How Israel Can Live With The Iranian Nuclear Agreement

For Israel, the bigger problem with the deal is the omission of guidelines on Iran’s regional activities. Changes to the United Nations Security Council embargos on arms deals and ballistic missile technology, for example, are not conditional on Iranian behavior apart from direct violations of the agreement. This is to be expected, as it is […]

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What the Next U.S. President Should Do With the Iran Deal

The next president of the United States will almost certainly be more hawkish on Iran than Barack Obama. Maybe a little more hawkish, if Hillary Clinton; potentially a lot more hawkish, if a Republican. What can that president do about the nuclear accord that the Obama administration and several world powers have struck with Iran? […]

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Iran-Russia Relations After Nuclear Deal

There has been a lot of speculation about how the lifting of sanctions and the re-engagement of Western companies in Iran would influence Iran’s relations with Russia. The simplistic view is that a resurgent Iran would compete with Russia as a major exporter of oil and gas, hence compelling Moscow to stand in the way of […]

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Iran Looks At The Day After The Nuclear Deal

That President Hassan Rouhani has staked his political fortunes on the nuclear talks is well-known in Iran. His optimism for a nuclear deal with the six world powers and the subsequent removal of international sanctions and end to Iran’s isolation is so high that he has even, somewhat controversially, linked the nuclear deal to solving Iran’s water crisis. […]

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Return Of The King

Whether its central claim is an inscrutable dream of religiously legitimated sovereignty or a malleable delusion, the appeal of ISIS is easily abstracted from motives available to outsiders. It is, in the incisive words of the New York artist Molly Crabapple, a ‘cosplay Caliphate’, a dress-up festival of blood-soaked nostalgia whose very pretensions to antiquity […]

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Dignity: The Hidden Factor in the Iran Nuclear Talks

There are few concepts as important yet as misunderstood and unaccounted for in explaining international affairs as dignity. Explaining what is happening in Vienna right now in the nuclear talks between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany is virtually impossible unless this critical variable is taken into account. Read […]

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Tehran’s Power Lobby

Since its announcement in early April 2015, the interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program has yielded some $7 billion in sanctions relief for Iran, even though core U.S. and EU sanctions blocking Iranian imports remain in place. Although U.S. President Barack Obama faces tough opposition on the deal from Congress, his EU partners are […]

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