Month: February 2011

Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo appreared on Fox Business Channel’s Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano Wednesday night.

He spoke about the uprisings in the Middle East.

The video is now available (below):

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 16th, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: The Journal’s editorial board elaborates on “Why Tehran’s thugs will be harder to depose than Hosni Mubarak” and observes that the U.S. has less leverage over Iran’s leadership because “Tehran scorns the West.” Or, “To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples.” The WSJ calls for Washington to impose greater isolation and pressure on Iran, and warns, “Yet many policy makers and pundits in the West still want to engage the regime as if it were merely another thuggish status quo power, rather than the greatest threat to world order.”

Commentary: Commentary Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin warns against complacency after the news that Stuxnet had done massive damage to the Iranian nuclear program. “Somehow, despite the sanctions and the ban on selling nuclear equipment to Iran, the damaged centrifuges were replaced almost as quickly as they were taken offline,” he says. “At best, it has delayed them a bit, but the IAEA evidence makes it clear that the Khamenei/ Ahmadinejad regime’s commitment to their goal of a nuke is such that cyberattacks won’t be enough to derail them,” he continues. Tobin goes on to lash out at the Obama administration for wasting time and effort in “engagement” with Iran and concludes, “[I]f the IAEA evidence is correct, then the optimistic forecasts about Tehran’s prospects must be thrown out and replaced with an evaluation that puts the need for either serious sanctions or the use of force back on Washington’s front burner.”

The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs on her “Right Turn” blog—a blog which is supposed to cover the “conservative movement and the Republican party” but disproportionately focuses on Iran and Israel—that sanctions against Iran have failed and that it’s time to reexamine the military option. “Neither the administration’s touted sanctions nor a computer virus has slowed the Iranian regime’s quest for nuclear weapons. For all the chest-puffing by the Obama team, sanctions have in fact not ‘worked,’” she writes. She consulted the American Enterprise Institute’s John Bolton, a former UN ambassador, who told her, “U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, with both overt and covert assistance to opposition groups willing to accept it.” Bolton goes on to warn, “[A]n Iranian crash program could produce a nuclear weapon in one year. That means there are still only two options: Let Iran get nuclear weapons or use preemptive military force.”

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 15th, 2011:

The Heritage Foundation: The Heritage Foundation’s Ted R. Bromund and James Philips make their against a U.S. policy of containment against Iran, preferring the “military option.” Their argument appears to defy the historical pattern of containment against the Soviet Union and China, asserting, “A serious containment policy will require the U.S. to maintain a credible threat of force against Iran. This will be even more difficult if Iran goes nuclear because the U.S. will have lost credibility.” Bromund and Philips say, “The U.S. therefore cannot rule out military action to stop the development of Iran’s nuclear program. If the U.S. fails to present a convincing threat of military action and thus effectively acquiesces in the Iranian program, it will encourage the Iranian regime to believe that it can continue to advance without fear.” The authors prefer this strategy over the “repetitious, content-free, and ill-informed mantra of containment.”

The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs that the Obama administration has been distracted by the new federal budget and is failing to support pro-democracy protesters in Iran. “There is no call for regime change and there is no indication we are planning any increased assistance for the opposition,” she says. Rubin repeats House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-FL) call for tightening sanctions, and concludes, “Perhaps some oversight hearings are in order. The chairwoman and her committee should probe whether besides tweeting in Farsi the administration is offering anything more than lip service to the protesters.”

National Review Online: Michael Barone opines, “[M]ost of us would probably prefer to have seen a victory of people power in Tehran or Pyongyang than in Cairo… Mubarak’s Egypt was an ally of the United States, at least somewhat helpful in our own efforts in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, and a nation at peace, albeit a cold peace, with Israel.” He continues, “In contrast, the mullah regime in Iran is developing nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and other American allies within missile range.” He goes on to blame the Obama administration for the failure of June 2009 protests in Tehran to bring about regime change: “The people of Iran did take to the streets in opposition to the mullahs’ election-rigging in June 2009. But Barack Obama and his administration gave a cold shoulder to this green movement, and there was no regime change.”

Fox News is reporting that the Iranian pro-democracy protest movement is gearing up, inspired by the Egyptian revolution, and so who do they go to for an interview —  “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi, son of the hated Shah!

UPDATE: There’s no video up yet, but here’s the Fox News report.

Are we to be spared nothing? Christiane Amanpour prefaces her interview with Newt Gingrich this morning on her boring Sunday tv program by saying the Newtster is running for president and is fresh from the CPAC conference — he then bloviates on about how we “abandoned” Mubarak, and what a shame that is. What Amanpour doesn’t mention is that the Newtster garnered a whopping 5 percent at the CPAC presidential poll.  So why is this loser given a slot on national television and the winner isn’t? My theory: the liberal-Obama-ite media has a vested interest in holding up losers as emblematic of the Right. An anti-war, anti-Fed libertarian isn’t politically correct. (Oh wait: she’s also  going to interview “later in the program” Tim Pawlenty — who got less than Newt in the CPAC poll.)