{"id":9286,"date":"2011-02-16T15:35:11","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=9286"},"modified":"2011-02-16T15:35:11","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:35:11","slug":"wednesday-iran-talking-points-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/16\/wednesday-iran-talking-points-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Iran Talking Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog<\/a>: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 16th, 2011:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>: The Journal<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial board elaborates on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thugs will be harder to depose than Hosni Mubarak\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and observes that the U.S. has less leverage over Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leadership because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tehran scorns the West.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To put it another way, pro-American dictatorships have more moral scruples.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The WSJ <\/em>calls for Washington to impose greater isolation and pressure on Iran, and warns, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yet many policy makers and pundits in the West still want to engage the regime as if it were merely another thuggish status quo power, rather than the greatest threat to world order.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a><\/em>: Commentary <\/em>Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin warns against complacency after the news that Stuxnet had done massive damage to the Iranian nuclear program. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Somehow, despite the sanctions and the ban on selling nuclear equipment to Iran, the damaged centrifuges were replaced almost as quickly as they were taken offline,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153At best, it has delayed them a bit, but the IAEA evidence makes it clear that the Khamenei\/ Ahmadinejad regime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s commitment to their goal of a nuke is such that cyberattacks won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be enough to derail them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he continues. Tobin goes on to lash out at the Obama administration for wasting time and effort in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153engagement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with Iran and concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[I]f the IAEA evidence is correct, then the optimistic forecasts about Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prospects must be thrown out and replaced with an evaluation that puts the need for either serious sanctions or the use of force back on Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s front burner.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a><\/em>: Jennifer Rubin<\/a> blogs on her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Right Turn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d blog\u00e2\u20ac\u201da blog which is supposed to cover<\/a> the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153conservative movement and the Republican party\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but disproportionately focuses on Iran and Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat sanctions against Iran have failed and that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to reexamine the military option. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Neither the administration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s touted sanctions nor a computer virus has slowed the Iranian regime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quest for nuclear weapons. For all the chest-puffing by the Obama team, sanctions have in fact not \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcworked,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she writes. She consulted the American Enterprise Institute<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s John Bolton<\/a>, a former UN ambassador, who told her, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, with both overt and covert assistance to opposition groups willing to accept it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bolton goes on to warn, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[A]n Iranian crash program could produce a nuclear weapon in one year. That means there are still only two options: Let Iran get nuclear weapons or use preemptive military force.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for February 16th, 2011: The Wall Street Journal: The Journal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editorial board elaborates on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why Tehran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thugs will be harder to depose than Hosni Mubarak\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and observes that the U.S. has less leverage over Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leadership because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tehran scorns the West.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To put it another […]<\/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-9286","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\/9286","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=9286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9287,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9286\/revisions\/9287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9286"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}