NewsTrust - Iran - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Happy birthday, Ahmadinejad

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Meir Javedanfar - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - You have come a long way in 53 years, Mr President. But your increasingly autocratic rule is driving Iran into the ground Dear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I write this message on the anniversary of your birth, which took place 53 years ago today. You have come a long way since 1956 when your family moved from your birthplace, the sleepy village of Aradan , to Tehran. You were only one year old at that time. Your family, much like many others moving from small villages to the capital city in Iran, had dreams of success for their children. They sacrificed their familiar surroundings and proximity to relatives for a new yet strange place, so that their children could have better opportunities than they did. Your meteoric rise in politics over the ...

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Iran's nuclear programme: Deadline missed

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Oct. 24 (Editorial) - Iran has again failed to do deadlines. It has been evading them in the seven years since an opposition group first outed its extensive covert nuclear programme, despite five UN Security Council resolutions that have told it to halt its suspect nuclear work. After talks that ended in Vienna on October 21st, Iran and the three countries trying to strike a side-deal over new fuel for a Tehran-based nuclear reactor were told by Mohamed ElBaradei, outgoing chief of the UN’s nuclear guardian, that they had just two days to take his draft agreement or leave it.

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Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert L. Bernstein - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

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Advice From an Iranian Nobel Laureate About Her Country

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - So it was startling this week to hear Ms. Ebadi say bluntly that the Obama administration has gotten some things backward when it comes to Iran. It's not that engaging with the government is a mistake, she said during a visit to The Post. But paying so

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Containing a Nuclear Iran

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - It is time to clarify the debate over Iran and its nuclear program. It's easy to criticize the current course adopted by the United States and its allies, to huff and puff about Iranian mendacity, to point out that Russia and China won't agree to tougher measures against Tehran, and to detail the leaks in the sanctions already in place. But what, then, should the United States do? The critics are eager to denounce the administration from the sidelines for being weak but rarely detail what they would do to be "tough." Would they attack Iran today? If not, then what should we do? It is time to put up or shut up on Iran.

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Iran: Talking is the only option

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 02 (Editorial) - No sane person should wish for the talks that started yesterday at a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva to fail. The half-hour meeting between William Burns, the US delegate, and his Iranian counterpart, Saeed Jalili, was the first official encounter the two nations have had in over 30 years. If this meeting marks the start of a substantive dialogue which has been so woefully lacking for three decades then that is, by a long measure, the most desirable outcome. The alternatives to engagement are appalling. Bombing Iran?s nuclear facilities – the option that Israel has been lobbying and training its pilots for – would, at the very best, only delay a nuclear bomb by a few years. It would turn the probability that Iran is making the bomb into a ...

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A nuclear Iran: The world was warned

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miami Herald - By Uri Dromi - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - A uranium enrichment facility nobody knew of suddenly emerges in the sacred city of Qom, Iran launches missiles that can threaten not only U.S. targets in the Persian gulf, but also Israel and southern Europe, and now the world panics. Surprised? Not if you're an Israeli. For years we have been sounding the alarm, only to be told to stop crying wolf. Now we are asked to lie low and let the responsible leaders of the world take care of the situation.

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Geneva Talks Help Iran

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - Oct. 02 (Editorial) - From Geneva yesterday come all kinds of good diplomatic vibrations. Iran may allow U.N. inspectors into a recently unveiled uranium-enrichment plant "within two weeks." Another meeting will be held before month's end. A "freeze" on sanctions was bruited about. In an appearance at the White House, President Obama sounded sober but hopeful, calling the direct American talks with the Islamic Republic "a constructive beginning" toward "serious and meaningful engagement."

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What are the odds that Obama's Iran talks will succeed?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Peter Feaver - Oct. 01 (Opinion) - How should we measure success in the talks with Iran that begin today? I propose the following sliding scale.

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Keeping Iran honest

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Scott Ritter - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Rather than representing the tip of the iceberg in terms of uncovering a covert nuclear weapons capability, the emergence of the existence of the Qom enrichment facility could very well mark the initiation of a period of even greater transparency on the part of Iran, leading to its full adoption and implementation of the IAEA additional protocol. This, more than anything, should be the desired outcome of the "Qom declaration".

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How to Press the Advantage With Iran

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Instead of relying on sanctions, the Obama administration should seek a strategic realignment with Iran, as President Nixon did with China.

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Tehran's worst fear is a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign.

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Anne Applebaum - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Very few security experts point out that there is another option. What do Iran's rulers truly fear, after all? I'll wager it's not sanctions, and it might not be a bombing raid. An economic boycott can be circumvented, after all, with the help of Venezuela or maybe the Russian mafia, and an attack on Iranian soil might help the regime once again consolidate power. By contrast, a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign must be a truly terrifying prospect. What if we therefore told the Iranian regime that its insistence on pursuing nuclear weapons leaves us with no choice other than to increase funding for dissident exile groups, to smuggle money into the country, to bombard the airwaves with anti-regime television programming, and above all to publicize widely the myriad crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

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Iran tests the world’s collective will

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Gideon Rachman - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Barack Obama normally likes to talk about hope. Last week at the United Nations he had the audacity to fear. The US president conjured up a vision of a dystopian world: “Extremists sowing terror ... Protracted conflicts that grind on and on. Genocide and mass atrocities. More and more nations with nuclear weapons. Melting ice caps and ravaged populations.” That is our collective future, according to Mr Obama, unless the world’s leaders co-operate to find “global solutions to global problems”.

