{"id":8442,"date":"2010-10-28T12:34:37","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T20:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8442"},"modified":"2010-10-28T12:34:37","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T20:34:37","slug":"thursday-iran-talking-points-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/28\/thursday-iran-talking-points-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 28th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

Foreign Policy<\/a><\/em>: Marc Lynch blogs that while the White House is considering \u00e2\u20ac\u0153talk[ing] more openly about military options [against Iran],\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to The New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 David Sanger, such rhetoric would be counterproductive and dangerous. Lynch warns that if the Iranians return to the P5+1 nuclear talks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran will quite reasonably refuse to bargain under the threat of military force, and will view American offers under such conditions as manifestly insincere,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a military threat credible. More importantly, such threats would destroy any confidence building measures and widen existing divisions. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The greatest danger of introducing open war talk by the administration is that it would represent the next step in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcratcheting\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been warning for months and pave the way either to the 1990s Iraq scenario or to an actual war,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Lynch.<\/p>\n

The Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/em>: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (FDD) Benjamin Weinthal writes that new EU sanctions will have an impact on EU-Iranian gas deals but unlike the U.S. sanctions the new EU sanctions will not place sanctions on individual Iranian officials because of human rights violations. Weinthal interviews FDD\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mark Dubowitz who tells him, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A fragile political consensus exists in favor of sanctions in Europe. If the Obama administration doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t provide determined leadership by either sanctioning foreign companies which are violating US law, or persuading these companies to terminate their Iranian ties, European governments will not enforce their own sanctions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Weinthal repeats his Dubowitz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s calls<\/a> for Swiss energy company Elektrizit\u00c3\u00a4tsgesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) to cancel its \u00e2\u201a\u00ac18 billion-\u00e2\u201a\u00ac20 billion gas deal with Iran.<\/p>\n

Tehran Bureau<\/a><\/em>: Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the hawkish Washington Institute for Neareast Policy<\/a> (WINEP) writes that while the Treasury Department\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to sanction 37 German, Maltese and Cypriot companies for being controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the latest U.S. actions are not likely to put sufficient pressure on Tehran to change the regime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s calculus.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Iranian shipping line is alleged to participate in arms smuggling and, according to Levitt is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one of the central players in Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s efforts to develop nuclear weapons capabilities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 28th, 2010: Foreign Policy: Marc Lynch blogs that while the White House is considering \u00e2\u20ac\u0153talk[ing] more openly about military options [against Iran],\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to The New York Times\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 David Sanger, such rhetoric would be counterproductive and dangerous. Lynch warns that if the Iranians return […]<\/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-8442","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\/8442","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=8442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8443,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions\/8443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}