Geography Archives: Iran

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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’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 […]

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 […]

WHEN these lines are published tomorrow, Friday, in Granma newspaper, the 26th of July, a date on which we always recall with pride the honor of having resisted the onslaughts of the empire, will still be in the distance, despite it being only 32 days away. Those who determine every step of the worst enemy of […]

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 […]

Stephen Sackur provides a misleading and one-sided picture of Venezuela after a brief visit there, during which he interviewed President Hugo Chávez (“A Chat with Chávez — Oliver Stone’s New Lead Tells All,” 14 June).  I am the co-writer of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming documentary on Chávez, South of the Border, and was present throughout the […]

  Despite what the experts of barefoot diplomacy1 never stop repeating, there is nothing even remotely anti-American in the Brazilian position on Iran: our motives, unlike those of the bullying trio (USA, France, United Kingdom), are clear, transparent and openly stated several times. We support the peaceful development of nuclear energy.  We do not believe […]

Western analysts and policymakers need to rethink their basic calculations about the Islamic Republic’s domestic politics.  This rethinking should start with a recognition that the Green movement is not the future of Iranian politics; in fact, it’s not even the future of what at least used to be called the “reform movement.”  By sticking with […]

  Marzieh Hashemi: American geologists say Afghanistan is filled with minerals, from iron ore, lithium, to gold and much more.  The values of the minerals are said to be estimated at around a trillion dollars. . . .  Would a mineral-rich Afghanistan affect the way that the United States is running its war machine there? […]

A cartoon mocking “Green Wave” leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, drawn by an Iranian cartoonist in exile Nikahang Kowsar, has reportedly been withdrawn from Rooz Online: Mir-Hossein Mousavi penning his Statement No. 300 in Khordad 1399/June 2020 Golnaz Esfandiari of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty writes that “Kowsar . . . a contributor to Rooz, confirmed the removal […]

  Listen to Amy Goodman’s interview with Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: Oliver Stone: So, Chávez was sort of a natural [as a subject for his work] because he is such a demonized, polarizing figure, but when I met him, it was not at all what I thought, you know, what we made him out […]

Scare the Gulf States into giving up their moola by manufacturing a specter of Iran under atomic mollas.  Positive growth outlook.  Risk-free investment.  Guaranteed returns. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in Maktoob on 10 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an […]