Iran

Let's ask the right question. When, exactly, did the U.S.A. become "the decider" for which countries can possess the complete nuclear fuel cycle? Seems like déjà vu all over again for a run-up to war with Iran. Will the media please do their job: asking the right questions and demanding real answers, instead of buying in to political demagoguery. John Kelly, Parkville

A Parkville man was federally indicted on charges that he conspired with a man in Iran to export manufactured industrial products from the U.S., state's attorney's office said Thursday. Authorities believe Ali Saboonchi, 32, ran the Ace Electric Company to obtain goods to send them to businesses run by Arash Rashti Mohammad, 31, in Tehran, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates since November 2009, the five-count indictment said. U.S. economic sanctions prohibit exporting to Iran.

One of several casualties of the vitriolic name-calling between Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is what to do about Iran. In interviews, Mr. Romney has spoken about tougher sanctions, but it's been difficult to consider the candidates' positions on Iran -- or much else -- with the childish talk about who is the bigger liar. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, testified Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mr. Clapper said that while American sanctions are likely to have a greater impact on Iran's nuclear program, they are not expected to lead to the demise of Iran's leadership.

President Barack Obama's call during the State of the Union address to reduce the threat of nuclear war could not have been more timely. The day before the president spoke, North Korea tested a primitive nuclear device, and the following day reports surfaced of Iranian attempts to buy technology that would greatly speed up its production of weapons-grade uranium. Mr. Obama's remarks focused on cutting the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals in a way that maintains their deterrent function but reduces the chances of a conflict breaking out by accident or miscalculation.

Can anyone explain to me why it is OK for Israel to have a nuclear capability and not Iran ("Iran nuclear advances seen," Aug. 24)? Iran has never attacked its neighbors (other than the US-fostered war with Iraq); Israel has attacked all its neighbors and still illegally holds territory in Syria and Lebanon, not to mention Palestine. Israel has actually threatened to use its nuclear power, in its 1973 war with Egypt. Israel admits that Iran, even if it had a nuclear bomb, would not be foolish enough to use it against Israel.

An article in The Sun says that Iran has announced that it has produced a nuclear fuel rod and has test-fired a missile ("Iran says it has produced its first nuclear fuel rod," Jan. 2). Since the world hasn't yet seen fit to stop these maniacs, we might as well get to work designing a second Holocaust Memorial. Fred Michaelson, Baltimore

An attack on Iran would be foolhardy and unnecessary ("As rhetoric heats up over Iran, so do preparations," Aug. 30). Iran is a "non-nuclear weapon" party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and Iran's nuclear materials and facilities such as reactors are under full-time surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). There are two paths to a first-generation nuclear weapon. An "implosion" weapon can use either plutonium or highly-enriched uranium, but is fiendishly complicated to engineer and would require a test explosion for a semblance of reliability.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi's five steps for dealing with Iran are steps to confrontation disguised as an alternative to war ("Five steps to isolate Iran," Dec. 6). Sanctions are self-evidently counter-productive as a means to stop or alter Iran's nuclear research and development when the motive behind sanctions is punishment or regime change. The premise of the sanctions - that the problem is with Iran exclusively - ignores the nuclear neighborhood that Iran lives in and our own desire to dominate the region.

I rejoice with the friends and families of Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal as their ordeal ended in Evin Prison in Iran. As Mr. Bauer said at the Oman Airport, "Two years is too long in a prison. We sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and in Iran. " This reminded me of the plight of Ahmadi Muslims, hundreds of whom are behind bars under Pakistan's Anti-Ahmadiyya Ordinance XX issued in 1984. It imposes three years imprisonment for simple acts like calling places of worship mosques, performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, or even publishing religious materials.

President Barack Obama may have scored a diplomatic win by securing international support for biting sanctions against Iran, but Arab public opinion is moving in a different direction. Polling conducted last month by Zogby and the University of Maryland in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates suggests that views in the region are shifting toward a positive perception of Iran's nuclear program. These views present problems for Washington, which has counted on Arabs seeing Iran as a threat — maybe even a bigger one than Israel.

