Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Peace Now
Over the last few months, a near-consensus has emerged in the press about the prospects for war with Iran: Here we go again. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration has “intensified planning for a possible major air attack.” This week, a Time cover story concludes that “a much discussed—but until now largely theoretical—prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.” READ MORE >>
by Jeffrey Herf READ MORE >>
Campus Politics
David Sanger's informative piece in yesterday's New York Times (to which I linked yesterday) begins with a tiny mistake. The Bush administration thought that its policy of containing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would keep him in New York and at the United Nations. READ MORE >>
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
The big, annual fall gabfest of the international set is upon us. The United Nations General Assembly convenes every year around this time, and heads of state and other political eminences converge on New York for ever-longer stretches of time. (The more desolate the country of origin, the longer the stay.) You can tell their arrival by the horrendous traffic and the literally dozens of motorcades on the Upper East Side, all escorted by the imported bodyguards, the local police, and the secret service. Sometimes streets where the visitors are staying are cut off entirely. READ MORE >>
The wider war.
Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005. For years, we were told that the "root cause" of the Middle East's problems was the Israeli occupation of Arab lands--the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon. Peace would come to the Middle East, according to this view, only when Israel finally retreated to its 1967 borders. READ MORE >>
The Quiet Americans
In late July, news surfaced that Iran had executed two gay teenagers--ostensibly for sexual assault, but most likely for the crime of being gay. READ MORE >>
