Amid promising signs of a negotiated end to the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the counter-effort to derail a resolution is heating up, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his neocon backers hype a “threat” from non-existent Iranian ICBMs, as…
New cracks have appeared in the Obama administration’s case for bombing Syria. Though the White House’s four-page white paper has been palmed off as a U.S. intelligence assessment, it now appears to have been a political document that cherry-picked evidence, reports…
Secretary of State Kerry’s move to shut down or preempt a UN probe of alleged chemical weapons attacks inside Syria suggests that the U.S. doesn’t want facts to undermine its case for launching a retaliatory strike, an attitude reminiscent of George…
“Defectors” are among the most unreliable intelligence sources since they have an obvious motive for discrediting their former governments, but still have been allowed outsized roles in whipping up hysteria against Iraq in 2003 and now against Iran, as Gareth…
Though Israeli leaders and U.S. neocons still beat the drum for war on Iran, new evidence suggests top Iranian officials did not sanction nuclear weapons research a decade ago but rather the work originated from scientists who resisted the will…
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel traveled to Afghanistan seeking to reduce tensions between the Afghan government and U.S. Special Forces who face allegations of supporting armed men accused of abusing civilians, as Gareth Porter writes at Inter Press Service.
Despite the Iraq debacle, neocons remain in the driver’s seat setting official U.S. attitudes toward Iran, mixing worst-case assumptions with unrelenting hostility. But national security experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett have stood up to this neocon-driven conventional wisdom, says Gareth Porter at…
In assessing murky terrorism cases in the Middle East, one must take into account the political pressures on investigators and journalists to push the conclusion in a favored direction. That truism has surfaced again in a bombing at the Bulgarian resort…
One problem in assessing blame for terror attacks in the Middle East is that governments have political interests in linking these outrages to enemies and then pushing that case in public forums. That dynamic may now be influencing the probe of a…
Propaganda aimed at convincing Americans that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb continues with more dubious evidence leaked to an ever-gullible U.S. press corps. An AP story highlighted a supposed Iranian computer model of a nuclear explosion but the graph…