Geography Archives: Iran

Cindy Hickey, Laura Fattal, and Nora Shourd — the mothers of Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd, the three American hikers detained in Iran — spoke to the Associated Press on 17 May 2010: Laura Fattal, the mother of Josh Fattal, said: We had to maintain this great optimism throughout these nine and a […]

Having met in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, the undersigned have agreed on the following Declaration: 1. We reaffirm our commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and in accordance with the related articles of the NPT, recall the right of all State Parties, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, to develop […]

  Tehran — The Turkish Foreign Minister said at the joint press conference with the Foreign Ministers of Iran and Brazil after signing the trilateral agreement on Tehran Research Reactor fuel: Turkey and Brazil guarantee that, until fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor is delivered to Iran, Iran’s low-enriched uranium will be kept in Turkey. […]

If I were in Washington this morning, I would run down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Congress with a big Brazilian flag, as the young Brazilians run down the Avenida Paulista in Sao Paulo during the “football” match, shouting “Golllllll!” Because with the news this morning that Iran has agreed to ship most […]

The New York Times, among others, is reporting that Turkey, Brazil, and Iran have agreed “in principle” to a nuclear fuel-swap that the three countries hope can placate the United States and its P5+1 partners at least enough to avoid a new round of Security Council sanctions on Iran. More details will be available today, […]

There seems to be a growing international consensus that the search for a “cold peace” with Iran is a desirable, even essential approach on the part of the international community.  Indeed, successive “war games” at specialised institutions in the United States have shown that bombing Iran’s nuclear installations is militarily unviable.  Even some Israeli and […]

  We are writing in support of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal who have been unjustly detained for more than nine months.  These three young people are active members of a global community opposed to US aggression in the Middle East.  They do not deserve to be punished for the policies of their […]

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will travel to Iran this weekend, ostensibly to attend the G-15 summit meeting that opens in Tehran on Monday.  But Lula’s trip is attracting enormous international attention because the Brazilian leader will use his visit to try, in collaboration with Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to broker […]

Author and analyst Hooman Majd traveled to Iran last month and has published an initial report from his travels, “Postcard from Tehran,” in ForeignPolicy.com.  Hooman makes a number of important points in his article, which largely reinforce our analysis of Iranian politics since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election and of U.S/Western policy […]

Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]

Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny.  Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not.  Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]

As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei.  Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]

  Maged Abdel-Fattah is Egypt’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Ezzat Ibrahim: Egypt is president of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and New Agenda Coalition (NAC).  What kind of contribution are NAM and NAC expected to offer during the NPT revision conference? Maged Abdel-Fattah: First of all, NAM (118 member states) is a major player in […]

On April 25, the Washington Post had another piece on Iran, this time on the front page, that could easily have been run about Iraq back in 2002.  We have recently criticized the Post for relying on Green Movement partisans for ostensibly objective “analysis” about Iranian politics.  This front page article relies almost entirely on […]

Yet again, the Washington Post has published another highly inflammatory article on Iranian nuclear developments, “Iran’s Advances in Nuclear Technology Spark New Concerns about Weapons,” by Joby Warrick.  As we wrote, Warrick co-authored another recent story for the Washington Post on Iran’s nuclear program that “could easily have been run about Iraq back in 2002.” […]

  The antiwar movement everywhere should be extremely alarmed about the Obama Administration’s declaration in April that Washington can target Iran with nuclear weapons.  Although vague “all options are on the table” warnings were also issued under George W. Bush, now the threat of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran is enshrined in the revised […]

  Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War.  What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations.  I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]

I was immensely saddened to hear of Fred Halliday‘s untimely passage.  I knew Fred since 1978 when through a New Left Review friend, Robin Blackburn, I met him at his London home on my way to revolutionary Iran, temporarily forfeiting my US education for the sake of the greater cause.  Fred was putting the final touches on his seminal book on Iran, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, which had the distinct flaw of depicting the Shah’s regime as “strong,” rather belatedly adding a final chapter to account for the unexpected whirlwind “populist” revolution that did not lend itself easily to Fred’s conventional Marxian class analysis.

Today, POLITICO published our newest Op-Ed, “Obama’s Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran” (excerpts below but also worth reading in full on POLITICO.com). Our piece was prompted by the partial leak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ January 2010 memo on Iran to the New York Times last week and subsequent statements by Gates and […]

A talk delivered to the Fifth Bil’in International Conference for Palestinian Popular Resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bil’in on April 21 Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism.  I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it […]