Photo credit: Flickr/ Nick Taylor By Seyed Hossein Mousavian December 12, 2020 Over the past few months, Iran has been working with China on a sweeping long-term political, economic, and security agreement that would facilitate hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in the Iranian economy. It is also pursuing a long-term partnership with Russia. Politicians in […]
By Gordon M. Hahn January 30, 2020 The apparent overreaction by the U.S. to Iranian provocations represented by the assassination of Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Qassem Soleiman is one of the stronger blows to hit one of the most important nails in the coffin of U.S.-Russian relations: the revival of Russian-Western geopolitical competition outside Russia’s […]
By Jonathan Power December 11, 2019 The Europeans have not done well in countering President Donald Trump’s onslaught on Iran. When Trump unilaterally decided that the US should withdraw from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, which committed Iran to winding down its nuclear research in return for the West, Russia and China (the latter two […]
By Conn M. Hallinan November 27, 2019 The fallout from the September attack on Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil facilities is continuing to reverberate throughout the Middle East, sidelining old enmities – sometimes for new ones – and re-drawing traditional alliances. While Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria is grabbing the headlines, the bigger story may […]
By Richard Falk October 3, 2019 Prefatory Note: The post below is a slightly modified version of an interview published in The Nation on September 25th, following the September 14th attack on Saudi oil facilities. It follows a pattern with respect to Iran of accusations, denials, and public uncertainties. This combination of elements, given the leadership in Washington […]
By Kevin Cashman and Cavin Kharrazian Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently visited the Group of Seven (G7) at the invitation of French president Emmanuel Macron, in what was seen as an overture to the Trump administration to negotiate over sanctions that have plagued the Iranian economy. Back in 2018, after months of increasingly hostile rhetoric, […]
August 5, 2019 By Farhang Jahanpour Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI is a highly respected research institute with a special place in the hearts of peace-lovers throughout the world. In a world where there are so many think thanks and organisations […]
By Jonathan Power July 30, 2019 In 2010 the signatory states of the International Criminal Court, established to prosecute war crimes, convened a conference to add aggression to the list of crimes the court could try. (See the Rome Statute here, the relevant provisions and definitions of the concept of “aggression” are described in Article […]
By Jonathan Power July 24, 2019 There’s never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran one day did cross the nuclear threshold the same deterrence will apply. No one rational would want to provoke their own incineration. Columbia University professor, Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, wrote in […]
William R. Polk June 5, 2019 Despite appearances of random, off-the-cuff decisions, rendered on tweets and without, or even in opposition to, the advice of foreign policy specialists, I am going to posit a rationale behind the warlike actions and pronouncements of Messrs. Trump, Bolton and Pompeo. To do so, I will try to put […]
