Truthout & AntiWar.com, August 8 & 10, 2019: Biden has a long history of inaccurate claims regarding that oil-rich country… as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he insisted Iraq somehow reconstituted a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons program and sophisticated delivery systems that had long since been eliminated…
Category: Middle East
Middle East Overview
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…
The Other Reason Biden Shouldn’t Run
The Progressive, April 22, 2019: As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, Biden stated that Saddam Hussein had a sizable arsenal of chemical weapons as well as biological weapons, including anthrax, and that “he may have a strain” of smallpox, despite UN inspectors reporting that Iraq no longer appeared to have any weaponized chemical or biological agents…
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…
‘More AIPAC Than J Street’: Kamala Harris Runs to the Right on Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy In Focus, January 28, 2019:
January 2017 Harris sided with Trump in criticizing the outgoing President Obama’s refusal to veto an otherwise-unanimous, very modest, and largely symbolic UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. [Source]
Rescinding a Human Rights Award to Angela Davis Was Cowardly and Unfair
The Progressive, January 10, 2019: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which had described activist, author and scholar Angela Davis, professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz, as “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak,” before rescinding plans to present her the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award next month.
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…
George H W Bush’s Legacy and US Wars in the Middle East
Yes! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali
Download the Audio or Video (24 min.)
The 41st U.S. president, George H. W. Bush has died at 94. The media’s usual posthumous praise does not begin to capture Bush’s ugly legacy, particularly in Middle East foreign policy…
Dems Eye Hawkish Eliot Engel to Chair House Foreign Affairs Committee
The Power of Nonviolent Action in Conflict Zones
American Friends of Combatants for Peace, 15 October 2018
By Professor Stephen Zunes, for the conference
“Beyond Dialogue—Nonviolence and Social Action”
Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam, Israel [source]
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…
The Robust Opposition: The Modern History of Israel/Palestine
Video interview with Lauren Steiner, May 19, 2018: Overview of the Zionist project, the wars of 1948, 1967, the first and second Intifada, the various peace talks, the change in Israel over the years making it harder and harder to achieve peace and how any real solution must be precipitated by American Jews pressuring their elected officials.
Analyst Stephen Zunes Looks At The Middle East
WORT, Madison, Wisconsin, May 17, 2018 (Soundcloud, 29 mins.):
This week, mass Palestinian protests at the fences around Gaza have been met with violence from the Israel military. A look beyond the headlines…
Trump’s Dangerous Abrogation of the Iran Deal
The Progressive, May 9, 2018: Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the U.S.—strikes a dangerous blow against arms control and international security and more firmly establishes the U.S. as a rogue nation.
History Shows Hypocrisy of US Outrage Over Chemical Weapons in Syria
Truthout April 24, 2018: There are serious legal and strategic concerns regarding the decision by the U.S., along with France and Great Britain, to bomb Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma…
News on Syria? Why Are Left Activists Falling For Fake News On Syria?
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On Rising Up with Sonali April 18, 2018: After President Donald Trump declared “Mission Accomplished” in Syria in the wake of US air strikes last week, the question about the veracity of reports on the chemical attack in Douma has taken on a new urgency. Inspectors with the Organization For the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are still awaiting access to the sites of the attack. Is it possible to accept that Syria’s government really did attack civilians and still be against U.S. militarism in Syria? Dr. Zunes posits it absolutely is.