{"id":7736,"date":"2010-08-18T07:54:59","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T15:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=7736"},"modified":"2010-08-19T06:11:24","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T14:11:24","slug":"wednesday-iran-talking-points-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/18\/wednesday-iran-talking-points-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for August 18th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

Washington Times<\/a><\/em>: In an editorial, the \u00c3\u00bcber-hawkish DC daily echoes John Bolton<\/a> (referenced in our last entry here<\/a>) and calls for a strike against Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bushehr reactor before fuel rods are inserted in the plant. Their revised timeline gives the United States or Israel just two days to act \u00e2\u20ac\u201d though they state that it might not be so bad to wait because the radiation-fallout that Bolton seeks to avoid would be a way for a potential strike to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hinder Iranian attempts to get it back up and running.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The editors opine that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153action is needed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but admit that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unlikely.<\/p>\n

NY Times.com<\/a><\/em>: At the Opinionator blog, Robert Wright offers a nuanced reading of Jeffery Goldberg<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent Atlantic <\/em>story<\/a> on the likelihood of an Israeli military strike on Iran in the coming year (50-50, Goldberg says). Wright says that while there is a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bit of channeling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bibi Netanyahu, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the piece is no simple propaganda exercise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wright concludes that while the piece is, if anything, a poor piece of war propaganda, it is instructive because it answers questions about the weak Israeli public (and private) reasons for bombing, and also offers the United States a map for constructing a plan to avoid that scenario, especially given that the piece offers \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no sound rationale for bombing Iran.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Arms Control Wonk<\/a><\/em>: Joshua Pollack, an occasional U.S. government consultant, laments that the arms control community \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nuke nerds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d are not playing a big enough role in discussions over what to do about Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear program, often only speaking amongst themselves in acronym-heavy jargon. So he offers, in plain English, a little parsing about the different views of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear goals: What, for instance, does \u00e2\u20ac\u0153going nuclear\u00e2\u20ac\u009d even mean? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If Iran is going to achieve breakout capability at a hidden facility somewhere \u00e2\u20ac\u201d call it Son of Qom \u00e2\u20ac\u201d then bombing Natanz won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t address that problem,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d write Pollack. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The name of the game today isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bombing, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intelligence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Hat Tip to Laicie Olson<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: On the anniversary of the 1953 coup d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122etat<\/em> that unseated the democratically elected and secular Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh (and re-installed the dictatorial Shah), Council on Foreign Relations fellow Ray Takeyh examines the events and offers an unusual account that places the blame for the failure of democracy fifty-seven years ago squarely on the same societal forces responsible for last summer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s squashing of democratic expression: Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clerics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for August 18th, 2010: Washington Times: In an editorial, the \u00c3\u00bcber-hawkish DC daily echoes John Bolton (referenced in our last entry here) and calls for a strike against Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bushehr reactor before fuel rods are inserted in the plant. Their revised timeline gives the United States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7756,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7736\/revisions\/7756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7736"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}