This is the wonderfully concise, humane and sensible approach by the Obama administration to bring peace to the Middle East; more weapons: The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
Is the internet actually helping authoritarianism in Iran?
Web contrarian Evgeny Morozov (I use that term with affection) argues that web tools such as Twitter and blogging are not really assisting dissidents in Iran but are in fact making it far easier for the regime to crack down.
Tony Blair will always be remembered for supporting colonial wars
The evidence given by Tony Blair to the Chilcot inquiry in London over his decision to invade Iraq showed a man utterly incapable or unwilling to understand the gravity of the decision. The hundreds of thousands killed, the lies told in the service of war and the criminality of the entire enterprise. Many in the…
Reading the Iranian tea-leaves (but not from neo-cons)
Many fear that this year will see aggressive action against Iran and “regime change” under the guise of supposedly freeing the Iranian people (witness Robert Kagan in the Washington Post this week making this very point; yet another man determined to install a friendly puppet in Tehran. A neo-conservative who doesn’t care one iota for…
Using and abusing the Holocaust, part 8652
This is a wonderful article (kindly passed along by a reader). Writing in the Guardian, German writer Alan Posener documents the growing voices that are begging the Jewish community to stop “wailing” about the Holocaust, use the catastrophe as a crutch and insulate themselves from criticism of Israel. Time to grow up: Even today, there…
Ehud Barak raises the apartheid reality
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak: The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future. We have a paramount interest in establishing defined borders between ourselves and the Palestinians that will set the stage for two states for two peoples. It must be understood that if…
Tehran feels the financial pressure
It’s impossible to know the veracity of these allegations – and military threats against Iran continue – but such reports merely add to the ongoing pressure on the Islamic Republic: A Kuwaiti newspaper published over the weekend a list of 66 senior Iranian government officials holding a fortune totaling some $16 billion abroad, according to…
The spirit of Iranian resistance is far stronger than we know
Nasrin Alavi, a keen follower of Iranian politics and its blogosphere, has a fine piece in the latest New Internationalist that challenges our media-led perceptions of the Islamic Republic: A simple glance at the background of Iran’s prominent student leaders tells you that, by and large, they are not the children of affluent citizens of…
Fisk on ever-worsening tensions between Lebanon and Israel
Robert Fisk on renewed fears that Israel and Lebanon may be at war again soon. The insanity of such a move is undoubted – both sides, Hizbollah and Israel, have been threatening the other – but it’s clear that Israel is determined to avenge its disastrous 2006 adventure against Lebanon: Of course, the gentle countryside…
What is the breaking point of Tehran?
Greek journalist Iason Athanasiadis was briefly imprisoned in Iran last year during the political turmoil. Now based in Istanbul, he writes in the LA Times that the Islamic Republic may be on its last legs: “The current regime has broken the social bonds that tie it to the public and thus is eventually due to…