via LobeLog
by Farideh Farhi
Paul Pillar has aptly explained why the vote this week in the House of Representatives for even more sanctions against Iran (H.R. 850) is at odds with the stated US foreign policy objective of changing Iran’s nuclear policies. While the Senate is unlikely to go along, at [...]
by Paul Pillar
Sometimes our political leaders act so contrary to their declared purposes, even in the face of repeated explanations and clear reasoning as to why what they are doing is counterproductive, that we have to move beyond the oft-ignored reasoning, squarely address the motives and politics involved, [...]
by Paul Pillar
Sometimes a child is able to drag a parent into doing something the parent might not really want to do—say, taking the kid to an amusement park—through a two-step process. The first step is to nag, repeatedly and insistently, about going to the park. The parent, [...]
by Paul Pillar
via The National Interest
The State Department released last week the government’s legislatively mandated annual report on international terrorism. There is no doubt what headline the administration hopes will be taken away from the release of the report, which covers the calendar year 2012. In a
by Paul Pillar
Many who offer opinions on policy toward Iran, and particularly on how to handle negotiations over its nuclear program, implicitly claim an unusual ability to read the minds of Iranian decision-makers. Assertions are made with apparent confidence about what the Iranians want, fear [...]
by Jim Lobe and Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, May 18 2013 (IPS) – A nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the United States and its regional allies like Israel and the Gulf Arab monarchies, according to a new report released here Friday by the Rand Corporation.
Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: [...]
by Paul Pillar
via The National Interest
Expressions of angst over Syria have entailed several themes, one of which concerns possible “spread” of the Syrian civil war into nearby states. Lebanon, for reasons of physical and ethnic geography, is most often mentioned as a locale of such spreading. But at [...]
by Jim Lobe
via IPS News
The surprise accord reached by the U.S. and Russia in Moscow Tuesday to try to convene an international conference to resolve the two-year-old civil war in Syria as soon as the end of this month has been greeted with equal measures of hope and scepticism.
If nothing [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jim Lobe
Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post who also writes a weekly foreign affairs column, generally stands at the intersection of neo-conservatism and liberal interventionism and, in my view, holds a lot of the responsibility for the paper’s neo-conservative editorial drift over the [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jasmin Ramsey
The following quote from this Washington Post article on last week’s nuclear talks with Iran stood out despite it being a regurgitation of past statements:
“I don’t want to overpromise, but we’re encouraged,” said the official, speaking to reporters accompanying Secretary of State John [...]
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