News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 16, 2010:

• The Weekly Standard: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal blogs on The Weekly Standard that the detainment of two German journalists in Iran should put call attention to German politicians who have travelled to Iran and continued to maintain contact with members of the Iranian government. “The taxpayer sponsored political junket with some of Iran’s leading Holocaust deniers raised hardly any attention within the German media at a time when the U.S. is trying to isolate Iran,” writes Weinthal. He concludes: “Twenty-six-years of German ‘critical dialogue’ and political appeasement toward the Iranian regime is finding its mirror image among many German news outlets and Germany’s democracy (and pro-Iranian democrats) is taking the hard hits,” and calls for Germany to implement human rights sanctions against Iran and recall their ambassador from Tehran.

• The National Post: Jonathan Kay, a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, attended the FDD’s “Countering the Iranian Threat” conference last week in Washington, and reports on a presentation by Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel’s Missile Defense Organization who told the conference, “don’t be fooled by those who say the Iranians are incapable of [advanced projects],” and “I can see the confidence of their engineers. I’ve seen the technology. I can see the way they are solving problems faster and faster.” Rubin concluded his presentation by suggesting that Iran is building a nuclear ICBM. “An ICBM program would be more consistent with a long-term strategy that imagines Iran being in conflict with the West for decades, or perhaps generations,” writes Kay.