US Action News

An Iranian official says Americans “must be dreaming” if they think they can intimidate Tehran into giving up its nuclear program. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea.

Charles Krauthammer at NRO – “[The United States and Israel] have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months.” — Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, July 26

Why did this take so long? The order freezes the U.S.-held assets of Gul Agha Ishakzai, head of the Taliban’s financial commission; Amir Abdullah, former treasurer to Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar; and Nasiruddin Haqqani, an emissary for the Haqqani Network. The order also prohibits U.S. businesses and individuals from engaging in any transactions with them.

BP remains one of the most active major western oil companies engaged in joint-venture energy projects with the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum outside of Iran. In the last five years, BP has begun extracting around 4 million cubic meters per day of natural gas from a field in Britain’s North Sea in a 50-50 joint venture with Iran, worth $1 million a day at June 15, 2010 spot prices.

“Isolation” may have failed to deflect Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but it does enjoy incessant repetition by the administration. Apart from the fact that isolation is hardly an end in itself and is pointless if Iran rushes headlong to become a nuclear power regardless, the very claim of Iran’s increasing isolation is increasingly implausible.

North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent U.N. sanctions, U.N. experts said.

It would be hard to say which specific foreign policy of the Obama administration is worst. Iran sanctions? Russian relations? Attacks on Israel for Jewish settlements in Jerusalem? Trashing the special relationship with Britain? Insulting the Canadians in their own capital? Failure to secure the border with Mexico? We have an entire menu of foreign policy disasters to consider. Maybe if your perspective is from above it all, standing up there as sort of God, it looks better. For those of us with our feet firmly on the ground, it looks less heavenly.

Wants exemption for firms based in China and Russia – and how is that supposed to pressure Iran?

The U.S. has backed away from pursuing tough sanctions against Iran in order to win support from Russia and China for a U.N. resolution.

Had the opposition “green movement” been successful with its Feb. 11 attempt to flood the streets of Tehran with hundreds of thousands of protesters on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the illegitimate regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have been dealt a severe blow.