US officials are denying Iranian government complaints that they aren’t following through on the P5+1 requirement to lift sanctions, saying they are not in any way blocking foreign banks from doing business with Iran. ››read more

Patrick CockburnThe capture of Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving planner of the Paris massacre, means that the media is focusing once again on the threat of terrorist attack by Islamic State. Questions are asked about why the most wanted man in Europe was able to elude the police for so long, even though he was living in his home district of Molenbeek in Brussels. Television and newspapers ask nervously about the chances of Isis carrying out another atrocity aimed at dominating the news agenda and showing that it is still in business.

The reporting of the events in Brussels is in keeping with that after the January (Charlie Hebdo) and November Paris attacks and the Tunisian beach killings by Isis last year. For several days there is blanket coverage by the media as it allocates time and space far beyond what is needed to relate developments. But then the focus shifts abruptly elsewhere and Isis becomes yesterday’s story, treated as if the movement has ceased to exist or at least lost its capacity to affect our lives. ››read more

Commentators have missed the significance of President Barack Obama’s acerbic criticism of Saudi Arabia and Sunni states long allied to the US for fomenting sectarian hatred and seeking to lure the US into fighting regional wars on their behalf. In a series of lengthy interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic magazine, Mr Obama explains why it is not in the US’s interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies.

Mr Obama’s arguments are important because they are not off-the-cuff remarks, but are detailed, wide ranging, carefully considered and leading to new departures in US policy. The crucial turning point came on 30 August 2013 when Mr Obama refused to launch air strikes in Syria. This would, in effect, have started military action by the US to force regime change in Damascus, a course of action proposed by much of Mr Obama’s cabinet as well by US foreign policy specialists.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies were briefly convinced that they would get their wish. This is in sharp contrast to Britains going to do their work for them by overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. They claimed this would be easy to do, though this would have happened only if there had been a full-scale American intervention and it would have produced a power vacuum that would have been filled by fundamentalist Islamic movements as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Mr Goldberg says that by refusing to bomb Syria, Mr Obama “broke with what he calls, derisively, ‘the Washington Playbook’. This was his liberation day”. ››read more

Days after the Obama Administration had already admitted that Iran’s missile tests were not a violation of the P5+1 nuclear agreement, US officials announced that they intend to take Iran before the UN Security Council over the matter anyhow. ››read more

For decades, Iran's researchers had to work largely cut off from the rest of the world. Now they can bring the nation's science back to the international stage ››read more

US Secretary of State John Kerry provoked widespread speculation when he referred in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee last week to “significant discussions” within US President Barack Obama’s administration about a “Plan B” in Syria. The speculation was further stoked by a “senior official” who told CBS News that options under consideration included “‘military-like’ measures that would make it harder for the regime and its allies to continue their assault on civilians and US-backed rebels.” ››read more

Today, we can see clearly how Iran and Saudi Arabia’s nation-building approaches have affected the success of their geopolitical strategies. Both states have experienced existential fears and threats in recent years, and their respective alliances have now confronted each other on a few battlefields. Today, Iran is in ascendency within West Asia whereas even powerful Saudi allies like the United States are questioning the longevity of the Saudi regime and state. Iran has approached the matter of its strategic depth carefully and built alliances with partners that genuinely share the common values of independence, self-determination and resistance against imperialism. The Saudis, on the other hand, have forged their external alliances with hegemony or dominance as the primary objective – irrespective of the divergent interests and values of allies. There really is little contest – one side is going from strength to strength in the region, whilst the other flails about with unreliable alliances, propped up by petrodollars and all the strategic brilliance of a sledgehammer. ››read more

For a long time, various Iranian politicians including President Hassan Rouhani have expressed the hope that the relations between Iran and Turkey can remain insulated from the surrounding crises, especially in Syria. As there are reports of President Rouhani’s planned trip to Turkey in the near future, and given the vast economic opportunities to expand the Iran-Turkish trade in the post nuclear agreement era, it is fairly safe to assume that Iran will continue to cling to this hopeful expectation — that is becoming more and more difficult to sustain in light of the big divide between Ankara and Tehran over Syria. ››read more

If the tentative agreement on a Syrian ceasefire negotiated by the United States and Russia falls apart before it can be implemented, the reason will be the Obama administration’s insistence that Russian airstrikes are targeting “legitimate opposition groups.” ››read more

In a recent article in The National Interest, two former US ambassadors, William Luers and Thomas Pickering, as well as Greg Thielmann, have defended the recent US sanctions on Iran over its missile program, calling for a mix of “pressure and diplomacy” to curtail the development of Iran’s missile program. ››read more

US Secretary of State John Kerry told Syrian aid workers, hours after the Geneva peace talks fell apart, that the country should expect another three months of bombing that would “decimate” the opposition.

