Is the Obama Administration so anxious to make a deal with Iran that it doesn't matter what the terms are?...
Six young Iranians were arrested earlier this week after a video was posted online in which they were featured dancing to Pharrell Williams' hit song "Happy." From CNN: Apparently, dancing to a song about happiness in Iran can get you arrested. Six Iranians are behind bars after they...
Thursday's ruling declared the agreement unconstitutional and ordered Argentina not to go ahead with it. The deal had been delayed anyway by Iranian reluctance to move forward in implementing it. ... Israel and world Jewish groups had denounced the "truth commission" deal with Iran, calling it a diplomatic win for Tehran that offered no benefit to Argentina. The deal would have let Iran review Argentina's investigation into the bombing.Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who took over investigation of the case, established responsibility to the highest level of Iran's government. Among those implicated were then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Iran's previous defense minister Ahmed Vahidi. Vahidi and intelligence officer Moshen Rabbani were among five Iranians who were flagged by INTERPOL for arrest in the case. (Video from March 2013) While current Iranian President was a member of the group that ordered the attack, Nisman told David Horovitz of the Times of Israel last year that Rouhani was not present at the meeting where the attack was planned. An English version Nisman's indictment is here (PDF). An op-ed in the New York Times at the time of the Argentine-Iranian agreement accused Argentina's government of doing "an about-face on terror."
UN pick "not viable" because part group that took over American embassy in 1979....
How does Iran show its moderation to the US? By appointing a suspected hostage taker as UN ambassador....
Construction on the crude model appears to be in full swing at a shipyard near Bandar Abbas, as shown in newly released commercial satellite images. 'They got this barge and threw some wood on top of it to make it look like the USS Nimitz. That's all we know for sure,' a U.S. defense official told AFP... The wooden, non-operational aircraft carrier made to look like a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered American vessel was first spotted on the Persian Gulf last summer, the New York Times reported. Besides having the shape of the 1,100-foot-long carriers, such as USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Carl Vinson, the shipbuilders also replicated the distinctive white markings on bow. A satellite flying over Gachin shipyard also photographed a fake plane parked on the deck of the equally fake carrier.
According the New York Times one life saved in Iran is a trend. A spike in executions is just a statistic....
Iran is facing a water shortage potentially so serious that officials are making contingency plans for rationing in the greater Tehran area, home to 22 million, and other major cities around the country. President Hassan Rouhani has identified water as a national security issue, and in public speeches in areas struck hardest by the shortage he is promising to “bring the water back.”
Experts cite climate change, wasteful irrigation practices and the depletion of groundwater supplies as leading factors in the growing water shortage. In the case of Lake Urmia, they add the completion of a series of dams that choked off a major supply of fresh water flowing from the mountains that tower on either side of the lake.
According to a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Iran didn't always have a water problem.
That cooperation began in 1962, after a severe earthquake in the Qazvin region of Iran killed more than 12,000 people. The earthquake collapsed a chain of wells that engineers had drilled in a qanat, or tunnel, style. Hundreds of thousands were at risk from lack of drinking water. Israel flew in teams of drillers. New water supplies were identified, and a series of artesian wells were drilled. The drilling was such a success that Israel’s water engineering company, today a private enterprise, was hired to identify and gain access to underground resources elsewhere in Iran.
Beginning in 1968, a desalination company owned by the Israeli government built dozens of plants in Iran. These are now aging, while Israel continues to innovate: On its Mediterranean coast, it recently opened an immense, energy-efficient desalination plant. More than half of Israel’s drinking water — purer, cleaner and less salty than natural sources — now comes from seawater.
Moreover, when viewed in the light of the core values of the Left—and, indeed, much of the contemporary Right—Israel actually comes off remarkably well; often much better than its most violent critics. These values are summed up by the great slogan of the French Revolution: “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Israel’s record with respect to these core values ranks among the best in the world, while that of its principal enemies, the Arab nations, is dismal. Indeed, Israel’s record is in some cases better even than its European and other Western critics. Because this record is often obscured in the angry polemics against Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, it is worth examining it in depth.One thing Muravchik mentions is the record of Israel's Arab enemies. It's indeed something worth looking into. However there's also the record of Iran, Israel's major non-Arab enemy that's worth examining. The liberal (or leftist) world has made a cause of reaching out to Iran. In doing so the Left ignores the way Iran violates many of its cherished values. I'd like to look at a few of these issues.
