If it’s September, it must be time for Mahmoud Ahmadinjad to stand up before the United Nations General Assembly and say something completely insane.

The protests in Iran have entered a third week and the state media acknowledges that the death toll has reached 19 and that hundreds have been injured. Fareed Zakaria, a man not noted for idle leaps, proclaims, “we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy.” In an interview with CNN, he explains: No, I don’t [...]

The United States is a very large and diverse country, its people have many differing views as you’d expect in such a country, and, not particularly surprisingly, some of those views are in diametric opposition. That’s particularly apparent in Americans’ views of how we should interact with Iran. Isolationism remains a strong strain of thought [...]

Like James Poulos, “I like the Iranian reformers more than I like the mass politics of solidarity by symbolism.” As such, I’m sympathetic to John Cole in thinking that the rabid coverage of the Iranian election controversy by enthusiastic American bloggers who know next to nothing about Iran is overblown.  (I include myself in the [...]

Over at New Atlanticist, I’ve published my thoughts on this weekend’s Iranian election mess in two separate posts: Iran’s Elections: What We Know (And What We Don’t) and Iran’s Elections: What Now? The short answers:  “Not a whole hell of a lot” and “The same thing we do every day, Pinky.” I’m reasonably sure that [...]

I’m going to write up a longish piece trying to make sense of the Iranian elections for New Atlanticist later today.  Since comparisons to happenings in America seem to be the blogospheric rage de jour, however, I will just note that I have received the news that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the [...]

As it turns out there was an independent nationwide poll taken in Iran three weeks before the election and the results of the poll were consistent with the election results. In their op-ed in the Washington Post Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, whose organizations produced the poll, conclude: Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will [...]

In Spiegel Flynt Leverett throws cold water on the Iran election conspiracy theorists in the West: SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mahmud Ahmadinedschad hat einen überwältigenden Wahlsieg errungen. Sind Sie überrascht? Leverett: Nein. Ich wäre überrascht gewesen, wenn er verloren hätte. Die westlichen Medien haben die Begeisterung für seinen wichtigsten Herausforderer Hossein Mussawi grob überschätzt. Sie haben fast [...]

The Western media are continuing to react in stunned disbelief to the results of the Iranian election: TEHRAN, June 13 (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday an election in which he secured another four-year term was “free and healthy”, rejecting allegations of irregularities by a moderate rival in the vote. “People voted [...]

My advice: don’t. Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been pronounced the winner in Iran’s presidential election: TEHRAN —President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s presidential election in a landslide, officials of Iran’s election commission said Saturday morning. But his main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, had already announced defiantly just two hours after the polls closed on Friday [...]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has responded to President Obama’s message to the Islamic world, delivered in an interview with al Arabiyah this week: The US should apologise for “crimes” it has committed against Iran if it wants a better relationship with Tehran, the Iranian president said today, after recent overtures to the Muslim world from [...]

The United States has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Iran since our embassy there was stormed and its staff taken hostage on November 4, 1979.  That may soon change, Ewen MacAskin reports for The Guardian. The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US [...]

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his gang of mullahs are said to be “seriously considering” the latest EU 5+1 proposals on resolving the international standoff on the Iranian nuclear program and are telling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pipe down. Warren Strobel: Iran’s senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six [...]

Remember that National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program years ago? It turns out that Iran is as little as six months away from nukes. And it’s not some neo-con warmonger saying thus but none other than International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. In an interview with Al-Arabiya, he [...]

If a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Barack Obama is a wise man, indeed. He’s changed his mind a lot lately. The latest example is NAFTA. After having campaigned in Ohio and elsewhere on the need to renegotiate our trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and excoriating Hillary Clinton for her long-time [...]

Dana Milbank makes a funny at Barack Obama’s expense: Now, here’s a change we can believe in. A mere 12 hours after claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee yesterday — and changed himself into an Israel hard-liner. Classic. As a pandering performance, it was the full [...]

A new Gallup poll shows that two thirds of Americans “believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States.” Lydia Saad, a friend of the family, analyzes this, reasonably enough, in terms of the 2008 election: The issue of using presidential diplomacy [...]

