In his column, the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius presents an important piece of reporting about the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran and the Palestinian issue. David opens his column by citing “two top administration officials” as telling him that President Obama is seriously considering putting forward an American plan for a two-state solution to the […]
Geography Archives: Syria
Is Iran Now a Nuclear Target for the United States?
Today — Tuesday, April 6, 2010 — the Obama Administration will proclaim, as a matter of declaratory policy, that the United States claims the prerogative to use nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic of Iran, even as Iran remains a non-nuclear-weapons state. The Administration will make this declaration as part of its much anticipated Nuclear […]
Israel: The Global Pacification Industry
Jeff Halper: We’re one of the leading — I would say, modestly — peace and human rights organizations in Israel. We started about thirteen years ago. I’ve been involved for forty years in the Israeli peace movement. During the Oslo peace process, during the 90s, the Israeli peace movement also, like other Israelis, invested […]
The Iran Threat in the Age of Real-Axis-of-Evil Expansion1
It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]
Biden’s Israel Debacle Puts Obama’s Flawed Middle East Strategy in the Spotlight
Vice President Joseph Biden set out to massage U.S.-Israeli relations this week, but instead ran up against the reality of Israeli politics, manifested in the Netanyahu government’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The result, as described by the normally rhetorically sober Financial Times, has been to expose “an emasculated […]
Kayed al-Ghoul: Israeli Aggression on Gaza and Lebanon Likely in the Event of an Attack on Iran
Kayed al-Ghoul, a member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, says that, in the event of aggression against Iran, the Occupying Power will likely attack the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to prevent any reactions and to disarm the resistance forces. Al-Ghoul remarked in an interview televised by Al […]
Israel in OECD: Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations
Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers? An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories. Israel has been told that its accession to […]
Syria’s Strategic Ties to the Islamic Republic: Diplomacy in the Post-Iraq/Post-Peace Process Middle East
Last week, just after we had completed our regional tour to Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his own journey to Damascus, for highly publicized meetings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, HAMAS Political Bureau chief Khalid Mishal, and a “resistance” summit with Assad and Hizballah Secretary General Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah. Ahmadinejad’s trip […]
The Israeli Agenda
Does Israel want another war in Lebanon and/or Gaza? Certainly, the Israeli posture toward both Lebanon and Gaza has grown increasingly provocative. Violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft are not new, but have increased dramatically in recent weeks. For the past several weeks, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been warning of escalating […]
Thanks to the University of Tehran
We just returned from a trip to the Middle East, which included stops in Lebanon, Syria, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We will be writing about our meetings, discussions, and observations on this trip in future posts. First, though, we want to express our gratitude to the Faculty of World Studies at the University […]
Israel’s Region-wide Underground War
Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost universally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or […]
Israel Is at an Impasse: It Can Make Neither War Nor Peace
The Main Points of the Speech We reiterate on this occasion our condolences for the loss of our dear martyrs, and our congratulations as well, for they are ultimately the first victors. They are our glory and pride. I will discuss current challenges and our strategy for addressing them. When we remember these leaders and […]
Israel’s War Drums 2010
When the ceasefire went into effect on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006, nobody believed — not for a moment — that this was the end of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. After all, none of Israel’s objectives were met in 2006: Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers were still held captive in Lebanon; and far from being […]
Arab Politicians Face Rising Tide of Persecution in Israel
Leaders of the Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities. The warning came after Said Nafaa, a Druze member of the Israeli parliament, was stripped of his immunity last week, clearing the […]
Just Which Major Power Faces “Diplomatic Isolation”?
Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.” In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]
Turkey: Will Hunger Strike of Tekel Workers Lead to General Strike?
Six union confederations in Turkey have announced that they will go on a general strike if the government does not respond to the Tekel workers’ demands by 26 January 2010. The hunger strike mentioned below is now on hold pending the government response by the deadline. — Ed. Worker Yaşar from the Tek Gıda-İş union: […]
The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification: Imperial Truth-Enforcement, British Branch
An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind. This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]
Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Islam
Elyse Semerdjian. Off the Straight Path: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. xxxviii + 247 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3173-6. The content of Off the Straight Path is less juicy than its title suggests. The reader with an appetite for stories of sexual scandals and dangerous liaisons […]
Iranian Defence Expenditure
The following table shows Iranian defence expenditure in each year since 1989 in local currency and constant US$ as well as the military burden, defined as spending as a proportion of GDP. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2007 Iran’s defence expenditure was one of the lowest in the Middle […]
Will America’s Arab Allies Strike Their Own Deal with Iran?
On Sunday, the Speaker of the Iranian majlis (parliament), Ali Larijani, met for two hours with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Ostensibly, Larijani was in Egypt to attend a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which includes Turkey, Kuwait, Niger, Azerbaijan, and Uganda in addition to Egypt and […]
