Diplomacy in Iran: Too Late for Change?

Cross posted at Scoop44 and Daily Kos.

President Obama has changed the United States government’s rhetoric towards Iran - but what does that actually mean for foreign policy in the Middle East?

America’s stance towards Iran has never been particularly nuanced, at least not in public. Both the Ayotollah and President of Iran have changed a number of times since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but the U.S. government has never signaled a significant shift in policy towards the country. A recent article in The Economist questions what Obama’s change in tone actually means for relations between the two states, especially considering the lack of rapprochement in the past.

Iran has had a number of Presidents since 1979, and many of them have not fit the stereotype of what an enemy of the U.S. should act like. President Mohammed Khatami, who was President of Iran from 1997 to 2005, was undoubtedly the country’s most liberal President since the Revolution. He was a reformist who allowed for greater freedom of expression domestically, and also softened Iran’s stance towards the West, openly claiming that Iran had “no hostility” towards the U.S. in 1998. However, in 2003, when Khatami was still in power, U.S. President Bush called Iran a member of the Axis of Evil.

In 2005, Khatami was succeeded by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current hardliner President of Iran. Some might claim that Bush’s comments affected the outcome of the election; Iranians might have seen that no matter how liberal a President they elected, the U.S. would never really respect their efforts to improve relations between the states. Others would argue that the U.S. had nothing to do with the election results, and that the reason the reformists lost was because of Khatami’s own failure to successfully enact his reforms domestically.

The question of how influential the President of Iran is in improving relations with the U.S. speaks to the immense power the Ayatollah has in Iran. Obama explicitly reached out to the Ayatollah in his statements on improving diplomacy between the two countries in large part because he knows that without the Ayatollah’s support, it is unlikely that he will be able to accomplish any changes whatsoever.

There is a Presidential election in June 2009 in Iran - Ahmadinejad is running for reelection, and Khatami recently bowed out of the race, significantly increasing the current President’s chances for victory. However, given Obama’s strategy of dealing directly with the Ayatollah, it might not even matter.

Rethinking Global Health

Cross posted at Scoop44 and Daily Kos.

The past few weeks have produced positive results in the fight against the global proliferation of HIV/AIDS. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it has given a $7.3 million grant to Imperial College in London for the development of a rapid HIV test. While rapid HIV tests have been around for a few years, this test is unique in one way: it costs $2. That means that those developing nations (particularly the ones with a significant percentage of their population at risk for or infected with HIV) will be able to purchase the test.

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, philanthropic foundations in the U.S. often devoted more money and resources to limit the spread of the HIV than any government was willing to commit. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Kaiser Family Foundation have been on the front lines of providing the funds necessary to combat the spread of HIV and to find a cure for AIDS. However, in recent years, many people thought that the U.S. government was finally stepping up to the plate when President Bush launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003.

PEPFAR has been well-received since it launched. The plan provides funding for prevention, treatment and care for those infected with HIV/AIDS. While some aspects of the plan are controversial (including the access it provides for religious organizations that preach abstinence to help in the AIDS prevention stage of the plan), Bush was commended for taking a legitimate and concrete stance in the global fight against AIDS. Since Congress reauthorized the act that provides the funding for PEPFAR in 2008, President Obama will have an enormous opportunity to expand on President Bush’s work.

However, there is a disturbing omission from PEPFAR: it has not provided funding for prevention, treatment and care for the domestic fight against HIV/AIDS. Millions are infected in the U.S., yet PEPFAR has almost exclusively focused on stopping the proliferation of AIDS in other countries. This omission in PEPFAR should be heavily criticized in light of the enormous racial disparities that exist among the HIV positive population in the U.S.; African Americans make up only 12% of the U.S. population, but “account for nearly half of all new HIV infections and almost half of all Americans living with HIV.”

The Obama administration has not made it clear how it will handle the worldwide HIV/AIDS crisis. Some have claimed that Obama’s proposed budget for the State Department indicates that he might be “rethinking…foreign priorities like global health,” and might want to shift his priorities (and funding) to fighting other infectious diseases like malaria or tuberculosis. If the Obama administration continues to have a vague stance on fighting HIV/AIDS, the philanthropic foundations that stepped up in the early years of the crisis might have to step up again - both internationally and domestically.

How They Fight

Cross posted at Scoop44 and Daily Kos.

The war between Hamas, a radical Islamist group based in Gaza, and Israel continued for several weeks. Many civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, were killed. The exact death toll remains unknown, but we know it was at least 1,200 with 5,400 wounded at the time the parties declared their own ceasefires on January 17.

There were many things about the war in Gaza that seemed eerily familiar. Back in 2006, Israel reacted in a similar way when Hezbollah, the radical Islamist group in Lebanon, captured soldiers stationed in Gaza. Rockets flew for weeks. Israel launched a massive one month assault into Beirut, killing thousands of Lebanese civilians in the process. But many Middle East experts argue that while Israel's reaction might have been warranted, it was also a huge failure.

Israel's goal in the war was to destroy Hezbollah. After the war, Hezbollah was stronger and more popular than it had been before. It maintained its political hold in Lebanon, and became particularly problematic for Israel in the conflict in Gaza. There were numerous attacks launched against Israel from Lebanon, and Israel openly worried that Hamas might convince Hezbollah to open up a two front war against Israel.

The ramifications of the latest conflict in Gaza remain unknown. There have already been op-ed pieces suggesting that Israel has been mishandling Islamist groups in the Middle East for some time and will continue to do so in the future. Only time will tell.