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Turning the World Downside UpTue, 26 May 2020 22:12:16 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1The Daily Talking Points
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https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-67/#commentsFri, 05 Nov 2010 15:35:33 +0000Eli Cliftonhttp://www.lobelog.com/?p=5487News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5, 2010. Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy’s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with [...]]]>News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5, 2010.
Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy’s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with Russia. One of the mailings raised the question: “’Why did Senator Bob Corker vote in committee to put Russia’s military interests ahead of our own?” This referred to Corker’s vote approving the treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16. Rogin adds, “With a picture juxtaposing the images of Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mailer alleges that President Obama and lawmakers are using the ‘lame duck’ session of Congress to ram through the New START treaty, which it argues ‘severely weakens our national security.’” The mailer alleges that the treaty, which would primarily reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads, would put nuclear weapons in the hands of “countries that want to destroy us,” like North Korea and Iran. Corker’s Chief of Staff told The Cable that much in the flier wasn’t accurate.
National Review Online: American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Ali Alfoneh writes that Sobh-e Sadegh’s—an Iranian newspaper with close ties to the IRGC—calls November 4th, the 31st anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy, as “the day of humiliation of world imperialism.” The newspaper’s statements, say Alfoneh, show that “the political alliances which defeated the Shah’s regime required foreign enemies like the United States for internal unification, an essential component of the regime’s survival.” Alfoneh concludes, “[Some of the hostage takers] have themselves become victims of this ruthless political system, which constantly looks for and finds fifth columnists. It is this side of the Atlantic where some are still unwilling to accept reality.”
The Weekly Standard: Michael Weiss writes that uproar over the sentencing to death of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, for the crimes of murder and adultery, and Iran’s unclear plans regarding her execution offer an insight into “the theocracy’s preferred method of psychological torture: Will we or won’t we.” Weiss concludes that despite outcry from various Western human rights groups and the U.S. State Department, “Whatever happens to Ashtiani, one can only guess at the psychological torture she and her family have endured because their government takes sadistic joy in treating capriciously the matter of whether she lives or dies.”
American Enterprise Institute: Charlie Szrom, a senior analyst and program manager at AEI’s Critical Threats Project, writes that the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation is flawed because it is used for political purposes. “Two weeks from now, officials from the P5+1 group, consisting of the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, hope to meet with Iranian officials for a new round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Did this announcement of Jundallah’s FTO designation occur now as a bargaining chip to encourage Iran to engage in talks over its nuclear program?” asks Szrom. He argues that the FTO designation should be used regardless of the diplomatic and political environment and “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda and its affiliates, threaten American interests and should trigger FTO designation as soon as credible evidence of their status emerges.” Szrom warns that fixing the FTO designation process and the recent designation of Jundallah as a terrorist group, “does not encourage Iran to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which will continue without serious considerations by the United States of all its options regarding Iran.”
]]>https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-67/feed/4The Daily Talking Points
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https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/the-daily-talking-points-2/#commentsTue, 03 Aug 2010 21:07:40 +0000Eli Cliftonhttp://www.lobelog.com/?p=2372The New York Times: Efraim Karsh repeats the argument that the Arab and Muslim world has ceased to care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the sooner the Palestinians realize they’re alone, the sooner they’ll make peace with Israel. Tony Karon, of Rootless Cosmopolitan, offers an excellent critical response to Karsh’s questionable argument and [...]]]>
The New York Times: Efraim Karsh repeats the argument that the Arab and Muslim world has ceased to care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the sooner the Palestinians realize they’re alone, the sooner they’ll make peace with Israel. Tony Karon, of Rootless Cosmopolitan, offers an excellent critical response to Karsh’s questionable argument and calls attention to Karsh’s use of weak factual evidence. Back in March, General David Petraeus made the compelling case that failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment.”
The Washington Times: Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) and Peter Vincent Pry, president of EMPact America, float the hypothetical scenario that Iran has already acquired a nuclear weapon. The authors suggest that former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei may have overlooked evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to strengthen his possible candidacy for the Egyptian presidency. Bartlett and Pry also argue that Israel’s nuclear weapons program proves that nuclear weapons-possessing countries no longer need to test their weapons (accounts of a secret joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in 1979 might contradict their assertion). The op-ed concludes with a rehashing of the long-discredited, but never quite dead, myth about the dangers of an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.
The Washington Times: Rowan Scarborough makes his case that the military is preparing for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The article quotes Global Security’s John Pike who puts forward the particularly gruesome suggestion that, “Most of [the alleged nuclear facilities] have co-located staff housing. Bomb the housing, kill the staff, set back the program by a generation.” Scarborough finds very little additional evidence to support his thesis that a military strike would be easy or effective, so he turns chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen’s comments on Sunday’s Meet The Press that, “[w]e do” have a plan for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, into conclusive evidence that, “… Pentagon strategists have updated and finalized a war plan for Iran.”
AEI Critical Threats Project: AEI’s Charlie Szrom reports that, “Iran’s nuclear and foreign policies rely upon a worldview that takes confidence from the support lent Tehran by allies in the developing world.” The reports cites as evidence the fact that over the past two years Iran has expanded its trade relationships with Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Senegal. Szrom acknowledges that “a lack of American attention to West Africa” is partly to blame for the Iranian inroads. While Szrom prefers to emphasize that Iran is fomenting anti-Israel and anti-American sentiments in the Muslim populations of West Africa, perhaps more importantly, the past two years have seen the introduction of broad sanctions against Iran. As these sanctions are implemented, it should surprise no one to see Iran searching for trading partners outside of U.S. and European spheres of influence. The economic concepts of “comparative advantage” and “gains from trade” may shed more light on why Iran insists on soliciting trading partners than an explanation predicated on Tehran’s desire to spread anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments.