IRAN: Loaded Letter
The three dots said it all. Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani last week released a secret letter penned by the late Ayatollah Khomeini outlining his reasons for accepting a ceasefire with Iraq in July 1988. Iran, wrote Khomeini, didn't possess the weaponry required to keep fighting--and alluded to a commander of the Republican Guard saying that Iran needed "the capability to build a considerable number of laser and nuclear weapons." Just hours after the release of the letter, Iran's Supreme National Security Council ordered all Iranian news agencies to replace the nuke line with an ellipsis.
As the U.N. Security Council once again takes up Iran and its refusal to halt its uranium-enrichment program this week, Khomeini's letter gives pause for thought. It may seem to bolster skeptics who claim Iran indeed seeks nuclear weapons. But it more clearly suggests a rift within Tehran's leadership. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani of "selling out to the enemies, selfishness and lack of faith." According to sources close to him, the letter is a sign of Rafsanjani's frustration at being excluded from Iran's nuclear negotiations--and with the direction of ongoing talks. His team (formerly in charge of the talks with the West) is thought to favor a softer line than Ahmadinejad, and thinks today's leaders, too, need to face up to their weak position.
Indeed, the letter testifies to Khomeini's essential pragmatism--a quality notably absent among current Iranian leaders. "What the Imam's letter shows is that sometimes we need to make sacrifices to keep the Islamic system intact," says a close Rafsanjani adviser who asked not to be named speaking on sensitive matters. "But in order to make sacrifices you need wise men in charge of decisions. Wisdom is what is lacking from the current team in charge of Iran's nuclear negotiations."
-- Maziar Bahari
TERRORISM: Case Solved?
When India's new foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, meets his Pakistani counterpart in New Delhi next month to revive a gasping peace process, he's expected to present evidence that militants from the Pakistani-based Islamic group Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) were responsible for the Mumbai train bombings in July. Indian police have told local media that the attacks were masterminded by a radical leader in his early 50s named Azam Cheema, who inspired and trained a group of Pakistani militants and their accomplices in camps in and around Bahawalpur, Pakistan, where he's said to live openly.
According to investigators, some of the conspirators traveled between India and Pakistan via Iran to avoid suspicion. They charge that two Indian Muslims, Asif Khan and Faisal Sheikh, both in their early 30s and alleged LeT operatives, played a crucial role in the attacks. By the end of June, nearly 30 men, including 11 Pakistanis, had formed the squads that would carry out the operation, according to press reports.
Intelligence sources say that there is no "direct evidence" implicating the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI to the Mumbai blasts. But, says B. Raman, a former top-ranking official of India's external intelligence arm RAW: "This will be a test case for Pakistan's commitment to cooperate with India in the investigation of terrorism-related cases." Officials in Pakistan say they know nothing about Cheema or his alleged involvement in the bombings.
-- Sudip Mazumdar
DIAMONDS: Polished Gems
Any publicity is good publicity, right? Wrong. "Blood Diamond"--coming soon to a theater near you--has the diamond industry up in arms. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a South African smuggler in pursuit of a rare stone in war-torn Sierra Leone, circa 1999. It draws attention to the awkward truth that local warlords have in the past used so-called conflict diamonds to fund some of Africa's bloodiest civil wars, which is bad news for a business that depends heavily on sentiment to sell its product.
In retaliation, the World Diamond Council--which groups the industry's largest players with powerful support from diamond giant De Beers has launched its own spin campaign. After seeing a leaked script, the WDC met with Warner Bros. to ask the studio to make clear in its marketing campaign, and possibly in the credits, that the situation in Sierra Leone had improved. And last month saw the launch of a Web site that details the council's measures to halt the flow of conflict diamonds as well as the diamond industry's beneficial effects on entire national economies. Around the world, an estimated 10 million people depend on the diamond trade for their livelihoods. A dip in sales--or, worse, a boycott--could cause serious damage to vulnerable populations, argues the council.
