Jewish writer raises a storm in America with his report from a 'tolerant' Iran | Media | The Observer

 

A row has broken out over allegations of antisemitism at the New York Times, America's most vaunted name in journalism and a newspaper with a large Jewish readership.

The storm centres on a column about Jews in Iran written by New York Times journalist Roger Cohen and a cartoon attacking the recent war in Gaza.

The newspaper, and Cohen in particular, has been accused of being too critical of Israel and an apologist for Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cohen's column was written from Iran about the country's small Jewish minority. His piece acknowledged the difficulties the group experienced and portrayed them as part of an Iranian society that he said was more tolerant, democratic and sophisticated than many American critics allowed.

Such sentiments might seem uncontroversial, but in America no one touching on issues around Israel or antisemitism escapes close scrutiny. Cohen was attacked by Jewish writers and bloggers. The Jerusalem Post dubbed him "misled", while the Atlantic Monthly called him "credulous". Others went much further. "The Nazis had Theresienstadt, their 'model' concentration camp used to 'persuade' the gullible that Jews and others who aroused the ire of the Nazis were being treated well. Would Roger Cohen have had no problem portraying that favourably as well?" fumed writer Ed Lasky on the American Thinker website.

Cohen said he was stunned by the vehemence of the response, an impression exacerbated when he visited exiled Iranian Jews in California and was abusively heckled. "I was surprised at the anger and intensity of the reaction ... I expected a reaction but did not expect it to blow up into a whole furore," Cohen said.

Perhaps part of the reason for the intensity of the attack is the fact that he is Jewish himself. "I think it's partly my name. The 'self-hating Jew' things can come to the surface in some of the responses," he said. Another reason is that the column appeared in the Times, which many media experts hardly see as a fierce critic of Israel, given its home audience. "As soon as I read the column I thought a lot of people would be unhappy," said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.

The debate over Cohen's piece came as the Times published Pat Oliphant's cartoon, which shows a headless figure goose-stepping and pushing a snarling Star of David in front of it. The figure is herding a woman carrying a child labelled Gaza to the edge of a cliff. The cartoon also appeared in the Washington Post, Slate and other publications. It caused instant outrage among Jewish groups. "It is cartoons like this that inspired millions of people to hate in the 1930s and help set the stage for the Nazi genocide," said a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Jewish writer raises a storm in America with his report from a 'tolerant' Iran | Media | The Observer

Eberhard Kronhausen and Phyllis Kronhausen: An Inconvenient Truth About Iran

 

What "inconvenient truth about Iran" could there possibly be that might have escaped even our present, unusually intelligent, political leadership?

Very simply, it is that we are dealing, once again, Hitler-like, with a highly dangerous and obsession-directed leader -- Ahmadinejedad -- of a well-armed and economically important (oil-rich) country, Iran. Furthermore, that particular leader of his country, Iran, sees the world -- again, very Hitler-like -- single-mindedly through the lens of an all-consuming and highly personal obsession of his own making: the absolute need for the destruction of what he calls "the Zionist entity," in other words, the State of Israel.

Contrary to Hitler, though, and not altogether unbelievably, he claims to have, personally, nothing against the Jewish people, as such. He points, for instance, to the, thus far, undeniable fact that thousands of Iranians of Jewish ethnicity are living peacefully and unharmed among their non-Jewish, Iranian fellow-citizens. Iranian Jews, he says -- without anybody having, thus far, been able to prove him wrong -- suffer no discrimination in his country (for instance, no "Nuremberg racial laws" in Iran, as in Hitler's Germany). Much less are Iranian Jews subjected to persecution and harassment as had been true, from the very beginning, in the case of Nazi Germany. Nor are there, as Ahmadinejedad likes pointing out, any restrictions to the personal freedom of Jews, nor of the safety of their property, in Iran. In fact, Jewish Iranians are treated not only by law but in actual, daily life, just like any other Iranians -- and what foreign journalist or other impartial observer has been able to present evidence to the contrary?

So, what is Iran's problem with the Jews all about? Nothing, as much as one can see: For, there simply is no Iranian problem with the Jews, as such, at all!

Iran's "Jewish problem" -- or at least President Ahmadinejedad's, as well as Iran's "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khameini's and that of most of the rest of Iran's high-ranking, religious "Mullahs" -- simply is not with the Jews themselves. Rather, it is about the existence of what they call "the Zionist entity" -- in other words, the State of Israel itself!

Their argument is that the State of Israel has, in their view, no legitimacy, as such. That is supposedly so -- if you can twist your mind into the contorted thinking of Iran's present leadership -- because the State of Israel is, to them, a totally artificial creation. As that argument goes, it was settled by people who did not "belong" to that region at all -- that is, according to that distorted view of history -- what eventually became the state of Israel is really Palestinian land, now occupied by "foreigners," that is, principally European Jewish immigrants who, in Iran's view, do not "belong" there.

Put differently, it is in the present Iranian leadership's view a "fact" that these mostly Jewish foreigners of European origin have simply settled on land that belonged to others -- Palestinians, in this case -- which the European, Jewish immigrants and their offspring usurped by either stealth or force. They, then, drove (according to the same argument) most of the original, legitimate occupants of this area -- the Palestinians -- off their land and properties, appropriating them as their own.

It actually is an argument that could be much more easily made in the case of the European settlers of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and above all, Africa. In all those cases there was no pre-history of former European presence, history, culture, and occupancy of any of these vast, overseas areas.

In stark contrast, as far as the disputed Palestine is concerned, one would have to disregard entire millennia of former Jewish occupancy of this entire area, from earliest Biblical times on, to make the Iranian argument stick. However, that is the perverted historical view the present Iranian leadership under Ahmadinejedad -- from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the highest religious establishment on down -- have chosen to adopt. Consequently, once having taken that position, no matter how historically wrong it happens to be, the present Iranian leadership see it as nothing less than their religious duty to do away with the hated and, in their distorted view "illegitimate," so-called "Zionist entity," in other words, the State of Israel, itself.

For the same reason the present Iranian leadership, represented by President Ahmadinejedad, is not interested at all in any so-called "two states" solution: To their way of thinking, the only acceptable solution is plainly and simply to, as Ahmadinejedad bluntly enough put it again and again, "wipe the state of Israel ('the Zionest entity') off the map," drive any survivors back to where they had come from, such as Germany, Russia, Romania, or whatever, and return the land to its rightful owners, the Palestinians.

