SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. This week pirates raid an American cargo ship off the coast of Somalia and take the captain hostage. Iran takes another step toward nuclear power. And a surge in the U.S. stock market leads to speculation - like what's happening? NPR's senior news analyst Dan Schorr is on vacation, so we're pleased to be joined to talk about the news this week - our friend, journalist and author Robin Wright. Robin, thanks for being with us.
Ms. ROBIN WRIGHT (Journalist): Always great to be with you.
SIMON: Do you have a new book out?
Ms. WRIGHT: I have a book out in paperback - "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East."
SIMON: Okay, let's get that on the record first, okay? And of course, much of the fascination of the U.S. is now drawn to the - if I refer to it as the drama of this brave captain who offered himself, as a matter of fact, apparently, in exchange for the crew, who's being - who's being held by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Take us to school a little bit, as U.S. Naval forces gather, about the increase in pirate activity in recent years. I mean not parenthetical, of course. French special forces raided a yacht and were able to free some of the hostages - the last one, one died. There's been a real increase in recent years.
Ms. WRIGHT: Extraordinary increase, and in a failed state like Somalia, this is one of not only the few businesses but one of the very few with profitability when you think that they have made at least $40 million last year, and it may be twice as high as that, according to some estimates.
That's an important injection into the economy of little Somalia. But it's an interesting development. You have a guided missile frigate joining today - a destroyer - to face down four pirates on a lifeboat holding one American hostage. We haven't had a drama like this since the Barbary pirates 200 years ago.
And it's interesting that it comes the same week as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates talked about shifting American resources from the conventional threat to the unconventional. And this is clearly the most unconventional threat the United States faces. And there's no easy out here. Maybe Navy SEALS can go in at some point and try to free the captain. But the problem is, what do you do about pirating in general?
The Bush administration was offered a proposal by the Pentagon to go in and clean them out and turned it down, because with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the experience of the famous "Black Hawk Down" incident in 1993, the White House decided against it.
And so far there's every indication that the Obama administration also don't want to take these pirates on - on land. Today you have in an area four times the size of Texas an international armada, something like 20 ships, including Russians, Chinese, even an Iranian warship, and they are unable to stop these, you know, little pirates.
SIMON: That must be part of what's daunting about - I mean people in the Pentagon like to throw around words like let's clean it out, but I mean, that would be a massive military operation, wouldn't it?
Ms. WRIGHT: It would certainly have to a major ground assault, probably by sea. You know, it's one thing to try to take out pockets of al-Qaida based in Somalia with missiles. But it's another thing, because pirates are so mobile, to be able to try to take them out and know where their headquarters are. This is not a place that needs to be based in one place. They can quite easily move.
SIMON: I want to ask you about Iran. You're just back from Iran. And of course news this week that they've launched a nuclear fuel production plan. Help us understand the Obama administration's efforts to engage Iran in talks on their nuclear program. Does Iran want to talk or do they want to talk at the cost of anything?
Ms. WRIGHT: I think for the first time in 30 years you have both Iran and the United States on the same page, that they're interested in the potential of some kind of dialogue. The difference today, however, is that Iran feels that it holds a lot of trump cards and that it wants not merely talks with the United States; it wants rewards for any kind of cooperation. And it ultimately wants the rights to enrich uranium for its peaceful nuclear energy program, which of course the international community is concerned…
SIMON: Yeah.
Ms. WRIGHT: …can be (unintelligible) to develop a nuclear weapon. I think what you've seen over the last week with President Ahmadinejad coming out and talking about they have 7,000 centrifuges and they have a fuel capability developing now, that they're posturing for those talks. They believe this is not just an issue of getting access to energy and fuel for energy. That's a sovereignty issue, that they have the right under the nonproliferation treaty to engage in their own fuel processing. So I think at the end of the day if there's going to be any movement - and it's going to be very, very tough because Iran does hold trump cards - that it will end up having to find a compromise over that fuel cycle.
SIMON: Also this week, Robin, Iranian authorities announced that detained American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who has reported for this network and others, has been charged with spying for the United States. What's going on?
Ms. WRIGHT: I think there are a couple of things. First of all, the Iranians are very nervous about what they call the Velvet Revolution. They think this is an American-inspired effort to undermine the regime and see a change in the leadership. And it comes on the eve of a very interesting election.
On June 12th, Iranians will go to the polls to elect a president, and there's a huge controversy this time, unlike any earlier election, about whether an incumbent president may get ousted because of economic pressures. And there are those who are also, on a third level, concerned about this dialogue or the overture from the Obama administration, and they want to either undermine that process by shifting the focus from how do we get along with each other to how do we deal with American hostages, and prevent any kind of movement on this initiative.
So I think Roxanna is in many ways a pawn to international politics, U.S./Iran relations, and domestic politics.
SIMON: Boy, saved this for the very last: Is the economy improving?
Ms. WRIGHT: Well, President Obama certainly sounded like a cheerleader this week. He talked about glimmers of hope and getting the economy back on track. And there was some very good news this week. You saw the - Wall Street was almost buoyant. The S&P 500 Stock Index has gone up since March 9th something like 25 percent, which is one of the biggest surges in decades, and the credit markets have thawed. So there are indications of hope. But at the same time you have GM preparing for possible bankruptcy and unemployment expected to increase. So there's good news, but there's still a lot of bad news.
SIMON: Thanks, Robin Wright.
Ms. WRIGHT: Thank you.
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