By Scott Ritter November 4, 2019 At a time when the credibility of the United States as either an unbiased actor or reliable ally lies in tatters, Russia has emerged as the one major power whose loyalty to its allies is unquestioned, and whose ability to serve as an honest broker between seemingly intractable opponents […]
By Gordon M. Hahn October 1, 2019 Five or six years ago, when I was still working most intensively on issues related to jihadism in Russia and globally, I warned of the Caucasus Emirate-tied network running from Russia’s North Caucasus to ISIS in Syria and Iraq through Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia (with Tbilisi’s connivance) (see […]
By Dr. William R. Polk June 27, 2019 Exclusive: Many Americans and Westerners are baffled by the violent rage expressed by many Muslims, but the reasons for their anger are real, deriving from a “deep history” of anti-Islamic wars and colonial exploitation of the Middle East, as ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk describes. Originally published by […]
By Jonathan Cook June 3, 2019 By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province - their final holdout in Syria - should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked […]
By Jonathan Power March 12, 2019 The long war is almost over in Syria. Tyranny has won. Violence has won. Most have suffered, many unspeakably. For too long all sides were stalemated by each others’ brutality. Now the government of Bashar Al-Assad has come out on top, aided by Russia and Iran. What to do […]
Photo: James Jeffrey – Special Representative for Syria Engagement in the United States (Hudson Institute via Flickr) By Paul R. Pillar September 19, 2018 Amid a week of attention-grabbing drama about the dysfunction of Donald Trump’s presidency, it almost escaped notice that his administration is putting U.S. troops in harm’s way in a foreign […]
Utterly destructive, self-defeating and spelling the end of the U.S. Empire By Farhang Jahanpour September 22, 2018 In view of the macro-historical perspective on the Middle East-West relations and the concrete cases referred to in this series – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – it is clear that the demonization of Middle Eastern […]
By Farhang Jahanpour September 20, 2018 1. An ally in warfare and torture Although the tragic events in Syria are too close to us to pass a definitive judgement about what has happened there and we need some perspective before we can make any definitive statements, nevertheless, some of the outlines of […]
Photo: Hassan Rouhani of Iran, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey September 12, 2018 By Seyed Hossein Mousavian* As the military phase of the Syrian conflict reaches its final stages, the leaders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey met in Tehran on September 9 and reiterated in a joint statement that […]
Tim Hayward became a TFF Associate in September 2018 He is Director of the Just World Institute and Professor of Environmental Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh. His academic work has focused on integrating ecological concerns into social and political theory. Publications in this field include the books Ecological Thought: An Introduction (Polity […]