Q&A: “Grand Bargain With Iran Was a Missed Opportunity”

Last week, the European Union offered Iran an incentives package to stop enriching uranium in order to initiate negotiations with the West. Mere days later, and before Tehran had responded, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the Europeans planned to freeze the assets of Iran's largest bank in a bid to discourage Tehran from developing "nuclear weapons".

US/MIDEAST: Let's Not Make a Deal

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was more explicit than usual last Sunday, asserting that Israel's settlement activity in the occupied West Bank was illegal and hurting efforts for a Mideast peace deal.

POLITICS: Bush Inspires Least Confidence as World Leader

While historians here debate whether George W. Bush has been the worst president in U.S. history, a global consensus that he inspires the least confidence of all the world's major leaders appears to have emerged.

MIGRATION: Int’l Community Failing Iraqi Refugees

The international community, especially the United States, has depicted a "false picture of the security situation" in Iraq in order to encourage refugees to return to a country where the situation is still "too dire", said Amnesty International, a prestigious London-based rights group, in a statement Friday.

POLITICS-US: Coercive Diplomacy Disputed at Centrist Meet

The assumption that the U.S. should exploit its military dominance to exert pressure on adversaries has long dominated the thinking of the U.S. national security and political elite in the past. But this central tenet of conventional security doctrine was sharply rejected this week by a senior practitioner of crisis diplomacy at the debut of a major new centrist foreign policy think tank.

POLITICS-US: Global Image Buoyed by Prospect of Change

After a virtually relentless fall during the seven-year reign of President George W. Bush, Washington's image abroad rebounded modestly in 2007, according to the latest edition of the annual Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of 24 countries released here Thursday.

RIGHTS-US: High Court Sides with Guantanamo Detainees

Rights groups lauded a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Thursday that reinstated the principle of habeas corpus for detainees at the prison for terrorism suspects in the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba.

POLITICS-US: Bush Pledges on Iraq Bases Pact Were a Ruse

Two key pledges made by the George W. Bush administration on military bases in its negotiations with the government of Iraq have now been revealed as carefully-worded ruses aimed at concealing U.S. negotiating aims from both U.S. citizens and Iraqis who would object to them if they were made clear.

BOOKS-IRAQ: The Fruit of a Poisonous Tree

For those seeking different and deeper reasons why Iraq ended up where it is today, other than the often-cited but somewhat clichéd list of blunders like the disbanding of the Iraqi army and dissolving of the Baath party, Jonathan Steele's "Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq" is a must-read.

US/PAKISTAN: Soldiers’ Killings Likely to Raise Tensions

The killings Tuesday night by U.S. warplanes of 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers at or near a checkpoint along the Afghan border is virtually certain to add to growing tensions between Washington and Islamabad at a critical moment in relations between both countries.

POLITICS: Al-Maliki’s Balancing Act Leaves Iran Cool

As Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to alleviate neighbouring Iran's increasing concerns about a security deal between his country and the United States, he strove to keep a delicate balance with the two countries which are vying for hegemony over Iraq.

POLITICS-US: Pledging Allegiance to AIPAC

With the Iranian nuclear "threat" in the crosshairs, discussion of Palestinians or a Syrian-Israeli detente was virtually non-existent. But then again, one should not expect many overtures for peace when attending the annual policy conference for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

POLITICS-US: Senate Finds Pre-War Bush Claims Exaggerated, False

Claims by U.S. President George W. Bush and other top administration officials before the 2003 invasion of Iraq regarding Baghdad's ties to al Qaeda and its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programmes were generally not supported by the evidence that the U.S. intelligence community had at the time, according to a major new report by the Senate Intelligence Committee released Thursday.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Possible Deal on Kirkuk Could Be a Stabiliser

A possible breakthrough over the fate of the contentious Iraqi province of Kirkuk appears to be underway, which could be a significant source of relief for the United States as it is trying hard to stabilise the country.

US/IRAN: Larijani’s Election Can Boost Congressional Diplomacy

Iranian Nobel prize laureate Shirin Ebadi has long argued that the United States and Iran need to have a dialogue with each other at three different levels: between their executive branches, between their civil societies and between their legislatures.

POLITICS-US: Winter Soldiers Hit the Streets

In a clear change of strategy to energise public anti-war sentiment, Iraq veterans led a determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets of downtown Seattle last Saturday, following regional Winter Soldier hearings at the Seattle Town Hall.

POLITICS-US: On Middle East, McCain Vows to Stay the Course

In a major address on Middle East policy Monday, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, pledged to maintain the Bush administration's hard line against Iran and expressed strong scepticism about the ability of the current Palestinian leadership to reach a peace accord with Israel.

US/IRAQ: "Enough Is Enough, It's Time to Get Out"

Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.

POLITICS-US: How Cheney Outfoxed His Foes on Iran and EFPs

For many months, the propaganda line that explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) that could penetrate U.S. armoured vehicles were coming straight from Iran has been embraced publicly by the entire George W. Bush administration. But when that argument was proposed internally by military officials in January 2007, it was attacked by key administration officials as unsupported by the facts.

US/IRAN: Necessity Is the Mother of Negotiation

Republican presidential aspirant John McCain's recent criticism of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama's foreign policy platform exposes contradictions with the George W. Bush administration's own actions.