Iran

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Council officials in the Bush Administration, wrote in May that "the Obama Administration has done nothing to cancel or repudiate an ostensibly covert but well-publicized program, begun in President George W. Bush's second term, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to destabilize the Islamic Republic."

As Iranians took to the streets to protest a fraudulent election last month, braving tear gas, batons and bullets, pressure mounted on President Obama to take a tougher stand against the Islamic Republic's repression of peaceful dissent. Some said the president's statements were too soft. Others argued that Obama should refrain from picking sides, lest he present a pretext for hard-liners to label the protesters American stooges.

People began to argue: What should Obama do? I'd like them to ask another question: What should ordinary Americans do?

Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council who has long advocated engaging Iran, notes that President Nixon opened relations with China under Mao Zedong, who is held responsible for more peacetime deaths of his own people than Hitler in Germany and Stalin in the Soviet Union.

"Foreign policy is not about making you feel good," he says. "It's about serving interests." Original article

Afshin Molavi, an Iran expert at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera that the "Guardian Council is not necessarily an impartial arbiter here".

Molavi pointed out that the council's members are all appointed directly or indirectly by Ayatollah Ai Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who has backed Ahmadinejad's victory.

A generation of American activists was inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which promised moral clarity amid the cruel compromises of the cold war. As Barack Obama vividly explained in Dreams from My Father, he was one of them. Given the foreign policy dilemmas that the president will face in the years ahead, it's worth thinking through the lessons of the South African transition.

"There is a rich tradition of conspiracy theory in Iran," said Afshin Molavi, an Iran expert at the New America Foundation, adding that the word ...

On June 26, Sir Richard Dalton, the former UK ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran and an associate fellow with the Middle East & North Africa Program at the Chatham House, joined Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation to shed light on current events in Iran and what the long term effects of the Iranian election will be.

Afshin Molavi, a fellow with the New America Foundation and the author of “The Soul of Iran,” joins Martin Savidge to discuss what role the US and other countries can play in ending Iran's conflict and how the protests may evolve.

After watching President Obama's latest press briefing, I've reached a troubling conclusion: For the good of America and the world, the man badly needs a regular supply of nicotine.

Though smoking will undoubtedly put the president at grave risk of developing a serious illness, it also will keep him from lashing out at innocent reporters and, behind closed doors, any number of worshipful subordinates.

Although bloody images continue to be replayed on American television, the protests that broke out in Tehran following Iran's presidential election on June 12 are, predictably, dwindling. They are fading because further demonstrations would no longer be about alleged election irregularities but, rather, would be a challenge to the Islamic Republic itself --something only a small minority of the initial protesters support.