Morning Joe: June 15, 2009

Iran's Post-Election Limbo

Stories we're following today:

Iran on a Razor’s Edge - Roger Cohen in the New York Times [link]

• Calibrating a response that does not give ammunition to the regime by suggesting American interference is delicate — and President Obama has been suitably restrained. But the air of business as usual at the White House is off-key. Millions of defrauded Iranians are thirsting for a little more.
• "The bottom line right now is whose violence threshold is higher? How much are the hard-liners willing to inflict to suppress the population and tell yet another generation to shut up?"

Iran Supreme Leader Orders Probe of Election Fraud - Washington Post [link]

• But because Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already congratulated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his apparent reelection, some observers dismissed the investigation as an attempt to diffuse the anti-government demonstrations.

Consequences of Iran’s Presidential Election Results - Carnegie Endowment's Karim Sadjadpour [link]

• Ahmadinejad’s victory could pose an insurmountable challenge to the Obama administration’s engagement strategy, but Iran remains integral to critical challenges including Afghanistan, the Arab–Israeli conflict, terrorism, and energy security. Once the dust settles the United States will eventually have no choice but to talk to Tehran, but it will likely be a cold, hard-nosed dialogue rather than friendly greetings.

Iran Vote Could Bolster Netanyahu Speech - Washington Times [link]

• The re-election Friday of hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the street protests by opponents who think the vote was rigged will make the international audience more receptive to Netanyahu's position on Iran, said Iran expert David Menashri.

North Korea Says It Will Start Enriching Uranium - Washington Post [link]

• On Saturday, a few hours after the U.N. Security Council slapped it with tough new sanctions for detonating a second nuclear device, the government of Kim Jong Il changed its tune, vowing that it would start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons.
• This may have been bluster, at least in the short term. It will take many years for the North to develop the uranium route to a bomb, according to Siegfried S. Hecker, a periodic visitor to the Yongbyon complex who was director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and is co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Why Japan won't go nuclear. - Newsweek [link]

• For one thing, despite North Korea's threats and China's growing military and political power, the Japanese people remain dead set against building nuclear weapons. Polls conducted over the past three years show that less than 20 percent of the public currently says it favors possessing such a deterrent.
• There are still many good reasons to try to rein in North Korea's nuclear program, and its attempts to build missiles that could deliver those weapons to the U.S. and Japan. But the risk that Japan will go nuclear is not one of them.

A View from the Dark Side

The Iranian Rebellion - Wall Street Journal Op-Ed [link]

• It turns out that the "axis of evil" really is evil -- and not, as liberal sages would have it, merely misunderstood.
• If the Administration really believes [that the election unrest will cause Ahmadinejad to be more receptive to the administration's overtures], then Mr. Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter and the mullahs will play him for time to get their bomb.

For Obama Abroad, Moscow Is a Special Case - New York Times [link]

• Updates of Mr. Obama’s talk in Prague of a nuclear weapon-free world, or echoes of his can’t-we-all-just-get-along appeal in Cairo... would screech off-key in the Moscow halls of power
• At this rate, as he flies into Moscow, the president might appear a supplicant. Three weeks from touchdown, it seems fair to ask, what for?
• Apart from the nuclear discussion, in which America might be surrendering a bit of its strategic advantage, the Obama administration has given little specific indication of what it expects or would want from the talks.

Tweeting the Iranian Election

Huffington Post Twitter Feed on Iran [link]

Real-Time Criticism of CNN’s Iran Coverage - New York Times [link]

• The performance of the American cable news, especially CNN, spawned an online protest by thousands on Saturday and Sunday, showing that viewers can try to pressure news organizations about their coverage in real time via the Internet.