Iran Video: Scott Lucas on Al Jazeera - Tehran, China, & US Sanctions

I appeared on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story on Wednesday, with Professor Sadegh Zibakalam and former Iranian diplomat Mehrdad Khansari, to discuss US efforts for tightened Chinese sanctions on Tehran.

The headline is easy enough: Beijing will not publicly back the US effort. Far more interesting are the complexities beyond --- China's private position, which may include a continued decrease in supplies from Iran; the restrictions on Tehran's oil from other customers, such as Japan and the European Union; and Iran's internal economic situation.

It was interesting to me to hear the difference of approach on that latter issue --- for me, it is even more important than the US manoeuvres; for Professor Zibakalam, it seemed secondary to the regime's manipulation of "sanctions" to hold public support. And I also noted the very different perspectives among the panellists on the Straits of Hormuz issue and the prospect of war.

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Happy New Year: 10 Predictions for 2012 --- From US Election to Syria to No War With Iran to EA WorldView

A Reliable Prediction? Right to Left: Tunisia's Ben Ali, Egypt's Mubarak, Libya's Qaddafi, Yemen's Saleh, Syria's Assad, Iran's Khamenei

See also A Resolution for a 2012 WorldView: A Global Community Built On Communication, Not Conflict
Happy New Year: Rap News Presents #Occupy2012

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President Obama will call on the international community to intervene in Syria. He may not be the loudest public voice, but he and his team will be working the diplomatic backchannels in Europe and the Middle East hard. He wants to avoid war in Iran, but not so secretly, he is rooting for the domino theory to hold with the fall of the regime in Tehran. He will sell more arms to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to pacify their unease with his policies, while preparing a backup plan if there is no movement in the Islamic Republic.

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Iran Special Analysis (Part 2): The IAEA's Nuclear Report --- Not All Sources Are Equal

If the burden on Iran, in the eyes of the IAEA, has been to show the level of co-operation to meet questions and assuage doubts, then the burden on the IAEA --- given that "proof", of either the absence or presence of a militarised nuclear programme, is likely to be beyond reach --- was to at least sweep away some of the cynicism over its effort by establishing a clear record of its enquiry.

The Agency may have cleared the low bar set by The New York Times, for whom any assertion was going to constitute "meticulous sourcing", but it has not gone much higher.

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US Politics Special: A Pizza-Based Foreign Policy Lesson for Herman Cain

Herman, if you must compare foreign policy to pizza-making...keep reading

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Israel and Palestine: Half and Half Pizza

It was supposed to be half and half, but someone mixed all the toppings up! Don’t try to separate them or you’ll burn your hands in the cheese. Let the toppings magically figure out how to migrate to their own side of the pizza before you get involved.

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Iran Feature: How Google Reader's "Tweak" May Cut Iranian Access (Perez)

The law of unintended consequences... When a company as large and as important as Google makes changes, seemingly minor tweaks can have massive repercussions. While most people in the West may have to deal with a slightly different interface (for better or for worse), the consequences elsewhere may be far more profound.

Tech Crunch writer Sarah Perez writes that in Iran, new changes to Google's RSS reader may cut Iranian dissidents off from a major line of communication, one that the government of Iran has yet to shut down.

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Tunisia (and Beyond) Opinion: Can West Stop Worrying and Accept the Islamist Movements? (Karon)

http://bit.ly/tKIEyN

Time Magazine's Tony Karon asks whether, as Tunisia and Libya enter this next phase of this pro-democracy movement, the West will be able to accept that Islam is not fundamentally at odds with democracy.

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Tunisia's election and Libya's celebration of the overthrow of Col. Muammar Gaddafi won't have made for a happy weekend among those fevered heads in Washington who believe the West is locked in an existential struggle with political Islam: If anything, the Islamist tones of the Libyan celebrations, coupled with the Islamist victory in the Tunisian polls will have evoked the collapsing dominoes of Vietnam-era anti-communist metaphor.

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Turkey Analysis: As 10,000 Soldiers Pursue Kurds Inside Iraq, What Does "Big Revenge" Mean?

The curiosity of Prime Minister Erdogan's statement was in its emphasis. Instead of a focus on operations against the Kurdish Communities’ Union (KCK), with the arrest of hundreds of Kurdish politicians, or ongoing military action against PKK militants, Erdogan implicitly blamed “external powers” for using PKK.

Doing so, he was trying to divert the public’s attention from domestic political debates. But this is also a move in foreign policy: according to many experts, columnists, and academics in Turkey, Erdogan is targeting Iran and Syria.

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Turkey-Israel Feature: Why There is a Downward Spiral in Relations

On Friday, the relationship between Israel and Turkey deteriorated further: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara would provide an armed escort for a new flotilla to break the blockade on Gaza, while Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed measures from a warning against travel to or through Turkey to support of the Kurdish insurgency PKK.

So what does the tension demonstrate? For all the differences between Israel and Turkey: it shows the two powers can agree on one thing --- playing to domestic audiences with declaration of their foreign policy interests. 

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Iran: Assessing Latest Cyber-Threat, Rogue Certificate Part 2 (Arseh Sevom)

Earlier in the week, our colleagues at the civil society organistion Arseh Sevom assessed the security threat, possibly introduced by the Iranian regime, that left Google users in Iran susceptible to a rogue certificate attack.

Now, Arseh Sevom reanalyzes the threat in part 2 of the series. And they have an alarming piece of information, that users of Tor, Yahoo, and Mozilla may also have been compromised...

See Also, Iran Special: Assessing the Latest Cyber-Threat --- The "Rogue Certificate" (Arseh Sevom

Latest from Iran (3 September): Elections and the Revolution

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UPDATE: Google and Mozilla have revoked more than 200 security certificates as a result of a hack into the accounts of certificate authority, DigiNotar.

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The Latest from Iran (28 August) It's the Ecology, Stupid

An overview of the ecological problems facing Lake Orumiyeh in northwest Iran

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1420 GMT:The US Hikers. The lawyer for US citizens Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, sentenced earlier this month to eight-year prison sentences on charges of espionage and illegal entry has said that he has filed an appeal.

Fattal and Bauer were arrested, along with American Sarah Shourd, who in July 2009 while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border. They had 20 days to appeal the sentence.

Shourd was freed on $500,000 last September and did not return for trial.

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