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IPS Writers in the Blogosphere » NRO http://www.ips.org/blog/ips Turning the World Downside Up Tue, 26 May 2020 22:12:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-135/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-135/#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 02:52:12 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=8674 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 24:

National Review Online: Clifford D. May, president of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lashes out at the UN for considering Palestinian requests for a condemnation of Israeli settlement construction. “[W]hy should Palestinians negotiate if they can get the U.N. to force [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 24:

  • National Review Online: Clifford D. May, president of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lashes out at the UN for considering Palestinian requests for a condemnation of Israeli settlement construction. “[W]hy should Palestinians negotiate if they can get the U.N. to force Israel to make concessions in exchange for nothing?” asks May. The UN, says May, is wasting its time when it should be confronting Iran. “Iran’s rulers are executing dissidents daily, developing nuclear weapons, and sending warships through Suez.” He argues that the settlements are really a non-issue, writing, “Hamas, Hezbollah, and the theocratic rulers of Iran have been candid: Creation of a Palestinian state is, at best, a secondary goal. Their primary objective is the defeat and destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.”
  • The Heritage Foundation: The Heritage Foundation’s vice president of foreign and defense policy studies, Kim Holmes, blogs that “Obama’s ‘engagement’ strategy toward the ‘Islamic world’ is irrelevant to the Middle East” and that protesters’ demands for “freedom and better standards of living” cause the Obama administration to “launch denunciations with dizzying speed when it is a pro-American dictator like Egypt’s Mubarak, but to delay for days in saying a word when it’s an anti-American thug like Libya’s Qadhafi and Iran’s Ahmadinejad.” He concludes, “If we find Ahmadinejad’s behavior unacceptable, we need to consider options more forceful than talking with ‘multilateral institutions.’”
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-135/feed/ 0 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-129/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-129/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:42:23 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=8480 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 15:

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 [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 15:

  • 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.”
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-129/feed/ 0 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-122/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-122/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 22:12:56 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=8212 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 4:

The Washington Post: Foundation for Defense of Democracies board member and Project for the New American Century letter signatory Charles Krauthammer opines on the unrest in Egypt and takes a swing at the possibility of Mohamed ElBaradei leading an interim government. “ElBaradei [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 4:

  • The Washington Post: Foundation for Defense of Democracies board member and Project for the New American Century letter signatory Charles Krauthammer opines on the unrest in Egypt and takes a swing at the possibility of Mohamed ElBaradei leading an interim government. “ElBaradei would be a disaster. As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he did more than anyone to make an Iranian nuclear bomb possible, covering for the mullahs for years,” says Krauthammer. He goes on to characterize El Baradei as a “useful idiot” for the Muslim Brotherhood and concludes that the Egyptian military is the “best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months.”
  • National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes, “When Iranians rose up against the tyrannical regime that has ruled them for more than 30 years — when they marched in the streets chanting, ‘Obama, are you with us or against us?’ — the president mostly held his tongue, reluctant to jeopardize his policy of ‘outreach’ to Iran’s rulers. Can Obama now be more supportive of Egyptians as they confront a regime that, while authoritarian, is nowhere near as oppressive and brutal as that in Tehran?” May argues for an Egyptian army officer to take control of Egypt and schedule elections. But he rejects that Mohamed ElBaradei should serve as interim president. “He was overly solicitous of Iran’s despots in his previous job, and he is overly solicitous of the Muslim Brotherhood now. What’s more, he is no friend of America,” he writes.
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-122/feed/ 1 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-121/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-121/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:07:15 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=8207 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 3:

National Review Online: Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie M. Fly opines that the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control in Egypt is concerning “but the solution is not for conservatives to cling to the supposed stability represented by Mubarak.” He argues [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 3:

  • National Review Online: Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Jamie M. Fly opines that the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control in Egypt is concerning “but the solution is not for conservatives to cling to the supposed stability represented by Mubarak.” He argues that Mubarak’s presidency is “finished” and, “As long as chaos and uncertainty reign, the more likely it will be that extremist elements in the Muslim Brotherhood or elsewhere take advantage of the situation, just as the Islamists did during Iran’s drawn-out revolution in 1978–79.”
  • The New York Times: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes that she knows the Muslim Brotherhood from her experience in a 2002 political campaign, on behalf of the conservative party, in the Netherlands. She repeats the oft-used Islamophobic meme that the Brotherhood, “argue[s] for taqiyyah, a strategy to collaborate with your enemies until the time is ripe to defeat them or convert them to Islam.” Hirsi Ali warns that secular democrats in Egypt must explain to the Egyptian people why a “Shariah-based government” would be a disaster but, “unlike the Iranians in 1979, the Egyptians have before them the example of a people who opted for Shariah — the Iranians — and have lived to regret it.” She concludes, “The 2009 ‘green movement’ in Iran was a not a ‘no’ to a strongman, but a ‘no’ to Shariah.” and “ElBaradei and his supporters must make clear that a Shariah-based regime is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.”
  • The Weekly Standard: Thomas Donnelly, another fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes about the comparison of the fall of Hosni Mubarak with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979. He writes, “It is one thing to acknowledge that we cannot determine or dictate the outcome of the changes coming to the greater Middle East, quite another to act as though we don’t care enough to continue to exert a shaping influence,” calling on Obama to assert greater support for the protesters and to not cut the Pentagon budget. “In sum, at the moment when the movement to create a new order in the region is accelerating – and who can seriously think that the likelihood of violence is diminishing, will be self-regulating, or can be met only with ‘soft power?’ – the United States appears to be backing away,” says Donnelly.
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-121/feed/ 0 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-116/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-116/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:07:07 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=7986 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for January 27:

National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes about the controversy surrounding a scheduled screening of the Clarion Fund’s film, “Iranium,” which was postponed after “suspicious letters” were received and the Iranian embassy complained. May points out [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for January 27:

  • National Review Online: Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Clifford May writes about the controversy surrounding a scheduled screening of the Clarion Fund’s film, “Iranium,” which was postponed after “suspicious letters” were received and the Iranian embassy complained. May points out that “it’s worth recalling that the Islamic Republic has a long history of attempting to enforce its will extraterritorially.” On Western engagement with Iran, May, who is interviewed in the film, observes, “diplomacy, outreach, engagement, and carefully crafted speeches showing respect and apologizing for “grievances” will have limited utility.” He concludes, “No sensible, rational person can watch this film, hear this evidence, and fail to come to the conclusion that the fanatics who rule Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.”
  • Commentary: Alana Goodman blogs on Commentary’s Contentions blog that, according to the Times of London, Iranian Press TV has had its British bank account frozen. Goodman concludes her post, “The fake news station not only devotes itself to publishing constant anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda; it’s also issued news reports denying the Holocaust and claiming that the Mossad helped commit the 9/11 attacks. At the very least, the government should require the station to provide a content warning informing viewers that it’s funded entirely by the Iranian government.”
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-116/feed/ 0 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-102/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-102/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:03:02 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=7289 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 31, 2010 to January 5, 2011:

The Wall Street Journal: David Feith adds his voice to the neoconservative criticism of HSBC’s recent advertisement that highlighted the high number of women in the Iranian film industry. Feith characterizes the bank as “Iran’s useful idiots” and says [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 31, 2010 to January 5, 2011:

  • The Wall Street Journal: David Feith adds his voice to the neoconservative criticism of HSBC’s recent advertisement that highlighted the high number of women in the Iranian film industry. Feith characterizes the bank as “Iran’s useful idiots” and says that the ad suggests that “a murderous theocracy is actually a progressive place.” The op-ed lists a number of human rights abuses against women in Iran and concludes that the ad is comparable to defending Nazi propaganda produced by females. “Imagine a 1939 ad pointing to Leni Riefenstahl—Hitler’s court filmmaker and a pioneering female artist—as evidence of the Third Reich’s unexpected “‘potential’,” he writes.
  • National Review Online: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Benjamin Weinthal blogs that Germany’s attempts at engagement with Iran, while Iran continues to detain two German journalists, “is yet another example of what a flop this cognitive-behavioral therapy for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and company has been.” Weinthal goes on to compare the arrest of three American hikers in 2009 to “replicating the 1979 model” of holding Americans hostage. Weinthal says that engagement with Iran has only produced more hostage crises and is a form of appeasement. “Germany’s flourishing trade relationship with Iran (German exports to Iran reached €3.4 billion this year) and a steady stream of German members of parliament travelling to Iran to meet Holocaust deniers, human-rights violators, and haters of women, reveal the bankruptcy of critical dialogue and change through trade,” he concludes.
  • The Wall Street Journal: Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, opines in the WSJ Asia edition that the Reserve Bank of India’s crackdown on domestic buyers of Iranian oil marks a major improvement in international sanctions against Iran’s energy sector, but that “further measures, and time for them to work, will still be needed to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program.” Dubowitz argues that the U.S. could do more to ensure that oil supply will not tighten if sanctions are more strictly enforced.  He writes, “Provided the United States and its allies can get more oil on the market—for example the Iran-loathing Saudis could increase production, or President Obama could lift the moratorium on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico—then the world oil market would have considerably more elasticity.” He concludes, “The near-miraculous attack of the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s centrifuges and the untimely deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists may have bought the administration that time, and further strengthened those who want to use economic sticks to beat back Iran’s nuclear aspirations.”
  • The Wall Street Journal: Emanuele Ottolenghi, a fellow the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, opines in the WSJ’s Europe edition that European countries could do more to expand sanctions against individuals associated with human rights abuses in Iran. In contrast to those who argue that the West’s approach to pressuring Iran must focus on either human rights or Tehran’s nuclear program, he writes, “If Western democracies were to target the Islamic Republic for its human-rights abuses, bolster the country’s internal opposition, and speak directly to the Iranian people over the heads of their oppressors, they would cause significant harm to Tehran.” Ottolenghi concludes with the suggestion that “every day, a member of the U.S. Congress or of the European Parliament spend just 30 seconds recounting the tale of one Iranian dissident, or one victim of Iran’s suppression, and plead for their freedom.”
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-102/feed/ 0 The Daily Talking Points http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-82/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-82/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:21:44 +0000 Eli Clifton http://www.lobelog.com/?p=6163 News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for November 30, 2010:

The Wall Street Journal: In his weekly column, Bret Stephens asks “Are Israeli Likudniks and their neocon friends (present company included) the dark matter pushing the U.S. toward war with Iran?” After analyzing the WikiLeaks documents, he concludes that, “Arab Likudniks turn out [...]]]> News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for November 30, 2010:

  • The Wall Street Journal: In his weekly column, Bret Stephens asks “Are Israeli Likudniks and their neocon friends (present company included) the dark matter pushing the U.S. toward war with Iran?” After analyzing the WikiLeaks documents, he concludes that, “Arab Likudniks turn out to be even more vocal on that score.” Stephens goes on to argue that the need for missile defense has not been overblown because, “we learned that North Korea had shipped missiles to Tehran that can carry nuclear warheads as far as Western Europe and Moscow.”
  • The Atlantic: Former New York Times investigative reporter Raymond Bonner blogs that the WikiLeaks documents have shown “…that Israel is, as Jeffrey Goldberg notes, [is] not alone in wanting decisive action to stop Iran’s nuclear program.” Bonner repeats the alleged comments from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Hamid of Bahrain, both of whom reportedly urged a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, and observes that “this the same chilling language, which the American public is accustomed to hearing from hardline Israeli officials.” He finishes his post by speculating that the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist on Monday might be the work of Saudi Arabia, UAE or Kuwait because it is “easier for one of those countries to have infiltrated, or recruited, and less likely to be caught, because they could be confident Iran would blame Israel or the United States.”
  • FrumForum: Executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), Noah Pollak, writes that this WikiLeaks release is “obliterating the Gulf-side Middle East” worldview of leftists and realists that had promoted negotiations with Iran and Syria, a withdrawal from Iraq and a policy of pressuring Israel to stop settlement construction. Pollak, attacking the “linkage” argument, blogs that Washington’s Arab allies are not alienated by the close U.S.-Israel relationship. Instead, “we now know that what’s really alienating the Arabs is America’s reluctance to use its power to confront Iran and enforce a security architecture in which Israel is America’s most capable client.”
  • National Review Online: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Benjamin Weinthal observes that WikiLeaks has  “forced [Arab world leaders] to come out of the diplomatic closet and declare Iran’s regime the number one enemy in the Middle East.” Now that the Arab world’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear program is known, says Weinthal, it’s time to ratchet up sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s energy and financial sectors. Weinthal stops short of calling for military action again Iran but concludes that the WikiLeaks information “vindicate[s] Israel’s longstanding position on the need for swift and powerful action against Iran’s out-of-control regime.”
]]> http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-82/feed/ 1 NRO: Blame Iran for Everything, Even Things Americans Do http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/nro-blame-iran-for-everything-even-things-americans-do/ http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/nro-blame-iran-for-everything-even-things-americans-do/#comments Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:22:02 +0000 Ali Gharib http://www.lobelog.com/?p=3463 Iran hawks have long seen the Islamic Republic as the center of the “Axis of Evil” for its support of Palestinian groups and regional ties to the likes of Hezbollah, Syria and, more recently, Turkey. The tendency is to link Iran to any and all nefarious activity anywhere near the Middle East.

But the National [...]]]> Iran hawks have long seen the Islamic Republic as the center of the “Axis of Evil” for its support of Palestinian groups and regional ties to the likes of Hezbollah, Syria and, more recently, Turkey. The tendency is to link Iran to any and all nefarious activity anywhere near the Middle East.

But the National Review Online took the ‘blame Iran’ theme a bit farther than it usually does.

In a one sentence post on NRO‘s ‘the Corner’ blog called “Violence in Kashmir, Inspired by…”,  Jonathon Foreman writes:

Indian-controlled Kashmir has exploded into violence, Indian security forces losing control of the streets — all because Press TV, the Iranian-run satellite channel, announced that a Koran was burned in Florida.

Of course, the announcement of such a burning would be much more difficult to do if there wasn’t an American behind it all — Pastor Terry Jones — who was actually trying to burn Korans. Or, for that matter, a U.S. press eager for sensational stories that pushed the issue to the front pages. (Tony Karon takes on both themes in his comparison, published at the National, of Terry Jones to Osama Bin Laden — i.e. threats over-hyped by the media.) And remember that the story was helped along by warnings about burning Korans from neocon darling Gen. David Petraeus.

But NRO proclaims that Iran is to blame for spreading the story to Kashmir, where riots broke out, because a semi-official (state-run, with some autonomy) news channel from the Islamic Republic picked up on one of the hottest news items from the U.S. and ran with it.

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