--William Underhill and Sean Smith
Click here for an interview with Nicky Oppenheimer, whose family has controlled De Beers for three generations
WALL STREET: It's Just The Dow
Even though the Dow has broken the record that it set on Jan. 10, 2000, the market is nowhere near its record high. That's because the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average isn't the same thing as the U.S. stock market. Things are going well for large-capitalization stocks--the Dow's up 11 percent for the year, double its 80-year average of 5.5 percent, as calculated by Ibbotson Associates. But it's not a great year for the NASDAQ, which is up only 4 percent and is 54 percent below its 2000 high. As for perhaps the best measure of all, the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, which includes all U.S. stocks, it's down 9 percent.
-- Allan Sloan
Letter From the Editor
The U.S. capital is no stranger to sordid sex scandals. And like the one that consumed the Republican Party last week, each one usually has to do with much more than sex. As Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas writes, the uproar caused by suggestive e-mails from Florida Rep. Mark Foley to underage House pages has hit home partly because the abuse of power and trust they reveal is much more readily comprehensible to voters than the average campaign-finance scandal. At a time when the majority party was already reeling from growing doubts about the war in Iraq, and as political columnist Howard Fineman notes, disenchantment among its evangelical base, disgust over the Foley affair could well be the crystallizing force that shifts power in America's upcoming midterm elections.
-- Nisid Hajari, Managing Editor
FACT OR FICTION
In their efforts to cut corporate costs during times of economic hardship, many CEOs are turning their employees upside down to shake out extra change. In return, they get low morale.
Nickel-and-diming at Credit Suisse is no different from the massive cuts at crisis-ridden Ford.
WRONG: Ford is fighting for its life and spreading the burden from assembly-line workers to shareholders. Telling employees to cut down on color photocopies at the highly profitable Credit Suisse won't do much when hundreds of bankers still receive seven-figure bonuses.
Cutting corners is often self-defeating--it infuriates employees.
RIGHT: Mandating vacation time between Christmas and New Year to its staff of 10,500 might save Yahoo $21 million, roughly the combined earnings of its top three execs. Pinching the worker bees, and not the brass too, is not the best policy for employee retention.
--From Slate.com
INTERNET: Web of Laughter
Must everyone try to be funny these days? Even corporate America is getting ironic with a trio of chart-topping comedic videos on YouTube. Shot in a mock-doc style by IBM itself, actual company sales execs hawk million-dollar servers by cold-calling random names from the phone book. Humor, it seems, is a valuable asset. Fortune 500 companies dole out big bucks to comedy consultants who lead humor seminars and improv workshops--in the name of improved productivity. But how are funnier employees better for business? According to Tim Washer, a communications executive at IBM and former improv performer, funniness fosters team-building and, of course, thinking outside the proverbial box. What's next--a sitcom, courtesy of IBM? Don't laugh: "The Office" has already proved that cubicle drones are a fertile source of yuks.
--From Slate.com
Reality Check
Is screening embryos for potential diseases a good idea? More than 3 million children worldwide have been born through in-vitro fertilization, but nearly 500,000 embryos have been rejected in the United States alone. The practice originally targeted fatal diseases, but now includes low-risk illnesses like arthritis. Others, such as leukemia, have no clear genetic cause, and 42 percent of U.S. IVF clinics allow parents to select for gender.
--From Slate.com
BOOKS: How to Fake It
If they keep putting out books to get you up to speed on what everybody else knows, eventually there won't be any more Bluffers or Dummies. This fall's biggest threat is "The Intellectual Devotional," a secular equivalent of volumes with daily commentary on 365 passages of Scripture. It, too, is aimed at the insecure: the subtitle is "Revive Your Mind [since you're dead above the neck], Complete Your Education [which you never got] and Roam Confidently With the Cultured Class [to which you don't belong]." It's directed particularly at codgers and codgers-to-be: "These readings," says the introduction, "offer the kind of regular exercise the brain needs to stay fresh, especially as we age." Philosophers may be as disappointed in the entry on Leibniz as writers and literary scholars will be in the one on Faulkner, but there can't be many people who know about "Beowulf," Elizabeth Cady Stanton and nociception (the perception of pain, dummy). You know what the Sistine Chapel is, but do you know why it's called that? Well, I do. Now.
-- David Gates