35 years ago was the Iranian revolution. The Rushdie fatwa was 25 years ago....
As American officials tout success of nuclear negotiations, Iran's Supreme Leader says the negotiations are failing....
Key elements of a new nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers are contained in an informal, 30-page text not yet publicly acknowledged by Western officials, Iran’s chief negotiator said Monday.... A State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, denied later Monday that there was any secret agreement. "Any documentation associated with implementation tracks completely with what we've described," she said. "These are technical plans submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency," the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency. "We will make information available to Congress and the public as it becomes available," Harf said.Remember last fall when the Obama administration insisted it had not consented to Iran's right to enrich uranium, even though Rouhani was claiming we had consented? Q&A: Is there a 'right' to enrich uranium? Iran says yes, U.S. no How's that looking now? Again from the L.A. Times article:
When I was almost fifty four, it was a very good year It was a very good year for kindly faced clerics Whose Justice Minister was an executioner And Defense Minister waged an anti-American war When I was almost fifty four.Nearly two years ago Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed President Obama about how he would deal with the threat from Iran. Given Goldberg's support for Israel, the interview was part of an administration campaign to tell Israel and Israel's supporters in the United States that "we've got Israel's back." It's unsettling now, that Goldberg has declared that For Iran, 2013 Was a Very Good Year.
Remember that interim Iranian nuclear agreement forged in Geneva on Nov. 24, the one accompanied by blaring trumpets and soaring doves? Would it surprise you to know that the agreement -- a deal that doesn’t, by the way, neutralize the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, just freezes the program, more or less, in place -- has not yet been implemented? Would it surprise you to learn that this deal might not be implemented for another month, or more? Or that in this long period of non-implementation, Iran is free to do with its nuclear program whatever it wishes? And that one of the things it is doing is building and testing new generations of centrifuges? Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, recently said , “We have two types of second-generation centrifuges. We also have future generations which are going through their tests.” Happy New Year, everyone.
President Obama says that we need to "test" Iran. Iran's actions in recent weeks suggest that test is already failing....
Mideast Media Sampler 12/20/2103 - Iran continues enriching...
In the coming months when Iran and the West have a dispute over the meaning of terms of the Geneva deal or the discovery of something suspicious in Iran, Iran knows that it can bluff its way out of suffering any consequences for its bad faith.Last week the Treasury Department designated a number of companies and individuals for their illegal trade with Iran.
“The Joint Plan of Action reached in Geneva does not, and will not, interfere with our continued efforts to expose and disrupt those supporting Iran’s nuclear program or seeking to evade our sanctions. These sanctions have isolated Iran from the international financial system, imposed enormous pressure on the Iranian economy, and motivated the Iranian leadership to make the first meaningful concessions on its nuclear program in over a decade,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen. “Today’s actions should be a stark reminder to businesses, banks, and brokers everywhere that we will continue relentlessly to enforce our sanctions, even as we explore the possibility of a long-term, comprehensive resolution of our concerns with Iran’s nuclear program.”The Iranian reaction was predictable.
Iranian negotiators in Vienna halted nuclear talks with major powers to return to Tehran for consultations Thursday after Washington blacklisted a dozen companies and individuals for evading US sanctions, Islamic Republic state media reported.Iran's deputy nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi added:
But those polls dealt in generalities. It's easy to support negotiations in principle; it's much harder to support a specific deal, which would necessarily require U.S. concessions as well as placing a degree of trust in the Iranian government, which is not exactly popular here in the United States. The reason this latest poll merits special attention is that it asked Americans whether they would support the deal currently under discussion between Iran and the major world powers at Geneva.But in subsequent weeks, a funny thing has happened, support the deal has eroded as Shmuel Rosner shows in a recent column tracking polls on the topic.
While the first polls following the the recent interim agreement with Iran all showed that the deal was met with a generally positive reaction by the American public, the latest Pew survey puts this view in question (according to Pew, there are more Americans who disapprove of the deal than Americans who support it). Is this a result of some of the public criticism the deal has received- or is it a matter of phrasing the question and of methodology?Even a Reuters poll from the end of November that shows support for the deal by a ratio of two to one (44 percent to 22 percent) found 34 percent had no opinion on the deal. (Rosner supplied the "no opinion" number.)
