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grayton downing

Iran Says It Agrees to 'Road Map' With U.N. on Nuclear Inspections - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...un-on-nuclear-inspections.html

iran US policy politics

shared by grayton downing on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday that Iran had agreed to resolve all outstanding issues with the agency, and would permit “managed access” by international inspectors to two key nuclear facilities that have not been regularly viewed.
  • the promise of wider scrutiny did not extend to one of the most contentious locations: the Parchin military site southwest of Tehran. Inspectors from the agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog,
  • “This is an important step forward to start with, but much more needs to be done,
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference in the United Arab Emirates that the Obama administration was not in a “race” to strike a deal.
  • In the past, the agency has questioned whether the Gachin mine, which produces yellowcake uranium for conversion to nuclear fuel, is linked to Iran’s military. The heavy-water plant at Arak could produce plutonium, which can be used in a weapon, and a key concern is that once the plant is operational, it would be all but impossible to destroy it without running the risk of spreading deadly plutonium. Western officials noted that the agreement gave the atomic agency access to the heavy production plant but not the nuclear reactor, which is under construction there.
  • lack of in-depth information and inspections of the heavy-water plant have been a particular worry to the West. French officials went further and indicated that they wanted construction halted altogether at the facility, and that Iran’s failure to agree to that was one reason the French were reluctant to endorse a broader deal with Iran this weekend.
  • The agreement on Monday comprised a four-paragraph statement and six bullet points in an annex of issues to be tackled within the next three months.
  • “Managed access” is a term used by the United Nations agency to denote the ground rules for inspections that permit host countries to protect information they consider to be proprietary or secret, such as military technology, while still allowing inspectors to garner data they require, officials said.
Ellie McGinnis

How John Kerry Could End Up Outdoing Hillary Clinton - David Rohde - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...354688

