The Obama administration has obviously decided that their grand vision of Middle East peace in our time involves recognizing and boosting the genocidal Islamists in Hamas, as well as what amounts to a major distancing in the US relationship with Israel. This is part of a policy of Obama's to 'engage' with Syria, Iran and their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Or in other words, appease...

This is how a pragmatist understands US foreign policy in conjunction with the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis! Yesterday morning I wrote a short commentary on the Obama administration's lack of understanding about Iran and that country's quest to obtain nuclear weapons. The writing was in response to reports of new sanctions being placed on Iran by Washington that were ostensibly designe...

Turning round a story is one of the most difficult tasks in journalism – and rarely more so than in the case of Iran. Iran, the dark revolutionary Islamist menace. Shia Iran, protector and manipulator of World Terror, of Syria and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad, the Mad Caliph. And, of course, Nuclear Iran, preparing to destroy Israel in a mushroom cloud of anti-Semitic hatred,...

The allegation that Iran is providing arms and assistance to Hamas has been denied as "illogical" by many pundits. Gaza is sealed, they say and so it is just not possible for Iran to get in there. Here is another point of view: Reva Bhalla, a Middle East analyst with the private intelligence firm Stratfor, said Iran uses a sophisticated Hezbollah smuggling network to get arms to Hamas. "Basically,...

The well-connected Jim Hoagland has a preview of how the Obama administration hopes the next year or so of its foreign policy will pan out. On Iran, still the biggest foreign policy challenge facing this administration, Hogland writes: ‘The next diplomatic trampoline for Obama is the G-20 summit [on September 24th], which he will host and hope to use to forge new multilateral approaches on I...

Britain is to assure Iran that it is "100% committed to diplomacy" to end the impasse over Tehran's nuclear ambitions and is signalling that it expects Barack Obama's administration to follow the same approach. The foreign secretary, David Miliband, will warn in a speech today that "the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran poses the most immediate threat to the stability" of the Middle East....

We are told that “experts” have now warned President-elect Barack Obama of a nuclear Iran. Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, the President-elect, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, a coalition of top think-tanks gave warning yesterday. Mr Obama must keep his

Iran has enough fissile material for a bomb: Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday. In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more

This is a guest post by habibi This news item has appeared on the BBC: “UK mulls lifting ban on Hezbollah” Only last year, the government put Hezbollah’s military wing on a list of proscribed organisations over its alleged training of insurgents in Iraq. But speaking to members of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell

The EU's foreign policy chief has warned Iran there can be no fundamental changes to the draft agreement on its nuclear programme that it is being invited to sign