I don't see why they should criticize Obama for making efforts to talk to Khamenei. He might be just as conservative as Ahmadinejad, but if he's intelligent he'll realize that the man is a serious threat to the power of the religious establishment. Splitting the two would be a good opportunity to push for more.
Aside from that, what are the credentials of the Leveretts anyway? I've never heard of them before now.

You've also apparently never heard of Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynt_Leverett

Instead of whining (taking "write what you know" to new extremes!), why don't you make the case that Iran will accept the ultimatum? And you can't tease the Leveretts over reliable sources when your link includes the phrase, "According to unclassified U.S. government talking points." That certainly fits your "brutally honest" theme. While we're on brutally honest, do you have a minimum number of your own posts or self-promotions you have to link to?

Do you know what "enticed" means? And I didn't realize large street demonstrations against the government are common in Iran. Those must have been awful big to top the 2004 rallies to protest the banning of parliamentary candidates. Or did they have the Michelle Malkin of the green revolution to declare their size?

Wait a minute, what happened to the brash Dan after the last blockquote? Bring him back, I miss him! Oh, you gave them an "I" for inchoate. Thanks, Dan. All is right in your pseudo-intellectual world.

Fair enough.

:-)

Anon_anon

Has there been any time in recent history where sanctions against a country has actually worked. Drezner brings out South Africa as an example of sanctions working, but it can be argued that Frederick De Klerk was far more instrumental in opening up South Africa to change than any sanctions.

If we look at South Africa, we find moral approbation and sanctions extending for years, if not decades. During this time, sanctions did not prevent South Africa from developing a nuclear weapon with assistance from Israel. Why are we supposed to assume that sanctions against Iran would be any more effective?

Sure, Iran is a dysfunctional dictatorship, but isn't Cuba in the same boat? And we can look there to see how much US efforts at 'regime change' have succeeded there since 1960.

The Obama administration needs to get serious. Assuming that Iran allows for inspection at Qom, this should be the excuse for opening up truly comprehensive negotiations with Iran about everything.

Then and only then, will we avoid the stupidity of the neocon policies.

The Leveretts claim that anonymous sources in the Iranian government told them that Iran's policy is to "[push] the limits of Tehran's nonproliferation obligations to the point where [Iran] would be seen as having the ability and ingredients to make fission weapons." This surprises me because I thought that Iran's public position, true or not, was that they were only developing civilian nuclear technology. So I'm wondering, are there any reports of Iranian officials telling other people the same thing they allegedly told the Leveretts?

http://niacblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/opposition-leaders-say-sanctions-will-hurt-the-iranian-people-govt-wont-care/

Opposition leaders say sanctions will hurt the Iranian people; gov’t won’t care

The reformist Presidential candidate turned opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi has officially spoken out against further economic sanctions. He joins the outspoken Mehdi Karroubi, who came out against sanctions earlier this month.

“We are against any sanctions against our nation,” Mousavi said in a statement posted on Rouydadnews reformist website.He said sanctions “will impose agonies on a nation who suffers enough from miserable statesmen.”

He added: “The country is on the verge of crises which will mostly hurt the poor as a result of wrong and adventurous foreign policies of the government from which our people suffer.

“We might have simplistically thought this is an advantage for our green movement, but it is not,” said Mousavi, who along with his green-wearing supporters regard President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as “illegitimate.”

“Which one of them can be expected to care about the agony their behaviour imposes on people?” he asked of Iran’s current leaders. “If we don’t care about what harms those living in this land, nobody will.”

Human rights advocates like Shirin Ebadi have argued that any new sanctions imposed against Iran should be targeted specifically at Iranian government officials, not Iran’s general population. Unfortunately, the primary tool the US Congress is considering is a refined petroleum embargo — just in time for winter. The IRGC probably won’t have any trouble getting gasoline or heating oil, but what about Iran’s poor and middle class, many of whom are out risking their lives to protest against the government?

The US should stand in solidarity with the Iranian people, not stand on their backs.

THANK YOU!!! It made no sense to me, either, it was logically incoherent even if I stretched to accept the premises.

I see little hope for sanctions. The only time I can think of when they worked (not having done a lot of specific research, I admit) was South Africa, where there was truly a world consensus, not to mention divisions within South Africa. Maybe Rhodesia, similar circumstances but even more so.

The more likely result is that if the sanctions are weak they have little effect other than to immiserate the populace (Italy, Serbia), if they are strong they make the sanctioned govt dig in even more or start a war (Japan) to break the cycle.

Iran has been working dilgently and consistently towards nuclear weapons for about 20 years, this is obviously a very high priority and there is no reason to believe they will bargain it away when they are this close.