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Does Tehran have a Plan C?

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Dalton - Sep. 28 (Opinion) - In diplomatic negotiations, as in other contests, knowing more of your opponent's plans will help, but you still have to conduct the campaign. The revelation of a second enrichment plant in Iran will change some of the tactics of the six-nation group – the US, Russia, Germany, France, China and Britain – but their strategic goals remain difficult to achieve

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YouTube - Iran Tests Long-Range Missiles

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - By Elizabeth Palmer - Sep. 28 (Interview) - In an act of defiance, Iran tested long and short-range missiles, ignoring pressure from the U.S., Elizabeth Palmer reports. Former State Dept. Spokesperson James P. Rubin discussed Iran's stance.

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Iran’s intentions

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - Sep. 28 (Editorial) - IRAN’S disclosure about its upcoming uranium enrichment facility has expectedly upset the US and its western allies. As it is the two sides have been trading charges and counter-charges since 2003 when Iran’s nuclear programme came to light.

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A Better Missile Defense for a Safer Europe

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert M. Gates - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - The new missile defense proposal will give needed capacity earlier than the original plan, and will provide more robust protection against longer-range threats.

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Israel has Iran in its sights

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Micah Zenko - Aug. 30 (Opinion) - Iran has until late September to respond to the latest international proposal aimed at stopping the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon. Under the proposal, Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for a U.N. Security Council commitment to forgo a fourth round of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

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Tumult in Iran Raises Questions About Negotiating Over Nuclear Efforts

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Aug. 27 (Editorial) - THE PROTESTERS have been routed from the streets of Tehran, but the political turmoil in Iran continues unabated behind the scenes. The authority of both the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is being overtly challenged by religious and secular elites. Given the internal tumult and uncertainty, it looks increasingly doubtful that the regime will respond meaningfully to the Obama administration's deadline of late September to discuss curtailing its nuclear program or risk what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called "crippling sanctions."

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On Iran, Do Nothing. Yet

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Fareed Zakaria - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - The hyperbole in America and Israel about apocalyptic mullahs with nukes missed the big story in Iran, which was that the mullahs were not apocalyptic, and they were fading in influence anyway. One might have said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is losing its distinct religious basis of power and becoming another Middle Eastern dictatorship—except that it now hosts an opposition movement that does not seem ready to quiet down.

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Misreading Iran's unrest

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Alastair Crooke - Jul. 12 (Opinion) - The troubles that have followed the Iranian presidential elections have been generally misread by the Western media and policymakers. What we are witnessing is not a frustrated East European-style "color revolution"; nor is presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi's movement an uprising of liberal, Westernized sympathizers against the principles of the Iranian Revolution -- although there are surely some who are hostile to the revolution among his supporters. Rather, what we have been seeing is a power struggle -- between factions of the "Old Guard" clergy who all initially assumed power in 1979 -- that erupted into public view in the recent presidential election campaign. As that dispute is settled over the coming months, we can expect big changes in the top ranks of the power elite. But the revolution is not about to implode.

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The Importance of Free Speech Online in Iran, China, Kenya

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Mark Glaser, Kim Spencer, Scott Rosenberg, Cyrus Farivar, Danny O'Brien, - Jul. 10 (Interview) - In a crisis, governments will often curtail freedom of the press, censoring or shutting broadcasts and newspapers. But blocking websites, slowing the Internet or cutting off SMS messaging can be harder to do. Stopping the flow of information online can be a difficult task, as the Iranian government has learned over the past few weeks, as protesters have posted images to Flickr, video to YouTube, and running commentaries on blogs and Twitter. While the Iranian government would prefer to operate under a cloud, the Interent has proven to be a key distribution medium for spreading news to the rest of the world. This month's 5Across video roundtable focused on free speech online in various countries, from Iran to China to Kenya -- and even a mention of the U.S. government's attempts at curtailing speech online over the years. The discussion gave context to Iranian Internet use, its demographics and the way people there get information via satellite TV from Persian-language foreign news sources such as BBC Persian and Voice of America. Plus, we talked about how China uses psychology in making its millions of Internet users believe they are all being monitored.

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Biden: No More Concessions on Iran

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - By George Stephanopoulos - Jul. 05 (Opinion) - Vice President Joe Biden has been pushing privately for a hard line on Iran, and in my exclusive "This Week" interview he hinted at a harder Administration line to come. For now, he told me, President Obama’s offer to meet with Iran over its nuclear program remains “on the table.” While insisting that President Obama is right not to rescind his offer to negotiate with Iran and the other “P-5” nations ( U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia ) plus Germany, Biden rejected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s attempts to condition any negotiations on more US concessions.

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US misunderstanding on Iran lingers

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Asia Times - By Ali Gharib - Jun. 26 (Opinion) - ... much of the attention in Washington and elsewhere in the US is often misplaced, misguided, or completely detached from the realities currently embroiling Iran in its most significant crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

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A More Contentious Obama Press Conference

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - By Brian Montopoli - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - Barack Obama's fourth solo White House press conference differed from his past efforts in many ways: It was held during the day instead of prime time. It was the first to be held in the briefing room. It featured a question that had been directly solicited by the White House.

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