The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mort Zuckerman and Guy Thomas.
|
|
Email
Share
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
Showing posts with label Rouhani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rouhani. Show all posts
Sunday, September 29, 2013
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mort Zuckerman and Guy Thomas.
|
|
Email
Share
The McLaughlin Group: Iran, Obama & Rouhani, Ted Cruz, Common Core
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Shoes and cheers: Rouhani gets mixed reception after phone call with Obama
Published time: September 28, 2013 15:45
Iranian hard-liners hurled shoes and eggs at President Hassan Rouhani’s car after his arrival in Tehran, following his historic phone conversation with Barack Obama – as the country appeared split over Tehran’s potential rapprochement with the West.
Both opponents and supporters gathered outside Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport on Saturday as Rouhani returned home from his trip to the UN General Assembly in New York.
Up to 100 hard-line Islamists chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and some of them pelted the presidential motorcade with eggs and shoes – a gesture considered a serious insult in Islamic culture.
“When Mr Rouhani became president, Obama signed an order imposing new sanctions against Iran on cars and other things, with his own handwriting,” said one of protesters, as quoted by AP. “This is a clear sign that [Americans] are in no way seeking talks, but unfortunately this [phone conversation] happened.”
The small contingent of police present at the airport could not prevent demonstrators “from attacking Iran’s president,” tweeted Thomas Erdbrink, Tehran bureau chief for the New York Times. He said that Rouhani was trying to keep smiling as his security guards tried to “shield him off with an umbrella, then pulled him into car and drove off.”
The hardline protesters were outnumbered by about 200 to 300 Rouhani supporters, who appeared at the site to cheer the president and welcome his diplomatic efforts to ease Tehran’s international isolation and get sanctions against republic lifted. They greeted him with placards, thanking him for seeking peace instead of confrontation.
“I think the younger generation is happy that the first contact [between Iran and the US] is being established after 30 years,” one of the Rouhani supporters said. “I think it’s very positive for us, as we are under such a pressure, sanctions, et cetera.”
Police reportedly separated the rival demonstrators.
Video: /files/news/20/96/c0/00/original_889980_iran.mov
During his trip to the United States, Rouhani had a 15-minute phone talk on Friday with President Obama, breaking over three decades of silence between the two nations. Compared to his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the recently-elected Iranian leader also softened his tone on the country’s controversial nuclear program.
Upon his arrival in Iran, Rouhani said that he told Obama that Tehran’s nuclear program was “not only a right of the Iranian nation and a matter of development, but also – and more importantly – it is a matter of national pride for the Iranian people.” He told journalists that Obama said that he acknowledged the nuclear rights of the Islamic republic.
According to Rouhani, he also told Obama that “with the window that the Iranian people have opened, there is not much time left for talks with the P5+1 and resolving the nuclear issue and that this matter should be speeded up.” The US president replied that he shared that view and would ask Secretary of State John Kerry to hasten the process.
Shoes and cheers: Rouhani gets mixed reception after phone call with Obama
Thursday, September 26, 2013
New York Times Fiction: On Obama’s Letter to Rouhani
Mark Landler is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Under the title “Through Diplomacy, Obama Finds a Pen Pal in Iran“, Landler wrote of President Barack Obama’s deep “belief in the power of the written word,” and of his “frustrating private correspondence with the leaders of Iran.” (NYT, Sep. 19)
What is also frustrating is the unabashed snobbery of Landler’s and the NYT’s narrative regarding Iran: that of successive US administrations trying their best and obstinate Iranian leaders – stereotyped and derided – who always fail to reciprocate. This is all supposedly changing though since the new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, who they present as different and approachable, decided to break ranks with his predecessors.
