{"id":8486,"date":"2010-11-05T10:29:10","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T18:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8486"},"modified":"2010-11-05T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T18:29:10","slug":"friday-iran-talking-points-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/05\/friday-iran-talking-points-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

Foreign Policy<\/a><\/em>: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation<\/a>, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with Russia. One of the mailings<\/a> raised the question: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Why did Senator Bob Corker vote <\/a>in committee to put Russia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s military interests ahead of our own?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This referred to Corker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vote approving the treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16. Rogin adds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153With a picture juxtaposing the images of Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the mailer alleges that President Obama and lawmakers are using the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclame duck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 session of Congress to ram through the New START treaty, which it argues \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcseverely weakens our national security.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The mailer alleges that the treaty, which would primarily reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads, would put nuclear weapons in the hands of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153countries that want to destroy us,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like North Korea and Iran. Corker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chief of Staff told The Cable that much in the flier wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t accurate.<\/p>\n

National Review Online<\/a><\/em>: American Enterprise Institute<\/a> (AEI) fellow Ali Alfoneh writes that Sobh-e Sadegh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan Iranian newspaper with close ties to the IRGC\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcalls November 4th, the 31st anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy, as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the day of humiliation of world imperialism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The newspaper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s statements, say Alfoneh, show that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the political alliances which defeated the Shah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regime required foreign enemies like the United States for internal unification, an essential component of the regime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s survival.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Alfoneh concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[Some of the hostage takers] have themselves become victims of this ruthless political system, which constantly looks for and finds fifth columnists. It is this side of the Atlantic where some are still unwilling to accept reality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Weekly Standard<\/a><\/em>: Michael Weiss writes that uproar over the sentencing to death of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, for the crimes of murder and adultery, and Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unclear plans regarding her execution offer an insight into \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the theocracy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferred method of psychological torture: Will we or won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Weiss concludes that despite outcry from various Western human rights groups and the U.S. State Department<\/a>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whatever happens to Ashtiani, one can only guess at the psychological torture she and her family have endured because their government takes sadistic joy in treating capriciously the matter of whether she lives or dies.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

American Enterprise Institute<\/a><\/em>: Charlie Szrom, a senior analyst and program manager at AEI<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Critical Threats Project, writes that the State Department\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation is flawed because it is used for political purposes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Two weeks from now, officials from the P5+1 group, consisting of the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, hope to meet<\/a> with Iranian officials for a new round of talks over Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear program. Did this announcement of Jundallah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s FTO designation occur now as a bargaining chip to encourage Iran to engage in talks over its nuclear program?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d asks Szrom. He argues that the FTO designation should be used regardless of the diplomatic and political environment and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda and its affiliates, threaten American interests and should trigger FTO designation as soon as credible evidence of their status emerges.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Szrom warns that fixing the FTO designation process and the recent designation of Jundallah as a terrorist group<\/a>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153does not encourage Iran to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, which will continue without serious considerations by the United States of all its options regarding Iran.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 5th, 2010: Foreign Policy: Josh Rogin, writing on Foreign Policy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Cable blog, reports that Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arms of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is sending out mailers to Republican senators, urging them to vote against the New START treaty with […]<\/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-8486","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\/8486","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=8486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8487,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8486\/revisions\/8487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8486"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}