US Foreign Policy

Dear CIA Director Burns: Don’t Listen to the Israelis on Iran– They just want you to fight a war for them

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jonathan Lis at Haaretz reports that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is lobbying the US to get on a war footing with Iran. The Israelis will try to convince CIA director William Burns of their position on Iran in his meetings there on Wednesday. Lis makes 3 […]

Afghanistan

Taliban Gains pose risk to fragile Legal Protections gained by Afghan Women: HRW

Human Rights Watch

( Human Rights Watch) – (New York) – The Afghan government’s failure to provide accountability for violence against women and girls has undermined progress to protect women’s rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Gains by Taliban forces as the United States completes its troop withdrawal leaves the current Afghan state, and […]

China

On China, Biden is continuing Trump’s Zero-Sum Vision of the World when our Crises demand a Win-Win Approach

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – Regarding China, Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Team has embraced the zero-sum rhetoric of the Trump administration. That approach could bifurcate the globe politically and technologically along racial lines, but instead of race, the project has been marketed as a contest of values. Zero-sum rhetoric didn’t begin with Trump. […]

Japan

On Anniversary of U.S. Nuking of Hiroshima, can we Learn from the Forests?

H. Patricia Hynes

(Special to Informed Comment) – On August 6 and 9 throughout the world, people will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who died—crushed, vaporized, burned beyond recognition, poisoned by radiation—from the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The bombs’ hideous intent and impact constituted a crime […]

China

What electric vehicle manufacturers can learn from China – their biggest market

The Conversation

By Youlin Huang, David Tyfield, Didier Soopramanien, and Lixian Qian | – Despite the pandemic, global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) increased by 43% in 2020. Total EV sales in China were 1.3 million, an increase of 8% compared to 2019, and 41% of all EVs sold worldwide. Though Europe sold more than China for […]

Featured

Trump’s Tehran Poison Pill: US Trade Embargo provokes Iranian Attacks in Gulf, Making Return to Nuclear Deal Harder

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The BBC reports that a bitumen tanker, the MV Asphalt Princess, was boarded by nine men on Tuesday and hijacked. It cites unnamed “analysts,” presumably MI6, to the effect that the hijacking was the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The MV Asphalt Princess, owned by the United Arab […]

Iran

Discussions of Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment ignore Israel’s Atom Bomb Arsenal: What if Iran’s Program is a Deterrent to War?

John Hickman

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – According to the latest news coverage, Iran-U.S. negotiations to revive the 2015 JCPOA are in trouble. The main sticking points involve a guarantee demanded by Tehran that Washington will not abandon the deal at some future date as it did in 2018 under the previous administration and […]

Archaeology

The U.S. Committed Cliocide (Destruction of History) in Iraq, and even Returning Gilgamesh Can’t Fix it

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US government has returned 17,000 archeological artifacts to Iraq, many of them over 4,000 years old. This, according to Al Jazeera The objects and tablets were looted from the country during the chaos of the Bush administration’s rule of that country and were smuggled into the U.S., then sold […]

Afghanistan

Taliban ‘has not changed,’ say women facing subjugation in areas of Afghanistan under its extremist rule

The Conversation

By Homa Hoodfar and Mona Tajali | – The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total […]