iran

Reid Wilson has the first look at a resolution being pushed by Republican National Committee member Jim Bopp, author of the infamous “socialist” resolution, that would aim to prevent future NY-23 disasters by requiring that candidates agree to at least seven of 10 issue promises in order to receive financial support from the RNC. After [...]

It’s still not a definitive rejection of the deal reached in Vienna to reprocess Iran’s uranium abroad into a matter unsuitable for a nuclear weapon, but it’s not nothing, either:
Iran’s foreign minister said in remarks reported Wednesday that he opposes sending the country’s enriched uranium abroad under a tentative deal negotiated with the United States [...]

Marc Ambinder has a seriously detailed curtain-raiser on a turf war that’s roiled the intelligence community for months. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, have clashed over who controls the top U.S. intelligence officer in various foreign countries. But Ambinder goes way deeper to provide a [...]

The International Atomic Energy Agency, after inspecting the recently disclosed nuclear facility at Qom, suspects there may be more:
International inspectors who gained access to Iran’s newly revealed underground nuclear enrichment plant voiced strong suspicions in a report on Monday that the country was concealing other atomic facilities. [...]

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last week urged Iran to stop stalling and accept a proposal formally put forward in Vienna by the so-called P5+1 nations to enrich Iranian uranium in Europe to a form unsuitable for nuclear weapons. “We are not altering” the deal, she said. Well, maybe-maybe-not.

So, what was at Iran’s nuclear facility at Qom, anyway?
U.N. inspectors found “nothing to be worried about” in a first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran last month, the International Atomic Energy chief said in remarks published Thursday.

“Political isolation is something the Iranians are very much concerned about,” said Thomas Pickering, who served as undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, arguing that continued diplomacy gave the U.S. the leverage of presenting Iran with a united coalition.

I just got back from a panel on the Hill sponsored by the National Iranian-American Council, one of the premier organizations within the Iranian diaspora, about next steps in U.S.-Iranian nuclear negotiations. But as an organization that helped lead the drumbeat in the U.S. to support the Iranian dissident movement after the stolen June election, [...]

Already circulating through the Twitterverse, thanks to @TehranBureau: this video, in which Iranian dissidents clearly chant that they don’t want an atom bomb (after the jump).

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolutionary capture of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. But instead of the typical anti-American protests, the Iranian dissidents are clashing with regime forces. The Wall Street Journal:
The scale of the opposition protests — and the government crackdown — was unclear early Wednesday, but wire services and state-controlled media [...]