kerry clinton politics policy obama US

shared by Ellie McGinnis on 21 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Kerry’s first foreign-policy speech as secretary, an hour-long defense of diplomacy and foreign aid, was a flop.
  • The nearly universal expectation was that Kerry’s tenure would be overshadowed by his predecessor’s, for a long list of reasons.
  • arriving in Foggy Bottom when the country seemed to be withdrawing from the world. Exhausted by two long wars, Americans were wary of ambitious new foreign engagements—certainly of military ones, but of entangling diplomatic ones, too
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  • Barack Obama’s administration, accelerating a process that had begun in the early 1960s under President Kennedy, was centralizing foreign-policy decision making in the White House’s National Security Council, marginalizing the State Department.
  • Finally, Kerry, a defeated presidential candidate, was devoid of the sexiness that automatically attaches to a figure, like Hillary Clinton, who remains a legitimate presidential prospect
  • The consensus in Washington was that Kerry was a boring if not irrelevant man stepping into what was becoming a boring, irrelevant job.
  • Nearly a year into his tenure, Kerry is the driving force behind a flurry of Mideast diplomacy the scope of which has not been seen in years. In the face of widespread skepticism, he has revived the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; brokered a deal with Russia to remove chemical weapons from Syria; embarked on a new round of nuclear talks with Iran, holding the highest-level face-to-face talks with Iranian diplomats in years; and started hammering out a new post-withdrawal security agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
  • it will be Kerry who is credited with making the State Department relevant again.
  • “He’s front and center on all these issues. That clearly represents a very ambitious first year for any secretary of state.”
  • Kerry has a bad habit of wandering off script. On a trip to Pakistan in August, he created two diplomatic incidents in a single interview. First he said that the Egyptian army was “restoring democracy” when it toppled the country’s democratically elected president.
  • President Obama had “a timeline” for ending U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.
  • he overshot in the opposite direction, promising that any American strike against Syria would be “unbelievably small”—a bit of impressively self-defeating rhetoric that undermined days of administration efforts to argue that a few dozen Tomahawk cruise-missile strikes would be more than what hawkish critics were calling a pointless “pinprick.”
  • a word that comes up frequently in conversations about Kerry is gasbag. He had few close friends in the Senate, where he served for nearly 30 years. A former diplomat says Kerry’s recent foreign-policy successes have made him more insufferable than ever.
  • his gaffes are caused by arrogance and indiscipline. They say that even in a city swollen with egotism and pomposity, Kerry stands out.
  • “Nobody would challenge the notion that he’s been very much a team player and willing to take on really hard assignments from the president and go to the toughest places.”
  • (In one late-night press conference in Moscow last May, he uttered a staggering 95-word sentence.
  • “Even as a junior or senior, he was a pompous blowhard,” says someone who attended Yale with Kerry in the 1960s and asked not to be named.
  • he is not so much arrogant as awkward.
  • Liberal Democrats call his hawkish views on Syria a betrayal of his antiwar past. Republicans say he is a perennial flip-flopper: he fought in the Vietnam War and then protested against it; he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and then opposed it; he tried to negotiate with Bashar al‑Assad in 2009, then compared him to Adolf Hitler—and then reopened the door to negotiating with him again.
  • Kerry “just can’t dance.”
  • Washington mandarins dismiss Kerry’s foreign-policy ambitions as grandiose and overweening, especially relative to what America’s diminishing power can achieve after Iraq and Afghanistan
  • old foreign-policy hands say that instead of acknowledging the limits of American power in the post–Arab Spring Middle East, Kerry looks for misguided ways to apply power the country no longer has.
  • Current aides argue that Kerry’s recent successes belie the caricatures of him. “Show me where he hasn’t done this job well,” one demanded when I interviewed him in mid-October.
  • “I would ask John Kerry, ‘How can you ask a man to be the first one to die for a mistake?’ ”
  • Kerry seem “pompous” is that “oftentimes he tries too hard.” According to Manley and others, Kerry had a knack for walking up to fellow members on the Senate floor at precisely the wrong time.
  • His enormous ambition motivates him to aim for major breakthroughs despite daunting odds. And his healthy self-confidence allows him to believe that he can convince anyone of virtually anything.
  • Kerry also has bottomless reserves of patience that allow him to engage for hours in seemingly fruitless negotiations; he persists long past the time others would have given up in exhaustion.
  • The amount of time he’s spent negotiating with Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and Russia’s Sergey Lavrov alone should qualify him for some kind of diplomatic medal of honor.
  • an indifference to his own political standing.
  • Political calculations may have constrained the risks Hillary Clinton was willing to take. Kerry, in contrast, no longer needs to heed political consultants. Nor does he need to worry too much about what his detractors say.
  • “I don’t care at all,” he said. “I could care less about it. You know, David, I ran for president, so I’m not scared of failure.”
  • secretary of state is the job for which Kerry was born and bred
  • “I’m not worried about the politics,” Lowenstein recalls Kerry telling him. “I want to get things done.”
  • Obama, too, no longer has to worry about reelection; concerns about the 2012 election may have limited the president’s own appetite for diplomatic risk taking in the Mideast during his first term.
  • But his enthusiasm for his current job is unquestionable; one aide told me that he will have to be dragged from the office—fingernails scraping against the floor—at the end of his term.
  • As a presidential candidate, he had to downplay his obsession with foreign policy and his fluency in foreign languages, for fear that such things would play badly with voters; as secretary of state, he can freely leverage those qualities.
  • if there is no breakthrough with Iran, or if his efforts to broker peace in Syria fall short, or if the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks founder, history will likely view Kerry as the tragicomic figure his detractors already judge him to be.
  • “After you lose the presidency, you don’t have much else to lose.”
  • Following stints as an assistant district attorney and the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Kerry would, after his election to the Senate in 1984, go on to serve for 28 years on the same committee he had stood before in 1971, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  • (But for Ohio, where he lost to Bush by 119,000 votes, Kerry would have been president.
  • But Kerry stepped into the role at a singularly weak moment for the position. For one thing, America, weary after a decade of conflict, is turning inward; activist diplomacy is out of favor. For another, State Department employees I interviewed told me that morale is low.
  • the department is too hierarchical, inflexible, and risk-averse—and is in danger of becoming even more so in the aftermath of Benghazi.
  • the intensely controlling Obama administration has centralized foreign-policy decision making in the National Security Council, weakening the State Department.
  • Just a day after Kerry delivered one of the most impassioned speeches of his career, assailing Assad’s use of chemical weapons on civilians as a “crime against conscience” and sending a clear signal that U.S. air strikes on Syria were imminent, the president announced that missile strikes might in fact not be imminent, and that he would be seeking congressional authorization to attack Syria.
  • the president risked causing foreign leaders and negotiators to doubt whether any future warnings or statements issued by Kerry were backed by the White House.
  • Kerry conducted long interviews with every living former secretary of state—Kissinger, George Shultz, Baker, Madeleine Albright, Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Clinton—and set out to model himself after Shultz, who, in six and a half years serving under Ronald Reagan, was seen as a combination of the two prototypes, both a great diplomat and a good manager.
  • “I don’t care about risk, honestly,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, spoiling for a fight. “The riskiest thing to do is to not act. I would far rather try and fail than fail not trying.”
  • When off the record, in relaxed settings, he is refreshingly direct, profane, and insightful, speaking bluntly about the limits of American power and caustically lamenting Washington’s growing paralysis and partisanship
