Iran

Iran uses cranes to hang citizens for offences such as ‘waging war against God’ and ‘crimes against chastity’. These cranes are often made in Europe. Now, with sanctions against the Iranian regime lifted, European companies are are clamouring to get back into the Iranian market. The CEO of the Austrian construction giant Palfinger last week called Iran a ‘promising market’. But after a human rights group in Vienna released a photograph of an Iranian dangling from a Palfinger crane, the company quickly backtracked on that statement. As Amnesty International noted last month, ‘Iranian authorities are believed to have executed an astonishing 694 people between 1 January and 15 July 2015.’

President Obama has accused critics of the recently announced deal with Iran of having no credible alternative. According to Obama, it was this deal or no deal. And then, alleges the president, the options are either acquiescence or war. But this is a false choice, set up by the Obama administration to make its bad deal look like the best we ever could have hoped for. Yet, the truth is that the alternative to this deal was not no deal, it was a better deal, one that actually met the international community’s objectives in undertaking negotiations in the first place. The Iran deal presented at Vienna is both weak and

Whatever happened to America’s desert kingdom? In the four months since Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud became king of Saudi Arabia, everything we thought we knew about this supposedly risk-averse US ally has been turned on its head. In a ruling house long known for geriatric leadership, the new king has pushed aside elder statesmen and seasoned technocrats alike in favour of an impetuous and uncredentialled son, Mohammed bin Salman, who may be in his late twenties. Now the world’s youngest defence minister, the princeling is already second in line for the throne, prompting grumbles from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, about ‘inexperienced youngsters’. As if to make the ayatollah’s

It is probably safe to say that the negotiations with Iran aren’t going very well. As the 30 June deadline for a final agreement looms America’s top negotiator Wendy Sherman has just announced that she will resign shortly after, telling the New York Times that it has been ‘two long years’ in that position. Meanwhile the Iranians are now saying that they want the deadline for reaching an agreement extended, with the Obama administration insisting that’s not an option. To make matters worse unconfirmed reports have recently emerged claiming that a delegation of North Korean nuclear weapons experts have been paying regular visits to Iranian military facilities. These being the same

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/defeatingisis/media.mp3″ title=”Andrew Bacevich and Douglas Murray discuss how ISIS can be crushed” startat=39] Listen [/audioplayer]For months, the White House has been saying that it has Isis on the run. Yet each week the world sees that Isis is only running forwards. Last week, the US state department briefed that Isis was ‘a significant threat to all of our partners in the region’ and ‘a significant threat to the [US] homeland. We’ve never seen something like this. This is a formidable, enormous threat.’ Which is fine as an observation. But governments aren’t only in a position to make observations. They — and the US government in particular — should be

 Washington DC and Iraq   We stood on a bleak hillside in eastern Iraq looking at a makeshift grave. It held a dozen Shia Arabs, according to the Kurdish troops escorting us. The dead were men, women and children murdered by fighters from the so-called Islamic State as they retreated, said the Kurds. We stepped gingerly around scraps of women’s clothing and a bone poking out through the dirt. In the town on the dusty plain below, Shi’ite militias were busy taking revenge on Sunnis, our escorts said, looting and killing. The town’s Sunni Arab population had fled to a miserable camp. Streams of sewage ran between their tents. But