EDITORIALS, OP-EDS, NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

The Right Way to Engage Iran
Washington Post, December 28, 2007 (Registration Required)
by Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow), Abbas Milani (Research Fellow).

As the year draws to a close, it's important to note that the U.S. debate on Iran is stalled, trapped between "regime changers" vs. "arms controllers," "hawks" vs. "doves," and "idealists" vs. "realists..."

Pious Populist
Boston Review, November 17, 2007
by Abbas Milani (Research Fellow).

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won a surprise election victory in 2005, has descended into infamy in the United States as a dangerous demagogue and an anti-Semite...

Iran-U.S. Talks Offer Some Hope
ABC 7 News (CA), May 15, 2007
Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is quoted in this article.

The U.S. and Iran talk tough, but they are talking, even as Iran's president and Vice President Dick Cheney trade barbs...

British captives shown on TV
San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2007
Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is quoted in this article.

Diplomatic tensions between London and Tehran continued to rise Wednesday, as British officials demanded the release of 15 of its sailors and marines captured by Iranian forces and decried the captives' appearance on Iranian television...

CA Lawmakers To End Iran Financial Ties
ABC 7 News (CA), March 28, 2007
Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is quoted in this article.

California lawmakers took the first step toward dumping $24 billion dollars in investments in companies that do business with Iran...

China, Russia Call on Iran to Heed U.N. Nuclear Demands
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, March 26, 2007
. Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is interviewed.

Four days after Iran seized 15 British sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf and took them to Tehran for questioning, Iran showed no sign of backing down from its foreign minister's tough words yesterday...

U.S. Launches New Talks To Secure Iraq
ABC 7 News (CA), February 27, 2007
Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is quoted in this article.

There's been a dramatic shift in policy in the search for peace in Iraq: the Bush administration has agreed to official talks with Iran and Syria...

What Scares Iran’s Mullahs?
New York Times, February 23, 2007 (Registration Required)
by Abbas Milani (Research Fellow).

Iran has once again defied the United Nations by proceeding with enrichment activities, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported yesterday...

No False Choices: Chuck Hagel's Foreign Policy Roadmap
Huffington Post, February 23, 2007
. Abbas Milani (Research Fellow) is quoted.

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) yesterday afternoon gave an important speech on US-Iran relations at the University of Nebraska at Kearney's James E. Smith Conference on World Affairs...

Iran's weakened hard-liners crave a US attack
Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2007
by Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow), Abbas Milani (Research Fellow), Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow).

From the rhetoric of President Bush to his dispatch of Patriot air-defense systems and a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, there are growing signs that the Bush administration is showing its willingness to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis with a preemptive military attack...

Congress must stop an attack on Iran
Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2007
by Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow).

Despite anguish and anger over the Bush administration's decision to escalate its failing war in Iraq, Congress is unlikely to cut off funding...

How experts view a strike against Iran
San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 2006
by Abbas Milani (Research Fellow), Kori Schake (Research Fellow).

Simple logic shows the fallacy of the military option...

Iran president missing badly: Ahmadinejad's crisis deepens as he endangers the petro-loot
San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2006
by Abbas Milani (Research Fellow).

The crisis in Lebanon has been a rude awakening for Iran's populist, fiery and forked-tongue president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…

The U.S. and Egypt: Giving up on the 'liberty doctrine'
International Herald Tribune, July 3, 2006
by Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow), Amr Hamzawy.

Has President George W. Bush given up on his liberty doctrine? From Libya to Iran to Azerbaijan, the Bush administration appears to have downgraded the importance of democracy promotion in the last several months. Nowhere, however, has a new indifference to democracy been more striking than in Egypt…

Inside Iran's Fractured Regime
Washington Post, June 25, 2006 (Registration Required)
by Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow), Abbas Milani (Research Fellow).

For weeks, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has insisted that there are no fissures in the Iranian regime…

What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable
June 14, 2006 (Subscription Required)
by Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow).

In his trenchant analysis, Stephen Biddle ("Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon," March/April 2006) argues that the escalating violence in Iraq is not a nationalist insurgency, as was the Vietnam War, but rather a "communal civil war" and that it must therefore be addressed by pursuing a strategy different from "Vietnamization": if the United States were simply to turn over responsibility for counterinsurgency to the new Iraqi army and police forces, it would risk inflaming the communal conflict, either by empowering the Shiites and the Kurds to slaughter the Sunnis or by enabling a Trojan horse full of Sunni insurgents to penetrate the multiethnic security forces and undermine them…

Democracy as a New International Norm?
June 16, 2003
by Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow).

As the going gets rough in Iraq and budgets deficits bloat in this country, the president may be tempted to let his doctrine of liberty morph into a smaller doctrine of stability.

What about Iran?
October 14, 2002
by Michael McFaul (Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow).

The current ambiguity about American plans for Iran strengthens hard-liners and weakens the prodemocratic movement because no one wants to appear unpatriotic.