Whenever I have written about Iran, I have looked at the problems of numerous policies to deal with the country, rarely offering my own suggestions for solving the Iran problem. There are two reasons for this, one of which is that it is ridiculously complex and no one can really come up with what I […]
These last few years have been tough for the Western Alliance and a dispiriting time for those like me who feel the well-being of the world is best served by Western primacy. It isn’t the rise of the emerging powers that has been dispiriting, but rather the self-pity their rise has engendered in the West. […]
Since the September 13th attacks in Kabul, relations between Pakistan and the United States have become so bad that it is rumoured the baddies in the next Indiana Jones film will be the ISI, which is much more damaging to a country’s reputation than being listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday, Admiral […]
Last summer, when perennial concern about Iran’s nuclear programme grew hysterical, Ron Tira, a noted Israeli strategic thinker, wrote that the importance of an attack on the country was not the operation itself but manipulating international reaction. ‘It is necessary to examine Israel’s response to different events, for example, the Turkish flotilla to the Gaza […]
There is a new article on the Newsweek site about the ‘covert war’ going on inside Iran to destabilise its nuclear programme, noting the suspicious attacks on its nuclear scientists recently. It brought me back to the discussion about murder and reason of state: are Iran’s scientists ‘fair game’ for targeted killing? Xavier says no: […]
With the misleading title ‘It is time to scrap Trident’, James Rogers at European Geostrategy argues that Britain and France should cut their nuclear submarines by half and share the deterrent. The rationale behind his idea is that both countries have budgetary pressures but rising defence costs, and given a nuclear strike against one would […]
I have wanted to write about Iran since I started the blog months ago, and now would seem appropriate with Jeffrey Goldberg reopening the debate on whether the United States should attack the country to stop its nuclear programme. He has examined in depth the anxiety felt by Israel about the prospect of Iran acquiring […]
To begin filling the unforgiveable gap on Iran, I recommend to readers these two discussions on the threat posed by it having a nuclear capability. I hadn’t heard of Tom Schelling before watching the video, so it was a wonderful introduction. Although he considers an Iranian nuclear capability an unfortunate but containable threat, he raises […]
October 23, 2012
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