October 28, 2010| News | Eli Clifton

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 28th, 2010:

Foreign Policy: Marc Lynch blogs that while the White House is considering “talk[ing] more openly about military options [against Iran],” according to The New York Times’ David Sanger, such rhetoric would be counterproductive and dangerous. Lynch warns that if the Iranians return to the P5+1 nuclear talks, “Iran will quite reasonably refuse to bargain under the threat of military force, and will view American offers under such conditions as manifestly insincere,” and won’t find a military threat credible. More importantly, such threats would destroy any confidence building measures and widen existing divisions. “The greatest danger of introducing open war talk by the administration is that it would represent the next step in the ‘ratcheting’ of which I’ve been warning for months and pave the way either to the 1990s Iraq scenario or to an actual war,” says Lynch.

The Jerusalem Post: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Benjamin Weinthal writes that new EU sanctions will have an impact on EU-Iranian gas deals but unlike the U.S. sanctions the new EU sanctions will not place sanctions on individual Iranian officials because of human rights violations. Weinthal interviews FDD’s Mark Dubowitz who tells him, “A fragile political consensus exists in favor of sanctions in Europe. If the Obama administration doesn’t provide determined leadership by either sanctioning foreign companies which are violating US law, or persuading these companies to terminate their Iranian ties, European governments will not enforce their own sanctions.” Weinthal repeats his Dubowitz’s calls for Swiss energy company Elektrizitätsgesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) to cancel its €18 billion-€20 billion gas deal with Iran.

Tehran Bureau: Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the hawkish Washington Institute for Neareast Policy (WINEP) writes that while the Treasury Department’s decision to sanction 37 German, Maltese and Cypriot companies for being controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) but “the latest U.S. actions are not likely to put sufficient pressure on Tehran to change the regime’s calculus.” The Iranian shipping line is alleged to participate in arms smuggling and, according to Levitt is “one of the central players in Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons capabilities.”

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October 27, 2010| News | Eric Garris

Deborah Johns, former vice chair of the Tea Party Express, has denounced North Carolina candidate for Congress Ilario Pantano and has endorsed his Democratic opponent. Johns is the mother of a Marine and once organized pro-Iraq War counterprotests against Cindy Sheehan.

Ilario Pantano shot and killed two unarmed prisoners in Iraq while serving in the Marines and survived charges of premeditated murder before returning to America to run for Congress in North Carolina this year.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Johns turned against Pantano after reading the transcript of the military hearing that eventually cleared Pantano of the charges. In April 2004, Pantano killed two unarmed Iraqi detainees, twice unloading his gun into their bodies and firing between 50 and 60 shots in total. Afterward, he placed a sign over the corpses featuring the Marines’ slogan “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy” as a message to the local population.

“That is not a war hero,” Johns said. “It is people like that that give all our military a bad name.”

Read the complete story and updates on The Daily Beast.

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October 27, 2010| News | Wendy Honett

On November 11th, the Boston Chapter of Come Home America will be hosting a talk by Justin Raimondo. The free event, “How We Can Organize a Left-Right Alliance Against the War Parties—and Why We Must” will be held at the Arlington Street Church (351 Boylston Street, Boston, MA) at 7 p.m.

And don’t forget, Justin is speaking in Thousand Oaks, CA tomorrow night; Danbury, CT on November 10; and Berkeley, CA on November 18. To sponsor an event, please email Wendy Honett.

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October 27, 2010| News | Eli Clifton

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 27th, 2010:

Foreign Policy: Harvard International Relations Professor Stephen Walt blogs the revelations that Hamid Karzai receives money from Iran should come as no surprise. Far from being a “dastardly Iranian plot to control Afghanistan,” Walt points out “given that the two states share a lengthy border, Iran has a considerable interest in Afghanistan’s future course. In fact, it would be surprising if they weren’t trying to buy a little influence in Kabul.” While some pundits have expressed concern about growing Iranian influence in Afghanistan, Walt responds that they should be glad that Iran is sending money to Karzai instead of using it to buy weapons for Hezbollah.

Wall Street Journal: John Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami opines that Karzai, in accepting money from Iran, is “taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes.” Ajami attributes the willingness of Karzai to take the money and the Iranian decision to offer it as: “This is the East, and basksheesh is the way of the world.” As for the Iranians, they “…are of the neighborhood, they know the ways of the bazaar.” Ajami, who is quick to defend the Iraq war, says that while Iraq had the possibility of transforming Iraq into a democracy in the midst of “a despotic Arab world” whereas Afghanistan is a “broken country” and a “land of banditry” whose president has no interest in partnering with the United States.

