What Iran Wants
By Ray Takey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/12/08):
After an eight-year struggle over whether to engage Iran, the United States may finally be on the verge of launching a direct dialogue with its perennial Middle Eastern adversary. Washington has a long list of grievances to discuss, from sponsoring terrorism to the nuclear issue. The success of any talks will hinge on a critical unknown: What does Iran want? Today, an ascendant Iran views negotiations with the United States as a means of consolidating its gains and achieving American recognition of its regional status.
As…
Let Russia Stop Iran
By Oded Eran, the director of the Institute for National Security Studies, Giora Eiland, a retired major general in the Israeli Army and Emily B. Landau, senior research associates at the institute (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 21/12/08):
Nine months have passed since the United Nations Security Council approved its most recent resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. That resolution, like its two predecessors, has failed to deter Tehran, which will soon be in a position to create a working nuclear weapon. Western intelligence establishments estimate that date as not later than mid-2010.
The problem with any Security Council resolution is that Russia and…
The prophets of Iranian regime split won’t find it in the fury of the bazaar
By Jonathan Steele (THE GUARDIAN, 03/11/08):
On the lookout for “cracks in the regime”, analysts of Iran had a thrill last month. The bazaars of Isfahan, Tehran, and several other cities went on strike for the first time in a generation.
In the labyrinth of vaulted passages the richest traders were always the jewellers. Their glittering windows are rarely without at least one mother and daughter glued to the glass. When one pair of black chadors goes in to buy or moves away, another takes its place. The hunt for the right wedding ring is constant and business never flags.
Except three weeks ago,…
How to stop an Iranian bomb
By Trita Parsi and Andreas Presbo. Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US, a silver medal recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Book Award. Andreas Persbo is a senior researcher at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (THE GUARDIAN, 31/10/08):
Ever since Iran publicised its nuclear fuel cycle plans in 2003, western experts have tried to downplay its rate of progress in nuclear engineering. The Iranian scientific community is often viewed as technologically inept. Relatively minor obstacles have been portrayed as next to insurmountable. These arguments are now…
Stopping A Nuclear Tehran
By Daniel R. Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana and Charles S. Robb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia. Both are co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s national security task force on Iran (THE WASHINGTON POST, 23/10/08):
It is likely that the first and most pressing national security issue the next president will face is the growing prospect of a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran. After co-chairing a recently concluded, high-level task force on Iranian nuclear development, we have come to believe that five principles must serve as the foundation of any reasonable, bipartisan and comprehensive Iranian policy.
First, an Islamic Republic of Iran…
Warning signs of an Israeli strike on Iran
By David Owen, foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979 (THE TIMES, 12/10/08):
Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.
In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number…
The President Who Will Deal With Iran
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 10/10/08):
A specter is haunting the presidential race — and it is not just the economy. It is the specter of a nuclear Iran.
Economic downturns are wrenching but cyclical. Nuclear proliferation is more difficult to reverse, creating the permanent prospect of massive miscalculation and tragedy. America’s next leader may be known to history as the president who had to deal with Iran.
This topic received glancing attention in the second presidential debate. Barack Obama called a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” John McCain said it would raise the prospect of “a second Holocaust.” But neither man seriously confronted the choices ahead.
Days…
Irán e Israel en un nuevo Oriente Próximo
Por Shlomo Ben-Ami, ex ministro de Exteriores de Israel y vicepresidente del Centro Internacional de Toledo para la Paz. Traducción de María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia (EL PAÍS, 09/10/08):
La desesperada súplica de Israel para que el mundo impida lo que sus servicios de inteligencia denominan la “galopada hacia una bomba nuclear” de Irán no ha tenido la respuesta positiva que Israel esperaba.
Ahora que el régimen de sanciones de Naciones Unidas ha demostrado ser completamente ineficaz, y la diplomacia internacional aparentemente incapaz de impedir que los iraníes controlen la tecnología de enriquecimiento de uranio, Israel está contra las cuerdas. Lo que se suponía…
Trust Is ‘A Two-Way Street’
THE WASHINGTON POST, 06/10/08:
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki spoke with Newsweek-The Post’s Lally Weymouth in New York last week about U.S.-Iranian relations. Excerpts:
Q. Do you believe there will be an Israeli or an American attack on your nuclear facilities?
No.
Q. If there were such an attack by Israel, would you regard it as an attack by the United States?
In the Middle East, [no one] makes a distinction between the U.S. and Israel.
