3 Foreign Hotspots that Will Test Obama’s Mettle
The “four more years” now stretching out in front of our forty-fourth president will be dense with challenges overseas, and meeting them will be essential if America is to regain a competitiveness already slipping. It would be hard to list…
Sanctions Will Turn Iran into Another Cuba
The U.S. and European sanctions imposed on Iran earlier this year seem to be working with a vengeance. As if by remote control, the West has thousands of Iranians taking to the streets while the nation’s political elites are splitting…
Three Global Hotspots that Can Damage the Recovery
Wories to the west of us, worries to the east. It is hardly the kind of August to encourage us to head for the beach and try to get through Proust for the 16th time. There are signs we are…
Why Obama’s Iran Strategy is All Wrong
The good news: We now have a new set of talks on Iran’s nuclear program scheduled for mid April in Istanbul. The bad news: Washington and its allies have not prepared the ground for these talks. We are a negotiating…
Unthinkable: Conflict between Israel and Iran
The guessing game as to whether sanctions imposed last month against Iran for its nuclear program will work is over. They are already working. This past week the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, struck a notably conciliatory tone as…
Europe Faces a Two-headed Monster of Debt and Oil
It looks as though we have a deal between Greece and its private-sector creditors, and not a moment too soon. The announced agreement over the weekend ended months of handwringing and protracted talks between the government of Greek Prime Minister…
Sanctions: Will Iran Redouble Its Nuclear Efforts?
Iranian oil, American diplomacy, and Asian economic power combined last week to yield a highly unstable, potentially combustible cocktail. The American economy and the financial markets have much to be thankful for so far in 2012, particularly as we look…
Iran Sanctions: Another Cuban Missile Crisis?
And two more hotspots: Iraq and Egypt Is 2012 destined to be a year of Middle East challenges—not to say calamities—for the Obama administration? It has certainly started out ominously. The White House already has three fires to put out…
The Indigenous and the Imported: Khatami’s Iran
Culture is what remains when one no longer believes in Utopia. —Farhad Khosrokhavar and Oliver Roy Comment sortir d’une revolution religieuse1 At the bar of my hotel in Tehran—or what used to be the bar in officially dry, postrevolutionary Iran—I sip…
Letter from Iran
In a gritty neighborhood of South Teheran not long ago, Iran’s animated opposition movement gathered at a mosque to mark a grim occasion. It was November 23, 2000 a year since state security agents assassinated Dariush Foruhar, the longtime leader…
Recent Comments