Haaretz: Zvi Bar’el writes that Saudi Arabia sees the recent U.S.-Saudi arms deal as an attempt to deter Israel, not Iran. He argues that the two countries are busily negotiating over key issues regarding their spheres of influence in Iraq and Lebanon. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia share an interest in stopping the special international tribunal investigating Rafik Hariri’s assassination. Stopping the investigation, says Bar’el, would prevent the collapse of the Lebanese government, a scenario which neither country wants. In Iraq, Iran may needs Saudi Arabia’s assistance to convince Ayad Allawi, who has received Saudi support, to join a coalition with Nouri al-Maliki, who has received the support of Muqtada al-Sadr. He concludes, “Meanwhile, it seems the Americans are aiming too high. The real game is in the hands of local forces that are sketching the strategic map, which will be presented to Washington as a fait accompli.”

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Jamie Kirchick writes that the latest WikiLeaks release of Iraq war documents show, beyond a doubt, that Iran “clearly sees itself as engaged in a war against the United States and those attempting to forge and independent and democratic Iraq.” Kirchick opines that the WikiLeaks release provides evidence of an Iranian “training camp for terrorists” who attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He concludes that the WikiLeaks release has served to, “… reveal the true nature of Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, and to open a window into what the region will look like should their efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq prove successful.”

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October 26, 2010| News | Ali Gharib

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 26th, 2010:

Politico: Laura Rozen reports on Dennis Ross‘, a top Obama adviser on Iran and the peace process, presentation to an AIPAC conference earlier this week. Ross addressed the administration’s efforts to pressure Iran, prioritize sanctions and conduct the “creative and persistent” diplomacy needed to “change the behavior of a government insistent on threatening its neighbors, supporting terrorism, and pursuing a nuclear program in violation of its international obligations.” He warned: “[S]hould Iran continue its defiance, despite its growing isolation and the damage to its economy, its leaders should listen carefully to President Obama who has said many times, ‘we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.’”

Weekly Standard: Gabriel Schoenfeld points to a study from the Israeli Begin-Sadat Center that examines various polls conducted over the past few years, and concludes that U.S. public opinion is moving toward confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. With the U.S. elections coming up, Schoenfeld notes the data shows “a gap between the wisdom of the American people and the wisdom of our elites.” Pointing out that Iran has not been much of a campaign issue, he alludes to the non-interventionism of some Tea Party candidates: “[I]t is unclear what the new crowd of candidates that will likely be elected next week thinks we should do about Iran or much else across the oceans. But at the very least their views probably will not be any worse than those of the goofballs they replace.”

Pajamas Media: Martin Kramer, a fellow at WINEP and the Adelson-funded Shalem Center in Israel, states in a long Q&A on Iran that the Persian Gulf is “as crucial to American security as Lake Michigan.” He says that “the world has to ask itself if it can tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran deliberately creating uncertainty, instability, and doubt surrounding the great reservoir of the world’s energy.” Kramer argues for reverse linkage, including the premise that Israel maintains a military occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to deter Iranian attacks.

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October 25, 2010| Iraq, News, Torture | Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

This has got to be the quote of the day — maybe the week, maybe the month. After agreeing all around on FOX News’ Special Report tonight that there was “nothing there, there” in the 400k documents dumped by WikiLeaks on Friday (a massive release of classified reports that martyr-hero-analyst Juan Williams deemed “unnecessary and mischievous”), neoconservative war hawk Charles Krauthammer said, “the overall the impression I got was how restrained the United States was.”

Charles Krauthammer

Yeah, I’m sure to Mr. Krauthammer, the killing of  681 civilians, including 50 families and 30 children — non-insurgents all — in their cars, at manned checkpoints, over a five-year period is pretty restrained (only 120 actual insurgents were killed at checkpoints in that same period, by the way). It’s pretty hard, however, to read the emerging individual stories of what actually happened and think “restraint” had anything to do with it.

But I guess the Americans were showing tremendous restraint when they turned over all those Iraqi prisoners to Iraqi military torture chambers that make the latest “Saw” installment look PG-13. They could have questioned their “orders” to ignore the abuse because international laws and the laws of humanity certainly prohibit torture — but our soldiers showed restraint (which is pretty impressive considering how many “Christians” there are filling the evangelical church services on any given forward operating base these days). They also showed great restraint in not questioning their Iraqi brothers doing the torturing — many of whom were part of the deadly U.S trained Wolf Brigade, so you could say there was some familiarity there. But the Americans followed orders and looked the other way. Restraint.

Sarcasm aside, just what might be “unrestrained” in Mr. Krauthammer’s world? — I am afraid to find out.

