New evidence has now surfaced from former Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak that Israel came close to attacking Iran three times over the past few years – if you believe what major news media reported about the story. But you shouldn’t believe it. The...
If and when the Iran nuclear agreement gets through Congress, many people in Washington hope that Obama will articulate a more realistic strategy for the Middle East than what we have heard from his administration in the past. But Obama has evidently decided this is...
I’m glad that the United States and Iran reached an agreement in Vienna after nearly two years of negotiations and 35 years of enmity. A failure to do so under present political conditions would certainly have left a festering conflict with unpredictably bad...
Now that Iran nuclear deal is completed, the attention of western news media and political commentators is predictably focused overwhelmingly on the opposition to the agreement within the US Congress and from Israel and the Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition. That media...
President Barack Obama decided this week against achieving a final agreement before the expiration of the July 10 deadline, which would have limited the period of Congressional consideration of the agreement. The motivation was the desire to neutralize criticism that...
VIENNA – As the US and Iranian negotiators move toward completion of a historic deal in Vienna, the lifting of sanctions against Iran – which is the most difficult outstanding issue in the talks – is on its way to being resolved, Western and...
VIENNA – A public diplomacy campaign by the Obama administration to convince world opinion that Iran was reneging on the Lausanne framework agreement in April has seriously misrepresented the actual diplomacy of the Iran nuclear talks, as my interviews with...
The story published in the Washington Post on 13 June shows how the US military service chiefs – who make decisions on war policy in light of their own institutional interests – prefer an inconclusive war with IS and existing constraints on US involvement,...
In the final phase of the negotiations with Iran, the US-led international coalition is still seeking Iran’s agreement to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit any military facilities it deems suspicious and to interview a selected list of...
News media coverage of the Camp David summit between President Barack Obama and Gulf Cooperation Council members has focused largely on Obama’s success in getting the GCC States to go along with the negotiation of a nuclear agreement with Iran. But the much more...
