US Foreign Policy

Review of Alexandra Stark, “The Yemen Model: Why U.S. Policy Has Failed in the Middle East” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– Yemen goes through a civil war that does not end, frequent cholera outbreaks, and acute malnutrition among children. These days, however, the southern […]

Featured

Is Iran Next?

Fariba Amini

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In 2005, in the summer of that year, while visiting Iran, I happened to meet an opinionated man. The first thing he asked me was whether I was coming from abroad. He could tell. I replied, yes. He told me, well you are lucky. Here we’re suffering. […]

Featured

The Great Babylon: America’s complicity in Gaza Atrocities

Hugh J. Curran

Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references […]

Featured

Blinken and Austin Scold Netanyahu over Gaza Atrocities, playing Cynical Presidential Politics

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Barak Ravid at Axios got the scoop. He was leaked a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accusing them of reneging on undertakings of last April to pursue their war on Hamas in […]

China

Powder Keg in the Pacific: America’s new Cold War with China

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia’s invasion […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Netanyahu’s Ambitions in Lebanon undermine Biden’s Middle East Strategy

Foreign Policy in Focus

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The Biden administration’s approach to the Middle East crisis that erupted in the wake of October 7, 2023 is on the brink of collapse. Israel’s aggressive maneuvers, coupled with Iran’s growing involvement, are pushing the region toward a full-scale war, one that the Biden administration ostensibly hoped to […]

Constitution

“A Bad” effing “guy!” – Biden cursed out Netanyahu but then let him do as he pleased – Hamlet on the Potomac

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Joe Biden has many achievements as a domestic president, including the biggest investment ever made in green energy and fighting climate change. Whatever one thinks of how he has handled the Ukraine crisis, he certainly has been decisive and has galvanized allies to act alongside him. But on the Middle […]

Israel/ Palestine

Inside the State Department’s Weapons Pipeline to Israel

ProPublica

By Brett Murphy | – ( ProPublica ) – Ambassador Jack Lew urged Washington to give thousands more bombs to the Israelis because they have a “decades-long proven track record” of avoiding killing civilians. A Thank-You: After State Department officials spent months working through weekends and after hours on arms sales, the Israelis sent cases […]

Food Insecurity

USAID Concluded that Israel was Blocking Aid to Gaza; Antony Blinken Lied about it to Congress

ProPublica

By Brett Murphy | – (ProPublica ) – The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its […]