Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
National Catholic Reporter
Two articles and an interview during the summer 2025 bombing of Iran:It’s Not About the BombMissed Opportunity on IranUpdates on the Iran-Israel War: Conversations with Leading Analysts Debunking Trump’s claim that Iranians were responsible for the deaths of thousands of…
National Catholic Reporter March 7, 2017
National Catholic Reporter February 9, 2017
National Catholic Reporter January 10, 2017 The election of Donald Trump may mark the end of any realistic hope of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And don’t expect the Democratic Party to try to save it, it…
National Catholic Reporter November 28, 2016 There are more than a few ironies regarding the Oct. 31 election by the Lebanese parliament of former Gen. Michel Aoun, a Maronite Catholic who received his military training in the United States, as…
National Catholic Reporter October 10, 2016.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal should have curbed the longstanding bellicose rhetoric coming from Republican and Democratic political leaders toward the Muslim country. Signed by Iran and six other nations (including the United States) and ratified by the United Nations Security Council, the comprehensive agreement contains strict provisions limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to well below the threshold necessary to develop atomic weapons and subjects Iran to the most rigorous inspection regime in history. The result has been dramatically reduced regional tensions and the elimination of any potential threat to U.S. national security.
As Morocco continues to defy the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and much of the international community in its continued occupation of Western Sahara, the United States continues supporting that autocratic government.
During the 1980s, the United States was seriously divided over U.S. policy toward Central America. The Reagan administration was propping up a brutal military-backed regime in El Salvador that was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including priests, nuns and catechists, along with labor, student and human rights leaders, as well as peasants who happened to live in areas supporting the opposition.
On March 3, Berta Cáceres, a brave and outspoken indigenous Honduran environmental activist and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize [1], was gunned down in her hometown of La Esperanza. Erika Guevara-Rosas [2], Americas director for Amnesty International, noted how “For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities.”
Following earlier Congressional initiatives to effectively recognize Morocco’s illegal annexation of the occupied nation of Western Sahara, a bipartisan effort has been launched in Congress in support of Israel’s colonization of occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank and greater East Jerusalem, effectively recognizing Israeli annexation of territories seized in the 1967 war.
Bloody civil wars, the rise of the so-called “Islamic State,” the continued rule by absolute monarchs and other despots, and the ongoing Israeli and Moroccan occupations have left many skeptical of the prospects of peace, democracy and stability in the Arab world….
As chair of the Democratic National Committee since 2011, Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the public face of the Democratic Party. Elected by over 300 Democratic leaders from across the country, she represents the party on talk shows and serves as a major fundraiser and influential strategist. Her leadership has engendered controversy, however, as a result of questions about her integrity and her advocacy of positions placing her well to the right of most of her fellow Democrats.
For more than a half-century, a series of United Nations resolutions and rulings by the International Court of Justice have underscored the rights of inhabitants of countries under colonial rule or foreign military occupation. Among these is the right to “freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources,” which “must be based on the principles of equality and of the right of peoples and nations to self-determination.”
The people of Libya and Tunisia both overthrew long-standing dictatorships in popular uprisings in 2011. Four years later, however, the current political situation in these two neighboring North African states could not be more different. The reason has much to do with how their authoritarian regimes were overthrown…
Though the United States may have taken the lead in the international diplomatic initiative against Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration has also taken the lead in undermining the United Nations’ efforts to promote nuclear arms control and disarmament elsewhere.
Since the military coup in Egypt against the unpopular but democratically elected government of Mohammed Morsi last July, more than 1,000 regime opponents have been killed, thousands more have been hauled before military courts on political charges, and a repressive anti-protest law has been enacted, severely limiting the right of peaceful assembly.
The tragic upsurge of violence in Iraq in recent months, including the temporary takeover of sections of two major Iraqi cities by al-Qaida affiliates, is a direct consequence of the repression of peaceful dissent by the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad and, ultimately, of the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation.
[Santa Cruz Sentinel & Transnational.org, Also National Catholic Reporter,May 31, 2013, updated Sept. 11, 2018While there are contending factions vying for the country’s relatively weak presidency, the narrow ideological spectrum within which candidates are allowed to run offers little hope…
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of up to half a million Iraqis, mostly civilians, and the displacement of millions of others.