via Lobe Log
Two must-read analyses of the Iran portion from last night’s final presidential debate are brought to us by TIME’s Tony Karon and the Arms Control Association’s Greg Thielmann. (This TPM headline also sums up the entire debate quite nicely: “Romney’s Final Debate Message: I’ll Be A Better Obama”.)
via Lobe Log
Sunday’s New York Times story that the US and Iran have agreed in principle to direct bilateral negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program provides opportunity for a more honest conversation on Iran than the presidential candidates have had so far. Well, at least this is my hope.
I know the NYT [...]
via Lobe Log
The escalating sanctions regime that has been imposed on Iran by the United States and European Union has placed all parties involved in a rather strange position. On the US side, the palpable glee over the dropping value of the Iranian currency and the success sanctions have had in causing misery [...]
via Lobe Log
This is becoming a recurring theme: sanctions are affecting the supply of humanitarian essentials for Iranians regardless of special waivers. Reuters has the report:
“The sanctions also appear to be affecting humanitarian operations in the country,” Ban wrote in the report, dated August 22, to the 193-member General Assembly on [...]
via Lobe Log
Jim Lobe and I wrote a report yesterday for IPS News about the expected US decision to delist the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (aka MEK, PMOI and NCRI) from its foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) list. Most analysts we interviewed predicted that the removal would only worsen already abysmal relations with Iran and possibly make [...]
via Lobe Log
Writing for the Financial Times the talented Iranian journalist, Najmeh Bozorgmehr, reports on how US-imposed sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank are preventing critically-ill patients from getting crucial medical aid:
The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says international sanctions have had little impact on the country and insists that its nuclear program [...]
via Lobe Log
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s statement yesterday that the Islamic Republic is prepared to host talks between Bashar Al Assad’s government and the opposition should be regarded as an indication of Tehran’s inability to influence events in Syria. His public declaration was more like a futile public relations [...]
Independent scholar and IPS News contributor Farideh Farhi argues in the ezine, Jadaliyya, that the Obama administration’s attempts to destabilize the Iranian government to the point of submission may affect Iranian decision-making processes in disastrous ways. Here’s why:
After a short and half-hearted attempt, the Obama administration, willingly or otherwise, fell into the trap of [...]
Everyone and their brother knows that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in Venezuela as part of a Latin American tour. It’s no secret and yet the amount of press this event has received suggests it’s more newsworthy than it is. The hype is reminiscent of the hot air blown over an Israeli announcement of a weekly flight [...]
Does the selection of Iran’s nuclear czar as its new (interim) foreign minister say anything about nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West? We don’t really know, and given that the next round of talks is only a month away, we might not know until news breaks from Istanbul.
Let’s get caught up with [...]
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