Middle East

By Dalia Alazzeh, University of the West of Scotland and Shahzad Uddin, University of Essex | – (The Conversation) – Israel’s ultranationalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced in May that he would be witholding tax revenues earmarked for Palestine. The decision was made in response to Spain, Ireland and Norway’s recognition of a Palestinian state. […]

Featured

Biden now falsely Claims Netanyahu has “accepted” Detailed Peace Plan, as Israeli Atrocities Continue

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – At his rally in Detroit on Friday afternoon, President Joe Biden at one point said, “That’s why I put together a detailed plan that the United Nations accepted that the Israelis accepted that the Palestinians have accepted to end this war. This war must end must end.” Biden probably would […]

Israel/ Palestine

Record Israeli Land Grab fuels already soaring Tension in the West Bank

The Conversation

By Serag El Hegazi, University of Bradford | – (The Conversation) – Israel has reportedly approved its largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, according to a report released on July 3 by Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, Peace Now. The seizure involves more than 12 sq km of land in […]

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Biden’s $270 mn Gaza Aid Pier to be Mothballed, but “Famine has spread across the Entire Gaza Strip”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Navy Times reports that the US aid pier at Gaza will be permanently decommissioned. The $270 million pier could not be reattached this week because of heavy seas. President Joe Biden announced the pier in his State of the Union address, pledging that “massive amounts” of humanitarian aid would […]

Featured

The Great Soccer Massacre: Israeli Air Force Kills 29 Refugees as it tries to get at one Militant

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Turkish news service TRT reports from wire services that an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Khan Younis, where people had gathered to watch a soccer match, killed at least 29 persons on Wednesday evening. The weapon was an American-provided 250-pound bomb of the sort used […]

Iran

Iran’s new Reformist President offers Hope to the West and Cover for the Conservative Establishment

The Conversation

By Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, SOAS, University of London | – (The Conversation) – Good news for democracy in Iran – words which in recent times, particularly in western news reports, are rarely seen in the same sentence. But the election of Masoud Pezeshkian as president of Iran must be seen as a positive development. Pezeshkian is […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Israeli PM Netanyahu relies on normalizing Genocide

Ramona Wadi

( Middle East Monitor ) – The UN has been stating that nowhere is safe in Gaza. Palestinians have been crying out the same, prior to the useless official statements. Those that remain have been displaced several times over, in a macabre spectacle that leaves one wondering who is next in Israel’s genocidal kill toll. […]

Climate Crisis

Water Shortage: Was Iran’s late President Raisi a Martyr to Climate Change?

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Tarique Niazi | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died on May 19 while returning from a ceremony to inaugurate a hydropower project in a remote corner of northwestern Iran. Why would a head of state brave the hazardous conditions of unseasonal blizzards in a mountainous region to […]

Featured

Can Iran’s New Reformist President Deliver?

Fariba Amini

Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Elections in Iran have predictable outcomes. The men picked by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, engage in a quasi-debate on TV, but usually the hand-picked guy is bound to win. This year saw a minor upset. The 2024 presidential election took place after the former President and […]