Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – At the embarrassing public meltdown that passed for his news conference on Monday, Trump addressed the question of opening back up the economy. Most epidemiologists warn that if social distancing measures end too soon, it could provoke a massive “second wave” of the pandemic, as happened with the Spanish Flu […]
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Iran
With 53,000 Covid-19 Cases, Iran Can’t get Needed Medical Supplies: Trump Admin must Ease Sanctions
(Washington DC) – Broad US-imposed economic sanctions are negatively affecting the Iranian government’s ability to adequately respond to the mounting health consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The US should take immediate action to ease US sanctions and expand licensing of sanctions-exempt items to ensure Iran’s access to essential humanitarian resources during the pandemic. According […]
Threatening Iran: Mired in Incompetence on Covid-19 at Home, Trump Tests Wagging the Dog
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – AFP quotes Trump as saying at a news conference and then on Twitter: “”We don’t want hostility, but if they are hostile to us, they’re going to regret it like they’ve never regretted anything before . . . If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed! . […]
Iran Covid-19 Deaths Rival US as Trump Blockade blocks Medical Supplies; and Europe Defies Washington
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Union has activated the Instex trading mechanism for the purpose of sending medicine and medical supplies to Iran to fight the coronavirus outbreak. Instex operates in Euros rather than dollars and avoids US banks, so that the US Treasury Department cannot claim jurisdiction over it. The Instex bank […]
Presence-as-Resistance: Iranian Women and the Politics of Social Contestation
The history of everyday public resistance on the part of women’s movements in Iran
Coronavirus Solidarity: A 13th Century Mystical Persian Poem about Humanity Shows why We need a Global Response
By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | – Coronavirus is all about human connectivity. From a philosophical perspective, I’ve been thinking about how this virus is forcing us to confront our common fate, highlighting our connections in the process. The novel coronavirus defies geography and national borders. There is no escaping it – exactly because humanity is inevitably […]
In a Plague Year, Trump Ratchets up Tensions with Iran and Iraq
San Francisco (Foreign Correspondent) – While the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic, tensions between the US and Iran are heating up. The two countries are engaging in tit-for-tat military attacks that threaten a wider war. In mid-March, Washington officials accused an Iran-allied militia of launching rockets at a US military base in Iraq, killing […]
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Pulls a Trump on Coronavirus: Denies Own Responsibility, Blames a Foreign Country (US)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump and his cronies in the GOP got high-level, frantic briefings from US intelligence in January and February that the coronavirus would produce a major pandemic and send the US economy into a tailspin. That would have been the time to order test kits (rather than having Jared Kushner futz […]
Trump Spared Iran from Bombing, but his Sanctions Fed Pandemic in which 1 dies every 10 Minutes
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee and Kristen Welker at NBC News report that Trump refused to bomb Iran last weekend for fear it would be a public relations disaster given international sympathy for that country’s coronavirus plight. It appears that some officials had considered bombing Iran in response to Shiite […]