The Daily Talking Points

News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations from Sept. 7-9 The week before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 saw several alarmist editorials about Iran in leading U.S. new outlets. Leon Panetta also did something he probably shouldn’t do: prophesize about… Continue Reading

Neocons Gloat About Islamist Iraq, Denounce Islamism

Something of a little blog firestorm was sparked when the Washington Post‘s neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin claimed that George W. Bush deserved credit for setting in motion the Tunisian uprising against its U.S.-backed dictator because the seed that sprouted popular… Continue Reading

Self-fulfilling prophecy: Dennis Ross Doesn’t Think Anything Can Get Accomplished

I was struck by an article by Nathan Guttman in the legendary Jewish Daily Forward about Dennis Ross and George Mitchell jockeying for the position of Obama Administration’s point-person in the Middle East peace process. The whole thing is a… Continue Reading

Does Goldberg Quote Ahmadinejad — or Himself?

Jeffrey Goldberg, a prominent hawkish Israeli-American journalist, has written a post responding to a Reza Aslan piece on The Atlantic website. Goldberg is indignant that Aslan suggests, based on revelations about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in WikiLeaks cables, that the boisterous president may not be… Continue Reading

Takeyh: “Just how stable is Iran’s clerical regime?”

Council on Foreign Relations scholar Ray Takeyh has an intriguing op-ed in the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of the New York Times. He asks: “Just how stable is Iran’s clerical regime?” Takeyh starts with a little armchair psychology… Continue Reading