Conflicts Forum

Alistair Crooke
Article posted on London Review of Books
It was in 2003 that I realised something fundamental had changed. The door to the room in which I was sitting flew open. In stalked a figure still dressed in a dark overcoat and scarf. He evidently could contain himself no longer. I was in Downing Street with […]

Sayyed Mohamed Marandi
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s interest in a stable Middle East is arguably greater than that of the United States—after all this is Iran’s neighborhood. For Iran to grow and prosper, it needs secure borders and stable neighbors. A poor and unstable Afghanistan, for example, inhibits trade and, potentially, increases the flow of […]

By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 19, 2009
In the wake of 9/11, no phrase more succinctly projected the upwelling of popular jingoism across the United States than the words “Power of Pride.”
America needed to reassert its potency after experiencing the insult and humiliation of witnessing its power simultaneously centralized and instantaneously crushed when two […]

By the Rt. Hon. Michael Ancram, MP, Middle East Institute, April 19, 2007
“It is often a better use of time to talk to your enemies than your friends,” so said a wise, experienced and senior Israeli to me a few weeks ago. In a similar vein last summer following the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon […]

By Mark Perry, Bitterlemons, November 2, 2006
We might now take George Bush at his word: in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he named three nations as the “axis of evil”: North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The statement had a solid tripartite ring to it, conjuring images of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial […]

Part five: The politics of indignation
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke, Asia Times, June 8, 2006
The foundational belief of the “war on terrorism” is that militant Islam is hollow. We are not fighting a credible movement with a set of core beliefs, but “evildoers” - people who have nothing to say, who are without values, […]