Iran
December 19, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I noted several instances in which Chuck Hagel denounced the option of attacking Iran in response to its development of nuclear weapons. Hagel’s supporters will point, however, to a more recent op-ed in the Washington Post of September 28, 2012 that Hagel signed. The other names on the op-ed are Retired Adm. William J. Fallon, former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, former undersecretary of state Thomas Pickering, and Retired Gen.
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December 19, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
I like to say that the Washington Post’s editorial page is one of the last bastions of respectable liberalism in America. It’s also the reason why I eventually accepted defeat in our long running family battle over whether to subscribe to the Post. Today, the Post’s editors come down hard against the idea of nominating Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. The Post focuses on two vital issues: defense spending
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December 19, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Salman Rushdie has just published a memoir — Joseph Anton — of his life under the fatwa promulgated against him by Ayatollah Khomeni on account of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. I have taken my bearings on this saga from Daniel Pipes’s prescient treatment of it in The Rushdie Affair, originally published in 1990. In his rewarding New Republic review/essay, Paul Berman cites Kenin Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad, which
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December 18, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, I asked: If Obama nominates Hagel, will that make Jews who worry about Iran but voted for Obama useful idiots? After all, Hagel voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization; urged President Bush to open “direct, unconditional” talks with Iran to create “a historic new dynamic in U.S.-Iran relations;” was a reliable “no” vote on sanctions against Iran; and serves on the board of
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December 18, 2012 — Scott Johnson
At the Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper describes the Iran PressTV site as the state-run propaganda outlet. In the outlet’s piece on the prospective nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, one can observe that the mullahs are pretty excited by the Hagel thesis. The piece struggles a bit with idiomatic English. Nevertheless, the Islamically correct Schadenfreude comes through loud and clear. “Some in the Israeli lobby have reportedly reacted
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December 3, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports on the reemergence of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). According to Bruce Reidel, a former CIA counterterrorism expert now with the Brookings Institution, “what we’re now seeing is al Qaeda in Iraq’s revival, not only as a movement in that country but as a regional movement.” Reidel notes that from its base in the Sunni provinces west of Baghdad, AQI is building networks in Syria and
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November 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Reuters reports on what some may see as a touching display of gratitude: “Gazans say ‘Thank you Iran’ after Israel conflagration.” Gazans offered very public thanks to Iran on Tuesday for helping them in this month’s fight against Israel, when Iranian-made missiles were fired out of the Palestinian enclave towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. “Thank you Iran”, said large billboards on three major road junctions in the Gaza Strip –
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November 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Let’s take a preliminary look at the advantages and disadvantages of the cease fire agreement, from an Israeli and traditional pro-Western perspective. There are two big advantages. First, the agreement puts an end, at least for now, to the bombardment of Israel. I suspect that Hamas was approaching the end of its ability effectively to bombard and, for this reason, was willing to agree to the cease fire. Even so,
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November 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
It seems exceedingly unlikely that the recent Hamas attacks on Israel from Gaza are a mere coincidence with Obama’s re-election. More likely still is that this is part of a new political phase in the Hamas-Tehran axis that presages some kind of breakout (next step in the nuke program?) and is designed to tie up Israel and make a strike against Iran more difficult. In any case, one new thing
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November 17, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Israel’s decision to leave Gaza some years ago meant that it could no longer police that cesspool of a Strip, and thus that it would suffer from the rocket attacks that have plagued it ever since. Now, Isreal’s only recourse is periodically to intervene in Gaza. That’s what is happening now, and the intervention might entail another invasion. Given that the Israelis must tackle Gaza every few years anyway to
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November 8, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Iran’s intelligence ministry published a report on the U.S. election in Farsi that appeared prior to Tuesday, but–no surprise here–didn’t get reported on in the U.S., and still hasn’t been, to my knowledge. The Israeli press has the story on why Iran’s mullahs were pulling for Barack Obama: As the world ponders what Barack Obama’s re-election will mean in regard to the U.S.’s stance against Iran, an Iranian intelligence ministry
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November 5, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
I should have written much earlier about an interesting congressional race in my district, Maryland’s Eighth. It pits incumbent Democrat Chris Van Hollen against Republican challenger Ken Timmerman. What makes the race stand out is not its competitiveness; Van Hollen is very likely to win. Rather, the race stands out because of the sharp contrast between the two candidates on foreign policy, an issue seldom seen in the 2012 election.
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October 21, 2012 — John Hinderaker
From Israel National News comes this highly entertaining report on Iranian coverage of the presidential election: Iran’s government mouthpiece Press TV is panicking over the prospect of a defeat for President Barack Obama and warns that Mitt Romney will steal the election through “black-box” voting machines that “manufacture election outcomes.” It also charged that the polls – virtually all of which now show Romney in the lead or at least
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October 14, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We went to see the film Argo last night. The film takes us back to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 for a sidebar (“the Canadian caper”) regarding the rescue of six State Department employees who had escaped from the American embassy at the time of the embassy’s takeover. The true story of their return from Tehran to the United States courtesy of the CIA was declassified by President Clinton
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September 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
At the risk of courting the condemnation of the Obama administration or a visit from local law enforcement authorities, we bring you reader David Ferguson’s illuminating photoshop of Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN today. Come and get me, copper! Mr. Ferguson comments: “In simple enough language even the UN delegates can understand — though likely not simple enough for the US Delegates.”
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September 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The text of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech has been posted here by the Israel News Agency. C-SPAN has posted the video here. As with Churchill’s great speeches, there is a bracing clarity in the truth of the words and in hearing them spoken in a forum where the truth is at a premium. Please read it all: Thank you very much Mr. President. It’s a pleasure to see the General
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September 25, 2012 — Scott Johnson
David Ignatius is the prominent Washington Post columnist who specializes in foreign affairs. He writes highly regarded espionage novels in his spare time. Ignatius is full of good feeling toward some of the world’s foremost terrorists, tyrants, and malefactors. In September 2003, for example, Ignatius got together for a little chat with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Ignatius’s subsequent column on the interview maddeningly refers to the Hezbollah war of extermination
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