This is of course hardly an appropriate framing of the story. While a friendly exchange of letters between Rouhani and Obama is a welcomed development in a region that is torn between failed revolutions, civil wars and the potential of an all-out regional conflict, it is not true that it is Rouhani’s personality that is setting him apart from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Rouhani’s ‘charm offensive’ as described by the times is a ‘process’ that ‘has included the release of 11 prominent political prisoners and a series of conciliatory statements by top Iranian officials.’ It is natural then, we are meant to believe, that Obama would make his move and apply his writing skills in earnest. Israel was not mentioned in the story even once, as if the fact that Israel’s decade-long advocacy of sanctioning and bombing Iran has not been the single greatest motive behind the deteriorating relations between Washington and Tehran, long before Ahmadinejad was painted by US media, the NTY included, as the devil incarnate.
Dominant US media is unlikely to adjust its attitude towards Iran and the rest of the Middle East anytime soon: the perceived enemies will remain enemies and the historic allies – as in Israel only – will always be that. While that choosy discourse has been the bread and butter of US media – from elitist publications like NYT to demagogues like Fox News – that one-sidedness will no longer suffice as the Middle East region is vastly changing in terms of alliances and power plays.
Iran’s internal politics is multifarious, and the country’s location in a geopolitically complex region makes it impossible, needless to say unfair, to confine the country’s existence to the US whims and expectations. It is US impulses, not the Iranian’s leader lack of letter writing skills that made the relationship extremely difficult since the breakup 34 years ago. Since then, it has been one pretense after the other. At the heart of the US argument is Israel’s security – a doctrine that simply means total Israeli military domination over its neighbors. US insistence to rule over a region it perceives as its domain since the fading of British and French influence in the oil-rich region has its many, violent at times, implications. But there were also many wasted opportunities that could have assured both the US and Iran that mutual respect and cooperation were a possibility worth exploring.
Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami (in office 1997-2005) was a reformist, and he too was seen as ‘different’. In fact, he did try to reach out to the US, but aside from a few symbolic gestures involving both parties, to no avail. The balances of power were extremely skewed in favor of the US, and politicians with sinister ambitions understood well the danger of reciprocal diplomacy with Iran.
The Obama administration is not particularly keen on peace for its sake, but is realistic enough to understand that the balances of power are constantly shifting. If the US continues with intractable attitude, it will leave the space open for its opponents to gain ground, and could find itself mired in new conflicts with dangerous consequences. Russia, whose political lot in the Middle East has grown to an unprecedented extent, delivered a masterful stroke when it capitalized on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s apparent gaffe regarding Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. On Sep 14, Moscow’s proposal to avert war, turned into an agreement, and in record time the mood had completely shifted from one geared towards an imminent war, to one with ample possibilities.
Of course, while the current civil war is tearing Syria to shreds, Iran and its allies – as well as its enemies – have been key players in the conflict. Now that an agreement has been reached regarding Syria, Tom Curry, a National Affairs Writer with NBC News reported that Obama is hoping the Syria agreement “could point the way to a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.”
Preparing for all possibilities, Rouhani began a quest to fortify his country’s own alliances. In the recent 13th Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Kyrgyzstan, Rouhani showed willingness to resolve problems surrounding its nuclear weapons program. Empowered by the dissipating chances of war against Syria, and Russia’s growing fortunes as a diplomatic arbitrator, Iran sees an opportunity for a dignified solution.
Evidently, Israel and its Washington allies are not happy. To offset a backlash, Kerry selected Israel as his first destination after the signing of the Syria chemical weapons agreement on Sep. 14. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had warned that Rouhani was no different than his predecessor, must now find a way to restate his country’s relevance, and will continue to find ways to push for war. Republican Senator John McCain’s tireless advocacy for military action is not bearing fruits. His song ‘bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ couldn’t even deliver a limited strike against Syria. Pro-Israel lawmakers such as Ted Deutch and Peter Roskam are merely urging their government to double its efforts to prevent Russia’s arming of Iran with advanced S-300 air defense systems.
