Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Iran

  • Top Iranian General Soleimani Killed in American Drone Strike

    Donald Trump
    Donald Trump gives a speech in Derry, New Hampshire, August 19, 2015 (Michael Vadon)
    • Protests have erupted in Iran after the government admitted responsibility for shooting down an Ukrainian passenger jet on the same night as it fired missiles into Iraq to avenge the death of its top military commander, Qasem Soleimani.
    • Soleimani, who led Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force, was killed in an American drone strike on President Donald Trump’s order.
    • No Americans or Iraqis were killed in the reprisals. All 176 passengers and crew aboard Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, including 82 Iranians, were killed when the plane crashed outside Tehran on Wednesday morning. (more…)

  • Soleimani Assassination Divorced from Strategy

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump answers questions from reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, July 18, 2019 (White House/Shealah Craighead)

    The killing of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in Iraq could turn out to be a brilliant gamble that in the long term stabilizes the greater Middle East.

    More likely, it will be a major political and strategic problem for the region and the United States broadly speaking within the context of renewed great-power competition, particularly with respect to Sino-American competition. (more…)

  • EU Shields Companies from Trump’s New Sanctions on Iran

    Donald Trump Giuseppe Conte
    American president Donald Trump and Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte arrive to a NATO summit in Brussels, July 12 (NATO)

    The European Union has announced measures to protect companies that do business with Iran from American sanctions.

    The BBC reports that an EU “blocking statute” bans European firms from complying with the sanctions, unless they get approval from the European Commission.

    It also enables businesses to recover damages resulting from American sanctions on Iranian cars, gold and other metals. (more…)

  • Europe Can Stand Up to American Threats on Iran

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump arrives in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017 (ANG/Annie Edwards)

    Leonid Bershidsky is optimistic the EU can stand up to American threats and continue doing business with Iran. He writes for Bloomberg that the stakes are higher than President Donald Trump seems to realize:

    With its influence on SWIFT, the Brussels-based payment-facilitation system, and its trade power, the EU is capable of blunting US sanctions. If they prove ineffective, and Iranians merely rally around their government as Russians have done in the face of American restrictions, the US may be exposed as less of a fearsome global policeman than Trump would like it to be. (more…)

  • Trump Further Isolates America by Withdrawing from Iran Deal

    Donald Trump
    American president Donald Trump arrives in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017 (ANG/Annie Edwards)

    President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the nuclear agreement his predecessor, Barack Obama, negotiated with Iran in 2015.

    All the other parties — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia — want to keep the deal in place. Trump’s only allies on the issue are the Arab Gulf states and Israel, which consider Iran a regional threat. (more…)

  • Europe Doesn’t Know How to Handle Trump, Macron Runs Tight Operation

    Angela Merkel Donald Trump
    German chancellor Angela Merkel speaks with American president Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, March 17, 2017 (Bundesregierung)

    Stephen Walt argues in Foreign Policy that the diplomatic crisis around the Iran nuclear deal shows European leaders don’t know how to handle an American bully:

    [I]nstead of getting tough with Trump and warning him that Europe would both stick to the deal and defy any subsequent US effort to impose secondary sanctions on them, [France, Germany and the United Kingdom] chose to mollify and flatter Trump instead.

    It seems to no avail.

    It pains me to admit it, but Walt has a point:

    [T]he European response to Trump shows how successfully the United States has tamed and subordinated the former great powers that once dominated world politics. After seventy-plus years of letting Uncle Sam run the show, European leaders can barely think in strategic terms, let alone act in a tough-minded fashion when they are dealing with the United States.

    I do think this is slowly changing. Trump is a wake-up call. The EU is rushing new trade agreements with Japan and Mexico. France is leading efforts to deepen European defense cooperation outside NATO. The Balts and Scandinavians are remilitarizing.

    But deferring to America is a hard habit to kick. (more…)

  • Locating the “Real” Country, Putting Germany First and NATO Solidarity

    Andrew Sullivan is always worth reading, but, in the case of his latest column, I do think Noah Smith has a point and Sullivan falls into the trap of conflating Brexit and Donald Trump voters with “real England” and “real America”.

    This is a mistake conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic make. The small towns and countryside aren’t the “real” country. They’re half the country. Or, in the case of Trumpists, a third of the country. Their views deserve to be taken seriously, but so do those of big-city liberals.

    Or as Smith puts it:

    What we should NOT do is elevate one segment of the populace to Special Real American status, simply because they fit a certain classic stereotype or because they are more intolerant and angry than the rest.

