Geography Archives: Iran

Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal.  He is the author of Humanitarian Imperialism and co-author, with Alan Sokal, of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.  He has written critically about ‘humanitarian interventionism’ since the Kosovo war in 1999.  In […]

As he has every year since becoming President of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to New York this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.  Several important U.S. media outlets have either already conducted (MSNBC, ABC) or will conduct (PBS’ Charlie Rose and CNN’s Larry King) interviews with Ahmadinejad in connection with […]

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based neoconservative “think tank” that has consistently promoted hard-line policies against the Islamic Republic, came out with what it describes as “a comprehensive report . . . identifying 10 major Chinese energy companies that continue to do business with Iran in spite of international sanctions.”  According […]

For decades Gideon Levy has used the platform provided by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz to shine a light on the brutal realities of Israel’s occupation.  His journalism, along with that of his colleague Amira Hass, has been an invaluable resource not only for Israeli readers but, through the Ha’aretz website, for international audiences seeking […]

In connection with the release of his memoirs, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given a number of interviews this week in which he endorses the first-use of military force to stop Iran’s nuclear development.  Blair’s statements on the matter prompted us to reflect on where European policies toward the Islamic Republic are really […]

We noticed a small news item, reported from Tehran, which we think deserves more media attention and reflection in the West than it received.  According to the story, Chinese Transport Minister Liu Zhijun is expected to visit Iran Sunday to sign a $2 billion contract to build a 360-mile-long railway linking key Iranian destinations that […]

There has, of course, been much commentary about the “re-launch” of the Middle East peace process last week in Washington.  Actually, the process is, at best, an Arab-Israeli peace process.  And, to be even more accurate, the process that was re-launched last week is really the highly conditioned Israeli-Palestinian “track” of old. Just giving an […]

Hooman Majd had another interesting piece in Foreign Policy.  His article does something that is very necessary, but which we’ve not had an opportunity to do properly over the past couple of weeks — to take on the stream of recent Western commentary arguing that the Islamic Republic is “unraveling under the weight of economic […]

June 21: AFP: Brazil refused to go on mediating on the Iranian nuclear subject after the US and other powers rejected the agreement for exchange signed in May by Iran and Turkey, as declared this Monday by Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim to The Financial Times.

We are living in an exceptional moment of human history. Starting from a period in which it was divided into Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary History. Not the history we were studying in school 75 years ago but the history brilliantly described by Karl Marx as Pre-history. That would be the result of the incredible […]

August 26, 2010 Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said today that the Islamic Republic has proposed to Russia that the two countries create a joint consortium to fabricate fuel for the Bushehr reactor and other nuclear power plants that Iran plans to build in the future.  Salehi reportedly […]

If I were to be asked who best knows about Israeli thinking, I would answer that without question it is Jeffrey Goldberg. He is an indefatigable journalist, capable of having dozens of meetings to ascertain how some Israeli leader or intellectual may think. He is not neutral, of course; he is pro-Israel, without question. When […]

In recent days, a good deal of attention has been focused on Iran’s first nuclear power plant at Bushehr, still in its final stages of development.  We believe that there are some important lessons to be learned from the Bushehr experiences that could help move U.S. policy on the Iranian nuclear issue in a much […]

As we anticipated, Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic, “The Point of No Return,” laying out the neoconservative case for attacking Iran, is attracting a lot of attention and comment.  We are pleased that, as of this afternoon, our response to Goldberg is the top-ranked “Most Commented” piece on the Foreign Policy website and the […]

No one should be surprised when The Economist or another controlled opinion source misrepresents tensions in the Persian Gulf as religious rivalry while overlooking decades of U.S. and Israeli success in stoking them for imperial gain.  The so-called mainstream press typically repeats unsubstantiated charges to pretend that Arab client states of Washington buy tens of […]

There is an old saying:  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.”  Many of the same writers, thinkers, political actors, and organizations that persuaded the American people and others to support invading Iraq in 2003 are now working to build public support for the United States to initiate a war […]

Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, as President, Barack […]

We have argued for some time that the policy debate about Iran here in the United States is distorted by a number of “myths” — myths about the Islamic Republic, its foreign policy, and its domestic politics.  One of the more dangerous myths currently affecting America’s Iran debate is the proposition that, through concerted diplomatic […]

To be honest,
I don’t remember
What I’ve come here for
Surely, it must have been an important reason
One doesn’t just make a vagabond of oneself for no reason
When I remember I will finish this poem. . .

Dear friends, As soon as we get five minutes to breathe, we’ll send out a report on the Second Grand Congress of Iranians Abroad, a conference for Iranian ex-pats held here in Tehran, Aug. 2-3.  As with many other countries that have experienced the international “brain drain,” the Iranian government is trying to redevelop ties […]