The Full Transcript:

AMANPOUR: Let’s start with Iran, because I know there’s a whole host of issues. But, you, from what I gather have really been focusing on that with all of your meetings here.

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Tags: Christiane Amanpour, Ehud Barak, Israel

On Monday, the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appeared on CNN’s Amanpour guest. Livni defended the Gaza War Operation Cast Lead because it ”regained deterrence” to Israel and stated that the blockade on Gaza will continue as long as there is no official representative of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip:  ”Gates are open to Gazans when it comes to humanitarian needs”.

Speaking about the arrest warrant issued for her by a British court because of Gaza, Livni said that she is willing to travel to any part of Europe as a “test case” for IDF soldiers to travel and see the free values of the free world.

AMANPOUR: Tonight, on the one-year anniversary of the end of the war in Gaza, we look at the troubled Middle East peace process, which President Obama has also made a center point of his foreign policy.

And from Jerusalem, we have an exclusive interview with Tzipi Livni, head of the Israeli opposition party Kadima. She had served as foreign minister during the previous Israeli administration throughout the Gaza war.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Gaza Strip, Goldstone Report, Hamas, IDF, Israel, Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian Authority, Tzipi Livni

On Monday CNN framed the Iran story by interviewing Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of Parliament who is challenging the system, and Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran University academic who defends it. The transcript below the video also includes the comments of former State Department official Ray Takeyh:

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, has Iran’s opposition movement crossed the point of no return? And is the Islamic republic struggling to survive? We’ll examine what is next for Iran.

Good evening, everyone. I’m Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to our program.
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Tags: Ashura, Barack Obama, Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Council on Foreign Relations, Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mujahedin-e-Khalq, Ray Takeyh, Seyed Mohammad Marandi

Israel: Gideon Levy’s Plea “Washington, Stop Sucking Up to Tel Aviv”
Video & Transcript: Clinton-Netanyahu Press Briefing (1 November)
Clinton’s Trip: Desperately Seeking Israeli Concessions

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Despite US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “positive statements” after her meetings with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, criticisms from the Arab side escalated on Sunday.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat denounced Clinton’s proclamation of “unprecedented” concessions from the Israeli side:
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Tags: Arab League, Benjamin Netanyahu, Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Hillary Clinton, Hosni Mubarak, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, King Abdullah of Jordan, Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah, Palestine, Petra News Agency, Saeb Erakat

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CNN, which is desperate to ensure that Christiane Amanpour is The Most Important Broadcaster in the History of the World, has not released the video of Monday’s roundtable at George Washington University with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. They have released the transcript, however.

The significance of the discussion is diluted because the first 2/3 of it is one of the worst interviews I have ever read. Forget Amanpour’s fawning and gushing about “the annals of recent history”, the first few minutes devoted to Clinton and Gates saying We are the Best of Friends, the opening substantive question, “Do you think you can win in Afghanistan?”, and the close in which Amanpour says that we have to fight in Afghanistan for “the young people”.

Almost nothing of importance is said about Afghanistan, even though the Obama Administration is on the cusp of a decision about another military escalation. There is no critique of what another 40,000 troops would mean, only scare words about Al Qa’eda and the Taliban. The conversation is slanted with the further question, “By scaling back over the next 12 to 18 months, you can win in Afghanistan?”, so Clinton and Gates can say, “No”, and avoid any specific consideration of the difficulties of escalation.

The only passage of interest is Frank Sesno’s challenge that the “non-military” dimension of US efforts is “only a drop in the bucket”. Clinton does not refute that point, instead she tellingly shifts the conversation, “In order to operate in many of the places in Afghanistan, you have to have a level of security.So there has to be a commitment to make an area as secure as possible.”

Yet, instead of pressing the point that there are issues beyond security, Amanpour and Sesno walked away. There is no reference in the interview to alleged corruption affecting the development efforts. Indeed, the Afghan Presidential election, which took place two months ago and still has not been resolved amidst allegations of fraud, is never mentioned.

The conversation on Iran is far more interesting. Indeed, Clinton dropped in an important revelation when she said that the Geneva talks on Iran’s nuclear programme had produced an aggreement for “third-party enrichment” in principle. That shift from earlier reports of an agreement in practice matches Tehran’s account. And beyond the specifics, Clinton offered perhaps the best summary of the US engagement with Iran: “[The talks] buy time.”

Clinton was far more close-mouthed on Iran’s internal situation, offering only, “We’ve been very clear in supporting the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people and in speaking out forcefully against the irregularities of their electoral process.” However, note further down her confirmation that the State Department did make a significant intervention early in the post-election crisis: “We were told that Twitter just was going to have to shut down for 48 hours to do some upgrades to the software. So we called and said, “Please don’t shut down, because this is a major communications loop for people on the streets.”

