by Winfield Myers*

Writing in his well-trafficked blog on Friday, University of Michigan Middle East studies professor Juan Cole illustrates the baleful consequences of the media’s reliance on Cole and other Middle East studies professors of his ilk to explain the Middle East to Americans: it makes possible the wide dissemination of a distorted, conspiracy-laden picture of that highly volatile region.

For in just a few paragraphs, Cole proposed or implied that:

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by P. R. Kumaraswamy*

As the U.S.-Iranian dispute escalates, both Washington and Tehran seek friends and allies. New Delhi is caught in the middle. While the U.S.-Indian partnership has grown closer in recent years, New Delhi’s approach toward Iran’s suspected nuclear program causes concern in Washington. Overshadowing the debate is India’s own nuclear program. With the July 2005 U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear deal yet to win U.S. Senate ratification, is India seeking to strengthen its energy security through Iran? Or is New Delhi pursuing the civilian nuclear deal without being sensitive to Washington’s concerns vis-à-vis Iran?

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By Phyllis Chesler

It was snowing in Teheran when they hung the twenty seven year-old mother of two children earlier today in the notorious Evin Prison. From the moment she was arrested, she had not been allowed to ever see her children again. Her name was Raheleh Zamani and she had been married off when she was only 15 years old. The political campaign to halt or commute her execution failed.

This tragic story could easily be one of the tales in Marjane Satrapi’s film, Persepolis.

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By Barry Rubin

The two main areas where the alliance of radical forces in the Middle East confront Western interests and pose a danger of major instability are Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons and Syria’s efforts to destabilize Iraq. This article considers these two issues. First, it examines what effect Iran’s obtaining nuclear weapons would have on Middle East politics, with an emphasis on scenarios that would occur even if Iran never actually uses them. Second, it asks why it is that the interests of Iran’s ally, Syria, compel it to destabilize Iraq.

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by Daniel Pipes*

With the Dec. 3 publication of a completely unexpected declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” a consensus has emerged that war with Iran “now appears to be off the agenda.” Indeed, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed the report dealt a “fatal blow” to the country’s enemies, while his foreign ministry spokesman called it a “great victory.”

I disagree with that consensus, believing that military action against Iran is now more likely than before the NIE came out.

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by Michael Rubin*

Congressional Democrats have seized upon the latest National Intelligence Estimate - which says Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003 - with great relish. They suggest it proves that not only did the Bush administration exaggerate the threat of a nuclear Iran, but that the White House, in its drive for hard-line sanctions backed by military force, has been far too skeptical of diplomacy.

In a statement yesterday, Sen.Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chastised President Bush, saying his “actions are doubly dangerous because they undercut the cooperation we need from other countries for dealing with the real problems Iran continues to pose.”

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By Barry Rubin

What would you do if your foreign policy agenda had these priorities:

• Get Arab and European support for solving the Iraq crisis.
• Mobilize Arab and European forces against a threat led by Iran and its allies, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
• Get Iran to stop its campaign to get nuclear weapons.
• Reestablish American credibility toward friends and deterrence toward enemies.
• Reduce the level of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

That pretty much describes the U.S. framework for dealing with the Middle East nowadays. The Annapolis conference is not going to contribute to these goals. The most likely outcome is either failure or a non-event portrayed as a victory because it took place at all. No one is going to say: We are so grateful at the United States becoming more active on Arab-Israeli issues that we are going to back its policy on other issues.

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By Barry Rubin

The idea that poverty, relative backwardness, violence, and instability must be caused by external circumstances is engrained in much of the Western intelligentsia. It encourages a tendency to apologize for those regimes and radical groups which are the main cause of continued stagnation and suffering.

In fact, of course, the problems are very much-and usually more-based on history, culture, geography, ideology, and choices made. For example, Muslim-majority countries have much lower participation of women in the economy; are more rural and agricultural; and have had no Enlightenment or industrial revolution. Governments don’t care about developing good health and educational systems. Lack of freedom and cultural restrictions–things changed and challenged in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards–harm economic development and social progress. And so on.