    Related to this discussion is Nabila Ramdani’s argument in UnHerd for retiring the label “Gaullist” in France. (Charles de Gaulle is to French politics what Ronald Reagan is to American conservatism.)

    de Gaulle’s base consisted of white, Roman Catholic conservatives who had a quasi-mystical faith in their rural nation. There was no place in Gaullism for the millions of immigrants from France’s former colonies, nor did it adapt to globalization and the spread of Anglo-Saxon culture.

    Emmanuel Macron’s project is a belated attempt to reconcile these facets of modern France and it meets strong resistance in La France profonde. (more…)

  • Trump Leaves Iran Nuclear Deal in Limbo

    Count on Donald Trump to find a worse way than outright cancel the Iran nuclear deal.

    The American president announced on Friday that he will no longer certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement but not withdraw from it either.

    The compromise is unlikely to please Iran, which has kept its end of the bargain, nor other world powers, which want to keep the deal in place. (more…)

  • Rebutting Trump’s Arguments for Canceling the Iran Nuclear Deal

    Fred Kaplan rebuts the arguments President Donald Trump and his underlings have made for repealing the Iran nuclear deal in Slate. (more…)

  • Trump Treats Foreign Policy Like Reality TV

    American president Donald Trump has made a decision about the future of the Iran nuclear deal — but he isn’t sharing it with anyone yet.

    Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed on Wednesday that the president has made up his mind. But he also revealed that Trump had refused to share his decision even with America’s closest allies.

    “Prime Minister [Theresa] May asked him if he would share it with her. He said no,” Tillerson said.

    What is this, a cliffhanger? (more…)

  • Trump, Who Accused Spies of Fabricating Evidence, Pressures Spies to Fabricate Evidence

    The same Donald Trump who accused America’s spies of fabricating evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) now expects America’s spies to fabricate evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear program.

    The Guardian reports that the president has put pressure on intelligence analysts to give him an excuse to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal.

    Trump is legally required to certify to Congress every three months that Iran is meeting its obligations under the multilateral agreement. The next time will be in October.

    If he declares Iran noncompliant, lawmakers would have sixty days to restore sanctions. (more…)

  • Worry More About Iran Than North Korea

    North Korea’s nuclear program is more advanced than Iran’s yet it is not the one that should keep Americans up at night, argues Adam Garfinkle, a foreign-policy expert.

    President Donald Trump has threatened “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continues to provoke the United States.

    Garfinkle doesn’t share his sense of alarm. (more…)

  • Donald Trump Wants Conflict with Iran

    By all accounts, Iran is complying with the 2015 multilateral agreement that curtailed its nuclear program. The country is giving full access to inspectors, who have found no violations.

    The only person upset by this is Donald Trump.

    The New York Times revealed earlier this month that the American president had only reluctantly certified Iran’s compliance with the deal.

    Now the same newspaper reports that he has instructed his team to find a way to declare Iran noncompliant — whether it is or not.

    Congress requires the president to certify every three months that Iran is meeting its obligations under the agreement. If Trump doesn’t, then lawmakers have sixty days to restore sanctions that were rescinded in 2015. (more…)

  • The Future of the Middle East is Turkey, Iran and Islamic Socialism

    Tehran Iran
    View of Tehran, Iran from the Milad Tower at night (Shutterstock)

    It may not seem it, what with the Islamic State’s suicide bombers lashing out, Israeli soldiers shooting wounded Palestinians and the war in Yemen grinding on, but the Middle East’s broad new outlines are starting to show.

    They appear in front of the Turkish tanks on their way to Raqqa; in the brightly-lit press conferences of the White House; in the ballot printing factories of Tehran and in the banks of Dubai.

    They are both a return to history and step further into it. Nation states founded on the borders of great empires are reasserting themselves and the assault on neoliberal economics will give way to Islamist socialism. (more…)

  • After Mosul Falls, What Then?

    There are some 100,000 troops involved in the conquest (or reconquest, depending on your perspective) of Mosul. On the surface, the battle is meant to restore the Iraqi government to its full writ; a Baghdad-united Shia and Sunni realm, a nation state on the way to functionality. In other words, a normal country.

    Ah, dreams.

    Careful observation reveals a more wretched future. The Islamic State may be doomed, but that hardly means peace for Iraq. There are too many who want a piece of this particular pie.

    Many players there are. Let’s start with the greatest of powers, who define the broadest outlines of geopolitics in the Middle East. (more…)