Posts tagged : "United States"

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...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the sun sets on America’s costly 18-year war in Afghanistan, neighboring Iran is poised to gain an upper hand as foreign troops chart their withdrawal from the war-ravaged country. That is despite Tehran’s vehement vocal objections to a nascent peace deal between the US and Islamic fundamentalist Taliban group aimed at ending a war that by some estimates has cost American taxpayers nearly US$2 trillion. In February, US President Donald Trump’s administration and the Taliban reached a conditional agreement following nine rounds of intense negotiations in the Qatari capital of Doha. The deal covers four key issues: a sustainable ceasefire, facilitation of intra-Afghan talks now underway...

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:...

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: As US President Donald Trump’s administration tightens incremental sanctions on Iran to impair the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, derail its regional escapades and bring it back to the bargaining table, citizens of Iranian origin living overseas including expatriates and international students are collaterally feeling the sting of the punitive measures against their country of birth. The US sanctions regime against Iran is now a multi-layered, sophisticated constellation of embargoes expanded over time through numerous Congressional acts and executive orders by the US president. It targets any sort of trade and banking transaction with the beleaguered nation and extraterritoriality applies to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: September 11, 2001, was one of the darkest days in US history and a watershed moment in the global consciousness around the West’s relations with the Muslim world. The terror attack on that day, which The New York Times once called “one of the most audacious attacks ever against the United States,” sabotaged the notion of the impregnability of America and violated the honor of a nation envied by friends and foes for its economic strength, political stability, military might and technological supremacy. The images of the 9/11 attacks, seared into the national collective memory of Americans, immortalized by detailed chronicles of investigative journalists and documentary photographers, might...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: Four decades after the Islamic Revolution was birthed, more Iranians are emerging critical of the state’s stringent, uncompromising anti-American rhetoric and tend to be skeptical of the rationale behind the authorities’ insistence on continuously fanning the flames of hostility with the United States. Critics have pointed to the high costs of this unwarranted ideological brinkmanship for the Islamic Republic while underlining its waning traction among the younger, middle-class Iranians for whom the definition of national interest takes on pragmatic overtones spurred by a genuine desire to be integrated with the international community and redeem their country from an entrenched...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Ultraconservatives in Iran have seized upon the wave of protests against police brutality and racism in the United States to highlight the failings of their longtime adversary and to herald its “collapsing regime.” In recent days, the front pages of hardline newspapers and news agencies have been flooded with pictures of protests in various US cities. Headlines describe how law enforcement authorities, instructed by President Donald Trump, have cracked down on demonstrators. Apocalyptic projections about the imminent downfall of the United States and “imperialism” are ubiquitous. “Washington Collapsed!” proclaimed the right-wing Mashregh News agency, which published a video of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: On January 28, US President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he hailed as the “deal of the century.” This is the latest attempt by the US to mediate between the Israelis and Palestinians and end the seven-decade-old dispute. The deal sparked outrage by the Palestinians but was praised by the Israelis. Even though the plan addresses controversial issues such as Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, many observers have rebuffed it as one-sided. The plan sets out both political and economic steps for peace. For the Israelis, Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel. They would also have full...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The United States is a diverse and multicultural society, accommodating people coming from a range of racial, cultural, religious and national backgrounds. In fact, multiculturalism is believed to be a historical tradition in the United States, and the blending of cultures and ethnic groups in America since it was discovered by the Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries, has led to the country to become known as a “melting pot.” Americans see advantages in their country’s growing demographic diversity. According to a Pew Research Center study carried out in 2019, a majority of Americans, namely 57% of them, believe the fact that there’s a diverse composition of people from different ethnic and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The coming to power of Donald Trump has reignited the debate on immigration and multiculturalism in the United States. His stringent policies and the efforts to slash both legal and illegal immigration to the US have been at the forefront of controversy since he took office in January 2017, leading some to assert that Trump is heading “the most immigration-restrictive administration since the 1920s.” Immigration and race relations are expected to be major areas of focus in the 2020 election, once again highlighting a longstanding challenge the United States has been grappling with. In September 2019, the State Department announced that the US will only admit up to 18,000 refugees in the next...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Democracy is on the decline. In 2018, the Freedom in the World report published by Freedom House recorded the 12th consecutive year of retreating global freedom. This included established democracies like the United States as well as authoritarian countries such as China and Russia. In the US, the situation is particularly worrying as a populist president appears to be damaging the country’s democracy through his divisive rhetoric, his contempt for the rule of law and his fiery attacks on the media and his critics. President Donald Trump’s incendiary language and his aggressive comments about immigrants, Muslims and Mexicans have emboldened white nationalists. Law enforcement authorities...