By Matthias Küntzel · Monday, February 8, 2021 Matthias Küntzel is a German political scientist with a focus on the Middle East. His books with Telos Press include Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 and Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold, both of which are available in our store for 20% off the list price. His English-language website is matthiaskuentzel.net.
The days are over when Europeans only had to point to Donald Trump to legitimate their appeasement politics toward Tehran. But what will the new American administration and its European allies do to prevent Iran from getting the bomb?
Of course there is the nuclear deal with Iran. For months its proponents have been hoping for Joe Biden’s electoral victory. He would revoke Trump’s leaving the deal and loosen the sanctions on Iran; in return Iran would revise its violations of the agreements, and everything would be good again.
And now? Biden is still holding onto his controversial promise to return to the deal. He has filled the most important positions in the State Department with people who played leading roles in the negotiation of the deal under Barack Obama, including some who—like the new Iran envoy Robert Malley—proved to be particularly accommodating toward Iranian demands. And Biden has not at all insisted that the regime change its missiles program or aggression policies in response to a lifting of the American sanctions. He has only asked for one concession: that Iran return to the terms of the deal before lifting the sanctions that Trump imposed.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, December 24, 2020 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with Qin Wang about his article “Constitution and Literariness: Takeuchi Yoshimi’s Critique of the Postwar Japanese Constitution,” from Telos 189 (Winter 2019). An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 189 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, November 19, 2020 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with John Milbank about his article “In Triplicate: Britain after Brexit; the World after Coronavirus; Retrospect and Prospect,” from Telos 191 (Summer 2020). An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 191 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Russell A. Berman · Tuesday, November 10, 2020 In the wake of recent killings in Paris and Nice, as well as in Vienna, the debate over “Islamism” has regained prominence in Europe, especially in France. Islamism as a political ideology must of course be rigorously distinguished from Islam, the religion. That conceptual distinction ought to be readily understandable and familiar from previous iterations of responses to terrorism. What however appears to be new in the current French discussion is the perceived linkage between Islamism, terrorist violence, and academic post-colonialism, regarded as providing a justification for the violence. That association is being made at high levels in the Macron government, generating considerable controversy. That is the context for the open letter published in Le Monde, translated below. Do academic ideas have consequences in the world?
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By Elham Manea · Monday, November 9, 2020 Elham Manea teaches Political Science at the University of Zurich. Her forthcoming book The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism will be published by Telos Press in the spring and can be pre-ordered today in our store. The following talk was delivered as a keynote speech in German at the Convention of the Schader Foundation in Darmstadt (online) on November 6, 2020.
It is becoming difficult lately to turn on the news. And I do not just mean the American presidential elections. The year 2020 was and still is a hard one. COVID-19 has dominated our lives with its limitations. But it has also welded people together in every corner of the world in the fight against a persistent and ultimately deadly virus. This struggle, this common challenge, has united us and yet divided us. We are still irritated by the lockdowns, afraid of their economic repercussions, and divided in our ideological fronts. Times like these are worrying and provide fertile ground for conspiracy theorists and right-wing and left-wing extremist groups.
In times like these, our societies can all too easily become polarized, and we run the risk of being trapped in a discourse of division, trapped in identity boxes. “Us” versus “Them.”
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By Saladdin Ahmed · Monday, November 2, 2020 As the world becomes increasingly more focused on the second coronavirus wave and the American elections, Erdoğan’s mercenaries and army will most likely invade Northern Syria again in the coming days and weeks.
Erdoğan knows that no regional or global power will seriously challenge him if he occupies the rest of Northern Syria, also known as Rojava. During the last four years, he has seized every opportunity to execute his neo-Ottoman enterprise. He has openly recruited jihadis and occupied three strategic areas in Rojava. As the Syrian Kurds remain the most stubborn obstacle to his regional expansion southward, he has made his intentions to eliminate the semiautonomous administration in Northern Syria abundantly clear.
The Trump administration has little concern for the situation in Syria. Dismissing the Pentagon officials’ strong advice, Trump has given in to Erdoğan’s demands in Northern Syria more than once. Erdoğan secured Trump’s implicit approval to attack the Syrian Kurds about a year ago, during a dubious phone call between the two leaders. Given that things might change under a Biden administration, it is safe to assume that the opportunistic Erdoğan has already planned a devastating strike to knock out this secular, semiautonomous, multiethnic entity in Rojava.
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