The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson on the Middle East
April 20, 2009 9 min. read

Jon Lee Anderson is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the “The Fall of Baghdad” and “The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan”. Anderson is an accomplished journalist who has reported on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran extensively. His most recent work for The New Yorker is entitled Can Iran Change?. I had […]

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Branding Journalism as Espionage
April 11, 2009 3 min. read

In the past few months, there have been three very high-profile cases of journalists being captured, imprisoned, and accused of espionage. They include two Americans who are now trapped in North Korea, and one Iranian-American who is being held in a notorious Iranian prison. Roxana Saberi has been charged with espionage by the Iranian government. […]

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Afghanistan International Conference: Happenings at the Hague
April 1, 2009 5 min. read

With a ‘hello‘ between US Envoy Richard Holbrooke and an Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister garnering the most media attention, the International Conference on Afghanistan was underway at The Hague in Netherlands.  This major conference features a geopolitical who’s who of actors influenced by the conflict, including representatives from Pakistan, Iran (wow, I didn’t know they […]

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Great Decisions for Afghanistan
March 19, 2009 2 min. read

Last night I led my local Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decision discussion group on the Afghanistan/Pakistan conflict.  My presentation largely stemmed from FPA’s Great Decision article written by Afghan expert and US government consultant on Afghanistan, Barnett R. Rubin, and an accompanying video debating the key issues of the conflict. I strongly recommend getting the […]

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Iran-US Partnership in Afghanistan?
March 12, 2009 3 min. read

Iran is in the news, this of course is no surprise, but what is worth noting is that it involves US-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan. After the fall the Taliban, which involved US-Iran partnering up in small, but significant ways, there has not been a healthy or productive relationship between the states regarding the stability and […]

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Iran Follow-up – Iran might be rising, but what about its president?
March 12, 2009 3 min. read

My colleague David Kampf in his posting today, draws our attention to the current Economic Cooperation Organization summit in Tehran in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicts the collapse of capitalism.  Scary, right?  It is another firebrand speech from an energetic leader of a rising regional power with a productive nuclear program and a lot […]

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SCO and Iran
February 23, 2009 2 min. read

The SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) has grown in prominence during the past several years as a regional counterweight to NATO.  Comprised of China, Russia, and 4 of the “Stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), the SCO was formed in 1996 with the signing of the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions.  The organization […]

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