Wednesday Iran Talking Points

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 23rd, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: The Foundation for Defense of DemocraciesEmanuele Ottolenghi opines, “Arabs’ revolutionary awakening belies Western conventional wisdom in the Middle East,” and repeats a linkage-denying argument that “ordinary Arabs who rose against their regimes didn’t do so because they wanted to free Palestine, but because they wanted to free themselves.” Ottolenghi rejects the linkage argument, a view promoted by the Obama administration, which posits that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a crucial step in addressing regional problems in the Middle East. He concludes, “The conventional wisdom that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the mother of all problems in the region has now been exposed as nothing but a myth. Will Western leaders finally learn?”

The Waterloo Record: Senior Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Ray Takeyh writes, “it is all too obvious that the only option the United States has in altering the Islamic Republic’s behaviour is to support the ‘green movement.’” Takeyh acknowledges that the “military option” has “now become implausible” and discards the potential of negotiations, observing, “Tehran’s callous leadership, indifferent to the financial penalties of its nuclear truculence, was hardly prone to make cost-benefit assessments and constructively participate in negotiations.” He concludes that the Green Movement should “be beneficiaries of advice and assistance” from the U.S. “Whether motivated by idealism or a desire to advance practical security concerns, the West must recognize that the only thing standing between the mullahs and the bomb is the green movement,” he writes.

Author: Eli Clifton

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service's Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

5 thoughts on “Wednesday Iran Talking Points”

  1. Could these fools explain the 2,000,000 plus crown in Tahrir square the other day chanting alongside Islamic leaders with their chants of Islamic prayers and the calls fro waht would be the liberation of Palestine. Also calling for events that would be detrimental to not only the security but the existence of Israel. All to chillingly a similiar reminder to the massive NAZI rallies of Nuremberg in the late 1930's, if you ask me.
    Do people remember the peace accord signed in 1979 between the US,Egypt and Israel.
    Well that surely means nothing now, given Egypt has allowed 2 Iranian warships to passage through the Suez canal for the first time since the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979.
    With Libya burning to the ground, Unrest right across the middle east how can any fool say this is not related to Plaestine and Islamic fundamentalism and is completely a show for wanting greater democracy and freedoms. Get real. A Massive middle eastern war will start this year or next year followed by another World War.

  2. Emanuele Ottolenghi has a very long record on the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian matters and I think it was totally wrong for the wall street journal to use this man as a reference with out the clear record that the man is very opinionated on the matter and I believe enough to question why he should even be published. Why he was posted on talking points on Iran is questionable since apparently he was attempting to sweep the thought that the problems of Israel occupied lands might be part of the problems in the arab revolt. What I noticed in two minutes of look up:

    He is research fellow in Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies'

    Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sweep under the rug by the report who apparently is not someone who
    is talking without a very bias opinion on the matter. The

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