via LobeLog
by Robert E. Hunter
With President Obama’s decision to step up arms supplies to Syrian rebels, Syria’s war has become his war. This was not part of his game-plan.
Obama did inherit a mess in the region. This included two seemingly unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which has much [...]
by Peter Jenkins
A whiff of bias in much media reporting of the conflict in Syria has made it hard to judge the situation there with confidence. Nonetheless, recent words and deeds suggest that Western governments have started to lose confidence in the eventual victory of rebel forces (whom one is supposed to refer to [...]
via Lobe Log
by Mitchell Plitnick
The Obama Administration’s options for avoiding deeper involvement in Syria are dwindling fast. With Russia and Hezbollah increasing their activities on the Syrian front, Obama may have a very hard time fending off the growing domestic and international pressure to take action, if that is what he still [...]
by Charles Naas
At last the Obama Administration has found a reasonable Syria policy. The critics will continue to insist that the US provide arms to the rebels, but it will be difficult to get more traction for this while the initiative with the Russians holds out hopes, although slender, for the beginning of [...]
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 [...]
by Peter Jenkins
Readers who recall that four years ago a new US President seemed eager to defuse the West’s quarrel with Iran over its nuclear activities may wonder why we are all still waiting for white smoke. I am not sure I know the answer, but I have a hunch it has something to [...]
via Lobe Log
by Charles Naas
The second round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan between the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) and Iran ended just about where they started — no advance from the March talks and the glimmer of hope that perhaps some kind of momentum could be established. Unlike Almaty [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jasmin Ramsey
It’s not unusual for evidence supposedly indicating an Iranian nuclear weapons program to be leaked to the press, but how credible is that evidence and how should the press be handling it? For example, late last year, the Associated Press reported on a graph, allegedly from [...]
By Ebrahim Mahdawi
Ebrahim Mahdawi writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.
In this testimony, Seventy-year-old Abdul Husain from Deh Afghan remembers a [...]
via Lobe Log
by Farideh Farhi
Much about various Iranian and non-Iranian narratives and reporting on the assassination of General Hassan Shateri (aka Khoshnevis) is unclear or contradictory. Let’s just say that reports cannot even agree on the date he died on. So I leave it to others to practice the art of speculation [...]
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