by Peter Jenkins
Listening, on 15 April, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on US policy towards Iran put me in mind of the inscription Dante imagined over the entrance to Hell: “Abandon hope all you who enter here”.
There seemed no notion among members of the committee that territories beyond the borders of [...]
By Jonas Siegel and Saranaz Barforoush
Few observers would question that news coverage prior to the 2003 U.S.- led invasion of Iraq affected public perceptions about the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction. Are news media making the same mistakes in covering Iran’s nuclear program? In short, yes and no.
Post-war studies of news [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jamal Abdi
The notion that U.S. sanctions on Iran are supposed to act as diplomatic leverage to get a nuclear deal may be dispelled once and for all by a new Congressional action now in the works.
The House is poised to move ahead with a new round of [...]
via Lobe Log
by Mohammad Ali Shabani
Most headlines on Iran’s launch of uranium-related sites on April 9th — its National Day of Nuclear Technology — linked it to the diplomatic deadlock in Kazakhstan. Tehran was regarded as pursuing escalation, perhaps in frustration with the situation. But was this really the case?
To answer [...]
by Peter Jenkins
Readers who recall that four years ago a new US President seemed eager to defuse the West’s quarrel with Iran over its nuclear activities may wonder why we are all still waiting for white smoke. I am not sure I know the answer, but I have a hunch it has something to [...]
via Lobe Log
by Charles Naas
The second round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan between the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Iran ended just about where they started — no advance from the March talks and the glimmer of hope that perhaps some kind of momentum could be established. Unlike Almaty [...]
via Lobe Log
by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani
The latest round of talks between the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) and Iran in Kazakhstan concluded on Saturday without any tangible progress. While details of the reciprocal offers remain unclear, what we have learned indicates that neither side is in any particular hurry [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
From the looks of it, the second round of talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan was a complete failure, with both sides unable to even find a common language to begin a process of give and take. The sense I get is that the US side is rather [...]
by Jasmin Ramsey
Columbia University Professor Gary Sick, who served as an Iran specialist on the National Security Council staffs of Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, examines US Persian Gulf Policy in Obama’s Second Term in the next issue of Aspenia, the Aspen Istitute Italia’s highly regarded journal on international affairs. Dr. Sick’s entire article is available on his
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
Others have written about the gist of a new report by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) on the impact of sanctions (here, here and here), so I am not going to provide a summary. But some points are worth reiterating. As Stephen Walt points out, the report [...]
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