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TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on US President Barack Obama on Monday to face him in a televised one-on-one debate to see who has the best solutions for the world’s problems. The provocative proposal comes as Iran deals with a new wave of international sanctions — driven by Washington - aimed at putting pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. “Toward the end of summer we will hopefully be there for the (UN) General Assembly and I will be ready for one-on-one talks with Obama, in front of the media of course,” Ahmadinejad told a conference of Iranian expatriates...

Libya chairing the old Human Rights Commission served to discredit that rotten institution once and for all. The UN's Economic and Social Council has just elected Iran to a seat on the UN's women's rights commission - formally known as the Commission on the Status of Women. There's more yet. Iran has also just obtained three other seats. Iran is one of 16 new members just elected to four year terms on the Commission of Science and Technology for Development. Maybe they can provide handy tips on capacity-building for nuclear bomb technology. Iran was also just elected to the governing...

Forget Iran, the Obama administration appears to be more worried about Israel’s nukes. It appears the next phase in the standoff over Iran’s apocalypse-inducing nuclear weapons program is beginning to come into focus. In the months ahead, don’t be surprised if the efforts of the Obama administration to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions become predicated on the nuclear disarmament of the Jewish state. Why is this likely? Simple: Such a mandate is the inevitable outgrowth of the foolish yet increasingly pervasive tendency to consider as equals the nuclear ambitions of Israel and Iran. This false moral equivalence between the nuclear programs...

Negotiations grind on toward a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's nuclear weapons program, even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference. Sanctions advocates acknowledge that the Security Council's ultimate product will do no more than marginally impede Iran's progress. In Congress, sanctions legislation also creaks along, but that too is simply going through the motions. Russia and China have already rejected key proposals to restrict Iran's access to international financial markets and choke off its importation of refined petroleum products, which domestically are in short supply. Any new U.S....

It was one of the most significant developments in the Obama presidency. We refer to the leak last week of an explosive top secret memo sent in January by the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to President Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, deploring the lack of planning concerning Iranian nuclear aspirations should the administration's much ballyhooed outreach approach fail. In itself, the memo's conclusion is nothing less than stunning - a senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, characterized the document as "a wake-up call." Yet the very fact that this highly classified analysis was leaked...

<p>KAMPALA, Uganda— Iran's president is in Africa this week to build alliances to evade stronger U.N. sanctions for his country's nuclear program, ease its international isolation and strengthen its economy.</p> <p>Both Zimbabwe and Uganda, the two countries President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting, have something to offer.</p>

Iran: A leaked memo from the defense secretary reveals the administration has no alternatives to stop Iran's nuclear push if "soft power" fails. This should be a wake-up call, but we continue snoozing toward Armageddon. President Obama campaigned on the notion that not talking to tyrants was not an option or a workable policy. He said he'd be willing to talk with anybody anywhere to bring peace and relieve tensions. Unlike President Theodore Roosevelt, however, he has been talking softly but forgetting about the big stick. A memo written by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and unearthed by the New York...

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command are updating military plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites, preparing up-to-date options for the president in the event he decides to take such action, an Obama administration official told CNN Sunday. The effort has been underway for several weeks and comes as there is growing concern across the administration's national security team that the president needs fresh options ready for his approval if he were to decide on a military strike, according to the official who is familiar with the effort. The official did not want to be identified because of the sensitive nature...

Only 5% think diplomacy and sanctions can stop Iran, AJC poll finds. Although a slim majority of American Jews supports the Obama administration’s handling of US-Israel relations, a larger majority opposes any Israeli concession on Jerusalem as part of a peace deal, a survey released over the weekend by the American Jewish Committee revealed. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they approved of the administration’s policy regarding US-Israel relations. But 61% also said Israel should not be “willing to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction” as part of the framework of a peace settlement.

