iran

Donald Trump Admits Mistake

Brendan O'Connor · 08/05/16 07:45AM

An incomprehensibly boring controversy emerged earlier this week after the Wall Street Journal published a poorly-structured piece about Iran involving the return of frozen Iranian funds in the form of cash, which coincided with the release four detained Americans. Naturally, this triggered Donald Trump’s paranoid imagination, and he began ranting about watching a “top secret” video, leaked by the Iranian government, of an airplane covertly delivering the cash. He described the footage as having been shot at a “perfect angle, nice and steady,” which could only have been the work of Iranian state media.

Trump Gives Iran Big Old Heads Up that He Intends to Sell Them Defective Missiles 

Gabrielle Bluestone · 04/11/16 04:00PM

If Donald Trump seems like the kind of guy who, if he were perhaps a little less wealthy, might put a brick in an iPad box and try to sell it out the back of his car to a guy he found on Craigslist, that’s because he basically is: that scheme shares its general operating principle with the plan he articulated over the weekend for dealing with Iran.

Saudis Say They Will Still Work for Peace in Syria Despite Cutting Ties With Iran

Brendan O'Connor · 01/04/16 09:01PM

After breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran, Saudi Arabia claims that it remains as committed as ever to securing peace in Syria and Yemen. This weekend, majority-Sunni Saudi Arabia ordered the execution of a dissident Shiite cleric, and, in response, protestors in majority-Shiite Iran stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.

How My Grandfather Helped Nixon Visit China

Sultana Khan · 07/15/15 01:15PM

On this day in 1971, President Richard Nixon, to the complete surprise of the American public, announced that he would be visiting communist China in 1972. It was an abrupt, about-face departure from a stance the vehemently anti-communist Nixon had campaigned upon. But the lost lives and political costs of the Vietnam war—as well as the insistent advice of Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger—led Nixon away from his intransigence and into a momentous meeting that would shape the course of American diplomacy and international affairs for decades.