A small group of hawks convinced George W. Bush to launch a war in the Middle East, despite his campaign-trail rhetoric and against the advice of top US military and intelligence officials. The parallels with Donald Trump’s war on Iran are striking.
In Iran and Lebanon, the US and Israeli militaries are bombing dense residential blocks, destroying civilian infrastructure, slaughtering children, and assassinating health workers. If it sounds familiar, it’s because this is the Gaza playbook.
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.
The shah of Iran faced a secular opposition that wanted to restore constitutional government. Washington continued to back his dictatorship as it faced mass protests, paving the way for Ruhollah Khomeini to establish a theocratic system after its fall.
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.
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.
Gilbert Achcar explains how oil, US power, and regional rivalries have shaped decades of conflict in the Middle East — and why the confrontation with Iran fits a long imperial pattern.
By pulling out of the Iran deal and reimposing sanctions, Trump has invented a crisis that could push the United States toward war.
The British Navy’s seizure of an Iranian oil tanker has sparked diplomatic crisis and a tit-for-tat action by Iran. Post-Brexit Britain wants to reassert itself as a global power — but it’s suffering from a serious case of imperial overreach.
Decades of neoliberalism have reshaped Iranian society — leaving its battered Left in a quandary.
Reza Pahlavi is son of the last shah — and he often echoes Israeli talking points condemning “appeasement” of Iran. It’s earned him admiration from US neocons, but such belligerent talk is a deadly danger to ordinary Iranians.
In a wide-ranging interview, the political economist Helen Thompson discusses how the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has transformed the region. With an incoming Trump administration, the stage is now set for hawks to confront an isolated Iran.
US sanctions are causing crippling shortages for many Iranians. But far from bringing the Islamic Republic to its knees, the sanctions are an opportunity for elites to remodel the economy — and find new ways of profiting from misery.
The United States is largely acting like it’s business as usual in the Middle East and Iran right now. But Israel’s assassinations of top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have brought us to the precipice of an absolutely disastrous war throughout the region.
There is little sign that Israel is achieving its war aims against Iran. But Israel is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons — and it may use them if it feels like it has run out of options.
When it comes to the United States' saber-rattling and waging war around the world, we've seen a consistent pattern: Democrats tee up the ball for Trump’s aggression, then express outrage when his administration takes a swing.
Abdullah Öcalan’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party is engaged in high-stakes negotiations with the Turkish government over a peace settlement. The outcome will shape the future for Kurds throughout the region, including the PKK’s sister parties in Syria and Iran.
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.
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.
We have another report that Israel used the military power the US underwrites to pressure Donald Trump into a disastrous war in Iran. US military aid to Israel makes Americans — to say nothing of the rest of the world — less safe.