By Jason Rezaian Relief for Iran’s ailing economy will be the top priority of Iranians on June 14, when they vote to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. Foreign policy, however, will take on extra significance in the election, as Iran struggles to undo the economic and diplomatic isolation of the past four years. Facing staggering unemployment and a high inflation rate, few

More than 60 percent of US combat casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan — 3,200 killed and 33,100 wounded since 2001 — stem from IEDs.    By Michael D Barbero A decade of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has confirmed that improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the weapon of choice for threat networks around the globe. While there are obvious differen

By Dalia Dassa Kaye Israel’s recent attacks on military targets in Syria have made clear the widening regional dimensions of Syria’s civil war. They have also fuelled debate about whether the United States should intervene. Look, some say, Israel acts when it sets red lines, and Syria’s air defences are easy to breach. Israel’s involvement has energised those, like S

by Gary Younge The thing people often forget about the story of the boy who cried wolf was that, at the end of the day, there was a wolf. For the past six years – since Barack Obama announced his presidential intentions – Republicans have been crying themselves hoarse. Obama, if they were to be believed, was a Kenyan-born communist Muslim with a forged birth certificate who stol

By Edward Cody There was a time, not so long ago, when anyone with a proper education spoke French. Diplomacy and business were conducted in French. Knowledge was spread in French. Travelers made their way in French and, of course, lovers traded sweet nothings in French. Viewed from France, the trouble with modern times is that many of those activities are now conducted in English, even

By Tabassum Zakaria and David Alexander Under pressure to fight sexual assault, the US armed forces in recent years rolled out education programmes about proper sexual conduct through methods like role playing and video games. The increase in education has nevertheless failed to prevent what the nation’s top general called last week “a crisis” after the Pentagon report

By Susan Cornwell When the Yemen-based branch of Al Qaeda placed a bounty on her husband’s head, Mary Feierstein learned of it from a friend who called and said, “You must be a mess!” US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein was thousands of kilometres away at the US Embassy in Sanaa, without his wife and family on what is called an “unaccompanied” posting. He i

WASHINGTON: Can Al Jazeera win hearts and minds in America? The pan-Arab news giant is laying the groundwork for the launch of Al Jazeera America after its purchase of Current TV, a struggling US cable channel. It will likely face an uphill battle for viewers but could solidify its journalistic brand, analysts say. “Al Jazeera is going into extremely unfamiliar terrain,”

By Glenn Greenwald Last October, senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post their newly minted “disposition matrix”, a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be “disposed of”: indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc. Their rationale for why this was needed

Former US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker views the current situation as a return to the conditions of 2006 and 2007, when Iraq plunged into civil war-like violence.   By Michael Knights As American troops were pulling out of Iraq in 2010, the US effort to stabilise the country resembled the task of an exhausted man who had just pushed a huge boulder up a steep hill. Momentum h

By William Pesek Voters in the Philippines appear to have delivered a resounding victory to President Benigno Aquino in midterm elections. The son of former President Corazon Aquino looks set to control both houses of Congress, giving him a mandate to continue his reform policies. His biggest worry now is making them stick. In the first half of his six-year term, Aquino arrested his pre

By Joan Biskupic and  David Ingram  He may have been the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He may have written a book extolling constitutional values in a democracy. And he may have run for president on a civil liberties banner, pledging to reverse the legacy of George W. Bush. But as US p

Poland is eyeing a place in the group of leading EU countries  just as Britain seems to be leaving.   By Timothy Garton Ash Like two Spitfires tipping their wings in the sky, Britain and Poland are beginning to fly in different directions. The Polish pilot is heading for Berlin, not to strafe it but to join it. The British pilot is steering out into the Atlantic. Their old

By Frederic M Wehrey While many Americans have been riveted by recent congressional testimony and debate about the September 11, 2012, attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, this country has been caught in its own drama. In recent days, amid Libya’s worst political crisis since the 2011 revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, the US and other Western governments have ev

By Leonid Bershidsky Two wigs, one blond, one dark. Three pairs of glasses. Two knives. Two envelopes containing 500 euro notes. One flashlight. One can of mace. One compass. One paper map of Moscow. One ancient Nokia phone. One letter in Russian, addressed “Dear friend.” These, according to the state-controlled news agency RIA Novosti, were the objects seized from Ryan Chri

By John Whitesides With no sign of an end to three mushrooming scandals, the White House acknowledged the rising political dangers on Wednesday by launching a concerted effort at damage control. In a whirlwind few hours, the administration moved forcefully to counter criticism of its handling of the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, the seizure of reporters’ phone records in a Ju

The national and provincial elections on Saturday marked the first peaceful transition from one civilian government to another since the country’s founding in 1947.   By Anja Manuel As expected, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N), which held power several times in the 1990s, won a plurality of the National Assembly seats, and is likely to fo

BY MELISSA KITE The latest Tory rebellion over Europe is like an iceberg, which is why David Cameron has had to change course in the face of it and promise to bring forward an EU referendum bill.  What the prime minister can see — 70 backbenchers threatening to vote against the Queen’s speech — is only a fraction of the obstacle.  Hidden beneath the surfa

By Michael Cohen Washington DC appears to have reached peak hysteria this week. The confluence of not one, not two, but three potential scandals involving the White House has given practically every Beltway scribe a case of the vapors as they don their Woodward/Bernstein capes and doggedly uncover the truth behind the Obama Administration’s lies. What’s missing, however, is

by Wenonah Hauter If you have a feeling that genetically modified (GM) foods are being forced upon the population by a handful of business interests and vociferously defended by the scientists that work in the agriculture industry or at the research institutions it funds, you might be onto something. The zeal with which GM proponents evangelise transgenic seeds is so extreme that they a