Posts tagged : "U.S. foreign policy"

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On July 14, Iran and the group of six world powers – comprising China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – reached a comprehensive agreement that drew a happy end to over a decade of exhausting tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. The deal would ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear activities and in return, terminate all the nuclear-related sanctions placed on Iran. International observers expect that in the light of the nuclear agreement, Iran and the United States would initiate some limited cooperation to address the Syrian crisis and extinguish the flames of destruction and bloodshed that have engulfed the Arab country for some...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The nuclear deal with Iran has been a resoundingly important theme in the primary debates of U.S. presidential contenders. The most peculiar, unconventional ideas have been broached by the Republican hopefuls such as Senator Ted Cruz who said the JCPOA will hasten Iran’s path to developing nuclear weapons and that he will rip the deal “to shreds” if elected president. Similarly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is one of the major GOP competitors and equals Ben Carson as the third most popular Republican nominee in the polls analyzed by Real Clear Politics, has opined that the nuclear deal with Iran is not binding for the next U.S. administration and he will undo it, since he considers it to be a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: As the final preparatory step for the implementation of the comprehensive nuclear deal agreed by Iran and the group of six world powers has been taken after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano submitted his report on the past and present outstanding issues regarding the country’s nuclear program to the nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors, political scientists and foreign policy experts are now passionately debating the prospective, much-anticipated thaw in the Iran-U.S. relations. A noted academician and political scientist, who is known in Iran for his research about the 1953 coup d’etat against the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Following the successful conclusion of the talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and as the negotiating parties gear up for the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), there are still concerns and uncertainties on the commitment of the interlocutors to the terms of the deal. The U.S. presidential election 2016 is approaching, and some candidates have openly vowed that they will scrap the nuclear deal with Iran if elected to the White House, including GOP hopeful and Florida Senator Marco Rubio who has said he will tear the agreement apart on his first day as the U.S. President. Now, having invested a great deal of political capital on obtaining this agreement, it’s inarguably...

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: While nearing the end of his first term, the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly termed the tough, cruel economic sanctions against Iran as "scraps of paper", naively advising the world powers to "issue resolutions and rejoice"; however, perhaps few of his advisors had told him that Iran's economy would move to the verge of an all-out collapse because of those "scraps of paper" and that an incredible international isolation would be what befalls the country in a matter of 3, 4 years. On various occasions, Mr. President ridiculed the sanctions imposed against Iran over its nuclear program, and irritated the Iranians suffering under the brunt of the most rigorous economically...

Kourosh Ziabari - Gateway House: In the last hours of the night of April 2, a historic primary agreement over Iran’s nuclear program, known as the framework for the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action(JCPOA), was announced by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the French, British and German foreign ministers as well as representatives from China and Russia, in front of hundreds of news-thirsty journalists in the conference room of the Rolex Learning Center at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. Iran and the group of five permanent members of the UN Security Council...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Iran and the six world powers are moving closer to singing a historic deal that will bring a happy and peaceful end to more than one decade of dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. Almost all the details regarding the foundation of a comprehensive nuclear accord were agreed upon in the Swiss city of Lausanne on April 2, and the Iranian negotiating team is talking to interlocutors from the United States, three European countries (Britain, France and Germany), Russia and China to work out the text of the comprehensive agreement that is due to be signed on June 30. Although the Congressional hawks in Washington, Israel and some Arab states in the Persian Gulf seem to be nervous about the possibility of a...

Kourosh Ziabari: An eminent American journalist believes that the publication of the US Senate’s report on CIA’s “detention and interrogation program” indicates a growing rift between the legislative body and intelligence apparatus of the United States. Reese Erlich, who is the author of several books about the Middle East and US foreign policy, says that the torture methods used against the terrorism suspects following the launching of the War on Terror by President George W. Bush were endorsed and approved by the high-ranking White House and CIA officials and they were certainly aware of the extent and severity of the torture program used in the US’s overseas jails. The winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: With the rise of the terrorist group ISIS in the Middle East and its intensified campaign against the peoples of Iraq and Syria, which is resulting in increased insecurity and instability in the already-turbulent Middle East, more attention is being paid to the role of Iran in leading a regional front for fighting violence and extremism. Although Iran was not officially included in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, there are many American politicians and academicians who lay emphasis on the importance of Iran’s contribution to the global battle against terrorism and believe that the U.S. government’s decision to exclude Iran was wrong. The role of Iran in addressing the concern of violence and...

Kourosh Zibari: David Barsamian, a leading Armenian-American radio journalist, believes that as a result of the good performance of alternative press, young Americans don’t pay attention to the propaganda of the corporate, mainstream media anymore. David Barsamian, who is the founder and director of Alternative Radio broadcast from Boulder, Colorado, says the journalists in the United States don’t need to be censored or monitored by the government, because they are accustomed to a full-fledged self-censorship. Mr. Barsamian says that the US government orchestrated a large project of media propaganda against its own people to rationalize and justify its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq: “f course the case of Iraq is very instructive...

Kourosh Ziabari: A leading American intellectual an anti-war activist believes that the United States is the most serious threat to the world peace and that the US government is a major terrorist entity. Bill Ayers says, according to the most standard and reliable definitions of terrorism, "US is indeed a terrorist nation." He adds, "It’s also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today." Bill Ayers, a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, believes that despite its destructive and dreadful impacts on the livings of American people and other nations across the world, the US imperialism is "in a decisive...

Kourosh Ziabari: Ismael Hossein-zadeh, a renowned political economist, believes that the US government, inextricably connected to the pro-war lobbies, is always in need of concocting new enemies to be able to justify its military aggressions across the world. Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh notes that the "militaristic US planners" need pretexts to carry out the “National Security Strategy” of the post-Cold War world through waging wars, selling weapons and making significant profits. "The monstrous attacks were treated not as crimes but as “war on America.” Once it was thus established that the United States was “at war,” military buildup and imperialist aggressions followed accordingly," said Prof. Hossein-zadeh. "As the...