WASHINGTON, Mar 8, 2012 (IPS) – This week was supposed to be all about Iran – at least, that’s how Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had planned it – and why the U.S. should prepare to bomb it very, very soon if its leadership doesn’t cave into Western demands to abandon its nuclear programme.
Israeli “We Love Iranians” campaign spawns imitators.
Some African Union leaders now miss Qadhafi’s largesse as Libyan Investment Authority assets are being returned to the new Libyan government.
“Washington has lost a valuable opportunity to nurture and support a key counterweight to Iranian influence among Shiites in the Arab world,” lament Danielle Pletka and Gary Schmitt of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in an op-ed for the Washington Post. They subsequently call on the Obama administration to bulk up its already grossly overloaded staff at the gigantic U.S. embassy in Baghdad. But in these few words, the two writers fleshed out a more fundamental concern for hawkish pundits in the Middle East: the fear of a “Shia Crescent” of Iranian-backed regimes in Bagdad, Beirut, and Damascus linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The real story out of Bahrain these days, though, is not the gift of some old PT boats, the vagaries of the dialogue between the pro-government camp and the predominantly Shia opposition groups.
Why do human rights activists and lonesome Internet commentators suffer the wrath of the U.S. government while politicians are allowed to accept large sums to advocate for a terrorist group like MEK?
Led astray by conventional wisdom about Iran? We’re here to help.
Before the first crusade, Christianity killing in war was but a necessary evil.
It was not sheer coincidence, journalist Paul Mason explains in Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, that drove people from places as varied as Egypt, Greece, Britain, New York City, and Wisconsin to stand up and speak out against injustice in 2011. Rather, a cascading international financial crisis brought the disconnect between governments and citizens into sharp relief, which ultimately resulted in a massive series of protests in all corners of the map.
It’s difficult to determine whether or not the Institute for Science and International Security is driven by politics.