During a conversation on the sidelines of this week’s Syria donor conference in London, sources say, Kerry blamed the Syrian opposition for leaving the talks and paving the way for a joint offensive by the Syrian government and Russia on Aleppo.
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Prime Minister David Cameron’s government can claim absolute consistency in just one policy: towering, jaw-dropping hypocrisy.

They follow in Tony Blair and his tantrum-prone, nail-biting successor, Gordon Brown’s footsteps as they attempt to market potential war crimes and illegal assaults as democracy-bringing, despot-vanquishing acts of mercy.

Recent events have again highlighted their contempt for human life, human rights and international law.

On Saturday January 3 Saudi Arabia announced it had executed 47 people.

Last September Saudi Arabia was elected chair of the UN human rights council panel that appoints independent experts, due (according to the Guardian) to Britain’s “secret vote-trading deals with Saudis to ensure both states were elected to the [council], according to leaked diplomatic cables.” ››read more

NetanyahuAs the agreement reached its “implementation day” with the removal of international sanctions following Iran’s compliance with the deal, Netanyahu was quick to credit Israeli efforts for preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu opened his weekly cabinet meeting by stating, “If it weren’t for our efforts leading the way in enforcing the sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon long ago.”

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The achievement of “implementation day” of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), when for both sides the central elements of the nuclear bargain went into operation on Saturday, means that it is going to be a fact of life in global and regional politics for many years. But will it have a profound impact on regional politics? ››read more

The US Department of the Treasury says it has imposed new sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program.

The Treasury Department made the announcement in a statement issued on Sunday, only a day after sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear energy program were lifted.

The statement said five Iranian citizens and a network of companies based in the United Arab Emirates and China were added to a US blacklist. ››read more

As expected, the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued a statement today affirming that Iran is is full compliance with all commitments under the P5+1 nuclear deal, with IAEA chief Amano Yukiya praising all involved for making the pact happen.

The IAEA statement obliges the international community to lift all nuclear sanctions against Iran, something they have wasted no time doing. Even the US, which was believed to be the last to abide by the treaty, has seen an order by the State Department to immediately lift all nuclear sanctions. ››read more

Hardliners who—for their separate reasons in each of the countries where such hardliners live—are still determined to sabotage the agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program must have been salivating when they first heard yesterday that Iran had taken into custody two U.S. Navy patrol boats and their crews in the Persian Gulf. This is just the sort of military incident that historically has upended detentes, spoiled diplomatic initiatives, and escalated into something much more than just an incident. Amid the recently heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the potential for escalation of almost anything in the Persian Gulf may be higher than usual. The hardliners are apt to see sabotage at this moment as especially attractive, coming shortly before the expected formal implementation of the nuclear agreement, an implementation made possible through completion by Iran of its obligations under the agreement.

Although some of the details of how the patrol boats got into this situation are still unclear, two central facts are undisputed. One, the U.S. boats entered Iranian territorial waters. Two, the entry was by accident, evidently for reasons having to do with failure of a navigation system or some other equipment problem. The first fact was clear to both sides from the beginning; the second fact was accepted by the Iranians once they had a chance to question the U.S. crew about what the boats were doing. ››read more

The ten US Marines who had trespassed on Iran’s territorial waters and had been taken into Iranian custody have been released after Americans apologized for the incident. ››read more

Patrick CockburnArab Spring was always a misleading phrase, suggesting that what we were seeing was a peaceful transition from authoritarianism to democracy similar to that from communism in Eastern Europe. The misnomer implied an over-simplified view of the political ingredients that produced the protests and uprisings of 2011 and over-optimistic expectations about their outcome.

Five years later it is clear that the result of the uprisings has been calamitous, leading to wars or increased repression in all but one of the six countries where the Arab Spring principally took place. Syria, Libya and Yemen are being torn apart by civil wars that show no sign of ending. In Egypt and Bahrain autocracy is far greater and civil liberties far less than they were prior to 2011. Only in Tunisia, which started off the surge towards radical change, do people have greater rights than they did before. ››read more

Saudi rulers have faced serious challenges before, but they have never been faced with the degree of instability in states surrounding or close to the kingdom. There are wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, a guerrilla conflict in Sinai and street protests in Bahrain that could always become more serious. It should be much in Saudi Arabia’s interest to mitigate these crises but instead it stokes them but without any real plan on how to bring them to an end. ››read more