Last week the Iranians passed on a mysterious plan for resolving the standoff over its uranium enrichment program to a visiting Russian delegation. On Friday, the EU3+3 agreed on an equally mysterious package of incentives aimed at getting Iran to halt its program. That looked to me like the makings of a round of negotiations, but according to an informed European source, the EU3+3 package has been in the works for the past few months, and Russian FM Sergei Lavrov made no mention of the Iranian proposal during the meetings. So far, the only thing that’s been revealed about the [...]
President George W. Bush has been dismissed as a lame duck, but it appears that significant elements of the doctrine that bears his name will endure long after he leaves the White House. Although we haven't heard much about the Bush Doctrine in recent years, its impact on American foreign policy—both positive and negative—is as significant as it is misunderstood. The doctrine is generally associated with the preventive war against Iraq, but it has more than one component. The first was unveiled during Bush's address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, long before the U.S. swept [...]
While in Tajikistan on March 24, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottak declared that Tehran had submitted an official application to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The announcement launched a wave of speculation about whether the other SCO countries would agree to elevate Tehran’s status. By mid-April, it had become evident that Iran’s application did not at present enjoy the required unanimous consent of the other full SCO members. Iran became a formal observer nation at the July 2005 SCO summit, but Tehran has eagerly sought to upgrade its status since then. India, Mongolia, and Pakistan [...]
