Over the past two years of Arab unrest, only in Bahrain did a neighboring country (Saudi Arabia) invade militarily to put down a popular uprising – and did so without U.S. outrage because Bahrain is home to the Fifth Fleet. But the political injustice of Bahrain remains a regional sore point, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul…
In the 1980s, the U.S. and its Saudi allies teamed up to funnel money and weapons to Afghan Islamists whose bloody “victory” set the stage for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Now, the same team is heading back to work supporting Sunni rebels in Syria, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland explains.
A key residual power of Washington’s neocons is their access to think-tank journals and influential op-ed pages to “controversialize” American analysts and writers who deviate from foreign policy orthodoxy. At such moments, history and honesty are cast aside for ideology and expediency, Nima Shirazi notes.
Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, made a pragmatic statement with his choice of a first foreign trip, visiting Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich monarchy, observes former CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
From the Archive: As the West’s confrontation with Iran grows more dangerous – and major U.S. news outlets blame Iran – it may be worth recalling the documents that revealed how the U.S. and its allies showed bad faith in talks with Iran about its nuclear program, as Robert Parry reported in 2010.
Exclusive: A prominent Saudi leader says his country might have to develop a nuclear bomb if Israel’s nuclear arsenal is not dismantled and if Iran is not dissuaded from obtaining nukes, an indication that oil-rich Saudi Arabia sees the WMD threat as coming from Israel as well as Iran, reports Robert Parry.
As Israel again ratchets up its threats to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, anti-Iran propaganda, which could rally the American people behind another Middle East war, becomes critical. At this key moment, Gareth Porter takes a deeper look at an alleged Iranian assassination plot.
The hard-to-believe accusation about an Iranian assassination plot in Washington may be thin on actual evidence but that has not stopped the Obama administration from using it to stir up animosity toward Iran within the American public and at the UN, writes Joe Lauria.
Official Washington’s clamor for retaliation against Iran for its alleged role in a bizarre plot to murder the Saudi ambassador has put the U.S. and Iran on a collision course again. But Lawrence Davidson wonders whether it’s U.S. counter-terror agencies that are out of control.
The U.S. government is using leaks to the news media to press its case regarding a purported Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, but the supposed links between a cooperating FBI witness and Iranian intelligence remain tenuous at best, as Gareth Porter reports for the Inter Press Service.
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