Iran

Top 5 ways Obama can redeem his Nobel

Juan Cole — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:11:00 PST

The world has noted the irony that President Barack Obama is delivering his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize after launching an escalation of the Afghanistan war. Of course, the critique is a little misplaced, since the prize is for a specific policy success, not for being a pacifist.

Student protests swarm Iran

Juan Cole — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:09:00 PST

The protests against the regime in Iran on Monday were remarkable in several ways, I conclude on reading Borzou Daragahi's account in the Los Angeles Times. One is the sheer number of cities where students came out for rallies: "Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht on the Caspian Sea."

Iran's nuke negotiator: "We have nothing to hide"

Dieter Bednarz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:25:00 PST

Ambassador Soltanieh, last Wednesday, your government announced that it would not transfer the enriched uranium stored at the nuclear facility in Natanz abroad so that it can be further refined there. In doing so, Iran backed out of an agreement that it had made at the nuclear talks held in Geneva in early October. Is this Tehran's idea of building confidence?

CNN on our new "huge, huge bomb" to use against Iran

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:18:00 PST

Here is Wolf Blitzer and Barbara Starr talking last night on CNN about the Iranians and what the U.S. might to do them; it's really pitch-perfect:

Neda's mom speaks

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:06:00 PST

The mother of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian woman who became a symbol of the Iranian election protests, has granted her first American interview to CNN. When her daughter was shot to death with a single bullet to the chest during an election protest in Tehran on June 20, the brutal murder, captured on video, swiftly went viral, and the phrase “I am Neda” became a rallying cry of support for the Iranian people.

How Israel destroyed Syria's Al Kibar nuclear reactor

Erich Follath and Holger Stark — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:04:00 PST

The mighty Euphrates river is the subject of the prophecies in the Bible's Book of Revelation, where it is written that the river will be the scene of the battle of Armageddon: "The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East."

America the superpower melts down

Michael Klare — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:00 PST

Memo to the CIA: You may not be prepared for time travel, but welcome to 2025 anyway! Your rooms may be a little small, your ability to demand better accommodations may have gone out the window, and the amenities may not be to your taste, but get used to it. It's going to be your reality from now on.

Obama inks defense bill with hate crimes provision

Associated Press — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:01:00 PDT

Trumpeting a victory against careless spending, President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a defense bill that kills some costly weapons projects and expands war efforts. In a major civil rights change, the law also makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation.

Obama's foreign policy report card

Juan Cole — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:26:00 PDT

Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama get the word out about its policy successes? President Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear program and persuading the Pakistani government to take on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by critics from both the right and the left in the wake of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set in motion significant change on several of these fronts -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd never hear about these successes from the mainstream media.

David Rohde on the "why do they hate us?" question

Glenn Greenwald — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:20:00 PDT

Yesterday I wrote about the first installment of the account by The New York Times' David Rohde of his seven months as a hostage held by the Taliban, and specifically how -- as he put it -- some of "Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban." His second installment is now available, describing his first several weeks of captivity after being moved to Pakistan, and it includes this:

Does Iran really want the bomb?

Juan Cole — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:08:00 PDT

When you tool around the blogosphere and the news sites, the discourse about Iran's nuclear program is maddeningly contradictory. But I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are:

Obama trumpets progress in Iran nuke talks

Alex Koppelman — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:30:00 PDT

The news about Iran and its nuclear program hasn't been great recently, what with the announcement last week that the country has a secret uranium enrichment facility that it's hidden for years. But the picture got a little brighter on Tuesday after talks between Iran and a group of nations including Russia, China, France, the U.K. and Germany.

The top ten things you didn't know about Iran

Juan Cole — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:02:00 PDT

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the U.S., other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

U.S. in talks with Iran over nukes

GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:34:00 PDT

The United States and five other world powers have begun high-stakes talks with Iran to demand a freeze of its nuclear activities.

Is Obama man or mouse?

Gene Lyons — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:06:00 PDT

As October arrives, all Washington is aquiver with anticipation over the Obama administration's first autumn theatrical season. The theme, of course, is forever the same: Geopolitical melodrama. The eternal foreign policy "crisis" remains our capital's only indigenous art form. The capital's political pundits function as drama critics.

Iran has no interest in compromise

Dieter Bednarz and Erich Follath — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:31:00 PDT

Three months after the disputed presidential election, Iran's leadership is more confident than ever. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has provoked the West at the U.N. General Assembly, while at home the opposition continues to be brutally repressed. There is little hope of progress at the negotiations that begin in Switzerland on Thursday.

Is the media exaggerating the Iranian nuke threat?

Juan Cole — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:30:00 PDT

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, reaffirmed Monday that a date would soon be set for the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the planned nuclear enrichment facility near Qom about which the Iranian government informed the IAEA on Monday a week ago.

The end of the Pax Americana?

Michael Lind — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:08:00 PDT

While the economic crisis continues to overshadow other topics, world politics is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. In areas from national security policy to trade, the Obama administration has repudiated Bush-era precedents significantly, if not rapidly enough for some critics on the left. The pressures on the administration to continue in the path followed by U.S. administrations since the fall of the Berlin Wall are intense, particularly in light of the victory of the hard-liners in Iran and new revelations about Iran's nuclear program. Even so, President Obama in partnership with other world leaders has a genuine opportunity to bring the post-Cold War era to a definitive end and to preside over the greatest reorganization of global politics since the end of World War II.

Iran conducts third round of missile tests

ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:01:00 PDT

Iran said it successfully completed two days of missile tests that included launching its longest-range missiles on Monday, weapons capable of carrying a warhead and striking Israel, U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and parts of Europe.

Obama undercuts Iran

Juan Cole — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:01:00 PDT

President Obama is slowly putting Iran in a box. His cancellation of the useless and expensive so-called missile shield program in Eastern Europe, which had needlessly antagonized Russia, has been rewarded with greater Russian cooperativeness on Iran. The U.S. right wing accused Obama of a failure of nerve. But in fact his move was shrewd and gutsy, since he predisposed Russia to increased cooperation with the U.S. in regard to Iran's nuclear research program. Obama's full-court press for a United Nations Security Council resolution on nuclear disarmament also pulled the rug out from under Iran's previous grandstanding tactics, whereby it accused the U.S. and its allies of only wanting nuclear dominance, not the abolition of nukes.