Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi‘s Substack: On March 9 of this year, roughly ten days into the Iran war, I made the following points on Twitter: Trump is desperately seeking to end the war, but Iran has a vote to, and it won’t allow the war to end quite...
JD Vance Is Not Our Guy
JD Vance drew anger this week after a CBS News town hall in which he appeared to brush off the Iran War’s operational failures in front of the grieving husband of a soldier killed in March. “Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot...
Trump’s Threats to Annihilate Iran
Of all of the things that Donald Trump has said publicly since returning to the White House, his threats to annihilate Iran are arguably the worst. This is not only because the repeated statements are deeply immoral and illegal – deliberate killing of civilians is a...
South Korea’s Hedging Strategy
Republic of Korea (ROK) leaders are having to navigate an increasingly challenging policy course to avoid having their country become entangled in an array of dangerous security problems, both in East Asia and elsewhere in the international system. The most recent...
A Culture of Death
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." — Voltaire (1694-1778) A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and...
‘Tortured’ or ‘Torturer’? – Mainstream Media Fail To Ask the Question
On 1 October 2026, Jeffrey Isaac Jarquin, a 35-year-old Nicaraguan man, was deported from the United States by ICE and, on arrival in Managua, was immediately sent to prison by Nicaraguan authorities. Reports described him as a “torture victim,” a “political...
NatCon Conference Dials Up Islamophobia (on Israel’s Behalf)
This past week, a flock of Israel supporters jetted to Jerusalem to attend this year’s “National Conservative” conference, the project led by Israeli political thinker Yoram Hazony. Days later, the offspring of neoconservatism’s godfather Norm Podhoretz, John,...
The Right-Wing Ukraine Divide Returns
President Donald Trump reignited a fierce debate within the American right on October 10, when he made some aggressive remarks about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Zelensky could’ve settled this war many times,” Trump said. “He chooses not to. Very...
Former Spymasters, a Taped Mouth, and the Market in Cross-Border Snatching
Just after midnight on New Year’s Day 2024, a man and his two children stood near the harbor in the Danish town of Gråsten, watching fireworks over the water a short walk from the house where the children had been living. A witness later told a court in Hamburg that...
UN and The Hague Confront Impunity for War Crimes
On October 9th, the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize Was awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African international lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid political prisoners on Robben Island, and went on to serve as a judge on the UN International Criminal...


