Foreign Policy Blogs

Tag Archives: Iran

Trump Sanctions: The Latest Disappointment for the Advocates of Iran-US Reconciliation

Trump Sanctions: The Latest Disappointment for the Advocates of Iran-US Reconciliation

When President Donald Trump announced on 8th May that the United States would not be a party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran deal, anymore, it was easily predictable that new tensions between Tehran and Washington will emerge soon. It didn’t take long for the European Union to voice […]

read more

Op-Ed: Why the US is correct in re-imposing sanctions

Op-Ed: Why the US is correct in re-imposing sanctions

The Iranian regime poses a strategic threat to the entire world and thus, it is critical for the US to act against this threat. Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov once proclaimed, “A country that does not respect the rights of its people won’t respect the rights of its neighbors.”  If one carefully examines Iran’s activities across the […]

read more

On Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From The Iran Deal

On Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From The Iran Deal

Donald Trump’s message and views on Iran have been remarkably consistent throughout his time in the public sphere. Even immediately following the deal’s successful negotiation, Trump came out against it, hurling a line many would become very familiar with: “Never, ever, ever in my life have I seen any transaction as incompetently negotiated as our […]

read more

Unforced Errors: On the Iran Nuclear Deal

Unforced Errors: On the Iran Nuclear Deal

Withdrawing from the Iran deal puts the United States in a weaker position in every way. Following the 2016 election, some wondered if President Trump was some sort of strategic savant, playing a game of three-dimensional chess behind a façade of emotionally volatile ignorance. Trump quickly put this theory to bed, though, and his decision […]

read more

2018 Iranian Protests: A Second Revolution on the Way in Iran?

2018 Iranian Protests: A Second Revolution on the Way in Iran?

What started off as protests spurred on by the deteriorating economic conditions in Iran and the inflation in prices of basic necessities, escalated into a rebellion against the Islamic Republic itself. But to what extent are these protests threatening the theocratic regime, and could such an upheaval foreshadow a second Iranian revolution? The latest protests, […]

read more

Israel and Iran on the path to escalation

Israel and Iran on the path to escalation

Iran has been ratcheting up the rhetoric while Haaretz warns of the consequences of Iran’s ambitions in Syria. It all started back in February, when an Iranian drone and an Israeli F-16 were shot down at the Syria-Israel border. More incidents and additional quarrels over the Iran Nuclear Deal could lead to more grievous confrontations between the parties involved. […]

read more

The Shiite Crescent: the Middle East’s Arc of Crisis

The Shiite Crescent: the Middle East’s Arc of Crisis

Backed by Russia’s President Putin and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Assad regime has recently made a bloodbath of Eastern Ghouta in Syria. During the past week, in the attacks on the rebel-held enclave near Damascus, upwards of 500 were killed, among them more than 120 children. On February 24, the UN Security Council finally managed […]

read more

Saudi Arabia and the UAE Heat Up Their Arms Race with Iran

Saudi Arabia and the UAE Heat Up Their Arms Race with Iran

While the world’s attention remains focused on the nuclear brinkmanship and missile launches on the Korean peninsula, the Middle Eastern arms race, pitting Saudi Arabia and its ally the United Arab Emirates against Iran has been slowly heating up and could soon reach a boiling point. The spending boom among the gulf states, the Saudis […]

read more

Abadi verses Barzani: Who is the true hero?    

Abadi verses Barzani: Who is the true hero?    

  Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has been hailed in many western circles as the unifier of Iraq but in reality, he is merely another sectarian leader, who murders and threatens his own people in order to hold a failed state together utilizing brute force.  To the contrary, Kurdistan’s Prime Minister Nichervan Barzani is […]

read more

North Korea, Iran, and the Nuclear Posture Review

North Korea, Iran, and the Nuclear Posture Review

Recently, the Trump Administration decided against nominating Victor D. Cha as Ambassador to South Korea due to his opposition to the “bloody nose” strategy against North Korea advocated by the White House. On the heels of this report, U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood declared that North Korea stands only months away from the ability to […]

read more

How Can America Bring Iran Back to the West?

How Can America Bring Iran Back to the West?

The recent Russian rejection of an American initiative at the UN Security Council for the world community to express solidarity with the Iranian protesters in the face of the Islamist regime’s brutalities did not come as a surprise. In fact, given the history of Russia’s imperialistic behavior towards Iran, the rejection came as a natural […]

read more

The Forgotten Genocide

The Forgotten Genocide

The reality of conflict in this New Year is that there must be a reckoning to remember the forgotten from the last few years and honour those lost to human rights atrocities. What is worse than fake news, is no news, and with so little attention being paid to some of the most mutilated and […]

read more

Time for Reckoning a Long Hidden Massacre

Time for Reckoning a Long Hidden Massacre

  This week, Tehran announced it would continue a missile development program that defense analysts say could allow Iran to launch nuclear weapons. It was a public threat that has understandably stirred strong response from the US and the west: the risk of nuclear proliferation by a fanatical regime is indeed a threat to millions […]

read more

Does Trump’s foreign policy enable Iranian aggression in the Middle East?

Does Trump’s foreign policy enable Iranian aggression in the Middle East?

From Syria to Iraq, Trump’s Middle East policy enables Iran to spread its tentacles across the region. During the elections, Donald Trump was highly critical of former US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy to the Middle East. From Obama refusing to follow his own red line policy on Syria to the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump […]

read more

The Middle East’s Cold War Is Not Going Well for the Saudi’s

The Middle East’s Cold War Is Not Going Well for the Saudi’s

On Saturday afternoon November 4th from the Saudi capital of Riyadh, now former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri declared he resigned due to threat of assassination, saying, “I have sensed what is being plotted covertly to target my life.” The BBC reported that Hariri made multiple trips to Saudi Arabia (KSA) over the couple of […]

read more

About Us

Foreign Policy Blogs is a network of global affairs blogs and a supplement to the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions program. Staffed by professional contributors from the worlds of journalism, academia, business, non-profits and think tanks, the FPB network tracks global developments on Great Decisions 2014 topics, daily. The FPB network is a production of the Foreign Policy Association.