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October 25, 2010| News | Eli Clifton

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 25th, 2010:

Commentary: Max Boot blogs that, in light of Hamid Karzai’s acknowledgment that he receives $2 million a year from Iran, “the Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try the same thing with another neighbor.” Boot says Iran’s policy is to give money to both the Afghan government and, allegedly, the Taliban, and its tendency to make contributions in cash is cynical and “seedy.” But the strategy is “not that far removed from conventional foreign aid programs run by the U.S., Britain and other powers.” Karzai’s decision to take Iranian money doesn’t make him a “dupe of Iran,” and he gets far more money from the U.S., says Boot. Instead, Boot takes the lesson that the revelations should be a warning that if the U.S. leaves, “Afghanistan will once again be the scene of a massive civil war, with neighboring states, and in particular Pakistan and Iran, doing their utmost to exert their influence to the detriment of our long-term interests.”

Pajamas Media: Michael Ledeen writes that the Wikileaks release shows that Iran is engaging in the “murder of Americans.” Ledeen says the documents show proof that he’s “been pretty much on-target all along” and that his critics owe him an apology. “But the really big apologies are due from our political leaders, who… have failed to respond, either politically (as I have proposed) or militarily,” he writes. He names many officials from the Clinton, Bush and Obama White Houses and says they are “all accomplices to the great evil that is the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and calls for overt support of Iranian opposition movements.

The Washington Post: Thomas J. Raleigh, a strategic planner at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since August 2008, opines that while Iraq is building a stable and prosperous economy, “Iran will be feeling increasingly isolated.” Iranian visitors to Iraq will see the benefits of free trade and democracy and will come back to Iran wanting a similar standard of living. “As the Iraqi standard of living rises, Iranian leaders will eventually find themselves confronting an economic ‘comparative crisis’ much like that East German leaders confronted in the 1980s as their people looked enviously ‘over the wall’,” writes Raleigh.

The Washington Post: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl writes that supporting free access to the internet should be better funded by the State Department and describes the success of such firewall breaching firms as UltraReach, a company which allows internet users to circumvent national firewalls. Diehl writes that the companies’ founders say that with $30 million in funding they could “effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.” Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner has said that defeating internet censorship would be a “game changer” in countries like Iran. Diehl writes that the holdup in funding such projects is rooted in a fear of offending the Chinese government. “State is polishing its policy and preparing yet more training programs, Iranians and people from dozens of other countries are trying to get free access to the Internet,” concludes Diehl.

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October 22, 2010| News | James Bovard

So the pre-leak spin by the Pentagon is that they have already disclosed everything important that will be revealed in the next WikiLeaks document super-dump.

Obama’s Pentagon apparently believes that Americans are as gullible – if not mutton-headed – as the Bush Pentagon believed.

No surprises expected in WikiLeaks Iraq war dump: Pentagon WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:21am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said on Friday it does not expect any big surprises from an imminent dump of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents by the WikiLeaks website.

“In terms of the types of incidents that are captured in these reports, where innocent Iraqis have been killed, where there are allegations of detainee abuse, all of these things have been very well chronicled over time,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.</

blockquote>

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October 22, 2010| News | Ali Gharib

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 22nd, 2010:

Jerusalem Post: Israeli President Shimon Peres endorsed linkage — the concept accepted by many in the Obama administration and military leadership that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will help the U.S. pursue its longterm strategic objectives in the Middle East —at a conference of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute on Thursday. According to the Jerusalem Post, “Peres said that, “for our existence, we need the friendship of the United States of America,” and “…the president said Israel could be of help to the US by enabling an ‘anti-Iran coalition in the Middle East, and the contribution will not be by declaration, but if we stop the secondary conflict between us and the Palestinians,’ in order to allow the US to focus on the Iranian threat.”

The Race For Iran: Peter Jenkins endorses Gareth Evans post which lays out why Iran’s leaders will not pursue nuclear weapons, but adds that while pressure and persuasion may help deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it may also have the opposite effect. Jenkins suggests that Western powers start focusing on addressing broader regional concerns about a nuclear weapons possession and the impact on the regional balance of power. “Now that most of the evidence points to Iran having opted for self-denial, a new policy is needed, a policy that gives priority to allaying Israeli and Arab fears that a threshold capability will enhance Iran’s regional status and self-confidence,” he concludes.

Commentary: Evelyn Gordon writes on the Contentions blog that the incoming Congress must do everything it can to support the Iranian opposition. She says “Swiss cheese sanctions” won’t work. “That leaves two choices: a military strike, which everyone professes to oppose, or regime change — which probably wouldn’t end the nuclear program but would mitigate the threat it poses,” she writes. She says this entails “vocal and unequivocal moral support,” and “technological support.” She concludes: “What Congress must do is find out from movement organizers themselves what they need — and then give it to them.”

