Who issued a fatwa (religious decree) in 2004 against the use of nuclear weapons?
Who in a subsequent sermon, declared that “developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.”?
No-one other than Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [...]

The Guardian Council today announced that there will be a partial recount of the disputed presidential election results: this is not expected to change the outcome. It is surprising that the western media before today failed to report much beyond the public outrage and demonstrations. The two opposing sides are divided by class rather than [...]

 
President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo University on 4 June, rivals the brilliance of John F Kennedy’s Ich bin ein Berliner 1963 speech in Berlin.  Shrewdly, the event was hosted by Cairo University, founded in 1908, al-Azhar University, founded in 975. 
I could not resist watching its entire 54 minutes.  Of course, words alone are [...]

Like many others, I’ve always believed that peace in the Greater Middle East begins with resolving the Israel-Palestine issue.  I have changed my mind.
 
I now believe that the key to peace begins with the Iran-US axis, not on the Israel-Palestine dispute.  And agreement with Iran is becomng a real possibility.  Barack Obama’s approach is a [...]

How did the United Nations and its leading member countries make such a mess of the racism conference in Geneva this week, dubbed ‘Durham II”?To try to answer this question requires other questions to be addressed:
How can the UN Human Rights Council have credibility, given its anti-Israeli bias?
With the experience of Durban I in 2001, [...]

The first meeting (on 1 April in London) between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev went very well.  Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have pledged to agree cuts in their countries’ nuclear arsenals by December of this year, as part of a “fresh start” in US-Russian relations and a step towards “a nuclear free world”.  Obama [...]

This post is inspired by an excellent debate hosted last Friday by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, which examined “Israel-Palestine in the New political Configuration: Future Prospects.”
Two ideas strike me as worth consideration, despite the current negative political environment in both Israel and Palestine.  The first is to establish an international trusteeship; and the second is [...]

President Barack Obama is to be congratulated on his video message to Tehran, but he spoiled it by unnecessarily saying:
 
“You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right - but it comes with real responsibilities, and [...]

Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Spotlight Europe of January 2009 highlights the interrelationship between a number of conflicts which ravage the Greater Middle East and the fact that the only solution is a long term, comprehensive one.
The paper contains two revealing charts, one setting out the interests of the key regional actors, and the other listing the conflicts [...]

Iran is one big enigma.  Having lived three years in Iran, one lesson I learned was not to try to analyse Iranian behaviour in order to determine policy or motivation.  You have to try to feel what is in mind because Iranian thinking differs fundamentally from western thinking.  Having been part of Iranian negotiating teams [...]