World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (February 2, 2012)

The Washington Post reported that faced with a plummeting currency in the wake of toughened international sanctions, Iran is cracking down on black-market money changers and warning that major speculators could face execution. The crackdown comes as Iranian authorities are struggling to stabilize the rial, which has nosedived amid announcements of new U.S. and European sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil exports. As a warning to speculators, several money changers working on the streets of central Tehran have been arrested by undercover police officers pretending to desperately seek foreign currency. In addition, the chief of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani, threatened Wednesday to seek the death penalty for major speculators. Speaking about the unrest in the foreign-exchange markets, he warned that “depending on the importance of their crimes, some of the economic corrupted can face execution,” the semiofficial Mehr News Agency quoted him as saying in a meeting with judicial officials on the currency crisis.

The same agency reported that ties between Turkey, NATO’s biggest Muslim member, and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that says Israel should not exist, are blossoming. Last month, the Hamas premier visited the Turkish prime minister at his Istanbul home. Today, Turkish and Palestinian flags fly side by side at a building site in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. It seems like bad news for Israel, whose alliance with Turkey collapsed over a deadly raid by Israeli troops on a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza in 2010. Yet some pundits believe that Turkey, a rising power that has worked with Washington on Iraq and other regional problems, could seek to nudge Hamas away from the principle of armed struggle or reduce the influence of Iranian sponsors. They acknowledge closer engagement with Hamas could disrupt Turkish diplomacy if there is another Gaza war, or a return to rocket attacks and bombings of Israeli targets. Israel wonders if Turkey will veer closer to the Hamas line, rather than the other way around.

The Los Angeles Times published the article headlined “Israel's profound choice on Iran.” It says that the debate in Israel over the Iranian nuclear threat is narrow but critical nonetheless. No one in Israel disputes that a nuclear Iran would pose a dire threat to its security and that Israel should go to great lengths to prevent this from happening. Some believe that Iran is an extremist but essentially rational actor, and can thus be deterred. Others believe the threat to be truly existential — that Iran's theocratic commitment to Israel's destruction may lead it to take unimaginable steps and risks — and thus that Israel must do everything it can to prevent that. Neither side can afford to be wrong. Netanyahu, by all indications of the existentialist mind-set, certainly cannot. In this case, as in no other, it behooves critics of Israel generally and Netanyahu specifically to approach the issue with caution and humility. If one can legitimately argue whether a nuclear Iran truly is an existential threat to Israel, Netanyahu's perception of it as such is sincere.

“Russia holds firm against military intervention in Syria” is an article published by The Los Angeles Times. It says that as diplomats attempted to craft a compromise, Russia remained firm Wednesday in its pledge to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that could open the door for international military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, fighting raged anew in the troubled Middle East nation, with nearly 70 additional deaths reported by opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose bloody crackdown on street protests has led to calls from the Arab League and Western powers for him to step aside. After a closed-door meeting, U.N. diplomats said progress had been made to overcome Russia's objections. "But there are a lot of difficult issues and we are not there yet," said British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, according to the Associated Press. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, "I think we have a much better understanding of what we need to do to reach consensus." But Moscow continues to oppose any U.N. move that calls for Assad to step down or would slap new economic penalties or an arms embargo on Damascus.