September 2009

Iran ‘has secret nuclear arms plan’

by Paul Woodward 09.30.2009

Iran ‘has secret nuclear arms plan’ By James Blitz, Daniel Dombey and Najmeh Bozorgmehr, Financial Times, September 29, 2009 Britain’s intelligence services say that Iran has been secretly designing a nuclear warhead “since late 2004 or early 2005”, an assessment that suggests Tehran has embarked on the final steps towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability. As [...]

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A hostile takeover of Zionism

by Paul Woodward 09.30.2009

A hostile takeover of Zionism By Patrick Martin, Globe and Mail, September 29, 2009 One Haredi leader who almost won Jerusalem’s mayoralty race last fall, boasts that, within 20 years, the ultra-Orthodox will control the municipal government of every city in the country. And why not? Of the Jewish Israeli children entering primary school for [...]

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Lawrence of Afghanistan

by Paul Woodward 09.30.2009

Lawrence of Afghanistan By John C Hulsman, Foreign Policy, September 29, 2009 It’s easy to assume that the Counterinsurgency Field Manual — the U.S. military’s new, post-Iraq-surge bible on unconventional warfare — is something of a revolution in military thought. Afghanistan itself is rewriting the rules of war every day, it seems. But history has [...]

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Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’

by Paul Woodward 09.30.2009

Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’ By Tim Teeman, The Times, September 30, 2009 Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama during the Democratic nomination process for president. Now, he reveals, he regrets his change of heart. How’s Obama doing? “Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was [...]

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General says Iraq troop reductions may quicken

by Paul Woodward 09.30.2009

General says Iraq troop reductions may quicken By Thom Shanker, New York Times, September 29, 2009 The senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he could reduce American forces to 50,000 troops even before the end of next summer if the expected January elections in Iraq went smoothly. That could ease the strain across [...]

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How to press the advantage with Iran

by Paul Woodward 09.29.2009

How to press the advantage with Iran By Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, New York Times, September 29, 2009 Absent some agreement with Washington on its long-term goals, Iran’s national security strategy will continue emphasizing “asymmetric” defense against perceived American encirclement. Over several years, officials in both the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami and the [...]

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US accepts Hamid Karzai as Afghan leader despite poll fraud claims

by Paul Woodward 09.29.2009

US accepts Hamid Karzai as Afghan leader despite poll fraud claims By Giles Whittell, The Times, September 29, 2009 The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have [...]

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Guantánamo deadline may be missed

by Paul Woodward 09.29.2009

Guantánamo deadline may be missed By Peter Baker and David Johnston, New York Times, September 29, 2009 The White House suggested Monday that it might not be able to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by next January as President Obama promised, an acknowledgment underscoring the difficulties in figuring out what to do [...]

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The U.S.-Iranian triangle

by Paul Woodward 09.28.2009

The U.S.-Iranian triangle By Roger Cohen, New York Times, September 28, 2009 Sanctions won’t work. Ray Takeyh, who worked on Iran with Dennis Ross at the State Department before losing his job last month and returning to the Council on Foreign Relations, told me that “sanctions are the feel-good option.” Yes, it feels good to [...]

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U.S. commander in Afghanistan submits request for more troops

by Paul Woodward 09.28.2009

U.S. commander in Afghanistan submits request for more troops By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, September 25, 2009 Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, hand-delivered his request for as many as 45,000 more troops to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Germany Friday and made his case for why [...]

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Israeli riot police, Palestinians clash at holy site

by Paul Woodward 09.28.2009

Israeli riot police, Palestinians clash at holy site By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2009 Israeli riot police entered the grounds of Islam’s third-holiest shrine Sunday and fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse rock-throwing Palestinians who had gathered to prevent Jews from praying at the contested site in Jerusalem’s Old City. [...]

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Is Yemen the next Afghanistan?

by Paul Woodward 09.28.2009

Is Yemen the next Afghanistan? By Andrew Lee Butters, Time, October 5, 2009 The Cheery in-flight magazine of Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, still runs articles encouraging adventurous tourists to visit the coffee-growing region in the country’s north, its terraced hilltop villages a vision of Old Arabia, and the fabled eastern valleys that were [...]