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by Michael Rubin*

On Oct. 17, President Bush raised the specter of war with Iran. “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III,” he said, it’s necessary to deny the Islamic Republic “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” Condemnation of his comments was swift. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) accused the President’s of using “rhetorical ghosts and goblins to scare the American people, with claims of an imminent nuclear threat in Iran.”

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By Jonathan Spyer

The possible emergence of a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is the key security issue currently occupying the attention of Israel’s political and security elite. It is one of the few issues upon which there is near (but not total) consensus. Israel has watched the growing power of radical elements within the Iranian ruling elite in the last half-decade with concern. These elements, of which President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the most prominent representative, openly reject Israel’s right to exist. Ahmedinejad’s comments advocating Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust are part of a larger project to recover the original fervour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The expansion of Iran’s regional role is also part of this, and Israeli strategists note that the influence of Iran in all areas of key strategic concern to Israel is being felt, in a negative way. Iran’s alliance with Syria underwrites Damascus’s increasingly bellicose stance. Iran’s creation and sponsorship of Hizbullah has enabled it to come to constitute the powerful militia opponent seen in last year’s war. Iranian assistance to Hamas and Islamic jihad may be in the process of turning these organisations into analogous forces.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Shades of Harvard’s Larry Summers! Columbia’s President, Lee Bollinger, has just come under faculty-fire for having mistreated Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, and in so doing, having “sullied the reputation of the University with (his) strident tone.” Bollinger has also been castigated by seventy faculty members for having “allied the University with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq” and for taking “partisan political positions concerning the politics of the Middle East.”

This is no parody. This is a seventy-gun opening salvo and the unmistakable sound of a bloody drumroll; the French Revolution has returned to Columbia’s campus.

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By Barry Rubin

The Iranian nuclear issue is too important and dangerous to be miscomprehended. So here are some life-and-death factors to keep in mind about it:

First, Iran is not about to obtain nuclear weapons, certainly not ones that it could use. That dreadful outcome is still several years away. Despite all the bragging going on by Iranian leaders in Persian-language statements about how they are getting closer to atomic bombs — coupled with denials of any such intention in English-language ones — it just isn’t that easy to do.

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By Barry Rubin

The alternative Western view of Middle East strategy–so influential in academic, media, and to some extent diplomatic circles–has a six-point program that boils down as:

Make deals with Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah; ally with Muslim Brotherhoods; and split Iran and Syria.

Those more extreme who advocate this approach are sympathetic to these forces, seeing them as more misunderstood victim than aggressive oppressor; the more moderate among them merely think the radicals can be moderated through concessions and confidence-building measures. In other words, they are not really adversaries but either already good guys or can be converted into playing that role.

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By Phyllis Chesler

We have just been informed that President Amadinejad, who himself enjoyed no disruption when he spoke at Columbia University, has called upon American students and faculty to disrupt the handful of panels and lectures at Columbia University and at the more than one hundred other universities where Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week will take place from October 22nd to October 26th, 2007.

By the way, the term “Islamo-fascism” was coined by Algerian Muslims and ex-Muslims to characterize the Islamic fanatics who slaughtered 150,000 of their Algerian Muslim brethren in the 1990s—and all in the name of Allah.

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by Michael Rubin*

Last Thursday two dozen political activists and organizations signed a statement drafted by the National Iranian American Council calling on Congress to cut off Iranian civil society funding. The signatories — who ranged from representatives of billionaire philanthropist George Soros to the group The World Can’t Wait/Drive Out the Bush Regime– argue that such funding, rather than aiding democracy, has precipitated an Iranian crackdown on dissidents. These political activists are wrong. Should democracy funding be cut, not only will independent civil society be eroded but a vital tool to encourage Iranian moderation will be removed, speeding the slide toward confrontation.

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