Who is responsible for U.S.-Iran tensions?

[Jefferson23]

Sanctions and spy operation memos increase friction

The United States is working to gain consensus for tougher sanctions on Iran after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the country was engaging in research that could only be used for developing a nuclear trigger.

Iran has consequently threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil exports. There is also increased concern that Israel will prepare to take tough measures against Iran.

In an article in Foreign Policy, author and historian Mark Perry describes a series of CIA memos revealing a false-flag operation involving Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. The memos report that Israeli spies posed as American agents to recruit members of Jundallah, a Pakistan-based separatist group, to carry out attacks in Iran.

Adding to tensions, an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed last week, and Iranian officials blame the United States and Israel for the death.

in full: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/whos-responsible-us-iran-tensions-0021985

[Laura PourMeADrink]

1. I am a huge Obama fan...but I have to ask...What happened to

his "talking to the enemies" promise?

[Jefferson23]

2. He has said many things, and looking back is important imo.

I would keep in mind the upcoming election too and the rhetoric the
Republicans are using.

Iran

President Obama has expressed support for "opening dialogue" with Iran, in part to ask for its assistance in "playing a more constructive role in Iraq." He says the war in Iraq has strengthened Iran's influence in the region. He has also said Iran's nuclear ambitions represent a "serious threat to the United States, to our ally Israel and to international security." A nuclear Iran would be "a game changer," he said in a September 2008 presidential debate. "Not only would it threaten Israel, a country that is our stalwart ally, but it would also create an environment in which you could set off an arms race in this Middle East."

Obama said in a March 2007 speech before AIPAC that he supports "tough sanctions" on Iran to compel it to stop its uranium enrichment program. In the same speech, he said that he "does not believe that the use of military force towards Iran should be ruled out (Chicago Sun-Times). Still, in an April 2007 presidential debate, Obama said, "I think it would be a profound mistake (NYT) for us to initiate a war with Iran." Obama hardened his position on this point following the NIE release. During a debate in Iowa in December 2007, Obama accused President Bush of not letting "facts get in the way of his ideology" in dealing with Iran, and said the Bush administration's saber-rattling and threats of war "should have never started" (NPR).

Obama has repeatedly said he will engage Iran in "tough, direct presidential diplomacy" without preconditions. "I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe," he said in September 2008. In a February 2008 Democratic debate, Obama said it is "important for the United States not just to talk to its friends but also to talk to its enemies," including Iran. This would not necessarily mean direct talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Obama says "is not the most powerful person in Iran" and therefore "may not be the right person to talk to." Obama has also said the United States should consider offering the incentive of World Trade Organization membership for Iran if it abandons its nuclear program.

In March 2008, Obama praised the UN Security Council's resolution to up pressure on Iran for its nuclear program. Still, Obama said, the resolution "represents a lowest common denominator because Russia and China did not agree to tougher sanctions."

In May 2007, Obama sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which would authorize state and local governments to divest from Iran's petroleum sector, protecting fund managers who divest from lawsuits. That bill has not reached a vote.

Obama did not vote on the September 2007 legislation labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, but he criticized the bill and said he would have voted against it. Still, in a September 2008 presidential debate, Obama said he does believe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization.
http://www.cfr.org/experts/world/barack-obama/b11603#15

[cbrer]

3. This is

The human condition in action. One may analyze the past in an effort to glean some insight about how events came about. But besides proportions, we can pretty accurately guess the "players". Governments, and media.

Becoming an informed individual capable of having rational opinions about world events is increasingly becoming difficult. The danger of reading and believing stuff that merely reinforces our own preconceptions is omnipresent.

You can pretty safely bet that manipulation, trickery, outright fakery is taking place. The importance of electing honest, forthright, and principled leaders is reinforced. The glaring lack of those features in our recent past leaders is apparent.

[Jefferson23]

4. The myth of an "isolated' Iran by Pepe Escobar

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt

These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the United States and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country's oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police.

He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington's "bulwark" in the Persian Gulf
until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the mullahs. While Khomeini & Co were hardly Washington's men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring.

In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA19Ak03.html