The origins of chess are contested, but few dispute that while the game began in India, it was the Sassanian Persian Empire that refined it into a recognizable strategic system. It was Persia that codified its language, symbolism and intellectual framework: the shah...
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. Can you even remember when the U.S. went to war with Iraq in 2003, when President George W. Bush announced that, “at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its...
President Trump and his minions assured America that he was a man of peace who would abandon the “failed policy of regime change”. Yet, since taking office in 2025, he has bombed seven countries and threatened several more. As a man without principles, Trump is an...
The war on Iran was neither inevitable nor necessary. As recently as March 3, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said the IAEA “has found no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.” On March 18, Director of National...
The skies over the Ukrainian frontline no longer belong to the birds. In a conflict now entering its fifth year, the rapid rise of small, low-cost drones has created a new kind of aerial pressure – one that hunters and wildlife managers would recognize as a permanent...
As we begin a new week, the media is filled with reports that President Trump is ready to approve a US ground operation against Iran, either to seize Iran’s uranium or to attack an island off the country’s coast. Thousands of US troops have sped to the conflict area...
The joint US-Israeli war on Iran has thrust back into the spotlight a divisive debate about whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog. Who is in charge of this war: Israel or the United States? One side believes Israel lured Trump into a trap from which...
The wording is familiar. The urgency is always absolute. The implication is unmistakable: Israel is not choosing war. It is forced into it. For many, the claim is inherently contradictory. How can a state initiate war – and in Gaza’s case, sustain a genocide – while...
On the eve of the horrific World Trade center attack on September 11, 2001, the mullahs and their IRGC hooligans had been in power for nearly 22 years. Yet the record for that two decade interval subsequent to the founding of the Iranian Revolution does not even...
US President Ronald Reagan once declared that “Terrorism is the preferred weapon of weak and evil men.” While the ideological descendants of President Reagan love to incessantly describe Iran as the “#1 State Sponsor of Terrorism,” the US and its Western allies have,...
