Larry Haas – Page 40

Global sanctions on Iran are working; relaxing them now would be foolhardy

May 31, 2012

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Calls to ease sanctions on Iran to spur global negotiations over its nuclear program will backfire, making a deal far less likely and greatly raising the risk of an Israeli military strike to cripple the program. To its proponents, sanctions-easing is a necessary confidence-boosting measure to assure Iran that the United States and the other …

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Latest U.S. Report Is Timely Human Rights Reminder

May 31, 2012

International Business Times

Nearly 40 years ago, a Congress disgusted with the value-less foreign policy realism of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford began to require the State Department to report each year on the human rights records of other countries. That requirement was part of a package of congressionally driven reforms of the mid-1970s that were designed …

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How the P5+1 should approach Baghdad

May 23, 2012

The Commentator

The upcoming Baghdad meeting over Iran’s nuclear program has raised legitimate hopes of a peaceful end to a high-stakes conflict, but it also raises risks that the P5+1 powers will misplay their hand – by either accepting a bad deal or letting Tehran buy time and make further progress on the nuclear front. Here, then, …

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Ah, to be gay in Iran

May 17, 2012

The Commentator

As U.S. and other global leaders prepare for their May 23rd meeting with Iranian officials on nuclear issues, the regime in Tehran continues to showcase its odious nature by abusing the rights of its people – particularly its gays. Gay rights in Iran may seem disconnected to Iran’s nuclear program but, in at least one …

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“And so it goes” in Syria

May 9, 2012

The Commentator

“And so it goes.” The phrase, from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 anti-war classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, is a literary shrug; a way to dismiss death and destruction; a device for turning the page rather than confronting humanitarian horror. Collectively, that’s where we are in Syria. The region looks for U.S. leadership, but a war-weary, economically fragile America has …

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Reading Bibi’s diary

May 4, 2012

The Commentator

Dear Diary, I’m still grieving my father’s death this week, and I haven’t received any condolences from Arab leaders. I wasn’t expecting any, of course. Frankly, it’s my friends and colleagues, at home and around the world, who are giving me more sleepless nights lately. I’ve been working my tuchis off the last several years …

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Bold action in Syria now will save U.S. tons of grief in the Mideast later

April 26, 2012

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

As Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad continues his slaughter, the issue is not whether more forceful U.S. action to stop him is risk-free. The issue, instead, is how the risks and potential rewards of more forceful U.S. action to stop Assad’s slaughter stack up against those of a continued U.S. reliance on sanctions and diplomacy that …

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