President Barack Obama, speaking Saturday in Turkey on the Iran nuclear standoff, reiterated his belief that “there is a window of time to solve this diplomatically, but that window is closing.” That may be a rhetorical device …
sanctions
Japan’s Cooperation Pays Off with Exemption from U.S. Sanctions
Tokyo’s close ties with the U.S. paid off this week when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Japan will be one of 11 nations exempt from sanctions on countries that buy oil from Iran. Aimed at pressuring Tehran to stop …
Netanyahu Signals Determination on Iran, but War Will Have to Wait
Had he been speaking Hebrew in a dramatic TV broadcast back home, parts of Benjamin Netanyahu’s fire-and-brimstone speech on Monday night might have been mistaken for the words of an Israeli Prime Minister about to launch a …
Vowing Military Action if Iran Builds a Bomb, Obama Demands Time for Diplomacy
If the tunes that followed each speech on Sunday at the AIPAC policy conference had been chosen along interpretive lines, President Barack Obama might have walked from the podium serenaded by the Rolling Stones’ chorus, “You …
Iran’s Elections: Conservatives Battle Each Other, While the Ayatullah ‘Runs’ Against the U.S.
For those seeking to understand Iran’s parliamentary elections, an unlikely analogy might be the GOP presidential primary race: Iran’s poll is a fiercely competitive, bare-knuckled fight for power. Like the GOP primary, the slate …
Why Netanyahu’s Visit to Discuss Iran Puts Obama in a Political Minefield
President Barack Obama’s reelection bid could face a stern test when he addresses the annual conference of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday, and then meets with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin …
What Iran’s Inspection Rebuff Says About Prospects for Nuclear Diplomacy
To those mesmerized by the drumbeat for war with Iran, Tehran’s rejection on Tuesday of an International Atomic Energy Agency request to visit a sensitive military site signaled grim prospects for diplomacy resolving the nuclear …
How to Interpret Iran’s New Nuclear Advances
The nuclear advances announced Wednesday by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are a prelude to an expected new round of talks between Tehran and Western powers — and also a moment of electioneering by a political faction …
Peacekeepers for Syria? Not While There’s No Peace to Keep
As Arab and Western diplomats work to fashion tools to pressure the Syrian regime to end its military response to a year-old rebellion, an unrelenting artillery exacts a terrible daily toll on the residents of rebel-held Sunni …
“It would be misguided for the United States to count on exploiting possible cleavages within the Iranian leadership.”
Obama Seeks to Cool War Fever While Keeping Up Pressure on Iran
Nobody likely envies the challenge President Barack Obama faces getting his “messaging” right on Iran. He must meet the demands of election-year politics and continue to press Tehran’s back to the wall over its nuclear program, …
Russia and China Challenge the West on Syria: What Implications for Iran?
The breach among the Permanent Five members of the U.N. Security Council in Saturday’s vote on Syria’s increasingly bloody power struggle could have profound implications for Syria’s immediate future. But it may also signal …
Israel’s Bombing Threat Helped Spur Iran Sanctions, How Will it Affect Iran Diplomacy?
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are due to start three days of talks in Tehran, Sunday, “to resolve all outstanding substantive issues” over Iran’s nuclear work. They plan to hear Tehran’s response to questions raised in the most recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear work, which cited evidence of research activity — …