MER Article The US and the Iranian Nuclear Impasse The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) underwent its most recent five-year review in May 2005. There were numerous proposals on the table for strengthening the global non-proliferation regime. None were adopted. Perhaps even more puzzlingly, in an age when the White House repeatedly invokes the Aslı Bâli • 31 min read
Current Analysis Let Cooler Heads Prevail on Iran Once again, President George W. Bush is hinting at preventive war—this time, ostensibly, to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Given the catastrophe that followed Bush’s last “non-proliferation war” in Iraq, and the deceit employed to sell it, one would expect the pub Shiva Balaghi, Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Under the Veil of Ideology When Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” in October 2005, the world appeared to be light years away from the end of history. It seemed that ideologues had once more taken the reins of power and rejoined a battle in which there could be no parley Trita Parsi • 11 min read
Current Analysis We Need Negotiations, Not Saber-Rattling, With Iran “All options are on the table,” says President George W. Bush when asked about press reports that the Pentagon is drawing up plans to bomb Iran to derail the nuclear research program there. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shoots back: "The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with do Kaveh Ehsani • 2 min read
Current Analysis Iran’s Nuclear File After almost a week of contentious meetings, on September 24, 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a resolution without precedent in its lengthy file on the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a split vote, the agency’s Board of Governors found that Iran’s “failures and breaches…constitute Farideh Farhi • 19 min read
Current Analysis Iran's Human Rights Record Should Be As 'Intolerable' As Its Nukes The Islamic Republic of Iran is in hot water with Washington and European capitals because of its apparent pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Dangling carrots of increased trade, the Europeans are trying to persuade Iran to renounce atomic ambitions. Skeptical of these methods but bogged down in Iraq, the B Kaveh Ehsani • 2 min read
MER Article Neo-Conservatives, Hardline Clerics and the Bomb Even as the US military launched a long-rumored offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja in early November 2004, the subject of anxious speculation in Washington was not Iraq, but Iran. President George W. Bush’s victory at the polls on November 2 returned to office the executive who located Iran upon Chris Toensing, Kaveh Ehsani • 14 min read
Current Analysis To Deny Iran Atomic Weapons, Create a Nuclear-Free Region The 12-year standoff between Saddam Hussein’s former regime and the US displayed a circular logic: the Iraqi refusal to “come clean” about possibly non-existent weaponry simultaneously fed, and fed off of, Washington’s belligerence toward Iraq. With most eyes on the denouement of that malign symbios Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article The Rise and Fall of the "Rogue Doctrine" Since 1990, US military policy has been governed by one overarching premise that US and international security is primarily threatened by the “rogue states” of the Third World. These states -- assumed to include Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria -- are said to threaten US interests because of Michael Klare • 13 min read
MER Article Nuclear Counterproliferation in the Middle East The United States and France are developing strategies for using nuclear weapons in developing countries, ostensibly to counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological). The Middle East in particular has become a testing ground for nuclear war games. [1] This w Hans M. Kristensen, Joshua Handler • 13 min read
MER Article Iran and the Virtual Reality of US War Games The year is 2002. Saddam Hussein has been assassinated, and Shi‘i forces in Basra have declared their independence from Baghdad. Iran, the dominant regional power, invades Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to gain regional hegemony, control the price of oil, finance its military buildup “and ameliorate its so William M. Arkin • 9 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1995) Not all international travelers are tourists. The August deployment of thousands of US troops to participate in war games in Jordan and Kuwait will not show up in the statistics of this fast-growing global industry, though shore leaves may boost some bar and brothel receipts in Haifa and Bahrain. Bu The Editors • 2 min read
