Every nation has its pride, but the feeling runs especially deep in Iran. There, the sense of nationhood extends back 2,500 years, to the time of Darius and Xerxes and other names that Americans might possibly have heard of somewhere — maybe in the action movie 300 — but which anchor modern Iranians to a stream of history that …
sanctions
Nuke Report Unlikely to Break the Stalemate, Could Iran Be the New Cuba?
Game changer? Hardly. As the dust settles on this week’s release of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran, it’s become clear that pre-release hype from Western officials that it would produce a dramatic shift in the international standoff over that country’s nuclear program appears to be wishful thinking. …
U.N. Body Accuses Iran of Nuclear Weapons Research, But Can Military Action Stop Tehran?
The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has finally lent its imprimatur to the suspicion that Iran is using its atomic energy program to put the means to build nuclear weapons within its reach. That’s the upshot of Tuesday’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran, making it the agency’s harshest finding yet on Iran’s …
You Say You Wanna Bomb Iran? Take a Number and Stand in Line
Yes, you heard right: Britain is preparing to bomb Iran. Well, that’s if the latest reported leaks from the British government are to be believed. The Guardian — not known, like some of its British rivals are, for frequent breathless front-page claims of imminent military strikes on Iran — reported Wednesday that Britain’s Defense …
Despite Mounting Bloodshed, Syria is Unlikely to See a Libya-style NATO Intervention
Seven months of often bitter fighting and up to 30,000 casualties notwithstanding, Libya’s civil war to end the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi was relatively easy for its regional and international stakeholder — at least it was when compared with the challenge of responding the increasingly bloody standoff in Syria. As the Arab League …
As Assassination Plot Becomes a Sideshow, U.S.-Iran Tensions Hinge on the Nuclear Issue
A used car salesman, a Mexican narco snitch, and an Iranian spook walk into a bar. What is this, says the ex-CIA barman, some kind of a joke?
Let’s just say that the ostensibly Iranian plot to blow up Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington is not yet proving to be the smoking gun that allows the Obama Administration to rally …
Obama’s Iran Dilemma: How to Respond to a Plot Seemingly Designed to Provoke Escalation?
The fact that President Barack Obama on Thursday found himself insisting that the facts support his Administration’s efforts to hold Tehran accountable for a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington suggests that the world is not yet rushing to fall in line with his call for “the toughest sanctions” on Iran.
The “toughest …