Middle East

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters. And yet — big surprise! — there’s always plenty of money for the […]

Featured

Spike in Violence in 2021 by Israeli Forces, Squatters, toward Palestinian Children: Defense for Children, UN’s Bachelet

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Defense for Children International-Palestine reports that 2021 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories in seven years, with 78 killed by Israeli troops or militant Zionist squatter-settlers. The bulk of these deaths came from last May’s indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of densely-populated Gaza. Israeli forces also […]

Iran

To Succeed in US Foreign Policy, Biden needs a clean Break with Trump

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed–or even infuriated. There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and […]

Iran

It was Israel, not Iran, that Derailed the 2015 Nuclear Agreement, and Bennett is still working against it

Middle East Monitor

By Nasim Ahmed | – World leaders have been trying desperately to salvage the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+ countries: the US, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany. The seventh round of talks in Vienna ended on Friday with very little to suggest that the main […]

Central Intelligence Agency

Yes, America overthrew the Democratically Elected gov’t of Iran in 1953 and Ray Takeyh is wrong on the History

Fariba Amini

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment) – It is likely that, if the elected government of Iran’s Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh had stayed in power, the Middle East or at least Iran would look very different now. But, in history, we cannot reach satisfactory conclusions based on ‘ifs‘. We have to consider only the facts and […]

Arab World

The End of Democracy’s Fourth Wave? The New Authoritarians in the Mideast and Eastern Europe

Middle East Monitor

By Amr Hamzawy | – (Middle East Monitor ) – Governments are described as authoritarian when they do not grant people the right to choose them freely and change them freely through periodic and fair elections when they prevent the free circulation of information and refrain from being transparent in their management of public affairs, […]

Featured

Nuclear Talks: Iran thumbs nose at US, betting on China as new Superpower

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The recent round of talks in Vienna between Iran and Germany plus the 4 members of the UN Security Council who are still members of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) have not gone well, though further meetings are planned. One reason is that […]

censorship

Yemeni journalist accused of spreading atheism is jailed for 15 years in Saudi Arabia

Brian Whitaker

( Al-Bab.com) – A Yemeni journalist has become the latest victim of Saudi Arabia’s laws against religious disbelief. Thirty-year-old Ali Muhsin Abu Lahoum worked in Sana’a for the Yemen Times before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and taking up a job with a TV station. More recently he is said to have been working […]

Corporate Surveillance

We’re all Palestinians Now: Israel-backed NSO Spyware used against US State Department

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reuters reports that at least nine US State Department officials had their smartphones hacked by Pegasus spyware, produced by the Israeli-government-backed NSO company. The officials were informed of the hacking of their iPhones by Apple, which is suing NSO, essentially for tortious interference. The State Department personnel were all either […]