You would think a meeting between fighting tribal factions in Iran, would be a super safe place, but a suicide bomber killed at least 29 people at a "Shiite-Sunni Tribes' Solidarity Conference" on Sunday. The dead included six commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. A Sunni insurgent group took responsibility for the attack, but even with other people taking credit for the bombing some Iranian officials say there's an American conspiracy at work.

The Baluchistan truthers include Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani who said "If we review the past, there have been many secret and public reports on the US connections and aids to the terrorists in the province... and this shows Americans' enmity towards Iran's progress." In a statement released through the Fars news agency, the Revolutionary Guard said the bombing was the work of "terrorists" backed by "the great Satan America and its ally Britain." Iranian officials also promised to strike back at those responsible for the attack, which makes the allegations of US involvement pretty ominous.

Update: Now Iran is also blaming Pakistan for this bombing. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters in his best James Bond movie villain voice that "some security agents in Pakistan are co-operating with the main elements of this terrorist incident... we regard it as our right to demand these criminals from them."

As for that first bit of news, we've uncovered an exclusive, an uncomfortable truth about Ahmadinejad yet to be revealed but here, for the first time, right now: he faked his way through his haftorah portion. Kidding! But no, really, he might be a Jew. Commence self-loathing, mother-hating, guilt-ridden jokes in three, two, and...

A close-up of the Ahmadinejad's ID reveals that the Iranian leader, who has described the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry as a "myth," was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The Telegraph said the short note scrawled on the card suggests that his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth. The Sabourjians, according to the report, traditionally hail from Aradan, Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia.

Fuckin' Jews, indeed! This isn't the first time this accusation has come up, either. The name "Sabourjian" is on a list of reserved names for Iranian Jews by Iran's government. And yes, "experts" are saying that his attacks on Jews—which include wanting to blow Israel into the next dimension, as well as vehement Holocaust denial—could be over-compensating. Two more important questions then arise: what kind of car does he drive, and how big is his dick? THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. So now that Ahmadinejad has his own birthers—ironically, The Jews—he's gotta come up with something to distract the public from figuring out why he's so goddamn good with money. Adonai-damnit, he's got nuclear capabilities. Go figure.

The New York Times reported today that senior staff members at the UN have, after vetting a report by the official (and official sounding) International Atomic Energy Agency, figured out that Iran is well on their way to making us all green...with radiation.

In recent interviews, a senior European official familiar with the contents of the full report described it to The New York Times. He confirmed that Mr. Albright's excerpts were authentic. The excerpts were drawn from a 67-page version of the report written earlier this year and since revised and lengthened, the official said; its main conclusions remain unchanged. "This is a running summary of where we are," the official said. "But there is some loose language," he added, and it was "not ready for publication as an official document." Most dramatically, the report says the agency "assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device" based on highly enriched uranium.

Also interesting: Iran picked up this information via the Black market (where else?) and then proceeded to pick away at the specific pieces of information that were pertinent to their cause. But who planted it on the Black market? Who else? The Russians. In Soviet Russia, market black you:

...Many intelligence agencies assume that Iran obtained a bomb design from A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani black marketer who sold it machines to enrich uranium. That information may have been supplemented by a Russian nuclear weapons scientist who visited Iran often, investigators say.

Do we have a ball game? We have a ball game. Also, is everyone in Russia a leaky weapons scientist? It's like everyone there down to the guy who keeps the pay phones working knows something about nuclear technology that can kill us all. It's apparently in their seventh grade curriculum, somewhere between The Outsiders and dividing fractions. The donkey show in Moscow—where donkey show you— is expensive and we're all gonna die, so the pay phone fixing nuclear scientist hooks up Iran and King Khan the Black Market Badass, and the self-loathing Jew pays to invest in wiping his guilt-shilling relatives out of existence. Also, gefilte fish. That, too. It always figured that the Jewish state's biggest menace would be a guilt-ridden one of their own (Bernie Madoff, here's looking at you). Really, though. Who needs a nuke when your country's revolting every six days? A guy with a small penis, that's who.

