Amir Taheri

“The Russians are coming!” Throughout the Cold War that phrase expressed the anxiety felt by Western democracies about the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Half jest the tongue-in-cheek quip evoked Russian chief Nikita Khrushchev’s notorious braggadocio in 1956…

How long might the war in Ukraine last? This was a question discussed and debated at a recent conclave in Paris of historians and strategic experts from different backgrounds. The real answer not given at the meeting was another question: how long is a piece of string? The current phase started…

The latest controversy over the BBC’s editing of a news clip to accuse US President Donald Trump of ordering an attack on the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021 reminded me of folkloric narrations of historic or mythological events in my childhood in Iran. The show consisted of a screen…

The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor is widely hailed as a political setback for President Donald Trump across the global commentariat. European pundits describe it as a sign that populism, triumphant for the past few years, may be peaking out. At first glance pundits may seem…

Hurricane Melissa which has just devastated large chunks of Jamaica and Cuba may be seen as an unwanted overture to the United Nations’ next Climate Change Conference to be held between 10 and 21 November. To be held in the Brazilian city of Belem the event known as COP30 is expected to be…

As might have been expected the decision by the Nobel committee in Oslo to grant this year’s Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition activist Maria Corina Machado has raised a storm of controversy about an annual ritual that has been losing luster for years. Critics say the committee chose Ms…

When President Donald Trump first launched his bid to stop the war in Gaza most observers expected another attempt at making the impossible possible. After all another ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages had been unveiled and unraveled a few months earlier. Thus, the initial…

The following could have appeared in the small-ads section of one of the free newspapers distributed in the Paris Metro: “Desperately seeking a Prime Minister, contact Marianne.” Marianne is the fictive damsel who serves as a symbol of the French Republic in the form of statuettes at town…

“Ha! Ha!” This was how the other day in Moscow national security adviser Dmitry Medvedev reacted to a quip by US President Donald Trump asserting that Kyiv “can win all of Ukraine back to original borders where this war started.” Dmitry Alexyevich, who once served as a parenthetic president of…

It was with a sigh of relief that Islamic Republic President Massoud Pezeshkian welcomed the new academic year and the start of autumn the other day- relief that what is dubbed “the thirstiest summer” in Iran’s long history was over. Only two months ago he had warned that even Tehran, the capital…