  • He finishes sentences with phrases such as something like that or that’s about it or thanks, man. Toes tapping, head bobbing back and forth, he speaks with fervor and candor. His tenacity is palpable.
  • Recent secretaries of state have had different strengths. Henry Kissinger and James Baker, two secretaries who had close relationships with their presidents (Nixon in Kissinger’s case, George H. W. Bush in Baker’s), were powerful bureaucratic players.
  • But isn’t staking America’s credibility, and his own reputation, on long-odds breakthrough agreements with Tehran or Moscow, or on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, a dubious exercise, as Obama’s failed first-term efforts at Mideast peace demonstrated?
  • Colin Powell lost a crucial internal administration battle in failing to halt the Bush White House’s march to war in Iraq—but was adored at the State Department for implementing sweeping administrative reforms.
  • Clinton embraced a new, Google Hangout era of town-hall diplomacy, and she elevated economic development and women’s issues. She was an architect of the administration’s “pivot to Asia,” and she took risks in supporting the Afghanistan troop surge and the intervention in Libya.
  • steered clear of the Middle East, delegating special envoys like Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell to grapple with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, peace talks with the Taliban
  • Clinton was much more prudent and careful than Kerry, whom one former State Department official describes as more of a “high-risk, high-reward”
  • “My view is that she was pretty sheltered,” he told me. “They were not interpersonally pleasant, and they were very protective of her. You can get into a cocoon.”
  • “My assessment was that she made a calculated political choice not to hang her hat on that thankless task,” Kim Ghattas,
  • the former secretary would have taken bolder risks but was reined in by the White House—especially during her first couple of years in office, when hostility from the bitter 2008 primary campaign still lingered between the Obama and Clinton staffs.
  • she actively engaged in Middle East talks, at one point meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for seven hours in New York.
  • Kennan warned Powell about the dangers of traveling too much—of prioritizing activist diplomacy over providing the White House with solid foreign-policy analysis.
  • Powell gave a copy of Kennan’s letter to Kerry. So far, Kerry is not following the advice. As October came to a close, Kerry had already flown more than 213,000 miles and spent more than 100 days—roughly 40 percent of his time—outside the United States. In his first nine months, he’d traveled more miles than Clinton had in her entire first year in office.
  • In 2009, he convinced Afghan President Hamid Karzai to consent to a runoff in his country’s disputed presidential election.
  • 2011, he was dispatched to Pakistan after the killing of Osama bin Laden to persuade local officials to return the tail of an American helicopter that had crashed at the site.
  • cemented Kerry’s bond with Obama was less his diplomatic achievements than his ability to impersonate another tall, wealthy Massachusetts politician with good hair: Kerry served as Mitt Romney’s surrogate during weeks of preparation for the 2012 presidential debates.
  • Kerry channeled Romney so effectively that, aides to both men say, he got under Obama’s skin.
  • Kerry agreed that the U.S. should try to revive Middle East negotiations before the Palestinians again pushed for statehood, at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2013.
  • In private meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama pushed for a resumption of negotiations. At a final press conference before returning to Washington, Obama announced that he was handing the pursuit of talks over to Kerry.
  • “What I can guarantee is that Secretary Kerry is going to be spending a good deal of time in discussions with the parties.”
  • He met alone with Abbas for two hours in Amman and then flew to Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu and three of his aides.
  • Kerry pressed on, returning in April to Jerusalem and Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital in the West Bank. After 24 hours of talks with both sides, Kerry held a press conference at the airport in Tel Aviv.
  • Kerry held three meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas in three days, including one meeting with the Israeli prime minister that lasted six hours, until 3 a.m. On June 29, he canceled a trip to the United Arab Emirates so he could keep talking with Netanyahu and Abbas, raising expectations of a breakthrough. On June 30, he held another press conference at the Tel Aviv airport.
  • “We started out with very wide gaps, and we have narrowed those considerably.”
  • Five months into the job, Kerry was off to an ominous start. His wife was in the hospital. Syria was convulsing. Progress toward Israeli-Palestinian talks was stalled. Egypt was burning. And Republican attack ads were making it appear as though the secretary of state had spent the weekend yachting.
  • Kerry said, according to the aide. “The only thing I’m interested in is a serious negotiation that can lead to a final-status agreement.”
  • “On behalf of President Obama, I am pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming direct final-status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Kerry said, calmly and deliberately. “This is a significant and welcome step forward.” He declined to take questions.
  • Nine days later, the Israeli cabinet approved the release of the 104 Palestinian prisoners. The next day, Israeli and Palestinian officials arrived in Washington to begin peace talks.
  • The smallness of his circle of aides, which had been seen early on as a detriment to his management of the State Department, now made it easier to keep information contained.
  • Working with consultants from McKinsey, diplomats estimated that $4 billion in long-term private investment would flow to the Palestinians in the wake of an agreement.
  • Palestinian officials appear to have compromised on their demand for a settlement freeze.
  • From the beginning, Kerry had insisted that the Obama administration not allow a halt in Israeli settlement construction to become a public precondition.
  • Kerry also reiterated a core argument: the security that Israel currently enjoys is temporary, if not illusory. Without a two-state solution, Israel will face a European-led campaign of delegitimization, a new intifada, and a Palestinian leader far more radical than Abbas.
  • The crucial concession—the release of the 104 prisoners—came from the Israeli side
  • “It takes time to listen, it takes time to persuade,” Frank Lowenstein told me. “This is where Kerry’s willingness to stay up all night pays off.”
  • The U.S. provided nonlethal aid to the opposition, but White House officials were so fearful of American assistance inadvertently falling into the hands of jihadists that the National Security Council Deputies Committee monitored the distribution of the aid in granular detail. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, were funneling cash and weapons to hard-line militants, including Al Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
  • Russia continued providing Syria with arms and blocking any action by the UN Security Council.
  • When Putin finally received Kerry, after a three-hour delay, Putin reportedly fiddled continuously with his pen and “more resembled a man indulging a long-ago scheduled visit from the cultural attaché of Papua New Guinea than participating in an urgent summit with America’s top diplomat,”
  • At a late-night press conference, a beaming Kerry announced that he and Lavrov would co-host a peace conference in Geneva.
  • “They were great efforts, and again, I reiterate my gratitude to President Putin for a very generous welcome here.”
  • Earlier, in April, after American intelligence officials had confirmed that Assad had carried out several small-scale chemical-weapons attacks, Obama had reluctantly agreed to mount a covert CIA effort to arm and train moderate rebels.
  • if the United States did not “impose consequences” for Assad’s use of chemical weapons, the Syrian leader would see it as “a green light for continued CW use.” But the White House did not alter course.
  • Both Obama and Kerry favored a military response—air strikes—according to a senior administration official. As American intelligence agencies accumulated evidence suggesting that Assad was responsible, Kerry offered to make the public case for strikes. White House officials welcomed the idea and vetted his speeches.
  • “My vision is that, if you can make peace, if you can get Israel and Palestine resolved and can get the Iranian threat of a nuclear weapon put to bed appropriately—even if Syria didn’t calm down—if you get those two pieces or one piece of that, you’ve got a hugely changed dynamic in a region that is in turmoil. And if you take just the Palestinian-Israeli situation, you have the potential to make peace with 57 nations—35 Muslim nations and 22 Arab nations. If the issue is resolved, they will recognize Israel.”
julia rhodes

