US Arms Sale Sends Mixed Messages to Israel

by Mitchell Plitnick US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel may have insisted that the latest sale of US arms to Israel sent a strong message to Iran, but the actual message was a bit more restrained. Hagel made a point… Continue Reading

Filling the Empty Battlefield

Jeremy Scahill, Blowback Reporter by Tom Engelhardt via Tom Dispatch Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 — and just about no one noticed.  Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of… Continue Reading

Farideh Farhi on Iran’s Power Dynamics

by Reza Akhlaghi via Foreign Policy Association With less than two months into the elections, what is your assessment of this year’s election dynamics and of the absence of key presidential contenders in the country’s faction-based political system? In the upcoming… Continue Reading

A Tale of Two Outliers: Comparing Options on Iran and North Korea

by Usha Sahay As Iran expands its nuclear infrastructure and North Korea issues increasingly hostile threats, analysts continue to expend much energy trying to figure out what military capabilities the two main “nuclear outliers” have. One is certain: Iran and… Continue Reading

Diplomacy is Still Washington’s Best Option for Iran

by Jasmin Ramsey Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile,… Continue Reading