It is safe to assume that the Iranian government's desperate rush to complete the construction of an atomic bomb is to be seen in that light, as well. The Iranian leadership is, of course, fully aware of the fact that Israel already has such an atomic weapon, as well. So, are we to conclude that the Iranian leadership thinks they can, if in possession of the Bomb and perhaps some help from other, friendly states in the area, successfully wage a total war against Israel and so get rid of it, once and for all?

Now, as far as the possession of atomic weapons is concerned: Well, Russia and the United States both have had hundreds of atomic weapons at their disposal, for a very long time. In fact, both countries still have large arsenals of such "doomsday weapons" but without either of them ever having used them against each other. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis, did they come within a hair of just such a conflagration. The basic fact, though, remains that both countries were fully aware that if either one or the other or them were crazy enough to start an atomic war, it meant "mutually guaranteed destruction." Since neither one nor the other side had any such suicidal impulses, the fact that both sides possessed the capacity to destroy each other, did have (and still has) sufficient restraining effect for preventing any such catastrophic event from happening.

In the Iranian case, though, the same cannot be assumed with the same degree of assurance. What if the Iranian leadership does not have the same survival instincts, as did, fortunately, have the Russian and American leadership, as well as their two countries' populations? Fortunately, neither the Russians nor the Americans have ever had any such concept as "martyrdom" -- much less any desire for experiencing its promised afterlife glories or sensual pleasures, such as eternal, sexual bliss, for those who become "martyrs."

However, can the same be confidently said of the present Iranian leadership?

Furthermore, and in complete contrast to Hitler's Germany, the Iranian leadership, fortunately, cannot count with the absolute loyalty of the vast majority of its population -- especially its large under-30 years old sector. This alone constitutes a great weakness for the Iranian leadership -- whether they care to admit it or not. In fact, this may be the only truly effective deterrent we can count on, in this case.

The truly worrisome point for the authors, though -- one of whom (EK) has had firsthand experience with Hitler's Germany -- is that there may be just enough suicidal ("martyrdom") potential, at least among Iran's leadership, that "mutually guaranteed destruction" may not be a sufficient deterrent -- even absent the absolute loyalty of much of the population.

We consider it, hence, highly risky to allow Iran to come into possession of an atomic weapon. Nor should our forever optimistic Obama leadership give too much weight to such considerations as Ahmadinejedad having, at one time, said he would not mind giving the Israelis 10 years to vacate the country. Hitler also did give the majority of Jews quite a few years to leave Germany -- provided, of course, they were prepared to leave their real estate and other valuable assets in Germany.

The difference between Hitler's monomania against the Jews and that of Ahmadinejedad against the "Zionist entity" (the State of Israel rather than the Jews, as such), is purely psychological and semantic. Politically, though, it is of no consequence: Hitler's hatred of the Jews, as such, seems to have been highly personal, having apparently been based on his fear that his own blood had been polluted by the seduction of one of his female ancestors by the son of her Jewish employer (hence the origin of the myth of "the lecherous Jew, seducing innocent German women!").

In contrast, Ahmadinejedad's obsession with the State of Israel is much more impersonal or ideologically motivated. In the final analysis, the end result, though, amounts to the same thing: "Juden raus!" -- meaning in Hitler's case, ethnic cleansing of the German population (and, eventually, the whole world), from the Jews themselves.

In Ahmadinejedad's case, "Juden raus!" simply means, out with the Jews from Palestine, the land that they, in his opinion, illegally occupied and where they have no right being.

In our opinion, Ahmadinejedad's monomania with the destruction of the State of Israel, though, is no less dangerous than that of his predecessor, Hitler's obsession with the ethnic cleansing of Germany (and, by implication, of the whole world) from the Jews themselves. Let no one kid himself or herself, though -- (Hillary, are you listening?) -- that Ahmadinejedad's obsession is any less dangerous than was, once, Hitler's obsession with the Jews, as such (in fact, Hillary, if anybody, ought to have plenty of personal experience with the power of personal obsessions, such as, for instance, those of her own husband with sex and food!). It should have immunized her against being overly optimistic to prevail over any obsessions with purely logical arguments. She certainly did not succeed, in that respect, in the case of her own marriage, so why should she be so optimistic in the case of Iran?

Let us just hope that we are dead wrong and that there is still some wiggle room to arrive at some kind of rational compromise with the present Iranian leadership! At the same time, it might be the better part of wisdom to be prepared that rational arguments might not be able to prevail over the Iranian leadership's obsession with what they seem to consider the "absolute necessity" of destroying what they like calling "the Zionist entity" -- that is, the State of Israel.

One thing seems sure already: Breaking through this obsession of the Iranian leadership with the destruction of Israel will not be nearly as easy a task as our own "best and brightest" seem to assume. They are, in our humble opinion, not giving nearly enough attention to the psychology involved, in this particular case. Instead, they appear to let themselves be mostly guided by the so-called "facts on the ground," which all seem to indicate that -- giving the problem proper, personal attention -- a rational solution to the Iran problem ought to be possible. The inconvenient truth, though, may -- alas! -- turn out to be otherwise.

• Ahmadinejad
• Genocide
• Iran
• Israel

Eberhard Kronhausen and Phyllis Kronhausen: An Inconvenient Truth About Iran

televisionwashington – Iran Visual News Corps – Israel provides US with intelligence on Iran nuclear site – report -

 

Updated: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

11:00GMT—7:00AM/EST

Washington, 18 March (IranVNC)—A senior Israeli defense official provided fresh intelligence to the United States regarding Iran’s nuclear facility in Arak, during a visit to Washington earlier this week, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Wednesday.

During his official visit, Israel Defense Forces [IDF] chief, Gabi Ashkenazi, met with General James Jones, national security advisor to US President Barack Obama, and Dennis Ross, senior advisor to the Persian Gulf.

Unnamed US sources told the Saudi daily that Ashkenazi gave US officials new intelligence about the Arak facility, which is believed to contain a heavy water reactor.

Iran has barred inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] from visiting the site to verify that it is being designed for peaceful uses, reports Reuters. Tehran says that the facility will be used to produce isotopes for medical care and agriculture.

Heavy water can be used in certain nuclear reactors or for the production of plutonium, for use in a nuclear weapons program.

Western powers suspect that Iran may design the nuclear facility in Arak to acquire plutonium as another possible source of bomb-grade fuel, besides uranium from its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, which is under IAEA surveillance.