Jim Geraghty, commenting on Barack Obama’s dismissal of John McCain’s invitation to tour Iraq with him as “a political stunt,” muses, [I]sn’t Obama vulnerable to the argument that a man who’s pledged to meet unconditionally, one-on-one, face-to-face with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really ought to meet at least once one-on-one with Gen. David Petraeus? It’s simultaneously superb [...]

Barack Obama has a “bad habit” of addressing “all kinds of people” as “Sweetie” in casual conversation, although he’s trying to quit. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has apologized to WXYZ reporter Peggy Agar for calling her “sweetie” during a campaign stop Wednesday in Sterling Heights. Obama apologized in a voicemail he left on [...]

When I first saw the headline “Brent Scowcroft Echoes Obama” at memeorandum, I read it as “Brent Scowcroft Endorses Obama,” which struck me as sufficiently newsworthy to immediately click the link. The actual story is markedly less surprising: Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, said on Monday [...]

Thomas Barnett published a piece in Esquire on CENTCOM chief William Fallon, a/k/a “The Man Between War and Peace,” that hit the Web yesterday evening and is already creating quite a buzz. If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If [...]

The picture at right, of Iraqi President Talabani Prime Minister Maliki and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, was taken on President Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Iraq, the first ever by an Irenian leader: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed a new era in relations with neighbouring Iraq as he began the first visit by an Iranian leader to Baghdad yesterday. [...]

Russia has began delivery of nuclear fuel to Iran, defying UN resolutions calling on Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program. Russia on Monday announced the start of nuclear fuel deliveries for Iran’s first atomic power station, brushing aside US and Israeli claims that Tehran harbours secret bomb-making plans. “On December 16, 2007, Atomstroiexport [...]

Despite years of loudly proclaiming otherwise, the United States intelligence community now reports that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Mark Mazetti, NYT: A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago [...]

University of Michigan Middle East scholar Juan Cole argues that the demonization of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is misguided and part of a right wing propaganda campaign to agitate for another war. Critics have also cited his statements about the Holocaust or his hopes that the Israeli state will collapse. He has been depicted as [...]

Daily Kos diarist Sally Kohn has come under some understandable fire for her confession of having “a little crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I know I’m a Jewish lesbian and he’d probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon… She thinks he’s “cuddly” and [...]

Several days after the story of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Columbia University visit inflamed the blogosphere, professional outrage monger David Horowitz has weighed in. Robert Stacy McCain has the story on the front page of today’s Washington Times. Columbia University’s invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the Ivy League school’s New York [...]

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, and plans to lay a wreath at Ground Zero and speak to students at Columbia University while here. This, not surprisingly, has caused quite an uproar. The visit to the former site of the World Trade Center [...]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledged that Iran is ready to step in once the U.S. leaves Iraq. Iran is ready to fill a vacuum in Iraq caused by the collapsing power of the United States, its president said on Tuesday. “The political power of the occupiers (of Iraq) is being destroyed rapidly and very soon we will [...]

So says an Iranian official. Click here to see the picture of a bloody woman at Gateway Pundit. Lovely, eh? Tehran, 21 May (AKI) – Iranians who do not abide by Islamic dress code rules are animals, according to an Iranian government aide quoted by Iran’s official news agency IRNA. “Anyone abandoning the principles of [...]

Iran announced today that it has dramatically expanded its uranium production capability to the point where it might actually be able to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran announced a dramatic expansion of uranium enrichment Monday, saying it has begun operating 3,000 centrifuges nearly 10 times the previously known number in defiance of U.N. demands it [...]

Fred Thompson (or, more likely, a staffer) made his blogging debut at Redstate yesterday afternoon, warning of the dangers of the propaganda victory Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got from taking 15 British marines hostage. He is disgusted with the weakness shown by the international community in this affair: “The UN Security Council summoned its vaunted multilateral greatness [...]

