Geography Archives: Iran

  • Egypt, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the NPT Review Conference

      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 […]

  • Threatening Iran Is Wrong

      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 […]

  • Why Are the US and Israel Threatening Iran? And Who Really Rules the World?

      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 […]

  • Remembering Fred Halliday

    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.

  • Israel’s Big and Small Apartheids: The Meaning of a Jewish State

    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 […]

  • Obama’s Slippery Slope to Military Strikes on Iran

    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 […]

  • Iraq Redux: “Conventional Wisdom” of Iran Analysts

    The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.”  Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]

  • Iran: What Is the Green Movement?

    Caught in the intoxicating effects of a violent moment in the history of a nation, one is particularly susceptible to reactionary outbursts.  But it is exactly during such moments that intellectual discourse must prevail over ideological cacophony.  And the cacophony about the causes and consequences of the recent unrests in Iran has been deafening, exactly […]

  • US Community Learns about Rural Healthcare from Iran

      Rosiland Jordan: In a Mississippi Delta neighborhood known as Baptist Town, the people have needed a miracle here for a long time now.  Good-paying manufacturing jobs that were once here vanished long before the current economic crisis, and with them so did a lifeline. Sylvester Hoover, Greenwood Merchant and Music Historian: Those people who […]

  • General Jones at the Washington Institute: Still Getting the Iran-Palestine Connection Wrong

    National Security Adviser James Jones was the headline speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s 25th-anniversary gala dinner in Washington last night.  Substantively, General Jones’ speech focused on “two defining challenges” confronting the United States and its allies in the region: “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, […]

  • Why Iran Won’t Attack Israel

    Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s population).  Ironically, while Benny Morris’ scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel — and millions more in the occupied territories — irks him, Israel’s […]

  • Iran Unveils Iranian “S-300” on Army Day

    During the military parade on Army Day in Iran, what looks very much like an Iranian variant of the Russian S-300 air defense system was on display. In 2007, Tehran announced that it signed a contract to buy S-300 from Russia, but Moscow, lobbied by Washington and Tel Aviv, has not delivered, citing “technical problems.”  […]

  • Message to the Tehran International Nuclear Disarmament Conference “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None”

    I would like to welcome the honorable guests who have gathered here.  It is a pleasure for the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the host of the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament today.  I hope this occasion will be an opportunity to yield enduring and important results from your dialogues and discussions for the […]

  • UN Must Oppose US Threat to Use Nuclear Weapons

    Iran’s UN ambassador Mohammad Khazaee calls on the United Nations Security Council and other UN bodies to oppose the US President’s nuclear policy and his threat against an NPT signatory which does not have nuclear weapons.  Below is a letter that Khazaee sent to UN Security Council President Yukio Takasu, UN General Assembly President Ali […]

  • Iran: New Challenges in the New Year

      About one month after the beginning of the new Iranian calendar year (21 March 2010), and following the international recognition of Norouz by the United Nations General Assembly, Iran is facing new challenges.  Some of the challenges are domestic, while others emanate from Iran’s regional and international policies as well as international pressures put […]

  • Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None

      Iran will be holding a nuclear disarmament conference with the motto “nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none” on 17-18 April.  Iranian Diplomacy has interviewed Ramin Mehmanparast, spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to ask him about the objectives of the conference. You have told the press that the UN Secretary General […]

  • China Will Do Whatever It Wants to Do . . . about Its Currency and Iran

    The United States and China seem to have reached an agreement with regard to the exchange rate between their two currencies.  The agreement is that the U.S. government will stop yelling about it, and China will do whatever it wants to do, which will probably include some modest rise in the renminbi some time in […]

  • Can the Obama Administration Take a Deal with Iran on the TRR?

    We have argued that the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran sanctions is, truly, a “dead end” policy and that the only way out of this dead end “is to get serious about nuclear diplomacy with Iran — first of all, by reaching agreement on a plan to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).”  Although the […]

  • Iran: Sanctions Will Fail — Then What?

      Listen to the Interview: Flynt Leverett: I think that the Nuclear Posture Review that came out earlier this week needs to be seen as a very imperfect and, in some important respects, very badly flawed product of an effort which originally had, I think, a very positive intention, namely, an intention on the part […]

  • The Islamic Republic and the World: Two Reviews

      Maryam Panah.  The Islamic Republic and the World: Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution.  Pluto Press, 2007.  232 pp.  ISBN: 978-0-7453-2622-1, ISBN10: 0-7453-2622-6. Review of The Islamic Republic and the World Maryam Panah offers a refreshingly different and powerful account of the causes and consequences of the Iranian Revolution.  Drawing on recent developments within […]