Amir Taheri
The Archive
Scenes from the Turkish crackdown
These days, Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly, an Italianate palace adorned with a manicured garden, looks more like a building site as workers replace shattered windows, clean debris-filled conference...
Obama's Iran deal is a fraud top to bottom
For more than a year, pundits have wondered what the “once-in-a-lifetime” deal that President Barack Obama claims he has made with Iran was really about. It now seems certain that...
Before the UN fights terrorism, it needs to define it
With the ISIS claiming credit for the terror attack in Nice, we could now assume that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the Franco-Tunisian man who drove his truck into a holiday crowd...
A cry from France: After Nice, can we finally face the truth about this war?
The French Riviera is the one spot in Europe that comes closest to the image of an earthly paradise. At its heart is the Franco-Italian city of Nice, now France’s...
Westerners who don hijabs in Iran are a disgrace
In Iran, do as the mullahs say, not as Iranians do. This seems to be the motto adopted by a string of foreign dignitaries rushing to Tehran in the wake...
Enough with the hysteria over Trump's foreign-policy plans
Ever since he threw his hat into the ring, Donald Trump, now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, has been branded a political novice. Trump has been particularly taken...
Russia and China rush to fill Mideast void left by Obama
It was meant to be a farewell visit by a cherished friend heading for retirement. Instead, Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia Tuesday and Wednesday turned into an unwanted call...
Brussels is what happens when liberals don't push immigrants to integrate
On Tuesday, when Islamist suicide bombers blew themselves up in Brussels, killing 35 innocent people and injuring 240, the European Union’s foreign policy representative, the Italian Federica Mogherini, happened to...
Obama's Iranian 'moderates' are anything but
When it runs out of plausible excuses for its appeasement-plus policy on Iran, the Obama administration advances one argument as final line of defense: showing goodwill toward the Islamic Republic...
Obama caves on Syria, does nothing to help innocent civilians
Just weeks after Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about a “new initiative” on Syria, details are emerging about what that really means: Handing over the Middle East to the...
Obama just made Iran's brutal regime stronger
“Evident victory!” This is how Iranian President Hassan Rouhani describes the diplomatic swindle, known as the “Iran nuclear deal.” The Koranic term (in Arabic Fatah al-Mobin) refers to one of...
Iran gets all benefits of nuclear deal without doing anything
Charade has always been part of diplomacy, but it is only now that, thanks to President Obama, it has become its very substance, at least as far as the virtual...
Liberals need to stop flattering Islam and ask tough questions instead
I remember back in the 1980s, the diplomat then in charge of United Sates counterterrorism program, Robert Oakley, insisted that the US will never be targeted by homegrown Islamist terrorists...
ISIS is inherently cowardly -- to defeat it, hit it hard
After the horrific terror attacks in Paris, French President François Hollande is talking a lot about a “strategy” to deal with the threat posed by ISIS, one he hopes to...
The jihadis' master plan to break us
PARIS — Still under shock from Friday night’s terror attacks, Paris may need a few more days to regain its signature mood of defiant dignity. Almost everyone had expected an...
The Kurds could be the key to the Middle East
“I am puzzled by God’s wisdom That, among all nations, has denied Kurds a state of their own!” This is how Kurdish poet Ahmadi Khani expressed his people’s feelings in...
Obama will be the only person sticking to Iran deal
Sometime this week, President Obama is scheduled to sign an executive order to meet the Oct. 15 “adoption day” he has set for the nuclear deal he says he has...
Putin is turning the Syrian coast into another Crimea
After weeks of dancing around the issue, the Obama administration has expressed concern about “heightened military activity” by Russia in Syria. But what if we are facing something more than...
How bad is the Iran deal? Let's count the ways
A fatwa that doesn’t exist, a wish list that no one signed, a resolution that contradicts the wish list, a protocol that no one has seen... These are the elements...
Art, business and hope are alive and well in the Iraq we don't see
BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Fewer women are wearing the veil. Many men have replaced their Islamic beards with elegant suits. Girls who had dropped out of school for fear of terrorist...