Middle East conflict formation

Screenshot from AlJazeera, October 20, 2023 October 20, 2023 This is a shortened version of a must-watch Mearsheimer lecture. You may enjoy his clear-eyed vision as if it was given recently. However… Professor Mearsheimer gave it at the March 24, 2017, Israel Lobby and American Policy conference. One indicator of good versus bad research is the degree to which predictions turn out to be right. Most Western researchers on international affairs whom decision-makers take inspiration from must, therefore, be incompetent, if not lousy, scholars…. Or they listen only to themselves in confrontational echo chambers populated by group thinkers. Be sure they do not listen to the likes of John Mearsheimer.

All photos © Jan Oberg Writing this, I must admit that my rage and pain build up inside, still twenty years later. Below, see what TFF and I wrote back then and why we were, simply put, making better predictions on a shoestring budget than the US and other NATO decision-makers on multi-billion-dollar budgets. Like other wars and interventions, this was no “mistake”. It was an unavoidable consequence of Western MIRE – Militarism, Imperialism, Racism and Exceptionalism. The West has learned nothing. Militarism is now its main cohesive force into its manifest destiny: Decline and fall. President George W. Bush announcing that he has just started the war on Iraq. Listen carefully! All the arguments and aims he presents were either false, mistaken or outright lies. And sanctimonious. Jan Oberg March 19, 2023 TFF’s fact-finding missions and scattered memories Permit me start out with a quotation from the British Stop...

Richard Falk July 21, 2022 The U.S. Government at the highest level criticized Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, because she went to China on a mission to develop opportunities for cooperation with respect to the protection of human rights. I found that criticism appalling at the time. The mission had been carefully prepared several weeks earlier by UN staff that had visited China and negotiated the itinerary of the visit, which occurred in May of this year. The whole experience seemed a win/win breakthrough as a major country opened itself up to a high degree of independent international scrutiny with respect to its human rights record, an exposure the U.S. itself has resisted and opposed. High officials in Washington let it be known in advance that they considered the trip ‘a mistake,’ and expressed consternation that its hyped allegations of ‘genocide’ associated with the treatment of...

Juan Cole July 21, 2022 Although President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia was ostensibly about petroleum and attempting to lower gasoline prices in the US, it doesn’t seem to me that that rationale entirely explains Biden’s about-face on Saudi Arabia. For one thing, Biden must have been told that Saudi Arabia does not have much extra capacity to put more petroleum on the market and so cannot itself lower prices. Whether OPEC will be willing to loosen the quotas for member states is unclear, and whether there is much extra capacity in the organization as a whole is a question mark. So if it isn’t all about oil, what is driving the president’s Middle East trip? On the one hand, I think he is trying to pressure Iran into coming back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear deal. If Biden could close that...

Translation of the Introduction to the New Edition of Arnold Toynbee’s Civilisation on Trial, translated into Persian by Farhang Jahanpour Farhang Jahanpour October 28, 2021 More than 45 years have passed since the publication of my translation of “Civilisation on Trial” by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) – read the entire book in English here. When that translation was first published by Isfahan University Press in 1976 it was warmly received, and in a short time, more than half of the copies of the first printing had been sold. Unfortunately, a short time after its publication, with the start of the growing political tensions and clashes that led to the Islamic Revolution, the book was caught up in the revolutionary maelstrom. Since then, the book has never been republished. However, more than 45 years later, in view of the importance of the book and its relevance regarding some of the latest political...

Iconic image of Taliban fighters in the Presidential Palace on August 15, 2021 Farhang Jahanpour TFF Associate August 16, 2021 I do not wish to rub salt into the wounds of US and British officials who are responsible for the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, but there is no way of sugar-coating this appalling tragedy, especially for hard-pressed Afghans who have experienced war and occupation for over 40 years. In my contacts with various senior Afghan officials and ordinary civilians, especially women, during the past 40 years, I had been very encouraged and impressed by how they used a short period of peace to get educated, to establish a civil society, to serve their country and to assume positions of responsibility with relative ease, only for all those hopes and dreams to come tumbling down in a matter of few weeks. The hasty withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in the...

