Rami G. Khouri at PostGlobal

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA. Close.

Rami G Khouri

Beirut, Lebanon

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. more »

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Political, Not Nuclear, Power Play

Iran has every right to have a full nuclear power program for research and peaceful purposes, with the appropriate safeguards and inspections as per relevant international conventions. There seems to be no problem with that in Iran, and I wonder why the international community does not call Iran's bluff and establish intrusive monitoring systems to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Or is that not the real problem?

The actual dilemma, I suspect, is two-fold today: One, the UN Security Council has decided to force Iran to suspend enrichment, and if Iran wants the world to apply international law to its rights to enrich uranium, then it also has to respect the force of law that is inherent in UNSC resolutions. This weakens Iran's argument that it has the right to enrich as per international law. Two, the United States and Israel are driving a political process that seeks to prevent the emergence of any major Arab or Islamic power that could ever challenge or counter-balance Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East.

The tensions with Iran are partly about nuclear power issues, but largely about political power issues. A "revolutionary Islamic" regime is not acceptable to the U.S. and Israel, nor to many Arab governments. In contrast, many ordinary people in the Middle East do not fear such a regime as much as they do the U.S. and Israel, which they see as more serious threats.

It would be interesting for someone to count the number of people killed and injured, and the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, by American and Israeli policies in the Middle East in the past 50 years, and the same costs incurred as a result of Iranian actions. The balance sheet would probably support the views of those in this region who see the Israeli-American axis as far more dangerous and destructive than the Iranian regime, despite the many valid criticisms we can make of Iran's authoritarian and often brutal government.

We must decide on this Iranian nuclear issue if we are talking about the law, or brute power. The two are irreconcilable for the moment.

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