Middle East

Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has announced that he will indict Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on bribery and fraud charges. I think it should be underlined that two of the charges have to do with tampering with press coverage of the prime minister, which is to say, tampering with the Fourth Estate, one of […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israel Broke Int’l Law, Likely Committed War Crimes, Shooting 6,000 Gaza Protesters: UN

Juan Cole

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A United Nations (UN) probe said, on Thursday, that Israeli security forces may have committed war crimes killing scores of Palestinians and wounding more than 6,100 suppressing weekly protests in the besieged Gaza Strip over the past year. Santiago Canton, Chairman of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry said, in a statement, […]

Iran

Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif is Back, but Revolutionary Guards still Want Control

Golnaz Esfandiari

(RFE/RL) – A whirlwind eases with the Iranian president’s refusal to accept his smooth-talking foreign minister’s resignation. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Mohammad Javad Zarif has the political wind at his back. The political drama over the immediate fate of Iran’s foreign minister appears to be over. Mohammad Javad Zarif was back at work less […]

Iran

Iran’s Religious Leaders Keep Foreign Minister Zarif on to pursue European Diplomacy

AFP

Tehran (AFP) Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rejected Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s resignation on Wednesday, saying the departure of the public face of the Islamic republic’s detente with the West would be against its best interests. Zarif’s abrupt announcement on Instagram late on Monday that he was quitting had sparked rumours of mass resignations in […]

Featured

A Victim of Trump? Iran’s Centrist Foreign Minister Mysteriously Forced Out

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif resigned via Instagram on Monday, apologizing for his inability to continue in office and for any shortcomings in his past service to the nation. A member of parliament said that Zarif had submitted letters of resignation to President Hassan Rouhani on several occasions but […]

nuclear weapons

Why Proposal to Sell Saudis Nuclear Technology without Safeguards is Terrifying

The Conversation

By Chen Kane | – According to a congressional report, a group that includes former senior U.S. government officials is lobbying to sell nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. As an expert focusing on the Middle East and the spread of nuclear weapons, I believe these efforts raise important legal, economic and strategic concerns. It […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israeli Bulldozers uproot 300 Palestinian-Owned Trees near Jenin

Maan News Agency

JENIN (Ma’an) — Israeli bulldozers razed dozens of dunams and uprooted hundreds of Palestinian-owned trees, on Monday afternoon, on lands belonging to residents from the Bartaa village, southwest of the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin. According to local sources, Israeli forces along with bulldozers stormed the area and began to raze about 28 […]

Iran

Khamenei hails Assad in Tehran as Key to “Resistance” to US

AFP

Tehran (AFP) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Monday on his first visit to the Islamic republic since the start of the Syrian conflict. During the meeting, Assad expressed his gratitude to Iran for all that it has done for Syria during the conflict, according to the Syrian presidency’s […]

Middle East

With Trump AWOL, Europe Woos Mideast, fearing Russian & Chinese Dominance

AFP

By Lachlan Carmichael and Menna Zaki in Cairo | – Sharm el Sheikh (AFP) – European and Arab leaders on Sunday opened their first summit in a bid to bolster cooperation as EU President Donald Tusk said neighbours “should not leave it to powers far from our region”, alluding to China and Russia. Host Egyptian […]