Christiane looks at why protesters are saying the World Cup only benefits outsiders.
Check showtimes to see when Christiane Amanpour is on CNN where you are. Or watch online.
By Mick Krever, CNN
The Taliban has long been known as an extremist group, but could it become a player in workaday politics?
The group said it hoped to do just that when it opened a political office in the capital of Qatar, Doha. So why come in from the cold?
“Their decision making is kind of mysterious,” Marc Grossman, former U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan,” told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
But he did have two leading theories. FULL POST
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Brazil is in the throes of massive protests, but its foreign minister does not think that his country will see the type of violence and confrontation that Turkey has seen in the past weeks.
“I think it’s a different situation; the manifestations have been peaceful, predominately,” Antonio Patriota told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday in an exclusive interview.
But federal riot police have been sent to five major cities.
“There may be episodes of violence here and there and, of course, the security forces have to be prepared because there are large numbers of people involved,” Patriota told Amanpour. “And our expectation is that they will continue to manifest in a peaceful way.” FULL POST
Syria may have dominated the G8 meetings, but at its heart, it is an economic summit.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said the point of the G8 is to fire up economies and drive growth around the world, but leaders certainly have their work cut out for them with punishing unemployment weighing down the world economy.
Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, said the G8 leaders achieved “nothing” this past week. FULL POST
By Mick Krever, CNN
“If you really want to end the bloodshed over [in Syria], I guess there’s two ways,” Former American General Wesley Clark told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“You could let him finish the job,” Clark said, creating millions more refugees, expanding the violence and sectarian warfare, and giving Iran more power, as he put it. “It’s a very short-sighted way to think you can stabilize the situation.”
The other way, Clark contended, is to “put the pressure on Assad.”
Clark has some experience forcing a strongman’s hand.
By Mick Krever, CNN
General Salim Idriss, chief of staff of the opposition Free Syria Army, hopes that promised American weapons will be enough to bolster his troops.
“It is very important now to strengthen the moderate FSA fighters,” Idriss told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. FULL POST
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Timothy Edgar has been on both sides of the debate over government surveillance, and he says that the protections in place work.
He was a lawyer at the ACLU holding the government's feet to the fire at the American Civil Liberties Union and then he became, in his own words, a reluctant insider advising both Presidents Bush and Obama on this very issue.
“Certainly Congress has been briefed repeatedly numerous times over the years,” Edgar told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “But it's very different when you're having a public debate than one in which you're just getting briefed by intelligence officials.” FULL POST
By Mick Krever, CNN
Want proof that Iran’s president-elect wants to change Iran’s foreign policy?
“Literally every diplomat that Ahmadinejad fired for favoring engagement with the U.S. was later on hired by Rouhani in his think tank,” Vali Nasr, a former member of Obama’s foreign policy team told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “So he’s been working on this.”
Add to that the fact that Rouhani has a track record on the international stage, as a former chief nuclear negotiator, and Nasr is convinced that diplomats around the world have been given the gift of “breathing room” by the election of the new Iranian president. FULL POST
By Mick Krever, CNN
One thing is clear in Iran, at least according to an adviser to the president-elect's campaign: The people have rejected the policies of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The election of reform-minded Hassan Rouhani is an indication of the mood of the Iranian people, Sadegh Zibakalam, who advised the campaign of the next president, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“The most important issue is not to continue with the policies that have been running and guiding Iran during the past, particularly four years,” Zibakalam said. “Moving towards a better conciliatory, realistic, and pragmatic policy – I mean, that is the main issue.” FULL POST
By Christiane Amanpour, CNN's Chief International Correspondent
You can watch the nightly international affairs program "Amanpour." on CNN International or in its entirety here at the Amanpour.com website.
The stunning election victory for reform and moderation in Iran this weekend takes me back 16 years to the mind-boggling election upset I covered in 1997, when the moderate cleric Mohammad Khatami won. I covered him on the campaign trail and dubbed him the Mullah with the smiling face, and in fact his was a new and different face of Iran. He was the first since the 1979 Islamic Revolution to call for reform at home, and for a type of detente (his words to me) with the West and the rest.
As word of Khatami's landslide victory swept through the country back then, I remember as if it were yesterday, an elderly, religious, working-class woman, tug my sleeve and ask me with a shy and toothless smile: "Will America make friends with us again now?" My heart skipped a beat, and it bled a little too. Iran had spoken, and it has spoken and spoken and spoken for the past 16 years. FULL POST
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Ambassador Thomas Pickering about Iran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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