NewsTrust - Iran - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Obama's Diplomacy in Iran: what went right, and what didn't

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

thebulletin.org - By David Shorr - Mar. 13 (Review) - The Obama administration started out by making strong diplomatic gestures to Iran, briefly yielding a fuel-swap deal in which Iran seemed interested. But as talks dissolved, the administration soon found itself wedded to steadily escalating sanctions with little maneuvering room left to pursue negotiations -- all while Iran ran down the clock and continued to enrich uranium. Parsi's book alternately challenges and praises the president -- mostly challenges -- while presenting a behind-the-scenes look at one of the greatest threats facing the United States as well as the acumen and dexterity it demands.

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Palestine: Gaza Under Attack - Again

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Global Voices - By Yasmeen El Khoudary - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - Throughout the night of March 9 and into the morning of March 10, Israeli warplanes attacked targets across the Gaza Strip, with a death toll of at least 12, and 20 injured.

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Obama slams GOP for casual war talk re Iran, stresses Costs

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan - Mar. 07 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama, in his Super Tuesday news conference, explained his thinking on Iran and tensions between it and Israel. The most impressive thing he said was, Now, what’s said on the campaign trail – those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not Commander-in-Chief. And when I see the casualness with which some [...]

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Neocons Dream Up Scary Iran Scenarios

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Paul R. Pillar - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - As American neocons continue to walk the United States toward another war in the Middle East, this time with Iran, they have been laboring to come up with rationales, including alarmist scenarios of what a nuclear-armed Iran might do geopolitically, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

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Prepping Americans for an Iran War

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By William Blum - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - There’s no letup, is there? The preparation of the American mind, the world mind, for the next gala performance of D&D — Death and Destruction. The Bunker Buster bombs are now 30,000 pounds each one, six times as heavy as the previous delightful model.. But the Masters of War still want to be loved; they need for you to believe them when they say they have no choice, that Iran is the latest threat to life as we know it, no time to waste.

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Despite Intelligence Rejecting Iran as Nuclear Threat, U.S. Could Be Headed for Iraq Redux

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Seymour Hersh, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - In his latest article for the New Yorker magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says the United States might attack Iran based on distorted estimates of Iran's nuclear and military threat – just like it did with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Hersh reveals that despite using Iranian informants and cutting edge surveillance technology, U.S. officials have been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center.

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Jahanpour: Is Iran Next? Supreme Leader Versus Ahmadinejad

Sun, 08 May 2011 07:18:00 -0700

Informed Comment - By Juan - May. 08 (Opinion) - Farhang Jahanpour writes in a guest column for Informed Comment The tug of war between Supreme Leader Khamene’i and President Ahmadinejad Despite the political turmoil and subsequent crackdowns in Iran since summer, 2009, seeming unity among the hardline

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WikiLeaks and the Secrets that Deceive

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Danny Schechter - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - In the days of Stalin’s Russia, not only would dissidents “disappear” but images of officials at the May Day reviewing stands would be erased from photographs when their political stars fell.

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Please, Kick Us: More Amateur Hour in the State Department

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Ricochet - By Claire Berlinski - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - I recently interviewed Turkey's former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled--like many in Turkey--by the soft-headedness of the Obama' Administration's diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama's speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game," he said. "He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.” ... It is hugely significant when the tone coming out of the State Department is childish, inappropriate, and supine; it is fundamentally unserious to put such a message on Twitter; and it is beyond belief that anyone there would think "sarcasm" about this situation--we are talking about kidnapped US citizens who are being held hostage in Iran--conveys American resolve.

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The Ahmadinejad Circus

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - Sep. 24 (Opinion) -

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Ahmadinejad UN Speech and Visit

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Hooman Majd - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - When President Ahmadinejad spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, the Israeli delegation was absent, the U.S. walked out on him, and we were once again willing and unwilling witnesses to the yearly Ahmadinejad show, for the sixth time in five years, no less.

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Glenn Greenwald on Iran, Tea Party Candidates, Jon Stewart and Obama's Assassination Policy

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - I think the significance, principally, of the tea party for the Democrat Party is that they don’t really have much to talk about in terms of why voters and supporters ought to go out and keep the Democrats in power. And so, what you see from the Democratic Party is this fixation on the tea party as a means of ratcheting up fear levels among Democrats and others, in order to encourage them to go to the polls.

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NYT Pushes Confrontation with Iran

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Apparently having learned no lessons from the Iraq WMD debacle, the New York Times is pushing for a heightened confrontation with Iran, slipping into the same kind of hysteria that it and other major U.S. news organizations displayed in 2002 and 2003.

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Mosque Furor Endangers US Troops

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - For years, the American Right and neocons have been quick to accuse critics of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of endangering American troops – by causing disunity, exposing counter-terror techniques, etc. – but these war enthusiasts are now the ones putting the lives of U.S. soldiers in jeopardy.

