Thirty years ago today, the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, was seized. Americans were held hostage in the embassy for more than a year. “This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust and confrontation,” Obama said in a statement issued by the White House.

The United States wants to move past this, Obama said, and seeks a relationship based on mutual interests and respect. “Iran must choose,” Obama said. “It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

The text of the president’s statement is available on America.gov.

“This is not how I expected to wake up this morning,” the president said, after hearing that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had awarded him with the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace. “I am both surprised and deeply humbled,” he said, and “do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace,” he said.

There have been detractors in the United States and overseas for the Nobel Committee’s decision. After only nine months in office, the president’s vision of eliminating nuclear weapons and his renewed emphasis on global cooperation and dialogue to resolve challenges such as climate change and pandemic disease have not yet accomplished their goals. Obama himself said today that some of his policy goals may not be completed during his administration, and the elimination of nuclear weapons “may not be completed in my lifetime.”

But when Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland announced the decision in Oslo, he compared President Obama to other peace prize winners such as former West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose own reform efforts had not been achieved when they received the prize.

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” Jagland said. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

The president said the prize has been used to “give momentum” to causes, and he said he sees the award, which will be given in Oslo December 10, as “a call to action” for the United States and all nations to “confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

What do you think about this surprise announcement? Do you think this will help or inadvertently hurt President Obama as he tries to advance his policy goals?

President Obama has authorized up to 80,000 refugees to enter the United States during the 2010 fiscal year (FY), which begins today, October 1. In a presidential determination, he specified what is known as the “refugee ceiling” or the maximum number of refugees allowed from each world region. The figure includes an “unallocated reserve” designed to accommodate unforeseen crises, and specifies that immigrants from Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and those identified by U.S. embassies as having “exceptional circumstances” will, “if otherwise qualified” to enter the U.S., also be considered refugees.

The president said his administration is “committed to maintaining a robust refugee admissions program,” which has been an important part of the overall U.S. effort in “support of vulnerable people around the world.” Citing the recent global economic downturn, Obama said an in-depth review of the program was done “with the goal of strengthening support to both the refugees and the communities in which they are being resettled.”

I decided to do a little review of my own, comparing the latest figures with those of a few previous years (FY 2007-FY2010). Not surprisingly, I found that presidents adjust the numbers and allocations for refugee admissions each year, perhaps to reflect the latest needs assessments from their advisers.

There were some interesting developments. For example, in FY 2008 then-President Bush increased the allowed number of refugees from 70,000 to the current 80,000 level, and much of that went towards allowing a dramatic increase in refugees (+22,500) from the Near East and South Asia. In FY 2009, an additional 9,000 were allowed from those regions and President Bush specified that those coming from Iraq would be considered refugees. But during both years, Bush made cuts to the numbers of refugees coming from Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

By comparison to the previous two years, President Obama’s adjustments today were fairly modest. He increased the number of those coming from Africa by 3,500, with the current level now at 15,500. The Latin America/Caribbean region was increased by 500 to 5,000. East Asia and the Near East/South Asia were both decreased by 2,000 for a total of 17,000 and 35,000, respectively, and the numbers for Europe/Central Asia and the unallocated reserve were unchanged at 2,500 and 5,000 respectively.

Marking World Refugee Day on June 20, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States is the world’s largest donor for refugee relief, contributing $1.4 billion in 2008, and “nearly 3 million refugees have made new homes in the United States, more than any other nation in the world.”

What are your thoughts on President Obama’s refugee quota? How do you think these kinds of decisions should be made?

 
The September 30 tsunami, caused by a major earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, is the most severe natural disaster to occur since President Obama’s term began, and it has directly affected the U.S. territory of American Samoa, making the disaster a domestic priority.

The earthquake, measuring between 8.0 and 8.3 on the Richter scale, was detected by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, which then projected the path of a probable tsunami and issued a regional warning that extended from American Samoa to New Zealand. However, the wave, which got as high as 7.5 meters (25 feet), struck Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga within just minutes of the quake, so most living there were unprepared. As I write this, news accounts list the death toll at more than 100 people.

A separate earthquake whose epicenter was 7,600 km (4,700 miles) away hit Indonesia, killing at least 75 people. [UPDATE - the death toll has climbed to nearly 800 people as of October 1.] Indonesia had previously been among those warned about a possible tsunami resulting from the quake near Samoa.

Because American Samoa is a U.S. territory, President Obama was able to declare a “major disaster” for it, and allow immediate assistance from the federal government in Washington to cover temporary housing, home and business repairs, clean-up, unemployment aid and temporary loans. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is dispatching two disaster recovery teams from Hawaii to assess the damage, and the agency is preparing to send relief supplies to survivors from provisions it had pre-positioned in a Hawaii distribution center.

The president said the U.S. Coast Guard is also being deployed to support “the deployment of resources to those areas in need of immediate assistance.”

Offering condolences to the families of those who died, Obama pledged a “full, swift and aggressive response,” and said that along with responding to the needs of the American territory, “We also stand ready to help our friends in Samoa and the region.” The United States and other countries most recently responded to assistance requests from the Philippines as it tries to prevent floods from Tropical Storm Ketsana from turning into a humanitarian disaster.

You may have noticed that President Obama is not a fan of nuclear weapons. At a speech in Prague this past April he called for their abolition. He has been working with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and launchers. And he has also been trying to prevent Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons of their own.

Today marked another indication that nuclear nonproliferation is a huge priority of the Obama administration when the president called a summit meeting of the United Nations Security Council and became the first U.S. head of state to ever chair the body. It was also only the fifth time the Security Council has met at the head of state level since its formation in 1946. The first was held in 1992 to discuss the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.

Can you guess what the topic was today?

What President Obama and the other heads of state achieved from this summit was the first U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and which sets out a broad framework on how to reduce nuclear dangers in pursuit of that goal.

The spread and use of nuclear weapons is a “fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations,” Obama said. If one nuclear weapon exploded in a major world city, it would kill thousands, and “it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.”

The president said every country has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but those which already have nuclear weapons “have the responsibility to move toward disarmament,” and those who don’t “have the responsibility to forsake them.”

What do you think? Is a world without nuclear weapons achievable? How can this goal become a reality?

Yesterday at President Obama’s speech before the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly, he said that when he was sworn in nine months ago, he was aware that many viewed the United States with “skepticism and distrust,” whether due to opposition to U.S. policies, unilateral action, or misperceptions and misinformation.

In response, “This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction,” he said.

So, nine months later, does the “skepticism and mistrust” remain or is the United States seen in a somewhat better light?

It is interesting that President Obama alluded to his global standing by saying he is “well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.”

But those expectations “are not about me,” he continued. “[T]hey are rooted, I believe, in a discontent with a status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences, and outpaced by our problems. But they are also rooted in … the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”

What do you think about where the U.S. image is right now? Since nine months is roughly the same amount of time as the American school year, why don’t you send us a report card?

Also, check out the full text of his speech. Or you can also read my summary of it.