Q. How do you feel about the recent events in Georgia and Russia’s virtual annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
There is no doubt that developments inside the Caucasus will come to affect the…
An Arms Race We’re Sure to Lose
By Gary Milhollin, the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and the executive editor of the Web site Iran Watch (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/09/08):
The coverage of the latest bombastic tour of Manhattan by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran may have obscured the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency has released its latest report on Tehran’s nuclear program, and it contains some unpleasant news: By the time we inaugurate our next president, Iran is likely to achieve “virtual” nuclear weapon status. This means that it will be able to produce, within a few months of deciding…
What’s Missing From the Iran Debate
By David Kay. He led the U.N. inspections after the Persian Gulf War that uncovered the Iraqi nuclear program. Later, he led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, which determined there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the time of the 2003 invasion. A longer version of this article appears in the September/October issue of the National Interest (THE WASHINGTON POST, 08/09/08):
It would be impossible and foolish to predict what lies immediately ahead for Iran. Inflation runs rampant and domestic unrest is growing, but the leadership is banding together in support of the country’s nuclear program. Threat assessment and war…
Atacar a Irán, otro gran error
Por William R. Polk, miembro del Consejo de Planificación Política, Dpto. Estado en la presidencia de Kennedy, y George McGovern, candidato demócrata en 1972 y congresista durante 18 años. Coautores de Salir de Iraq: un plan concreto de retirada. Traducción: José María Puig de la Bellacasa (LA VANGUARDIA, 31/08/08):
Al tiempo que la Administración Bush cuenta los meses que le quedan de mandato, lo cierto es que se ha embarcado en un par de derroteros que, en caso de seguirse hasta el final, condicionarán de raíz las intenciones y propósitos de la administración Obama o McCain y atormentarán a Estados Unidos durante…
Biden’s Blink on Iran
By Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/08/08):
In selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama acknowledged the importance of foreign affairs to this year’s election. His Web site trumpeted Biden as “an expert on foreign policy” and a man “who has stared down dictators.”
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is well versed in policy debates and carefully choreographed trips. But his record on the Islamic Republic of Iran — perhaps the chief national security threat facing the next president — suggests…
David Ignatius’s Updates about Iran
By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 07/08/08):
Two brief updates concerning past columns on Iran:
In my Aug. 3 column, I said that a Washington Institute for Near East Policy task force “advocated ‘preventive military action’ ” to keep Iran from building a nuclear bomb. That shorthand truncated the report’s conclusions. According to the group’s executive director, Robert Satloff, “the report endorses a strategy of prevention, as opposed to deterrence, to deal with the issue and urges the president to engage in high-level discussions with Israel to assess the entire range of policy options, which includes preventive military action.”
Negotiating with Iran is maddening, but bombing would be a catastrophe
By Max Hastings (THE GUARDIAN, 04/08/08):
The favoured season for launching wars used to come when the harvest had been gathered. This year, there is talk of an Israeli strike against Iran in November or December, when it would no longer embarrass the US election process but George Bush will still be in the White House during the presidential transition.
Last year, following a US intelligence submission which stated that Iran was not actively pursuing the creation of atomic weapons, a direct American attack on the country’s nuclear facilities became implausible - and remains so. But Jerusalem and Washington are talking seriously about…
‘Bomb Bomb Iran’? Not Likely.
By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 03/08/08):
Analysts speculate about the danger of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration departs office next January. But if you read the tea leaves carefully, the evidence is actually pointing in the opposite direction.
One sign that the diplomatic track is dominant for now is that the administration plans to announce late this month that it will open an interest section in Tehran, a senior official disclosed Thursday. This will be an important symbol, as it will be the first American diplomatic mission in Iran since the U.S. Embassy there was…
Using Bombs to Stave Off War
By Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University and the author, most recently, of 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 18/07/08):
Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either…
Keep watch on the hawks
By Abbas Edalat, the founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (THE GUARDIAN, 18/07/08):
President Bush’s decision to send William Burns, his third-ranking diplomat, to observe nuclear negotiations in Geneva with Iran, represents a long-overdue shift in American policy - underlined by plans revealed in yesterday’s Guardian to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran. Hitherto, the US had demanded that Iran must concede the main point of negotiations, namely suspension of its uranium enrichment programme, before talks begin. Iran has responded positively to negotiations, but ruled out the US precondition of suspension. The US still states that…
Taming the hawk
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 17/07/08):
It may be too early to proclaim an end to the “Cheney era”, but Washington’s decision to participate in Saturday’s nuclear talks with Iran and send diplomats back to Tehran is a very significant shift. It marks a nadir for the gun-toting neoconservatives who dominated the first Bush term and for their unofficial champion, vice-president Dick Cheney, the stealthy advice-giver also known as “whispering grass”.
Noisy sabre-rattling and a crescendo of shouted threats exchanged by Iran and Israel in recent weeks convinced many observers that the Middle East was on the brink of a new conflagration. They feared a…
Our Man in Iran?
By James P. Rubin, a teacher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and an assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Clinton administration (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 14/07/08):
Iran’s latest missile tests occurred just as there have been glimmers of progress in nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the Western powers. Whether or not those talks succeed, it’s time for Washington to open a diplomatic post in Tehran.
A high-level official has told me that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is seeking President Bush’s approval to establish a United States Interests Section in the Iranian capital. This is…