Too little too late. Russia knows well that any turning back on its Iranian ally will not bode well for its longer term interests in the region. Andrei Arashev of the leading Russian think tank Strategic Culture Foundation is calling for “strategic alliance” with Iran, a sentiment echoed elsewhere. To achieve that alliance, but also to ease tensions with Washington, the Russian Kommersant reported that Moscow might offer Antey-2500, an alternative air defense system with equal efficiency. But there is more as “Russia is ready to execute the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project, ignoring the US sanctions on Iran,” reported Pakistan’s The New International on Sep. 19, citing a Russian minister’s comments in a meeting with Pakistan’s petroleum minister in Islamabad.
It really matters little whether Obama is a true pen pal or not, the same way that his oratory skills have long been disregarded as extraneous. The issue here has much to do with the political landscape in the Middle East, the failed attempt at war in Syria and Iran’s own alliances, starting with Russia. Obama’s alleged morally-driven expectations from Iran’s leaders and his supposed need for a trustworthy Iranian pen pal is all but mere fiction promoted by the New York Times. This strange logic begins and ends there.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is a media consultant, an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).
New York Times Fiction: On Obama’s Letter to Rouhani
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Kristol says Obama appeases the new Hitler, Rouhani, making Israel ‘the leader of the west’
As we reported this weekend, Israel and its supporters are flipping out over the apparent thaw between the United States and Iran, precipitated by Obama’s climbdown on Syria. Here is an angry piece by Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard, calling Obama an appeaser, Rouhani Hitler, Assad Mussolini, and saying that only Israel can lead. It seems the piece is written in desperation: Kristol marshaling what forces he still has at his disposal to head off any understanding between the US and Iran.
There is so much hysteria here that I need to quote a lot of Kristol’s argument to give full measure to his world view. How many Americans share this understanding? Notice Kristol’s extended and repeated Hitler analogies, the characterization of Obama as an appeaser who will leave the U.S. to be eaten by locusts, the overblown tone employing Shakespeare and Churchill references, and the heroic description of Israel as “for now the leader of the West” because it will act against Iran.
Act Two opens at the United Nations. There, we’ll see a charm offensive worthy of Richard III by the new Iranian president and veteran deceiver of the West, Hassan Rouhani. In response, the Obama administration will move on from punting in Syria to appeasing Iran….
Smaller retreats lead to larger ones. The West’s failure to resist Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935—and his troops’ use of poison gas—was merely a foretaste of the failure to resist Hitler when he took the Rhineland in March 1936. In his essay in the volume Present Dangers, the historian Donald Kagan tells the story. Hitler had expected Britain to slap down Mussolini…. Hitler drew the lesson. The occupation of the Rhineland followed shortly.
There will be no Rhineland this time. Iran isn’t 1930s Germany, and the United States is more formidable than Britain. For now, Iran will have to achieve its goals by stealth and diplomacy, while Hitler achieved his by bravado and force. But the accommodation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons lies ahead as surely as the accommodation of Nazi Germany’s expansionist dreams. Moreover, Rouhani knows what he is doing. He was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator for two critical years a decade ago and proved then his skill at duplicity in the furtherance of his regime’s nuclear ambitions.
And the Obama administration, too, will play its role, echoing the Baldwin government, which Winston Churchill in 1936 characterized as “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Churchill continued, “So we go on preparing more months and years—precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain—for the locusts to eat.”
As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons, undeterred by the West’s leading power, a 21st-century tragedy threatens to unfold. Unless. Unless a dramatis persona who didn’t exist in 1936 intervenes: Israel. Ariel Sharon once famously said that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Nor will it play the role of Poland. Despite imprecations from the Obama administration, Israel will act. One prays it will not be too late.
It is a strange course of events, heavy with historical irony, that has made the prime minister of Israel for now the leader of the West.
Once again this demonstrates the significance of MJ Rosenberg holding the line on the use of the term Israel Firster. Kristol is surely an Israel Firster. But only when people are allowed to talk about this allegiance freely will there actually be a public understanding: that not all Jews are Zionist, that Zionism calls on tribal and paranoid elements inside the Jewish community, and it has helped to build a militarist and discriminatory regime that is more and more isolated from positive world opinion.
Kristol says Obama appeases the new Hitler, Rouhani, making Israel ‘the leader of the west’
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)