The Israel-Palestine conflict has been at the heart of regional affairs since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This is the context wherein the “de facto” Iran-Turkey-Syria axis should be understood, although substantive normalization of relations in the last decade between Turkey and its neighbors Iran and Syria served as a pre-requisite for the supposed alliance.
The United States can’t compensate for the ineffectiveness of sanctions against Iran by bombing it instead.
Israel risks painting itself into a corner with its talk of preemptive strikes against Iran. Meanwhile, Iran once again finds itself the odd man out in the shopworn Israel-Iran-Arab triangulation game.
Iran’s nuclear program has become the focal point of international discussions about the region’s future, and the United States and its allies have made the resolution of the nuclear standoff a precondition for future discussions of Iran’s broader interests. Therefore, despite President Obama’s emphasis on diplomacy, U.S. relations with Iran remain strained. It would be in the best interest of both countries to put aside their history of conflict and often baseless mutual suspicion in favor of a more forward-looking approach.
Things are heating up for Iran. The international community, responding to doubts over the intentions of the Iranian nuclear program, has passed three sanctions packages over the past three weeks.
Trying to track—let alone make sense—of recent developments around Iran is enough to make one reach for that stuff they just found lots of in Afghanistan: lithium.
Iran’s nuclear program has become the centerpiece of global security discussions for the last 10 years. It is a main sticking point in the relationship between Iran — a key regional player — and western countries, and it has acquired oversized significance in the international war against extremism. Despite Obama’s promise for change, and greater emphasis on multilateralism and diplomacy, the specter of military confrontation between Iran on the one hand and either Israel or the United States on the other persistently looms over the horizon, even though the probability remains low.
Blind criticism of Iran deal seen as spot on Paper of Record’s legacy.
The U.S. State Department’s claim that the “international community” is behind the U.S. is increasingly sounding like whistling past the graveyard.
With mid-term elections only six months away, many lawmakers are eager to demonstrate their strong support for Israel, which has argued for the adoption of “crippling” sanctions against the Islamic Republic as the only way to halt its alleged effort to acquire nuclear weapons short of a military attack.