{"id":8910,"date":"2011-01-07T10:50:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T18:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8910"},"modified":"2011-01-07T10:50:30","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T18:50:30","slug":"friday-iran-talking-points-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/friday-iran-talking-points-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 7th, 2011:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: Jennifer Rubin<\/a>, writing on her Right Turn blog, asks whether India is doing enough to enforce sanctions against Iran. Rubin, picking up on The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reporting<\/a>, writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The revelation that the government of India \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcadvised oil companies to open individual accounts with government-owned State Bank of India\u00e2\u20ac\u201cIndia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest lender\u00e2\u20ac\u201cwhich has a branch in Frankfurt,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rather than directly with the blacklisted Iranian Trade Bank points to the shortcomings of sanctions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The real lesson of this episode is that we should be circumspect about India\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or any country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201d ability and willingness to turn off the flow of cash to the revolutionary Islamic regime.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: Alana Goodman blogs on Commentary<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Contentions blog that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153HSBC may be doing a bit of damage control in Foggy Bottom after its pro-Iran ad campaign sparked criticism from the media and foreign-policy experts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Goodman claims that the ad came up in a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153private meeting between HSBC CEO Niall Booker and Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary for economic energy and business affairs, at the State Department on Monday,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to an anonymous source. HSBC declined to respond to the claim. Goodman repeats Jennifer Rubin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suggestion <\/a>the possibility that HSBC \u00e2\u20ac\u0153was conducting transactions on behalf of sanctioned entities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d HSBC has been mentioned by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago<\/a> as needing to improve its anti-money laundering and terrorist-financing mechanisms but no mention was made of HSBC conducting business with sanctioned entities.<\/p>\n

The Weekly Standard<\/a><\/em>: Stephen Schwartz blogs that Iran is exhibiting the qualities of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153other tyrannies before it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by oppressing the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sufis. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iranian fear of Sufis puts the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clerical oligarchs in the same camp with other Islamist radicals from the Balkans to Pakistan, where attacks against the mystics have proliferated<\/a> along with anti-Western jihadism,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Schwartz.<\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: Jonathan Tobin blogs on Contentions that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran is still on track to have a bomb in four years.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Tobin says that Western or Israeli \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sabotage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d operations have delayed the nuclear program and given the West \u00e2\u20ac\u0153more time to prepare less-diplomatic methods of ensuring that the tyrannical Islamist regime in Tehran does not obtain the ultimate weapon.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But, warns Tobin, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it is only a matter of time (and perhaps less time than we think) before they succeed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stuxnet is not a solution to the existential threat that an Iranian bomb poses to Israel in particular and to stability in the Middle East in general. It is just a delaying tactic.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 7th, 2011: The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin, writing on her Right Turn blog, asks whether India is doing enough to enforce sanctions against Iran. Rubin, picking up on The Wall Street Journal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reporting, writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The revelation that the government of India \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcadvised oil companies […]<\/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-8910","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\/8910","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=8910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8911,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910\/revisions\/8911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8910"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}