The Mixed Blessings of the Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama was named this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his diplomatic efforts. The unexpected choice made him the third U.S. president to be so honored while still in office.

There have been mixed, even critical reviews of President Obama winning this honor. In our coverage we wanted to share the reactions, examine the implications, and reflect on the purpose, at times more political than laudatory, of the Nobel Peace prize. Read the rest of this entry »

Obama Begins Meaningful Engagement With Iran

(Robert Naiman | Truthout | 8 October 2009) - The relationship between the United States and Iran with respect to Iran’s nuclear file is playing out at two levels. One level revolves around formal obligations and agreements and diplomacy. The second level is the long-running contest between the United States and its allies and Iran and its allies for power and influence in the region. The contest at the formal-obligations level on the nuclear program is a proxy for the contest for power and influence, and accommodation on the nuclear program likely implies some acceptance of Iran’s power and influence in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran, America, Israel: the nuclear gamble

Iran Gives Nod to Inspections, More Nuclear Talks

(Online NewsHour | 1 October 2009) – Iran has agreed to a second round of discussions over its disputed nuclear program following a meeting in Geneva on Thursday with diplomats from the U.S. and other world powers.

Sanctions, War, or Support?

Why after four years does Ahmadinejad reclaim “his disbelief” about the Holocaust?  Why  has the news of another nuclear site been “leaked?”  Are these  really accidental?

(Mahmood Karimi-Hakak | Iranian.com | 28 September 2009) - In reaction to Ahmadinejad’s recent visit, a number of groups, organizations and government agents have called for more sanctions against and/or military intervention in Iran.  While the efforts of such groups in discrediting Ahmadinejad is appreciated, and indeed, this man and his ruthless, barbaric, and coldblooded backers must be stopped, I have few concerns with their message.  I believe that these well-intentioned groups and organizations are playing into the hands of the dictatorial regime in Iran.  They are asking for exactly what Ahmadinejad wants; more sanctions and/or possible war with Iran! Read the rest of this entry »

Iran Continues with Missile Tests

(Online NewsHour | Part 1 | 28 September 2009) – Iran continued with missile tests for a second straight day Monday, firing mid-range missiles capable of hitting Israel, parts of Europe, and U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Lindsey Hilsum of ITN reports.

Iran Seeks Image of Defiance With New Missile Tests

(Online NewsHour | Part 2 | 28 September 2009) – Iran has test-fired its most advanced missiles, demonstrating its ability to strike targets as far away as Europe, and increasing tensions over its nuclear program. Analysts break down the details of the development.

Iran declares it’s running another uranium enrichment plant

(Russia TV – 25 September 2009) - Iran has officially declared it’s running another uranium enrichment plant.  The announcement comes shortly before Barack Obama presented evidence of this previously secret facility to the G20.

Iran Continues to be Attacked by Imperialist Powers of the West During G20

Armed with the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility, President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain demanded Friday that Tehran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions “or be held accountable.”

(Ed Hale | Transcendence Diaries | 25 September 2009) - CNN the most rusted name in fake-news reported today that the United States, France and Britain have presented “detailed evidence” to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog that “Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility,” President Obama said Friday before the start of the G-20 economic summit here.”

What’s ironic of course about this sudden announcement is that those same three countries — in a covert CIA-led coup d’etat never reported by Western media but largely known about now after the fact — invaded and then ousted Iran’s democratically elected president, Mosaddeq, in 1953 after they became a democracy in the early nineteen-fifties. Those same three countries — United States, France, Great Britain — then installed ‘the Shah’ as a puppet leader against the people’s will and split Iran’s oil up three ways for themselves, paying the Iranians pennies a barrel for it for nearly thirty years; they called their new “company” British Petroleum, or BP – you might have heard of it. This led of course to the extreme ‘Islamic revolution’ of 1979. (Religious fervor as the powers that be would have dumbed-down TV guzzlers believe had nothing to do with the American Embassy hostage “crisis,” but rather thirty years of rage and frustration over imperialist domination and their oil being stolen from them.)

Next up came the eight year US-led Iran-Iraq war where the Reagan administration funded a young CIA operative named Saddam Hussein, giving him millions of dollars and chemical and biological weapons to use against the Iranian people, where over 20 million of them died. And then when Iraq proved unable to defeat the strongly proud and patriotic Iranians, Reagan decided to play both sides against the other in the infamous Iran-Contra Affair and started illegally selling weapons of mass destruction to Iran as well, thinking one assumes that if both countries destroy each other in the process with US money and weapons that the US and Britain could walk right in and grab at all the oil in the region. Of course the plan didn’t work. The United States added yet another fallen hero to its shelf of publicly shamed and sham presidents. Iran and Iraq eventually called a truce.

The Iranian people sit at a crossroads now. Read the rest of this entry »

Ahmadinejad attacks Western “hypocrisy”

(Mike Hanna | Al Jazeera English | 23 September 2009) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, launched a scathing attack on Western powers, accusing them of spreading “war, bloodshed, aggression, terror and intimidation” in the Middle East and Afghanistan.  He called for the “awakening of nations” worldwide to counter the “hypocrisy and vicious attitudes.”  Iran’s leader did not directly address the issue of its nuclear programme but called for the “eradication of arms race and elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to pave the way for all nations to have access to advanced and peaceful technologies.”

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna reports from New York on the speech that prompted a walkout by several delegations, including the US one.