Published by the National In the days leading up to Iran’s missile attacks against Israel on Tuesday, the country’s political class was polarised along predictable lines. Centrists and reformists urged caution and pleaded with the government to not fall into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trap by getting drawn into a war with his government. Hardliners, on …
Published by the Atlantic At the center of current conflicts in the Middle East is a long-running staring contest between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And Netanyahu seems to have calculated that, even if Israel moves ferociously against Khamenei’s so-called Axis of Resistance—the region-wide network of militias arrayed against …
Published by the Atlantic Iran’s newish president and foreign minister could hardly be more different in demeanor. President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks informally, often goes off script, and loves to crack jokes. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a career diplomat who earned his Ph.D. in Britain, chooses his words with painstaking precision. But the two men have been saying …
Published in The National For any newly elected leader, picking a country to make his or her first official visit holds great significance. It’s no exception for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who assumed office in July. There was much chatter around which country he would visit first and what that might say about his administration’s foreign policy …
Published in The Atlantic Even by the standards of the American far right, Tucker Carlson’s airing of Holocaust-revisionist views on his popular show on the platform X seemed to hit a new low. On an episode that streamed September 2, Carlson gushed at his guest Darryl Cooper, introducing him as the “most important popular historian working in …
Published on IranWire By any fair measure, the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the worst human rights violators in the world today. It executes more people than any country except China and it came 176th out of 180 in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, to mention just two examples. This is reflected in …
Published by the Atlantic In the months before the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago, the city prepared for massive protests against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Pundits raced to draw parallels with 1968, when anti-war protesters overshadowed the Democratic convention and helped hand the White House back to the GOP. But history …
Published in Liberties In the western region of Los Angeles a long boulevard stretches from the main local campus of University of California in the north to the residential quarters to its south. If visitors to LA make it to Westwood Boulevard at all, it would probably be for a visit to UCLA and its …
Published by the Atlantic The administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have all shared one common foreign-policy desire: to get out of the quagmire of the Middle East and focus American attention on the potentially epoch-making rivalry with China. Even in fiendishly polarized Washington, foreign-policy hands in both the Republican and Democratic …
Published in the National On July 24, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was asked about the achievements during his tenure since 2021. He pointed to Iran’s most immediate security problem, repeated operations by Israel on Iranian soil and its assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists, and claimed he had solved it. “With the grace of God, …