Morning Joe: Back and Forth from Iran

Stories we're following today:

Iran ‘Pragmatists’ Proposed Nuclear Halt-Diplomats - Reuters [link]

• Iranian leaders received and rejected in May a proposal from domestic "pragmatists" to halt Iran's nuclear enrichment program to resolve its feud with the West and avoid new U.N. sanctions, Western diplomats said.
• A senior Western diplomat said the proposal showed that within Iran's labyrinthine political system there are voices that are "pragmatic" and want to end their country's isolation and avoid further U.N. sanctions by suspending enrichment.

Iran ayatollah: Opposition not stooges for West - Associated Press [link]

• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said claims that opposition leaders had links to Western powers has not been proven despite widespread allegations of foreign meddling by hard-liners.

An Asia Strategy for Iran - Kishore Mahbubani in Project Syndicate [link]

• The only clear lesson to emerge from Iran’s disputed presidential election is that the country has a vibrant and indeed dynamic civil society.
• In engaging Iran, the West should ignore the nature of its regime. It is almost impossible for any outsider to understand Iran’s real internal political dynamics... What we do know with certainty is that the regime is divided.

Nuclear Warfare - Arms Control Wonk [link]

• [NPR repeated a common misconception that] "On June 7, 1981, Israel launched the first confirmed military strike ever against a nuclear site."
• Actually, it wasn’t even the first military strike against that particular facility. As best as I can tell, attacks on nuclear facilities have come in four or five waves...

Ted Kennedy: A Lion for Nuclear Disarmament – My post on Huffington [link]

• In June 2004, I had the honor of introducing Senator Kennedy as a keynote speaker at the Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference. He was warm, gracious and generous in his praise of our work at Carnegie. He was also ferocious in his criticism of the failed policies that had led the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq and that had increased the nuclear threats.