Donald Trump is once again threatening war with Iran just six months after bombing the Islamic Republic in June. Part of the reason for his hawkishness is his closeness to Israel, whose increasingly reckless actions threaten the whole Middle East.
Iran’s rulers have managed to contain a wave of protest for now. But the nature of the unrest and the state’s lethal response make this an unprecedented moment since the 1979 revolution, with the threat of a US attack still hanging over the country.
The Iranian leadership has managed to contain the biggest protest wave since the 1979 revolution. De-escalation of geopolitical tensions with the US would help the protesters, making it harder to depict domestic dissent as the product of foreign interference.
Decades of neoliberalism have reshaped Iranian society — leaving its battered Left in a quandary.
The terrifying escalation of attacks between Israel and Iran is a predictable result of Benjamin Netanyahu’s clear desire to start a war with Iran — enabled, like everything else Netanyahu has done since October 7, by Joe Biden.
Donald Trump is on the brink of a war with Iran that wouldn’t be good for Israel, the United States, civilians on all sides, or even his own political future. But because of his inability to stand up to Israel, it may not matter.
Donald Trump’s indictment was the biggest news of the week, but what was lost in the typical Trump absurdities of documents in ballrooms and bathrooms is the revelation of US plans to attack Iran.
It took less than half a year for Donald Trump to renege on the promises he incessantly made on the campaign trail and plunge the country into another dumb, potentially bloody Middle East war no one wants.
When it comes to Iran policy, Joe Biden's stance has been a striking departure from Barack Obama's legacy and a return to the dangerous containment and intimidation techniques of the Donald Trump era.
Amid an internet blackout, reports describe waves of catastrophic violence across Iran. Yet the ruling order remains firmly in control, even as an economic crisis erodes the welfare systems that once underpinned its legitimacy.
Chuck Schumer is not only failing to meet the moment by not opposing the war on Iran. He has long been a hawk on Iran among Democrats and Americans who are yearning for peace.
Whatever restraints once existed on Israel’s behavior are long gone. Benjamin Netanyahu is now setting his sights on Iran — the question is to what extent President Donald Trump will back him.
Iranians have been trying to complete their democratic revolution for over a century. Every time the US gets involved, it sets that project back by decades.
Iran poses no remotely plausible threat to the United States, the Constitution prohibits presidents from going to war without congressional approval, and only 21% of Americans support Donald Trump’s attack on the country. He doesn’t care about any of that.
For roughly half a century, a certain strain of American evangelical theology has taught millions of believers to read conflicts like Trump’s war with Iran not simply as geopolitics in action but as prophecy unfolding in real time. I was one of them.
On the eve of the Iranian revolution, Fred Halliday published a classic study of the shah’s US-backed dictatorship and the social forces working to undermine it. It’s an essential text for those who want to understand the politics of the Middle East.
Top Israeli officials, now on an official visit to Washington, are pushing for US military action against Iran. It’s a dangerous provocation that should be mainstream news.
Under Donald Trump, Congress moved swiftly to block a president from starting a war with Iran. As Joe Biden allows the country to be dragged into such a war, criticism is nearly nonexistent.
Even before the coronavirus, the United States' sanctions against Iran were unconscionable. But now, with one person dying of coronavirus every ten minutes in Iran, the sanctions are killing untold numbers of people. They must end now.
Israel’s air strikes on Iran highlight the risk that Israeli bellicosity and Biden administration fecklessness could combine to produce a disastrous regional war in the Middle East.