Iran reaches nuclear deal with world leaders -- now what? - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...iran-nuclear-deal

US politics history crisis policy obama economic iran deal nuclear nuclear weapons israel congress

shared by julia rhodes on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • A day after Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for lighter economic sanctions, the difference in the moods on the streets of Tehran and Jerusalem couldn't be starker.
  • We hope all the world knows we use this nuclear (power) just for peace, not for war
  • most Iranians are extremely happy with the deal, especially after many rounds of negotiations that yielded no results.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, who slammed the deal as "a historic mistake."
  • "I'll find us new friends" -- an apparent jab at the United States and other allies that supported the deal.
  • This deal doesn't represent the fact we're dealing with the most thuggish people in the whole world."
  • Even though it's only a six-month deal, world leaders hope it'll pave the way to a long-term guarantee that Iran won't produce nuclear weapons. And Iran hopes to recoup some of the billions of dollars it's lost as a result of international sanctions.
  • Iran has stumbled from one economic crisis to the next under the sanctions, and unemployment currently runs over 24%. But not every country is following suit. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said his country will maintain its sanctions on Iran. "People of #Iran deserve freedom & prosperity denied them by regime's nuclear ambitions," Baird tweeted. "Until then, Canadian sanctions remain in full force."
  • It's also unclear whether Congress will agree to the deal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican on the Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget, and Judiciary committees, called Monday for a new round of sanctions that can be relieved only if Iran dismantles its plutonium reactor.
  • Netanyahu said, "must lead to one result: The dismantling of Iran's military nuclear capability. I remind you that only last week, during the talks, the leaders of Iran repeated their commitment to destroy the State of Israel, and I reiterate here today my commitment, as Prime Minister of Israel, to prevent them from achieving the ability to do so."
  • "Its success hinges on whether or not it leads to a bigger agreement to "put Iran's nuclear weapons program to rest."
  • "We are pleased after 10 years that an agreement on this level has been reached," he said.
  • Now that sanctions are working, Netanyahu wants to see them tightened, not loosened, until Iran shuts down much of its nuclear capability.
grayton downing

A Step, if Modest, Toward Slowing Iran's Weapons Capability - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ack-irans-nuclear-program.html

iran weapons capability US

shared by grayton downing on 24 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The interim accord struck with Iran on Sunday interrupts the country’s nuclear progress for the first time in nearly a decade, but requires Iran to make only a modest down payment on the central problem.
  • The most immediate risk to the interim agreement comes from hard-liners in Washington and Tehran who, after examining the details, may try to undo it.
  • The Saudis have been equally blistering, hinting in vague asides that if the United States cannot roll back the Iranian program, it may be time for Saudi Arabia to move to Plan B — nuclear weapons of its own
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  • Such warnings are part of the expected theater of these negotiations, in which the United States must look simultaneously accommodating enough to a new Iranian leadership to keep fragile talks
  • Lengthening that period, so that the United States and its allies would have time to react, is the ultimate goal of President Obama’s negotiating team.
  • “Rollback may be a step too far for the Iranians,”
  • “because he can’t been seen at home giving up such a huge investment or abandoning national security.”
  • The North Korean example has become Exhibit No. 1 in Israel’s argument that the deal struck on Sunday gives a false sense of security. “There are two models for a deal: Libya and North Korea,” Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and intelligence, Yuval Steinitz, said in an interview during a recent trip to Washington. “We need Libya.”
Javier E

