In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta. Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished. Megara […]
Geography Archives: Iran
Gulf Arab Support for Attacking Iran: The Strange Case of the UAE
The Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, is in the news for comments he made yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival — comments in which he apparently expressed some measure of support for a U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear targets. We have known Yousef since before his […]
Iran, Israel, and Air Defense: What, Exactly, Is the “Threat”?
A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had sent Syria a “sophisticated radar system that could threaten Israel’s ability to launch a surprise attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.” The story cited reporting from “two Israeli officials, two U.S. officials and a Western intelligence source,” and was “confirmed . . . by […]
Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
As the United States government does what it can to halt Iran’s nuclear program, it may be suspected that it is seeking to build up its own nuclear industry, denying Iran the capacity to develop its own technology while pressuring it to open itself up for US technological export and to become dependent on […]
Persian Gulf History and Politics: Manama since the First Era of “Global” Capitalism
Nelida Fuccaro. Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xvi + 257 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-51435-4. In many ways, the city of Manama (now the capital of Bahrain) shares affinities with other Gulf city-states. Like Dubai, Kuwait, and Muscat, the port city drew […]
Iran, Natural Gas, and EU Sanctions: “Is Europe Shooting Itself in the Foot (to Russia’s Benefit)?”
Earlier this month, after the United Nations Security Council authorized new multilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic by adopting Resolution 1929, the member states of the European Union (EU) approved guidelines for expanding European sanctions against Iran. Any new sanctions that the EU might apply against Iran on the basis of the new guidelines must […]
Iran Sanctions: An Obsession Explained in Five Acts and a Poem
Act I In the second half of the 1990s, at the onset of his first term as Brazil’s president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, or FHC for short, faced a dilemma. To honor his recent conversion to the Washington Consensus, he had to get rid of State companies to make money to pay the interests on […]
BP and the Other Gulf
The name BP is now forever ingrained in people’s minds as the oil giant responsible for what has become the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history. But the mammoth oil spill resulting from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t the first time British Petroleum has brought disaster […]
BP — A Long, Bloody History of Reckless Greed
BP, the company responsible for what is already the worst single-source environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, is the largest corporation in Britain, fourth largest in the world, and the world’s third largest energy company. Over the course of its 100-year history, this company has caused a number of environmental and workplace disasters. But the harm […]
Expelling Palestinians from Jerusalem: The Case of Four Hamas Politicians
Israeli human-rights groups and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, have condemned a decision by Israel to expel four Palestinian politicians from East Jerusalem by the end of this week. The Israeli government revoked their residency rights in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, after claiming they were “in breach of trust” for belonging […]
Saudi King Abdullah to Meet President Obama: Iran, Iraq, and Palestine on the Agenda
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will come to Washington for a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday; there is little doubt that Iran will be a high-priority topic for discussion between the two leaders. Notwithstanding the extraordinary importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, it is striking how relatively few meetings there are between American presidents and Saudi […]
Lieberman’s “Peace” Plan: Strip Palestinians of Citizenship
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel’s future borders. Warning Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the […]
Iran Vote Shows China’s Western Drift
This month, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran, imposing a ban on arms sales and expanding a freeze on assets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to the country’s uranium-enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes but other countries contend are driven […]
Shanghai Power Politics: China Shuts Out Iran from SCO
Two weeks ago, the 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council summit, held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, approved the SCO Rules of Procedure and the regulation on procedure for future membership expansion. Before the summit, Chinese diplomats ritually pointed out that approval of the admission regulations was the first step in forming the basis for a […]
The Excess of the Left in Iran
Maziar Behrooz. Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran. I.B. Tauris, 2000. The role of the left in the Iranian Revolution is complicated, what Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek would call the ‘vanishing mediator’ of the event. The fact that at their peak Iranian Marxists commanded the loyalty of millions, and […]
Excerpt from “The Prophet and the Proletariat”
What the group around Khomeini succeeded in doing was to unite behind it a wide section of the middle class — both the traditional petty bourgeoisie based in the bazaar and many of the first generation of the new middle class — in a struggle to control the hierarchies of power. The secret of […]
Iraq
The text below is an excerpt from “Imperialism and the Gulf War,” which was first published as the “Review of the Month” of the April 1991 issue of Monthly Review (42.11). While the exact character of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party state is certainly debatable (“lack of government corruption”? — only relatively so in comparison to […]
Russia, Iran, and the United States
Russia’s Iran Policy Since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic has worked hard to cultivate a strategic partnership with post-Soviet Russia. Of course, for many Iranians, there is heavy historical “baggage” attached to relations with Russia/the Soviet Union. But, from an Iranian perspective, Russia is […]
Gasoline Sanctions against Iran Will Be Futile and Counterproductive
H.R.2194 (the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2009) passed the Senate by a vote of 99-1 and the House by a vote of 408-8 (1 “present” and 16 “not voting”) yesterday. — Ed. The U.S. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed a new piece of legislation authorizing the President to impose so-called […]
A University at the Center of Iran’s Internal Power Struggle
World media are focused so narrowly on Iran’s nuclear program and election-related turmoil and Western threats and sanctions that the public is unaware a battle over ownership of a politically connected Iranian university is likely to help shape the future of the Islamic Republic and its foreign relations. We hear all about the Revolutionary Guard […]