Last month, the IAEA reported that Iran had built a dome over the reactor, meaning that satellite imagery was no longer able to monitor further construction inside the site.

The Islamic Republic says its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

Sources: Al-Watan newspaper, Reuters

televisionwashington – Iran Visual News Corps – Israel provides US with intelligence on Iran nuclear site – report -

Chicago Nonpartisan Examiner: Iran democracy possible with help from The Great Satan

 

Although the U.S. has been the Great Satan to the Iran Republic for decades, they can take advantage of a democracy movement among a younger generation.

Anytime a westerner thinks of the Iranian revolution, images of Shiite swarms burning stuffed U.S. statesman in effigy come to mind, while mouth foaming throngs chant “death to the Great Satan”. Shocking though it may seem, the fact is perhaps there’s legitimacy behind the accusations that the Unites States has resembled Satan during the course of modern U.S.-Iran history. Iran, of course, certainly not to be outdone, should focus on their side of the street, especially its Islamist theocratic leadership, because one can see demonic likenesses embedded in Iranian wicked rhetoric and actions both internally and on the international stage. The most effective approach to defeating Iran's theocracy is not nuclear deterrence, direct negotiations, economic sanctions or military action, although all those are and/or may be necessary – the most effective approach for the U.S. is to continue developing the seeds of democracy within a new generation of Iranians that crave it.

This is not some far-fetched theory. Ironically, it is U.S. actions that have helped fan the flames of hatred for America, and have enabled an extremist mindset to flourish to date. If there are any doubts, pick up a text on U.S.-Iran relations over the past few decades, and let history judge - especially when we backed Iraq in a bloddy eight year war.  But the U.S. is positioned, and fortunate, that a new generation of Iranians yearn for a secular democratic state and an American lifestyle, as pointed out by Christopher Hitchins in an interview, that was done while Bush was still in office, but his recommendations still hold true for Obama:

Hitchins, the ever skeptical atheist and a great fan of what he refers to as that "good idea" called democracy, despises theocratic rule of any type, and believes that, not only Iran, but that Iraq will have a functioning democracy in 10 years.  Will he be right?  We'll let history judge.

U.S. policy has not only ignited right-wing Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, but the U.S. has gone so far as to stifle democracy in this Persian Islamic Republic, beginning over half of a century ago. In addition, as mentioned in the previous article, U.S. support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s has aggrandized America’s image as “The Great Satan”. Although younger generations have revealed a heart-felt predilection towards American freedom, the U.S. can’t simply wait 10 years for democracy to flourish - like a boy whistling in the dark; it must deal with the regime in power that is led by Ahmadinejad and old guard imams, mullahs and ayatollahs immediately – especially to deter them from weaponizing nuclear power for long-range usage.

In order to attempt diplomacy with Iran, U.S. diplomats must understand Iran – and the more one reviews the chronology of U.S. misdeeds since 1953, as outlined by Eric Margolis in a recent article, Iran’s hatred for the West does make more and more sense.

It all began in 1953, when, based on extending the containment policy to the Middle East, the U.S. and British mounted a coup that overthrew an extremely popular Iranian leader, Mohammed Mossadegh – which ended Iran’s first democratic government. Mossadegh, a leader that put the devastated Iranian state on the road to prosperity by securing a larger portion of its own oil reserves from the grasp of Western greed, was replaced by Shah Pahlavi, an incompetent tyrant, and as a byproduct, Iran’s oil wealth was transferred to British and American control, while the Iranian masses wallowed in abject poverty.

This single event was seared into the minds of an entire generation of Iranians, as Mossadegh and his National Front party were focused on decentralizing power, implementing a representative government, providing public education and accessible healthcare, enacting judicial reforms, and, amazingly, ensuring equality before law. Instead, the country eventually fell into the hands of radical Islamic elements that wanted to turn back the clock to the seventh century.

The Shah’s corruption enabled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni to stage the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to the installation of an extremist Islamic government. The C.I.A. and British secret service tried everything in their power to oust the Ayatollah, but eventually the Western powers relied on a dubious ally - Saddam Hussein - to prosecute war against Iran. The ensuing eight-year war between Iran and Iraq led to one million Iranian causalities and deaths, while the U.S and Brits, with some help from Israel, provided arms, intelligence and financing to Iraq, along with chemical weapons - including anthrax. The final devastation is summarized effectively by Margolis:

Iran lay in financial and emotional ruins, with an entire generation killed in battle or horribly maimed by Iraq's western-supplied chemical weapons that included the burning agent’s mustard gas and lewisite, chlorine, cyanide, and a variety of deadly nerve gases.

Ahmadinejad actually fought in the Iran-Iraq war, and based on the overall history of Iran’s struggle with the west, one could only imagine what his feelings are, at depth, about the United States, England and Israel. Regardless, resolution begins with knowledge of the past, and we can only hope Madame Secretary Clinton and her team grasp this. Because it will be harder to capitalize on next-generation Iran’s love for America, if we can’t effectively deal with the current generation’s obvious, and understandable, lack of it.

Chicago Nonpartisan Examiner: Iran democracy possible with help from The Great Satan

A 'back channel' appeal to Iran - Los Angeles Times

Obama hopes that reaching out to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will open the door to negotiations.

