Author: Charles Goyette

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/2007-12-10dilliphiro.mp3]

Dilip Hiro, author of Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After: A Prelude to the Fall of U.S. Power in the Middle East?, discusses the history of U.S. relations with Iraq, why they didn’t topple Saddam in 1991, the Iran-Iraq war and his belief that the Annapolis summit was held mostly for the purpose of holding together the Arab coalition against Iran.

MP3 here. (15:06)

Born in the Indian sub-continent, Dilip Hiro was educated in India, Britain and America, where he received a master’s degree at Virginia Polytechnic & State University. He then settled in London in the mid-1960s, and became a full-time writer, journalist and commentator. He has published 28 books.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw20071207tritaparsi.mp3]

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance, discusses the possibility that the new Iran NIE will give the Israeli government the opportunity to adopt a new foreign policy toward Iran, how the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon have benefited Iran and the Iranian leadership’s sanity.

MP3 here.

Trita Parsi is the author of the forthcoming Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.) He wrote his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama (and Drs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. K. Ramazani, Jakub Grygiel, Charles Doran) at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 2006.

Dr. Parsi is one of the few people in the US – if not the only one – that has traveled both to Iran and Israel and interviewed top officials in these countries on the state of Israeli-Iranian relations. He has conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American officials in all three countries. He is fluent in Persian/Farsi.He has followed Middle East politics for more than a decade, both through work in the field, and through extensive experience on Capitol Hill and the United Nations. Dr. Parsi’s articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the Financial Times, Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Globalist, the Jerusalem Post, the Forward, BitterLemons and the Daily Star.

He is a frequent commentator on US-Iranian relations and Middle Eastern affairs, and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN (Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room, Anderson Cooper 360°), CNN International (Your World Today), Al Jazeera, C-Span, NPR, MSNBC, Voice of America and British Channel 4.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/12-04awpatbuchanan.mp3]

Pat Buchanan, author of the new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart, his belief that the new Iran NIE has significantly weakened Bush’s case for war, the battle between the War Party and the “realists,” U.S. use of Pejak and MEK terrorists against Iran, the costs of the Iraq war, the neocons’ efforts to create a new Cold War with Russia, his analysis of the presidential race, his affection for Ron Paul, Israel’s nuke program, why he doubts Iran would even want nukes and the peace offer of 2003.

MP3 here. (22:07)

Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/12-03awjonathanschell.mp3]

Jonathan Schell, columnist for the Nation and author of The Fate of the Earth, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger, discusses his view that the people of earth are in great danger from nuclear weapons, his fear of Iran’s nuclear program and belief that bombing them is the worst way to keep them from making nukes, the theory of mutual assured destruction as applied to Iran, the call for a “preemptive” first strike on China back in the 60s and the U.S. and USSR’s pledge to disarm their nukes under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

MP3 here. (19:55)

Jonathan Schell is the author of The Fate of the Earth, among other books, and the just-published The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger. He is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University.