Archive for the ‘American Policy’ Category

WPO Survey of Iranian Attitudes towards US, Iranian Governments

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

The World Public Opinion, an established polling organization, “a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland” came out with a randomly selected poll of slightly over 1000 Iranians. The WPO’s summary of the results are published on its website, including a link to PDF files with the survey’s full findings and its methodology. A very good analysis is published on Gary Sick’s blog.

In this post I want to examine the questions Gary Sick raises. I believe that many of the issued raised in it can be explained by a general desire “to say the right thing.” However, the evidence can be otherwise interpreted. The italicized are abridged passages from his blog. They are followed by my comments.

Click here to see the rest of the article.

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An Interview on Iran’s Crisis with Steve Clemons in al-Sharq al-Awsat

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Will Iran Instigate a Foreign Crisis from a Domestic Crisis?

ash-Sharq al-Awsa, July 2, 2009

by Huda al-Huseini

Every dictatorial regime needs to be condemned. It refuses to “grant” its people the “favor” of recognition, for that is the manifestation of the rejection of many of the methods of that system. It wants to dwarf its people’s aspirations, but at the height of a crisis, the dictatorial regime has to determine whom to blame. It wants to retain the option to open towards the United States, but as for Great Britain, there is plenty available to confirm the accusation that it is inciting the Iranian people against its leaders. From the beginning of this year, Iran was concerned with the BBC’s opening of a Persian-language television station beaming towards Iran and Afghanistan. The dictatorial regime was able to destroy the static and the mobile, but how could it destroy what is in the ether? But when this regime felt it was weakening, it arrested Iranian employees working in the British embassy in Tehran.  The accusation was for foreign consumption, but aimed at strengthening its hold over the people. The Iranian government’s confrontation of the demonstrators or opponents from among the Iranian people have been turned from a resistance to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i and the “confirmed” president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and driven underground. But a division exists between the reformists and the rest. The government never trusted the people and this shows the leadership’s weakness.Click here to see the rest of the article.

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