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By Tim Hames (THE TIMES, 04/09/06):

PERSIAN PROVERBS have a particularly poetic quality to them. Among my personal favourites are: “The wise man sits on the hole in his carpet”; “You can’t pick up two melons with one hand”; and “When fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth.” Profound.

Another local maxim appears to capture the outside world’s response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It is akin to an ancient remark: “A gentle hand may lead an elephant by a hair.” For that is clearly the approach that Kofi Annan, on behalf of the United Nations, and Javier Solana, for the European Union, are adopting.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Roya Hakakian, the author of two books of poetry in Persian and the memoir “Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.” (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 02/09/06):

The news of the exhibition of Holocaust cartoons in Tehran took me back to a moment in my childhood. In 1974, his first year at Tehran’s Academy for Visual Arts, my brother mounted an exhibition of his own cartoons. The drawings were a novice’s best attempt at political satire, but they were enough to alarm my law-abiding father into sending my brother away to America. Our family was never whole again.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Mábel González Bustelo, responsable de desarme de Greenpeace (EL MUNDO, 01/09/06):

La cuestión del programa nuclear iraní se está abordando de forma equivocada. Es preocupante que nuevos países accedan a armas nucleares, pero nadie ha demostrado que éste sea el propósito de Irán y se están aplicando a este país parámetros que no se aplican a otros.

El problema son las contradicciones de la comunidad internacional al abordar las cuestiones de desarme y no proliferación, y la insuficiencia de las normativas internacionales al respecto.

La verdadera cuestión a abordar es la configuración del Tratado de No Proliferación Nuclear (TNP), que en su artículo cuatro establece el «derecho inalienable» de todos los países a la energía nuclear.…  Seguir leyendo »

By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 01/09/06):

TEHRAN -- Behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiant rhetoric lies a conviction that is widely shared here: Iran is a rising power in the Middle East while the United States is in decline -- and now is the moment for Iran to emerge as a regional superpower.

You hear versions of this cocky nationalism in almost every conversation. And when you look around this surprisingly modern metropolis of 12 million people, it's easy to think that Iran's time may indeed have come. The problem is that its national ambitions are wrapped today in the fanatical language of Ahmadinejad, who emerged from among the hardest of this country's hard-core Islamic revolutionaries.…  Seguir leyendo »

By David Ignatius (THE WASHINGTON POST, 30/08/06):

TEHRAN -- Drivers here play a high-risk game of chicken at every intersection. They barge into the frantic stream of traffic and you think there's going to be a crash for sure. But at the last moment someone usually gives way, and a collision is avoided.

Watching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a news conference here Tuesday, I had the same mesmerizing anxiety as a passenger in a Tehran taxi. He has moved boldly -- recklessly, it seems to Americans -- into the international traffic flow. He keeps revving his motor, and it looks as if he and the West might be heading for a dangerous crackup over Iran's nuclear program.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Micah Zenko, a research associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government (THE WASHINGTON POST, 29/08/06):

How long until Iran becomes a nuclear weapons state?

The current best guess of American intelligence agencies is found in a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) completed last summer: "Left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons," it says, yet it is unlikely that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb before "early to mid-next decade."

Senior Bush administration officials, lawmakers in both parties and analysts out of government are increasingly skeptical of the Iran NIE.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Anatole Kaletsky (THE TIMES, 24/08/06):

DEFEAT IS NEVER pleasant, but often it is better to lose than to win. Defeat in the Second World War was the best thing that ever happened to Germany and Japan in their thousand years of recorded history. For America, losing in Vietnam was also a blessing in disguise. While defeat seemed to shatter the illusion of an “American century” of global dominance, it was followed by 30 years of almost uninterrupted prosperity, a political renaissance for conservative values and America’s total victory over communism in the Cold War.

