On Iran, Obama Should Forget Sanctions And Push For Cooperation: Analysis

nytimes.com:

TEHRAN'S disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant near the holy city of Qum has derailed the Obama administration's already faltering efforts to engage with Iran. The United States will now cling even more tightly to the futile hope that international pressure and domestic instability will induce major changes in Iranian decision-making.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[wwoody]

08:53 PM on 09/30/2009

Some time you have to go along, to get alone. To get what you want.

[MARNIE2]

01:40 PM on 10/01/2009

That... wood be called .....APPEASEMENT.....in other words ...given in to a ...Bully ...lol !

[Foxrun]

10:21 AM on 09/30/2009

This is one of the best articles I have read on this subject. I only wish that the Obama Administration would take the advice of such experts. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case Obama i being pressured by the hawks, neocons, the Zionist organizations and of course Israel who would like to see nothing better than crippling sanctions followed by military option.

[Khirad]

10:51 PM on 09/29/2009

"But compared to past upheavals in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history — the forced exile of a president, the assassination of another, the eight-year war with Iraq and the precipitous replacement of Ayatollah Khomeini’s first designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, with Ayatollah Khamenei — the controversy over this year’s election was hardly a cataclysmic event."

While I generally agreed with the assessments in this piece, the glossing over and spinning left me a little dizzy. Why not, for example, remove the hyperbole of "cataclysmic" and replace 30 years with 20? If you want to go into the formation of the IRI, and its eight years of war, well then... that opens up its own tangent on how the regime manipulated it to their own advantage. It was hardly cataclysmic for the Khomeinists, it was a boon. It was the secularists, the left, and even other Islamist opposition groups who suffered (and I'm not even talking about Mohajedin or Fedayin here). It was the Iranian people, even apolitical, who suffered (sans even bomb shelters -- after all, to die was a blessing, right?). I'd trust analysts at such think tanks as the New America Foundation would know better than to make that sloppy aside. This could have been a much stronger piece.

[Mogamboguru]

07:26 AM on 09/30/2009

Excellent, Khirad.

The knowledge of facts, and being accustomed to what one is talking about, still matters.

[joabear]

09:45 PM on 09/29/2009

..."
Failing in their role as managers and leaders of Iran, the regime elite are hiding behind their role as the defenders of Islam and Palestinians against Israel. This may work with the neo-con hating Iranians of the Diaspora or the Islamists in the region but at home it does not work because there many people are actually pro-Israeli.

I would bet that Iranians are less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than any other Muslim nation for the simple reason that the regime is pro-Palestinian.[...]
Sanctions will benefit the regime because they thrive in a black market economy and are old hands at how to survive sanctions, which they faced from the very beginnings of their dictatorship.

A military strike would be a disaster, not just because the nuclear sites are too close to huge population centers, but because it would give the regime a freer hand to continue its brutal treatment of the opposition, on the grounds of treason and aiding the enemy. It would help the regime hide behind the lie, meticulously crafted, of their role as the champions of Islam fighting a crusading West.

[...]
The only way to make Iran safe for the world is to make her safe for her citizens.

Copyright © 2009 Tehran Bureau
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/09/-opinion-almost-everyone.html

[Khirad]

10:23 PM on 09/29/2009

Spot on on a few points. The official IRI propaganda for Palestinians actually diminishes those suffering under Israeli policies in many Iranian eyes. After all, if the regime's credibility and actions are so questionable domestically, it's sort of hard to take their word on anything externally. It's a taint upon the Palestinian cause.

And on the sanctions -- I've still not been given any actual rationale -- as to domestic Iranian realities, why they would work. Hello, the IRGC runs one of the biggest rackets in the ME. And like Saddam, the IRI would simply smuggle oil. It wouldn't be hard, and is all too likely, according to Juan Cole and anyone with common sense.

And unlike sanctions, which you might be able to finesse a few points on me (however unsure or unconvinced I remain), military strikes make no sense in any way whatsoever.

"It would help the regime hide behind the lie, meticulously crafted, of their role as the champions of Islam fighting a crusading West."

If anything ever summed up their modus operandi, there it is. It's the equivalent of Western empires spreading "civilization" (as under the British), or "freedom" (as under the US).

[altohone]

08:37 PM on 09/29/2009

What's the point of linking to a story on the NYT they won't let you read without jumping through hoops?

They are lame.

[joabear]

08:22 PM on 09/29/2009

""...
New information has since emerged indicating that planning and initial work on the Qom uranium enrichment facility actually began in the early 1990s, during the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

At that time, people in the city of Qom started talking about scientists and engineers with "almond-shaped eyes" -- East Asians. They were seen living in a large house on Maysam Street in the Salariyeh Complex in the holy city of Qom. ,,,
The house was next to Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi's, the former judiciary chief, and very close to the homes of Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi (who was the judiciary chief at the time, preceding Shahroudi), and Hojjatoleslam Morteza Agha Tehrani, who is now a Tehran deputy to the Majles and an ardent supporter of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad.