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned his US counterpart Barack Obama of a "tooth-breaking" response, as he condemned Washington's new nuclear policy. Ahmadinejad lashed out after the United States unveiled new limits on use of the nation's nuclear arsenal, but suggested that exceptions could be made for "outliers" such as Iran and North Korea, both accused by the West of flouting UN resolutions concerning their nuclear programmes.

The rules of the great Iranian nuclear charade are simple: We pretend to punish the Iranians for the nuclear- weapons program that they pretend doesn't exist. The Obama administration is about to go to the UN Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions. Remember the first three rounds? Models of collective international action, they passed unanimously (with the exception of an abstention by Indonesia in 2008) while Iran spun ever-more centrifuges and enriched ever-more uranium. It's a two-track process. On one track, the West feels as though it's doing something; on the other, the Iranians advance the nuclear program...

The Obama administration is reported to be pressing key members of the U.S. Congress to allow more time before taking final action on legislation that would impose tough, unilateral sanctions on Iran. The president says he believes there can be success within weeks, rather than months, in building a tough sanctions resolution in the U.N. Security Council. Senator Joseph Lieberman called for quick action, describing new sanctions as a "last chance" for Iran. But efforts at the United Nations come amid increased concern in the U.S. Congress that Iran might be speeding up efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability....

The reported defection of an Iranian scientist to the United States has renewed speculation about a CIA plot to sabotage Iran's nuclear program through covert action. But it remains unclear whether Shahram Amiri, the young physics researcher who reportedly joined forces with the US spy agency, represents an intelligence coup for Washington or a minor setback for Tehran, former CIA officers said. ABC television reported that Amiri, who went missing without explanation in Saudi Arabia last year, had defected and resettled in the United States in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency. Amiri, in his thirties, worked at Tehran's Malek-Ashtar...

Obama Accepts a Nuclear Iran By Greg Sheridan US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation. This is the shifting tectonic plate in the Middle East. This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem....

Over the past three months, several prominent American think tanks and academic institutions have conducted simulation games about the Iranian crisis. Although these war games have nicely covered almost all facets of the problem, they have left one aspect mostly understudied: the nature of Iran's response to a U.S. or Israeli airstrike. I recently took part in two U.S. government-sponsored games in which the participants attempted to provide a modest assessment of that crucial issue. War simulation games are certainly not a new invention in government practice. Indeed, the history of strategy and that of simulation are inseparable. Ever since...

MARCH 25, 2010 U.S. Softens Sanction Plan Against Iran BY DAVID CRAWFORD, RICHARD BOUDREAUX, JOE LAURIA AND JAY SOLOMON VIENNA—The U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran in order to win support from Russia and China for a new United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter. Among provisions removed from the original draft resolution the U.S. sent to key allies last month were sanctions aimed at choking off Tehran's access to international banking services and capital markets, and closing international airspace and waters to Iran's national air...

The number three Republican in the House of Representatives today told reporters, "I never thought I'd live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the Jewish state of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem." Pence is a strong supporter of Israel and his remarks came just before a bipartisan meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Speaking of bipartisanship, Pence has penned a letter with Democrat Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. asking the administration to focus less attention on where Israelis are building settlements and pay more attention on Iran's push for nuclear weapons. Here's a copy of the letter,...

The chess-masters of Tehran have played a single combination for the past five years: threaten America's flanks in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to gain control of the center of the board, that is, by pushing on with a nuclear program that many suspect is designed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has sufficient assets in the territory of its troubled neighbors to make a shambles of America's Potemkin village. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki may be able to govern Iraq with a third of the seats contested in the March 7 parliamentary elections, provided that Iran's allies such as Shi'ite...

(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States this week will include a demand that U.S. President Barack Obama release previously-promised bunker-busting bombs, the Times of London reported Sunday. The bombs could be used in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are buried deep underground. The Iranian Fars news agency has quoted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the Busheur nuclear facility will be online by the summer.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama told Iranians in an online video message that the U.S. wants more educational and cultural exchanges, and lamented that Tehran's leaders have "turned their backs" on good faith overtures in the past to expand opportunities for their people.