To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html

iran foreign policy GOP invasion

shared by Javier E on 31 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • the president’s policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fuel drawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Iran’s nuclear weapons establishment.
  • The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.
  • Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.
jlessner

Turkey and Iran Put Tensions Aside, for a Day - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-tensions-aside-for-a-day.html

turkey iran politics

shared by jlessner on 09 May 15 - No Cached
  • ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Iran last month of trying to “dominate the region” through its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, suggesting to some that Turkey was shifting toward confrontation with its neighbor and joining a Saudi-led coalition to push back against Iranian influence across the Middle East.
  • Yet it was all smiles and handshakes in Tehran on Tuesday, as Mr. Erdogan was welcomed by Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, at the start of a one-day visit that had been long planned but was put in jeopardy after some Iranian lawmakers called for it to be canceled after Mr. Erdogan’s comments.
  • In a joint news conference broadcast live on state television, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Rouhani pledged to work together to calm regional crises. “The region is burning in a fire,” Mr. Erdogan said. “So far, more than 300,000 were killed in Syria. All were Muslim. We do not know who is killing whom. We have to get united and block the killing and bloodshed.”
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  • The Iranian president called for an end to the Saudi-led airstrike campaign in Yemen — Tuesday was its 13th day — and for all Middle Eastern countries to “fight terrorism and extremism” together.
qkirkpatrick

'Defending the Faith' in the Middle East - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-faith-in-the-middle-east.html

middle east history culture

shared by qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • THE last several months have brought a dramatic escalation in conflict across the Middle East, almost all of it involving tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims
  • The kingdom has sent planeloads of weapons and millions of dollars to Sunni militants in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, many of them Salafi extremists. In contrast to Tehran, Riyadh has no compunction ab
  • And yet, as new and disturbing as these developments may appear, the linkage of sectarian and secular interests is a return to the classic geopolitics of religion in the Middle East
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  • Consider Imperial Russia’s claim to be the patron of Orthodox Christendom, a claim mainly targeted at its major regional rival, the Ottoman Empire. Following the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774, the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji allowed Russia to represent Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands.
  • The most spectacular efforts to employ the geopolitics of religion were made by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In 1914, the sheikh al-Islam, who oversaw the empire’s religious affairs, issued five fatwas, translated into numerous languages, urging Muslims in the British, French and Russian empires to revolt.
  • The politics of religion undermined the Westphalian order, based on the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
  • To weaken the order of transnational sectarian protectorates in the region, their underlying conflicts need to be resolved. The clients — Sunni or Shiite — must be sensibly accommodated in their states’ power structures, which will reduce the appeal of foreign patronage.
  • More important, the international community must prevent any further escalation of the struggle between their main protectors, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  • qkirkpatrick on 04 Jun 15
     
    History of Middle East and how it has affected the events today.
julia rhodes

Kerry Opens Door to Iran's Participation in Syrian Peace Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kerry-iran-syria.html

kerry iran peace talks politics crisis policy hindsight syria history

shared by julia rhodes on 06 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Sunday that Iran might play a role at the peace talks on Syria that are scheduled to take place this month.
  • Iran has been one of Mr. Assad’s main supporters and has been supplying his government with arms and supporting his war efforts with military advisers.
  • Russia has argued that Iran should be present at the peace conference, as has Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy. But France and the United States previously insisted that Iran first make clear that it supports the goal of the meeting: a transition to a governing structure that would exclude Mr. Assad.
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  • But Mr. Kerry also made clear that there would be limits on Iran’s role if Tehran did not formally accept that the goal of the conference would be to work out arrangements for a transitional authority that would govern Syria if President Bashar al-Assad could be persuaded to give up power.
  • On Iraq, meanwhile, Mr. Kerry expressed serious concern about the inroads made by Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, including the capture of major parts of Falluja, in Anbar Province. Mr. Kerry described the group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as “the most dangerous player in the region.”
  • “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” he said. “We are going to do everything that is possible to help them.”
Grace Gannon

Iran looks to speed up negotiations to end 12-year nuclear standoff - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...us-nuclear-negotiations-geneva

Iran nuclear standoff negotiations US

shared by Grace Gannon on 13 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 13 Jan 15
     
    Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US secretary of state John Kerry will confer ahead of negotiations in Geneva with six world powers on settling Tehran. Zarif said Iran-US talks "will remain confined to the margins of the nuclear negotiations".
jlessner

