Iran

In one sense, of course, John McCain is correct to say: “The president saying that we didn’t want to be perceived as meddling, is, frankly, not what America’s history is all about.” And while one may say that, more often than not, the United States has been one of, for want of a less crude way of putting it, the Good Guys even that country’s admirers must acknowledge that this has not always or universally been the case. And that has led to problems. It also, frankly, makes one pretty happy that John McCain ain’t President. Relatedly, it would be useful if Obama’s advisors ceased this sort of nonsense: But

Really interesting debate on who is winning the Blog/Comment War last night at Edelman HQ in Victoria Street. I tried to argue that they are part of the same continuum. I have never seen them as particularly antagonistic.  I suggested that we are yet to see a “classic” or “great” blog posting in the way that you have memorable comment pieces that stay with you for life. Peter Beaumont’s Observer piece about Iran at the weekend is one such article. There has been some good discussion of the debate at journalism.co.uk and Mark Reckons. Mark (a Lib Dem blogger) has challenged my assertion that there are no classic blog posts and

I was playing cricket* yesterday, so wasn’t able to follow events in Iran too closely. Happily, Andrew Sullivan’s blog means that it’s easy to catch-up. Andrew, of course, has been at his considerable best these past few days, but yesterday’s marathon live-blog was something else. Newspapers, at least in this instance, are now the second draft of history; blogs, Youtube, camera phones and Twitter are the first. Reading Andrew’s live-blog – a compendium of tweets from Iran, video footage, stills photography, commentary and links to other sources of information around the web – is a pretty draining experience; producing it must have exhausted Andrew and his brace of helpers, Chris

In his cover story for this week’s edition of the magazine James is, quite characteristically, honest enough to acknowledge that the consequences of attacking Iran would be “horrendous” and, of course, he is also right to argue that there are any number of terrible possibilities if Iran does acquire nuclear weapons. He sums them up: It would spark an arms race across the Middle East. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that Saudi Arabia has a deal with Pakistan to buy a bomb off the shelf if Iran goes nuclear: a Shiite bomb must be countered with a Sunni one. Iran would also step up its support for disruptive,

Democracy in America goes back to pre-election profiles of Mir Hossein Mousavi and finds a “cautious, pragmatic, vague and increasingly shrewd politician.” This seems a fair verdict and, as we know, Mousavi can hardly be the perfect poster-boy for liberals since, if he were, he wouldn’t have been permitted to stand in the first place. But that was then and this is now. The movement is bigger than Mousavi now and it’s hard to see how much of it he and his advisers really control anyway. What can be said is that reform is a process, not an event. Furthermore, I would hazard that the regime faces a pretty bleak

Ezra Klein has copped some stick for his observation that: There are a couple things to say about this, all of them depressing. First, those of us who have long argued for the fundamental rationality of the Iranian regime have seen our case fundamentally weakened. A rational regime might have stolen the election. But they would not have stolen it like this, where there is no doubt of the theft. I a) disagree with Ezra and b) think he’s being too hard on himself. That is, there is a difference between the rationality of the Iranian regime’s foreign policy and its attitude towards domestic dissent. One can believe that Iran

For real: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday accused his election rivals of adopting smear tactics used by Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler and said they could face jail for insulting him. Ahmadinejad was speaking at a rally in Tehran on the final day of an increasingly bitter and hard-fought election campaign, in which he faces a growing challenge from moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi. Mousavi and the two other candidates say Ahmadinejad has lied about the state of the economy which is suffering from high inflation and a fall in oil revenues from last year’s record levels. Ahmadinejad said his rivals had broken laws against insulting the president. “No