Does Iran want to be a pariah? | Salon

Juan Cole - "The point of my Salon piece is that the hard ... Read Moreliners, as Hussein Ibish correctly says, are trying to deal with massive internal dissent by blowing off the UNSC (not just the US and its allies), and in my view this path is not going to end well for Iran. The article isn't about whether that would be right or wrong but about the self-inflicted wounds of the hardliners. I mean, Obama said he wanted to reach out to them; why make that impossible by silly political stunts?"

From Juan Cole's website: http://ping.fm/DZkqC
Are Khamenei and Ahmadinejad Determined to Make Iran a Pariah?

My column is out in Salon.com, on the way in which Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are turning Iran into a pariah state. I warn that if they keep going down this path, they are going to end up like North Korea.

Excerpt:

'Iran's hard-liners are pushing their country into a dangerous and perhaps crippling isolation that could, if Tehran continues on this path, eventually make it another North Korea. Having damaged their legitimacy at home with a stolen election, which is still being actively protested in the streets months later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are thumbing their noses at the international community. The regime is adamant that it will make no concessions in regard to its nuclear research program, even in the face of a threat of increased United Nations sanctions. And Ahmadinejad, on the cusp of his trip to New York this week to speak to the U.N. General Assembly, has veered even deeper into a David Duke-like rhetoric about the Holocaust and the role of Jews in history.'

Read the SALON story at http://ping.fm/rtUSc

From: http://ping.fm/TOJoq