There is greater consensus today about the understanding that Iran is a brutal tyranny, intending to produce the weapons of mass death.
Clinton Expected to Seek Saudi Arabia's Help in Confronting Iran ... Glenn Kessler. Washington Post, Feb15
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins a difficult diplomatic assignment Monday in Saudi Arabia, where she is expected to have lengthy meetings with the king. In his meeting with Obama in May, Abdullah rejected making any confidence-building steps toward Israel.
(The Saudis themselves had thought Obama's visit was a courtesy call and they were surprised so many tough issues were raised without much preparation.) The tough session helped convince the president he needed great expertise in the Middle East on his staff, which is one reason why Dennis Ross was moved from the State Department, where he worked for Clinton, to the White House, officials said.
Clinton will also seek to win pledges from Saudi Arabia to help on the confrontation with Iran, specifically reassuring China that its oil supply will not be harmed if relations with Tehran sour over support for international sanctions. Riyadh had been highly skeptical of this idea, which has been promoted by Ross, but U.S. officials traveling with Clinton have dropped broad hints that the Saudis already have made such an approach to China.
The officials say the Saudis are now merely waiting to see if China will seriously entertain a tough UN Security Council resolution before any such arrangement becomes public.
Blame China for Iran's Nukes... Michael Danby . Wall Street Journal, Feb 15
The Chinese people will tolerate the communists' monopoly of power only so long as their living standards keep rising. The weak link is China's inadequate energy sources. China is short of energy, and its dependence on imports is growing.
China can buy all the oil it wants on the international market, but the communist leaders don't want China's prosperity - and their own hold on power - to be dependent on a free market they don't trust.
They want control and certainty. They see the way to get these things is through deals with selected oil-exporting countries, preferably ones which are at political odds with Western powers, so that their need for friends and protectors is greater.
China now gets 15% of its oil from Iran, and is Iran's second-biggest customer after Japan. China's greed for secure oil imports and its willingness to deal with outlaw regimes to get these imports is causing a breakdown in the world's only system for disciplining countries that endanger peace.
The writer is a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade of the Australian Parliament.
Iran Celebrates the Anniversary of its Islamic Revolution... David Ignatius; Washington Post, Feb.16
What did the world see as Iran celebrated the 31st anniversary of its Islamic revolution on Thursday? A hollowed-out regime that is better at repressing its own people than at governing. The Iranian regime's success in intimidating demonstrators was a show of strength, but only superficially. "It's the Enron of governments," says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"If Iran were a stock, nobody would buy shares in it." It's a safe bet this regime will eventually break down, but the process could take years. If you want an example of how long a hollowed-out, repressive regime can last, just look at the Soviet Union.
Compared with a year ago, Iran is far more divided internally; it has lost much of its legitimacy within the Muslim world, with the regional balance of power tipping the other way for the first time in years; and it is more isolated internationally, no longer able to count on Russia as a reliable patron.
Russia Tells Netanyahu It Will Hold Off on Iran Arms Dea...Barak Ravid; Haaretz, Feb.16
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Russia would hold off on its contract to sell the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran.
"On this issue Russia is taking into consideration the need for stability in the region," Netanyahu said. "What is needed now is very tough sanctions that can influence this [Iranian] regime and severe sanctions that will considerably and convincingly harm the import and export of oil."
U.S. Encounters Limits of Iran Engagement Policy ...Helene Cooper. New York Times, Feb 16
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama declared himself open to dialogue even with intransigent states like Iran. But there is little diplomatic nicety to be seen these days, as the administration presses tough new sanctions aimed at the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Monday of a drift toward a military dictatorship in Iran.
White House officials maintain that they have not abandoned Mr. Obama's pledge of engagement, but the administration is now coming to terms with the limits of its engagement policy, many foreign policy experts say
Ray Takeyh, a former Iran adviser to the Obama administration, said, "There was a thesis a year ago that the differences between the United States and Iran was subject to diplomatic mediation, that they could find areas of common experience, that we were ready to have a dialogue with each other," but "those anticipations discounted the extent of how the Iranian theocracy views engagement with the United States as a threat to its ideological identity."
Administration officials say the biggest benefit of Mr. Obama's engagement policy now is a defusing of a worldwide view that the U.S. is part of the problem, and a demonstration that the problem is Tehran's intransigence. "What the president has achieved is that he has outed Iran," a senior administration official said Friday. He said Iran, by refusing to respond positively, had exposed itself as uninterested in a better relationship with the U.S.
Russia, US, France blast Iran enrichment....Jerusalem Post, Feb 17
Ahmadinejad says country installing more advanced machinery at main facility.
Russia joined the US and France in urging Iran to stop enriching uranium to higher levels in a statement shared Wednesday with The Associated Press, suggesting the project reinforced suspicions that Teheran is seeking to make nuclear weapons.
Shrugging off international concerns, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the country was moving ahead to expand its enrichment capacities by installing more advanced machinery at its main enrichment facility.
Ahmadinejad told reporters in Teheran the centrifuges are not yet operational but are five times more efficient than the model now in use at its Natanz enrichment plant.
Because enrichment can produce both nuclear weapons as well as reactor fuel, Iran is under three set of UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to stop its program. Its determination to expand such activities had been criticized worldwide even before an announcement earlier this month thaT Teheran would enrich to a higher level.
In a confidential letter to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the three world powers questioned Teheran 's assertion that it had started the higher enrichment project to provide fuel to a research reactor providing medical isotopes for cancer patients...
Since its clandestine enrichment program became known eight years ago, Iran has insisted it is meant only to generate nuclear fuel. But its secrecy and refusal to cooperate with an IAEA probe of allegations that it experimented with aspects of a weapons program had increased fears about its nuclear ambitions even before Ahmadinejad's Feb.7 announcement that Iran will raise the enrichment bar.
