US Foreign Policy

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – When a country starts casting around for 60-year-old veterans to send to the front, you know that something’s wrong. All hands don’t go on deck unless the ship is foundering. It’s not yet clear whether the Russian ship of state is taking on water. But its military effort […]

censorship

Saudi Arabia: Drop Baseless Investigation of US Citizen: US Embassy Should Fully Assist Woman Facing Free Speech Charges

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Washington, DC) – Saudi prosecutors should drop an investigation possibly leading to formal criminal charges against a US citizen living in Saudi Arabia for “disrupting the public order,” Human Rights Watch said today. Carly Morris, 34, believes the allegation relates to her statements on social media voicing concerns about how Saudi […]

censorship

Iran Protests for “Woman, Life, Freedom” and against “Tyranny” spread to 31 Cities, with 35 Dead

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iran is witnessing the worst mass unrest since the failed Green Revolution of 2009, which saw its biggest crowds come out in major cities such as Tehran, Tabriz and Shiraz, and which was spear-headed by college students and youth more generally. The 2009 movement was not joined by the bazaar, […]

Congress

Tlaib calls out “Progressive except on Israel,” and Wasserman Schultz inadvertently makes Her Point for Her

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ursula Perano at the Daily Beast reports on the controversy among the Progressive Democratic Caucus in Congress over remarks on Wednesday by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She attacked the syndrome of “progressive except on Israel” within her caucus and observed at an online seminar, “that among progressives, it has become […]

Israel/ Palestine

Can the UN be Reformed? Turkish President Erdogan’s “A Fairer World is Possible.” – A Review

John Hickman

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – I avoid reading books written by politicians. They are all too often nothing more than exercises in annoying self-promotion disguised in improbably high-minded language. Yet circumstance tempted me beyond the powers of resistance to buy a copy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s 2021 book A Fairer […]

nuclear weapons

Ukraine war: Putin calls up more Troops and threatens Nuclear Option – But is it a Sign of Weakness?

The Conversation

By Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham and Tatyana Malyarenko, National University Odesa Law Academy | – Declaring a partial mobilisation and threatening the use of “lots of Russian weapons” in response to alleged western nuclear blackmail, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has upped the ante once more in his war against Ukraine. Indeed, Putin nearly went […]

Iran

What Really Drives Israeli Politicians’ Posturing over Revival of Iran Nuclear Deal?

Middle East Monitor

By Motasem A. Dalloul | – Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited himself for a security meeting with Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid last month to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme. Afterwards, he said that Lapid and Defence Minister Benny Gantz did not live up to their responsibilities for preventing a new nuclear deal […]

Climate Crisis

Scientists Conclude Climate Change Contributed to 1/3 of Pakistan being Under Water; Calls for Debt Relief

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The massive monsoon floods that affected 33 million people in Pakistan, destroyed 1.3 million homes, turned the southern province of Sindh temporarily into a new inland sea nearly 70 miles across, and killed off 80% of the country’s livestock was in part fueled by the human-caused climate emergency. So argues […]

Iran

The US-Iran Conflict: Review of “Republics of Myth”

Marc Martorell Junyent

Barcelona (Special to Informed Comment) – Review of Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman, Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2022.) The enmity between the United States and Iran following the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution constitutes one of the most studied international rivalries. This notwithstanding, the recently […]