In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics Lobe Log is launching “Iran Hawk Watch”. Each Friday we will post on notable militaristic commentary about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Mainstream Media and Pundits:
Washington Post: Neoconservative media spokesman Charles Krauthammer (who [...]
I was struck by an article by Nathan Guttman in the legendary Jewish Daily Forward about Dennis Ross and George Mitchell jockeying for the position of Obama Administration’s point-person in the Middle East peace process. The whole thing is a fascinating read, but this line really jumped out at me:
Others have [...]
It’s worth noting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Middle East policy address on Friday contained yet another explicit endorsement of the concept of ‘linkage‘ between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the long-term strategic interests of the United States in the Middle East.
… Iran and its proxies are not the [...]
While Iran hawks, such as Jennifer Rubin and David Frum, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been quick to push the story that WikiLeaks cables prove “linkage”—specifically that curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked—is an irrelevant concept for explaining the Middle East’s regional dynamics and the U.S.’s relations [...]
There’s a clear emerging pattern here — one that should not surprise us after the run-up to the Iraq war — of Washington-based hawks seeing exactly what they want (and nothing more) in everything that comes across their desks.
Matt Duss, at Think Progress, has one such example with regard to David Frum‘s [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for December 4-6, 2010:
National Review Online: American Enterprise Institute Resident Fellow Ali Alfoneh opines that expectations should be “subzero” for the P5+1 talks, continuing today in Geneva, since “the Iranian negotiators in Geneva represent the Ahmadinejad government and possibly Khamenei, therefore they cannot deliver what they [...]
News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 17, 2010.
FrumForum: Arsen Ostrovsky highlights an interview with Bahazad Massawi, a former Iranian Air Force pilot who defected to France. The segment aired on Israeli Channel 10 News. Writing on David Frum’s blog, Ostrovsky says that Massawi described Iran as “the world’s biggest supporter [...]
Jewish Journal’s Danielle Berrin’s profile of Jeffrey Goldberg is well worth a read for those who want to do a little armchair psychology on Goldberg. It provides no shortage of material for analyzing his views with nuggets like this:
Both of his parents were teachers and union loyalists, inculcating their son with left-leaning liberal politics [...]
If someone is the Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at a prominent Washington think-tank, it’s fair to expect a certain level of scholarship. After all, these institutions are supposed to be in influencing policy. In the case of the American Enterprise Institute, they just about ran foreign policy during George W. Bush’s first term.
Yet [...]
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The Daily Talking Points
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for February 19-22:
The Wall Street Journal: The Journal’s editorial board writes that the Obama administration needs a “new freedom agenda,” and should take notes from George W. Bush’s second inaugural address. They accuse Obama of “[O]ffer[ing] no support for Iranian demonstrators after [the June 2009] fraudulent elections” [...]