{"id":7916,"date":"2010-08-31T13:14:20","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T21:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=7916"},"modified":"2010-08-31T13:14:20","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T21:14:20","slug":"tuesday-iran-talking-points-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/31\/tuesday-iran-talking-points-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for August 31st, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: News columnist Gerald Seib has a convoluted piece on Mid East and Central Asian policy where he says that almost all the U.S.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regional policy is directed at Iran. Seib writes that Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine all aim to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153clear the decks in order to concentrate more intensely on the paramount challenge posed by Iran and its Islamic extremist friends.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Raising the specter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a hostile state potentially armed with weapons of mass destruction,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Seib nonetheless affirms the neocon b\u00c3\u00aate noire<\/em> of linkage between the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the rest of the region. He calls the Mid East talks in Washington this week \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an attempt to reduce the danger of a traditional flashpoint, the plight of the stateless Palestinians.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

National Review Online<\/a><\/em>: Robert Costa briefly sums up House Minority Leader John Boehner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech to an American Legion Convention in Milwaukee before reproducing the speech in full. Boehner, who would become Speaker should the GOP take the House in November, asserts that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153international isolation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will not stop Iran from pursuing the bomb. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran is more than prepared to sacrifice the well-being of its people for the chance to fundamentally change the balance of power in the region,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is the true source of instability in the region, and we must not naively assume a nuclear-armed Iran would be containable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Without directly mentioning an Israeli attack on Iran, Boehner says that the U.S. should support Israel as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153island of freedom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stick by [its] friends.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Financial Times<\/a><\/em> (free subscription required): Reporting from Tehran, Monavar Khalaj highlights the still-turbulent domestic politics of Iran. While the current sparring in Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s majles \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or parliament \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is between President Ahmadinejad and fundamentalist hard-liners, the wrangling is in direct defiance of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supreme leader Ali Khamenei<\/a> and indicates how difficult it is for authorities to keep a lid on politics there. In fact, self-proclaimed Green Movement supporter and arch-neocon Michael Ledeen<\/a> has a post at NRO<\/em><\/a> pointing to calls for a new round of Green protests (though Ledeen strikes a patronizing tone by declaring the opposition\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poster<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u0153elegant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).<\/p>\n

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy<\/a><\/em>: WINEP <\/a>fellow Simon Henderson warns that arrests of Shiite opposition activists in Bahrain could threaten to bring greater resentment from the island-kingdom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Shiite majority. Henderson argues that the large number of potentially disenfranchised Shiites, Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s historical claims to Bahrain (although Tehran renounced its claim to the kingdom during the Shah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rule), and the importance of the island state to U.S. military staging in the region are all reasons for the U.S. to encourage the Bahraini government to avoid an outbreak of anti-government and anti-U.S. protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for August 31st, 2010: The Wall Street Journal: News columnist Gerald Seib has a convoluted piece on Mid East and Central Asian policy where he says that almost all the U.S.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regional policy is directed at Iran. Seib writes that Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and […]<\/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-7916","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\/7916","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=7916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7917,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916\/revisions\/7917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7916"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}