Month: January 2011

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 20th, 2011:

Commentary: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal blogs on Commentary’s Contentions blog that Switzerland has finally “relented and announced that it will fall into line with EU sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector,” but only after “touting its ‘active neutrality’ position, whatever that means,” over the past year. Weinthal characterizes the Swiss Foreign Ministry as going “to great lengths to maximize their gas and other economic deals with the mullah regime.” He emphasizes, “The gas revenues from the [Swiss deal] with [National Iranian Gas Export Company], whose parent company, National Iranian Gas Company, was placed on Britain’s Proliferation Concerns List in February 2009, would end up funding Iran’s nuclear-weapons program as well as its wholly owned subsidiaries, Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Council on Foreign Relations: George W. Bush administration Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams blogs his evaluations of the Obama administration’s Middle East Policy thus far. On Iran, he writes, “Diplomatic efforts to stop the Iranian nuclear program continue, but any deal is more likely to concede to the Iranian regime some limited right to reprocess and enrich uranium than to stop the Iranian bomb,” and “Sanctions and sabotage have slowed the Iranians down and credit is due to some combination of the EU, the United States, and Israel, but the Iranian centrifuges continue to spin.” He claims that the administration has insufficiently engaged with individuals in authoritarian countries, claiming, “We seek ‘engagement’ with the Asad regime in Syria and the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and with the ayatollahs in Iran, not with the people who live under their thumbs.”

The Jewish Telegraph Agency: Ron Kampeas, JTA’s Washington bureau chief, speaks to a number of close followers of U.S. Middle East policy in Washington. On the hawkish side, he speaks with Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), who tells him, “Iran is still enriching uranium. It is absolutely critical we bear down with a comprehensive strategy of which sanctions is a critical part.” The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz takes an even more hawkish tone, saying, “If you’re going to target a hard-line regime, you’ve got to have a military option on the table.”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 19th, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: Johns Hopkins Professor and Hoover Institution fellow Fouad Ajami opines, “The Bush diplomacy had declared an open ideological assault against the Iranian theocracy. Mr. Obama would offer that regime an olive branch and a promise of engagement.” Ajami declares this swing toward diplomacy a message to “the despots in the region that the American campaign on behalf of liberty that Mr. Bush had launched in 2003 has been called off.” The op-ed describes Obama’s slowness to speak publicly about the 2009 Iranian election as a “break of faith with democracy” and “deference of the pre-eminent liberal power to men who had unleashed the vigilantes on their own people.” Ajami praises Clinton’s speech last week in Qatar, in which she criticized Arab leaders: “For a fleeting moment in Qatar, George W. Bush seemed to make a furtive return to the diplomatic arena.” He concludes, “He was there, reincarnated in the person of Hillary Clinton, bearing that quintessential American message that our country cannot be indifferent to the internal arrangements of foreign lands.”

The Wall Street Journal: Joshua Muravchik reviews Abbas Milani’s book “The Shah” and highlights “The shah’s tolerance of religious minorities—notably Bahai and Jews—and his advancement of women’s rights brought him to daggers with Iran’s clergy, led by Khomeini… The paradox of the fall of the Shah,’ Mr. Milani says, ‘lies in the strange reality that nearly all advocates of modernity formed an alliance against the Shah and chose as their leader the biggest foe of modernity,’” quotes Muravchik. He concludes, “The Iranians have already paid dearly for this folly. What price the rest of the world will pay remains an open question.”

Commentary: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal, writing on Commentary’s Contentions blog, responds to the Der Spiegel magazine cover story about Israeli involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Weinthal mentions that “…the magazine, like most German media, has a peculiar obsession with Jews and Israel,” and goes on to accuse the magazine of helping to propagate “anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment.” “Take as an example the headline of the article in the current issue documenting a chronology of the planned hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his posh Dubai hotel,” writes Weinthal. “It screams out ‘An eye for an eye, a murder for a murder.’” He concludes, “The cheap wordplay on a section from the Hebrew Bible further reinforces widespread European prejudices against Jews.”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 18th, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: In his weekly column, neoconservative Bret Stephens acknowledges that the Stuxnet virus appears to have done serious damage to Iran’s nuclear program but, “As of last November, U.N. inspectors reported that Iran continued to enrich uranium in as many as 4,816 centrifuges, and that it had produced more than three tons of reactor-grade uranium.” Stephens says, “That stockpile already suffices, with further enrichment, for two or possibly three bombs worth of fissile material.” He goes on to suggest that North Korea might export enriched uranium to Iran: “Merely stamp the words “Handle With Care” on the crate, and the flight from Pyongyang to Tehran takes maybe 10 hours.” Stephens ominously concludes, “The next time Israel or the U.S. tries to stop Iran’s nuclear advances, the means aren’t likely to be as targeted, or as bloodless,” and, “Wars are never won by covert means alone.”

Commentary: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal writes on Commentary’s Contentions blog that “Iran’s pariah regime said today that it plans to drop the death-by-stoning penalty against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.” (The New York Times reported that the head of the Human Rights Committee in Iran’s parliament said the stoning sentence had never been confirmed.) Weinthal theorizes that, “Given Iran’s deceptive behavior with respect to its illicit nuclear weapons program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might be flirting with a cooling-off period in order to reimpose the stoning penalty at a later stage,” and partially blames the EU for failing to adequately sanction Iranian human rights abusers. “While the European Union claims to have cornered the market on advancing human rights, there is an eerie silence and passivity emanating from the E.U. about sanctioning Iran for human rights violations,” he writes. Weinthal concludes, “The tragic case of Ms. Ashtiani shows that if the Western democracies decide to fill its human rights rhetoric with meaning and content, they can influence a change in Iran’s incorrigibly reactionary domestic policies.”

The Wall Street Journal Europe: Author Giulio Meotti and FDD’s Benjamin Weinthal opine that Germany and Italy have “put themselves on the wrong side of history” by increasing trade with Iran. “As Tehran continues its illicit nuclear program, Berlin and Rome are extending a commercial life line to the regime,” they write. “If Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is serious about his pledge to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, he ought to find ways to help Italians buy oil from other sources… Without the help of the two European economic powerhouses, Iran would have considerably less money with which to build nuclear weapons, and to finance terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas,” they conclude. “Unfortunately, it appears Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Berlusconi still consider their countries’ combined €10 billion trade relationship with Iran to be more important than stopping a nuclear Iran.”

The State Department has released its “American Documentary Showcase,” which includes…

“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”

Ellsberg responds:

WOW! Hot damn! Sometimes even the current USG comes through — with a show of the old American ideals, still worth fighting for! (Now, if we could get this shown INSIDE the State Department, and the Pentagon and CIA, Camp David… I’d give anything; any ideas?)

The US State Department has released their list of films for the 2011 “American Documentary Showcase,” a program that brings their approved documentaries to audiences around the world to “offer a view of American society and culture.”

Amongst the list of selected titles, surprisingly, was “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”

It’s a fine choice, of course, and a splendid documentary, but with the State Department railing against WikiLeaks it seems odd for them to be celebrating a laudatory documentary on the last major whistleblower officials were trying to spin as a grave threat to national security.

Then again maybe it’s just a matter of time healing all wounds – maybe the State Department will be celebrating a WikiLeaks documentary in another 40 years.