The most raucous holiday of the Jewish calendar begins tonight (Wednesday), observed by reading the biblical Book of Esther (Megillat Esther or just the Megillah). The reading accompanied by an outbreak of cacophony every time the name of Haman the villain is mentioned. Other Purim traditions including feasting and sharing treats with friends and family, [...]
A tweet from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) twitter account:
#Iran says that #Palestinian statehood is the first step toward eradicating Israel – Stop #Iran before its too late aipac.org/Donate%20Now
The statement is likely in reference to comments [...]
Former CIA operations officer Robert Baer is in the headlines–again. He’s predicting an Israeli attack on Iran–again. And he’s promoting one of his books–again.
A WikiLeaks cable reported this week suggested that the main Iranian obstacle to striking a nuclear fuel swap deal with the West was not the deal itself (or the Western countries involved), but internal Iranian politics.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took heat from his right flank on the issue during a 2009 push for [...]
Our IPS colleague Omid Memarian has a piece up at the wire explaining Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s sudden Monday firing of his foreign minister, Manoucher Mottaki.
Memarian’s piece draws on Iranian sources to describe the political context of, and gauge reactions to, Mottaki’s firing and his interim replacement by Ali Akbar Salehi, until now [...]
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 [...]
Earlier this week, Ambassador Chas W. Freeman offered some invaluable insights on WikiLeaks, which Jim Lobe and I wrote about in this IPS piece and I shared here. I thought I’d take another chance to empty my notebook of more of Freeman’s observations. (And check out his new book.)
Freeman, who has extensive [...]
At a release event for the U.S. Institute of Peace’s (USIP) Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Power – an exhaustive collection of new writings on the country — the opening address came from Dennis Ross, a top national security adviser to President Barack Obama on the Mid East.
Ross is an influential adviser to [...]
The Washington Times story on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s talk on Tuesday is missing a little something. Specifically, the Times omits any mention of his assessment of the unsavory outcomes of a U.S. military attack on Iran.
Here’s the Times report, by Ben Birnbaum (my emphasis throughout), minus the article’s last two [...]
The European Union told reporters on Friday that Iran responded to it’s offer for P5+1 talks on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear stand-off with the West.
The New York Times reports:
In a two-paragraph letter answering an invitation offered more than three months ago by the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, the [...]
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