Amir Taheri

What will Trump’s foreign policy look like in his second term? This is the question currently making the buzz in the commentariat around the world. Western European pundits claim that Trump will abandon the Ukrainian lamb to the Russian wolf or, at least, force the European shepherd to foot the…

“Think twice! No, think thrice before you put a word on paper!” This was the advice that the great Persian poet Muhammad Iqbal, a son of India, advised his disciples in the last century. “In using words let caution be your guide.” That thought found an echo in the writings of Sayyed Kazem Assar,…

For decades at least until the early days of the current century a saying attributed to a19th century vaudeville troupe was often used to assess the prevailing political mood in an imaginary “average America”: See how it plays in Peoria! I first heard the phrase in 1974 from Thomas Philip (Tip) O…

It is late night in Paris when the phone jolts me out of my pre-sleep somnolence. It is a fellow-Iranian who wants to know who I think would be the United States’ next president. As I mumble in search of an answer the distant caller darts: So who will win? “The winner will be the American system,…

«This is not who we are! » This is one of the favorite shibboleths used by US Democrat Party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her supporters with the aim of portraying supporters of her Republican rival Donald J. Trump as not quite American if not utterly alien. One of Ms. Harris’ …

These days my two favorite book-shops in Paris and London are devoting a full shelf to books on or inspired by Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Storm” October 7 raid on Israel. Some of these books offer various accounts of what happened on that day and could be classed as extended reportages of the kind news…

Although the war, or in fact wars, triggered against Israel by Hamas are far from over, global punditry is already regimented in a cacophonic chorus to tell the protagonists what to do and what not to do. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s decision to try and save face by firing missiles at Israel…

Last week, on a single day of an undeclared war, one of the protagonists suffered more than 500 deaths and more than 1,600 wounded, a total of over 2,200 casualties. The country in question has a population of 5 million. Now imagine if that casulaty figure had occurred in a country with a…

A couple of weeks ago I had a visit from a schoolmate I had not seen since the “good old days” of pre-Khomeini Iran. Under the Shah he spent eight months in prison because he was supposed to be on the left. Under the mullahs he spent five years in jail on a charge of pro-monarchy activities. In…

Is France going to have an extremist president in a few months’ time? If we believe the prophecy made by popular novelist Michel Houellebecq in his “Submission” in 2015 the answer must be yes. In the novel Houellebecq claimed that the French have only seven years that is until 2025 to prevent…