European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, left, is seen with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili, right, at the opening of the Geneva talks between Iran, the U.S., and five world powers in Geneva, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009. (AP)

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Earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra and Samoa this week. Elsewhere, battling on.

In Geneva, no earthquake, but the big powers — the U.S. included — did sit down with Iran for nuclear talks, and made some progress.

In Copenhagen, it was all Olympics. At the White House, real debate over whether to boost troops in Afghanistan. In the Senate, no public option.

Saturn, the great motor hope, will die. The Dow wobbles. And September unemployment, up not down: 9.8 percent.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Jill Dougherty, foreign affairs correspondent for CNN.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Margaret Talev, White House correspondent for McClatchy.

And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech, in front of pictures of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, right, before Friday prayers at Tehran University on Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. (AP)

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President Obama, before the United Nations General Assembly and the world today, talking about the world’s challenges and how the United States cannot solve them alone.

In the middle of those challenges — and very soon at the center of six-party talks including the United States and, for the first time, the Obama administration — Iran and its nuclear program.

Can the Obama White House succeed where others have failed in rallying the world to cut Iran off from the path to nuclear weapons?

This hour, On Point: On and offstage at the UN — diplomacy, threats, and tackling the challenge of Iran.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us in our studio is David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.”  You can read an excerpt here.

From New York, we’re joined by Gary Sick, senior scholar and professor of Middle East Politics at Columbia University. He served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and was principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He’s author of “All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter With Iran” and “October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan.” He blogs at Gary’s Choices.

And from Berlin, we’re joined by Constanze Stelzenmuller, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She is former defense and international security editor at the German weekly Die Zeit.

In a photo released by the semi-official Iranian Fars News Agency, an unidentified defendant speaks in a court room in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009. On Sunday, Iran put 25 more activists and opposition supporters on trial for their alleged involvement in the post-election turmoil. (AP/Fars News Agency)

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The whole world was watching in June as giant crowds poured into the streets of Iran to protest what they cried was a blatantly stolen presidential election.

Then came crackdown in the streets — and worse for those swept up and imprisoned.

Tehran has been rocked by allegations of rape and torture — “Worse than Abu Ghraib,” has been the critique from within. By mass trials, with threats of more to come. And a boiling standoff among elites now about the way ahead for the Islamic Republic.

This hour, On Point: Looking through the crackdown in Iran.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Beirut, Lebanon, is Borzou Daragahi, Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.

From New York, we’re joined by Hooman Majd, author of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran” (2008). Born in Iran and educated in England and the U.S., his father was a diplomat under the shah and his grandfather was a prominent ayatollah. He reported from Iran in April for Newsweek and remains in contact with people in Iran. He has also written for GQ, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Salon, and the Huffington Post.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak hold a joint press conference at a Jerusalem hotel on Monday. (AP)

Iran, nuclear weapons, and the Middle East. Is it never going to happen? Or is the US ready to accept, and put up what Hillary Clinton calls a “defense umbrella”?

Guests:

Graham Allison, professor of government and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy school of government. Author of “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.”

Barry Posen, professor of political science at MIT and director of the MIT Security Studies program. Author of “Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks” and “The Sources of Military Doctrine.”

Ephraim Sneh, former member of the Israeli Knesset. Served briefly under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as Deputy Minister of Defense. Also has served as Minister of Health and Minister of Transportation. Left the Labor Party in May 2008 to create a the Yirael Hazaka (Strong Israel) party.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wipes his tears as he admitted to having an affair during a news conference in Columbia, S.C., on Wednesday, June 24, 2009. He said he is resigning as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "I spent the last five days crying in Argentina," Sanford said. (AP)

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Is it just me, or has it been a long, long week?

A week that began with the world riveted by the brutal suppression of Iranian protestors draws to a close with the untimely death of Michael Jackson at age 50.

In Washington, the Obama administration faces big questions on health care from Democrats as well as Republicans.

And speaking of Republicans — another confession, as Mark Sanford admits to his Argentine affair, and another setback for the party.

Up next, On Point: What moved you in the world this week? Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from London is Roula Khalaf, Middle East editor for The Financial Times. She’s just returned from Tehran, where she was covering the post-election unrest.

From Providence, Rhode Island, we’re joined by Froma Harrop, nationally syndicated columnist and editorial board member at The Providence Journal. She also blogs at RealClearPolitics.com.

And from Hanover, N.H., we’re joined by Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

In this photograph posted on the Internet, a protester is seen after throwing a projectile at Iranian riot police in Tehran on Saturday, June 20, 2009. (AP)

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In Iran, a tense and violent dance over the country’s destiny continues — while in Washington and the capitals of the Middle East, no one knows who will rule Iran when the dust has settled.

For the Obama administration the stakes could not be higher, with two American wars on Iran’s borders — in Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east — negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and the fate of Middle East peace in the balance.

This hour, On Point: The Iranian uprising and its shockwaves, from the Middle East to Washington.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jack Beatty, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from Beirut is Rami Khouri, director of the Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at American University of Beirut and editor-at-large for the Lebanese English-language paper The Daily Star.