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Arab public has different view of nuclear Iran

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

todayszaman.com - By ABDULHAMiT BiLiCi - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - One of the steps America took during the Bush administration to improve relations with the Muslim world was to appoint a representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The person appointed was a friend of Bush’s from Texas named Sada Cumber. It was not a bad idea for Bush to take a step, albeit a symbolic one, after the occupation of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Guantanamo nightmare. Of course it was odd that the person who was appointed to mend relations with the Muslim world, of which 85 percent is Sunni, belonged to the Ismaili sect. But during his term Cumber, who was born in Pakistan, traveled to Muslim countries, listened to problems and fostered solutions. For example, he brought the torment that people face at borders when traveling to America to the administration’s agenda.

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Jeffrey Goldberg Probes Israel's Iran Strike Option: Is Netanyahu a "Bomber Boy"?

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Note - By Steve Clemons - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - n an important article titled "The Point of No Return" to be published in The Atlantic tomorrow, national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg recounts something many people didn't realize at the time and still have a hard time believing. President George W. Bush knocked back Dick Cheney's wing of the foreign policy establishment - both inside and out of his administration - that wanted to launch a bombing campaign against Iran. In a snippet I had not seen before, Bush mockingly referred to bombing advocates Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer as "the bomber boys."

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Israel/Palestine and Iran: Linkage Should be Hard Wired by Obama Team

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Note - By Steve Clemons - Aug. 07 (Opinion) - America is not completely out of the global power game. In my view, a combination of brilliant leadership and well orchestrated "strategic leaps" coupled with visionary re-crafting of America's global social contract with other of the world's leading stakeholders could actually restore significant American leverage (and power) in global affairs.

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PBS's Shultz Doc Has Content to Match Its Conflicts

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - Aug. 02 (Review) - After FAIR criticized PBS for airing Turmoil and Triumph, a documentary about Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz that was funded almost entirely by his friends and associates (Action Alert, 7/12/10; Activism Update, 7/20/10), the program’s producer/writer/director David deVries (PBS.org, 7/16/10) complained that FAIR (and Nation critic Greg Mitchell--7/12/10) hadn't "[paid] much attention to the content and quality of the production."

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Threatening World Order: US and Israel Quietly Announce Plans to Reconstitute Their Nuclear Stockpiles

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Anthony DiMaggio - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - The world looks like it's about to become a more dangerous place. A recent report from Israel's newspaper Haaretz finds that the United States is moving forward with plans to strengthen Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile. The report, exposed within the last few days, originated from Israel's Army Radio, which sent along a secret document chronicling the nuclear cooperation between US and Israeli leaders.(1) Israel has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)read more

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BP Is a Corporate Criminal

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Jim Hightower - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - Gosh, how quickly things turn. One day, you're a strutting peacock -- the next day, you're just another gasping, oil-covered bird. ... From the time it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and set out to grab and control the rich petroleum reserves owned by what is now Iran, BP has been a recidivist global criminal.

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Nuclear Iran: Is There An Option?

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jamal Dajani - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - As for making a dent in Iran's import- export traffic of energy products, the sanctions will have little effect. Turkey has indicated that it plans to increase its imports of natural gas from Iran. Also, according to The Wall Street Journal, oil traders and oil industry analysts say Iran will have little trouble finding other gasoline supplies in the Persian Gulf, where a black market in fuel products thrives, even if Washington passes measures that would penalize firms or individuals with business in the U.S. that supply gasoline to Iran.

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Obama Goes with Neocon Flow on Iran

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - President Barack Obama is pursuing a neocon-charted path on Iran that parallels the one that George W. Bush took to war with Iraq – ratcheting up sanctions against the “enemy,” refusing to tolerate more peaceful options, and swaggering along with the propagandistic tough-guy-ism of the major U.S. news media.

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Why Turkey is Looking East

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - Ha'aretzWhy Turkey is Looking EastHuffington Post (blog)Then came the surprise uranium deal with Tehran, undermining Western pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, followed by the Israeli ...Erdogan wins raucous reception from Arab leadersJerusalem PostOfra Bengio / Turkey's Strategic U-Turn, Israel's Tactical MistakesHa'aretzLosing TurkeyAl-Ahram WeeklyWall Street Journal?-The Hindu?-BBC Newsall 804 news articles??

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Dirty Linen Gets Intel Chief Fired

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - May. 23 (Opinion) - An incompetent manager? Seems so. But Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral, also demonstrated a strain of integrity. And that can often be the kiss of death in Official Washington. On substantive issues, like Iran’s nuclear program, Blair did not show the malleability that is desired by those who are out to zap Iran; I believe it likely that these get-Iran hawks helped to zap Blair.

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US/Israel Challenged on Iran

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Rayb McGovern - May. 20 (Comment) - As a former CIA analyst, I hope that Obama would have the presence of mind to order a fast-track special National Intelligence Estimate on the implications of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey agreement for U.S. national interests and those of the countries of the Middle East.

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