Archivo etiqueta «Irán»
By Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale and the author, most recently, of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 05/03/12):
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington has provoked a broad debate over the military and political wisdom of an attack on Iran. But so far, there has been little attention to the legal issues involved, which are crucial. American support for a preemptive strike would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution.
Article II of the Constitution requires the president to “take care … Seguir leyendo
By Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 03/03/12):
Imagine two men planning for years to escape from a high-security mental institution that is surrounded by 100 walls. On the night of their escape, they reach the 99th wall, and one asks the other, “Are you tired yet?”
“Yes,” says the second one. And so they go back to their cells.
Are Iran’s leaders that crazy?
In the current standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, Western policy is guided … Seguir leyendo
There’s an old saying, attributed to the British Foreign Office in colonial days: “Keep the Persians hungry, and the Arabs fat.” For the British — then the stewards of Persian destiny — that was the formula for maintaining calm; it still is for Saudi Arabian leaders, who simply distribute large amounts of cash to their citizens at the first sign of unrest at their doorstep.
But in the case of Iran, neither America nor Britain seems to be observing the old dictum. Keeping the Persians hungry was a guarantee that they wouldn’t rise up against their masters. Today, the … Seguir leyendo
ON just two occasions have recent elections in Iran reflected the people’s will and yielded particularly surprising and disorienting outcomes for the ruling establishment, first in 1997 with the election of Mohammad Khatami, and again, three years ago. In June 2009, the democratic opposition, led by the reformist Mir Hussein Moussavi — a former prime minister with a reputation for honesty, integrity and clean politics — polled strongly, only to have the election stolen from it through fraud.
Popular protests were met with widespread arrests, street assaults and assassinations, and a show of force by police commandos, the Islamic Revolutionary … Seguir leyendo
By Colin H. Kahl, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. From 2009 to 2011, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East (THE WASHINGTON POST, 02/03/12):
On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets, protected by six F-15 escorts, dropped 16 2,000-pound bombs on the nearly completed Osirak nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha complex in Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw the reactor as central to Iraqi President Saddam … Seguir leyendo
By Martin Indyk, the director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and the author, with Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael O’Hanlon, of the new book Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 01/03/12):
As the Obama administration ramps up the sanctions pressure on Iran to accept meaningful curbs on its nuclear program, it is following a strategy of coercive diplomacy that has a fundamental design flaw. Consequently, President Obama is in danger of achieving the opposite of his intention: Iran may well decide that rather than negotiate a compromise, its best choice is actually … Seguir leyendo
By Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and the director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 01/03/12):
On June 7, 1981, I was one of eight Israeli fighter pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. As we sat in the briefing room listening to the army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, before starting our planes’ engines, I recalled a conversation a week earlier when he’d asked us to voice any concerns about our mission.
We told him about the risks we foresaw: running out of fuel, Iraqi retaliation, … Seguir leyendo
By Roya Hakakian, the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 26/02/12):
“If a war were to break out between Iran and Israel, whose side would you be on?” someone asked me on Facebook a few weeks ago, when an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities was reportedly imminent.
From early adolescence, at the start of Iran’s 1979 revolution, my loyalties have so often been questioned that I’ve come to think of such suspicions as my Iranian-Jewish inheritance.
In the early 1980s in Tehran, a small group of socialist intellectuals who clandestinely gathered in … Seguir leyendo
Talk of a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is not subsiding. If diplomacy can’t head off Iran’snuclear ambitions, advocates for a military strike in Israel and the United States will only gain strength. While proponents may believe that Israel can endure the short-term military and diplomatic fallout of such action, the long-term consequences are likely to be disastrous for Israel’s security.
Those believed to favor a military option, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, argue that the Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran would be far more dangerous than a military attack to … Seguir leyendo
El mundo asiste con incredulidad a un posible desliz hacia otra guerra en Oriente Próximo: un ataque contra Irán, con consecuencias no exactamente previsibles pero sin duda muy graves. Parece que nadie, en Occidente, haya sido capaz de sacar las conclusiones de lo que ha pasado con las guerras de Irak y de Afganistán, teóricamente ganadas por Estados Unidos y sus aliados pero, de hecho, origen de conflictos y desequilibrios que podrían ser mayores de lo que el anterior statu quo hubiera podido producir. A la incapacidad de sacar las lecciones del pasado se junta la falta de lucidez y … Seguir leyendo
La movilización actual para impedir que Irán desarrolle un arsenal nuclear es reflejo de dos cambios importantes e interrelacionados. Son cambios a los que desde la perspectiva de Israel es preciso darles la bienvenida, pero aun así el gobierno israelí debe mantenerse cauto en relación con el papel del país en la cuestión.
El primer cambio consiste en la escalada de esfuerzos por parte de Estados Unidos y sus aliados occidentales para abortar el plan nuclear del régimen iraní. Este cambio se originó, en parte, como respuesta a un informe de noviembre de 2011 del Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica, … Seguir leyendo
Speculation about an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities is rife, but there is little discussion about whether diplomacy can still succeed, precluding the need for military action.
Many experts doubt that Tehran would ever accept a deal that uses intrusive inspections and denies or limits uranium enrichment to halt any advances toward a nuclear weapons capability, while still permitting the development of civilian nuclear power. But before we assume that diplomacy can’t work, it is worth considering that Iranians are now facing crippling pressure and that their leaders have in the past altered their behavior in response to such … Seguir leyendo
Hardly a day goes by that an Iranian official doesn’t threaten Turkey. Take for instance Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi’s recent warning to Ankara: “Turkey must radically rethink its policies on Syria, the NATO missile shield and promoting Muslim secularism in the Arab world, or face trouble from its own people and neighbors.”
This is no surprise. Turkish-Iranian rivalry goes back centuries, to the Ottoman sultans and the Safavid shahs. It briefly subsided in the 20th century, when Turkey became an inward-looking nation-state, leaving a vacuum in the Middle East. In the past decade, though, Turkey’s economic growth and emergence … Seguir leyendo
Most people in the Arab world, according to opinion polls, believe that the Holocaust never happened, that it’s a Jewish invention and trick to win the world’s sympathy and support. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is similarly minded; he has said so countless times.
In the West, speaking of the Holocaust, most leaders and commentators concede that it did, indeed, occur. But, privately and sometimes publicly, some tell the Israelis: “Get over it.” They mean that the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II should not dominate, or perhaps even strongly influence,Israel’s policies today.
But is this reasonable … Seguir leyendo
L’on parierait volontiers sur le fait qu’Israël ne bombardera pas l’Iran. Mais les scénarios échappant à tout contrôle sont souvent ceux que leurs auteurs se flattaient au départ de contrôler. Plaçons-nous donc dans l’hypothèse d’un bombardement.
Il nous est expliqué qu’il devrait avoir lieu sans plus tarder, car l’usine d’enrichissement de Fordo, profondément enterrée, est désormais opérationnelle. Les inspecteurs de l’AIEA l’ont d’ailleurs confirmé. Elle peut donc produire assez d’uranium hautement enrichi pour une ou deux bombes par an. Mais à moins de disposer d’armes capables de percer 90 mètres de terre et de béton, ou encore d’utiliser des armes … Seguir leyendo