Geography Archives: Iran

Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.

There are signs of a new tanker war in the Persian Gulf, with Britain joining a coalition that wants a war with Iran.

In the last week of June 2019, as this article was being written, tensions between the U.S. and Iranian governments escalated sharply. On June 20, 2019, in response to aggressive U.S. actions, including the mobilization of troops, naval forces, and aerial provocations, Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone flying  near the Iranian border.

Trump might not have sent in a suite of missiles to hit Iran last week, but the United States has—of course—already opened up a certain kind of war against Iran.

Palestinian resistance literature helped break the bounds of many of the literary taboos holding Arabic literature back. A whole new genre within a genre developed with the Palestinian intifada. It is a shame that there is no science fiction as future-oriented as Palestinian resistance literature is.

Quick question: Does the U.S. ever break, breach or violate its international agreements?

Mike Pompeo, in a press conference, accused Iran of engineering the attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman. However, he cited unnamed intelligence reports and other vague references in support of his claim.

A war against Iran–as Hamid says–will be catastrophic, not only for Iran but for Eurasia. It would divide the world into two, vultures and hyenas feasting on both halves.

China has increased its oil purchases from Saudi Arabia by 43 percent in April. There is every indication that China will continue to increase its buys from the kingdom during the course of this year—to substitute for Iranian oil and, perhaps, for U.S. oil.

It’s obvious that Bolton and Pompeo are trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident with Iran.

The UN’s position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. Yet, they have allowed the U.S. and Israel to push against Iran.

Organizers of the far-right AfD hoped to get 10,000 adherents for a march on Sunday in Berlin, but their ranks were far thinner, even with buddies from openly pro-fascist gangs. After distributing a thousand or more big German flags, they joined ranks and set off on their anti-foreigner, anti-Islam, anti-leftist Berlin crusade.

Contrary to a widely-held belief that U.S. President Trump acts only out of impulse or is being unpredictable, I believe that the opposite is the case.

Trump’s anti-Iran move on Tuesday was deeply worrying for allies of the US. It is a blow for those countries, especially in Europe, that were hoping to build on the big expansion of trade with and investment in Iran after the July 2015 nuclear deal was signed.

Since the outbreak of mass demonstrations and unrest in Iran last week, U.S. media have mostly busied themselves with the question of not if we should “do something,” but what, exactly, that something should be. As usual, it’s simply taken for granted the United States has a divine right to intervene in the affairs of Iran, under the vague blanket of “human rights” and “democracy promotion.”

When it comes to Iran, do basic facts matter? Evidently not, since dozens and dozens of journalists keep casually reporting that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program” when it does not—a problem FAIR has reported on over the years (e.g., 9/9/15).

Trump and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, have regarded Iran and the agreement with suspicion, with Trump threatening to withhold certification of Iranian compliance, and saying in an interview in July, “If it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago.”

Declassified documents released last week shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh, fueling a surge of nationalism which culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.

With a few days to go to Iran’s upcoming presidential elections on 19 May, six candidates could survive the vetting process of the Guardian Councils.… The role of the media, both in Iran and throughout the diaspora, to shape public opinion is significant. Iranian state media, radio and television are supposed to give the “hopefuls” an opportunity to continue campaigning for office, as they speak about their future plans and defend past performances, but they often fall short.

The article discusses surveillance in today’s capitalist society with a reference to a recent revelation that the German intelligence agency spied upon scores of foreign journalists.