The Iranian Regime's Lobby in the U.S. vs the Israeli Lobby

Here are a few links regarding both the Iranian Regime's Lobby in the U.S. and the Israeli Lobby in the U.S., which has taken a hard stance against Iran.

This link is about the Iranian Lobby in the U.S. It argues that "The Iranian regime has always tried to frame its confrontation with the international community and its own people, as a battle between Iran and Israeli."

This link summarises the key points made in the new book critical of the Israeli Lobby by John Maersheimer and Stephen Walt. They visited Berkeley just last week. I would suggest picking up the book because it has a chapter on Iran.

And finally, this is a link to AIPAC's (America's Pro-Israeli lobby) homepage. Their main story for today involves the sanctions on Iran.

Though this post does not count towards a blog posting comment, comments are welcome.

The Rise and Fall of the Reformists

This week we talked about Khatami and the reform movement in Iran. For this post, you will need to answer one or more of the following three questions:

1. Describe some of the impediments Khatami experienced during his presidency. Why did the reformists "fall," so to speak?

2. Do you feel that the "dialogue of civilizations" is an idea that can succeed in the world we live in? How does it deviate from our Western mode of thinking? Use citations from Khatami's text, located in the reader.

3. Do you think Khatami made the right choice by not supporting the student uprising of 1999?

Iran-Iraq War

This week we went over the Iran-Iraq war.

You can view a gallery of photos here. You can also view the surprisingly catchy Iranian propaganda song and video here.

For this post, I am interested to hear some of your views on many of the controversial moves on behalf of Iran and the world during the war. Once again you can answer as many of these questions as you like.

Without knowing the outcome, was the decision of Iran to counter-invade Iraq after two years the right one?

Do you feel it was right for the world, which felt threatened by Iran, to provide Iraq with both military support and chemical weapons?

How do you feel about Iran using human wave attacks, child soldiers, and human mine detectors (knowing that they helped Iran defend itself)?

In light of understanding more about the war, do you feel like you understand Iran's position (in terms of foreign policy) better?

Have a good week guys, keep on the lookout for more opportunities to post.

-Amir

Back to Tehran

Here you can read various opinions about Ahmadinejad after his visit to New York.