Amir Taheri

As the Gaza war seethes through its fourth month policymakers and think-tankers in the West form a chorus demanding what shall we do about the Middle East? The best short answer may be "mu" Japanese word that means "unask your question". The word is used when the question is defective and…

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in the Wonderland” a visual perversion deforms people and objects so that they look like what they are meant to be but are not quite the same. The fantasy device used by the English poet in his comic tale has given its name to a neurological condition known as the…

If you had asked me just a couple of weeks ago I might have assured you that Pakistan is the last county with which the Islamic Republic in Tehran would pick a fight. I might have cited many reasons for that opinion. First, A recent demise of the classical reasons for antagonism between…

Torture at ringside! This is how Antoine Blondin, perhaps the greatest contemporary French sports writer, described the agonies of hard-core fans of combat sports. They are glued to the ringside, watch the fight, see or imagine that they see the mistakes of the adversaries in the ring, wish they…

If you thought you knew all you need to know about the war in Gaza, think again. Much depends on where and how you get your news from. Last week I decided to do a little, obviously non-scientific, experiment by following the Gaza news through two channels: the old BBC, one of Great Britain’s most…

As the war in Gaza enters its third month the short-attention span syndrome that characterizes our age swings in full gear to reduce it to a version of background noise. You might have noticed that the war is bowing out of front pages and dropped down several slots in TV news bulletins. Even…

If there is a pendulum that regulates world affairs it is important to know which way it may be swinging in the year that is about to start. Seen from one angle, the pendulum looks like swinging towards uncertainty. In 2024, many countries with major roles in international affairs are facing…

Trying to grab a piece of someone else’s land has always been a favorite trick by rulers in domestic difficulty to divert attention from their own incompetence or worse. It is, therefore, no surprise that as international order begins to break down for lack of an authority to enforce it and…

Even before it started it was evident that the Cop 28 jamboree to “save the planet” would not satisfy the high expectations, some of them contradictory, of the 198 nations and dozens of non-governmental organizations attending the event with different agendas including some hidden ones. It is,…

The history of terrorism in pursuit of political aims is as long as history itself. However, the past two decades have witnessed important, and needless to say worrying, developments in what could be seen as a zoological version of political activism. The old versions saw disgruntled…