Iran

Via NIAC: July 30, 2019 As foreign-policy practitioners with decades of collective experience in national security and diplomacy, we write to warn that U.S.-Iran tensions have entered a dangerous new phase that has put us on the brink of a disastrous and avoidable war. The administration’s decision to violate the Iran nuclear agreement in pursuit […]

Iran

Iran Crushing Rights just when it Needs understanding in the West: Must Release Prominent Anthropologist

Juan Cole

Detention of French-Iranian Anthropologist Confirms Worrying Trend

Featured

Iran: How Bolton tricked Clueless UK Conservatives into Confrontation with Tehran

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Simon Tisdall at The Guardian explains the difference between Socialist Spain and the disorganized Conservatives in control of UK on foreign policy. US national security adviser John Bolton tried to hoodwink both of them about the Grace I, a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker carrying Iranian petroleum through the Straits of Gibraltar. […]

Iran

Crickets from European Union over Questionable UK Seizure of Iran tanker: With Brexit, London should Get Used to It

The Conversation

By Barry Ryan | – It’s rare to experience silence in this age of political anger and loudness, of bombastic tweets, insulting truths and incredible lies. It’s so unfashionable for a politician to not immediately respond to an event with lightening praise or withering cynicism, that when we hear nothing, it seems as though something […]

Iran

Are the Iran-Trump Tanker, Drone incidents in the Strait of Hormuz a Form of Guerrilla War?

The Conversation

By Rockford Weitz | – Tensions between the United States, Iran and other countries are flaring again in the Strait of Hormuz. There are competing explanations for what’s going on in the narrow seaway through which 21% of the world’s crude oil currently passes. Most of the reports of attacked tankers, smuggled oil and downed […]

Featured

UK Ambassador: Trump Breached Iran Deal to Spite Obama & was “Diplomatic Vandalism” driven by “Personality Reasons”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former British ambassador to the US Kim Darroch alleged in a diplomatic cable that Trump’s motivation in breaching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was motivated by nothing more than spite, according to the Daily Mail , which saw the text. In spring of 2018, then foreign secretary Boris Johnson came […]

Congress

Bipartisan House Vote Amends Pentagon Funding to forbid Trump to attack Iran

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine reports that the House of Representatives has passed the National Defense Authorization Act with a number of riders. One, which passed 251-170, was an amendment forbidding Trump to launch a war on Iran without explicit Congressional approval, except in a case of clear self-defense. […]

Iran

Iran in Crosshairs Again: It is Always – Always – about the Oil

Michael T. Klare

By Michael T. Klare | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – It’s always the oil. While President Trump was hobnobbing with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Japan, brushing off a recent U.N. report about the prince’s role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo […]

Iran

Iran’s leader is losing his grasp on power. Does this mean diplomacy is doomed?

Shahram Akbarzadeh

( The Conversation) – Iran’s announcement last Sunday that it would break the limit on uranium enrichment agreed to in the nuclear deal with world powers was not a surprise. It came hot on the heels of another breach only a few days earlier on the 300-kilogram limit agreed to in the deal on stockpiles […]