Doyle McManus

President Obama and his aides are preparing to send a secret message to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, inviting him to open a clandestine "back channel" for direct talks between the United States and Iran.
It may sound cloak-and-dagger, but that's how a lot of delicate diplomacy is done. Back-channel talks opened the way to the U.S. relationship with China in 1972, the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in 1993 and other lesser breakthroughs.
But what will Obama's message say? That's one of the crucial issues Dennis Ross, the administration's new Iran strategist, is wrestling with. Demand too much, and the Iranians may refuse to play. Give away too much, and they may simply ask for more.
So Ross and Undersecretary of State William Burns have been huddling with Iran experts and European diplomats to formulate a strategy.
The administration hasn't decided exactly what form the message should take. It could be a personal letter from Obama to Khamenei, or an oral communication from one diplomat to another. However it's conveyed, it will be a diplomatic version of the "extended hand" Obama offered in his inaugural address. In effect, it will say: We are ready to talk. Just name a time and place.
Beyond that, the message may be notable for what it doesn't say. It may not even mention the touchiest issue between the two countries: nuclear weapons. Obama's goal at this point is to get talks started, not to define their substance.
European diplomats have pushed for Obama's message to Khamenei to explicitly renounce any U.S. ambition of "regime change," a basic condition for talks in the Iranians' eyes. That's an assurance the Bush folks couldn't bring themselves to make, even after they finally recognized that ousting Khamenei was beyond their grasp. It's not yet clear how the Obama team will handle that issue.
One subject of debate is just how tough the U.S. should be. Before assuming his current post, Ross advocated a fairly hard line, writing in a 2007 New Republic article that "penalties, more than [positive] inducements, are the key to altering the Iranian position." But one European diplomat who met with him last week argued that new sanctions should be delayed at least through the spring to allow negotiations a better chance to get off the ground.
On one key point, everyone agrees: Negotiations must be with Khamenei, the cleric who is Iran's supreme leader, not with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or any lesser official.
So will Khamenei bite? The Iranian leader has sent contradictory signals. He has said that Iran has never opposed talking with the U.S. as long as the two countries were on an equal footing. But he also has denounced Obama for supporting Israel and for following "the same wrong path" as George W. Bush.
The strongest impetus for Khamenei to engage is his country's economic crisis. With an official inflation rate of 26% and an unemployment rate of more than 12.5%, Iran has a desperate need for foreign capital and technology to boost oil production. The global economic collapse has had at least one silver lining: It has deprived Iran of the economic power it enjoyed when oil sold for $147 a barrel. Now, with oil below $50, Iran's government is running a deep budget deficit -- and Tehran has a harder time selling bonds than Timothy Geithner.
But even if Iran comes to the table, agreement may be difficult. The U.S. and its allies want Iran to stop enriching uranium and put its nuclear energy program under tighter international control. Iran wants an end to the economic sanctions that have been imposed by the United Nations, the U.S. and the European Union.
But that's not all. Iran wants the United States to stop supporting Iranian rebels in the southern province of Baluchistan. (The CIA has denied funding the groups; the Iranians don't believe the denial.) The United States wants Iran to stop supporting Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both countries are involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both want to reduce the amount of opium and heroin that Afghanistan exports.
If negotiations get underway, the biggest worry is that the Iranians will try to use the talks as a way of running out the clock until their nuclear program is more advanced. That's what frustrated European diplomats believe Tehran did to them over the last five years. So one of the toughest parts of the U.S. strategy will be setting a deadline by which the Iranians must move -- and sticking to it.
Two other potentially difficult scenarios face the United States if Iran agrees to negotiate. One is if the most moderate candidate in Iran's presidential election, Mohammad Khatami, wins. If he were to take office, it would be harder for Obama to walk away from negotiations, even if they were going in circles. A second is if Iran opts for what nuclear experts call the "Japanese option" -- developing a technological capability to produce nuclear weapons without actually making them. That could keep Iran within international rules, making it difficult for the U.S. and its allies to crack down.
During last year's presidential campaign, Obama was criticized by opponents (including Hillary Rodham Clinton) for offering to negotiate with Iran without preconditions. It's now clear that he was right all along; without a more open U.S. approach to Tehran, the international effort to put pressure on the Iranians had reached a dead end. But getting talks started will be only the first hurdle; Iranians pride themselves on their negotiating skill. Obama's real test may be this: If the talks don't make progress, is he willing to walk away from the table?

A 'back channel' appeal to Iran - Los Angeles Times

Roger Cohen: Iran, Jews and pragmatism - Print Version - International Herald Tribune

 

Roger Cohen: Iran, Jews and pragmatism

By Roger Cohen

Sunday, March 15, 2009

LOS ANGELES: The Persian New Year, known as Norouz, is celebrated this month, often with great extravagance. Among its traditions is jumping over a bonfire while declaiming: "Take away my yellow complexion and give me your red glow of health."

One way of looking at Iran's particular calendar, its language and its Shiite branch of Islam is as forms of resistance against the Arab and Sunni worlds. Shiism has been a means to independence. The defense of Farsi against Arabic took the form of a medieval epic, Shahnameh, by the poet Ferdowsi.

I have, in a series of columns, and as a cautionary warning against the misguided view of Iran as nothing but a society of mad mullah terrorists bent on nukes, been examining distinctive characteristics of Persian society.

Iran — as compared to Arab countries including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — has an old itch for representative government, evident in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The June presidential vote will be a genuine contest by the region's admittedly abject standards. This is the Middle East's least undemocratic state outside Israel.

Another Iranian exception is that it had its Islamic Revolution three decades ago. Been there, done that. So its lessons are important.

From Egypt to Algeria to Afghanistan, Islamist movements are radicalized by dreams of establishing everlasting dominion; democracy is feared because it could prove to be their means to power. In Iran, by contrast, life is a daily exercise in compromises that temper Islam with the demands of modern life. Iran is emerging from extremist fervor as clerical absolutism and pluralism spar.

While Bernard Lewis, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, posits an epochal clash between "Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy" whose outcome will be decisive, I don't see any victor in this fight. Rather, beyond the regional autocratic model, a variety of compromises between the two forces will emerge, as in Iran.

It is therefore in America's strong interest to develop relations with the most dynamic society in the region.

What autocrats from the Gulf to Cairo fear most is an Iranian-American breakthrough, precisely because it will shake up every cozy, static regional relationship, including Washington's with Israel.

Another distinctive characteristic of Iran is the presence of the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East in the country of the most vitriolic anti-Israel tirades.

My evocation of this 25,000-strong community, in the taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate, has prompted fury, nowhere more so than here in Los Angeles, where many of Iran's Jewish exiles live.

At the invitation of Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple, I came out to meet them. The evening was fiery; there was scant meeting of minds. Exile, expropriation and, in some cases, executions have left bitter feelings among the revolution's Jewish victims, as they have among the more than two million Muslims who have fled Iran since 1979. Abraham Berookhim gave me a moving account of his escape and his Jewish uncle's unconscionable 1980 murder by the regime.

Earlier, Sam Kermanian, a leader of the Iranian Jewish community, argued that I had been used, that Iran's Jews are far worse off than they appear, and that my portrayal of them was pernicious in that it "leads people to believe Israel's enemies are not as real as you may think." He called the mullahs brilliantly manipulative: "They know their abilities and limitations."

On at least this last point I agree. Just how repressive life is for Iran's Jews is impossible to know. Iran is an un-free society. But this much is clear: The hawks' case against Iran depends on a vision of an apocalyptic regime — with no sense of its limitations — so frenziedly anti-Semitic that it would accept inevitable nuclear annihilation if it can destroy Israel first.

