July 7 - The
latest report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker confirmed that the US is
involved in counterinsurgency and black ops inside Iranian territory. The report
came out just weeks after the AIPAC policy conference, where presidential
hopeful John McCain told crowds that a nuclear-armed Iran is a danger we cannot
allow and that Iran poses an existential threat to the state of Israel,
underlining his camp's demonizing of Iran.
Trita Parsi,
president of the National Iranian American Council, says this is the
continuation of a failed policy which has "imposed a significant cost on the
Iranian people", but not translated into a change in the policies of the Iranian
government. According to Parsi, sanctions have the most influence in the context
of a negotiation, and McCain has made it clear â€" he will never go to the
table.
His Democratic
counterpart, Barack Obama, has emphasized the need for negotiations, and has
sparked the interest of the Jewish-American community and Iranians alike.
Sixty-two percent of the Jewish-American community supports Obama, according to
some polls. In Tehran, "there is a mystery that the next president of the United
States may not only be African-American, but may also have a Muslim father and a
Hussein as his middle name." Parsi tells The Real News Network's Pepe Escobar,
"That actually can give the United States significant political capital that it
can again utilize in the Middle East, but only in the context of negotiations."
The consensus
among the Iranian-American community, much like the majority of the American
population, Parsi says, is "that war would have tremendously negative
consequences, and that it would be un-American to even vote for a military
solution prior to having exhausted all other options."
To hear more,
watch the full interview on
The Real News Network
Lieberman wants stronger action against Iran
July 7 - On Sunday, Senator Joe
Lieberman appeared on the ABC program "This Week." Lieberman, a strong supporter
of John McCain, claimed that not only Israel but also Arab nations want the US
to stop Iran's nuclear program.
"I would say that, obviously, Israel
is first in the line of Iranian fire, and it represents an existential threat to
Israel. But you know who's next? The Arab countries in the Middle East,"
Lieberman asserted. "And they're worried about the Iranian program and want us
to act strongly to stop it." He did not say which Arab states he was talking
about, nor did he quote the National Intelligence Estimate produced by US
intelligence agencies that said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in
2003. In recent months, there have been many high-level visits between Iran and
many Gulf states, as well as attempts that are being made to reestablish
relations between Iran and Egypt since they were cut off in 1981.
Senator Jack Reed, who has backed
Senator Barack Obama for president, said that more was needed to be done
diplomatically, as military actions by Israel would have dire consequences for
the region: "I think we have to seize the time. As short as it might be, we have
to seize the time for a diplomatic approach sincerely."
Watch the full story on
The Real News Network.
