Recent reports that IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei is resisting pressure from Western governments to make public intelligence reports demonstrating past Iranian weaponization efforts as part of its nuclear program got SWJ’s Robert Haddick pretty worked up. But they strike me as a bit disingenuous. After all, as the IAEA’s just-released Iran report (.pdf, via ACW) makes clear, the agency is having some trouble getting Tehran to respond to the weaponization claims because of restrictions placed by the source countries on sharing the intelligence with the Iranians. So if ElBaradei has his hands tied on sharing the dossier with the Iranians, [...]
President Barack Obama came to power with a not-so-secret plan to reshape the Middle East. His team envisioned a fundamental realignment in the region, with an eye towards resolving a host of longstanding conflicts that made it a global focal point of political instability. A key element of that plan centered on one country: Syria. By reconstituting Washington’s relationship with Damascus, the reasoning went, Obama would manage to radiate improvements outward to a host of regional disputes. Seven months into the Obama administration, Washington’s efforts to pry Syria from its tight alliance with Iran and persuade it to start working [...]
In one of the most quoted aphorisms in international relations, the Prussian political philosopher Carl von Clausewitz said that “war is merely a continuation of politics.” In other words, for every war that has been waged, we can point to political aims underpinning its waging. Take some recent examples. In large part, the 1991 Persian Gulf war was about exerting power: It sought to prevent an invasion of Saudi Arabia and oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. However, in Vietnam, the end goal was political influence: The war was fought to keep the south from falling to the communists. The examples [...]
