Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
President-elect Joe Biden’s selection of Antony Blinken for secretary of state is a worrying sign. Despite Biden owing his election to the Democratic Party’s progressive base and left-leaning independents, he has nominated someone The Washington Post has described as having “a centrist view of the world” and who has “supported interventionist positions.”
While a likely Republican-controlled Senate could limit many of the progressive domestic policies President-elect Joe Biden has promised to enact, presidents have far more leeway to advance their agenda in the realm of foreign policy. As a result, Biden — who has perhaps the most extensive background in foreign affairs of any new president in U.S. history — has the ability to make a positive difference. While he will certainly be an improvement over Donald Trump, Biden’s record is well to the right of most Democratic voters.
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. By Kourosh Ziabari & Stephen Zunes
Due to a series of decisions by the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) platform committee, progressives are concerned that the Biden-led Democratic Party’s foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine will more closely resemble that of Republicans than that of the Democratic rank-and-file.
The use of lethal force by police, National Guard, and other security forces has come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the George Floyd killing and resulting uprisings. Congressional Democrats have begun speaking out against police-perpetrated killings as well as the use of excessive force against protesters and journalists across the country, such as the notorious incident in Lafayette Park across from the White House late last month.
INTERVIEW: Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes talks about Sudan’s hopeful but uncertain future in the wake of its peaceful democratic revolution.
Skip to Minute 29:30 for interview
Stephen Zunes talks about Joe Biden’s shameful history helping to advocate for the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003.
A 19-Minute documentary featuring a contribution by Dr. Stephen Zunes.
In an extraordinary joint press conference at the United Nations on Tuesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert outlined their objections to Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan” between Israel and Palestine. The plan would allow Israel to annex large swathes of territory conquered in the 1967 war that it has since illegally colonized with Israeli settlers. Trump’s proposal, made without Palestinian participation and unilaterally announced last month, would leave small noncontiguous enclaves of remaining Palestinian territory surrounded by a greatly expanded Israel and allowed only limited autonomy.
A “peace plan” for Israel-Palestine? War on Iran? A way out of Afghanistan? East-West Conflict Over Syria? Numerous tinderbox situations in the region are all made more dangerous by Trump’s impulsive, ill-informed actions.We take an authoritative look at the region’s…
The ramifications of the illegal, unnecessary and predictably tragic U.S. decision to invade Iraq are still with us. This includes the ongoing crisis with Iran, which brought us perilously close to all-out war in early January, resulted in the tragic downing of a civilian airliner and remains in a hair-trigger situation.
According to our next guest– the claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq—which has been repeated by Republicans, some Democrats and the mainstream media—appears to be groundless.
Our guest today is STEPHEN ZUNES, a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.
He’s written a new piece for The Progressive Magazine saying there is zero evidence that Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans….
The assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently groundless claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq possessed weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a grave threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war.
Three previous U.S. administrations all ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers—an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the U.S. is also the primary military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.
Supporters of presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden are probably hoping that Democratic voters will see his key role in pushing through the Iraq War authorization as simply a “mistake” which should not be a factor in the 2020 presidential race. Indeed, Biden now claims that, “From the moment [the invasion] started … I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress” despite his statements at the time and subsequently that he supported Bush’s decision to invade even after inspectors returned and no “weapons of mass destruction” were found.
Not only was Biden one of the most important Democratic supporters of the Iraq War, but that support says much about the kind of president he would be.
On an October evening in 2002, while quietly embroidering on the porch of her home in Nablus in the West Bank, 60-year-old Shaden Abu Hijleh was shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces. A grandmother and community activist involved in promoting the arts, women’s and children’s advocacy, serving the needy and nonviolent resistance to the occupation, she had no links to any violent or extremist organizations. No protests or other violent disturbances were taking place nearby, and her killing is widely believed to have been a targeted assassination.
BBC October 14, 2019 (4 minutes).
President Trump’s decision to give a green light for a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-populated regions of northern Syria has been faced with swift bipartisan opposition
For the second consecutive Democratic debate, Joe Biden has failed to come to terms about his critical role in supporting the illegal, unnecessary, and predictably disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq….
The Trump Administration has imposed sanctions against more than 1,000 Iranian entities, including Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, targeting almost every significant sector of that nation’s economy. But recently it reversed course, backing off its threat to sanction a top Iranian diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in response to concerns that it would foreclose any diplomatic recourse…..