Posts tagged : "Foreign policy"

Kourosh Ziabari - The National Interest: The latest flare-up of violence between Israel and the Palestinians was extinguished on May 21 after eleven days of exchanging rockets and missiles, leaving behind a trail of casualties and destruction and further compounding what is an intractable dilemma that has demonstrated its resistance to resolution throughout decades. The conversation about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can go on infinitely, and there are always questions that remain unanswered. But the less-meditated aspect of this multi-pronged, byzantine feud is the role external powers have been playing since 1948 in lengthening and exacerbating what is no longer a fracas over territory, but a scene of...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The novel agreements on the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the governments of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan have unveiled evolving paradigms in the geopolitical landscape of Middle East and North Africa. The accords expose how pan-Arab, pan-Islamic ambitions are being discarded by the regional states in favor of economic, technological and military incentives that initiating relations with the Jewish state might bring about. The majority of Palestinians feel they are abandoned following the signing of the Abraham Accords, brokered by the outgoing Trump administration. A September poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has found an overwhelming...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: An attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility on April 11 has been blamed on Israel by Iranian officials, an accusation that threatens to hamper efforts now underway to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear pact. The apparent cyber-attack, which caused a power blackout at the plant situated eight meters underground, reportedly inflicted substantial damage to a number of centrifuges operating at the installation. Although Iranian officials have ruled out casualties or leakage of hazardous material, anonymous American and Israeli officials quoted in media reports have conjectured that the attack may have set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least nine...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: For nearly two decades now, Iran’s nuclear program has represented a global concern debated in the media on a daily basis, and world leaders have made every effort to find a way out of this intractable dilemma. Iran insists on the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, remains adamant that it should be entitled to enrich uranium unrestrictedly, has consistently worked on the development of advanced centrifuges and heavy-water reactors, and at times has been accused of covering-up its past nuclear activities. Lamentably, the sizeable investment Iran has made on its nuclear mission has yielded little concrete outcomes its people can discern other than underpinning an international...

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: Joe Biden’s election has revived certain hopes that the landmark Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), may soon be restored and usher in a new era of stability to the region. Biden vowed on the campaign trail he would rejoin the JCPOA and enter broad negotiations with the Islamic Republic to address a wide array of sticking points that continue to blight bilateral relations. Iran, which resorted to so-called “remedial measures” after the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018, has since rolled back several of its commitments under the deal, including recommencing its sensitive uranium enrichment activities. At the same time,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was one of the most traumatic episodes of the 20th century for Iranians. While a new governmental system was being crystallized in a turbulent social context in the wake of a revolution, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein waged an all-out internecine war against his fragile neighbor, inflicted unspeakable human suffering on the people of Iran and razed the country’s infrastructure to the ground. The goal was to nip the fledgling Islamist movement spearheaded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the bud and prevent revolutionary Iran from emerging as a force of hostility against the Arab states of the Persian Gulf region and the alliance of Western powers. Described as...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A group of MPs in Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament, or Majlis, have proposed legislation that if implemented as worded will spark new conflict and crisis in the Middle East. One year after Iran’s hero-worshipped military commander, Qasem Soleimani, was eliminated by a US drone strike in Baghdad, a group of Iranian lawmakers has proposed an idiosyncratic parliamentary motion in 16 articles obligating the government to retaliate the killing by laying the groundwork for the “annihilation” of Israel by 2041. At the helm of Iran’s parliament sits Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander now in plainclothes. Out of the 290 parliamentarians...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world was mesmerized by the spectacle of the presidential race in the United States, attention was diverted from other headline-making issues, at least fleetingly. In particular, it looks as though the dust has settled on the latest civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world following the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher who had shown the cartoons in one of his classes. A debate on the appropriateness of republishing the controversial cartoons, the degree to which they caused offense to Muslims worldwide, the sanctity of freedom of speech in a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: It might not be good news for Iran, but Israel is solidifying its foothold in the Middle East, cozying up to more Muslim, Arab nations that have long stopped thinking of the Jewish state as an existential threat. The surprise announcement on the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August, followed by a similar deal between Israel and Bahrain in September, lifted the veil on the new realities of the region, ushering in fresh alliances and shifting paradigms. It’s out in the open that Iran and Israel are sworn enemies, and although they never engaged in any direct confrontation, they have been the two belligerents of a full-blown proxy conflict and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Ever since his inauguration in 2017, US President Donald Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy. Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization. The president has pledged to draw an end to the “forever...

Kourosh Ziabari: Climate change is a complex threat to life on Earth, driving countless shifts worldwide, and it is only through collective action on the individual, national, regional and international levels that it can be addressed meaningfully. The provision of food, fibre, fuel and freshwater, without which human society and its economy cannot survive, is jeopardized by the rising global temperature and record levels of land and freshwater exploitation. The UN Secretary General António Guterres has termed climate change the “defining challenge of our time.” Some experts talk of climate change as a “threat multiplier” that even has the potential to increase the risk of political instability and terrorism. Climate change...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Living in a highly connected world means people take pride in assets that were less relevant and charming 50 years ago. Today, social mobility, freedom of movement, connectivity and open borders are privileges that are cherished by the citizens of the 21st century. It is no longer possible for nation-states to erect walls of protectionism along their borders and preclude the flow of people and information. Even for a country like North Korea, which to many typifies isolation and autarky within the framework of a revolutionary Juche doctrine, foreign relations are critical, ensuring the survival of the nation in a hyper-connected, radically changed world. The Henley Passport Index, a global ranking...