So what would Iran actually do to respond to an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities? Sam Roggeveen over at The Interpreter gives the range of possible responses the once-over and comes away unimpressed. He makes a pretty compelling case. If someone had said that Israel would carry out an airstrike on Syria that not only had no regional repercussions, but were followed less than a year afterwards by backchannel peace negotiations between the two countries, most people would have thought he was crazy. So maybe Sam’s got a point.
I mentioned last week, in the aftermath of the announcement that William Burns would be attending Saturday’s Iran nuclear discussions, that the move seemed calculated to appeal to the court of public perception as much as it did to the Iranians. After all, while Burns’ presence represented a symbollic shift, his message didn’t. And it’s a message that the Iranians have consistently rejected over the years. Now that it looks like the meeting between the EU’s Javier Solana and Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili didn’t produce any breakthroughs (which isn’t so very surprising), the onus does indeed seem to be very [...]
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . — That four-page biography of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi distributed to reporters traveling with President Bush to the G-8 summit in Japan earlier this month apparently wasn’t the only White House snafu in the background material compiled for the trip. As was reported, the specially prepared press kit described Italy as “a country known for governmental corruption and vice,” and called Berlusconi an opportunist who bought his way to political power. An Italian correspondent covering the summit read it and immediately telephoned an Italian official who, in turn, took it up with [...]
