Latest Articles

Tearing Down Iran's Electronic Curtain

April 13, 2012  •  The Wall Street Journal

Three hundred and sixty seconds. That's all it would take for Iranian security services to identify and track an encrypted message sent to a mobile phone somewhere inside Iran, kick in the door, and seize the phone.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

To Stop Iran, the G.O.P. Should Back Obama

March 22, 2012  •  The New York Times

These days, Republicans are seizing every opportunity to hammer President Obama for both high gas prices and his Iran policy.

Mitt Romney recently criticized him, arguing that, when it came to Iran, Obama "not only dawdled in imposing crippling sanctions, he's opposed them."

Rick Santorum called Obama's Iran policy a "colossal failure," and blamed high gas prices on a "radical environmental movement in this country" that has failed to make America "energy independent" from the Middle East.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Canceling the Mullahs' Credit Card

February 1, 2012  •  Foreign Policy

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, is a member-owned cooperative that provides some 10,000 financial institutions worldwide with the means to exchange secure electronic financial messages. If you've ever transferred funds from one bank account to another, you've probably used SWIFT's ubiquitous secure messaging system. But on Feb. 2, the network will receive a different kind of message from the U.S. Congress: Stop facilitating Iranian financial transactions that violate U.S. and European laws.The Senate Banking Committee is now hard at work on an amendment to new sanctions legislation making its way through Congress known as the Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act, filed by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), now recovering from a recent stroke, inspired the amendment, and in the spirit of bipartisanship, his colleagues are carrying it forward.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Economic Regime-Change Can Stop Iran Bomb

January 17, 2012  •  Bloomberg

Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the choke-point for Persian Gulf oil shipments, reveals how deeply the latest Western sanctions -- and the threat of even tougher measures -- have spooked the clerical regime.

Yet, as the U.S. and its allies aim to tighten the noose, they have to consider two new realities. First, given the progress we now know Iran has made on its atomic-weapons programs, there is little reason to think the leadership will voluntarily disarm. (Unfortunately, if a nuclear-armed Iran is truly unacceptable, military action is the most likely route to success -- and the window for that option is closing fast.)

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Iran's War on Religious Freedom

October 13, 2011  •  The Huffington Post

The Iranian regime is in the news again over an alleged terrorist plot on American soil. Back in Iran, the regime's brutality to its own people continues. As Western governments consider how to respond to an ever more reckless and dangerous Iran, what will the West do to protect Iranians who seek to practice their religious faiths without fear of state persecution or murder?

The possible execution of Iranian Christian cleric Youcef Nadarkhani for questioning Islam as the dominant form of religious instruction in Iran reveals a vastly under-reported crackdown that has resulted in the arrests of over 300 Christians since 2010.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles