Posts tagged : "Middle East"

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: For more than three years, Syria has been engulfed in a deadly conflict that has so far claimed hundreds of lives and displaced, orphaned and widowed thousands of others. At the outset, there were people who claimed that the unrest in Syria was part of the democratic, revolutionary wave sweeping the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab Spring, but it’s now clear to everyone, both friends and foes, that the unrest in Syria is a proxy war to which tens of countries are contributing for one end: bringing down the government of President Assad. Syria has now turned into a battlefield for the face-off between the government forces and ordinary people loyal to President Assad and trained...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: “I firmly believe that the world can become a better place, if a critical number of people join hands in creating it. Then we can make this Earth a place where every human can live in dignity, where other species are respected for their rights to survive next to us, and where humankind is committed to care for our planet, for it is our common Mother and our common Home.” These are the aspirations of one of the world’s prominent leaders and a democratic president who introduced strategically important social, political and cultural reforms to her country and is now a member of several international organizations. Vaira Vike-Freiberga is a high-profile Latvian politician and the first female president...

Kourosh Ziabari - Press TV: It’s now three years that Syria has been engulfed in a destructive civil war which is leading nowhere but simply continues to claim the lives of innocent civilians falling prey to the greediness and voracity of imperial powers and those who intend to disintegrate Syria and disrupt the solidarity of its people. More than 130,000 Syrians have reportedly been killed and well over 2 million displaced in the ongoing clashes in the war-torn country since March 2011. The Western mainstream media persistently try to portray the violence in Syria as part of the wave of revolutionary movements in the Arab world that started from Tunisia three years ago known as the Arab Spring, but the irony is that there is...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: Mário Nobre Lopes Soares is the 17th President of Portugal who served two terms in office from 1986 to 1996. He was also the nation’s Prime Minister from 1976 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1985. At the time when the former dictator António de Oliveira Salazar was ruling Portugal, Soares diligently fought him and the dictator’s secret police PIDE that arrested him 12 times and expelled him to different countries. Soares is endowed with the highest-ranking military order of Portugal titled “Military Order of the Tower and of the Sword, of Valour, Loyalty and Merit” which was created by King Afonso V in 1459. Mario Soares’s father João Lopes Soares was a minister, anti-fascist republican...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: Former Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio believes that the controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program should be solved through dialog and negotiations, and that a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear standoff would be in everybody’s best interests. Palacio, who was the Spanish foreign minister under Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar from July 2002 to March 2004, said that despite the fact that Spain has been a traditional ally of the United States, her government “never subscribed to the ‘axis of evil’ approach.” “I arranged and conducted a state visit of King Juan Carlos to Syria and of President Khatami to Spain. I strongly believe that exchange, even a critical exchange, is...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: The European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response says that with the financial assistance of the European citizens, the EU Commission is providing humanitarian assistance and aid to more than 150 million people in more than 90 countries. According to Kristalina Georgieva, the civil war in Syria is the worst humanitarian disaster our world is experiencing, and that it will take many years for the crisis-hit country to recover and get back to normal situation. “I am afraid the situation will continue to worsen in the coming months. Even if a political solution were to be found quickly, the country has been virtually destroyed. It will take years before...

Kourosh Ziabari: Vietnam War veteran and renowned peace activist S. Brian Willson believes that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf are destabilizing Syria by sending arms and ammunitions to the rebels and Al-Qaeda fighters operating in the Arab country simply in order to gratify the United States and make sure that they will be never destabilized politically. “Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia either have US military bases or possess strategic resources desired by the US and the West. Perhaps many of the Arab nations want to be sufficiently supportive of the US and its desire to finish off Syria as the US did recently to Libya so as not to be so vulnerable themselves to being destabilized by the US,” said Brian...

  Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Syria has become a battlefield for the face-off between the forces of government, Al-Qaeda terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries that are hell-bent on removing President Bashar al-Assad from power. So far, more than 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war which has extricated the Arab country. After a chemical attack in the Ghouta district of Damascus killed around 1,400 people, as claimed by the United States, the White House announced that it intends to launch a “surgical”, “limited” military strike against Syria, and that the attack would certainly take place. It later postponed its plans after the Russian government presented a proposal that would demand Syria to...

  Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: More than two years after the outburst of conflict and violence in Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad is being accused of killing its own citizens and using chemical weapons against the rebels. Although these claims haven’t been substantiated with credible evidence yet, the United States and its allies are ratcheting up their war rhetoric against Syria and lobbying to ensure a UN Security Council resolution that will permit them to launch limited, surgical attacks against Syria’s military and government sites and perhaps lead to the removal of President Assad from power. The crisis in Syria has embattled the country in a complicated and unusual situation which sounds...

Kourosh Ziabari: The United States has seemingly lost the battleground in Syria by ashamedly retreating from its war threats against the Arab country; however, there are still extremist neo-conservatives in the US administration and the Congress who persistently call for a new costly military adventure in the Middle East. American author Douglas Valentine says that the United States does not abide by any of its international obligations and its calls for war against Syria violate the international law and the UN Charter. "The US has threatened about 50 nations with military attack. Warmongers on the Left and Right claim this right on the basis that America is an "exceptional" nation. That means the US has an exception to all laws. It is...

Kourosh Ziabari: American author and political commentator Paul Gottinger believes that the United States has become stunningly isolated after it failed to build up international support for attacking Syria, and now the global public overwhelmingly oppose his hawkish rhetoric against Syria, even in such countries as France and the UK. "The Obama administration was almost completely isolated on its position towards Syria. The US population strongly opposed the attack, and even the US military personnel opposed the attack by three to one. When the British Parliament voted not to play their usual role as faithful servant to the US, it surprised the Obama administration," said Paul Gottinger. Elsewhere in his remarks, Gottinger underlined...

Kourosh Ziabari: Prominent American author David Swanson believes that the world nations should strongly stand up to protest at the US warmongering policies in the region and its illegal calls for war against Syria which is a violation of the UN Charter and Kellogg-Briand Pact that prevent the world countries from unilateral use of force against another sovereign state. David Swanson also believes that the United Nations should impose sanctions against the United States because it has violated the UN Charter by threatening a military strike against Syria. “I think the United Nations needs to speak up as clearly as it can against any assault on Syria and needs to propose sanctions on the United States for such an action. I think that...