A Nuclear Deal With Iran Isn't Just About Bombs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ran-isnt-just-about-bombs.html

deal iran US politics

shared by jlessner on 02 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • As the Iranian nuclear talks creep on into double overtime, let’s remember that this isn’t just about centrifuges but also about creating some chance over time of realigning the Middle East and bringing Iran out of the cold.
  • “A better deal would significantly roll back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,” noted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “A better deal would link the eventual lifting of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to a change in Iran’s behavior.”
  • Netanyahu also suggests that a deal would give “Iran’s murderous regime a clear path to the bomb.” That’s a fallacy.
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  • Iran is already on a path to nuclear capability. Netanyahu should know, because he’s been pointing that out for more than two decades. B
  • ■ We can try to obtain a deal to block all avenues to a bomb, uranium, plutonium and purchase of a weapon. This would allow Iran to remain on the nuclear path but would essentially freeze its progress — if it doesn’t cheat. To prevent cheating, we need the toughest inspections regime in history.
  • We can continue the sanctions, cyberwarfare and sabotage to slow Iran’s progress. This has worked better than expected, but it’s not clear that we have a new Stuxnet worm to release. And, partly because of congressional meddling, international support for sanctions may unravel.
  • We can launch military strikes on Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, Fordow and, possibly, Tehran. This would be a major operation lasting weeks. Strikes would take place in the daytime to maximize the number of nuclear scientists killed. All this would probably delay a weapon by one to three years — but it could send oil prices soaring, lead to retaliatory strikes and provoke a nationalistic backlash in support of the government.
  • Imagine if we had launched a military strike against Chinese nuclear sites in the 1960s. In that case, Beijing might still be ruled by Maoists.
Javier E

To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html

iran bomb nuclear US relations

shared by Javier E on 26 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.
  • Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.
  • Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Iran’s threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • . The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israel’s 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in Iraq or its 2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea, can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.
  • The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.
rachelramirez

Iran, Emerging From Sanctions, Faces Crisis After Saudi Arabia Embassy Attack - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-after-embassy-attack.html

sanctions Iran Saudi Arabia politics

shared by rachelramirez on 05 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Iran, Emerging From Sanctions, Faces Crisis After Saudi Arabia Embassy Attack
  • a Saudi state executioner beheaded the prominent Shiite dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday
  • Within hours of the execution, nationalist Iranian websites were calling for demonstrations in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Iran might have capitalized on global outrage at the executions by Saudi Arabia, but instead it finds itself once again characterized by adversaries as a provocateur in the region and abroad.
  • The moves formalized the Sunni-Shiite polarization that has fueled the chaotic proxy wars
  • Now, some Iranians are wondering whether Saudi Arabia has again gained the upper hand in the new diplomatic crisis.
  • Sheikh Nimr was not only a leading opposition figure in the Saudis’ Sunni kingdom but also a symbol of Shiite activism abroad. After he was sentenced to death by the Saudi judiciary in 2014, Iran warned of “dire consequences” if Sheikh Nimr were to be executed.
  • The act of cutting ties seems a simple one, but the consequences can be far-reaching.
sarahbalick

Iran billionaire Babak Zanjani sentenced to death - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35739377

iran death

shared by sarahbalick on 06 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Iran billionaire Babak Zanjani sentenced to death
  • He was arrested in December 2013 after accusations that he withheld billions in oil revenue channelled through his companies. He denies the allegations.
  • One of Iran's richest men, Zanjani was blacklisted by the US and EU for helping Iran evade oil sanctions.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Two others were sentenced to death along with him and all were ordered to repay embezzled funds. The ruling can be appealed.
  • Before the oil embargo imposed by the EU in 2012, one in every five barrels of crude Iran exported was sold to refineries in Europe.
  • "We believe that Babak Zanjani in this case is just a debtor," the lawyer said.
  • Played a key role in helping Iran get around sanctions to sell oil abroad during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • Born in Tehran, attended a Turkish university and became a driver for Iran's central bank head in 1999, when he started out in currency exchange
katyshannon

Saudi Arabia announces 34-state Islamic military alliance against terrorism | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...security-idUSKBN0TX2PG20151215

saudi arabia military alliance fighting terrorism isis politics history

shared by katyshannon on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • A new Saudi-led Islamic alliance to fight terrorism will share information and train, equip and provide forces if necessary for the fight against Islamic State militants, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday.
  • Saudi Arabia announced earlier on Tuesday the formation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, a move welcomed by the United States which has been urging a greater regional involvement in the campaign against the militants who control swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
  • A statement carried by Saudi state news agency SPA said the new coalition would have a joint operations center based in Riyadh to "coordinate and support military operations".The states it listed as joining the new coalition included Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and several African nations.
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  • The list did not include Shi'ite Muslim Iran, the arch rival of Sunni Saudi Arabia for influence across the Arab world. Tehran and Riyadh are ranged on opposite sides in proxy conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
redavistinnell

Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ed-territorial-waters-state-tv

revolutionary guards release iranian waters

shared by redavistinnell on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters
  • The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.
  • The sailors’ two small navy craft brieflywent missing on Tuesday while crossing the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. Pentagon sources later said the vessels entered Iranian waters because of technical difficulties.
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  • “These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control. I’m appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities.”
  • In fact, it is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved, and officially resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping the country safe, secure and strong.”
  • The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said: “I am pleased that 10 US navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in US hands. I want to personally thank secretary of state John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return. Around the world, the US navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved.”
  • The Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
  • The swift release of the Americans contradicted speculation that the hardline Revolutionary Guards were seeking to sabotage improving relations between Iran and the west days before the planned implementation of the nuclear deal reached in Vienna in July
  • In an unusual move, the Guards last week condemned the attack by a group of hardliners on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, showing an approach in line with that of the Rouhani administration.
  • Once Iran finishes swapping the core of a heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak with cement, they will receive an influx of cash under the July deal.
Megan Flanagan

Ex-Marine Held by Iran Received Care, Family Says - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...received-care-family-says.html

iran US

shared by Megan Flanagan on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • who is the longest-held American prisoner in Iran was allowed to receive medical treatment in a hospital outside his prison in recent weeks
  • Iranian judicial authorities had allowed Mr. Hekmati to leave the prison, albeit temporarily, for the first time since he was incarcerated more than four years ago
  • considering a conditional release of Mr. Hekmati for good conduct
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • onvicted of espionage and sentenced to death
  • served with the Marines in Iraq, was seized while visiting relatives in Tehran in August 2011
  • lient was eligible for probation under Iranian law, which permits releases for certain inmates who have served at least a third of their sentences
  • onvicted of aiding a hostile country — meaning the United States
  • repeatedly demanded that Iran release them, an issue that has festered despite diplomatic advances made in other areas, most notably the multinational agreement on the Iranian nuclear program that could take effect this month.
  • imprisoned in July 2014 and convicted in October on charges that included spying
  • harges that included subverting national security
  • permitted an extended year-end visit with him in prison and more time for phone conversations
  • innocent of any wrongdoing, have described his prosecution and imprisonment as a Kafkaesque farce
proudsa

Tensions Boil Over As Iran Accuses Saudi Arabia Of Bombing Embassy - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ttack_568e4a5ce4b0c8beacf5c24c

shared by proudsa on 07 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's eastern Shiite heartland prepared to hold a funeral service Thursday night to honor the executed Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.
  • However, an Associated Press reporter who reached the site just after the announcement saw no visible damage to the building.
  • Iranian protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Somalia joined Saudi allies such as Bahrain and Sudan and entirely cut diplomatic ties with Iran
  • There are concerns new unrest could erupt.
  • Many ultraconservatives of the Saudi Wahhabi school of Islam view Shiites as heretics.
  • In other developments, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir arrived in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, for meetings with Pakistani leaders. Pakistan, which is a predominantly Sunni Muslim state but has a large Shiite minority, has expressed hope that Saudi Arabia and Iran will be able to normalize their relations.
katyshannon

Iran demands apology after detaining US navy boat crews for 'violating' Gulf waters | W... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...two-us-navy-ships-persian-gulf

iran apology navy boat gulf waters detainment world news the guardian politics US crisis obama

shared by katyshannon on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Iran has said the US should apologise after the crews of two US Navy boats were detained by Revolutionary Guards for “violating” Iran’s waters in the Gulf.
  • Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said in an interview broadcast live on state television that foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had taken a “firm stance” on the issue when contacting US secretary of state John Kerry.
  • Earlier, US officials said they had received assurances from Tehran that the crew of two small US navy ships in Iranian custody would soon be allowed to continue their journey. Fadavi was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as saying “The final order will be issued soon and they will probably be released.”
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Fadavi blamed the incident on the American navigation system. “Investigation shows that [the] entry of American sailors into Iran’s territorial waters was due to mechanical problems in their navigation system and that issue is being resolved,” he said.
  • The two small craft briefly went missing on Tuesday after transiting the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. The Pentagon said the crews ended up in Iranian custody, sparking immediate fears of escalating tensions during a week when Iran is expected to receive the first wave of sanctions relief from the landmark nuclear accords.
  • Plans were in place for Iran to return the crew to a US Navy vessel in international waters early on Wednesday, during daylight hours when it would be safer, a US defence official told the Associated Press. The exchange was reportedly set for 10.30am local time (7am GMT), but is yet to have happened.
  • Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that 10 Americans – including one woman – were arrested by the naval forces of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters.
  • Fars said the two American boats were 2km inside Iranian waters when they were detained close to Farsi island, which is home to a Revolutionary Guards base.
  • The agency claimed GPS data on the American ships – reported to be on a training mission – also indicated they were on the Iranian side. Pentagon officials told the Associated Press the two boats drifted into Iranian waters after facing mechanical problems. Fars reported the Americans were carrying semi-heavy weaponry on board their craft.
  • The episode comes amid heightened regional tensions, and only hours before Barack Obama was set to deliver his final State of the Union address.
  • Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio reacted swiftly to the reports, calling on Iran to release the US sailors and navy boats immediately. “If they are not immediately released, and the boats are not immediately released, then we know something else is at play here,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
  • Paul Ryan, House speaker and the top Republican in Washington, withheld judgment, saying in a statement: “Our top priority is the safety and security of our servicemembers detained by Iran.
  • A US defense department official played down the incident, saying the Iranians had sent indications of the “safety and wellbeing” of the sailors.
  • Pentagon and Navy officials did not identify the naval craft, the number of detained sailors, their mission or a timetable for their release.
  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway where a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
maddieireland334

