by Joanna Lillis
When Iranian officials sit down at the negotiating table in Almaty with representatives from six international powers, Kazakhstan will gain kudos that will burnish its international diplomatic image and raise the prestige of President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The event may also encourage the United States and European Union members to restrain criticism of [...]
via Lobe Log
By Erich C. Ferrari and Samuel Cutler
Contained in the Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2013, and signed into law by President Obama on January 2, are sweeping new sanctions targeting Iran over its disputed nuclear program. The new measures target foreign entities engaging in a wide array of transactions with [...]
via Lobe Log
In an interview with BBC Persian, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen says that his department’s assessment is that reports published regarding serious and extensive shortages of medicine in Iran are exaggerated. He thinks the government of Iran is trying to portray a manageable problem as [...]
via Lobe Log
Bloomberg News reports on a new round of EU sanctions against Iranian banks and firms that will be announced tomorrow:
The new restrictions also include a ban on exports to Iran of materials that could be used in the Iranian nuclear and ballistic programs, in particular graphite, aluminum and steel as [...]
via Lobe Log
In last night’s vice presidential debate moderated by ABC News’s Martha Raddatz, Vice President Joe Biden and GOP nominee Paul Ryan (R-WI) focused extensively on the Iranian nuclear program and the US-Israeli response to it. Ryan sought to portray Obama Administration’s public disagreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as [...]
via Lobe Log
In a wide-ranging interview, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell discussed Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech with neoconservative Romney-adviser Dan Senor, challenging him over his intimation that the Obama administration lacked the will to increase sanctions on Iran two years ago:
SENOR: They talk about all these tough sanctions that they [...]
via Lobe Log
Bloomberg’s editorial board urges US and EU officials to use more crippling sanctions to make the threat of regime change more credible:
The idea behind tightening the screws is not that we expect the regime to see the error of its atomic ambitions. Rather, it is to stress the economy to the [...]
via Lobe Log
The US and EU are touting Iran’s currency woes as proof that sanctions are working, though it’s not clear to what end. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Western powers “are working on new coordinated measures intended to accelerate the recent plunge of Iran’s currency and drain its foreign-exchange reserves”:
The first [...]
via Lobe Log
The Virginian-Pilot reports that former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates restated his opposition to military strikes against Iran last night. The Republican made the comments to an audience of nearly 2,000 in Chrysler Hall as a speaker for the Norfolk Forum:
Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of [...]
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Hagel and the Hawks
via Lobe Log
Chuck Hagel hasn’t even been nominated for Secretary of Defense and yet rumors abound that he is a frontrunner for the job. The volume of the squawking from hard-line hawks opposing his nomination reveals much about the way the neoconservative echo chamber operates.
Morris Amitay, a former executive director of [...]