US Foreign Policy

( RFE/ RL ) – Iran’s Rasa news agency has rekindled rumors that Mojtaba Khamenei, the influential son of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being groomed as the successor to his elderly father, despite his lack of credentials. Affiliated with seminaries in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom, the agency used the title of […]

Iran

Did the U.S. Permanently Destabilize Iraq? Will There be an Intra-Shia Civil War?

Middle East Monitor

By Raed Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – There is usually a lot of competition between near-equal armed groups in Iraq. Resisting the 2003 US-led invasion provided a good opportunity for emerging groups from Sunni and Shia communities across the country to do just that. Such groups became the main protagonists in […]

Iran

Israel is worried about a possible Clash with Washington over the Iran Nuclear Deal

Middle East Monitor

By Adnan Abu Amer | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – As the countdown begins for the signing of a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, a number of disputes have surfaced between Israel and the US about the deal. There is also criticism within Israel of the government’s political and military approach […]

Russia

Mikhail Gorbachev: The contradictory Legacy of Soviet Leader who attempted ‘Revolution from Above

Ronald Suny

Mikhail Gorbachev was a contradictory figure; his legacy, complex. Hailed in the West as a democrat and liberator of his people – which he genuinely was – he increasingly became despised by many within Russia for destroying the Soviet Union and dismantling a great power. Either way, he was consequential. Indeed, his death at 91, […]

Iran

Iran has Reached out to the US many Times, and often been Rebuffed by Washington

Jeffrey Rudolph

( Detailed Political Quizzes) – In an August 14, 2022, New York Times Opinion piece (“How the United States Misunderstands Iran”), Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that, “By and large, the United States has sought to engage a[n] [Iranian] regime that clearly doesn’t want to be engaged…” […]

Afghanistan

That Time Gorbachev Announced Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan and US went on Building up Muslim Fundamentalists there Anyway, leading to 9/11

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing yesterday at age 91 is a good occasion to review some of the profound mistakes of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies regarding Afghanistan. Reagan-era officials refused to believe that Premier Gorbachev actually intended to pull Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, though Gorbachev came into […]

Afghanistan

End America’s Collective Punishment of Afghans

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Farrah Hassen | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – A year has now passed since the tumultuous U.S. withdrawal from decades of war and occupation in Afghanistan. With the Taliban functionally in charge, the country faces a deteriorating humanitarian crisis and economic collapse. But instead of taking action to promote stability and reinvigorate […]

Bill of Rights

The Real Cancel Culture: Anti-Palestinianism and the Crisis of American Free Speech

Middle East Monitor

By Nasim Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The firing of Palestinian American woman, Natalie Abulhawa, has sparked a debate over free-speech, “cancel-culture” and the ever-growing crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism. The 25-year-old athletic trainer was fired by a private girls school in Bryn Mawr over years-old social media posts criticising Israel. In […]

Featured

Why the Right Wingers in Israel and the US Really Oppose Iran Nuclear Deal: They want Regime Change Instead

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Right wing Israeli politicians such as former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even centrist politicians like caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid have fulminated against any US renewal of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As with the loony Right wing in the US (increasingly […]