Joining us from Arlington, Virginia, is Anthony Cordesman. He holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Over the course of his career he has worked for the U.S. Defense Department, State Department, Energy Department, and NATO International Staff, with assignments in Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf. He is the author of numerous books and reports on U.S. security and Middle East policy.

In this image made available from Mousavi's election campaign media operation Ghalam News shows Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi waving to supporters at a demonstration in Tehran on Thursday June, 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Ghalam News)

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Dramatic events this week with historic stakes here and abroad.

Iran sees protests and unrest. Talk of revolution, reform and a stolen election are swirling.

In Washington, health care reform takes center stage, with plenty of pushback. President Obama pushes big new regulations for Wall Street and the banking sector.

A new poll says Americans are worried about the runaway deficits. There are new benefits for partners of gay federal employees. Plus, scandal for a top GOP leader, Senator John Ensign and more.

This Hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer

Bill McKenzie, editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor for The Atlantic Monthly

A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi hurls a stone at riot-police during clashes in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP)

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Anyone who thought the world would wake up Saturday to a remade Iran, on easy street for reconciliation with the West, got a rude shock this weekend:

A landslide re-election victory announced for President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Rioters in Tehran alleging a stolen election. And, on its face, a much tougher road ahead for President Barack Obama’s outreach effort.

Today, the scent of teargas and burning tires lingers in Tehran. Opposition outrage is not over. But what’s next, for Ahmedinejad’s opponents?

This hour, On Point: What now for Iran — and for the U.S. and Iran?

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Istanbul, Turkey, we’re joined by Scott Peterson, Iran correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He was in Tehran covering the election until early this morning.

Joining us from Tehran is Mohamed Marandi, an Iranian political scientist and lecturer at the University of Tehran’s Institute for North American and European Studies.

Joining us from Washington is Hillary Mann-Leverett. She worked for 15 years for the Bush and Clinton administrations at the National Security Council and State Department. For two years following 9/11, she was one of a small number of U.S. officials authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan and Al Qaida. She is now CEO of a political risk firm called Stratega.

Joining us from Honolulu is Farideh Farhi. Formerly a professor at the University of Tehran, she teaches political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is an advisor to the National Iranian American Council.

A Revolutionary Guard missile, the Shahab-3, claimed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Europe, Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East, is displayed in Tehran on Sept. 23, 2008. Behind it is a picture of the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, (AP)

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The tangled intrigue over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and advances is a world where fact can be as strange and bewildering as fiction.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius looks at it both ways. As fact, in his job following intelligence and foreign affairs for the Post. As fiction, in his second life as a writer of near-to-life spy thrillers.

In his latest, Ignatius imagines a full-lather American plunge toward war with Iran as intelligence operatives battle over whether Tehran is really on the brink of going nuclear, as in nuclear arms.

This hour, On Point: David Ignatius goes close to life in “The Increment.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

David Ignatius is a columnist and associate editor at The Washington Post. He has covered the Middle East and the CIA for more than 25 years. His new novel, his seventh, is “The Increment.” His 2007 novel, “Body of Lies,” was made into a movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe.

Read the first chapter of “The Increment” (pdf).

Akiko Saberi, mother of imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, holds her daughter's photo next to a family picture in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday, April, 25, 2009. The 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen was convicted of spying for the United States in Iran and sentenced to eight years in prison after a swift, closed door trial earlier this month. She has gone on a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, her father said. (AP)

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Roxana Saberi grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Played soccer. Played piano. Was good at languages. Was pretty. She was Miss North Dakota.

Iranian-American through her immigrant father, she wanted to be a foreign correspondent. And then she was — for NPR, for the BBC, in Iran.

Now Roxana Saberi sits in a Tehran prison, convicted in a one-day trial to an eight-year sentence for espionage. She celebrated her 32nd birthday on Sunday with her parents. They say she’s on a hunger strike and looking frail — and looking for all the world like a very vulnerable pawn in a huge game of global politics.

This hour, On Point: The case of Roxana Saberi.

You can join the conversation. Have you been following her story? Do you buy the charges of espionage? Do you think she’s just a pawn in a bigger U.S.-Iran game? Are you tying a yellow ribbon for Roxana Saberi?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Culver City, California, is Mike Shuster, diplomatic correspondent and foreign correspondent-at-large for National Public Radio. He was in Iran in February, and has worked closely with Roxana Saberi over the years.

Joining us from Washington is Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He first met Roxana Saberi in Tehran in 2004.

From Fargo, North Dakota, we’re joined by Charley Johnson, general manager at NBC affiliate KVLY in Fargo. A former teacher, boss, and mentor to Roxana, he taught her broadcast journalism for two semesters at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and later hired her to work at KVLY.

Azadeh Moaveni

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On the streets of Tehran today, tens of thousands of Iranians chanted at a mass rally marking 30 years since Islamic revolution toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran.

Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni watches the anniversary with a special perspective.

Born in California, she went back to Iran as a young woman for Time magazine. She wrote “Lipstick Jihad,” saw the rise of Ahmadinejad, saw Iranian longing for pride and freedom. She fell in love, got pregnant, got married, got out.