And, for your Friday amusement, the debut of the hit single "Aloof?" by Stewart featuring the guy from Kreepie Kats

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to Midtown this week to tell the United Nations General Assembly about Iran's "peaceful nuclear program" and how much he hates Zionists. His presence caused clashes between protesters and alleged Iranian agents on 48th Street.

Ahmadinejad has been in hot water at home over his highly questionable victory in Iran's last Presidential election. A large group of his green garbed opposition gathered across the street from his room on the seventh floor of the Intercontinental hotel. The protesters taunted him with chants of "down with the dictator" in Farsi punctuated with shouts calling Ahmadinejad a liar, murderer, torturer, and fascist.

One police officer standing in front of the hotel told us there were at least four law enforcement agencies on hand to make sure the Iranian delegation and their opposition played nice including the NYPD, the FBI, and Diplomatic Security officers from the Department of State. Secret Servicemen manned baggage x-rays and metal detectors in front of the hotel.

Tight security kept the protesters from getting a glimpse of Ahmadinejad, but they claimed to have no trouble spotting his security detail and members of his delegation. Akash a 23 year-old who moved from Iran to Manhattan two years ago told us that, at one point in the evening, Ahmadinedjad's bodyguards "were behind the window capturing people's faces" with a videocamera. The protesters told us that they complained to police who stopped the filming with the help of FBI agents. Nearby cops wouldn't discuss Akash's story with us, but other demonstrators showed us photos of men filming from the window.

A little after 10pm, the NYPD began asking the crowd to disperse. Some stragglers began screaming at a pair of men with Ahmadinejad-style scruffy beards and khaki dress clothes who were walking out of the hotel lobby. After two days of staking out Ahmadinejad's hotel, they claimed to be able to recognize some of the members of Ahmadinejad's entourage. They chased the bearded pair towards Lexington Avenue yelling "these guys are the terrorists" and "you're anti-Iranian, you're an Arab-lover." The groups exchanged angry words in Farsi before going their separate ways.

We asked the bearded men if they were part of the Iranian delegation and whether or not they liked New York. One of them responded by saying "I don't speak."

A few minutes later, two other men who also looked very Ahmadinejadesque drew the attention of the crowd across the street. Protesters told us that Iranian secret police often dress like their leader. We tried to talk to these men as well, but they waved at us and continued toward Lexington Avenue under a rain of insults and shouts from the protesters.

Not all of the Iranians we met at the Intercontinental showed up to taunt Ahmadinejad and his crew. Kamran Khoshroui said he came from Los Angeles because he was "interested" in observing the protests. Koshroui, who supports "some" of the Iranian government's policies, thinks Ahmadinejad won the recent Iranian election "fair and square." He described the protestors as members of the Iranian diaspora and the "bourgeouis middle-class" in Tehran who "do not by any means reflect the majority of Iranians."

Just as we were about to leave for the night, a chubby mustachioed man wearing a dark suit and a General Assembly entry badge emerged from the hotel to derisive jeers from the protestors. We approached the man and identified ourselves as writers with Gawker. When we asked if he was with the Iranian delegation, he grabbed at our notepad, attempting to take it and rip it into pieces. A nearby police officer separated us and sent the man away. He walked into the night pointing at us and shouting "Go back to Tel Aviv! You would do well there!"

With reporting by Daniel Johnson-Kim

Derb, I've noticed that President Obama frequently forgoes the necktie - lately, even in public appearances. That reminded me - I have no idea why - that the Iranian regime has shunned the necktie ever since Khomeini pronounced it a symbol of Western decadence.

This is just like when JFK and Khrushchev stopped wearing hats.

It looks like it could be winding down. The protesters don't have the brute force and weaponry that the police and Basij do, nor the incentive for violence, it appears. Also, some of their strongest voices are being identified and arrested:

- Andrew Sullivan notes one incredibly prolific blogger/twitterer from Iran who's appearing to have been detained.

