Geography Archives: Iran

The interview with Giovanni Arrighi below was conducted on 12 November 2005, at the “Kapitalismus Reloaded” international conference held in Berlin.  It is published in English here today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Arrighi’s death. A. Fathollah-Nejad (AFN): Does the West have to fear China? G. Arrighi (GA): I don’t think so.  I mean […]

Prior to the 2008 US presidential election, in an essay entitled “What the Future Has in Store for Iran,” I predicted that regardless of who is elected president, the US foreign policy toward Iran will be determined largely by Israel and its various lobby groups in the US, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee […]

  The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that is routinely sanitized in establishment U.S. and Western media coverage and intellectual life.  But if we use Erlinder’s arrest to call attention to some less-well-known facts, a much grimmer […]

The thunderous events set in motion by Israel’s storming of the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the peace flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, have thrown important light on the overall situation in the Middle East.  Turkey has emerged as the major protagonist among the forces that support the Palestinian cause.  This is extremely […]

Iran’s Central Bank announced that the annual inflation rate has dropped below 10%, so it may seem like an odd time to talk about how rising inflation might affect Iran’s poor.  But if the government implements the subsidy reform law, as it has promised to do in the second half of this year (Iranian year […]

  . . . Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, de facto leaders of the Green Movement, had issued a statement on June 10 asking their supporters to stay home. According to Fars, a semi-official news agency with intimate ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Moussavi and Karroubi were afraid of low turnouts and […]

  Ah, these lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.  Fish are jumping (except if they happen to be in the Gulf of Mexico) and the cotton is high.  And Israel prepares to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran, under clear and sunny Saudi skies — at least according to the London Times. Hugh Tomlinson’s June 12 piece in the […]

On Tuesday, June 8, I wrote the Reflection “On the Threshold of Tragedy” around midday; later I watched Randy Alonso’s “Roundtable” television program, broadcast at 6:30 p.m. as usual. That day, the eminent and distinguished Cuban intellectuals taking part in the Roundtable replied to the program director’s acute questions with eloquent words which greatly respected […]

Since manufactured claims about Iraqi WMD led the United States to invade Iraq in 2003, no analytic line about developments in the Middle East has had a bigger impact on American foreign policy than the assertion that the outcome of Iran’s June 12, 2009 presidential election — held one year ago tomorrow — was a […]

The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for new sanctions against Iran today.  Wait, did you just yawn?  Pay attention, there’s real news here.  The man-bites-dog story is that two countries — Brazil and Turkey — voted no, while Lebanon abstained. That’s a record.  There’s never been more than one no vote before; […]

Today, the United Nations Security Council will adopt a new resolution imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear activities.  Predictably, the Obama Administration is working to spin its “victory” in New York as both a great diplomatic achievement and a serious intensification of international pressure on Iran over the nuclear issue. […]

President Obama’s first half year in office was singularly focused on reviving America’s desultory standing in the Muslim world.  Last week marked the first anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech — his widely heralded address “to the Muslim world” — which was intended as the culmination of a series of important steps.  These included: Obama’s appointment […]

As the United Nations Security Council moves toward a vote on a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities, China is being remarkably silent, at least in public.  In the wake of the announcement of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration in Tehran on May 17 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement in […]

  Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words “Middle East” and “South America” are rarely mentioned together in a positive light.  Reports of Middle Eastern terrorist cells allegedly operating in South America’s Tri-Border region or on Venezuela’s Margarita Island have appeared intermittently in the U.S. press since at least 2003.  These […]

Ali Khamenei, Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: The Zionists made a miscalculation.  They made a mistake.  They made a big mistake.  This mistake has been repeated in recent years, again and again.  They made a mistake of attacking Lebanon.  They made a mistake of attacking Gaza.  And they made a mistake of attacking the aid […]

As the interlinked dramas of Israel’s attack on Turkish civilian ships on the high seas and the Obama Administration’s push for a new Iran sanctions resolution in the Security Council play out, some in the American foreign policy establishment are beginning to realize that the Middle East — and America’s place in it — are […]

Two days ago, I briefly commented that imperialism was unable to resolve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which is assaulting the world’s population.  Today, I would like to tackle another subject that, in my opinion, is of great significance. The current danger of North Korea being attacked by the United States, following the […]

Two days ago, I said in a few words that imperialism was unable to solve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which has become a scourge for the people all over the world. Today, I wish to deal with another issue that I consider of major significance. The current danger that the United States […]

President Obama’s already diminishing chances to “steamroll” the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration by ramming new sanctions against the Islamic Republic through the United Nations Security Council during the next few weeks got even smaller this morning, when Israeli naval commandos stormed Turkish-flagged ships in international waters off Gaza, killing at least 16 people in the process. […]

  Norman G. Finkelstein: What happened with the Gaza flotilla was not an accident.  You have to remember that the Israeli cabinet met for fully a week.  All the cabinet ministers discussed and deliberated how they would handle the flotilla.  There were numerous reports in the Israeli press, numerous suggestions, numerous recommendations about what to […]