The U.S. foreign policy elite still wants the Middle East for its oil and its strategic location. By Edward Hunt, January 19, 2018. Originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus here • In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, four former U.S. diplomats provided remarkably candid commentary on recent U.S. involvement in the […]
By Jonathan Power January 23, 2018 • Last week, the American secretary of defence, Jim Mattis, declared a new era: “There has been a return of great power competition……great power competition – not terrorism- is now the primary focus of US security”. In the new national defence strategy document China and Russia are singled […]
Women from around the world cross the DMZ – De-Militarized Zone – border between North and South Korea in 2015. To the left TFF Associate Mairead Maguire. Reported here by the Daily Mail. By Samuel S. Kim* Abstract The often-used description in the American mainstream media and geopolitical literature of “North Korea’s nuclear aggression” […]
By Jan Oberg In 2017-2018, the risk of nuclear war has surfaced more or less permanently in the media – the catchword being “North Korea” and the media being Western. It’s all been seen from the West’s point of view, nobody pointing out, for instance, that North Korea’s military expenditures are around 1% of […]
By Jan Oberg On January 16, 2018, David E. Sanger and William J. Broad of the New York Times reported that “A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear […]
By Mike Whitney January 16, 2018 The Trump administration has settled on a plan for sabotaging the Iranian Nuclear deal that does not explicitly violate the terms of the agreement. Trump will continue to suspend sanctions, as is required under the terms of the deal, but at the same time, he will warn that […]
By Javad Heiranni The Tehran Times, January 14, 2018 TEHRAN – Professor Farhang Jahanpour, part-time tutor on the Middle East in the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, tells the Tehran Times that “It should be remembered that a greater part of the statement released by President Trump is for domestic consumption, […]
Photo: The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini By Peter Jenkins January 13, 2018 • It is with some reluctance that I write about President Donald Trump’s latest statement on Iran, because the statement is so full of half-truths, untruths, and logical fallacies that it is bad […]
By Graham Fuller • With the emergence of demonstrations and rioting in various Iranian cities earlier this month, Washington’s neoconservatives and interventionist/ imperial-minded “liberals” have been given a new lease on life in promoting their aspirations for “regime change” in Tehran. Indeed, of the three current potential global flashpoints—North Korea, Russian borderlands, and Iran in […]
By Jan Oberg A few comments in advance of President Trump’s speech on January 11 concerning the nuclear deal, JCPOA, with Iran and why it would be stupid of him to isolate the US by violating the agreement’s letter and spirit. Iran’s response will also be very important and here it is essential to […]