There’s a discernible logic to what Iran is doing funding Mexican drug traffickers to bomb a US restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador, and whoever else might be eating there. Three elements have come together in a dangerous cocktail of terrorism, international rivalry and criminality, and the threat is serious.
The Global Strategic Review, the annual conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 9 to 11 September 2011.
This article first appeared in the 3 May 2011 edition of The Irish Times and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
ANALYSIS: The death of the figurehead leader of al-Qaeda does not presage the end of the worldwide campaign of terror he inspired
OSAMA BIN Laden’s legacy is that the ideology of al-Qaeda will endure. Al-Qaeda is a group of like-minded people, not a global military structure directed from a notional centre. In fact, the “Arab spring” we are witnessing is a much greater threat to al-Qaeda than the loss of its figurehead, iconic though he may have been.
To understand the significance of bin Laden’s death, we need to take a few steps back.
Al Qaeda’s “home-ground” is the Middle East, Gulf and North Africa, the location of the recent popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and now Syria. Despite all its terrorist activities and its endless propaganda, it has been effectively “missing in action” in all the popular uprisings in these countries over the last three months.
Why? Continue reading
I attended the recent annual conference, the “Global Strategic Review”, as it is called, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (“IISS”) in Geneva on September 10-12 2010. Almost simultaneously the IISS published its 432-page Strategic Survey 2010 -The Annual Review of World Affairs.
Israel did succeed in destroying a Syrian clandestine nuclear reactor designed for military purposes last year. Long the subject of claim and denial, the independent “think tank” the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has accepted the veracity of US documents released earlier this year. They show that the bombed building had been designed to produce plutonium, and was too small for generating electricity commercially. Continue reading
This article first appeared in the 12 June 2008 edition of The Irish Times and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
It is time for the international community to halt Iran’s nuclear programme – if Tehran obtains nuclear weapons, the Middle East will self-destruct. Continue reading
This article first appeared in the 4 April 2008 edition of The Irish Times and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
In the Middle East you don’t make peace with friends , you make it with distasteful enemies, writes Richard Whelan.
This article first appeared in the 8 July 2007 edition of The Sunday Business Post and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
The recent attacks in Britain are part of a global insurgency and are not just a terror campaign, writes Richard Whelan.
A careful review of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 indicates that the core issue is the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty. Continue reading