Iran Roundup – News and Commentary

The situation is so fluid on the ground, that I hesitate to comment, This post is a collection of news articles and commentary I personally found educational and enlightening. I start with a quote which expresses my own feelings about what is going on. It seems exceedingly strange to me that I quote a sitting President as the person who most eloquently expresses my own feelings. But Barack Obama does have a gift with words, and he is an exceptionally kind and intelligent man:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

I’m not sure how I feel about all this Twitter stuff. It is fascinating to get up-to-the-minute and unfiltered commentary from people directly experiencing the event. For those who want a “real-time” twitter-based feed on the web, this page should be of interest. Personally, I prefer human editing. I don’t always agree with him, but no one can deny Andrew Sullivan is super bright and insightful, and his blog is doing an excellent job of providing human-edit updates on the situation.

The New Yorker, as always, is my best and favorite source of intelligent reading. There are several articles of interest by Laura Secor including this comment from the day after and a piece from later in the week. This week’s issue has many pieces on Iran (and much other interesting material) with Laura Secor providing the comment, which is the best introduction to all the players involved that I have read anywhere. Don’t miss Letter from Teheran either. For those who like me never heard of the Basij before, John Anderson enlightens us.

Not too long ago I brought a piece by Roger Cohen (who in the past was not always my favorite commentator). He has another excellent commentary here.

The Wall Street Journal had to interesting articles which I hope you can access without a subscription. The first is on behind the scene diplomacy and the roles of the US and Europe (which is a pretty unbiased article given the Rupertization of the WSJ). The second is entitled Iran’s Web Spying Aided by Western Technology.

Finally, there has to be an Israel angle, no? A day after the election I saw a headline in Ha’aretz which basically declared that Ahmadinejad’s victory was good for Israel. I nearly puked. Bernard Avishai does an excellent job of expressing my own feelings on right-wing Israeli/US neo-con reactions.

Tags: Iran