"Neocons still busy on Iran"

Jim Lobe, here

While no doubt demoralized, the neo-conservative hawks at American Enterprise Institute (AEI) will be continuing their efforts for a major U.S. confrontation with Iran. They’ve scheduled an all-day briefing on “The Imam Returned: Thirty Years of Revolution in Iran” for January 30, no doubt featuring the recommendations of last September’s Bipartisan Policy Center report (signed by Dennis Ross) that I called a “roadmap to war” in a post in October. The two main authors (and graduates of Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans) of the report, AEI’s Michael Rubin (who has denied it is a “roadmap to war”) and Michael Makovsky will be presenting, although the featured speaker is Jeffrey Gedmin, an AEI alumnus and the head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who bore major responsibility for that heavily Likudnik Prague Conference on Democracy and Security in June 2007. Given my persona non grata status at AEI, I will unfortunately not be permitted to attend, but, coming ten days after Obama’s inauguration, I’m sure it will be the first big Iran-bashing event of the Obama era.