Q: Pride seems like an insurmountable obstacle sometimes. On one hand, you have a black man who has withstood taunts from other blacks for working with The Man and achieving success in mainstream society. On the other hand, you’ve got an officer who is sworn to uphold civil society, dealing with, in his mind, someone who is being decidedly uncivil. How do you get both sides to admit they maybe went too far?

Mnookin: What I would ask each is if they would find it valuable to have an opportunity to really explain to the other person their perspective, to really make it clear what their perspective is, and as part of that, would they be willing to take in the perspective of the other.

Q: Do the issues of race or ethnicity complicate negotiations? How does it change things here?

Mnookin: Well, they always do. Everyone brings to any conflict their own background and perspective.

Q: Is there hope for a clean resolution?

Mnookin: I certainly think there is hope that professor Gates and this officer could sit down together and have a constructive conversation where they each came to understand better the perspective of the other — and themselves.

President Obama’s special video message to the Iranian people on the Nowruz holiday, which has more than 600K views, was “most popular” in Iran:

His policy speech announcing a “new strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan was very popular in Pakistan…and in China.

His Cairo speech to the Muslim world was highly popular not just in Egypt, but also several countries in Africa, especially Nigeria and Tanzania:

Turkey is ready to resume its role as mediator in suspended indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, before leaving for a one-day visit to Syria.

Syria wants the return of the entire Golan Heights, while Israel wants Syrian diplomatic recognition and other political concessions.  Land and recognition are at the crux of this conflict.  Whether used as a back channel or a front channel, the Turkish lines of communication and mediation between Syria and Israel are beneficial for the region.  Last time around, the US was missing from the table.  I doubt it will be again.

So when former General Jim Jones invited Woodward along on a trip to the war zones in late June, Jonathan Martin (substituting for Ben Smith) and others wisely spotted this as the General up-armoring against the rumors that he wasn’t adapting too well as National Security Adviser. What’s curious is that Hillary Clinton was attempting her own defensive maneuvers at about the same time, hoping to hire her former enforcer, Sid Blumenthal–an effort that was nuked by the Obama White House.

By all accounts, they’ve been getting along just fine. But the Jones and Clinton moves may indicate some pre-emptive skittishness, a sense of–unjustified, I believe–insecurity on the part of the two principals.

Infighting at the top is a definite concern for Obama; as is insecurity among the key principles.  But, is Joe Klein making a mountain out of a mole hill.  In his closer:

Again, the bottom line here is that everyone agrees about the policies–and that the policies have a good chance of succeeding. There is a good chance that this is merely background noise, the sort of gossip and jockeying that goes on in any Administration. But still…

Background noise or not, Obama needs to keep running a tight foreign policy ship with so many big players (and egos) from Jones and Clinton, to Ross, Holbrooke and Mitchell, among others, working the diplomatic angles and backrooms.

This city gave me pretty much everything – I was born here, so it gave me my dear parents; it gave me my school and university education. Here I started my career and defended my thesis. All the major events which shaped me as a person happened here, in this city. 

Meeting Putin?  And on the spoils of success:

When I started teaching, I traveled by car. I was a successful teacher. I had a car.

Take a look for yourself:

The report in the UK paper quoted unnamed diplomats as saying Israel was prepared to offer concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state as well as on its settlement policy and “issues” with Arab neighbors, in exchange for international backing for an Israeli operation in Iran.

“Israel has chosen to place the Iranian threat over its settlements,” one senior European diplomat said.

Perhaps not the best of bargains  since the impossibility of destroying the Iranian nulcear program through missiles and bombs is literally a mission impossible.  Delaying the program, sure, but at what cost?  The most likely upshot: a unified Iran behind the Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad (as oppsed to now with a real and vibrant opposition at least maintaining a presence on the streets and in the clerical backrooms) and  a nuclear program delayed by X factor.  Realize a two-state solution right now, but not at the expense of bombing Iran.

Hillary Clinton is coming to India for what is slated to be a major step forward in Indo-American ties. Mrs Clinton’s first stop is Mumbai where she will stay at the Taj Hotel.

The Taj Mumbai, perhaps the most visible symbol of India’s war against terrorism, on Friday will play host to Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State.

The heritage hotel, one of Mumbai’s key landmarks was closed for about a month after the 26/11 terror attack.

Sources tell NDTV Secretary Clinton is very keen to stay in the hotel.

Significantly, she is not going to Pakistan on this tour, a trip which the State Department has said will be about enhancing the India-US strategic partnership.