The column about a theoretical Mitt Romney presidency by Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. contains two serious flaws ("What if? Life under President Romney," Jan. 27). First, Mr. Ehrlich writes "... there would be a fiscal plan to cut $4 trillion of federal spending over the next four years. " In fact, not only did Mr. Romney never present any plan to help balance the budget, he proposed increasing the already bloated defense budget by $2 trillion over the next 10 years. Second, Mr. Romney's foreign policy was a disaster waiting to happen.

While many have persuasively argued that the fiscal cliff defense cuts would hurt innovation and slow our economic recovery, few offer concrete examples of how these catastrophic cuts would endanger our national security. Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons provides the perfect example. Intent on testing America's resolve to stop its nuclear program, Iran will accelerate its uranium enrichment if the U.S. cannot credibly threaten to use military force. Cutting warships, fighter jets, intelligence technologies, and other critical capabilities - as would happen if we go over the fiscal cliff - would encourage Iran to run out the diplomatic clock until it has built a nuclear ballistic missile.

Robert Ehrlich Jr.'s recent column ("Obama's foreign policy reset has little to show for it," Oct. 28) could not be further from the truth when it states that Iran is "oh-so-close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. " In fact, our own intelligence agencies have stated that Iran has neither nuclear weapons nor a weapons program and ended its former program in 2003. Mr. Ehrlich has been wrong about his support for a disastrous war in Iraq, his calling for military action in Iran and his willingness to allow Israel to dictate U.S. foreign policy.

After a two-week delay, the state Board of Public Works approved a $205 million contract Wednesday under which an arm of Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. will operate the Camden and Brunswick lines of the MARC commuter train system. The board's unanimous approval came after concerns over the level of minority business participation in the contract and Bombardier's links with Iran were resolved. The contract was removed from the board's agenda two weeks ago after the Maryland Minority Contractors Association raised concerns that the roughly 8 percent share of the work earmarked for minority contractors was insufficient.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is right to be disturbed by the Obama administration's flawed Middle East policy ("As Mideast burns, Obama fiddles," Sept. 30). Arab nations that formerly had governments that may not have been friendly but at least tolerated the U. S. now have rulers who mostly represent the Muslim Brotherhood and an agenda that is not only anti-democratic but anti-American. An even more serious foreign-policy failing in that region is the current administration's ambivalence and ambiguity regarding the security of Israel.

After listening to speeches during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, I concluded that both U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad do not take each other seriously. Mr. Obama repeated his old empty messages and declared again, "Make no mistake: A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. " The Iranian apocalyptic leader who has never engaged in serious discussions also declared again to the world his wishes to see the elimination of the state of Israel.

How fitting! On this year's Veterans' Day we're learning about the next war in the Middle East ("Iran and the bomb," Nov. 11). Now it's Iran that's in the crosshairs. In my opinion the Pentagon has become "too big to fail," and lessons from the recent banking debacles should be applied. Americans were tricked into a costly war with Iraq, and we're still bogged down in God-forsaken Afghanistan. Our extra-Constitutional military action in Libya was unacceptable, and the U.S. "global police force" is obscene.

I n streets across Iran, on rooftops late at night and city walls, the cry now is "Death to Khamenei!" and "Death to the dictator!" There is no question that the nationwide uprisings target nothing less than the foundation of Iran's ruling theocracy. After seven months of murder, rape and torture, the arrests of hundreds of dissidents, and a brutal crackdown in the streets, the theocratic regime has failed to turn back the movement. Both the opposition and the regime are on an irreversible path that can only lead to the latter's downfall.

President Barack Obama's surrogates were all over the political talk shows Sunday morning, proclaiming that the confusion as to what happened in Benghazi was a matter of bad intelligence. In fact, our intelligence showed it was safe enough to send our ambassador down there and house him in a facility that didn't meet the standards other embassies are required to meet. Given the challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed for the world to look at Iran and imagine a nuclear al-Qaida, a fair comparison given Iran's history of violence in the region, one can't help but wonder if the president's confident declarations that there is time yet for negotiations may be based on similarly faulty intelligence.

Israel is currently sounding off over what it views as the limited effectiveness of economic sanctions as a way of stopping Iran's nuclear weapons program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized President Obama's failure to specify what would provoke a U.S. military strike against existing Iran's nuclear facilities. Mr. Obama's current wait-and-see policy is clearly the wrong approach. Iran has no moral right to weapons of mass destruction, while Israel does have a moral right to prevent Iran from obtaining them.