- The daughter and four relatives of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjan were briefly detained. Despite being one of the more powerful figures in Iran, Rafsanjan is "believed to be" a supporter of the protests, and thus, susceptible to the wide net cast during the crackdown.

- Strong words via Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as he lashed out again at President Obama, this time asking: "Didn't he say that he was after change? Why did he interfere? They keep saying that they want to hold talks with Iran ... but is this the correct way? Definitely, they have made a mistake."

- The nighttime raids and beatings are getting particularly bad, notes Human Rights Watch. The Basij have been given run of the country. They're destroying private property, beating civilians, savaging entire neighborhoods, and detaining essentially anyone they feel like taking on. They're doing it to quell the rooftop chants and protests at night; nobody's complaining to the police, who're turning a completely blind eye to this sort of thing.

- The Basij are fighting back on the internet, using crowdsourcing to identify prominent protesters they can arrest and detain.

The picture that's beginning to come together: the protesters are tired, and the dissenting contingent of Iran is exhausted and starting to get a little scared. And now that Mir Hussein Moussavi has promised to conduct only "official protests" under what could only begin to be described as government pressure - which, come on, I'm more likely to get clearance to run assnaked on Lex from 92nd on down tonight - the figurehead of the political opposition to Iran's standing government has been more or less crippled.

It's easy to sit around and blog about how hard people are fighting, or how hard reporters are actually reporting, but honestly: we really have no idea what kind of energy it takes to do so. Moving the ground beneath one's feet, let alone that of an entire government's, can't be easy. Maybe they just needed a weekend off, maybe there's more to come tomorrow, or maybe this game's already been called. Whatever it is, it isn't looking good for anybody who hasn't already aligned themselves with Iran's re-ignited regime.

Opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi appears to be running out of options. According to the New York Times, he's promising to conduct only officially permitted protests (not likely) and the Guardian Council, which already validated Ahmadinejad's election, has validated it again. "There has been no fraud in the election," a spokesman announced.

And after blaming foreign reports for all their troubles, Iranian officials are also making extra efforts to silence the media (satellite signals have been jammed), which shouldn't be too difficult for a regime willing to arrest an entire newspaper (an estimated 40 journalists have been taken into custody). And don't wait for Twitter to ride in on a horse and save everybody. "It is still possible that the information age will crack authoritarian structures in Iran," writes Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "But it is far more likely that the government will be able to use that technology to secure its own rule."

To top it all off, ‘influential' cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, speaking at Friday Prayer in Tehran, called for protesters to be dealt with extra persuasively (with death).

Meanwhile, President Obama is not impressed. "There is no doubt that any direct dialogue or diplomacy with Iran is going to be affected by the events of the last several weeks. We don't yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran," he says, adding that the "clock is ticking" on Iran's development of a nuclear program.

• In one of the more heartbreaking stories to come out of this whole mess, reports emerged yesterday that the Iranian government was charging "bullet fees" to family members of anyone shot during the protests and demonstrations by Iranian forces. One man said that he had to pay the equivalent of $3000 in order to retrieve the dead body of his son from a local morgue. [Wall Street Journal]
  
  
• In an effort to prevent him from speaking to his millions of supporters, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been placed under 24-hour guard by the Iranian secret police. [Independent]
  
  
• Iran announced that it has no intention of overturning the results of the recent presidential election there. [VOA News]
  
  
• Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted Iran's Guardian Council five additional days to review complaints of fraud in the country's recent presidential election, though it's doubtful that this is anything more than a symbolic gesture. [Reuters]
  
  
• Iranian newspapers sympathetic to that country's hardline leadership are calling for the government to prosecute Mir Hossein Mousavi for causing the deaths of many of the young people killed in the uprising there. [Telegraph]
  
  
• Iranian forces raided a downtown Tehran building on and arrested a number of people accused of organizing protests against the government and its leadership. [Yahoo]
  