If Iran gets nukes, so will Turkey... By Herb Keinon Jerusalem Post, Feb 17
MOSCOW - Following his meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and
local Jewish community leaders on Monday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went out to eat with his wife Sara at a Moscow restaurant and coincidentally ran into Greek Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs George Papandreou.
The Greek premier, facing an economic crisis back home,asked he could join the Netanyahus....
In an apparent to prod the Greeks toward action on the Iranian issue, Netanyahu said that a nuclear Iran would eventually lead to the nuclearization of Turkey, Greece’s long-time nemesis, as well as Egypt and Saudi Arabia
The hour-long discussion focused both on the economic crisis facing Athens, and the Iranian crisis facing the world. Netanyahu told Papandreou that just as what was needed for Greece to emerge to from its deep economic crisis was help from the international community along with actions taken by the Greek government, what would be needed to emerge from the Iranian crisis was concerted efforts by the rest of the world as well.
If there is a crisis, Netanyahu told his counterpart, whether be it economic or nuclear, the international community must step in. Netanyahu said repeatedly during his Moscow visit that one of the goals of the visit was to push the world towards taking “sanctions with teeth against Iran.”
On the second day of his Moscow visit, the prime minister met with seven leading Russian media commentators, and will give thee different interviews to Russian media in the early afternoon. Later in the day, he was scheduled to visit the Russian White House for a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, and then return to Israel around midnight
Statement by Ambassador Leshno-Yaar to UN Human Rights Council... UN Human Rights Council, -MFA Newsletter, Feb 15
Today's meeting in Geneva is about the threats that Iran's rulers make, day after day, upon their own people. The work of this Council on the human rights situations in Iran needs to go far beyond today's periodic review.
Iran's record was reviewed by the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, under a standard procedure that examines every country once every four years.
Islamic and Leftist Allies Defend Iran’s Human Rights Record at U.N Gathering... By Patrick Goodenough, (CNSNews.com) February 16, 2010
As the U.N. Human Rights Council scrutinized Iran’s domestic rights record on Monday, Western nations raised concerns about abuses including executions, torture and mass arrests, while Tehran’s Islamic and leftist allies lined up to defend and praise the regime.
The events once again highlighted the deep divisions in the Geneva-based U.N. body, which the Obama administration joined last year, citing hopes of improving it from within.
After Iran presented the HRC with a 31-page report on its human rights record, the council on Monday held a three-hour “interactive dialogue,” with almost 60 states making statements and Iranian delegates periodically responding. The exercise is known as the “universal periodic review” (UPR), which examines every U.N. member state once every four years.
The U.S. led the criticism of Iran, with Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner voicing concern about suppression of post-election protests, restrictions on freedom of expression, violations of religious freedom, “show” trials, and reports of torture of detainees.
Several Western delegates called for an international inquiry into the post-election violence, while some implied that Iran was not an appropriate candidate to join the HRC. Iran hopes to win a seat on the council in elections scheduled for May.
For Iran’s allies, however – many of them countries whose own human rights records draw criticism – Iran’s UPR was an opportunity to shield Tehran and scold the West.
The Nicaraguan envoy painted Iran as the victim of Western imperialism….
Venezuela’s representative praised Iran’s achievements, which he said came despite the country being “subjected to unjust economic sanctions and an ongoing defaming media campaign.”
Cuba’s envoy similarly said Iranian progress had been achieved despite restrictions imposed from outside.
Pakistan’s delegate encouraged Iran to ensure the protection of citizens’ rights, then added, “Pakistan firmly believes that human rights are better served when these are pursued through a non-politicized and cooperative approach. We should acknowledge that no country in the world can claim a blemish-free human rights record.”
The representative of Algeria noted that the UPR process was meant to be conducted in an “objective, non-selective, constructive, non-confrontational and non-politicized manner … unfortunately this does not seem to be the case today with Iran.”
Iran’s large delegation was led by Mohammed Larijani, the head of the country’s High Council for Human Rights, who said no Iranians were in custody for their political views; those being held faced charges of terrorism or espionage….
Iran’s UPR process will now involve a troika of countries – Pakistan, Senegal and Mexico – compiling a document containing recommendations arising from Monday’s proceedings, which the HRC will “adopt” on Wednesday. In four years’ time, Iran will go through the exercise again
The UPR was touted as one of the most important reforms built into the HRC when it was established in 2006 to replace its discredited predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
Non-governmental organizations critical of Iran said Monday’s meeting showed the need for the council to take further steps, including holding a “special session” on Iran and mandating a U.N. rights monitor, known as a “special rapporteur,” to investigate
INDIA
India again successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable missile Sunday that can hit targets across much of Asia and the Middle East, an official said... Jerusalem Post, Feb 8
India's current arsenal of missiles is largely intended for confronting archrival Pakistan. …
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan usually notify each other ahead of such missile launches, in keeping with an agreement between the two nations. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
The two sides began talks aimed at resolving their differences over the Himalayan region of Kashmir and other disputes in 2004. India put the peace process on hold soon after terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, which India blamed on the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
India recently offered to restart peace talks, though Pakistan has yet to formally accept.
ANTI-SEMITISM
United Kingdom. Jerusalem Post, Feb 8
Benny Morris talk stirs uproar at Cambridge
University's Israel Society called off talk "for fear of being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamo phobia."
French nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld winds up Holocaust conferences in Arab states... European Jewish Press
BAGHDAD (AFP)-Feb 8--French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld on Monday urged Muslims and Jews to learn about their mutual suffering as a way to bring them closer, after a series of Holocaust conferences mostly in Arab states.
