Last month Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed, in an article for the Foreign Policy Magazine, ‘America’s Pacific Century’! This week, President Obama will be laying the foundation through a series of multilateral meetings involving Pacific Rim countries. He will start with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Hawaii (Nov 12th-13th), and continue at […]
I loved Robin Wright’s new book, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion in the Islamic World. (And thanks to The Clash for inspiring the title!) The book couldn’t be more timely given current events. It is a smart, provocative and compelling read, and I recommend it for anyone who is interested in what happened across […]
Tomorrow (November 12) is World Pneumonia Day. Although it seems that there’s a commemorative event almost every day to increase awareness about various illnesses or health issues, pneumonia is one that the world should remember and take action on. Pneumonia is currently the number one killer of children worldwide, more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles […]
The U.S. is taking time off today to honor veterans. The Veterans Day holiday is a time to give thanks and to pause and recognize the contributions of the more than 23 million veterans who served our country. The day is also observed all over the world by our allies as Armistice Day and Remembrance […]
The Keystone XL Pipeline extension proposed by TransCanada is current in planning limbo after the November 10 decision by the Obama administration not to make a decision on going ahead with or killing it. If and when built, it would bring crude from Alberta, Canada’s oils sands to the Gulf Coast of the US. The […]
Mark Hibbs, the former long-time Europe correspondent for Nucleonics Week and all-round specialist on global nuclear commerce, comments today on the IAEA’s Iran report. He notes that the agency has been unable to ferret out the line of command connecting Iran’s nuclear weapons program with the country’s political leadership, and speculates that the program may […]
Last week, Victor Bout, the infamous Russian arms dealer, was convicted by a New York grand jury on four counts of conspiracy to sell weapons to Colombian rebels. But, that is just the tip of the iceberg for this so called “merchant of death.” A former member of the Soviet Military and Intelligence Services, Bout […]
Further to the point I made in yesterday’s post regarding the changed tone in the most recent Iran safeguards report, Reuters has run a piece today which expands a bit on the Amano versus ElBaradei contrast regarding Iran. Describing the differences in style between the two IAEA DGs, Fredrik Dahl and Sylvia Westall write that […]
In May 2010, Israel raided a flotilla of aid ships determined to breach the maritime blockade of Gaza which activists claim violates international law by imposing collective punishment on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Nine activists were killed in the raid, which created a major international incident for Israel and Turkey, where the […]
I’d like to add my two Rial to the din of commentary on the just-released IAEA report on Iranian nuclear activities. There are a number of reasons why this report is notable, despite the fact that it uses much information that has been obtained previously and that most of the reported weapons development work took […]
The highly anticipated report released today consists of two parts: a main body about implementation of safeguards and UN resolutions, and an annex, “Possible Military Dimensions to Iran’s Nuclear Program.” It is the annex that’s getting all the attention in the press, and rightly so, inasmuch as it is surely the most trenchant and alarming […]
http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_8Nov2011.pdf
The report discussed in my previous post is now expected to be released on Wednesday, but from stories and commentary that have appeared today and yesterday in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Financial Times, it already is clear what some of the main points will be. Much of what […]
Iran is back in the news again: bungled attempt to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US on American territory, IAEA’s upcoming report which is expected to detail how the Islamic Republic is working toward a nuclear weapon’s program, President Ahmadinejad’s growing feud with the Supreme Leader, and of course Iran’s support for the Bashir […]
President Obama took a break this week from Washington D.C. drama to attend the G20 summit in France. As you can imagine, most of the debate at the summit had to do with the European debt crisis. Given that focus, it was not a summit at which one would expect U.S. leadership to be especially […]