If the world were to place really tough sanctions on Iran, which China has already said it won't support and Medvedev is at best equivocal, it's a race between the sanctions forcing regime change and Iran having a nuke and delivery capability. Oncer it has a nuke it can use to make credible threats, the sanction regime collapses. Which is why they won't be disuaded.

As the consensus is that Iran will have enough weapons-grade uranium to make 2 bombs in 2010, and a uranium bomb is so simple we (United States) didn't even feel a need to test it in 1945 (Trinity was a plutonium implosion bomb), we have to assume that Iran goes from uranium to bomb in a period of weeks or days. The question is how they would deliver it, and what they would do to communicate that threat and on whom they would focus to break the sanctions.

As China and Venezuela are committed to helping them deal with an energy/gasoline embargo and Russia will continue supporting their nuclear program and would likely allow embargoed materials to pass through their territory should the US attempt a naval blockade (inconceivable for Obama, anyway), there seems little hope that sanctions can effectively prevent Iran securing uranium bombs, if sanctions are possible, at all.

I give you an "A" for being an As*hole. Now you care about the Iranian opposition? How many Nedas will die in military strikes?

Read this in Today's FT.

Dig your head out of the sand.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de5ac1f6-ad58-11de-9caf-00144feabdc0.html

Security Council is wrong to single out Iran

Published: September 30 2009 03:00 | Last updated: September 30 2009 03:00

From Dr Yousaf Mahmood Butt.

Sir, In discussing the Iranian nuclear impasse, Gideon Rachman quotes Otto von Bismarck as saying: "The great questions of the day will be decided not by speeches, or by resolutions of majorities, but by blood and iron." ("Iran tests the world's collective will", September 28.) Let us hope not: other German leaders thought the same thing also, and things did not turn out so well for them.

Use of force against Iran would only shore up domestic support for President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and would give new impetus to Iran for restarting its suspended nuclear weapons programme. Hyperbole aside, it should be remembered that the newly revealed Iranian facility is no proof of a nuclear weapons programme.

Back in 2005, when the west assessed that Iran did have an active nuclear weapons programme, the National Defense University in Washington DC examined its motivations. The NDU study concluded that Iran desired nuclear weapons mainly because it felt strategically isolated and that "possession of such weapons would give the regime legitimacy, respectability, and protection". In other words, Iran desired nuclear weapons for the dual purposes of pride and deterrence, just like every other nuclear-armed nation. The NDU study judged "and nearly all experts consulted agree, that Iran would not, as a matter of state policy, give up its control of such weapons to terrorist organisations and risk direct US or Israeli retribution"; and, finally, that the "United States has options short of war that it could employ to deter a nuclear-armed Iran and dissuade further proliferation" (see http://www.ndu.edu/inss/docUploaded/McNair70.pdf ). As it happens, the latest US National Intelligence Estimate, from 2007, indicates that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

Let's remember that Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Russia, the UK and the US all enrich uranium legally just like Iran. (Further, Israel and North Korea are suspected of having similar enrichment programmes). The "international community" (aka the United Nations Security Council) needs to investigate all these programmes with equal vigour, and not pick and choose which countries to harass. To be taken seriously, international law must be blind.

Yousaf Mahmood Butt,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, MA, US

How many hot young Iranian women ("Neda"s) will starve in sanctions?

Neocons care a lot about "Neda's", right?

How many Neda's did they kill in Iraq?

Beautiful hot young women with lustrous hair....That's what it is about right?

Dumba*s,
Look up UN Security council resolution 487 which calls on upon Israel to place its nuclear facility under the International Atomic Energy Agency's surveilance.

Here we have a rouge nation, Israel, threatening a law-abiding one, Iran.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 487
JUNE 19, 1981

The Security Council,

Having considered the agenda contained in document S/Agenda/2280,

Having noted the contents of the telegram dated 8 June 1981 from the Foreign Minister of Iraq (S/14509),

Having heard the statements made to the Council on the subject at its 2280th through 2288th meetings,

Taking note of the statement made by the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Agency's Board of Governors on the subject on 9 June 1981 and his statement to the Council at its 2288th meeting on 19 June 1981,

Further taking note of the resolution adopted by the Board of Governors of the IAEA on 12 June 1981 on the "military attack on the Iraq nuclear research centre and its implications for the Agency" (S/14532),

Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that in accordance with that Treaty Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the Agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date,

Noting furthermore that Israel has not adhered to the non-proliferation Treaty,

Deeply concerned about the danger to international peace and security created by the premeditated Israeli air attack on Iraqi nuclear installations on 7 June 1981, which could at any time explode the situation in the area, with grave consequences for the vital interests of all States,

Considering that, under the terms of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations",

1. Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;

2. Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;

3. Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the non-proliferation Treaty;

4. Fully recognises the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation;

5. Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards;

6. Considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel;

7. Requests the Secretary-General to keep the Security Council regularly informed of the implementation of this resolution.