Month: November 2010

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 9th, 2010:

The Washington Post: Senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow and former George W. Bush policy adviser Michael Gerson writes that after the midterm election, Obama may choose to focus his efforts on foreign policy. He warns that Obama will make little headway in bringing peace in the Middle East because “Palestinian leaders are divided – unable to deliver on the agreements they are too weak to make in the first place. Israelis feel relatively safe behind security walls, uninclined toward risky compromise and concerned mainly about Iran,” echoing the reverse linkage argument frequently employed by hawks in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Gerson concludes that threat of military force against Iran is unlikely because, “When a president threatens force, he also loses control. And Barack Obama seems to be a man who values control.” As for the Tea Party movement, Gerson says it represents a “Jacksonian ascendancy” on Capitol Hill and “will urge more forceful policies against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela – along with Russia and China.”

Time: Tony Karon discusses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure onVice President Joe Biden to get tough with Iran. “The only way to ensure that Iran will not go nuclear is to create a credible threat of military action against it if it doesn’t cease its race for a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu reportedly told Biden. Karon writes that the Obama administration would have neither a legal basis nor international support in initiating a war with Iran. But the real challenge for the Obama administration, says Karon, may lie in the charges voiced by Republicans that Obama is “soft on Tehran” whenever any attempt at engagement with Iran is pursued. “That will certainly suit the Israeli leadership, who not only want to see a more confrontational U.S. position on Iran, but who also came into office insisting that Iran’s nuclear program, rather than peace with the Palestinians, should be Washington’s priority in the Middle East.”

The Wall Street Journal: Walid Phares of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies opines on the imminent judgement of the tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minsiter Rafik Hariri. “Thanks largely to bountiful Iranian aid, Hezbollah is winning its war against international justice,” writes Phares. He expects many Hezbollah members will be charged, but not arrested. He views Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent trip to Lebanon as an indication that “Iran, and not only its minions, would act in the event of an adverse ruling.” Phares concludes by imploring the UN, which helped set up the tribunal, to adhere to the UN charter which permits the use of force to ensure such rulings are enforced.He concedes this is unlikely, since it requires consent of the Lebanese government.

AFP: The newswire reports on the comments of the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, who said that “Iranian influence has diminished somewhat.” Via a video conference, Cone told reporters in Washington, “We see all sorts of Iranian influence — some of it positive, in fact.” He added that some of the negative influence is “very difficult to attribute that to the Iranian government” — a reference to the fact that the alleged Iranian weapons entering Iraq may come from non-state actors.

Antiwar.com columnist Kelley Vlahos appeared on Russia Today’s Crosstalk show, with a panel talking about the future of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Watch it here:

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 8th, 2010:

AFP: Michael Comte reports on Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R-SC) recent comments on China and Iran. The remarks included a call for “bold” action to deal with Iran and a statement which appeared to endorse military action against Iran’s nuclear program. “[If President Barack Obama] decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon,” he told the Halifax International Security Forum. “Containment is off the table,” Graham added. If the United States were to pursue a military option against Iran, Graham emphasized that it would be a war, “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime.” Graham also warned that a “period of confrontation” with China over its “cheating” currency manipulation was drawing closer.

The National Interest: George Washington University professor Hossein Askari argues that a nuclear enrichment agreement with Iran would only serve to lift some sanctions. Meanwhile, Tehran could continue secretly pursuing their nuclear program and “meddling in the region to pressure the United States.” Askari suggests negotiations and a fuel swap agreement are simply stalling tactics coming from a regime that views America as “their existential threat.” “The atomic issue is not America’s central problem with Iran, the regime is the problem, a fact that America must painfully acknowledge and so reorient its strategic interests,” says Askari. He concludes that the United States should support the opposition and reform movements within Iran, while expanding sanctions and freezing foreign bank accounts of Iranian citizens in excess of “say $1 million or $5 million.”

