US Foreign Policy

Scientists Conclude Climate Change Contributed to 1/3 of Pakistan being Under Water; Calls for Debt Relief

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The massive monsoon floods that affected 33 million people in Pakistan, destroyed 1.3 million homes, turned the southern province of Sindh temporarily into a new inland sea nearly 70 miles across, and killed off 80% of the country’s livestock was in part fueled by the human-caused climate emergency. So argues […]

Iran

The US-Iran Conflict: Review of “Republics of Myth”

Marc Martorell Junyent

Barcelona (Special to Informed Comment) – Review of Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman, Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2022.) The enmity between the United States and Iran following the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution constitutes one of the most studied international rivalries. This notwithstanding, the recently […]

Europe

As Falls Russia, So Falls the World: Exceptionalism Goes Global

John Feffer

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Here’s a nightmare scenario: Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin takes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un up on his recent offer to send 100,000 North Koreans to join the Russian president’s ill-fated attempt to seize Ukraine. Kim has also promised to send North Korean workers to […]

Iran

Iran and the US appear unlikely to reach a new Nuclear Deal – leaving Everyone more Unsafe

The Conversation

By Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences | – (The Conversation) – Iran’s standoff with the United States over its potential nuclear weapons program is unlikely to ease anytime soon. The U.S. and Iran launched talks in 2021 to renew a now-defunct political deal that would curb Iran’s nuclear program. […]

Authoritarianism

Rumors Swirl Around Iranian Supreme Leader’s Successor: Will it be another Khomeini?

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/ RL ) – Iran’s Rasa news agency has rekindled rumors that Mojtaba Khamenei, the influential son of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being groomed as the successor to his elderly father, despite his lack of credentials. Affiliated with seminaries in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom, the agency used the title of […]

Iran

Did the U.S. Permanently Destabilize Iraq? Will There be an Intra-Shia Civil War?

Middle East Monitor

By Raed Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – There is usually a lot of competition between near-equal armed groups in Iraq. Resisting the 2003 US-led invasion provided a good opportunity for emerging groups from Sunni and Shia communities across the country to do just that. Such groups became the main protagonists in […]

Iran

Israel is worried about a possible Clash with Washington over the Iran Nuclear Deal

Middle East Monitor

By Adnan Abu Amer | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – As the countdown begins for the signing of a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, a number of disputes have surfaced between Israel and the US about the deal. There is also criticism within Israel of the government’s political and military approach […]

Russia

Mikhail Gorbachev: The contradictory Legacy of Soviet Leader who attempted ‘Revolution from Above

Ronald Suny

Mikhail Gorbachev was a contradictory figure; his legacy, complex. Hailed in the West as a democrat and liberator of his people – which he genuinely was – he increasingly became despised by many within Russia for destroying the Soviet Union and dismantling a great power. Either way, he was consequential. Indeed, his death at 91, […]

Iran

Iran has Reached out to the US many Times, and often been Rebuffed by Washington

Jeffrey Rudolph

( Detailed Political Quizzes) – In an August 14, 2022, New York Times Opinion piece (“How the United States Misunderstands Iran”), Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that, “By and large, the United States has sought to engage a[n] [Iranian] regime that clearly doesn’t want to be engaged…” […]