{"id":8899,"date":"2011-01-05T13:59:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T21:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8899"},"modified":"2011-01-05T13:59:36","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T21:59:36","slug":"wednesday-iran-talking-points-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/05\/wednesday-iran-talking-points-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 5th, 2011:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: David Feith adds his voice to the neoconservative criticism<\/a> of HSBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent advertisement that highlighted the high number of women in the Iranian film industry. Feith characterizes the bank as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s useful idiots\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and says that the ad suggests that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a murderous theocracy is actually a progressive place.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The op-ed lists a number of human rights abuses against women in Iran and concludes that the ad is comparable to defending Nazi propaganda produced by females. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Imagine a 1939 ad pointing to Leni Riefenstahl\u00e2\u20ac\u201dHitler\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s court filmmaker and a pioneering female artist\u00e2\u20ac\u201das evidence of the Third Reich\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unexpected \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpotential\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he writes.<\/p>\n

National Review Online<\/a><\/em>: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc Benjamin Weinthal blogs that Germany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempts at engagement with Iran, while Iran continues to detain two German journalists, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is yet another example of what a flop<\/a> this cognitive-behavioral therapy for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and company has been.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Weinthal goes on to compare the arrest of three American hikers in 2009 to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153replicating the 1979 model\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of holding Americans hostage. Weinthal says that engagement with Iran has only produced more hostage crises and is a form of appeasement. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Germany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flourishing trade relationship with Iran (German exports to Iran reached \u00e2\u201a\u00ac3.4 billion this year) and a steady stream of German members of parliament travelling to Iran to meet Holocaust deniers, human-rights violators, and haters of women, reveal the bankruptcy of critical dialogue and change through trade,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he concludes.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a>, opines in the WSJ Asia edition that the Reserve Bank of India\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crackdown on domestic buyers of Iranian oil marks a major improvement in international sanctions against Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s energy sector, but that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153further measures, and time for them to work, will still be needed to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dubowitz argues that the U.S. could do more to ensure that oil supply will not tighten if sanctions are more strictly enforced. He writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Provided the United States and its allies can get more oil on the market\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfor example the Iran-loathing Saudis could increase production, or President Obama could lift the moratorium on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthen the world oil market would have considerably more elasticity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The near-miraculous attack of the Stuxnet virus on Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s centrifuges and the untimely deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists may have bought the administration that time, and further strengthened those who want to use economic sticks to beat back Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear aspirations.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Emanuele Ottolenghi<\/a>, a fellow the Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a>, opines in the WSJ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Europe edition that European countries could do more to expand sanctions against individuals associated with human rights abuses in Iran. In contrast to those who argue<\/a> that the West\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach to pressuring Iran must focus on either human rights or Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear program, he writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If Western democracies were to target the Islamic Republic for its human-rights abuses, bolster the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s internal opposition, and speak directly to the Iranian people over the heads of their oppressors, they would cause significant harm to Tehran.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ottolenghi concludes with the suggestion that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153every day, a member of the U.S. Congress or of the European Parliament spend just 30 seconds recounting the tale of one Iranian dissident, or one victim of Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suppression, and plead for their freedom.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 5th, 2011: The Wall Street Journal: David Feith adds his voice to the neoconservative criticism of HSBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent advertisement that highlighted the high number of women in the Iranian film industry. Feith characterizes the bank as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s useful idiots\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and says that the ad […]<\/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-8899","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\/8899","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=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8900,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions\/8900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}