Guest Post by Patrick Doherty: The McCaffrey Plan

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Patrick Doherty directs the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative. “Strangulation is no solution.” That’s General Barry McCaffrey’s assessment of the U.S. policy towards Cuba. He’s right. More importantly, writing in the Miami Herald, McCaffrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, hero of Desert Storm and, more relevant to this discussion, former commander, U.S.

Reading White House Tea Leaves on Iran Getting Difficult

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(Washington Note publisher Steve Clemons, Obama political guru David Axelrod, and Al Jazeera’s Mysa Khalaf) Yesterday evening, I chaired a dinner featuring Austan Goolsbee, the charismatic economic guru of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and a key adviser to the President in the White House.

Iran: an Egyptian Perspective

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Commentary on Iran’s election fallout from the greater Middle East has been eerily absent for the past eleven days. The wait-and-see posture has been adopted by the region’s leaders and civil groups alike; respectively they are nervous and hopeful.

The Real Threat to Iran’s Clerics

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Afshin Molavi astutely noted yesterday in New America’s debate on the Iranian election aftermath that some of the most important events took place prior to the election – that is, during the electoral debates where Ahmadinejad took on the clerical establishment accusing them, with Rafsanjani as the symbol, of a self-interested betrayal of the revolution….

MEDIA ALERT: Rachel Maddow Show on Basiji Hunting

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I will be appearing on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show tonight about 9:15 pm EST discussing with Rachel some of the things that protesters in Iran are doing to put the feared and violent basij security forces on edge and how some groups are organizing a capacity of domestic insurgency inside Iran.