  
• Iran's parliament announced it would inaugurate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president by mid-August. [LA Times]
  
  
• The Iranian government has instituted lifetime bans on members of the Iranian soccer team who wore green wristbands in support of the protesters. [Guardian]
  
  
• Prior to the Iranian election, the Obama administration reached out to the Iranian Supreme Leader, only to have him ridicule their efforts publicly. [Washington Times]
  
  
• The Iranian government is airing interviews on state television of protesters saying they were coerced by Western governments and the Western media into going out and causing trouble in the streets. [MSNBC]

K-Lo's excuse is that she is simple-minded. Former assistant US Attorney Andy McCarthy can say no such thing, as idiotic as the things he writes are.

At least K-Lo's apologia for Ensign succinctly exposes an important difference in how dumb conservatives and dumb liberals interpret the world: dumb liberals justify their mean-spirited glee at seeing a member of the other team brought down in shame by claiming it exposes hypocrisy; dumb conservatives don't understand that it's not a tragic tale of a moral man felled by temptation, it's just a holier-than-thou asshole getting his*.

All McCarthy's doing, though, is absentmindedly flinging shit at the wall in the hopes that something sticks.

So Andy McCarthy's piece is a helpful attempt to explain just why Barack Obama has not yet personally flown into Iran to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei and grant free-market democracy to the grateful protesters. Some apologists have suggested that it would, in fact, strengthen the ruling regime for the American President to more actively take sides. Others have suggested that Obama might be better able to bargain with whomever eventually runs Iran if he hasn't pissed them off. You can fairly criticize the rationale behind both of those interpretations! Unless you are Andy McCarthy. In that case, this is your explanation.

The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.

Andy McCarthy is well-educated enough to know that a theocratic dictatorship is not compatible in any way with Leftism. He knows, when he writes that the "hard-Left... was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists," that many of these anti-Communists were, in fact, fascists, theocratic totalitarians, and dictators. (Like the heroic Afghani freedom fighters who beat back the Russians! Now we call them "the Taliban.") He knows that a ridiculously inequitable oil state that throws occasional sops to its massive underclass is more or less the opposite of the Socialist ideal. And yes, of course he fucking knows that Barack Obama is not even close to being "a man of the hard Left." (Why did President Barack Castro over here appoint Geithner?) Any idiot knows that the President of the United States would obviously rather see a non-insane moderate in charge of Iran, because seriously, how does Obama benefit by having Ahmadinejad still in power, again? He just likes the dude because they both hate America so much? In fact not a single one of the sinister insinuations made in that one simple sentence should even require any sort of rebuttal, because it is all just half-assed trolling.

But it is all especially shameless because neo-conservatives—not the "hard Left"—were the only Americans publicly begging for an Ahmadinjead victory, so that they could—as they are now!—demand that Obama take a harder line against the Iranian regime. One guy said it right there on National Review Online! And look, they won, and they are doing exactly what they said they would!

Anyway. Andy McCarthy: what a prick.

*Seriously, her attempts to frame Ensign's Clinton-era harangues about the sanctity of marriage as a bold truth heroically stated, one that Ensign, tragically, could not live up himself, are mind-boggling, unless you are as dumb and conservative as she is. Like, if she believes that his moralistic pandering was actually an attempt to preach the gospel, then she will forgive him for not living up to those high standards (the high standards he demanded Bill Clinton live up to, but whatever!) himself, because we are sadly all too human, except for abortionists. "I confess that my first instinct was certainly not to praise Senator Ensign upon learning of his infidelity," K-Lo writes, but then she performed the mental jujitsu necessary to align the facts—a man on "her side" does not live up to her standards of morality—with her worldview—she and her friends, the Republicans, are Holy and Right. And so, John Ensign's affair with a married woman is the fault of "the left-wing blogosphere," and all is right with her world. If K-Lo's boyfriend Mitt Romney was caught on video nailing an underaged Thai sex slave she'd probably find a way to make it Keith Olbermann's fault. Ok we promised we wouldn't actually talk about this column so much but come on.

