The Iran-grand-bargainers, the Leveretts, have an interesting piece up challenging the notion that the Barack Obama administration was ever serious about engaging Iran. (Because I’m behind on my reading, I only picked up on it via the Progressive Realist.)
These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for [...]
Details are still emerging on the exchange of artillery fire in the Yellow Sea following what has been described as a North Korean artillery attack on South Korea. However, this incident, combined with reports of Pyongyang’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) facility, has given new life to the eternally rehashed comparisons between North Korea and [...]
Steven Simon, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dana Allin, Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Affairs at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, just came out with a new book called The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumors of War.
I haven’t read the book yet, [...]
In engaging Iran, the U.S. has found difficulty in balancing the West’s interest in seeing Iran end its alleged nuclear weapons program with pressure on Iranian leadership to improve human rights, particularly in the wake of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.
Unfortunately, these interest are often mutually exclusive. Calls for supporting the Green Movement are [...]
News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 9, 2010.
The Washington Post: Senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow and former George W. Bush policy adviser Michael Gerson writes that after the midterm election, Obama may choose to focus his efforts on foreign policy. He warns that Obama will make little [...]
The media has been buzzing about the admission from both Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Iran that the latter passed the former bags of cash, apparently in euros.
The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who [...]
Fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have been some of the most outspoken, and most published, voices on how the United States can most forcefully impose sanctions on Iran. Suggestions from FDD have included: recalling Switzerland as the representative of U.S. diplomatic interests in Iran to punish them for allowing a [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for October 20, 2010:
The National: Mohamad Bazzi, former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday and current adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes while the Obama administration has portrayed Hezbollah as having questionable loyalties to Lebanon, the Shi’a political party plays a valuable [...]
In the newest edition of Foreign Affairs, Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol has a review of Stephen Kinzer’s latest book, Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future.
The former New York Times journalist’s previous book, All the Shah’s Men, is a must-read account of the CIA orchestrated 1953 coup that unseated a secular democratic [...]
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News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 9, 2010:
The Washington Post: The Post’s editorial board opines that the P5+1 talks in Geneva benefited Iran by introducing Turkey into the negotiations, where negotiations will continue next month, and provided Tehran with a means to postpone further additional international pressure. “[Iran] seeks to delay [...]