The Guardian: Foreign affairs columnist Simon Tisdall writes that “neither sanctions nor diplomacy can wholly obviate the dread possibility of military confrontation unless something fundamental changes soon at the heart of Iran’s fundamentalist regime.” Tisdall points to some of the effects of sanctions, but says their overall impact inside is difficult to know, noting comments from Iran’s finance minister that the country’s cash reserves are enough to withstand the pressure. He also mentions resistance to the program from China, Turkey and Iraq. He says that while Iran is due to come to the negotiating table next month, it will likely limit the talks. “[T]here is little or no evidence so far that Iran’s top leadership is willing, or can be forced, to fundamentally change its ways,” he writes. “And so the dread juggernaut of direct, physical confrontation rolls ever closer.”

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October 22, 2010| Afghanistan, Antiwar movement, Culture, Economics, Empire, Iraq, Military spending, Military-industrial complex, News, Propaganda, non-violence | L. Reichard White

Can YOUR card do this?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you how war fits into this. I mean, you co-wrote the book with Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War. How does war fit into our problems with the economy?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, war fits in because you’re creating a liability, you’re spending money. And when we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we already had a deficit. And so, these wars were the first wars in America’s history financed totally on the credit card. So, you’re creating a liability, but you’re not creating an asset. So that’s the kind of spending that does weaken the economy, because it’s one-sided. … The numbers now are much more like four to six trillion.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, across this country, as the debates for various congressional and Senate seats[go], war is almost never raised [as an issue]. –Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz: Foreclosure Moratorium, Government Stimulus Needed to Revive US Economy

Blackout??

PRECEDENT? According to a "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting" two week study, during the lead-up to the Iraq war, a period of particularly intense debate (Jan. 30 to Feb 12, 2003), U.S. mainstream media, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS Evening News, conducted 393 interviews about the pending war. Only three of those interviews were with peace leaders.

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October 21, 2010| News | Eli Clifton

from LobeLog: News and Views Relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for October 21st, 2010:

The Washington Post: Glenn Kessler reports that Iran is increasingly unable to conduct “normal banking” activities due to the sanctions, and is attempting to set up banking operations in such Muslim countries as Iraq and Malaysia “using dummy names and opaque ownership structures.” For their alleged support of Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. Treasury has blacklisted 16 Iranian banks. Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism and intelligence program at the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) told Kessler that “the banking operations, even if successfully created in other countries, are likely to be small-scale and insufficient to make up for the volume of banking activity Iran has lost.”

The National Interest: Ken Pollack, the director of Brookings’s Mid East Center, reviews the Obama administration’s Iran policy and concludes that “it is working, but it probably isn’t going to work.” He says an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear program — “and launching air strikes will be war” — will rally people to the government, justify an Iranian nuclear deterrent to further attack, cause Iran to withdraw from the NPT (meaning the world will be in the dark), and bring condemnations of the U.S. from the world. Following a lengthy analysis of U.S. policy options, he ends with thoughts on containment. He writes that given Iran belief that it can outlast sanctions, the United States and the international community needs to build “an aggressive new containment regime that Iran cannot possibly outlast. Like North Korea, Iran would not be allowed to enjoy any benefit from its acquisition of a nuclear capability or even a nuclear arsenal.”

The National Interest: Georgetown professor and former CIA officer Paul Pillar responds to Pollack’s article and disagrees that “pressure and more pressure” is the best way of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. Pillar raises the question of why the Iranian nuclear program is such a preoccupation for the United States and whether assumptions about Iranian irrationality have any grounding in reality or are reflected in Iran’s record of behavior. Pillar also disputes the argument that a strategy of deterrence has “no guarantees of success” and “failure is invariably catastrophic” is reason enough to pressure Iran. “…[T]o make that observation as an argument for not tolerating someone else’s nuclear force would mean not only dismissing a lot of Cold War history but also throwing up our arms in despair over nuclear deterrence relationships that we continue to have to this day with the likes of Russia and China,” he contends.

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October 20, 2010| News | Wendy Honett

The Michigan Campaign for Liberty and the University of Michigan College Libertarians will host Antiwar.com Editorial Director Justin Raimondo in Ann Arbor on October 25, 2010 at 7pm. The free event, “War Without End: The Shame of the American Left,” will be held in the Michigan League Ballroom at 911 N. University at the Central Campus in Ann Arbor. You can also join the hosts and Raimondo at the sponsors dinner by purchasing tickets here. To book an event with Raimondo, please contact Wendy Honett wendy@antiwar.com.

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