Middle East

San Francisco (Foreign Correspondent) – While the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic, tensions between the US and Iran are heating up. The two countries are engaging in tit-for-tat military attacks that threaten a wider war. In mid-March, Washington officials accused an Iran-allied militia of launching rockets at a US military base in Iraq, killing […]

Israel/ Palestine

Palestinians in Gaza Face Coronavirus alone after 14-Year Israeli Lockdown

Middle East Monitor

By Ahmet Alioglu | – Humans never thinks of the blessings they have unless they’re lost or about to vanish. Freedom to move is an unequivocal human right that is taken for granted everywhere except in conflict zones or besieged areas like the Gaza Strip. People living there have been tirelessly calling on the international […]

Featured

5 Years into Saudi War on Yemen, 14 mn. in Acute Need, 1/2 of Hospitals closed, and Coronavirus Looms

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Five years ago, Saudi Arabia launched its ruinous war on Yemen. In 2020, the oil-rich kingdom has nothing to show for this albatross around its neck. The war was the brainchild of then defense minister Mohammed Bin Salman, who is now the crown prince. Yemen is a country of 28 […]

Authoritarianism

Viral Coups: Authoritarians like Trump and Israel’s Netanyahu see Coronavirus as Opportunity for Power Grab

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The United States and Israel may be considered “liberal democracies,” though the US is technically a “republic;” and Israel’s brand of democracy is qualified by its selective application of human rights. Both Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have ravaged traditional norms of government and social […]

Israel/ Palestine

Checkpoints of Death? How Israel’s Illegal Occupation of Palestinian West Bank exacerbates the Coronavirus Crisis

Middle East Monitor

By Robert Andrews | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Every morning, tens of thousands of Palestinians line up at one of over 140 fixed Israeli checkpoints spread across the occupied West Bank. These permanent structures separate Palestinian cities, towns and villages, as well as families, from one another and severely limit Palestinians’ mobility […]

Israel/ Palestine

The World Turned its Back on Gaza’s Palestinians, but Qatar is donating $150mn to support coronavirus battle

Middle East Monitor

Qatar will be sending $150 million in aid to the besieged Gaza Strip to support United Nations humanitarian programmes and efforts to help combat the new coronavirus outbreak, the state-run Qatari Committee to Rebuild Gaza announced on Twitter today. The emergency aid, which will cover a period of six months, comes after the Palestinian Health […]

Donald Trump

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Pulls a Trump on Coronavirus: Denies Own Responsibility, Blames a Foreign Country (US)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump and his cronies in the GOP got high-level, frantic briefings from US intelligence in January and February that the coronavirus would produce a major pandemic and send the US economy into a tailspin. That would have been the time to order test kits (rather than having Jared Kushner futz […]

Afghanistan

What Americans Don’t Know About the hardships of Military Families

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As each of my husband’s Navy submarine deployments came to an end, local spouses would e-mail me about the ship’s uncertain date of return. They were attempting to sell tickets to a raffle in which the winner would be the first to kiss her returning sailor. […]

Donald Trump

As US Pulls Military Trainers from Iraq, will the Coronavirus Finally End America’s Forever Wars?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Will the coronavirus result in the second withdrawal of US troops from Iraq? There is an increasing question of whether the some 5,000 US military personnel there can be protected from the outbreak if they remain in that country. In any case, many of those servicemen are involved in training […]