sanctions

Berlin

German chancellor Angela Merkel's speech last week to the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) in Manhattan, when compared with her administration’s Iran policies, shows the gap between pro-Israel action and flowery pro-Israel rhetoric.

Berlin

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is slated to honor today in the city of Potsdam, just outside of Berlin, the Danish caricaturist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad and fanatical Islam triggered violent protests across the Muslim world in 2005. Westergaard will receive the “M100” media prize for his devotion (and unwavering courage) to press freedom.

The European Union announced today that it would be imposing robust sanctions on Iran, targeting its energy, shipping, insurance and financial sectors.

The European Union is slated this week to wrap up a new round of sanctions. Their goal is to force Iran to suspend its illicit nuclear program.

Here is Benjamin Netanyahu on Fox News with Chris Wallace: 

when the president [of the United States] says that he's determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table, I think that's the right statement of policy. ...the president's position that all options are on the table might actually have the only real effect on Iran...—if they think it's true.

Last year, Barack Obama and his crack foreign policy team (Valerie Jarrett? David Axelrod?) came up with a grand strategy for dealing with the Iranians: hot dog diplomacy. Here was the plan: Host Iranian diplomats for Fourth of July barbecues at American embassies across the globe. This good will effort, the theory went, would do wonders for America's relations with the mullahs, by engaging them rather than standing-up to them. 

“The party and the viewpoint that we’re closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima.” -- J Street founder and president Jeremy Ben-Ami, October 28, 2009.  

Over the last 18 months, there’s been a lot of debate about the Obama administration’s strategy in Israel – not whether it’s working (you can’t find anyone in town to make that case), but what it seeks to achieve.

Iran, moving steadily forward on its march toward nuclear status, has once again brazenly defied the International Atomic Energy Agency, barring two of its inspectors from touring its sites. How will the West respond?

On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury announced targeted financial sanctions on a formidable list of Iranian companies, persons, and entities. Some of the designations specifically target Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, while others target the country’s energy sector, which has kept its economy on life support. Others target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a terrorist organization tied to both the nuclear program and the energy sector.

The passage last Wednesday of a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Iran was the latest act in the tragicomedy that is U.S. policy toward Iran.

With drilling now limited off the Gulf Coast, oil businesses might have even greater incentive to engage in business elsewhere -- even in Iran. This could provide a great boost to the economy of this rogue regime, unless the U.S. acts to prevent such engagements. Barack Obama and his surrogates first promised "crippling" sanctions, and have now settled on "biting" sanctions.

Eli Lake reports:

The Obama administration is pressing Congress to provide an exemption from Iran sanctions to companies based in "co-operating countries," a move that would likely exempt Chinese and Russian concerns from penalties meant to discourage investment in Iran.