Editor’s note: The following is a excerpt of Chapter 9, "Nuclear Thresholds" from the author’s book, Engaging Iran.
Burning the Ships? Iran and the United States
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Iran
Culture of Evil
Enemies don’t have cultures. They have leaders, usually tyrants. They have armies, usually large and menacing. They have propaganda, usually dull and artless. Enemies are not civilized enough to have culture. Culture humanizes, and humanity is the last thing you want in an enemy. It might mess up your aim.
Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh
Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was 22 years old. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She writes regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News, and many other literary magazines and newspapers. Her poems translated into English appear in Kritya, Jehat, interpoetry, museindia, earthfamilyalpha, and Thanalonline. Her anthology of contemporary American poetry will appear in 2007. You can read her poem Isn’t It Enough? here.
Shiite vs. Sunni?
In 1609, a terrible thing happened: not terrible in the manner that great wars are terrible but in the way that opening Pandora’s Box was terrible. King James I of England discovered that dividing people on the basis of religion worked like a charm, thus sentencing the Irish to almost four centuries of blood and pain.
Rep. DeFazio: Don’t Attack Iran
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has been in Congress since 1986. In April 2006, he wrote a letter to President Bush to remind him that he must seek authorization from Congress before launching any preemptive attacks against Iran. He also introduced Resolution 391 to the same effect as well as a similar amendment to this year’s Defense Authorization Act (which was voted down). One year later, rumors of an upcoming U.S. military assault on Iran still abound, the latest from Russian intelligence that predicts a Good Friday attack. Here Rep. DeFazio talks of the congressional strategy to prevent a war with Iran.
Keeping All Options on the Table: A Roadmap to Negotiation or War?
In the light of the passing of the late February deadline imposed by the UN Security Council Resolution 1737 and Iran’s refusal to comply, Washington is abuzz with wildly diverse plans regarding how to deal with Iran. Just days after the deadline, on February 24, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the Bush administration’s long standing position that “all options are on the table" if Tehran does not suspend uranium enrichment activities. On the other side of the spectrum, the announcement that the U.S. will attend the regional security conference held in Baghdad on March 10th and is open to talks with the representatives of Iran who will also be attending has highlighted the possibility of direct negotiations between the two countries
Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World
Iran in Iraq?
Faced with growing public opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bush administration has been desperately trying to divert attention to Iran. Washington has gone so far as to make a series of dubious and unfounded charges that blame the Iranian government for the difficulties facing American forces fighting the Iraqi insurgency.
Bush’s SOTU: Annotated
President George Bush gave his 2007 State of the Union address on January 23. While the speech covered many domestic issues, Bush also laid out his foreign policy approach to Iraq, Iran, terrorism, and democracy promotion. Excerpts from the president’s speech are in italics; my comments follow.
Nuking Iran
The headlines this week will be all Iraq, all the time. President Bush will unveil his not-so-secret plan of a military “surge” to rescue Iraq from all its other disastrous surgesÂin civilian deaths, pervasive violence, and unemployment. FPIF analyst Dan Smith, in Bush to Iraq: More War, argues instead that “Congress needs to act as a surge suppressor and carefully look at what Bush as commander-in-chief threatens to decree.” And, indeed, the Democrats have decided to shift from the largely domestic focus of their 100-hours plan, having realized that 45% of the American electorate wants action on the Iraq War versus only 7% who wants Congress to focus on the U.S. economy or health care reform.