Iran, Foreign Policy | featured news

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Sunday his desire to engage in direct talks with the U.S., on one condition. “Take your guns out of the face of the Iranian nation and I myself will negotiate with you,” he said at an event attended by tens of thousands of Iranians in Tehran’s Azadi Square.

People overseas who were asked to comment on the US election looked forward to President Obama turning more attention globally, where serious matters remain such as China's rising ambitions and Iran's nuclear program. But what he should do depends on who one talks to.

...U.S. officials say the list sends a clear warning to Iran's suppliers that the net is closing. But Frosch's ability to continue selling sensitive equipment and evade prosecution also is a cautionary tale about gaps in the U.S.-led sanctions campaign, which has sent Iran's economy into a tailspin but has yet to persuade its leaders to curb their nuclear program.

While foreign policy became an unexpected pivotal point in last week's town-hall style presidential debate, Monday's final showdown will focus entirely on international affairs.

Iran followed the United States on Sunday in denying that the two countries had scheduled direct bilateral negotiations on Iran's controversial nuclear program. The New York Times, quoting unnamed U.S. administration officials, had said on Saturday that secret exchanges between U.S. and Iranian officials had yielded agreement "in principle" to hold one-on-one talks.

What the Republican nominee’s campaign billed as a major foreign policy address didn’t have much new in it and left some analysts unimpressed. The speech, they said, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy -- couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about.

The address mostly repackaged things Romney has said before, sometimes with greater precision. The Republican, who has stumbled in past efforts to articulate his foreign policy, offered few specific ways he would change the Obama administration’s current approach. Although he made broad critiques of Obama’s “passivity,” Romney did not call for any new armed intervention in any Mideast conflict.

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney traded shots in high-profile interviews with Romney saying Obama hasn't supported Israel strongly enough and Obama asking if Romney was trying to start a war in the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that Iran would be on the brink of nuclear weapons capability in six to seven months, adding new urgency to his demand that President Barack Obama set a clear "red line" for Tehran in what could deepen the worst U.S.-Israeli rift in decades.

Some of Mr. Romney’s most provocative language — calling Russia the nation’s pre-eminent foe, promising a virtual trade war with China and rattling sabers for a possible strike on Iran — seems calculated at least in part to appeal to conservatives eager for a more muscular policy. Mr. Romney will surely feel compelled by his own campaign language to enact tougher policies than Mr. Obama in those areas once in office, and conservatives have made clear they will hold him to his words.