Word: terme
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...details. (Both sides had a case.) But Clinton, as President, didn't waver from his belief that a grand bargain with the North was possible - not just denuclearization but an eventual peace treaty and normalization of relations between Washington and Pyongyang. In October 2000, late in his second term, Clinton sent his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, to meet with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, where they famously clinked champagne glasses. The former President even flirted with the idea of going to North Korea himself right up until the end of his presidency; in the end, he didn't, because...
...economic sanctions against Pyongyang and - perhaps most important - had his Treasury Department start to put into effect unilateral financial sanctions against North Korean companies and individuals. It was precisely those sorts of sanctions - and their effectiveness - that infuriated the North Koreans during George W. Bush's second term, when they stormed out of the six-party nuclear talks and didn't return until Treasury sanctions were removed. The Obama Administration, moreover, has constantly reiterated what Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this past spring after the second nuclear test: "We're not going to buy the same horse twice"; that...
...Ayatullah Ali Khamenei's improbable haste in declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of Iran's June 12 presidential election was motivated by a desire to smooth his ally's path to a second term of office, it had quite the opposite effect. Eight weeks later, as Ahmadinejad was sworn in by Iran's parliament on Aug. 5, the Islamic Republic remains in the grip of an unprecedented political crisis over the legitimacy of both men - a crisis that shows no sign of abating, either on the streets or inside the corridors of power. (Read "Khamenei: The Power Behind the President...
...failure of the regime to quiet the streets and to close ranks behind Khamenei in his endorsement of a second Ahmadinejad term is without precedent in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history. As leading U.S.-based Iran scholar Farideh Farhi told the Council on Foreign Relations, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had assumed that "if they use a sufficient amount of violence, they can put an end to the popular anger that has been generated. [Instead], they continue to be surprised by the resistance that is being shown - not only by major players in Iranian politics, but the people of Iran...
...foes are sailing in uncharted waters. The rupture in the regime - and in its constitutional contract with the Iranian people, which allows them to democratically choose their President, even if from a limited palate of options - that occurred after June 12 has not been healed. In his second term, Ahmadinejad will have to navigate both the ongoing socioeconomic crisis in Iran, and the international battle of wills over its nuclear program, from a position of diminished political authority and legitimacy. And his domestic political opponents are showing no sign of easing the pressure...