{"id":8886,"date":"2010-12-27T14:38:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-27T22:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8886"},"modified":"2010-12-27T14:38:28","modified_gmt":"2010-12-27T22:38:28","slug":"monday-iran-talking-points-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/27\/monday-iran-talking-points-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for December 27th, 2010:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Weekly Standard<\/a><\/em>: Stephen F. Hayes blogs on a report<\/a> that a member of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Qods Force, serving as a Taliban commander, has been arrested in Afghanistan. Hayes writes that this capture disproves the commonly held belief that Iran and the Taliban are adversaries and provides further evidence that Iran has been providing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153increasingly lethal support\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the Taliban. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And yet senior Obama administration officials have either downplayed the seriousness of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s support or ignored it altogether, despite a never-ending series of reports from the U.S. military that such coordination is happening,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he concludes, adding that NATO forces in Afghanistan (as ISAF) have retracted their claim that the man was part of the Qods Force.<\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: Jonathan S. Tobin, writing on Commentary<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Contentions blog, offers his take on The New York Times<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expos\u00c3\u00a9 on the limited number of U.S. companies who have received exemptions from the trade sanctions against Iran. (See our coverage of the article here<\/a>.) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153While the purpose of the statute that allows for exemptions was to provide humanitarian aid, the Obama administration has let things like chewing gum, sports equipment and even hot sauce be sold to Iran,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Tobin. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In light of these revelations, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that sanctions will never work to halt the march of this terror sponsor toward nuclear capability,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he warns. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After reading this shocking story, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little doubt that Ahmadinejad and his tyrannical Islamist confederates are laughing at us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: Jennifer Rubin<\/a>, writing on her Right Turn blog, interviews Israeli ambassador Michael Oren who warns that sanctions \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6have not impacted Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear behavior. Now [the Obama administration is] talking about \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcratcheting up\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the sanctions. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good but the ultimate test is whether Iran will cease enrichment on its soil.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oren emphasized that for both the United States and Israel \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all options remain on the table.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But when pushed for specifics ways of indicating to the Iranians that the threat of force was real, he responded \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are ways to communicate that [a military option is real] to the Iranians.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for December 27th, 2010: The Weekly Standard: Stephen F. Hayes blogs on a report that a member of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Qods Force, serving as a Taliban commander, has been arrested in Afghanistan. Hayes writes that this capture disproves the commonly held belief that Iran and the Taliban […]<\/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-8886","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\/8886","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=8886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8887,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions\/8887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8886"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}