{"id":8401,"date":"2010-10-25T14:19:37","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T22:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8401"},"modified":"2010-10-25T14:19:37","modified_gmt":"2010-10-25T22:19:37","slug":"monday-iran-talking-points-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/25\/monday-iran-talking-points-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 25th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: Max Boot<\/a> blogs that, in light of Hamid Karzai\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s acknowledgment that he receives $2 million a year from Iran, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try the same thing with another neighbor.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Boot says Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policy is to give money to both the Afghan government and, allegedly, the Taliban, and its tendency to make contributions in cash is cynical and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153seedy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But the strategy is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not that far removed from conventional foreign aid programs run by the U.S., Britain and other powers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Karzai\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to take Iranian money doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make him a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dupe of Iran,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and he gets far more money from the U.S., says Boot. Instead, Boot takes the lesson that the revelations should be a warning that if the U.S. leaves, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Afghanistan will once again be the scene of a massive civil war, with neighboring states, and in particular Pakistan and Iran, doing their utmost to exert their influence to the detriment of our long-term interests.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Pajamas Media<\/a><\/em>: Michael Ledeen<\/a> writes that the Wikileaks release shows that Iran is engaging in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153murder of Americans.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ledeen says the documents show proof that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153been pretty much on-target all along\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that his critics owe him an apology. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But the really big apologies are due from our political leaders, who\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 have failed to respond, either politically (as I have proposed) or militarily,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he writes. He names many officials from the Clinton, Bush and Obama White Houses and says they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all accomplices to the great evil that is the Islamic Republic of Iran,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and calls for overt support of Iranian opposition movements.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: Thomas J. Raleigh, a strategic planner at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since August 2008, opines that while Iraq is building a stable and prosperous economy, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran will be feeling increasingly isolated.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Iranian visitors to Iraq will see the benefits of free trade and democracy and will come back to Iran wanting a similar standard of living. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As the Iraqi standard of living rises, Iranian leaders will eventually find themselves confronting an economic \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccomparative crisis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 much like that East German leaders confronted in the 1980s as their people looked enviously \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcover the wall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Raleigh.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl writes that supporting free access to the internet should be better funded by the State Department and describes the success of such firewall breaching firms as UltraReach<\/a>, a company which allows internet users to circumvent national firewalls. Diehl writes that the companies\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 founders say that with $30 million in funding they could \u00e2\u20ac\u0153effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner has said that defeating internet censorship would be a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153game changer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in countries like Iran. Diehl writes that the holdup in funding such projects is rooted in a fear of offending the Chinese government. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153State is polishing its policy and preparing yet more training programs, Iranians and people from dozens of other countries are trying to get free access to the Internet,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d concludes Diehl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 25th, 2010: Commentary: Max Boot blogs that, in light of Hamid Karzai\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s acknowledgment that he receives $2 million a year from Iran, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try 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-8401","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\/8401","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=8401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8402,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8401\/revisions\/8402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8401"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}