Stories written by Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian who specialises in U.S. national security policy. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published by Just World Books in February 2014. He writes regularly for IPS and has also published investigative articles on Salon.com, the Nation, the American Prospect, Truthout and The Raw Story. His blogs have been published on Huffington Post, Firedoglake, Counterpunch and many other websites. Porter was Saigon bureau chief of Dispatch News Service International in 1971 and later reported on trips to Southeast Asia for The Guardian, Asian Wall Street Journal and Pacific News Service. He is also the author of four books on the Vietnam War and the political system of Vietnam. Historian Andrew Bacevich called his latest book, ‘Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War’, published by University of California Press in 2005, "without a doubt, the most important contribution to the history of U.S. national security policy to appear in the past decade." He has taught Southeast Asian politics and international studies at American University, City College of New York and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. | Twitter |

Media Didn’t Buy Petraeus Command’s Story of Low Taliban Morale

By Gareth Porter
In an effort to introduce a story of "progress" into media coverage, Gen. David Petraeus’s command claimed last week that the Taliban is suffering from reduced morale in Marjah and elsewhere, despite evidence that the population of Marjah still believes the Taliban controls that district.

Obama Resists Pressure for Red Line on Iran’s Nuclear Capability

By Gareth Porter
President Barack Obama's refusal in a White House briefing earlier this month to announce a "red line" in regard to the Iran nuclear programme represented another in a series of rebuffs of pressure from Defence Secretary Robert Gates for statement that the United States will not accept its existing stocks of low enriched uranium.

Obama Plays Down Plan for Post-2011 Iraq Troop Presence

By Gareth Porter
When the Barack Obama administration unveiled its plan last week for an improvised State Department-controlled army of contractors to replace all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of 2011, critics associated with the U.S. command attacked the transition plan, insisting that the United States must continue to assume that U.S. combat forces should and can remain in Iraq indefinitely.

Israeli Generals and Intel Officials Oppose Attack on Iran

By Gareth Porter
Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran's nuclear programme.
President Obama speaks at the convention of Disabled American Veterans on Monday. Credit: White House Photo, Pete Souza

Obama Drops 2009 Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq

By Gareth Porter
Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.

Leaked Reports Make Afghan War Policy More Vulnerable

By Gareth Porter
The 92,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks, and reported Monday by the Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, offer no major revelations that are entirely new, as did the Pentagon Papers to which they are inevitably being compared.

Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Programme

By Gareth Porter
Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons programme, according to a former CIA officer.

Clues Suggest Amiri Defection Was an Iranian Plant

By Gareth Porter
U.S. officials are explaining Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri's return to Iran as the result of a defector having a change of heart because of his concern about Iranian government threats to his family. Iran and Amiri himself have insisted that it is a simple case of a victim of abduction escaping his captors.

McChrystal Probe of SOF Killings Excluded Key Eyewitnesses

By Gareth Porter
The follow-up investigation of a botched Special Operations Forces (SOF) raid in Gardez Feb. 12 that killed two male government officials and three female civilians, ordered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal Apr. 5, was ostensibly aimed at reconciling divergent Afghan and U.S. accounts of what happened during and after the raid.
Olli Heinonen, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards. Credit: IAEA

Heinonen Pushed Dubious Iran Nuclear Weapons Intel

By Gareth Porter
Olli Heinonen, the Finnish nuclear engineer who resigned Thursday after five years as deputy director for safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was the driving force in turning that agency into a mechanism to support U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Switch to Petraeus Betrays Afghan Policy Crisis

By Gareth Porter
Despite President Barack Obama's denial that his decision to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan and replace him with Gen. David Petraeus signified any differences with McChrystal over war strategy, the decision obviously reflects a desire by Obama to find a way out of a deepening policy crisis in Afghanistan.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal (left) crosses a poppy field to Forward Operating Base Camp Dwyer in Marja. Credit: U.S. Navy

McChrystal Faces “Iraq 2006 Moment” in Coming Months

By Gareth Porter
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal confronts the spectre of a collapse of U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan in coming months comparable to the one that occurred in the Iraq War in late 2006.

CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al Qaeda

By Gareth Porter
Some CIA officers involved in the agency's drone strikes programme in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the programme within the agency, because it is helping al Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.

Fuel Swap Shakes Sanctions Draft, Prods U.S. on New Iran Talks

By Gareth Porter
Although the Barack Obama administration continued to dismiss the May 17 Iranian fuel swap agreement Friday, there are indications that Iran's move has shaken the agreement among U.N. Security Council members on sanctions, and is bringing Russian diplomatic pressure on the United States to participate in new talks with Iran on the swap arrangement - something the administration clearly wished to avoid.
A sergeant with the Parwan Provincial Reconstruction Team provides security for a helicopter. Credit: U.S. Defence Department

McChrystal Strategy Shifts to Raids – and Wali Karzai

By Gareth Porter
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's team once talked openly about the need to remove Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and the most powerful man in Kandahar, from power.

U.S. Says Only Reason for Talks with Iran Is Enrichment Halt

By Gareth Porter
The agreement on draft Security Council resolution sanctions against Iran has grabbed the headlines on the Barack Obama administration's response to Iran's nuclear swap proposal brokered by Turkey and Brazil. But the more consequential response is the acknowledgement by the U.S. State Department Monday that the administration is not willing to hold talks with Iran unless it agrees to a complete halt in uranium enrichment.
U.S. Pres. Barack Obama and Pres. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan hold a joint press conference after meeting at the White House. Credit: White House Photo

Obama, Karzai Still Split on Peace Talks with Taliban

By Gareth Porter
U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought to portray a united front on the issue of a political settlement with the Taliban in their joint press conference Wednesday. But their comments underlined the deep rift that divides Karzai and the United States over the issue.

Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan

By Gareth Porter
Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.

Pentagon Map Shows Wide Taliban Zone in the South

By Gareth Porter
The Pentagon was still trying to spin its report on the war in Afghanistan issued this week as holding out hope because the instability had leveled off, even as some news outlets were noting that it documents the continued expansion of Taliban capabilities and operations.

U.S. Nuclear Option on Iran Linked to Israeli Attack Threat

By Gareth Porter
The Barack Obama administration's declaration in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.

Ninety-Four Percent of Kandaharis Want Peace Talks, Not War

By Gareth Porter
An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers".
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