“This partnership will enable us to advance solutions to the defining challenges of the 21st century, and to enhance global prosperity and stability,” said Ian Kelly, Spokesman, US Department of State.

That includes a possible agreement on sites for American nuclear reactors and a key speech on climate change.

The visit by the French, Russian, and US co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group to Yerevan and Baku may have brought a formal settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict one step closer.

Meeting with the Minsk Group co-chairs on July 8 and 10, respectively, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to meet in Moscow on 17 July. That meeting will be the sixth between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in just over a year.

Forward movement indeed.  But, is a party missing:

Speaking today at a conference in Stepanakert, de facto Nagorno-Karabakh leader Bako Sahakian said no peace agreement is possible without Karabakh’s participation.

“Karabakh, which is the main party to the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict, has been left out of the negotiations, and we must achieve the return to this important principle. It is impossible to realize any solution without the consent of the people of the Nagorno-Karabakh republic,” Sahakian said.

The conditions to create a spoiler, or a still-birth agreement seem to be in the making if all relevant parties are not involved and included.

One of Iran’s most senior clerics issued an unusual decree on Saturday calling the country’s rulers “usurpers and transgressors” for their treatment of opposition protesters in recent weeks, in the strongest condemnation by a religious figure since the contested presidential election a month ago.

The decree by Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a dissident who has often criticized Iran’s ruling clerics, did not mention by name Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was clearly aimed at the clerical leadership.

Posted on the Web site of Mohsen Kadivar, a dissident cleric and former student of Ayatollah Montazeri, the ruling said the recent arrests and shootings of protesters were proof that Iran’s leaders are unqualified to rule the community of Muslims.

“In my estimate this is the strongest criticism ever of the supreme leader,” said Rasool Nafisi, a United States-based academic and Iran expert. “Although it doesn’t mention Ayatollah Khamenei by name, it is clear he is referring to him.”

It is unlikely that the decree, or fatwa, will have any immediate effect in Iran, where opposition figures have already made their positions clear. Some prominent clerics, including Ayatollah Montazeri, have joined political figures in criticizing the government crackdown on street protests in recent weeks, and have said that they believed the election was rigged.

The bottom line is Iran is changing, how that change unfolds, whether a genuine revolution emerges, or whether power is concentrated more within the current regime, is what is at stake internally. Externally, the world can watch, influence publicly around the edges and behind the scenes in various ways, biding its time until it can talk nukes, primarily.  Ultimately, there is no way around diplomacy, and states, even revolutionary ones like the U.S.S.R. and the Islamic Peoples Republic end up taking part in the system.  The question will be one of interests, actors and processes.

One process and means of communication that can allow for engagement, knowledge and even negotiation is technology.  In this  pointed analysis on the Iranian revolution, Jon Weinberg over at the Washington Note offers this technologically based take:

Nevertheless, perhaps the greatest disparity between the current Iranian protests and those of a decade ago is the existence of websites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. These websites keep Iranian protesters informed about their progress and give the world a firsthand account of what is happening on the ground.

During the July 1999 protests 21 year-old Ahmad Batari became his movement’s de facto poster child for appearing on the cover of that week’s Economist holding a blood-spattered t-shirt of a fellow protester.

In some ways, this image of Batari offers a salient parallel to the video footage of Neda Agha-Soltan (known by her admirers and mourners simply as “Neda”), taken on June 20th when the 27 year-old aspiring singer was shot during while peacefully protesting in Tehran.

Yet, it is the stark contrasts between Ahmad’s and Neda’s stories that highlight why the events of the past four weeks do not have as strong of a historical precedent as many believe. In 1999, the Iranian government could effectively restrict communication and media outlets. Those were the days when journalists and the rest of the world had to settle on an old photograph of Batari and the bloodied shirt.

Now, two videos of Neda’s death are circulating around the internet. News of the videos spread like wildfire, mostly via Twitter after the government disabled SMS texting. On July 3rd, a third video–which was taken from a rooftop–emerged on YouTube confirming Neda was guilty of little more than proximity to a crowd shouting marg bar dictator!– “Death to the dictator!”

I have no doubt that similar, though hopefully less tragic, footage will emerge from yesterday’s protests. Again, young Iranians have gathered around Tehran University chanting “Death to the dictator.” This time, protesters were met with tear gas and nightsticks instead of bullets, perhaps as a result of the Neda videos.

No question about it, technology matters and empowers – be it through the bullet or the tweet.