مقالات مختارة - Chosen Articles

The Kurds may be leveraging recent arms agreements to achieve a more direct security relationship with Western powers on the road toward de facto autonomy. When US defence officials want to give a compliment to a junior military partner they will often use the phrase "Little Sparta", referring to the ancient Greek city state revered for its small but potent army. Most recently the phrase has been applied in reference to the UAE. Now Iraqi Kurdistan is making a major play to become the next "Little Sparta". The Peshmerga -- Kurdistan's fighting force -- has always enjoyed the admiration and trust of the US military. Now Iraqi Kurdistan is emerging as an unparalleled launchpad for western operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), offering secure bases with easy access to Mosul, eastern Syria and over a thousand kilometres of ISIL's front-line in Iraq. This week has seen a senior Kurdish delegation ...

U.S. President George W. Bush, right, walks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a news conference at the White House in 2006. (Jason Reed/Reuters) By Ali Khedery July 3   Ali Khedery is chairman and chief executive of the Dubai-based Dragoman Partners. From 2003 to 2009, he was the longest continuously serving American official in Iraq, acting as a special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors and as a senior adviser to three heads of U.S. Central Command. In 2011, as an executive with Exxon Mobil, he negotiated the company’s entry into the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. To understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since 2006. I have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him, for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure me...

By  George Friedman Nuclear talks with Iran have failed to yield an agreement, but the deadline for a deal has been extended without a hitch. What would have been a significant crisis a year ago, replete with threats and anxiety, has been handled without drama or difficulty. This new response to yet another failure to reach an accord marks a shift in the relationship between the United States and Iran, a shift that can’t be understood without first considering the massive geopolitical shifts that have taken place in the Middle East, redefining the urgency of the nuclear issue. These shifts are rooted in the emergence of the Islamic State. Ideologically, there is little difference between the Islamic State and other radical Islamic jihadist movements. But in terms of geographical presence, the Islamic State has set itself apart from the rest. While al Qaeda might have longed to take control of a significant nation-state, it primar...

by Parastou Hassouri | published November 10, 2014 - 2:31pm    The decision to leave your country, especially when you leave for political or ideological reasons, can be gut-wrenching. My parents made that decision for me when they left Iran in my early adolescence. Unlike some Iranians forced to flee, my parents were not members of a persecuted religious minority. Nor were they high-profile political activists at immediate risk of arrest. But as people who had demonstrated against the Shah’s dictatorship, and had hoped that the 1979 revolution would bring democracy and social justice to Iran, witnessing their country plunge into authoritarianism and turn into a theocracy was more than they could bear. It was like the country they knew and hoped for no longer existed. Add to that the fact that, in September 1980, Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Iran, igniting a cruel war that would last eight years, and my parents felt that the best ...

The final message of a woman executed in Iran for killing a man she said tried to rape her has been released, telling her mother she would have justice in “the court of God”. She left her final will in a voice message to her mother, Shole Pakravan , in April, according to the  National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI ), which released the English translation. Ms Jabbari recorded it on the day she learned she would be executed, saying she had “given in” to death. "Dear Sholeh, don’t cry for what you are hearing," she said. “The world did not love us - it did not want my fate. “In the court of God I will charge the inspectors…and all those that out of ignorance or with their lies wronged me and trampled on my rights and didn’t pay heed to the fact that sometimes what appears as reality is different from it.” She was sentenced to death by a Tehran court in 2009 for killing Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of I...