March 20, 2008, destined to be another day of infamy. On this date the US officially declared war on Iran. But it’s not going to be the kind of war many have been expecting. No, there was no dramatic televised announcement by President George W. Bush from the White House oval office. In fact […]
Geography Archives: Iran
When Henry Kissinger Opines
When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention. There is a message there. Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme “realist” proponent on U.S. imperial policy. But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment. […]
Beware an Attack on Iran
Is the Bush administration ramping up for an attack on Iran? The signs seem to point in that direction. On March 11, Navy Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired early because of differences with Washington on Iran policy. And now, Dick Cheney’s current Middle East tour may be […]
Life and Death of Maryam Firuz
Maryam Firuz in the final decade of her life Maryam Firuz, the first woman who became a political committee member of a party in Iran, passed away in Tehran, in the afternoon of Wednesday, 12 March 2008. She was an iconoclast, a friend of many artists and intellectuals, and a prisoner for seven years. […]
US Navy’s Expeditionary Strike Group Threatening Lebanon and Syria
The recent beefing up of the US Navy in the Mediterranean has caused concern in Russia and some Mediterranean countries. Experts believe the appearance of US warships off the coast of Syria and Lebanon presages a US military operation in the region. The recent deployment of the US Navy guided missile destroyer DDG 67 […]
Afghanistan: Why Canada Should Withdraw Its Troops
This Thursday the House of Commons passed a Confidence Motion put forward by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to extend the Canadian mission in Kandahar, Afghanistan to December 2011 past the current commitment to 2009. With the support of the Liberal Party (breaking their previous position of a call for a […]
Two-State Dreamers: If One State Is Impossible, Why Is Olmert So Afraid of It?
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the […]
The Meaning of Gaza’s “Shoah”: Israel Plots Another Palestinian Exodus
Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicized remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for the Holocaust — was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip. More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli […]
The Politics of Non-Proliferation
If there was a time when Iranian analysts and decision makers would question the benefits of continuing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it would be now. The IAEA has allowed systematic US intervention in Iran’s nuclear file, paving the way to a third round of sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme. But while […]
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of the Israeli army.” The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticized a Jewish student who arrived in his film […]
Reviving the Iranian Revolt
At the height of the Iranian revolution in the winter of 1979, French philosopher Michel Foucault described what he was seeing in Tehran as “perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.” “Islam,” he wrote, “– which is not simply a religion, […]
Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women
Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name. She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago. Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]
Walking Away: The Least Bad Option
Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win. At the same time, a very large number of […]
Our Encounter with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
It was a bright, hot July day in Yazd, an ancient, oasis city in central Iran. The five members of our 2007 People’s Peace Delegation were following our tour guide to see one of the city’s famous Wind Towers, which boast a hundreds-years-old form of natural air-conditioning. I had fallen a bit behind the rest […]
The Futility of Sanctioning Tehran
Do facts matter in international relations? One day after the latest US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) established with high confidence that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, President Bush stepped in front of the cameras to declare that the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. […]
Evidence of Israeli “Cowardly Blending” Comes to Light
It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organizations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behavior of Israel and Hizbullah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right. A new report, […]
Can the Antiwar Movement Take Advantage of Bush’s “Spectacular” Failure?
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
From Diego to the People of Iran [De Diego al pueblo iraní]
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day“Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
A Major Reversal? The NIE Report on Iran
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran
“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight. By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]
