At first, the Americans couldn’t believe it. The Israelis were pressuring the Clinton administration to see Iran as the greatest global threat. Only a short time earlier, Israel was cooperating with Iran militarily and selling them weapons. The Israelis were Iran’s...
Iran’s hardliners were right. They recited a long history of agreements in which Iranian compliance was repaid with American betrayal. Like a Persian chorus of Cassandras, they called their warnings into the wind, and the world called them crazy. Well, the mad mullahs...
The “insanity” label that America attaches to North Korea has a lot of political utility. First, it colors the interpretation of everything North Korea does. The consideration of a rational motivation for undesirable actions can be prevented: the actions are assumed...
As Donald Trump increases the pressure on the throat of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran, more than the nuclear agreement is at risk of being lost. Trita Parsi, an Iran expert who was consulted by the Obama administration...
Like a badly written series of romance novels, the plot template remains fixed while just the names of the characters and places rotate through the template. The story of Syria that Americans and Canadians ingest from the mainstream media is the same simplistic...
Donald Trump has just approved Montenegro's accession into NATO. Montenegro is a tiny nation, and its inclusion doesn't significantly change the abilities of NATO, but it's inclusion is huge, and its meaning is significant and clear to Russia. As the curtain rose on...
One of the promises that President Trump has kept is his promise to be tough on Iran. Though he has not canceled the nuclear weapons agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he has "officially put Iran on notice," and he has imposed new...
On February 15, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump held their first official meeting. Strangely, they held their press conference prior to the meeting. During that press conference, in answer to the question,...
On the domestic front, Donald Trump’s bullying and abuse have unfolded on the nightly news like a soap opera. When acting attorney general Sally Yates did her job by telling Trump that his suspension of visas to seven Muslim nations was possibly unlawful, he fired...
As the end of Obama’s term in office approaches, it may be of interest to evaluate his performance on Latin America. One of Obama’s foreign policy promises at the beginning of his first term was to change the way America does business with Latin America. The promise...
