Expert Analyst: International Politics, Middle East & Nonviolent Action
Truthout
Truthout, September 3, 2026: Party leaders are ignoring the three-quarters of registered Democrats who oppose providing military aid to Israel. House Democratic leadership has picked two prominent hawks to join the House Foreign Affairs Committee while also promoting an even…
Truthout August 7, 2026, by Stephen Zunes: This is a disingenuous bipartisan effort to discredit the ICC and international humanitarian law as a whole. [Transcript & 15-min. audio podcast]
Truthout May 5, 2026: The same kind of US hubris that led to the tragic wars in Vietnam and Iraq is manifesting itself with Iran today. U.S. efforts to force an end to the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz…
Truthout, April 17, 2026: Democrats share responsibility with the GOP for creating the climate that made such a war possible. Unlike the invasion of Iraq, which received the support of a sizable minority of congressional Democrats, Donald Trump’s war on…
Truthout, March 4, 2026, by Stephen Zunes [podcast]: Many of President Trump’s stated justifications for the US and Israeli war on Iran are demonstrably false… Much of it has to do with what was perceived as an opportunity. The Iranian…
Truthout, August 2, 2025, By Stephen Zunes [podcast & source] The UN treats the Polisario as the legitimate representative of the Western Sahara people. Washington’s designation of armed groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) has always been politicized, but it…
From Gaza to Aleppo: A Handy Guide for Defending War Crimes: This article notes the remarkable parallel in the language used by those defending war crimes by the Assad regime and war crimes by Israel Here’s an analysis also from…
August 25, 2024 panel, Unitarian Universalists of San Francisco panel: Dr. Zunes addressed U.S. policy and the prospects of change in Iran (segment starts at the 13:35 mark, and in the Q&A session starting at the 1:32:30 mark).
Truthout August 2, 2024: The US is misrepresenting the strike on Majdal Shams and even the geography and political status of where it took place. Israel has been trading strikes with Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and armed group, ever…
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21, 2024 (IPS) Inter Press Service, by Thalif Deen, quoting Dr. Stephen Zunes: “It has been U.S. policy since 1990 to withdraw funding from any United Nations agency which grants Palestine member status…’” [source]
Truthout May 26, 2024: Biden’s administration is violating US law by continuing to send military aid to Israel despite Gaza war crimes [and] growing popular opposition…
Truthout May 22, 2024: This marks the first time in US history a sitting president has openly sided with suspected war criminals…
Truthout May 5, 2024: This phrase was never about killing Jews. It emerged in the 1960s as a call for equal rights within a democratic state. The wave of pro-Palestinian protests sweeping American campuses was triggered by Columbia University President…
Truthout April 17, 2024: Recent initiatives by the Palestinian government to revive their application for UN membership are testing the U.S. claim it supports a “two-state solution” [source]
Truthout, April 5, 2024, by Stephen Zunes: In reality, the Biden administration has the power to stop Israel’s offensive in Gaza in its tracks. Though Congress authorizes military aid, the president has the authority under the Arms Export Control Act…
Truthout, Feb. 14, 2024 [source] Historically, would-be authoritarians of various stripes have used the threat of other forms of authoritarianism to consolidate their own power. We saw this during the Cold War, when the alleged threat of communism led to…
We must not allow the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan to be used to rewrite history and teach the wrong lessons.
Now with a working majority, the Democrats have named Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This has rung alarm bells for advocates of peace, human rights and international law, given that Menendez has opposed the Iran nuclear agreement, repeatedly attacked the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, supported unconditional military aid to governments that have used the weapons in the commission of war crimes, and taken other positions far closer to those of Republicans than rank-and-file Democrats.
On December 10, the United States 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.