Ken Ballen and Patrick Dohery polled 1,001 Iranians last month, and they found Ahmadinejad leading "by a more than 2 to 1 margin." Almost a third of respondents were still undecided but basically everyone else loved Mahmoud. And they were not just lying to pollsters because they were worried that maybe someone was going to arrest them! (That is the Iranian version of "the Bradley effect.")

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians — including most Ahmadinejad supporters — said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

It is heartening to know that, as in America, Iranian voters generally refuse to vote in ways consistent with their own self-interest. Ahmadinejad must've had a lot of support in the Iranian heartland.

But all Nate Silver (from whom we got that nifty map!) will say is that "the statistical evidence is intriguing but, ultimately, inconclusive." Tell us what happened, number god!

In as close to chronological order as we can determine, here is a brief summary of the major events that have taken place over the last couple of days.

• Iranians went to the polls last week in large numbers (85% of registered voters turned out) to vote in that country's Presidential election, a sign usually favorable to candidates challenging incumbents.
  
  
• Reports begin to emerge that the high turnout has definitely worked in favor of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who many, including former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, believe will win in a landslide.
  
  
• Turnout is so great that Iranian election officials extend the voting deadline an additional three hours so that more citizens are allowed to cast their ballots.
  
  
• Within hours of the polls closing, the Iranian government announced that incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 62% of the vote, reported to be the largest margin of victory in the history of Iranian Presidential elections, while main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi received only 33% of the vote. Due to the large number of hand ballots cast in Iran, this declaration of victory seemed extremely odd, as it was expected to possibly take days for election officials to count all of the ballots.
  
  
• Already sensing a bubble of unrest on the verge of bursting, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei states that all Iranians, including the losing candidates of the presidential election, must support Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  
  
• Ignoring the government's orders, thousands of Iranians, many of them covering their faces out of fear of being recognized and punished for rising up against the government, take to the streets in spontaneous protest.
  
  
• Reports emerge that cell phone calls and text-messaging have been blocked throughout Iran.
  
  
• Protests in the streets reach critical mass with thousands of average citizens doing battle with Iranian police and military outfitted in full riot gear.
  
  
• Iran's supreme leader issues a statement calling the election a "divine assessment."
  
  
• As the uprising begins to turn violent, with protesters throwing stones at Iranian officials and Iranian officials mercilessly beating hundreds of protesters, the New York Times' Bill Keller talks to an anonymous Iranian election official who says this: "They didn't rig the vote. They didn't even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it."
  
  
• British journalist Lindsey Hilsum files this remarkable report from Tehran, in which she says she feels as though she "went to sleep in one country and woke up in another."
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Reports emerge that Mir Hossein Mousavi has been placed under house arrest by the Iranian government.
  
  
• A group of employees within the Iranian Interior Ministry, the government body overseeing the election, issue a statement saying that the results of the election "were not healthy."
  
  
• Protests in the streets of Iran go deep into the night, with thousands of others going up to their rooftops to engage in chants that ring through the cities.
  
  
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives a speech in which he basically declares that everything is fine and events taking place in his country are no different than fans breaking out in fights after a soccer match.
  
  
• Tehran Bureau, an independent magazine doing exceptional reporting on events in Iran, reports that a massive protest march has been called by Mir Hossein Mousavi. It is later reported that protesters have called for a national work strike day on Tuesday.
  
  
• The BBC is ordered out of the country by the Iranian government. The BBC's John Simpson later reports that Iranian officials have attempted to arrest he and his crew, but each time that they do a mob of protesters surrounds them to protect them from Iranian forces.
  
  
  The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
  
  
  
  
• Reports emerge that Iranian college students were being brutally beaten and even shot dead by police as the government cracked down even harder on the protesters.
  
  
• Word gets out that Iranian forces have surrounded hospitals and are refusing to allow those injured in protest confrontations to seek treatment.
  