Such thoughts may not offer much consolation to George Bush, Tony Blair and Ehud Olmert as they contemplate their defeat at the hands of Iran and its Hezbollah allies.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Maziar Bahari, a journalist and documentary film maker (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 24/08/06):

WORKING as a journalist in Iran embodies the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again without getting any results. That’s how I felt at the height of the conflict in Lebanon, when I asked officials about Iran’s relations with Hezbollah, bearing in mind that posing such questions can be a futile, dangerous and sometimes even lethal exercise.

How was Iran helping Hezbollah? Did Iran really start the war to divert attention from its uranium enrichment program (which it vowed this week to continue)?…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Shahram Chubin, director de investigación del Centro de Investigación de Políticas de Seguridad, Ginebra, y autor de Iran´s nuclear ambitions (Carnegie Endowment, agosto de 2006). Traducción: Laura Manero Jiménez (LA VANGUARDIA, 14/08/06):

El culebrón del programa nuclear de Irán se prolonga ya desde hace tres años y no parece acercarse a su resolución. Durante todo este tiempo, las políticas regionales activistas del país - como en Líbano Hezbollah- han amenazado con agravar la inestabilidad antes aun de que Irán se convierta en potencia nuclear. Un Irán con capacidad nuclear, más seguro y enérgico, representaría un temible desafío para las políticas occidentales y la estabilidad de la región.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Walter Laqueur, director del Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos de Washington (LA VANGUARDIA, 13/08/06):

Las actuales operaciones militares en Líbano e Israel irán disminuyendo poco a poco, aunque no tan deprisa como deseamos la mayoría. Sin embargo, ésta es sólo una guerra simbólica, y el peligro de una guerra a gran escala no desaparecerá con ella. El jeque Nasrallah, jefe de Hezbollah, declaró que el momento y el lugar del ataque a Israel de hace unas semanas fueron decisión suya, y que Teherán y Damasco no fueron informados. Puede ser verdad, puesto que detalles operativos tan precisos suelen mantenerse en el más absoluto secreto.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 11/08/06):

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is preparing to confront the US and United Nations security council over Iran's nuclear activities partly to distract attention from the country's worsening economic problems, sources in Tehran have said.Iran's hardline government said it would respond by August 22 to a western compromise package designed to defuse the dispute over its nuclear activities. But diplomatic sources said that while expressing readiness to continue negotiations, Mr Ahmadinejad was opposing concessions on the issue, which has become key to maintaining his support following his disputed election victory one year ago.

"People say it's Ahmadinejad who's the problem," a western diplomat said on Friday.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Henry A. Kissinger (ABC, 09/08/06):

La atención mundial está centrada en los combates en el Líbano y en la Franja de Gaza, pero el contexto nos devuelve inevitablemente a Irán. Por desgracia, la diplomacia encargada de ese asunto se ve constantemente desbordada por los acontecimientos. Mientras los explosivos llueven sobre ciudades libanesas y hebreas, e Israel recupera parte de Gaza, la propuesta de negociar sobre el programa de armamento nuclear hecha a Irán el pasado mayo por los denominados Seis (Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Francia, Alemania, Rusia y China), sigue pendiente de respuesta. Es posible que Teherán interprete el tono casi suplicante de algunas comunicaciones recibidas como un signo de debilidad o irresolución.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 08/08/06):

A charity event in Tehran for the "children of the resistance" is but one of many ways in which Iran's government is using the Lebanon crisis to rally domestic support and advance its regional agenda. Highlighting the "ongoing war of aggression against the defenceless and oppressed Palestinian and Lebanese nations", the event featured supportive messages and drawings from Iranian schoolchildren and a 25-metre "solidarity scroll".Iran profited greatly from the US-directed toppling of its enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the Islamic Republic is once again the accidental beneficiary of American and Israeli miscalculations on the Middle East abacus - and, at the risk of becoming an even bigger target for regime change, it is busily exploiting the opening.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist, is the author of a forthcoming collection of writings on Iran’s democratic movement (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 01/08/06):

Tehran, Iran

IN February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress for $75 million to help Iran’s democratic opposition. In Iran, her request was widely discussed in the news media and in opposition circles. It became particularly controversial after an article in The New Yorker on March 6 suggested that this money might be used in an attempt to change the regime in Tehran with the help of Iranian democrats, particularly those living abroad.

