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UkraineAlert

Jan 16, 2019

The Best Ukraine Can Hope for with Russia in 2019

By Anders Åslund

Donald Trump has been president of the United States for two years, but it remains uncertain whether he has a Ukraine policy. His administration does, but Trump is famously superficial in his knowledge. Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, hardly said anything negative about Russia, and insisted on the need to cut sanctions […]

Russia Ukraine

IranSource

Jan 16, 2019

Iranian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike Is a Plea for Basic Rights

By Tara Sepehri Far

This week, two well-known political prisoners in Tehran’s Evin prison went on a three-day hunger strike to protest their inability to get urgent medical treatment.  Narges Mohammadi, a prominent human rights defender serving a ten-year sentence for her peaceful activism, suffers from a serious neurological disease that causes muscular paralysis. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian dual national serving a […]

New Atlanticist

Jan 15, 2019

May’s Brexit deal stumbles in Parliament. Now she is fighting to save her government.

By David A. Wemer

At the end of her remarks on January 15, May promised that her government will not simply “run down the clock” toward the Brexit deadline.

European Union United Kingdom

New Atlanticist

Jan 15, 2019

#StrongerWithAllies: Danish sergeant wants to ‘help make a change’

By Graham Lanktree

“When I had the chance to volunteer, I volunteered,” said the now thirty-two-year-old sergeant in the Danish Military Police.

NATO

SyriaSource

Jan 15, 2019

Can anything be salvaged?

By Frederic C. Hof

President Trump’s impulsive “out of Syria” tweet of December 19, 2018 may have sacrificed high value, low cost American leverage in eastern Syria for precisely nothing.  Russian, Iranian, and Assad regime alarm that the West would work with local Syrians in areas liberated from ISIS (ISIL, Daesh, Islamic State) to create the long-awaited governance alternative to Bashar al-Assad, family, and friends have all-but-evaporated. 

Syria

IranSource

Jan 15, 2019

How the exiled Iranian opposition may actually Be helping the Iranian regime

By Maysam Behravesh

The Islamic Republic of Iran has no shortage of opposition groups, many with adherents in the large Iranian diaspora. From the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to secular republicans to ethnic separatist organizations, they are all bent on overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with what they claim will be a more inclusive system. Despite this […]

Iran

New Atlanticist

Jan 14, 2019

The Brexit uncertainty that worries Ireland

By John M. Roberts

The Good Friday Agreement, which had to be approved by referenda on both sides of the border, ensured agreement in Dublin as well as Belfast that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the UK so long as its population voted to remain with Britain.

European Union United Kingdom

IranSource

Jan 14, 2019

Japan Strives to Keep Importing Iranian Oil Despite US Sanctions

By Sachi Sakanashi

Japan’s energy policy towards Iran has been an area of struggle for independence from the United States for four decades. Even when Japan tried to pursue its own energy policy towards Iran, the US has generally had the final say. From Japan’s point of view, however, the US stance towards Japan-Iran energy relations has toughened […]

Iran Japan

Global Energy Forum

Jan 13, 2019

OPEC production cuts defended

By Ashish Kumar Sen

OPEC’s secretary general and its former president on January 13 defended the group’s decision to cut oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day from criticism that the cut is insufficient to address the slowdown in the market.

Oil and Gas

Global Energy Forum

Jan 13, 2019

Can the US shale revolution maintain its momentum?

By David A. Wemer

The key to extending the rapid growth of US shale will be harnessing new technologies to make harder-to-reach shale deposits more accessible and raising the success rate of shale recovery.

Oil and Gas