  
• Rumors spread on Twitter that today's protest march, which should be underway shortly, had been called off, but now appears to be back on again.
  
  
  It should be noted that exceptional reporting is being done on all of this by Andrew Sullivan, the Times' Lede blog, the BBC and the aforementioned Tehran Bureau.
  
  
  Photo of beaten Iranian student via Madyar Twitter

[Note: I'll be updating this post as reports come in. Whatever you've got, send it my way.] Iranians are taking to the streets, and whoever can access the Internet (a population being seemingly marginalized by the minute) is uploading footage to YouTube. Tehran Beaureu's reporting Ahmadinejad having already shut down land access to Facebook, and AP reports indicate that all social networking sites, major non-government consumer cell phone networks, and opposition sites - like that of Ahmadinejad's main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi - are getting shut down as well. Assuming this is true, people have found ways around it to get some information up and out into the ether. As you can see from the photo above, and the video below, things aren't looking good there.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The Lede's reporting that a Reuters reporter in Iran has already become a victim of the regime's violence, as he got the piss beaten out of him by some Iranian riot cops. Also, some Old School Bloggery: this Blogspotter's keeping a great running feed of whatever images and video she can cull as it comes in.

As The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan - who's also done an amazing job covering the beat today - points out, Iran's active government barely even tried to hide the fact that the entire thing was a farce, as the numbers in Ahmadinejad's favor increased exponentially as they came in, a telltale sign that they either (A) panicked or (B) just got numbers-happy and went with it. Sullivan also pointed out that opposition candidates have taken to Twitter in an attempt to organize and protect retaliation protests. Some of the collected Tweets from "reformer" candidate Mehdi Karroubi:

"Karoubi's camp believes that if there is no resistance this time, people's help can never be expected again." "Making any decision is very difficult and we are in a very difficult situation, any protest must very carefully calculated." "Karbaschi asks people to follow the news through satellite, facebook and internet and ignore rumors." "Karoubi will never be silent. He is present in the scene and never left it. Solutions are being considered."

Also interesting: typically, the election results are supposed to be given three days before Iran's Ayatollah certifies them. Today, they were certified immediately. Both White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have issued reports that they're "closely watching" the Iranian elections, with Gibbs noting that they're keeping an eye out for any irregularities. Oh, and this one's nice: Ahmadinejad just accused the foriegn media of unfavorable coverage, via an AP report:

"The heaviest pressure and psychological warfare was organized against the people of Iran. A large number of foreign media ... organized a full-fledged fight against our people."

Gonna have to disagree. I speak on behalf of American Media by offering that we give Kate Gosselin unfavorable coverage. You get off easy.

A great Flickr stream (from which the second image was pulled) is here. Check it out.

News update from Channel 4, again, via The Atlantic:

Joe Klein, in Tehran, reports:

The candidates are listed by name and by number...and also by code. You vote by writing down the candidate's name and then his...what? Number...or code? No one is quite sure. The leading reformer, Mir-Hussein Moussavi, has the number 4 and the code 777. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has the number 1 and the code 444. So the question arises: If you vote for Moussavi and list his number as 4...have you actually voted for Ahmadinejad? And why on earth have they devised such a complicated ballot in the first place?

Now polls closed... like a half-hour ago? But no one will know the results until tomorrow morning. And also there might be a run-off on June 19, if for some reason the Ayatollah hasn't made up his mind which guy to throw the election to.

Hah, no, seriously, he doesn't need to actually interfere in the election itself too much because he will retain his ultimate power over the nation no matter who the president is.

Here is a thing about how the government in Iran works, in case you are curious.

Jahan News, an Iranian website affiliated with Iran’s intelligence community, reported on Monday that he admitted to spying for Israel [presumably in jail under some kind of awful interrogation] ...
Two years ago, Derakhshan did not express any concern about being arrested.
“Blogging in Iran is not something that gets you into trouble now. It's a mainstream thing, because religious people, pro-government people have blogs and secular, totally rationalistic people also have blogs,” he said.

