Geography Archives: Iran

In the run-up to a new round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Iran on Monday, Western commentators are re-hashing old arguments that the Islamic Republic is either too politically divided or too dependent on hostility toward the United States for its legitimacy to be seriously interested in a nuclear deal.  From this perspective, […]

The corporate media are reliable and consistent.  They consistently focus on the sensational, and they reliably take the position of the US government.  So, it should come as no surprise that the recent release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is being covered with much sound and fury, signifying little. On the sensational and gossip-mongering […]

We were struck by a piece published by Reza Marashi — former State Department desk officer for Iran who now works as the National Iranian American Council’s research director.  For us, the most striking passage is the following: It should now be clear that U.S. policy has never been a true engagement policy.  By definition, […]

The media spin on the latest batch of WikiLeaks revelations gives the impression that, next to Israel, it’s the Arab states that are most energetically pressuring the U.S. to attack Iran.  In terms of the real threat to Iran, that’s definitely putting the cart before the horse. In the first place, the Arab governments mentioned […]

November 29, 2010 We will be writing about the WikiLeaks documents and Iran throughout this week.  As we sort through the cables that are available so far, the first major point is that, as even the New York Times‘ quasi-neoconservative David Sanger and his colleagues noted in their first story on the documents, the Obama […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 09RPODUBAI177 2009-04-22 11:11 SECRET//NOFORN Iran RPO Dubai Game of Attrition.  Ahmadinejad’s defeats on the budget and his plan to distribute cash payments to lower-income Iranians show that power centers, such as the Majles, are actively working to pressure the President prior to the June election, according to [Source removed].  […]

  Reference ID Date Classification Origin 05TELAVIV1593 2005-03-17 14:02 SECRET Embassy Tel Aviv This record is a partial extract of the original cable.  The full text of the original cable is not available. S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 001593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2015 TAGS: PARM PREL MNUC […]

WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them.  There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!”  But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.”  In those cases, WikiLeaks is deemed very, very […]

A hallmark of the Obama administration’s Iran policy has been a dual track approach to its contentious nuclear program: diplomacy, and pressure on the regime.  An improvement, to be sure, over President Obama’s predecessor’s policy — essentially all pressure and no diplomacy — but pressure, the Iranians have stated time and time again, will not […]

Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets — under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the […]

Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.”  This is no minor challenge.  With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever.  Nevertheless, […]

Paul Jay: Certainly President Obama had more support for the war in Afghanistan from the Republican Party than he ever did from within his own party.  But might this mean increased pressure for a more aggressive stance towards Iran? . . .  What’s your take?  How do you think this election might affect US foreign […]

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, is in the United States this week, but few observers expect an immediate or significant breakthrough in the stalled peace talks with the Palestinian leadership. In public, Mr. Netanyahu maintains he is committed to the pledge he made last year, shortly after he formed his right-wing government, to work towards […]

Tony Karon has another sharp piece this week, entitled “Israel Pressed for a Tougher U.S. Line on Iran.”  For some time now, we have been forecasting an intensification of pressure on the Obama Administration, by Israel and pro-Israel constituencies in the United States, for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It appears that the […]

Last month, the New America Foundation and the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) sponsored a conference in Washington, entitled “Cutting the Fuse: Moving beyond the War on Terror.”  The conference was sparked by the publication of a new book by CPOST’s director, Robert Pape, and James Feldman, entitled Cutting the Fuse: […]

In a notable turn-around, the U.S. Department of State today designated Jundallah as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).  In early 2009, shortly after President Obama came into office, the United States considered designating Jundallah as an FTO, as a conciliatory message to the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In March 2009, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali […]

This is not a joke (at least not on my part).  David Broder, the longtime columnist and reporter at a formerly respectable newspaper, quite explicitly suggested that fighting a war with Iran could be an effective way to boost the economy.  Ignoring the idea that anyone should undertake war as an economic policy, Broder’s economics […]

Like the rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Washington DC on Saturday, Brazil’s election on Sunday was a contest of “Restore Sanity” versus “Keep Fear Alive.” Dilma Rousseff of the governing Worker’s Party coasted to victory against the opposition […]

In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called the House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from North America to Tehran with the goal of building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran.  Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War, […]

October 28, 2010 Today, Marc Lynch — a professor at George Washington University who blogs at Foreign Policy — published a timely piece entitled “Keep the Iran War Talk Quiet.”  As Marc notes, “there’s some hope that Iran will return to nuclear talks with the P-5+1 in Geneva on Nov.15, even if they probably will […]