8217;re at that old &#8220;trust but verify&#8221; business again.<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that neither proposition &#8212; that a fatwa exists as claimed, but has not been made public, or that no fatwa exists, and claims to the contrary are simply incredible &#8212; is verifiable, or falsifiable for that matter.  Hunh.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing that is clear from my POV is that the Ayatollah Khamenei is playing this close to his chest. He could very easily write out a fatwa and publish it, and he doesn&#8217;t. He could very easily not have issued a fatwa, which would explain its non-publication. But his refusal to publish a fatwa, while claiming to have issued it, presumably by word of mouth, is a clear indication that he is toying with his interlocutors in the west. And the game is: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I claim to have given a fatwa &#8212; will you take my word for it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He&#8217;s asking for trust, we&#8217;re asking for verification: trust, but verify, it&#8217;s not a new idea. And it seems to me that neither axiomatic doubt nor axiomatic trust is the point, although we are mostly prone to one or the other. <\/p>\n<p>The point is that this is poker.  Perhaps this is an obvious truism that others move quickly past on their way to reading the Ayatollah&#8217;s &#8220;tells&#8221; one way or the other. Or perhaps we are so quick to take sides that the idea that we face a formidable opponent in what is essentially a very high stakes game eludes us.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not a player, I don&#8217;t speak or read Farsi, the Shah was still in power when I visited Tehran, I haven&#8217;t studied for years in Qom or Najaf, I&#8217;m not inclined to make political assertions more than one or two levels above my pay grade, I&#8217;m mostly unpaid, and I&#8217;m left with this:<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re in a game. <\/p>\n<p>And if that&#8217;s the case, intelligence &#8212; human intelligence &#8212; is the way to read Khamenei&#8217;s poker face. And FWIW, <strong>Amir Taheri<\/strong> wouldn&#8217;t be my go to source for intel. <\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>BTW, here&#8217;s Khamenei&#8217;s latest:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>US by means of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ISIS?src=hash\">#ISIS<\/a> diverted struggle from liberation of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Palestine?src=hash\">#Palestine<\/a> to war among Muslims in Iraq and Syria. 11\/25\/14 <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/vv9KPezq3K\">pic.twitter.com\/vv9KPezq3K<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/khamenei_ir\/status\/537254947252101121\">November 25, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; when is a tweet not quite a fatwa? when it&#8217;s a tweet! ] . Ayatollah Khamenei&#39;s decree on Banning WMDs http:\/\/t.co\/xsTIenb4rJ&#10;#Iran #IranTalksOman pic.twitter.com\/01VwBjjnoY &mdash; Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 12, 2014 ** A day or two ago Tim Furnish pointed me to a recent MEMRI post titled: Tehran Again Offers Khamenei&#8217;s Nonexistent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,93,983,90,446,393,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-iran","category-negotiation","category-nuclear","category-shia","category-twitter","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41839"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41864,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41839\/revisions\/41864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}