U.S. prisoners Jason Rezaian, Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini, two others freed - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by maddieireland334 on 16 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, is being released by Iran, but his release is not part of the negotiated prison swap, U.S. officials said Saturday.
  • So, that is an additional individual who was not a part of this negotiation given how longstanding the negotiation was, but we did indicate to Foreign Minister Zarif that it'd be important for them to try to resolve some of the other cases of Americans detained in the context of this.
  • Iran freed four U.S. prisoners on Friday, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, senior U.S. administration officials said, confirming reports first published in Iranian media.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The announcement comes on a day when the United Nations' nuclear watchdog is expected to announce whether Iran is in compliance with a July deal to restrict its nuclear program.
  • "Based on an approval of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and the general interests of the Islamic Republic, four Iranian prisoners with dual nationality were freed today within the framework of a prisoner swap deal," the semi-official Iranian FARS news agency quoted the office of the Tehran prosecutor as saying.
  • Rezaian was detained by Iran in 2014 and eventually charged with espionage and other crimes, according to the Washington Post.
  • Hekmati was detained in 2011, weeks after arriving in Iran to visit his grandmother, according to his family's website. The former Marine infantryman and Arabic and Persian linguist was accused of espionage and other charges in 2012.
  • He appeared on Iranian television and said he was working for the CIA in a confession her mother and the U.S. State Department has said was forced and fabricated.
  • The punishment was later overturned, but Hekmati was later convicted of "cooperating with hostile governments" and sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to a website set up by his supporters.
  • Abedini, an Iran native and convert to Christinanity, was arrested in 2012 and convicted the next year on charges of attempting to undermine the Iranian government. He had been sentenced to eight years in prison.
  • The American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based group dedicated to protecting religious and constitutional freedoms, reported that Abedini has endured torture during his imprisonment and was beaten by fellow prisoners in June.
  • Abedini's wife, Naghmeh Abedini, said in the statement that the release was "an answer to prayer."
  • The releases appear to leave unresolved the fate of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent and CIA contractor who disappeared after visiting Iran in 2007. As described in Iranian media, the deal does not appear to include Levinson, who is not Iranian-American.
maddieireland334

The American Prisoners Just Left Iran. But Kerry Almost Got Them Out Months Ago. - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...hange_569b799fe4b0b4eb759eaa09

US Prisoners Crisis Iran Kerry

shared by maddieireland334 on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • A Swiss plane carrying American citizens, including a Washington Post reporter, who were released from Iranian prison on Saturday departed Tehran early Sunday morning. The prisoners were freed as part of a prisoner release deal -- the result of 14 months of high-stakes secret negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
  • Last July, just before the U.S., Iran and five world powers announced they had reached an agreement on Iran's nuclear program, Kerry had a conversation about the prisoners with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and President Hassan Rouhani's brother, Hossein Fereydoun, in Vienna.
  • Afterward, they went to Zarif's hotel room and spoke again about the prisoners. “We actually shook hands, thinking we had an agreement,” Kerry said. “I thought it was done.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Zarif and Kerry continued to meet, while Brett McGurk, head of the State Department's counter-Islamic State coalition, ran a separate diplomatic track with different Iranian officials as part of the effort to keep the prisoner negotiations separate from the then-ongoing nuclear talks.
  • Ultimately, the two countries agreed on seven Iranians: three who were serving prison time and four who were awaiting trial. All seven were facing charges related to violations of nuclear sanctions -- which were lifted on Saturday. “So there was a symmetry here,” Kerry said.
  • Kerry credits the nuclear deal with showing that Iran and the U.S., despite having no formal diplomatic ties, can work together to resolve issues peacefully.
  • The deal leaves American citizen Siamak Namazi, who was arrested in October, in prison. And it doesn’t provide answers about Robert Levinson, the American CIA contractor who disappeared in 2007.
  • Kerry sees the prisoner deal as a positive precedent for Levinson's and Namazi's cases.
  • Critics of the prisoner agreement, namely Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates, argue that any type of swap or exchange is unjust.
  • According to Kerry, Zarif suggested that there was room for the two countries to work cooperatively on other issues, including in Yemen and Syria, where the U.S. and Iran are effectively fighting on opposite sides of proxy wars.
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