The presence of the experts with the almond-shaped eyes in Qom in the early 1990s appears to mark the beginning of the work on the Qom uranium enrichment facility. Due to the significance of Qom as one of the two important cities in Shia Islam, foreigners would not have been housed in the city unless the project that they were working on was highly important.



If, as it appears, preliminary work on the Qom facility began in the early 1990s, Iran has not violated its obligations under the Safeguards Agreement.""
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/09/when-did-iran-begin-building-the-qom-nuclear-facility.html

[joabear]

08:02 PM on 09/29/2009

Tehran University Students Stop Ahmadinejad

Despite all the threats and intimidation against Iran's students in the new academic year, more than 2000 protesting students made sure Ahamdinejad did not deliver his speech at Tehran university today. See Photos Here.

Ahmadinejad was scheduled to appear at Tehran University today but failed to show up after his security voiced concerns about student protests at Tehran university as the new school year began.

http://www.hra-news.org/news/5858.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gY2yQ4zY3o&feature=player_embedded

[joabear]

07:48 PM on 09/29/2009

Petition: UN should Investigate torture and killing of our children
by Shorts
29-Sep-2009

SIGN PETITION

To: UN secretary General Mr. Ban-ki moon

We, the supporter of "The Committee of Mourning Mothers of Iran", call upon UN secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon to immediately send a delegate to Iran to investigate, identify and prosecute those responsible for imprisonment, disappearance, torture and killing of our children.

Tomorrow will be late.
Prevent more crimes against humanity now.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned
http://www.petitiononline.com/Iran2009/petition.html

http://www.iranian.com/main/node/82301

[joabear]

07:29 PM on 09/29/2009

..What Is Iran Afraid Of?
Forget sanctions; forget bombing. Tehran's worst fear is a human rights campaign.
By Anne Applebaum

http://www.slate.com/id/2229833/

[Khirad]

11:44 PM on 09/29/2009

Disagreed on a few minor points. Mainly in the tact and finesse that could be taken to get across the same goals. But the main one: that this talk of nukes and sanctions is a distraction from the real issue, I couldn't agree more with that.

[joabear]

07:26 PM on 09/29/2009

While people's basic rights means nothing to IRI and their apologists
Iran Insists on Its ‘Rights’ to Nuclear Program

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/middleeast/30tehran.html

[joabear]

07:22 PM on 09/29/2009

Tehran U: "Death to Dictator"
Continuing student protests

Tuesday, September 29, 2009:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrg2mpBi8gg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP-riIathKw&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA1tFgzCbmQ&feature=player_embedded

More videos here:

http://www.iranian.com/main/2009/sep/sharif-university-protests

[Chace Haynes]

05:18 PM on 09/29/2009

Obama is distorting the truth just like Bush did in the run up to Iraq. His bosses need a new war, because the other two are not enough.

[LeftOfCenter44]

09:55 PM on 09/29/2009

Let me guess, a NWO conspiracy? Billderberg? Tri-Lateral Commission?

[Khirad]

12:03 AM on 09/30/2009

Correct.

[LeftOfCenter44]

03:47 PM on 09/29/2009

We MUST Demand that congress put an end to the "private armies" who have no rules or regulations. They consider themselves cleansers of earth. Christian crusaders. Tasked with eliminating the Muslim faith off of earth. Help me stop them. PLEASE.

New petition demanding our tax dollars no longer fund "private security firms" notorious for inexcusable behaviors.

http://www.change.org/actions/view/demand_congress_stop_funding_private_armies_in_the_middle_east

and help to invoke honest politics. It starts here:

http://www.change.org/actions/view/end_the_pay_to_play_campaign_practices

[Mogamboguru]

02:19 PM on 09/29/2009

Dealing with Iran is just that easy.

They have in abundance, what America needs in abundance: Oil and natural .g.a.s.

Offer them to develop their g.a.s- and oilfields and buy the produced resources at a reasonable price, and you have a huge lever to move Iran where you want to.

Money makes the world go round: Not the stick makes a donkey run like Seabiscuit - but carrots.

But, of course, this goes only, if I.s.r.a.e.l. wasn't hellbent to eradicate Iran from the map, to have her free reign in the Middle East.

[ArcEnCiel]

03:16 PM on 09/29/2009

The Iranian leadership is erratic and cannot be trusted. It is not reason to allow religious fundamentalists to have nukes!

[Mogamboguru]

03:38 PM on 09/29/2009

You are absolutely right: Let's force I.s.r.a.e.l. to abandon their own nukes ASAP.

[Mogamboguru]

02:10 PM on 09/29/2009

FINALLY!

A voice of reason - from the New York Times - in HP!

Incroyable!