I was freed from prison amid these discussions.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Henry A. Kissinger (THE WASHINGTON POST, 31/07/06):

The world's attention is focused on the fighting in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, but the context leads inevitably back to Iran. Unfortunately, the diplomacy dealing with that issue is constantly outstripped by events. While explosives are raining on Lebanese and Israeli towns and Israel reclaims portions of Gaza, the proposal to Iran in May by the so-called Six (the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) for negotiations on its nuclear weapons program still awaits an answer. It's possible that Tehran reads the almost pleading tone of some communications addressed to it as a sign of weakness and irresolution.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Rosemary Righter (THE TIMES, 26/07/06):

IRAN AND SYRIA have violently disordered the Middle Eastern chessboard using their Hamas and Hezbollah pawns. The anxious and, they must hope, futile scamper to reassemble the pieces must be mightily pleasing to both these scheming, nihilistic and intransigent regimes.

Provoking Israel to battle served many purposes at once, both for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, of Iran, and Bashir Assad, of Syria. The first is defensive. Their calculation was that the crises in Gaza and Lebanon would take the heat off Tehran and Damascus, where international pressure was making the temperature uncomfortably hot. In this they have, for the time being, succeeded.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 25/07/06):

If Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert are to be believed, Iran wields significant influence throughout the Middle East, and not least over the current Lebanon crisis. Which, logically, makes it all the more strange that Britain, the US and Israel have so far systematically excluded the Islamic republic from international efforts to end the fighting and achieve a lasting settlement.Tomorrow's Rome conference will be attended by the main western powers and the so-called moderate Arab states. But Iran and its second-string ally, Syria, have not been invited even though it is widely accepted that any peace deal involving their Lebanese political ally, Hizbullah, is unlikely to stick without their support.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Olivier Roy, politólogo francés, director de investigación del Centro Nacional de Investigación Científica de París; autor, entre otros libros, de El islam mundializado (Bellaterra). Traducción de Martí Sampons (EL PAÍS, 23/07/06):

¿Qué relación hay entre las cuatro grandes crisis de Oriente Medio: el conflicto palestino israelí, la nueva guerra del Líbano, Irak y el tema nuclear en Irán?

El problema de los occidentales es que se enfrentan a cada conflicto de manera aislada y lo gestionan al día a día, a la vez que defienden un discurso estéril sobre la "guerra contra el terrorismo", como si ésta fuera el denominador común de todos estos conflictos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por Robert Kagan, miembro permanente del Carnegie Endowment for International Peace y representante transatlántico del German Marshall Fund (ABC, 23/07/06):

Imaginemos, y esto es puramente hipotético, que el presidente Bush ya hubiera decidido no dejar su cargo en enero de 2009 sin dar una solución satisfactoria al problema nuclear iraní. Imaginemos que ya hubiera decidido que si no puede obtener el acuerdo iraní para desmantelar voluntariamente su programa de armamento nuclear de manera verificable, ordenará una intervención militar para destruir el programa en la mayor medida posible antes de irse. Imaginemos que hubiera decidido no poner fin a sus dos mandatos en la Casa Blanca de igual modo que Clinton terminó los suyos, dejando todas las grandes crisis internacionales -Irak, Irán, Corea del Norte y Al Qaida- para su sucesor.…  Seguir leyendo »

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/07/06):

Let's imagine, and this is purely hypothetical, that President Bush has already decided that he will not leave office in January 2009 without a satisfactory resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem. Let's imagine that he has already determined that if he cannot obtain Iran's agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons program voluntarily and verifiably, then he will order some form of military action to destroy as much of that program as possible before he leaves.…  Seguir leyendo »