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Rethinking our terrorist fears

by Paul Woodward 09.28.2009

Rethinking our terrorist fears By Scott Shane, New York Times, September 27, 2009 Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying [...]

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Thoughts on Iran, mountains and winning without war

by Paul Woodward 09.27.2009

On mountains and metaphors By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 27, 2009 A few random thoughts and observations on the latest developments with Iran: How big’s a mountain? It’s a clandestine nuclear facility under construction “inside a mountain“. The only adjective that got left out was “deep,” yet knowing that detail might be the [...]

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Locating Iran’s secret nuclear facility (updated, update II)

by Paul Woodward 09.26.2009

Update — Turns out ISIS already published a report [PDF] on this and suggest an alternative location NW of Qum in addition to the one described below. They also add dates to the imagery, the Google Earth images appearing below having been taken on March 25, 2005. Locating Iran’s secret nuclear facility By Paul Woodward, [...]

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Iran’s newly revealed nuclear facility

by Paul Woodward 09.25.2009

Paradox: Now is the time to deal By Geoffrey Forden, Arms Control Wonk, September 25, 2009 Iran has admitted that it has at least one (and there is no reason to believe that there are not more) secret enrichment facilities. More information will undoubtedly come out in the coming days but we can deal now [...]

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Images of The Blitz — London, Gaza, Sderot

by Paul Woodward 09.24.2009

Netanyahu likens Hamas to Nazis attacking Britain By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, September 24, 2009 Netanyahu just told the UN General Assembly that the only example in history of rockets being rained down on civilians–prior to Hamas doing so to southern Israel–was the blitz of England by the Nazis. And the western powers responded justifiably by [...]

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Obama pushes timetable for Mideast talks

by Paul Woodward 09.23.2009

Obama pushes timetable for Mideast talks By Jay Solomon and Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2009 Mr. Obama and his aides have stressed the settlement-freeze issue as the key to developing support among the Arab states. Mr. Netanyahu hasn’t agreed to a complete freeze on building settlements, though he did agree earlier this [...]

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Ahmadinejad at the UN

by Paul Woodward 09.23.2009

The skunk at the party By Reza Aslan, The Daily Beast, September 22, 2009 There are those in the U.S. and in Israel who argue that Ahmadinejad’s views on the Holocaust are of utmost importance in understanding Iranian policy. I have heard more than one influential foreign-policy analyst argue that the Iranian president’s beliefs regarding [...]

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Obama is considering strategy shift in Afghan war

by Paul Woodward 09.23.2009

Obama is considering strategy shift in Afghan war By Peter Baker and Ellisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, September 23, 2009 President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al [...]

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Israel’s never-ending war

by Paul Woodward 09.22.2009

Israel’s never-ending war By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 22, 2009 As Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, meet at the United Nations today, “both sides have made clear that they’ll essentially be humoring Obama, showing up because the President of the United States expects it of them and [...]

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‘We went into Gaza and God went into Gaza with us’

by Paul Woodward 09.22.2009

‘We went into Gaza and God went into Gaza with us’ “After the Second Lebanon War, we learned some very valuable lessons. We learned that we had been living in an imaginary world and that the most dangerous type of war is the one that you call peace. We learned that we are not in [...]

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The numbers never lie — unless they come from Jackson Diehl

by Paul Woodward 09.22.2009

The numbers never lie — unless they come from Jackson Diehl By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 22, 2009 In yesterday’s Washington Post, deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl presented his case on how Israel “won” the war in Gaza and how this bodes well for the Israel’s prospects in the event that it [...]

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Iranians favor diplomatic relations with US but have little trust in Obama

by Paul Woodward 09.21.2009

Iranians favor diplomatic relations with US but have little trust in Obama WorldPublicOpinion, September 18, 2009 A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of Iranians finds that six in 10 favor restoration of diplomatic relations between their country and the United States, a stance that is directly at odds with the position the Iranian government has held for [...]

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