Heard Around the Hillary-Sphere

Needless to say it’s been a jam-packed week for Secretary Clinton and the week’s not even over.

Yesterday, I did a mini round-up of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, here, and there are a ton of posts below about what the Secretary has been doing daily. In addition, for anyone interesting in some differing commentary on what is at stake in the US-China economic relationship, I’d encourage you to check out this and this. Both are from Foreign Policy but offer somewhat differing takes.

Yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear what she thought of Iran’s treatment of it’s political prisoners:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday she deplores the reported abuse in custody of Iranians rounded up in protests of the country’s disputed June 12 presidential election. Clinton discussed the situation in Iran with visiting British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The comments by Clinton at a press appearance with her British counterpart were the first by a senior U.S. official on the multiple reports from Iran this week that detainees in the crackdown by the Tehran government may have been tortured, and some killed, while in detention.

Clinton hailed what she termed the “incredible courage” of Iranian election protesters in standing up against what they viewed as an infringement of their rights, and said the alleged abuse of prisoners is deplorable.

“We deplore that,” said Hillary Clinton. “We believe that it is imperative for the Iraqi authorities to release political prisoners, to treat them appropriately and humanely, and it is something that is very much telling, because their continuing detention and abuse of political prisoners certainly suggests that the political situation inside of Iran has not yet resolved itself.”

On the topic of Iran’s deplorable treatment of protesters and members of the political opposition, today Iranians bravely took to the streets to have a memorial at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was murdered on June 20th in Tehran while at the post-election protests:

Clashes erupted as two of Iran’s main opposition leaders tried to join the several thousand people at a memorial for the slain woman who became the symbol of Iran’s post-election violence, witnesses said.
Neda Agha-Soltan was gunned down on a Tehran street on June 20.

Security forces barred opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi from the grave site of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old woman shot in election protests on June 20, witnesses and news reports said. About 2,000 to 3,000 people were gathered at Agha-Soltan’s grave, Iran’s Press TV reported.

Mourners arrived on the religiously significant 40th day after the fatal shooting in Tehran. For Iranians, a predominantly Shiite Muslim population, the 40th day after a death marks the last official day of mourning.

Security forces worked to clear the area of demonstrators and mourners. A witness said riot police and Basij militia were there, but confrontations with people in the crowd involved the militia.

The witness spotted instances of the baton-wielding militia charging the gathering, and reported as many as nine beatings. Other people appeared to have been beaten as they ran from police, the witness said. iReport.com: Share your photos, video, stories

One of the mourners had a bloody head and one woman said she was struck on the back of the neck.

One security force member seemed to have a head injury was bloodied.

Witnesses also said they saw a confrontation between women protesters and police. The women shouted, “Don’t beat up our young people. You, our Muslim brothers. It is a shame to beat up our young people.”

The crowd chanted “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein,” the first reference to the revered Shiite imam and the second reference to Moussavi. Then there were more chants of “Allah wa Akbar,” or God is great.

Despite reports of arrests, none was seen on the mourning day.

Moussavi was the chief challenger of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June presidential elections, which the government said Ahmadinejad won in a landslide, but many Iranians think was rigged.

Moussavi had said on his Web site that he and fellow reform candidate Karrubi would commemorate Agha-Soltan’s death with her mother at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery…

Secretary of State Clinton will be focusing on the use of rape as a weapon of war in her upcoming trip to Africa, and specifically, the Democratic Republic of Congo:

As part of her swing through Africa next week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to visit eastern Congo, the epicenter of two wars in the past decade, and denounce the alarming rates of rape in the region, an official said Wednesday.

“She is intending to go to Goma, where a lot of this violence is taking place,” said Johnnie Carson, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, in an interview, referring to the provincial capital of eastern Congo.

The Congolese military launched an offensive earlier this year against Rwandan Hutu rebels who have lived for years in eastern Congo. The rebels have been a major cause of the deadliest documented conflict since World War II, which has involved several countries in the area and left millions dead from the violence and turmoil.

And over at Laura Rozen’s, ‘The Cable’, there is continued talk about the differing views regarding exactly how to articulate US policy towards Iran:

…

On Sunday, in her first appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press since becoming Obama’s top diplomat, Clinton was asked about her defense umbrella remarks.

“What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions [in Iran] that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we’re not going to let that happen,” Clinton explained.

Later in the interview, Clinton said something else that, though unremarkable to many observers, pricked up the ears of some international nonproliferation experts and one hawk-eyed journalist, World Politics Review’s Judah Grunstein. Addressing Iran, Clinton said, “You have a right to pursue the peaceful use of civil nuclear power. You do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon. You do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control.”

Whether Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has a right to enrich depends on whom you ask. (Iran insists it does under the NPT, as do many international nonproliferation experts. Others believe the Islamic Republic has essentially forfeited that right for being found by the U.N. Security Council to have violated its obligations under the same NPT treaty.) But the explicit assertion that Iran does not have the right to enrich has not been previously publicly expressed by the Obama administration, some nonproliferation experts asserted.

“That statement [by Clinton on Meet the Press] also perked up my ears,” one U.S. government expert said on condition of anonymity.

“The NPT does give members states the right to enrich uranium, as long as they comply with their other obligations,” he continued. “The Bush administration position, which was supported by the U.N. Security Council, was that Iran forfeited this right by concealing many of its nuclear activities for 18 years, but Iran asserts that the right is still inherent there. So, in essence, she was restating the Bush position that Iran no longer has the right to enrich. But it is because Iran was deemed to have forfeited the right through its behavior.”

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