AMANPOUR: Welcome. Welcome to you both.

We’ve been sort of searching back in the annals of recent history, and we can’t really find an example such as this, where two sitting secretaries, in charge of some of the most important briefs at the moment, are sitting on stage in an interview such as this.

So we just wanted to start by asking you, how often do you speak together? What is it like working together? Do you pick up the phone and call each other whenever you like? How does it work?
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Tags: al-Qaeda, Christiane Amanpour, David Petraeus, Frank Sesno, Hillary Clinton, James Jones, NATO, Pakistan, public diplomacy, Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, Taliban, Twitter

The Latest from Iran (6 October): Loud Noises, Quiet Manoeuvres

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On Sunday, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour followed up her interview with chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili with a discussion with Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran and Dr Ray Takeyh, formerly of the US State Department and now with the Council on Foreign Relations.

There is little here in the way of new analysis on the nuclear talks: Marandi is now CNN’s “go-to” academic for a view supporting the Iranian Government, and Takeyh will be generally supportive of an Obama strategy of engagement.

The key paragraph instead is on Iran’s internal situation. Note how Marandi links Iran’s sovereignty to the question of Ahmadinejad’s legitimacy, citing two very suspect opinion polls to put his central point. Accept the President and life will be a lot easier:

Iran is quite stable, and unlike what one often hears in the western media, I don’t think that the country is in any serious problem.

I think that it’s important for the American government to recognize that and to deal with the reality on the ground in Iran. If you’ll recall, Terror Free Tomorrow, they had a poll before the elections that showed that Mr. Ahmadinejad was well ahead. And then the more recent University of Maryland poll also showed that he won the elections, or he was far more popular than Mr. Mousavi.

This doesn’t go down well in the United States, I know. But I think that the United States, in order to be able to move towards rapprochement, and to be able to deal with Iran, they have to finally come to understand that Iran is not going to go away and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not going to collapse. If they do come to that recognition and they do come to respect the country, then I think that rapprochement would become much more easy, and I think that the Iranians are quite willing to move in that direction.

AMANPOUR: The Iranian government has invited hundreds of journalists, as well as six ambassadors from the so-called Non-Aligned Movement. There are no western countries represented here. Nonetheless, the Iranian government is saying that this is a transparency visit designed to show the world what it claims to be its peaceful nuclear program.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: That was early 2007, at another of Iran’s nuclear facilities near the city of Esfahan. So, nearly three years later, will the Geneva talks between Iran and the U.S. lead to a new era of dialogue?

We turn to Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, and to Ray Takeyh, a former adviser to the Obama administration on Iran.

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Tags: Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Ray Takeyh, Saeed Jalili, Seyed Mohammad Marandi

UPDATED Iran: Rafsanjani Makes A Public Move with “Friendship Principles”
Video: Sharif Uni Protest Against Javad Larijani (4 October)
The Latest from Iran (4 October): Waiting for Developments

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2030 GMT. Harrumph, harrumph. The Financial Times, which is vying with The Times of London to be the at-hand Government channel for “news”, uses several hundred words as a backdrop for this fist-shaking from “a senior British government official”:

It is important that IAEA inspectors are given access to Qom immediately. We regret that Iran is delaying this until October 25. We see no reason for a delay. What possible reason can there be for it?

Given that the IAEA and even most of the Obama Administration welcomed the agreement, one has to wonder whether this is the same “rogue” British official who gave the FT their recent non-story on “secret Iran nuclear arms plan”, whether this is a concerted London effort to play “tough cop” alongside a more conciliatory US, or whether Gordon Brown’s Government has decided it really doesn’t want meaningful negotiations.

1945 GMT: We’re not asleep. It’s just a very slow night for news, and we’re also suffering from a bit of fatigue after a heavy academic day.

However, I think you can look forward to some new analysis on Hashemi Rafsanjani by the morning. And we’re trying valiantly to track down the video of last night’s interview on CNN by Christiane Amanpour of Ray Takeyh, formerly of the National Security Council, and Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran.  (Coincidentally, I’ve worked with both on academic projects.)

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Tags: Abdollah Momeni, Christiane Amanpour, CNN, David Sanger, Etemade Melli, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Hossein Taeb, Iran, Iran Elections 2009, Kalemeh, Khabar Online, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Mohammad Atrianfar, Mohammad el Baradei, Mohammad Javad Larijani, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Nazila Fathi, New York Times, Ray Takeyh, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Shahab Tabatabaei, The Times

Iran’s Nuclear Programme: Obama Remarks on Geneva Talks
The Latest from Iran (1 October): From Geneva to “Unity”?

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Tags: Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Iran, Nuclear Proliferation, Saeed Jalili