Roundup: Media's Take

Nathan Gonzalez: Learning from Iran's Past Revolutions

[Nathan Gonzalez is author of Engaging Iran: The Rise of a Middle East Powerhouse and America’s Strategic Choice (Praeger, 2007), and the upcoming The Sunni-Shia Conflict and the Iraq War: Understanding Sectarian Violence in the Middle East. ] The last one and a half centuries of modern Iranian history have been marked by recurring popular revolts in the streets of Tehran and throughout the rest of the country. Among the countless uprisings, three stand out as dramatic examples of a

Tom Friedman: The Green Revolution(s)

... I believe in “The First Law of Petro-Politics,” which stipulates that the price of oil and the pace of freedom in petrolist states — states totally dependent on oil exports to run their economies — operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because leaders have to educate and unleash their people to innovate and trade. As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down because leaders just have to stick a pipe in the ground to stay

Daniel Gross: A Recession in Dog Years

[ A native of East Lansing, Michigan, Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the

Ali Ansari: Why Iran is obsessed with the British

[Professor Ali Ansari is director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.] In a briefing to heads of foreign missions in Tehran this week, Manochehr Mottaki, the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, lambasted the West for its criticism of the Iranian elections. Taking his lead from the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr Mottaki reserved his severest criticism for Britain. In what must rank as one of the most idiotic st

Gregory Scoblete: The War on Obama's Realism

[Gregory Scoblete is an associate editor at RealClearWorld.] The recent protests in Iran have revealed deep fractures in the ruling elite - and I'm not talking about Iran. Closer to home, a debate has erupted over whether President Obama should be speaking out more forcefully on behalf of the protesters on the streets of Tehran, or whether his rhetorical restraint is a mark of wisdom. The debate has given the president's neoconservative critics a chance to kill two birds with one st

Edward Luttwak: Iran's Regime Will Never Be the Same

[Mr. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace" (Belknap, 2002).] At this point, only the short-term future of Iran's clerical regime remains in doubt. The current protests could be repressed, but the unelected institutions of priestly rule have been fatally undermined. Though each aspect of the Islamic Republic has its own dynamic, this is not a regime that can last many more y

Frank Ching: China would benefit from Zhao's beliefs

[Frank Ching is senior columnist at the South China Morning Post.] The publication of the secretly recorded memoirs of former Chinese party leader Zhao Ziyang, who spent the last 16 years of his life under house arrest for opposing the crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, provides a rare glimpse into how high-level politics works in China. The memoirs show that, as widely suspected, Deng Xiaoping was the one who decided to call in the troops eve

Richard Cohen: President Cool Plays It Right

[Richard Cohen is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on domestic and foreign politics. His column appears on Tuesdays. (Courtesy, The Washington Post).] The foreign policy sins of the United States fall into two categories: commission and omission. The commission ones include the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and a one-time Latin American policy tailored to the needs of United Fruit Co. The sins of omission are less well-known. They include the failure to redeem the hollow promi

Christopher Hitchens: Persian Paranoia and the Anglo-Saxon blame game

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, now out in paperback.] I have twice had the privilege of sitting, poorly shaved, on the floor and attending the Friday prayers that the Iranian theocracy sponsors each week on the campus of Tehran University. As everybody knows, this dreary, nasty ceremony is occasionally enlivened when the scrofulous preacher leads the crowd in a robotic chant of Marg Bar Amrika

Joshua Muravchik: The Abandonment of Democracy

[Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. His new book, The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East, has just been released by Encounter.] The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its prim

Nabil Al-Hadithy: A Muslim Lectures Obama

[Nabil Al-Hadithy heads Berkeley's toxic management division addressing hazardous waste problems. He graduated in Geology from University of London in 1975 and obtained Master's Degree from Cranfield University in Material Science in 1977 and doctorate in Welding Technology in 1982. He joined City of Berkeley in 1993 as HazMat Inspector and then became HazMat Manager. An Iraqi, he voted in the country's elections.] Obama delivered a complex speech on June 4th in Cairo to the Muslim and

David R. Stokes: The Amazing Colossal Presidency

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] In April of 1979, a week or so after the nuclear-near-disaster at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Saturday Night Live did a sketch featuring Dan Akroyd as President Jimmy Carter. Playing on the idea that Carter had a background in engineering and nuclear physics, Akroyd insisted on visiting a place called cryptically, “Two Mile Island,” and his character was exposed to contaminated water.

Christina Romer: The lessons of 1937

[Christina Romer is the chairwoman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers and a scholar of the Depression]. AT A recent congressional hearing I cautiously noted some “glimmers of hope” that the economy could stabilise and perhaps start to rebound later in the year. I was asked if this meant that we should cancel much of the remaining spending in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I responded that the expected recovery was both months away and predicated

Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Koran and the Ballot Box

[Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former Middle Eastern specialist in the C.I.A.’s clandestine service.] WHATEVER happens in Iran in the aftermath of this month’s fraudulent elections, one thing is clear: we are witnessing not just a fascinating power struggle among men who’ve known each other intimately for 30 years, but the unraveling of the religious idea that has shaped the growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism since the cr

Robin Wright: The evolution of Iran's revolution

[Robin Wright, the author of "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East," has been covering Iran since 1973. She is a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.] How ironic. A regime that came to power through a brutal revolution, in a country suspected of secretly developing a nuclear weapon, is now facing its biggest challenge from peaceful civil disobedience. The largely silent street demonstrations by day and ha

Amir Taheri: The end of the Khomeinist regime?

[Amir Taheri's new book is "The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution."] BILLED as "unity prayers," yesterday's congregation at Tehran University's campus instead highlighted the deep divisions that are tearing apart the Khomeinist ruling elite. The gathering was supposed to reassert the authority of "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei and defuse the crisis triggered by the "re-election" of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A

Jonathan Lyons: Khamenei's Past Power Play against the Clerics May Be Haunting Him

[Jonathan Lyons, Reuters Tehran bureau chief from 1998-2001, is the co-author of Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in 21st-Century Iran. His latest book, The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Press.] As the latest political drama unfolds in Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may yet come to rue the day, in 1999, that he sought to muzzle one of the nation’s most important constituencies – the handful o

Paul Rogat Loeb: Gutting the Health Care Plan

[Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org ] Will serious health reform meet the fate of the scorpion and the turtle? In that fable, the scorpion pleads with the turtle

Gary Sick: Is this another Iranian revolution?

To someone who has watched and studied the Iranian revolution of 1979 with fascination, developments in Iran today have an eerie reminiscence. Then there were massive protests that filled the streets, often marching in dignified but ominous silence; there was bloodshed as nervous security men with guns faced determined but unarmed crowds; there were sullen mourning parades; there were catchy chants and ritual calls of "Down with the shah!"; at night the rooftops rang with shouts of all

Stanley B. Greenberg: Why health care reform could fail again

[Stanley B. Greenberg is the author of Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders. ] Nothing brings on a headache quite like health care reform. My head has throbbed lately, as Congress has begun to consider a serious overhaul--a debate that forces me to recall the painful last time we embarked on a similar effort some 16 years ago. At the time, I was conducting polls for Bill Clinton and, on the eve of his address to a joint session of Congress in