{"id":8549,"date":"2010-11-18T13:06:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8549"},"modified":"2010-11-18T13:06:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:06:02","slug":"thursday-iran-talking-points-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/18\/thursday-iran-talking-points-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)<\/a>, writes that Turkey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), due to its identity as the defender of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islamic Civilization,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d may have already signaled a rift with NATO over Iran. In an op-ed entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153NATO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Turkey Problem,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cagaptay says the AKP is expected to drags its feet in implementing the NATO missile defense shield because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it is directed against potential threats from two fellow Muslim countries\u00e2\u20ac\u201dSyria and Iran.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cagaptay adds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Given that Turkey is the only NATO member bordering Iran and Syria, viewed by the U.S. as ballistic missile threats to NATO, this is a troubling strategic shift.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Pajamas Media<\/a><\/em>: Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a> fellow Michael Ledeen<\/a> rails against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent comments that an attack on Iran would devastate the nascent opposition movement there. He calls Gates a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blind man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that there is no evidence for Gates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 assertion, never mentioning that top-level current and former Pentagon brass and diplomats<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as well as, notably, Iranian <\/a>dissident <\/a>figures \u00e2\u20ac\u201d believe otherwise. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I try to imagine one of the tens of millions of Iranian opponents of the regime,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ledeen fantasizes, rather than asking experts and actual Iranian dissidents. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And then one day somebody blows up a bunch of nuclear labs, some secret military installations, and [Revolutionary Guard] headquarters in the major cities. Does that guy now rally round the supreme leader? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Think Progress<\/a><\/em>: At the Center for American Progress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Think Progress<\/em> blog, analyst Matt Duss reports on a conference at D.C.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s National Press Club dedicated to boosting the case for war on Iran. At the conference, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) cited unspecified \u00e2\u20ac\u0153intelligence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to allege that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we know that they [Iran] already have a nuclear capability.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Duss notes that the CIA disagrees with this assessment. Bachmann also called for overt U.S. support for the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an Islamist-Marxist organization (commonly accused of having a cultish outlook) that fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, and since 1997 has been designated a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foreign terror organization\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by the State Department. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have shackled this freedom-seeking group which has the ability to help Iranians rise up against that tyrannical regime,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bachmann said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 18th, 2010: The Wall Street Journal: Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), writes that Turkey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), due to its identity as the defender of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islamic Civilization,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d may have already signaled a […]<\/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-8549","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\/8549","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=8549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8551,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8549\/revisions\/8551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8549"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}