The presence of these Jews undermines that vision. It blunts the hawks' case; hence the rage.

I think limitation-aware pragmatism lies at the core of the revolution's survival. It led to cooperation with Israel in Cold War days; it ended the Iraq war; it averted an invasion of Afghanistan in 1996 after Iranian diplomats were murdered; it brought post-9/11 cooperation with America on Afghanistan; it explains the ebb and flow of liberalization since 1979; and it makes sense of the Jewish presence.

Pragmatism is also one way of looking at Iran's nuclear program. A state facing a nuclear-armed Israel and Pakistan, American invasions in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and noting that North Korea was not hit, might reasonably conclude that preserving the revolution requires nuclear resolve.

What's required is American pragmatism in return, one that convinces the mullahs that their survival is served by stopping short of a bomb.

That, in turn, will require President Obama to jump over his own bonfire of indignation as the Middle East taboos that just caused the scandalous disqualification of Charles Freeman for a senior intelligence post are shed in the name of a new year of engagement and reason.

Readers are invited to comment at my blog: www.iht.com/passages

Roger Cohen: Iran, Jews and pragmatism - Print Version - International Herald Tribune

Iran has not decided to produce nuclear arms, says US intelligence chief

 

Iran has not decided to produce nuclear arms, says US intelligence chief

New York, March 11, IRNA -- Iran has not produced the highly enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon and has not decided to do so, U.S. intelligence officials told Congress, according to the Washington Post.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said that Iran has not decided to pursue the production of weapons-grade uranium and the parallel ability to load it onto a ballistic missile.

"The overall situation -- and the intelligence community agrees on this -- [is] that Iran has not decided to press forward . . . to have a nuclear weapon on top of a ballistic missile," Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Our current estimate is that the minimum time at which Iran could technically produce the amount of highly enriched uranium for a single weapon is 2010 to 2015."

Blair said there may be no connection between the country's development of missiles and any ambition to have nuclear weapons.

"I believe those are separate decisions," Blair said. "The same missiles can launch vehicles into space. They can launch warheads, either conventional or nuclear, onto . . . land targets, and Iran is pursuing those -- for those multiple purposes. Whether they develop a nuclear weapon which could then be put in that . . . warhead, I believe, is a . . . separate decision which Iran has not made yet."

Blair said Israel was working from the same facts but had drawn a different interpretation of their meaning.

"The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view," he said.

IRNA diplomatic correspondent said that the US has to admit that the propaganda campaign over Iranian nuclear program had been fabricated by Israel prior to mending ties with Iran.

"The US methodology has focused on admission of the mistakes of the past and that the US had embarked on unfair propaganda against Iran under the so-called intelligence provided by Israel."

Iran is a signatory to Non-Proliferation Treaty and cameras of the International Atomic Energy Agency are monitoring Iranian nuclear sites round-the-clock.

IAEA has verified non-diversion of Iranian nuclear program and Iran renounced nuclear weapons as forbidden in Islam.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in a religious decree has banned production of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

"Any weapons which kills or poisons a large number of people are forbidden in Islam," the Supreme Leader said.

The Supreme Leader said that Iran refrained from reciprocal action when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers in 1980s, because such weapons are forbidden in Islam.

Ex-US envoy to UN backs Iranian-led multinational enrichment program

Berlin, March 10, IRNA -- Iran should be able to own and operate its nuclear facility as part of a multinational program, the former US ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering said Tuesday.

Talking to the website of the weekly Der Spiegel news magazine, Pickering said, "Under this approach, the Iranian government would agree to allow two or more additional governments -- for example, France and Germany -- to participate in the management and operation of those activities within Iran."

"In exchange, Tehran would be able to jointly own and operate an enrichment facility without facing international sanctions," he added.

Pickering stressed resolving the nuclear issue would, in turn, make it possible to end sanctions and for Iran "to enjoy a variety of other benefits, such as membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), increased trade with Europe and, perhaps, normalized relations with the United States."

The ex-US official has repeatedly said sanctions and threats have failed to force Iran to abandon its enrichment program to which it is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran has not decided to produce nuclear arms, says US intelligence chief

Report: Iran Can Get Material to Make 50 Nukes - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

Another deceptive cage rattling news by FOX and friends

Iran can develop a nuclear weapon within a year and has ready access to enough fissile material to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons, according to a panel of current and former U.S. officials advising the Obama administration.

William Schneider, Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board and a former under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, offered those estimates Wednesday during a news conference announcing the release of a new "Presidential Task Force" report on Iran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The report, entitled "Preventing a Cascade of Instability: U.S. Engagement to Check Iranian Nuclear Progress," was signed by a team of policymakers, former officials and Iran scholars that included Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind..

Also signing on to the early draft form were two individuals expected to play significant roles in the development of the Obama administration's foreign policy: former Ambassador Dennis Ross, named last month by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a special envoy on the Iran issue, and Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state who is expected to accept a senior position dealing with non-proliferation issues.

The "cascade" refers to a set of 164 high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium to the high levels necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reported that Iran has enough low enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon, and currently has 5,600 centrifuges operating at its pilot enrichment facility in Natanz. Iran has declared its intention to add another 45,000 centrifuges over the next five years.

But Schneider said Iran has already "perfected the industrial aspects of enriching uranium," and can easily develop a nuclear weapon long before 2014.

"The ability to go from low enriched uranium to highly enriched uranium, especially if [the Iranians] expand the number of centrifuges, would be a relatively brief period of time, perhaps a year or so, before they'd be able to produce a nuclear weapon," Schneider said at the news conference. "So it's not a long-distance kind of problem."

Moreover, Schneider warned that the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Tehran -- which has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and equipped and funded regional terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah -- has access to significant amounts of the raw fissile material that would be the core ingredient in such a nuclear arsenal.

These indigenous natural resources include "yellowcake," the raw uranium ore that is converted to gas and then fed into the cascades of centrifuges. "Iran has enough yellowcake in the country to perhaps produce enough highly enriched uranium, if they go to that length, to produce perhaps fifty nuclear weapons," Schneider said.

Neither of the other two panel members who appeared alongside Schneider at the news conference -- Eugene Habiger, a retried four-star general and former commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, and Nancy Soderberg, a former ambassador to the U.N. and National Security Council staffer during the Clinton administration -- disputed Schneider's claims.

The Washington Instiyute's nine-page report also warned that Israel "may feel compelled" to take military action to try to destroy or retard the Iranian nuclear program if Russia sells the S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Iran.

"Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option," the report states.

"However, Israelis see the option fading over the next one to two years, not only because of Iran's nuclear progress and dispersion of its program but also because of improved Iranian air defenses, especially the expected delivery of the S-300. ... Israel therefore may feel compelled to act before the option disappears."

Schneider, who along with Habiger and Soderberg conferred with high-level officials from Israel, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain during a trip to the Middle East last December, reported that the Israeli military still believes it can hold the Iranian nuclear apparatus "at risk," but will no longer hold that view if Tehran acquires more sophisticated air defense technology from Moscow.

"It is the transfer of the S-300 that is likely to be a trigger for Israeli action," Schneider said. "The time frame is getting compressed and we need to act quickly if we are going to be successful [in resolving the issue peacefully]."

"Time is not on our side," agreed Habiger. "We've been mucking about on this issue for years now."

Habiger and Soderberg said it remains possible for the U.S., by working with Russia, China and Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, to persuade Iran not to obtain a nuclear weapon.

"They are a rational actor," Soderberg said of the Iranian regime. "They are deterrable." If the costs of pursuing the nuclear program are made sufficiently high, the panel said -- particularly through the imposition of sanctions on Iran's oil and gas sector -- Tehran's "cost-benefit analysis" could be changed.

Iran's defense minister visited Moscow last month to press for the Russian state-controlled arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, to sell Iran the S-300 system. Russian officials, at least publicly, were non-committal.

However, Iran signed a $700 million contract with Russia in 2005 to purchase 29 low-to-medium altitude surface-to-air missiles, which were delivered the following year and became operational in early 2007.

Report: Iran Can Get Material to Make 50 Nukes - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

Iran's Fist Is Clenched for a Reason

 

By Muhammad Sahimi

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised during his campaign that his administration will take a new approach to the crises in the Middle East and, in particular, to the long-standing confrontation with Iran. He promised that his administration would negotiate with Iran without any preconditions. Most recently, President Obama told the al-Arabiya TV, "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us."

Like all of his predecessors, however, Obama is not explaining to the American public why Iran's fist is clenched in the first place. If the reason for this were understood and put in the proper context, it would represent a quantum leap toward resolving most, if not all, of the important issues between Iran and the United States, which would then contribute greatly to stability and peace in the Middle East. It all comes down to Iran's historical sense of insecurity, and U.S. policy toward Iran since 1979.

A glance at history tells us why Iranians have a long-lasting sense of national insecurity. Iran is in one of the most strategic areas of world. This was as true 2,000 years ago as it is today. Because of its location, as well as its natural resources, Iran has been invaded and occupied many times by foreign powers, from Alexander the Great and his army to the Arabs, Moguls, Turks, Russians, and British. Over the last 200 years alone, Russia, Britain, and the U.S. have tried to control Iran.

Two Russo-Persian wars that resulted in the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813 and the Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 enabled Russia to separate and occupy a large part of Iran in the Caucasus region (the present Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia), and the British empire ended Iran's political influence in Afghanistan through the Treaty of Peshawar in 1855. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Russia and Britain divided Iran into their spheres of influence. Russia supported the forces that were opposed to Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1908, and it opposed the industrialization of Iran, in particular, the construction of railways. Britain played the key role in the 1921 coup that brought Reza Shah to power in Iran and established his dictatorship. British and Russian forces invaded and occupied Iran during World War II. The CIA-sponsored coup of 1953 overthrew Iran's democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh and started the era of U.S. influence in Iran. The U.S. helped establish and train the SAVAK, the shah's dreaded security services. These events ultimately led to the revolution of 1979.

The hostage crisis of November 1979-January 1981, during which 53 American diplomats and embassy staff were taken hostage by Iranian students, should be viewed in light of Iran's bitter experience of the 1953 CIA coup. As one of the student hostage-takers told Bruce Laingen, chief U.S. diplomat in Tehran at that time, "You have no rights to complain, because you took our whole nation hostage in 1953."

The history of Iran-U.S. relations since the resolution of the hostage crisis in 1981 shows that the U.S.' goal has been to hamper Iran's economic development and prevent its integration with the rest of the Middle East. This has meant only one thing to Iranian leaders: the U.S. has never recognized the legitimacy of the 1979 revolution and has always been intent on overthrowing their government. This perception, backed by Iran's historical sense of insecurity, is not difficult to understand.

The U.S. directly encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in September 1980, hoping that the invasion would topple Iran's revolutionary government. When the war started, the U.S. refused to supply Iran with the spare parts for the weapons that it had sold to the shah of Iran, even though Iran had already paid for them (the funds paid to the U.S., lawfully Iran's, are still frozen after 29 years). After the war began, the U.S. prevented the United Nations Security Council for several days to convene an emergency meeting, and after the UNSC finally met, the U.S. prevented it from declaring Iraq the aggressor, or even calling for a cease-fire. Only after Iranian forces pushed back Saddam's army out of most of Iran in the spring of 1982 did the UNSC call for a cease-fire. President Ronald Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Iran in 1983, in violation of the Algiers Agreement of January 1981 that ended the hostage crisis.

The U.S. dropped its pretense of neutrality in December 1983 when President Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to offer Saddam U.S. support. It kept silent as Iraq showered Iranian troops with chemical weapons. While Iraq was attacking Iran's oil installations in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. and other members of NATO sent their naval forces to the Persian Gulf to protect Arab oil tankers that had provided Iraq with $50 billion in aid to keep fighting Iran. The U.S. destroyed a significant part of Iran's navy in the Persian Gulf, as well as several of Iran's offshore oil platforms.

The U.S. intervention in the war culminated with the shootdown of Iran Air's Airbus A300B2 on Sunday July 3, 1988, by the USS Vincennes. The civilian aircraft, which was flying from Bandar Abbas to Dubai, was carrying 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children, and was flying within Iranian airspace, while the Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters in the Straits of Hormuz. All 290 passengers were killed.

The war finally ended in July 1988, with 1 million Iranian casualties (at least 273,000 dead) and $1 trillion in damage to Iran's economy and infrastructure. At the same time, Iran's extreme Right used the war to suppress progressive forces, stopping Iran's evolution toward democracy.

When it came to compensating the Vincennes victims' families and showing remorse, the Clinton administration exhibited utter contempt for any sense of justice. Although the U.S. agreed in 1996 to pay $61.8 million as compensation for the Iranians killed, it never accepted responsibility nor apologized for the shootdown. In addition, the compensation paid to the Iranians should be compared to what the U.S. forced Libya to pay for the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, which was destroyed on Dec. 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland: $10 million for each victim.

