If you want to visualise the financial cost of the war on terror since 11 September 2001, imagine $2 trillion when a dollar is put on top of a dollar reaching far into outer space.
Stephanie Savell
The first $1 trillion would be 67 miles high, (...)
Where does the West go from here? This is a legitimate question as the West commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks not by marking a triumph, but by asking hard questions about why the war on terror has been in many (...)
Iran and the Western countries are trying to prepare the ground for the resumption of the talks on Iran's nuclear programme, suspended since June because of the Iranian presidential elections.
While European diplomatic sources say there is no clear (...)
The G7 group of countries failed to persuade US President Joe Biden to postpone the date for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan at a virtual meeting on Tuesday, with Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby saying there had been "no change" to the (...)
When UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace broke down during a media interview on Monday, admitting that the UK may not be able to get all remaining UK nationals and their local allies out of Afghanistan, the scale of the challenges facing the UK and (...)
The first telephone conversation between new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and a western leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, was the embodiment of the difficulties in relations between Iran and the West.
While there are ambitions to improve (...)
The West is wary of tensions between Iran and Israel, which at the very least could ruin nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the 5 + 1 countries. That is why Washington and European capitals took their time to respond to an attack on an oil (...)
The outcome of Iran's presidential elections was not a surprise, with hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi being duly elected in last week's elections and delivering control over all the agencies of the state to hardliners.
However, his victory was (...)
US President Joe Biden did not need to do much on his first European tour this week. Just being there was good enough for the feel-good factor to return after four disruptive years under former president Donald Trump.
Nonetheless, the challenges (...)
In Iranian politics, timing is everything. With that in mind, it is no wonder that Iranian officials are now saying, both explicitly and implicitly, that a return to the nuclear deal will not take place before the election of the new president next (...)
When pro-Palestinian demonstrations started in many European capitals at the beginning of the recent Israeli offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, no one expected the protests to attract tens of thousands of people or to continue to gather (...)
A flurry of diplomatic activity that has spread through Vienna, Washington, London and the Middle East suggests that talks between the US and Iran may be on the verge of restoring the nuclear deal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in London (...)
There are few doubts about who carried out the cyber-attack on Iran's Natanz nuclear site last week. Usually, these highly effective operations are carried out by Israel.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion fell (...)
Efforts to bring the United States and Iran back into the 2015 nuclear deal stepped up a gear this week as the two countries, the Europeans, Russia and China met in Vienna to discuss how to breathe new life into the deal.
US President Joe Biden came (...)
A year ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Covid-19 outbreak a "global pandemic."
The virus spiralled out of control and spread across borders at breathtaking speed, becoming the biggest health crisis the world has faced in over (...)
Resetting America's Middle East policy is proving to be a very tough task.
This week, US President Joe Biden found himself face-to-face with the complexities of Middle East politics and the conflicting priorities of how to protect America's (...)
The revival of the nuclear deal with Iran was never going to be a simple or straightforward affair. But the difficulties facing even the start of preliminary talks have alarmed Western officials and made them question whether Iranian supreme leader (...)
After the expected, yet still shocking, US Senate verdict to acquit former US president Donald Trump of inciting the Capitol Hill insurrection in January this year, many people in the US and the rest of the world are asking questions about American (...)
One conclusion that US President Joe Biden will have taken from his first few weeks in office is that resetting US foreign policy after four years of former president Donald Trump will not be easy.
In a major speech at the State Department, Biden (...)
US President Joe Biden was inaugurated just two weeks ago, but he has already signed dozens of executive orders addressing pressing issues such as coordinating the US government-wide Covid-19 response, Covid-19 economic relief, immigration (...)
US President Joe Biden is entering his second week in office with a lot on his plate.
Among the most pressing issues are plans to produce and distribute the Covid-19 vaccine in the US, economic rescue proposals to support tens of millions of (...)
As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press this week, celebrations at the inauguration of new US President Joe Biden on Wednesday were not expected to be wild even if the sense of relief would be.
Restricted by the Covid-19 pandemic and various security (...)
As outgoing US President Donald Trump enters the final week of his divisive and troubled presidency, Democratic Party Congressmen in the US House of Representatives are embarking on an “accountability week” to hold him and their Republican Party (...)
The Brexit experiment has begun: the UK started 2021 outside the European Union, now independent of its rules and regulations after 47 years of membership.
With few celebrations on either side, both started with the job in hand, which is to see how (...)
It has been a turbulent year all over the world, Europe included. The Covid-19 pandemic dominated everything, costing lives, decimating growth, accumulating debts, stifling investment and increasing unemployment.
Yet, there could be a lot to (...)
