The events of 11 September 2001 were intended to impose and enshrine a new Exceptionalist paradigm on the young 21st century. History, though, ruled otherwise. Cast as an attack on the US Homeland, 11 September 2001, immediately generated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), launched at 11 pm on the same day. Initially christened “The... Read More

The Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is now, for all practical purposes, dead. Just like in the legendary Dead Parrot sketch by Monty Python, this deal is no more. It has gone to meet its maker. This is a former deal. The undertaker, significantly, was none other... Read More

In a stunning interview to the Beirut-based al Mayadeen network, Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah has outlined how Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani – assassinated by an American drone strike at Baghdad airport a litle over a year ago – was instrumental in convincing Russia to help Syria militarily in its war against Salafi-jihadis. Here is the... Read More

Hysteria reigns supreme. As in the new Jim Jarmusch movie, The Dead Don’t Die, The Return of the Living Neocon Dead, in a trashy rerun of the lead-up to Shock and Awe in 2003, keeps orchestrating the zombie march. Yet no one in war-cheerleading US corporate media talks about the quadrillion derivative crisis that will... Read More

The so-called Islamic State should have learned by now: they’ve picked a fight against the wrong guys. We have entered “take no prisoners” territory. For Russia, now all the gloves are off. Especially after online terrorist magazine Dabiq published a photo of the alleged bomb that downed the Metrojet: a crude device inside a can... Read More

PARIS - There it was, magically empty, on a discreet corner, never spotted by the tourist magma; my favorite little table since the 1980s at the Cafe de Flore in St Germain. I took possession, ordered a Welsh rarebit and a glass of Chablis, and was back in business, reading and watching the world go... Read More

Former United States president George W Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein before bombing and invading Iraq. Nine years later, US President Barack Obama has issued an ultimatum to the leadership in Tehran before ... setting optimal conditions for an "all options on the table" exercise. Obama has made an offer to Tehran to... Read More

WASHINGTON - And now, the end is near; the final curtain drops in a cold, paranoid Fortress DC under maximum red alert. In a contrived Oscar night-style mood, with thanks aplenty, George W Bush delivered his farewell address from the East Room of the White House on January 15. Bottom lines: he turned Afghanistan into... Read More

“Iraq and its costs”, the op-ed published this Monday by the Wall Street Journal and authored by Senators Joe Lieberman (Independent, Connecticut) and Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina)[1] is nothing short of alarming. Even more alarming than counterinsurgency ace General David Petraeus’ show to the US Senate. Coming from the two top surrogates to Republican... Read More

The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the... Read More

President George W Bush goes to New York next week for the annual United Nations General Assembly to ratchet up the demonization of Iran, confident that his new French ally is doing "a heck of a job". President Nicolas Sarkozy - widely referred to in Paris as King Sarko the First - has let loose... Read More

In 2002, in the runup to the war against Iraq, the George W Bush administration changed the subject from its failure to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction. In 2007, in the run-up to the coming war against Iran, the administration has changed the subject from its abject... Read More

He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance. - Graham Greene, The Quiet American PARIS - With former British prime minister Tony Blair out of the picture, there's now a newer, leaner, meaner, adrenaline-packed "Made in France" version. Thanks to his unrelenting support for President George W Bush's war on Iraq, Blair... Read More

It was four years ago today, Field Marshal von Rumsfeld got his guns to play. A fitting way to "celebrate" the bombastic opening of the most astonishing blunder in recent military/geopolitical history would be to read Andrew Cockburn's book. The late US president Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, a ruthless judge of character himself, already in... Read More

US President George W Bush – biting the dust in Iraq, contested at home, despised around the world – is taking a break and heading south on a five-stop tour of Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. He is not visiting the 100,000-hectare family ranch his daughter Barbara bought last autumn in the Paraguayan chaco.... Read More

As the dogs of war ominously circle the Persian Gulf, regime change in Iran could become a distinct possibility – but not exactly according to the desires of US Vice President Dick “all options are on the table” Cheney, whose supreme obsessions are oil, war and their mutual intersection. A leading Western energy consultant, who... Read More

For Part 1: Hezbollah south of the border, click here. ASUNCION - "The Yankees are coming," says a Paraguayan university student in Villa Morra, the slice of North American suburbia in eastern Asuncion. Wait; in fact they're already here. And not only because of the American University, or the rows and rows of private clinics,... Read More

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, at the triple border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay - This is the way savage globalization ends - at least 20,000 shops, stalls, tin shacks and mini-malls crammed into 15 blocks selling everything under the (tropical) sun. There's Little Asia - thousands of Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and Koreans. But above all there... Read More

TEHRAN - Imagine the photo opportunity: US President George W Bush and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad meeting face-to-face in New York. But it won't happen. Blame the public relations machine in Washington and the Islamic guidance handlers in Tehran. Yet it would be so much easier if the two leaders would talk. Ahmadinejad, just weeks... Read More