Yes, it's the hallmark of a good spy: A really active blog, where he reports his location, thoughts and meetings to the entire world. Where do we go to apply for a part in the next 007 flick??

(Photo from The Media Line)

We have other questions as well — including an open Defamer inquiry into the identity of an unusually sexy bedside photo subject. Help us figure it out after the jump.

Upon closer inspection, and in keeping with the home's general theme of despot-chic, we are all but certain that the mystery man pictured in Emmerich's guest room is none other than Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But we've never seen him looking so... hot. We're open to other suggestions (one immediate suggestion around HQ was Bronson Pinchot, which, frankly, we'd prefer) and decor commentary as well. We don't even know if 2012 could squander the Emmerich goodwill we're feeling right now.

[Photos: NYT]

• A London Home to Shock the Neighbors [NYT]

Begun in 2006, Ahmad's blog contains a mere 13 posts. But each entry is epic in length and is available in four languages. (Though cat pictures speak in many languages!) Here are some highlights, in his own words:

From Autobiography, 8/8/06:
I remember one day, when I was in first grade, by looking through a newspaper - with the help of the adults in our house- I read the news of the capitulation passage by the shah's so called "parliament."
With hope in God, I intend to wholeheartedly complete my talk in future with allotted fifteen minutes.

From Some Notes, 10/1/06:
I thank you for your remarks and explanations. Of course you reconfirmed that you are an independent council. It's interesting for me.

On the Holocaust:
The question is that in the world war the second more than sixty million people were killed. Out of these sixty millions two millions were among military personnel and the rest were civilians who did not have anything to do with war. These civilians were killed differently and they were respected. Now why we shall focus on certain number of people. Another question was that if you claim that this incident is real, why no impartial groups are allowed to investigate on it? Why European citizens are put behind bars only because of expressing their views? This occurs while we are allowed to question the most proved realities of the world. We allow every one to investigate and raise questions on God, prophets, freedom of human being, human being democracy and human rights but we do not allow anyone to question or investigate a historical event which happened sixty years ago. This is a big question. We think if this is a real incident we can present and prove it more clearly through researches and investigations. But here we face the main question which is raised by no one: this incident happened in Europe but the Palestinians are paying the price.

From Meeting with University Students, 10/18/06
A young student is pure, unpolluted and sincere. He is just and the supporter ‎of oppressed people. The spirit and vitality of these youth and their hopes for the ‎future can bring any obstacle down to its knees.

From Bureaucracy at People's Service, Not the People Serving Bureaucracy 11/21/06:
But in reality, the people's problems have not been solved. This is a dangerous issue which I have noticed since I was the mayor of Tehran and even before that time it bothered me. And I have tried to break with these erroneous customs and wrong ‎imported "innovations", and free the government administration from the web which ‎has tangled its operations. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I could not.

And like any new media guru, Ahmadinejad invites commenter participation from around the world. Here's what the followers of the hottest .ir are saying:

"I knew you were telling the truth."

"I come to your blog just for a glance, its so liberal of you to think of the idea of setting a blog. I didnt pay much attention to international politics before, but I find you a very intelligent and smart president~ Wish Iran and you all the best!"

"die slow ..."

"You are a nigger"

"I hate you. you are retarted. that simple mentally retarted"

Consider this RSS feed subscribed!

Seventy faculty members have signed a letter protesting the president's tantrum, which "sullied the reputation of the University with its strident tone," according to the letter, which was obtained by the New York Sun.

"You don't invite someone and then take him apart in the introduction," said Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand, who teaches at Columbia and signed the letter. "I don't understand it ethically, and I don't understand what it accomplished—that was my justification for signing the letter."

They're also more than a little pissed that Bollinger hasn't come to their defense against "outside groups" (like, for instance, the New York Sun!) who attempt "to vilify members of the faculty and determine how controversial issues are taught on campus." The irate academics will present their letter to a larger faculty meeting tomorrow. No letters denouncing nooses and swastikas on campus yet though!