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Two years after Soleimani killing: more shadows than light for Iran
Exactly two years ago, I was in Tehran attending, at the invitation of the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), Iran’s foreign ministry’s think tank, a conference on Iran’s Hormuz...
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Why German-Russian Ostpolitik may be dead, but shouldn't be buried
One undeniable outcome of the Russian aggression in Ukraine so far is a widespread perception of a profound change in the German foreign and security policy. In his historic speech in the Bundestag...
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Anne Applebaum's endless world war against autocracies
One of the world’s most accomplished historians of the former Soviet bloc, Anne Applebaum, sets out to warn us in The Atlantic that the “forces of autocracy” are out to “destroy democracies.” For her,...
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Rejoining the Iran deal would be a 'victory' for Dems to tout in midterms
The resolution of the year-long saga of restoring the Iran nuclear deal, known as JCPOA, now hinges on the avatars of U.S. domestic politics. The ruling Democrats have a key incentive to clinch the...
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Why we should care that Janez Jansa got trounced in the Slovenia election
With all the attention devoted to the April 24 French presidential election, it was easy to overlook the parliamentary voting in another EU and NATO country — Slovenia. The two-million-strong nation...
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The strange detention of EU diplomats returning from Tehran
On the morning of May 13, Enrique Mora, the political director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), was briefly detained in the Frankfurt airport by the German police upon his return from...
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US dithering on Iran deal re-entry causing rift with Europeans
The U.S. and European participants (Britain, Germany, and France) to the nuclear agreement with Iran have submitted on June 7 to the Board of Governors of the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, a...
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NATO boasts unity but potential for division lies ahead
As the leaders of NATO gathered in Madrid for their summit on June 29, they predictably made a show of unity and solidarity in countering the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and in defense...
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The Iran hawks' dangerous hubris
If there is something that distinguishes the Iran hawks, it is their seemingly insatiable lust for a war with Iran. The latest iteration of the theme is found in Foundation for Defense of Democracies...
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Azerbaijan and the EU’s faltering gas realpolitik
As the European Union scrambles to compensate for the loss of Russian gas as a result of Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Monday flew to Azerbaijan,...
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What if the US took a more nuanced view of Iran?
As the talks to revive the nuclear accord known as the JCPOA are reaching the critical stage, the traditional Washington view holds Iran solely responsible for its antagonistic relationship with the...
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Caucasus conflict highlights US hawks' reckless support for Azerbaijan
U.S. hawks have a habit of disparaging diplomatic engagement with the country’s adversaries as acts of appeasement, even when it clearly serves the national interest. Yet they turn conspicuously...
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Protests in Iran make restoring the JCPOA more urgent than ever
The Iran hawks never miss an opportunity to get things wrong. As the murder of a young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini by the infamous “morality police” in Tehran triggered nationwide protests, Nikki Haley,...
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The US should stay away from Azerbaijan-Iran tensions
One of the persistent weaknesses of U.S. foreign policy is its propensity to enable what a prominent scholar Barry Posen called “reckless driving” — embolden, intentionally or not, U.S. allies and...
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Saudi-Iran deal exposes EU's waning Middle East influence
The announcement of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, under Chinese mediation, has exposed the limits of the European Union’s influence in the Middle East. While...
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Will Israel follow Saudi Arabia and make a deal with Iran?
Among the flurry of comments on the China-facilitated normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, one stood out as particularly intriguing: former chief of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad...
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Cruz stunt highlights Washington's unhealthy addiction to sanctions
A few hours before President Joe Biden’s White House meeting with his Argentinian counterpart, Alberto Fernandez, last week, the hawkish Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a bill that seeks to impose...
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The folly of Macron-bashing
There’s a certain déjà vu about it: another of those periodic rounds of French-bashing in Washington. This time the trigger was French President Emmanuel Macron’s interview about his recent meetings...
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Fears of Iranian influence in Latin America are way overblown
The former president of Colombia Ivan Duque, while on a visit to Israel in the end of May, sounded an alarm about Iran enjoying an “increasingly friendly environment” in Latin America that amounts to...
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The MEK’s waning fortunes
The former vice president of the United States Mike Pence joined a long list of former U.S. dignitaries who have thrown their weight behind the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a...
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