This hour, On Point: Azadeh Moaveni and her candid, conflicted view of modern Iran.

You can join the conversation. How do you see Iran? What’s your question about the complex country behind the “death to America” chants? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Joining us from London is Azadeh Moaveni, contributing writer on Iran and the Middle East for Time magazine. She spent two years in Iran, from 2005 to 2007, and just returned from three weeks there at the first of the year. She is author of “Lipstick Jihad” and of “Iran Awakening,” with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Her new book is “Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.” You can read excerpts at RandomHouse.com.

More links:

In a recent piece for The Wall Street Journal, Moaveni wrote that Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has been targeted recently by the Ahmadinejad regime. 

In The Washington Post, she wrote about Iranians’ reactions to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

And on a somewhat lighter note, she wrote recently for The New York Times Magazine about her effort to serve alcohol at her Tehran wedding.

Iraqi election officials check the seals on a ballot box after the polls closed in the country's provincial elections in central Baghdad on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009.(AP)

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Iraqis have voted. Again. Provincial elections. A candidate’s house blown up here, some mortar fire there — but overall, a remarkably orderly democratic process in a country not long ago soaked in blood.

And once again, Americans look to the exits and ask: “Can we go now?”

Barack Obama promised combat troops out in 16 months. That’s summer, 2010. The Bush administration committed to an exit by the end of 2011. Meanwhile, it’s costing $10 billion a month, and we’ve got other problems.

This hour, On Point: Iraq — when can we go?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Sudarsan Raghavan, Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post.

Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is called “How to Leave a Stable Iraq.”

Judith Yaphe, senior research fellow at the National Defense University and a former CIA analyst. She testified before Congress on Iran-Iraq dynamics.

Adm. William J. Fallon in February 2007. (AP)

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Four-star Admiral William J. Fallon had a brilliant Navy career and a mouth, it was said, that could peel paint off the walls.

He flew fighter missions over Vietnam, rose to head of the Pacific Command, then was named by George W. Bush Combatant Commander of U.S. Central Command — Centcom — the U.S. military’s top commander in the white-hot region from Egypt to Pakistan.

He oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and abruptly retired after Esquire magazine called him the last man standing between Washington and war with Iran.

This hour, On Point: The admiral who spoke his mind.

You can join the conversation. What’s your question for the fighter-pilot admiral who once ran your country’s wars? What’s your question for William Fallon today on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza? On “smart power”? On Al Qaeda?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Adm. William J. (“Fox”) Fallon, retired four-star Navy admiral, Commander of CENTCOM from March 2007 to March 2008, Commander of PACOM (Pacific Command) from Feb 2005 to March 2007, and currently a Robert E. Wilhelm fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies.

More links:

“The Man Between War and Peace,” the Esquire profile by Thomas P.M. Barnett that caused so much controversy.

Slate’s Fred Kaplan, writing in March 2008,  looked at the context surrounding Fallon’s departure.

Iran's Shahab-3 missile being launched from an undisclosed location on Wednesday July 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Sepah News)

It’s summertime and we want the livin’ to be easy, but it’s a tangle out there – on the economy and, potentially, on yet another warfront: war with Iran.

In recent weeks, the signals are hot – and all over the place. Israeli war games. Iranian missile tests. Blistering rhetoric and calls for cool.

U.S. and Israeli generals shuttling back and for the between Washington and Tel Aviv. Reporting that US special forces are already inside Iran.

That war could come before Bush leaves office. And today that a top US envoy will talk with Iran.

This hour On Point: red lines and real plans – we’re weighing the talk of war with Iran.

- Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Jonathan Karl, senior national security correspondent for ABC News.

Emily Landau, senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, where she is also director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project.

James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND, he was the Clinton administration’s special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo and the George W. Bush administration’s representative to the Afghan opposition in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, and author of “Treacherous Allianice: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.”

When America’s spy agencies issued a National Intelligence Estimate two weeks ago stating that Iran shuttered its nuclear weapons program in 2003, it was a blockbuster like few can recall.

The sigh of relief in Washington and around the world was audible. Only recently, President Bush had said a nuclear Iran might ignite “World War III.”

But behind the scenes, among intelligence and foreign policy experts, the reaction is more complicated. No one quite knows what to believe, or what the effect on U.S. policy should be.

This hour, On Point: Iran and the politics of intelligence.

-James Hattori

Guests:

Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, and author of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”

Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, and analyst at the State Department and CIA. He is now director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation and author of “Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire.”

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist, is resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy.”

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York has turned into a doozy. The city where Fidel Castro called JFK “ignorant,” Yasser Arafat packed a pistol on his hip, and Nikita Khrushchev banged the UN podium with his shoe, has gone after Ahmadinejad with a vengeance.

“Bearded blowhard” said the New York Post. “Petty, cruel dictator” said Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger — to the face of his invited guest.

Ahmadinejad is delivering some doozies of his own. But behind all the theater, there is a real risk of brutal war.

This hour, On Point: the US, Iran, and Ahmadinejad in New York.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Robin Wright, diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post.

Richard Bulliet, professor of Middle East history at Columbia University, author of “The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization,” and an organizer of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to the university.

Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-author of “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos.”