Statement of concern – concerning the OPCW – Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons‘ – investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria in early April 2018. Here NBC News’ coverage of the alleged attack and President Trump’s decision to strike in response to it. We wish to express our deep concern over the protracted controversy and political fall-out surrounding the OPCW and its investigation of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018. Since the publication by the OPCW of its final report in March 2019, a series of worrying developments has raised serious and substantial concerns with respect to the conduct of that investigation. These developments include instances in which OPCW inspectors involved with the investigation have identified major procedural and scientific irregularities, the leaking of a significant quantity of corroborating documents, and damning statements provided to UN Security Council meetings. It...

U.S. bombs and bullets have claimed at least hundreds of thousands of civilian lives this century. Here, a U.S. airstrike against Islamic State militants in densely-populated Mosul, Iraq on July 9, 2017 is shown. (Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images) March 29, 2021 Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies Unbeknownst to many Americans, the U.S. military and its allies are engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis.  On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago.  The Western media reported the U.S. airstrike as an isolated and exceptional incident, and there has been significant blowback from the U.S. public, Congress and the world community, condemning the strikes...

TFF Associate and friend over decades, Richard Falk, last year turned 90. Read more about him here – and use the search engine to find lots of his writings. The latest we’ve published is on championing lost causes... Eric Walberg March 10, 2021 Writing this memoir has been as much about discovering my story, that is, myself as it is about telling it. That’s Falk’s version of Socrates’ ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ Or should I say, Forrest Gump’s? Falk’s life reads like a storybook, starting with meeting Supreme Court judges with his father at age 9 in 1939, making friends with Claudette Colbert, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liz Taylor (long story) at age 15, befriending and befoeing many of the dramatis personae of the Cold War throughout his long and productive life, finally landing on the shores of democratic socialism as the US charges towards the (literal) finish line. Falk came...

© Jan Oberg – How much longer shall the Iranian people suffer? And shall they also be bombed? NEW – Listen to this article here Jan Oberg March 1, 2021 The West-Iran conflict is extremely a-symmetric. It’s the West that has, historically, sought to influence, change, threaten, demanded obedience from, punished (with sanctions and more), liquidated high-level politicians and scholars, shot down a civilian plane, demonised and excluded Iran. Not to speak of giving Saddam Hussein the chemical weapons and the green light for his war on Iran in 1980. Iran has not done similar harm to the West. Originally published by Transcend Media Service, TMS The conflict’s roots go back to 1953 when the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6 orchestrated a coup d’etat, or regime-change, in Tehran and deposed the democratically elected Prime Minister, Dr Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah and made Iran the most militarized country...

TFF is very proud to have published numerous articles and videos by one of the world’s most knowledgeable scholars on the Middle East in general and Iran in particular, Dr Farhang Jahanpour, Oxford, since he became an Associate in 2006 (and later Board member). It’s been such a delightful co-operation and a great contribution to TFF and our engagement with Iran since 2012. Fortunately, this incredibly prolific writer continues to publish with us here on The Transnational, but we believe that you will also like to know that he has recently set up his own homepage with many more articles – a treasure on Persian culture, history, literature and – well, much more. Since it seems to have been a Western media-political pastime to only publish negative, demonising stuff about Iran and omitting its amazing culture dating back to 7000 BC, it is so important that there is a homepage...

Introduction Below is a long interview from Konrad Stachnio with Richard Falk – TFF Associate – on a wide-ranging set of questions, which stretched by knowledge past its breaking point, especially in assessing where the technological innovations on the horizons will lead us.It is one of 17 conversations published by Clarity Press under the title, Civilization in Overdrive: Conversations at the Edge of the Human Future.Preface by Stachnio after interview.The book is recommended strongly.It can be ordered here Originally published on Richard Falks blog on September 12, 2020 Civilization in Overdrive, edited by Konrad Stachnio “If a digital Fukuyama tells the world that ‘the end of history’ has been reached, he should be scorned this time around.” KONRAD STACHNIO: Do you know what is the role of the so-called Black Budget in building the power of the USA as a global security state? RICHARD FALK: It is not possible for someone without access...