Category Archives: Arab Spring

The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Price of Raising False Hopes

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US Secretary of State John Kerry shares a moment with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif, after concluding an agreement for relaxed sanctions and renewed talks. [Credit: BBC]

US Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry shares a moment with his Iran­ian coun­ter­part, Mohammed Javad Zarif, after con­clud­ing an agree­ment for relaxed sanc­tions and renewed talks. [Cred­it: BBC]

Iran, World Pow­ers Reach His­toric Nuclear Deal. – Wash­ing­ton Post 

“What was agreed last night in Gene­va is not a his­toric agree­ment, it is a his­toric mis­take.” — Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu

The irre­sistible ten­den­cy of gov­ern­ment to over­sell its achieve­ments was on dis­play in this past weekend’s announce­ments of an agree­ment between Iran and the so-called G5+1 – the five per­ma­nent mem­bers of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Germany.

News out­lets the world over her­ald­ed the Iran nuclear deal as “his­toric.”  Its crit­ics called it his­toric fol­ly.  Review­ing the agree­ment, it appears that both sides are exag­ger­at­ing. It nei­ther sets back Iran’s capac­i­ty to devel­op nuclear weapons nor facil­i­tates their devel­op­ment. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Syria and the Future of US Policy

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The August 21 chem­i­cal attack in Syr­ia has iron­i­cal­ly left Assad more secure­ly in pow­er than before, while increas­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in the region. [Cred­it: ABC]

The Syr­ia episode is behind us, but after the President’s ser­i­al impro­vi­sa­tions, our pol­i­cy, aims and inter­ests remain unclear.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Syria and the Budget: Putting Our Money Where Our Morality Is

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The Pres­i­dent delib­er­at­ed for weeks before decid­ing to ask Con­gress for autho­riza­tion to attack Syr­ia. He’s work­ing the phones to gath­er votes but will his bud­get pro­vide future Pres­i­dents with the resources to car­ry out sim­i­lar actions? (Cred­it: Telegraph)

On August 14, the Sec­re­tary of the Army gave his sub­or­di­nates an order: pro­duce a list of cuts that will reduce spend­ing by 25 percent.

A week lat­er, a chem­i­cal weapons attack near Dam­as­cus left an esti­mat­ed 1,429 dead,  mov­ing the Pres­i­dent to ask the mil­i­tary to pre­pare for a retal­ia­to­ry strike against the Assad gov­ern­ment. Even a lim­it­ed assault would cost hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, accord­ing to defense experts. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Struggling to Make Sense of Syria and Egypt

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A man prepares the bodies of those killed in last Wednesday's attack east of Damascus, Syria. [Credit: NY Daily News]

A man pre­pares the bod­ies of those killed in last Wednes­day’s attack east of Dam­as­cus, Syr­ia. [Cred­it: NY Dai­ly News]

Sarin vic­tims often first feel its tox­ic effects in their eyes.  They water and ache. Vision is blurred. Pupils con­tract to a pin­point. The nox­ious gas also affects the lungs, with chest tight­ness, cough and rapid breath­ing among the com­mon symp­toms. Then there are the car­dio­vas­cu­lar effects. The heart may race or sud­den­ly slow down. Blood pres­sure can spike or pre­cip­i­tous­ly drop. Nau­sea, vom­it­ing and abdom­i­nal pain are among its gas­troin­testi­nal con­se­quences. Its effects on the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem include con­fu­sion, drowsi­ness and headache. Con­tin­ue read­ing →