National Review: National Review senior editor Jay Nordlinger laments that his warnings about the imminence of an Iran bomb have gone unnoted in the public discourse. Last year he interviewed former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who opined that Iran would have a bomb by 2015. Believing he had a scoop, Nordlinger ”put it here in the Corner. I put it in my web column. I put it in a piece for National Review (at the tippy-top). I put it everywhere but in concert and opera reviews.” Nordlinger writes, “And . . . nothing. No one commented, no one noticed — no one said, ‘Holy-moly!’” Casting himself as a prophet ignored, Nordlinger concludes: “Oh, well, it could be that the Iranian A-bomb is simply a foregone conclusion, or a topic that bores people. I fear it will not be so boring, when the mullahs go nuclear.”

Jerusalem Post: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met in New Orleans this weekend during the Jewish Federations of North America’s general assembly . Netanyahu reportedly told Biden, “The only way to ensure that Iran is not armed with nuclear weapons is to create a credible threat of military action against it, unless it stops its race to obtain nuclear weapons.” Netanyahu said paradoxically that a military threat was the only way to avoid war, and that he feared Western governments were falling into Tehran’s hands: “Iran is attempting to mislead the West and there are worrying signs that the international community is captivated by this mirage.”

On October 26, Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo spoke at the University of Michigan.

His talk, “Whatever Happened to the Antiwar Movement?,” is available below as a video and is also available in text format. Photos of the event are also available.

Justin Raimondo at the University of Michigan, 10/25/10 from MIC4L on Vimeo.

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5th, 2010:

Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy’s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with Russia. One of the mailings raised the question: “’Why did Senator Bob Corker vote in committee to put Russia’s military interests ahead of our own?” This referred to Corker’s vote approving the treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16. Rogin adds, “With a picture juxtaposing the images of Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mailer alleges that President Obama and lawmakers are using the ‘lame duck’ session of Congress to ram through the New START treaty, which it argues ‘severely weakens our national security.’” The mailer alleges that the treaty, which would primarily reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads, would put nuclear weapons in the hands of “countries that want to destroy us,” like North Korea and Iran. Corker’s Chief of Staff told The Cable that much in the flier wasn’t accurate.

National Review Online: American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Ali Alfoneh writes that Sobh-e Sadegh’s—an Iranian newspaper with close ties to the IRGC—calls November 4th, the 31st anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy, as “the day of humiliation of world imperialism.” The newspaper’s statements, say Alfoneh, show that “the political alliances which defeated the Shah’s regime required foreign enemies like the United States for internal unification, an essential component of the regime’s survival.” Alfoneh concludes, “[Some of the hostage takers] have themselves become victims of this ruthless political system, which constantly looks for and finds fifth columnists. It is this side of the Atlantic where some are still unwilling to accept reality.”

The Weekly Standard: Michael Weiss writes that uproar over the sentencing to death of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, for the crimes of murder and adultery, and Iran’s unclear plans regarding her execution offer an insight into “the theocracy’s preferred method of psychological torture: Will we or won’t we.” Weiss concludes that despite outcry from various Western human rights groups and the U.S. State Department, “Whatever happens to Ashtiani, one can only guess at the psychological torture she and her family have endured because their government takes sadistic joy in treating capriciously the matter of whether she lives or dies.”

American Enterprise Institute: Charlie Szrom, a senior analyst and program manager at AEI’s Critical Threats Project, writes that the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation is flawed because it is used for political purposes. “Two weeks from now, officials from the P5+1 group, consisting of the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, hope to meet with Iranian officials for a new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Did this announcement of Jundallah’s FTO designation occur now as a bargaining chip to encourage Iran to engage in talks over its nuclear program?” asks Szrom. He argues that the FTO designation should be used regardless of the diplomatic and political environment and “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda and its affiliates, threaten American interests and should trigger FTO designation as soon as credible evidence of their status emerges.” Szrom warns that fixing the FTO designation process and the recent designation of Jundallah as a terrorist group, “does not encourage Iran to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which will continue without serious considerations by the United States of all its options regarding Iran.”

Antiwar Radio’s Scott Horton was interviewed yesterday on Russia Today about the foreign policy impact of the US elections.

Check it out: