{"id":8542,"date":"2010-11-16T14:27:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T22:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8542"},"modified":"2010-11-16T14:27:28","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T22:27:28","slug":"tuesday-iran-talking-points-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/16\/tuesday-iran-talking-points-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 16th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)<\/a> fellow Benjamin Weinthal categorized a trip by five German parliament members to Iran last month to meet with their Iranian counterparts as that nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bizarre way of working through its history\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and\u00e2\u20ac\u0153court[ing] Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holocaust deniers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The German lawmakers defended their trip as an example of valuable cultural exchange. Weinthal takes issue with the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unwillingness to ask questions about Iranian human rights abuses and limitations on freedom of religion. With other German politicians scheduled to tour, Weinthal concludes that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[i]t appears that for Berlin, promoting its flourishing trade relationship with Tehran and preserving the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchistorical treasure of the German-Iranian friendship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 trump concerns for human rights and nuclear proliferation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Defense News<\/a><\/em>: Efraim Inbar, a Bar-Ilan University professor and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, makes the case for military action against Iran. Inbar argues that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153diplomacy has run its course,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153economic sanctions are generally futile\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that further negotiations just gives Iran more time to complete its nuclear program. Inbar says that an Iranian nuclear program could threaten the regional stability of the Middle East, Europe and South Asia. Inbar is resolute: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The discussions on postnuclear Iran scenarios underestimate the strategic repercussions of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. At this late stage, only military action can prevent the descent of the greater Mid-east into a very brutish region.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: With foreign policy not having been on the mid-term election agenda, neoconservative Senator Joe Lieberman<\/a> makes the case for resurrecting an internationalist (read hawkish) bipartisan foreign policy. After indefinitely continuing the Afghan war, Lieberman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153second priority for national security bipartisanship\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is Iran. He wants to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ensure that sanctions are aggressively enforced\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and to keep the military option on the table \u00e2\u20ac\u201c euphemistically referred to by stating: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We must also work together to send a clear message to the Iranian regime that the U.S. is unified and determined to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthrough peaceful means if we possibly can, by other means if we absolutely must.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lieberman asserts that an Iranian bomb \u00e2\u20ac\u0153would dramatically undermine our national security\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and lauds bipartisan support for the most recent rounds of U.S. sanctions on Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 16th, 2010: The Wall Street Journal: Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) fellow Benjamin Weinthal categorized a trip by five German parliament members to Iran last month to meet with their Iranian counterparts as that nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bizarre way of working through its history\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and\u00e2\u20ac\u0153court[ing] […]<\/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-8542","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\/8542","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=8542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8544,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542\/revisions\/8544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8542"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}