But the hostility of the U.S. government toward Iran did not end with the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war. Every subsequent move toward Iran � small or large � has been meant to either strangle Iran's economy or prevent Iran from making political gains in the region. Consider, for example, the U.S. government's refusal, in violation of its international obligations, to supply the spare parts for the civilian aircraft that it sold to Iran. The U.S. has also prevented the European Union from selling civilian aircraft to Iran. As a result, Iran's civilian fleet consists mostly of old and obsolete Russian aircraft, many of which have crashed, resulting in high casualties.

While preaching that Iran does not need nuclear energy because it has vast oil and natural gas reserves, the U.S. has made every effort to prevent foreign companies from investing in Iran's oil and gas industry and helping Iran develop its untapped natural gas reservoirs. The U.S. also prevented the transportation of Azerbaijan's oil by a pipeline through Iran and instead pushed for a purely political pipeline through Georgia and Turkey.

Whereas, according to every report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has abided by its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its Safeguards Agreement, the U.S. has repeatedly, and without presenting any credible evidence, accused Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program, even though its own latest National Intelligence Estimate from November 2007 stated that Iran stopped its weapons program in 2003 (and there is actually no evidence that Iran had such a program even prior to 2003). In violation of the IAEA Statute, the U.S. forced its Board of Governors to demand the suspension of Iran's legal uranium enrichment program. The Board of the IAEA has no legal authority to make such a demand.

Such baseless accusations, together with the U.S. blackmail of some members of the IAEA Board, were the primary reasons for sending Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council (UNSC). But, this was illegal, because it was against Article 12(c) of the IAEA Statute, which clearly states the conditions under which a member state's nuclear dossier should be sent to the UNSC. As Michael Spies of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms has explained [.pdf]:

"Verification and enforcement of the non-proliferation objectives contained in the NPT are limited, in part to maintain the balance of rights and obligations of state parties. NPT Safeguards, administered by the IAEA, are limited to verifying that no nuclear material in each non-weapon state has been diverted to weapons or unknown use. These safeguards allow for the IAEA to report a case of non-compliance to the Security Council only if nuclear material is found to have been diverted."

According to every report of the IAEA, such a diversion has never occurred in Iran's case. As a result, even the legality of the three UNSC resolutions against Iran is in doubt, because they are based on the illegal actions of the IAEA Board. Regardless, not only has the U.S. pressured others to enforce the resolutions, it has also imposed unilateral sanctions and blackmailed others to do the same. Moreover, the U.S. has opposed Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization, hence preventing integration of its economy with the rest of the world.

Iran provided crucial help to the U.S. to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the Bush administration rewarded it by making Iran a member of the "axis of evil." The Shi'ite groups that spent their exile years in Iran, and were supported and funded by it, are now in power in Iraq and are considered allies of the U.S. But, instead of recognizing and appreciating this fact, the U.S. has accused Iran of aiding "special groups" in Iraq, meaning extremists and radicals. And in a show of force, in addition to surrounding Iran with the U.S. forces on three sides, the Bush administration dispatched two carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf in May 2007. Dick Cheney used the deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to threaten Iran: "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region. We'll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats."

The U.S. has also pushed for the formation of regional alliances against Iran, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, and has sold tens billions of dollars' worth of weapons to the Council's members, weapons that they neither have the capability nor the need to ever use.

Even now that the supposedly realist Obama administration has taken over and the president is looking for Iran's unclenched fist, the threats have not stopped nor changed in nature. Asked if the military option was still on the table with regard to Iran, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Jan. 28, "The president hasn't changed his viewpoint that he should preserve all his options. We must use all elements of our national power to protect our interests as it relates to Iran."

Given decades of hostility, sanctions, threats, and attacks, is it any wonder that Iran's fist is still clenched? How is Iran supposed to forget 55 years of hostility without even a simple apology by the U.S. for its misdeeds?

About the author:

Muhammad Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and the NIOC professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has published extensively on Iran's political developments and its nuclear program.

Iran's Fist Is Clenched for a Reason

Georgia banks' problems 'alarming,' data show | ajc.com

 

In ‘brutal’ third quarter, 26 banks had Texas ratios over 100%

By RUSSELL GRANTHAM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sunday, January 11, 2009

More Georgia banks faced deeper problems from souring loans and other challenges in the third quarter, based on a commonly used measure of their financial health.

The number of banks with high “Texas ratios” — a figure that attempts to gauge how likely institutions are to face insolvency — grew during the quarter ended in September. Most banks’ ratios also got worse.

“The third quarter was brutal,” said Walt Moeling, an Atlanta attorney who represents many of the state’s banks and the Georgia Bankers Association, a trade group.

Georgia once again had the largest number of troubled banks in the nation, with 26 banks with Texas ratios over 100 percent, said Brett Villaume, a research analyst at Atlanta bank consulting firm FIG Partners, which produced the quarterly update based on third-quarter data, the latest available.

“It’s just alarming,” he said. “No other state came close.” He said Florida had seven problem banks, the next largest concentration. Georgia and California tied for the biggest share of the nation’s 26 bank failures last year, with five each.

Moeling said 90 percent of local banks reported increases in problem loans or foreclosures during the quarter as the economy worsened and home sales and building activity remained virtually frozen. More home builders’ and developers’ loans went unpaid, and most local banks booked bigger charges for expected loan losses.

Previously, “there was a lot of denial” among some bankers who hoped home builders could catch up on late loan payments if the real estate market improved, said Moeling, with law firm Bryan Cave Powell Goldstein. “The third quarter ended the period of denial.”

The Texas ratio — developed during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, when far larger numbers of financial institutions failed — attempts to measure a financial institution’s health by comparing its total defaulted loans and foreclosed properties to total cash reserves and other funds it has available to absorb potential losses. A ratio over 100 percent suggests “you owe more than you have,” Villaume said.

Critics of the Texas ratio say it provides a one-time snapshot and doesn’t reflect the bankers’ ability to shore up cash reserves by raising capital, selling foreclosed houses, cutting expenses and generating additional revenue.

“A lot of things could have changed” since the third quarter ended in September, said David Oliver, spokesman for the Georgia Bankers Association. “We advise people to exercise caution when looking at those numbers.”

