{"id":8160,"date":"2010-09-20T17:14:49","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T01:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8160"},"modified":"2010-09-20T17:14:49","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T01:14:49","slug":"monday-iran-talking-points-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/20\/monday-iran-talking-points-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for September 18-20th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

NBC<\/a><\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Meet the Press: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s David Gregory, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think the, the stars are lining up for an attack on Iran either by Israel alone, or Israel in concert with the United States, or the United States alone. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to happen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Powell said the U.S. should focus on finding a way for Iran to have a nuclear program dedicated to power production. Powell flatly rejected the arguments that a nuclear weapons possessing Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. or that the Iranian government is suicidal. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[W]hat can they do with a nuclear weapon compared to what we could do in return? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it is\u00e2\u20ac\u201cyou know, they are interested in remaining in power. The easiest way for them to lose power is to seriously threaten or use such a weapon,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he concluded.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/a><\/em>: International sanctions against Iran are having an impact and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creating leverage for diplomacy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. The Treasury Department\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s curbs on financial institutions doing business with blacklisted Iranian entities have created a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bleak\u00e2\u20ac\u009d investment landscape for Iran. Levey adds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We believe Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leadership was caught off guard by the speed, intensity and scope of the new measures, misjudging the strength of the international community\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s will.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: On Sunday, The Council on Foreign Relations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Ray Takeyh arguedthe Obama administration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emphasis on sanctions overlooks the domestic politics and ideologies which prevent Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei from making \u00e2\u20ac\u0153subtle estimates of national interests.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Islamic Republic, however, is too wedded to its ideological verities and too subsumed by its rivalries to engage in such judicious determinations,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Takeyh. He concludes the only way forward for the U.S. is to support \u00e2\u20ac\u0153an Iranian political class that is inclined to displace dogma with pragmatism. And that still remains the indomitable Green movement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jeffrey Goldberg<\/a> picked up<\/a> on Takeyh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s piece today and claims the scenario described by Takeyh will result in a crisis, referencing his own Atlantic <\/em>cover story<\/a>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Point of No Return<\/a>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

ABC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s This Week<\/a><\/em>: On ABC<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sunday talk show, Christiane Amanpour sat down separately with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York, in town this week for the UN General Assembly. Clinton described sanctions as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tool\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6not an end in themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sanctions were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153biting,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, and called for Iran to return to the P5+1 talks over its nuclear program and allow full IAEA inspection. Ahmadinejad told Amanpour that all of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear rector activity was monitored by camera, the IAEA was becoming politicized and the sanctions were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meaningless.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He did acknowledge he was taking \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sanctions seriously\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a response to former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s request that Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leadership not treat sanctions as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153joke.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> However, Ahmedinejad also took exception to Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assessment of the effectiveness of sanctions: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taking [sanctions] seriously is different from believing that they are effective.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a><\/em>: In the left-leaning British daily\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Comment Is Free section, the University of Maryland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Manuel Hassassian and Edward Edy Kaufman make a case for linkage \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal \u00e2\u20ac\u0153could actually neutralise the Iranian nuclear peril.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They note if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas \u00e2\u20ac\u0153can offer a credible alternative [to Iranian support for Arab resistance groups on Israel’s borders], it offers excellent prospects for trumping the rejectionists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 appeal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They point out Iran is one of the 57 Muslim countries that have endorsed a plan by the Arab League<\/a> to support a peace deal, in which the 22 members of the Arab League said they would normalize relations with Israel. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This kind of linkage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and Israeli-Palestinian peace deal first \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153may be the only way to achieve results in which all the parties \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and Iranians \u00e2\u20ac\u201c can \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwin,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d write Hassassian and Kaufman, who are respectively Palestinian and Israeli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for September 18-20th, 2010: NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Meet the Press: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s David Gregory, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think the, the stars are lining up for an attack on Iran either by Israel alone, or Israel in concert with the United States, or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"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-8160","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\/8160","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\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8161,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8160\/revisions\/8161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8160"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}