Word: tehran
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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President Barack Obama's year of outreach to Iran has succeeded in putting it on the diplomatic defensive: that much was clear from Friday's blunt reproach of Tehran by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board. But it's less clear that Obama can convert that diplomatic advantage into sanctions that will curtail Iran's nuclear program. "The question is," says one senior Democratic aide in Congress, "Can Obama pivot [from engagement to sanctions] and succeed in changing conditions on the ground?" Iran is betting he can't. On Sunday, two days after the IAEA rebuke, Tehran approved plans...
...Administration insists it is still open to talks with Tehran, but behind the scenes it is stepping up its efforts to approve new sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. It is also encouraging even tougher measures among like-minded allies - the European Union may adopt new penalties in mid-December. And the U.S. Congress is moving closer to passing new sanctions legislation. "We hope Iran will see the IAEA vote as disturbing" and will change course, a senior Administration official says. But for now, he adds, "We are now working to see what sanctions might be put in place...
When Iranian Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work as a lawyer and human-rights activist, the regime in Tehran faced a dilemma. The award infuriated the country's hard-liners, but the regime privately acknowledged that it had also earned Ebadi the admiration of most Iranians. Reluctant to arrest or openly target such a popular figure, the government tolerated Ebadi's activities and limited itself to low-level harassment of her legal office...
...That tacit policy has now changed. As part of an intensifying campaign to silence Iran's opposition, authorities in Tehran last week confiscated Ebadi's Nobel medal from a safety deposit box and froze her bank account, according to Ebadi and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, which protested on behalf of the Nobel Committee in Oslo. A spokesman for the Iranian government denied that the medal was seized and said Ebadi's assets were frozen due to her failure to pay taxes. (See the top 10 players in Iran's power struggle...
...Iran is another newcomer to APT6, represented by veteran artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Tehran-based Farhad Moshiri, whose work Mobile Talker, in which an image of a young woman talking on the phone is picked out with cake decorations, seems to offer a wry comment on the country's modern mores. Rather more confronting is Line of Control, a huge sculpture of metal utensils forming the shape of a mushroom cloud, by Indian artist Subodh Gupta. Something to ponder over the washbasin, perhaps. See qag.qld.gov.au for more...