Current Analysis War Drums and Obama For the last three weeks or so, liberal commentators have repeatedly insisted that the Obama administration bears little to no responsibility for the ever louder beating of the Iran war drums. Whatever such sounds the White House makes are just pre-election theater necessitated by Republican attacks, they say, or reflexive Chris Toensing • 4 min read
Current Analysis Strategic Commodity 201 Goodness! Look at this marxisant rubbish: Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Slouching Toward a Hot War The odd, improbable Manssor Arbabsiar story [http://www.merip.org/mero/mero110311] is back, in prepared Congressional testimony [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iran-is-prepared-to-launch-terrorist-attacks-in-us-intelligence-report-finds/2012/01/30/gIQACwGweQ_story.html] by Dir Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis A Not So Distant Mirror At the risk of stating the obvious, there are eerie and multiplying parallels between the long lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war and what passes for debate on what to do about the Iranian nuclear research program. Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Fading False Flags First the latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist happened on a slow news day (Romney wins New Hampshire -- zzzz), prompting many major American outlets to give it prominent coverage. The LA Times editorial board was not pleased [http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-carbo Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Strategic Commodity 101 Every US president since Jimmy Carter has spoken earnestly of the need to wean America from “foreign oil,” which is often more bluntly called “Middle East oil.” After the September 11, 2001 attacks and the resulting spotlight on Saudi Arabia, the clamor grew, only to subside, and now has resurfaced Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Narrowing the Options on the Table Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister and former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is not usually a sarcastic man. But he became one in early November following several days of leaks about the negative content of a pending IAEA report on Iran. “Marg yek bar, shivan Farideh Farhi • 14 min read
Current Analysis Debunking the Iran "Terror Plot" At a press conference on October 11, the Obama administration unveiled a spectacular charge against the government of Iran: The Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, right in Washington, DC, in a plac Gareth Porter • 19 min read
MER Article The Imam's Blue Boxes A fashionable description of the Islamic Republic of Iran is “garrison state,” a concept that originated in the West in the early 1940s. In a garrison state, the ruling elite is mainly composed of “specialists in violence,” and military bureaucrats dominate the social and civil spheres. In Iran’s ca Kevan Harris • 4 min read
MER Article A War on Multiple Fronts Lasting from 1980 to 1988, the war between Iran and Iraq was the longest inter-state war of the twentieth century. Yet standard narratives of the war, or of Iranian and Iraqi political history, for that matter, barely discuss the war’s legacy for the structure of the two states in question or the wa Arang Keshavarzian, Nida Alahmad • 29 min read
MER Article Deep Traumas, Fresh Ambitions The seeds of future war are sown even as parties fight and, depleted or on the verge of defeat, sue for peace. The outcome is rarely stable and may be barely tolerable to one side or the other. This rule holds true for the two belligerents no less than for their respective sponsors, keen to protect Joost Hiltermann • 19 min read
Current Analysis The Green Movement Awaits an Invisible Hand It is the custom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to devise a name for each Persian new year when it arrives. On Nowruz of the Persian year 1388, which fell in March 2009 Gregorian time, he proclaimed “the year of rectifying consumption patterns.” But Ir Mohammad Maljoo • 11 min read
