The Obama Administration has used its Presidential sharpie to drawa big oval around the ‘October 1′ on the White House calendar.
That’s the day U.S. plans to sit down (with 4 other nations) and talk with longtime arch enemy Iran.
“Death to America” Iran? “Axis of Evil” Iran”?
That’s the one.
“Axis of Evil”Iran and the “Great Satan”US have been ticked off with each other for a couple of decades. Now there are claims Iran is building nuclear weapons. Some even fear a war is a possibility between the two nations.
So you can imagine this little chat could be, well, a little important.
We here at USDemocrazy have been checking out what folks smarter than us have to say about this event… here’s what we’ve learned:
First, the Wall Street Journal Online helps us get the gist of what the conference will be about:
The event, whose location hasn’t been decided, won’t be a “formal negotiation,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Solana said. There will be no set agenda or specific goals. Instead, she said, it will serve as an opportunity to question Iran on a proposal it released last week calling for a discussion with the international community on a range of security and development issues.
Iran may want to chat about a “on a range of security and development issues” but the US will likely want to talk nukes.
Michael Adler at the Daily Beast says that despite tough Iranian rhetoric, there could be a real opportunity here.
Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran… told reporters in Vienna on Monday: “Once it comes to discussion, everyone is free to pose any question they wish.”
Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal Online Opinion is crying “nay!” and saying that we are pushing war upon Israel:
Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between.
The NYTimes Editorial is saying that there is a serious opportunity here, and its time to act:
Paul Reynolds at the BBC, on the other hand, says maybe its time for the U.S. to hold up:
General Dr John Chipman said: “Domestically, [President] Obama may have campaigned on the theme ‘yes we can’; internationally he may increasingly have to argue ‘no we can’t'”.
And just to complicate the maddening, Sharon Otterman at the NYTimes says that signs of war crimes are afoot in a volatile area:
A United Nations fact-finding mission investigating the three-week war in Gaza issued a lengthy, scathing report on Tuesday that concluded that both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups “committed actions amounting to war crimes,” and possibly crimes against humanity.
Could this further complicate an already hairy negotiation situation? What is going to happen? What should happen? We want to hear from YOU!
