Yes! Jan. 20, 2021 by Stephen Zunes.
Activists prepared for months, expecting Trump to steal the election. They were right, and he failed.
Category: Trump
Trump Foreign Policy
Trump’s deal on Morocco’s Western Sahara annexation risks more global conflict
Washington Post December 13, 2020: Last week, President Trump formally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara as part of a deal to get Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed an act of self-determination. This is why no country had formally recognized Morocco’s takeover — until now…
Trump Recognized Morocco’s Illegal Occupation to Boost the Israeli Occupation
Truthout: On December 10, the US became the only country to formally recognize Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony forcibly seized by Moroccan forces in 1975. Trump’s proclamation is directly counter to a series of UN Security Council resolutions and a landmark World Court ruling calling for self-determination. Trump’s decision was a quid pro quo…
A Dangerous Move to Crack Down on Protests Against Israel
The Progressive, Dec. 4, 2020: Late last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. government finds the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign to be inherently “anti-Semitic.” He pledged to “immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups”…
Pompeo Embraced Israeli Settlements, But Democrats Also Paved the Way for It
Truthout, November 28, 2020: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has faced widespread international condemnation for his recent assertions that illegal Israeli settlements constructed in the occupied West Bank are somehow legal and part of Israel, and that products from these colonies on confiscated Palestinian land should be labeled as “Made in Israel”…unprecedented [but] the culmination of decades of bipartisan support for Israeli expansionism… Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention — to which both Israel and the United States are signatories — prohibits any occupying power from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
INTERVIEW: What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy?
Fair Observer October 20, 2020: Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy. Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization…
Trump “Peace Plan” Too Extreme Even for Former Right-Wing Israeli Prime Minister
Truthout, February 12, 2020: In an extraordinary joint press conference at the UN, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert outlined their objections to Trump’s so-called “peace plan” [to] allow Israel to annex large swathes of territory conquered in the 1967 war that it has since illegally colonized with Israeli settlers [and] leave small noncontiguous enclaves of remaining Palestinian territory surrounded by a greatly expanded Israel…
INTERVIEWS: Trump ‘Peace Plan,’Middle East Update with Stephen Zunes
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 many hot spots.
March 5, 2020 (58-min. video): Other Voices TV, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, hosted by Paul George, Director Emeritus, with Midpen Media Center, Palo Alto.
To the Brink of War with No Upside, January 17, 2020,
WhoWhatWhy.org Podcast interview with Stephen Zunes
Zunes debunks the Trump administration’s changing rationale for assassinating Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s response, and the risk of war. Among Zunes’s intriguing claims:
- Too little is said about Democrats’ role in the hostilities
- Exactly the same beefs the US has with Iran apply equally to many American allies
- Evidence does not support Trump’s key assertions about the Iranian general whose death he ordered.
Trump’s Recognition of Israeli Settlements Is Rooted in Bipartisan Support
The Progressive, November 21, 2019: 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. [T]he illegality of the settlements couldn’t be clearer. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention…
Interview: BBC on Trump Impeachment
This Isn’t the First Time the US Has Abandoned the Kurds
Truthout October 10, 2019: Trump’s decision to give a green light for a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-populated regions of northern Syria has faced swift bipartisan opposition… following a conversation with authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (one of a number of autocratic leaders with whom Trump has developed a close relationship)…
Trump’s Threats towards Iran Aren’t Working. Here’s Why.
The Progressive, July 17, 2019: The Trump Administration has imposed sanctions against more than 1,000 Iranian entities… But recently it reversed course, backing off its threat to sanction a top Iranian diplomat in response to concerns it would foreclose any diplomatic recourse…
Also Dr. Zunes’ interview July 22, 2019 on KBOO
US Conflict with Iran: an anti-imperialist analysis
The Threat of War with Iran
The Progressive, May 15, 2019: The White House has ordered an aircraft carrier strike group off the coast of Iran and a fleet of bombers have flown to U.S. air bases near that country, while preliminary plans are apparently underway to send 120,000 U.S. troops to the region…
Trump’s Controversial Decision on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
The Progressive, April 10, 2019: There is little question that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is bad news. Some of its units have engaged in severe repression of nonviolent dissidents, supported Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency operations in Syria, backed hardline Islamist militia in several foreign countries, and more…
U.S. Recognition of Israel’s Golan Annexation a Threat to World Order
March 25, 2019 in The Progrssive, AntiWar.com and Common Dreams: Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights—Syrian territory seized in the June 1967 war—marks a serious violation of fundamental principles of international law…
Politicians Are Not Going to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable
Sojourners January 2019: Despite manifold horrors inflicted by the Saudi regime over the years, it was not until the grisly murder of a well-connected exiled journalist in early October that public attention has finally been given to the monarchy’s savagery…
Despite Everything, U.S. Troops Should Leave Syria
Z Network, January 4, 2019: Donald Trump’s sudden decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria appears to have been impetuous and ill-considered — apparently a result of a conversation with Turkey’s autocratic president Recep Erdogan. That doesn’t mean, however, that the United States should remain in that country…
The Day Dreamers Show Topic: USA Policy Towards Israel and Palestine
Under Trump U.S. Contempt for International Law Intensifies
Truthout, June 5, 2018, by Stephen Zunes:
What is Gaza’s hope for the future after the fallout over the US embassy move and the Iran deal exit?
Pompeo’s Iran Speech a Prelude to War?
The Progressive, May 23, 2018: The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech targeting Iran may have created a new benchmark for hypocritical, arrogant, and entitled demands by the U.S. on foreign governments…