{"id":8956,"date":"2011-01-19T15:54:52","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T23:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8956"},"modified":"2011-01-19T15:54:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T23:54:52","slug":"wednesday-iran-talking-points-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/19\/wednesday-iran-talking-points-22\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 19th, 2011:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Johns Hopkins Professor and Hoover Institution<\/a> fellow Fouad Ajami opines, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Bush diplomacy had declared an open ideological assault against the Iranian theocracy. Mr. Obama would offer that regime an olive branch and a promise of engagement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ajami declares this swing toward diplomacy a message to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the despots in the region that the American campaign on behalf of liberty that Mr. Bush had launched in 2003 has been called off.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The op-ed describes Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slowness to speak publicly about the 2009 Iranian election as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153break of faith with democracy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deference of the pre-eminent liberal power to men who had unleashed the vigilantes on their own people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ajami praises Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech last week in Qatar, in which she criticized Arab leaders: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For a fleeting moment in Qatar, George W. Bush seemed to make a furtive return to the diplomatic arena.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He was there, reincarnated in the person of Hillary Clinton, bearing that quintessential American message that our country cannot be indifferent to the internal arrangements of foreign lands.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: Joshua Muravchik<\/a> reviews Abbas Milani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Shah\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and highlights \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The shah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tolerance of religious minorities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnotably Bahai and Jews\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand his advancement of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rights brought him to daggers with Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clergy, led by Khomeini\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 The paradox of the fall of the Shah,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Mr. Milani says, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclies in the strange reality that nearly all advocates of modernity formed an alliance against the Shah and chose as their leader the biggest foe of modernity,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d quotes Muravchik. He concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Iranians have already paid dearly for this folly. What price the rest of the world will pay remains an open question.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Benjamin Weinthal, writing on Commentary<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Contentions blog, responds to the Der Spiegel<\/em> magazine cover story<\/a> about Israeli involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Weinthal mentions that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the magazine, like most German media, has a peculiar obsession with Jews and Israel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and goes on to accuse the magazine of helping to propagate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Take as an example the headline of the article in the current issue documenting a chronology of the planned hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his posh Dubai hotel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Weinthal. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It screams out \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAn eye for an eye, a murder for a murder.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The cheap wordplay on a section from the Hebrew Bible further reinforces widespread European prejudices against Jews.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for January 19th, 2011: The Wall Street Journal: Johns Hopkins Professor and Hoover Institution fellow Fouad Ajami opines, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Bush diplomacy had declared an open ideological assault against the Iranian theocracy. Mr. Obama would offer that regime an olive branch and a promise of engagement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ajami […]<\/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-8956","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\/8956","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=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8957,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions\/8957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}