By Matthias Küntzel · Wednesday, May 16, 2018 Matthias Küntzel’s book Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold is available for purchase in our online store. Save 20% on the list price by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during checkout. Also available in Kindle format from Amazon.com.
On May 8, 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to the press to make the case for the U.S. decision to leave the nuclear deal with Iran, he stated: “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.” With this sentence, Trump initiated a new phase to diplomacy with Iran. Up to this point, nuclear blackmail, the threat that Iran would otherwise build a bomb, had defined and shaped the dynamic of negotiations. This worst case hung like a sword of Damocles over the actors. In order to avert it and in order to secure the nuclear deal, Obama refused to support the Iranian protest movement in 2009, just as in 2013 he refused to make good on the red line he had drawn in the Syrian war.
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By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, December 21, 2016 In addition to its main focus on nature and the Anthropocene, Telos 177 (Winter 2016) features a special section of topical writing, introduced here by Russell A. Berman, that continues our ongoing commitment to setting forth a critical theory of the contemporary. Telos 177 is now available for purchase in our store.
 After a rancorous and ugly presidential campaign, in which vitriol and name-calling replaced discussion and policy, one moment stands out for its dignity: President Obama’s grace and generosity when he welcomed the president-elect to the White House. Above the fray and with a Lincolnian refusal of malice, he modeled a possibility of reconciliation and healing, as if citizens might genuinely respect each other, despite profound differences. That utopia will likely remain elusive, but the president’s bearing provides a lesson in civic virtue. Democracy can be coarse. He showed how it can be better. That legacy will be important.
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