via Lobe Log
The UN High Commission for Human Rights now believes 60,000 Syrians have been killed since March 2011 (far more than claimed by the Syrian opposition) and that death rates have been rising more sharply of late. Given the situation on the ground and the continuing failure of diplomacy, the bloody human [...]
via Lobe Log
Foreign Policy’s Stephen Walt highlights a chart by Belfer Center fellow Matt Waldman showing that as the US-led 2009 “Surge” in Afghanistan proceeded, US casualties increased. The pace in 2012 is also roughly similar to the toll from the previous two years:
Equally important, the final column (based on figures [...]
via Lobe Log
It’s a most unwelcome feeling of déjà vu which must settle over any observer of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the US role in it. An escalation is seen in the woefully asymmetric exchange of fire between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israel claims the escalation was entirely initiated by Hamas, when [...]
via Lobe Log
By Mark Jansson
Although President Obama has another four years, he will surely continue to hear from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and a chorus of critics at home, that he has far less time to convince Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). But the administration [...]
via Lobe Log
Amidst reports that Great Britain has denied the US military use of important British bases for an assault against Iran, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters on Friday that whenever the DOD considers military action “we do it within the legal confines…of this country.” The US [...]
via Lobe Log
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima examines the question of what constitutes war if the trigger point originates in cyberspace:
Deciding what amounts to an act of war is more a political judgment than a military or legal one. International law avoids the phrase in favor of “armed attack” and “use of force.” [...]
via Lobe Log
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released a brief report emphasizing that Iran continues to move toward nuclear weapons capability and the international community must halt further progress. ISIS’s latest concern centers around Iranian lawmaker Mansour Haqiqatpour’s October 2 comment that Iran could enrich uranium to 60 percent [...]
via Lobe Log
Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative polemicist and long-time Iran hawk who joined the Foundation for Defense of Democracies after leaving the American Enterprise Institute in 2008, is being honest when he reminds us here that he has opposed direct US military intervention in Iran. For Ledeen, Iranian-regime change is more attainable if [...]
via IPS News
It was exactly 50 years ago when then-President John F. Kennedy took to the airwaves to inform the world that the Soviet Union was introducing nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba and that he had ordered a blockade of the island – and would consider stronger action – to force their removal.
[...]
via Lobe Log
The National Iranian American Council’s Reza Marashi, who served at the Office of Iranian Affairs at the US Department of State during the transition from the Bush to Obama administration, on the key foreign policy issue facing the next president of the United States:
Political parties in the US do [...]
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