Posts tagged : "U.S. foreign policy"

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Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Kourosh Ziabari - New Lines Magazine: Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, resonates with many Iranians as a traumatic episode that wreaked havoc on their lives. Earlier this month, the Iranian mastermind of the deal, former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, recounted what he presented as the untold stories of the genesis of that diplomatic blockbuster, now in a state of suspended animation, during an online forum on the Clubhouse app that stretched for six and a half hours, well past midnight in Tehran. At a maximum, a Clubhouse room can host 8,000 users, but the moderator said roughly 42,000 people had tuned in through...

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Raisi’s Inept Negotiators Are Sinking Iran Deal Talks

Raisi’s Inept Negotiators Are Sinking Iran Deal Talks

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: Progressive commentators in the United States who once championed U.S. President Joe Biden and touted his appetite for multilateralism as an advantage of his foreign policy are now openly criticizing the president for his Middle East approach. Specifically, they say it’s reminiscent of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda and failed legacy in the region, epitomized by his catastrophic withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The argument is that Biden squandered moderate former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s final months in power in 2021 to finalize a JCPOA revival while a breakthrough was imminent and that he is...

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Sanctioning Russia won’t stop Putin. Just look at Iran.

Sanctioning Russia won’t stop Putin. Just look at Iran.

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: The atrocities in Bucha, Mariupol, and other Ukrainian cities have taken the severity of Russia’s war in Ukraine to a whole new level. Graphic footage emerging of bullet-riddled bodies with tied hands, charred corpses piled together dumped in the streets, and buildings and cars blown to pieces have exposed how an apparently unquenchable thirst for power and domination can be boundless. In response, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, Spain, the United States and a handful of other countries expelled more than 325 Russian diplomats from Moscow’s missions. At the same time, the sanctions machinery of the United States and European Union is in full swing, and Russia is being targeted by...

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Canceled wrestling bout highlights Iran-US issues

Canceled wrestling bout highlights Iran-US issues

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran-United States relations are on the ropes again after a much-anticipated wrestling competition between the two national sides was abruptly canceled. In late 2021, it was announced that the national wrestling teams of Iran and the US would be facing off for a friendly match in February next year. Many observers of Iran’s politics were overjoyed in the hope the apolitical encounter would build bridges between the two rivals, whose recent engagements cannot be characterized as “friendly.” Iran and the US have not had formal diplomatic relations since 1979, but in defiance of the official narrative of the two governments built on maintaining and prolonging hostilities, punctuated by fleeting...

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More American Jews are critical of Israeli policies today: Rachad Antonius

More American Jews are critical of Israeli policies today: Rachad Antonius

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...

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US cannot mediate Palestine-Israel conflict impartially: Dr. Greg Shupak

US cannot mediate Palestine-Israel conflict impartially: Dr. Greg Shupak

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Nearly 73 years after it began to unleash havoc on the Middle East, little has changed in the dynamics of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. World powers and international organizations seem to have thrown in the towel, conceding that they are incapable of remedying the impasse, and as time goes by, diplomacy and fence-mending prove more evasive. In the final days of the US administration of Donald Trump, the dawning of the Abraham Accords, through which a handful of Arab countries initiated diplomatic relations with Israel, offered solace to the Jewish state, boosting its foothold at the doorstep of its arch-nemesis, Iran. To the Palestinians scrambling for sovereignty, though, the...

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Biden’s vowed US-Iran detente won’t come easy

Biden’s vowed US-Iran detente won’t come easy

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,...

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Biden’s repeal of ‘Muslim ban’ an olive branch to Iran

Biden’s repeal of ‘Muslim ban’ an olive branch to Iran

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: New US President Joe Biden has started his tenure with a flurry of executive orders aimed at annulling various of his predecessor’s policies and decisions. But his move to repeal an entry block imposed on several Muslim nations signals a potential more conciliatory foreign policy in the Middle East. In January 2017, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, officially titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, which blocked the entry of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen nationals to the US. It also suspended indefinitely the admission of Syrian refugees and slashed the total number of refugees taken by the US to 50,000 per year. Since all...

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Why Trump backed down from attacking Iran

Why Trump backed down from attacking Iran

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Reports that US President Donald Trump consulted senior aides about military attack options on Iran has raised speculation that a new destabilizing conflict could be imminent in the twilight of his tumultuous term. Trump reportedly backed away from launching a strike when confronted with the scenarios such a hit would likely set in motion. But there are still concerns the lame-duck president may fire parting salvos at his Iranian adversary, leaving behind a conflict for his rival President-elect Joe Biden to untangle. Trump raised the strike option in a November 12 meeting at the Oval Office with his top-tier cabinet members, namely Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting...

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Iranian hardliners mourning Biden’s victory

Iranian hardliners mourning Biden’s victory

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The theatrical presidential race in the US is over after a blistering campaign season. Even though the loser has defied a long-standing tradition by refusing to concede defeat and congratulate his challenger, it is safe to assume Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20, 2021, as the 46th president of the United States. Newspapers, radio and TV stations, and news agencies are flooded with analysis and commentaries about how this election was epoch-making and unparalleled, what should be expected of Joe Biden, eyed by millions of Americans, as well as people in the four corners of the globe to undo the damage done by the eccentric Donald Trump to the pillars of democracy and multilateralism, and what...

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What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy? Q&A with Prof. Stephen Zunes

What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy? Q&A with Prof. Stephen Zunes

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...

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Biden ‘has political capital’ to engage with Iran: Prof. Eric Lob

Biden ‘has political capital’ to engage with Iran: Prof. Eric Lob

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: With less than two weeks to the US presidential election, Iranians, like much of the world, are carefully watching the heated contest between the incumbent Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden, who has opened up significant leads in the pre-election polls and many observers say has the potential to make the Republican president a one-termer. Although foreign policy is not usually a determining factor in how the American people elect politicians, the outcome of the November 3 ballot will have reverberations beyond the US borders, and America’s friends and foes have already begun contemplating the contours of their future relations with the United States under the two possible scenarios:...

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