Word: rossing
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...they considered his coarse impertinence; in American terms, these might have been debates between George Bush the Elder and Newt Gingrich, a gentlemanly establishmentarian against a rude populist brawler. Ahmadinejad was a slick combination of facts and accusations. He spoke directly into the camera. He deployed little charts, as Ross Perot did in the 1990s, to show that things weren't as bad as people thought. His statistics were heavily massaged and challenged by his opponents, but he had muddied his greatest vulnerability - the stagflating Iranian economy. The real jaw dropper, however, was Ahmadinejad's willingness to attack...
Being Nice to Be Nasty It makes you wonder, is Ross really serious about dialogue with the mullahs? "He favors a pro forma attempt at negotiations with Iran, followed by far more severe sanctions or even military action if and when they fail," says Gary Sick, a former National Security Council staffer who is now a professor at Columbia University. The Iranians, too, seem to smell a trap, telling European diplomats that they fear that the U.S. is extending a hand to Iran only in an attempt to build a united coalition against them when talks fail. Indeed...
...offer of talks is genuine and remains on the table. Perhaps the presidential election in Iran will bring a significant change; perhaps Tehran will negotiate its nuclear program back into compliance with international treaties. But few of those involved in Iran policy expect such events to happen. Dennis Ross has spent the first months of the Obama Administration peeling carrots. Don't be surprised if you see him soon sharpening sticks...
When Obama Administration Iran czar Dennis Ross and top U.S. Iran negotiator William Burns were planning the details of the President's outreach to Tehran with senior European diplomats earlier this spring, they discussed a possible nightmare scenario for the June 12 presidential elections in Iran. It was not, however, the prospect that incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might win, or even that he might steal the election, as many are alleging he now has, that had them worried. Quite the opposite, it was the possibility that the provocative Iranian President might lose to a moderate challenger...
...even had a nightmare scenario yesterday," a senior European diplomat said the day after the meeting with Burns and Ross in March. If a moderate were elected and negotiations with Iran still went nowhere, how would the U.S. and Europe stop Iran from going nuclear? With its centrifuges spinning, Iran could continue to amass enriched uranium while presenting to the outside world an openness to compromise, the diplomat explained. When it came time to confront a stalling Iran by dropping the carrots and applying the sticks, said the senior European diplomat, "Try to imagine how difficult it would...