Iran: Economic Sanctions Success Story?

Economic sanctions don't always get the best rap. Frustrated Middle East watchers and myriad Obama critics point to Iran as proof that sanctions aren't coercive, but the detractors may have spoken too soon.

FP's The Cable blog (which, incidentally, has impressed me with its coverage of the Syrian chemical weapons story) put up a new piece this Friday on the reputation of Hasan Rouhani, Iran's new president, in the US intelligence community. Former IC officials who met Rouhani during the Reagan administration say he struck them as a genuine moderate.

If they're right, his election could be a first step toward real progress on ending Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. But the article also mentions another contributing factor: the UN sanctions regime.

Russponsibility to Protect

Vladimir Putin says the U.S. needs more evidence before any military action in Syria could possibly be justified. And even if conclusive proof of Assad's use of chemical weapons were to be found, our favorite amateur aquatic archaeologist continues, any military action would have to have the approval of the UN Security Council.

One may well ask, as Jonathan did today: doesn't Putin remember his own 2008 "intervention" in Georgia?

Korea Checkpoints #2: The Kaesong Industrial Complex

The first bit of post-crisis peninsular rapprochement is slow going so far. The Kaesong Joint Industrial Complex in Kaesong, just on the North Korean side of the DMZ, saw over 50,000 North Korean workers employed by South Korean firms until the DPRK shut it down in April.

Korea Checkpoints #1

I've been in Korea about 8 months now. I've been thinking and reading a lot about Korean affairs and international affairs more generally, but I'm getting the itch to start writing about it, too. Here's what I'm paying attention to in Korean affairs right now: