Spring is in the air in US-Russia ties as Trump’s revolution gains momentum

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L ) and US President Donald Trump at their last meeting, Osaka, Japan, 28–29 June 2019  What emerges from the dramatic happenings of the past week is that the 3-year chronicle of US-Russia rivalry and the NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine was a crisis engineered with great deliberation by the Anglo-American nexus per …

Trump talks the talk with Iran, but needs to walk the walk

Iran’s Supreme Leader Imam Khamenei (R) met with Iran Air Force and Air Defense Force commanders, Tehran, February 7, 2025 Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, made a memorable speech to the stormy Labour Party annual conference in 2016, while per forma  congratulating Jeremy Corbyn for winning the leadership election with an increased mandate but remaining …

Trump revives ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran but adds a message on US-Iran deal

US President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum ‘reimposing maximum pressure on Iran’, White House, Feb. 4, 2025  France’s distinguished former career diplomat Sylvie Bermann, wrote an op-ed recently in the leading financial paper Les Echos that a new chapter of ‘transactional geopolitics’ has begun with Donald Trump.  Extremely unlikely events can be expected, metaphorically …

Russia-Iran treaty signifies a ‘breakthrough’ in ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, Moscow, January 17, 2025  Russia and Iran, as two immediate neighbours and great powers with a glorious history, had a difficult, chequered relationship through centuries. It goes to the credit of Iranian pragmatism that it learned to live with …

Trump bends the arc of history in West Asia – Part II

US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff (R) met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Tel Aviv, January 11, 2025  Trump frogmarches Netanyahu down the deep stairs    President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their key operative in the White House, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, hopelessly underestimated President-elect Donald Trump’s quick reflex action to demolish their …

Trump bends the arc of history in West Asia – Part I

An April 2023 satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC showing construction on an underground facility in the tangled mountains somewhere near Iran’s Natanz nuclear site which has been targeted by Israeli sabotage attacks multiple times Iran’s Islamic revolution is in transition   My one-week visit to Tehran to observe the presidential election last  June came …