Georgia’s bumper crop of problem banks has its roots in the creation of more than 100 new banks since 2000, mostly in metro Atlanta. Those and older banks in turn bet heavily on metro Atlanta’s then-booming residential real estate market by bankrolling developers and home builders. Many of those loans imploded after the real estate market crashed.

“There was an oversupply of new banks. And needless to say, when times got tough, they were the first victims,” Villaume said. “Everyone on the street who was watching for bank failures was surprised there weren’t more [failures] in 2008,” he said.

Still, he and other industry players argue that there are glimmers of hope despite continued grim industry trends. A handful of Georgia’s banks recently have snagged federal bailout money, shoring up their capital reserves.

Outside investors also have injected money or shown interest in a few of the state’s banks. Some troubled banks said they have made some progress toward digging out of their holes by cutting expenses and selling foreclosed properties or other troubled assets.

Five Georgia banks have announced that they were getting federal bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, including Atlanta’s SunTrust Banks and Fidelity Bank, Columbus-based Synovus, and United Community Banks in Blairsville.

None of those banks were on FIG Partners’ troubled bank list. However, industry insiders said some banks on the list have also applied for TARP money. They expect more that currently don’t qualify because of their legal structure — typically the smallest community banks — to apply as well if the U.S. Treasury Department broadens its program rules to cover them.

The parent company of Jackson-based McIntosh State Bank, which landed on the Texas ratio list for the first time in September with a ratio of 101 percent, announced late last month that it is raising up to $14 million from private investors, including Atlanta-based Redemptus Group. McIntosh also said it has applied for $10.7 million from the federal TARP program.

“We feel real good, even though we did creep onto the list,” said William “Pete” Malone, McIntosh’s chairman and CEO.

David D. Stovall, chief executive of Habersham Bancorp., said the Clarkesville bank holding company likewise is applying for roughly $11 million in TARP money after raising new capital at year-end from a private investor.

“We’ve already injected $3 million of private money. … That should bode well in our favor,” said Stovall, whose bank had a 115 percent Texas ratio in September. He said the bank has been “fairly aggressive about addressing issues” by also selling about three foreclosed homes per month.

“We have plenty of capital and plenty of liquidity to ride it out,” he said.

Dan Baker, president of First Security National Bank, with a Texas ratio of 273 percent, said the Norcross-based bank has been able to sell most of its foreclosed homes with modest losses. But the pace is slow because “the public wants to buy them for nothing,” he said.

The 25-employee bank has cut four employees and foreclosed on more than a dozen home builders in recent months.

“It’s a shame, because they’re good people,” he said.

The bank’s federal regulators, who want the institution to raise additional capital, “have been working very closely with us,” Baker said. “I think we’re probably in for a slow 2009. I think we’ve got a ways to go to work through this real estate.”

State banking regulators “obviously want us to raise capital,” said Vincent Cater, chief executive of Freedom Bank of Georgia. The state Department of Banking and Finance hit the Commerce-based bank with a cease-and-desist order last month requiring several improvements. Cater said the bank, which had a Texas ratio of 175 percent, is “talking to several potential investors.” Meanwhile, it has been able to sell foreclosed homes relatively quickly and deposits “remain very stable,” he said.

“I think we’re seeing some leveling off. The problems don’t seem to be getting worse. They’re not getting any better,” he added. “I think we would obviously not like to be on the next [Texas ratio] list.”

Stephen Klein, chief executive of Omni National Bank, said its recent Texas ratio, 219 percent, “doesn’t do justice” to the Atlanta bank.

“We do not have a liquidity problem,” he said, noting that the bank has “$105 million of cash in the bank” and rent coming in from about 70 percent of the roughly 500 foreclosed homes in its portfolio.

Unlike most banks, he said, Omni isn’t rushing to sell those homes because prices fell too far. Following an unusual strategy, the bank made most loans to home builders who were rehabilitating homes in inner-city Atlanta neighborhoods populated primarily by low-income black families.

But those neighborhoods were especially hard-hit, he said, after the market for subprime home loans froze up, sidelining many would-be buyers.

Omni foreclosed on the builders and now rents the houses out until it can work through its problems, Klein said.

“If something happens to the bank, there’s going to be a … void in inner-city Atlanta,” he said.

PROBLEMS GROWING FOR GEORGIA BANKS

More Georgia banks have landed on a list of troubled institutions, as measured by a statistic known as the “Texas ratio.” The formula, used with some modifications by Atlanta-based FIG Partners, attempts to gauge risk levels at banks — the higher the number, the bigger the potential problems.

Bankers want to avoid a score above 100 percent, which indicates that a bank’s problem loans exceed the capital it has to absorb losses.

Bank
Third Q
Second Q

Integrity Bank, Alpharetta
Failed, Aug. 29
510%

FirstCity Bank, Stockbridge
281%
217%

Alpha Bank & Trust, Alpharetta
Failed, Oct. 24
214%

FirstBank Financial Services, McDonough
276%
159%

First Security National Bank, Norcross
273%
201%

First Georgia Community Bank, Jackson
Failed, Dec. 5
199%

Security Bank of Gwinnett County, Suwanee
228%
268%

Community Bank, Loganville
Failed, Nov. 21
237%

Omni National Bank, Atlanta
219%
153%

Southern Community Bank, Fayetteville
209%
196%

First Piedmont Bank, Winder
189%
147%

Neighborhood Community Bank, Newnan
186%
177%

Security Bank of North Metro, Woodstock
181%
94%

Freedom Bank of Georgia, Commerce
175%
124%

Gordon Bank Gordon
149%
80%

McIntosh Commercial Bank, Carrollton
139%
113%

American Southern Bank, Roswell
137%
107%

First National Bank of Georgia, Carrollton
125%
121%

Peoples Bank Lithonia
124%
117%

First Cherokee State Bank, Woodstock
122%
107%

First National Bank of Griffin, Griffin
119%
92%

Chestatee State Bank, Dawsonville
118%
102%

United Security Bank, Sparta
118%
117%

Haven Trust Bank, Duluth
Failed, Dec. 12
116%

Community Bank of West Georgia, Villa Rica
116%
71%

Habersham Bank, Clarkesville
115%
107%

Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro
112%
122%

First Covenant Bank, Norcross 111%
69%

Farmers & Merchants Bank, Lakeland
103%
86%

Tattnall Bank, Reidsville
102%
85%

McIntosh State Bank, Jackson
101%
90

Georgia banks' problems 'alarming,' data show | ajc.com