Friday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 8.19.2005:

The Free World's Guess

NY Sun, Eli Lake :

"Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary state." This quote is from an August 1978 CIA assessment of a government five months away from being toppled by the first modern Islamic revolution.

The phrase, however, could easily belong to many of the Bush administration's top analysts ...

Brave leaders of Iran's democracy movement, men such as Akbar Ganji, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, and Ahmad Batebi, should not be discouraged by the free world's recent guesswork. Read More

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• VOA News reported U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded the release of Iranian dissident journalist, Akbar Ganji.
  
• KRSI published English translations of their famous Iranian interrogation videos.
• Alain Peters provided some interesting underreported news from the Middle-East.
• Khaleej Times Online reported that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the US of being behind the terrorist bombings in Iraq.
• Radio Free Europe published a brief series of interviews with experts on Iran's pursuit of the nuclear-fuel cycle and its lack of political transparency.
• Voice of America News reports that while the world community has been focused on Iran's nuclear ambitions, Tehran has also been developing and deploying ballistic missiles that some believe could further destabilize the region and prompt an arms race.
• The Heritage Foundation published an Executive Memorandum: Dealing with Iran's Resurgent Hardliners.
• The Vermont Guardian reported Iranian newspapers argue that an embargo on oil sales to the United States and European countries as the most potent economic weapon for settling scores.
• Victor Davis Hanson, Chicago Tribune ponders: Is it best to let others handle terrorists and rogue states through diplomacy and conciliation, or is American proactive intervention to prompt democracy in the place of tyranny the wiser course of action?
• Michael Ledeen, The National Review reminds us that Iran is waging war on us, we are well aware of it, and we are not responding.
• The Guardian UK reported Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that Western allegations his country is secretly trying to make weapons are a propaganda trick to deceive their own public opinion.
• And finally, Yahoo News reported Sen. Chuck Hagel called for the United States to open talks with Iran's new president.