The British service personnel seized by Iran and accused of violating Iranian territorial waters almost two weeks ago have returned home: LONDON – A British navy crew returned home Thursday from Iranian captivity to the relief of a nation, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced their surprise release and ended the two-week crisis. The 15 sailors [...]

The Associated Press is reporting that Iran will free the British sailors it’s been holding for the last several weeks: TEHRAN, Iran – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran would free the 15 detained British sailors and marines as a gift to the British people. He pardoned the sailors and announced they would be [...]

Iran ‘to try Britons for espionage’-News-World-Middle East-TimesOnline FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying. A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted. Referring to them [...]

There’s some buzz on both sides of the blogosphere over a number of press stories on the Iran-Iraq nexus. In the NYT, James Glanz and Mark Mazetti report that, “Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. [...]

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s party apparently lost some local elections. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced electoral embarrassment today after the apparent failure of his supporters to win control of key local councils and block the political comeback of his most powerful opponent. Early results from last Friday’s election suggested that his Sweet Scent of [...]

Under the unsupported headline of “Iran’s parliament wants Ahmadinejad out”, The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Iran’s presidential elections may be held over a year early. [Iran's] Parliament approved a draft bill upon which the parliamentary and presidential elections would be held simultaneously in the first quarter of 2008. As the next parliamentary elections are [...]

There’s a bit of cheery news from Iran this morning. Iran is nearing the completion of its nuclear fuel cycle program: TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran would soon celebrate completion of its nuclear fuel program and claimed the international community was ready to accept it as a nuclear state. Iran [...]

Rick Santorum told a suburban Philadelphia newspaper that the Lord of the Rings provides valuable insights for the Iraq War. In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” According to the paper, [...]

Fresh on the heels of a sharp decline in oil and gasoline prices comes news that Chevron and two partners have discovered an oil field apparently containing 3-15 billion barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in U.S. territorial waters off Louisiana: Oil analysts and company executives said newly released test results from a [...]

Via Robot Guy who quips “This is going to piss off Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” Spaceports on the first Iranian scheduled to fly to the International Space Station; As a child, Anousheh Ansari begged her mother to let her sleep on the balcony of their home near Tehran, Iran. She would gaze into the velvety [...]

Defying U.N., Iran opens nuclear reactor – Yahoo! News An Iranian plant that produces heavy water officially went into operation on Saturday, despite U.N. demands that Tehran stop the activity because it can be used to develop a nuclear bomb. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the plant, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The announcement [...]

The politics of ethnic outrage has taken an unusual turn, with Hispanic groups railing against a new Democratic Party ad that seemingly conflates terrorism and illegal immigration. A Democratic political ad is under fire from Hispanics who say it unfairly compares Latino immigrants to terrorists. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sponsored a 35-second ad on [...]

Mike Wallace came out of retirement to interview Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wallace found him to be “an impressive fellow.” Indeed, he might have a little man-crush on him, remarking, “He’s actually, in a strange way, he’s a rather attractive man, very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way.” Twenty-seven years after a [...]

Robert Worth had a piece in yesterday’s NYT noting that the proliferation of online information has driven a cottage industry of online experts who journalists must rely on. Journalists in Iraq are far too busy with the perils of on-the-ground reporting to sit at screens for hours browsing for terrorist Internet traffic. That is why [...]

Iran’s parliament has passed a law that will require all citizens to wear what amounts to an Islamic uniform, with non-Muslims distinguished by different colored cloth strips. Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to [...]

Uh oh. Matthias Küntzel, in Ahmadinejad’s Demons Friday, April 14th ; The Basiji’s cult of self-destruction would be chilling in any country. In the context of the Iranian nuclear program, however, its obsession with martyrdom amounts to a lit fuse. Nowadays, Basiji are sent not into the desert, but rather into the laboratory. Basij students [...]

Amir Taheri has an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s London Telegraph arguing that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hoping to run out the clock until President Bush leaves office. He’s also, apparently, even nuttier than most of us guessed: Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed “the nuclear club”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [...]

Sy Hersh claims in a long New Yorker piece that the United States is on the path to war with Iran to stop them from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for [...]