This week US relations with Saudi Arabia cool down, while heating up with Russia and Iran. Is the US considering a sweeping change to foreign policy? Saudi King Salman chose not to attend a joint US-Gulf State meeting this week set to deal with the possibility of giving Gulf States a missile defense system to ward off a nuclear-powered Iran. [...]

A top commander warned that Iran is ready for an all-out war with US, alleging that aggression against Tehran "will mobilize the Muslim world" against it. The remarks follow Secretary of State John Kerry's claims that military force was still an option. [...]

Iran's supreme leader says the United States has created the “myth” of nuclear weapons to paint Tehran as a “source of threat.” The tough rhetoric comes days before nuclear talks are set to resume in Vienna. "They created the myth of nuclear weapons so they could say the Islamic Republic is a source of threat,” Khamenei said in a televised address to a hall of several hundred military [...]

Congressional neocons are determined to sink negotiations to constrain but not end Iran’s nuclear program – all the better to get on with bombing Iran at the heart of their agenda. They are now disguising their sabotage as a constitutional argument, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains. David Sanger’s article in the New York Times about how the Obama administration is seeking a nucle [...]

Iran has refused an offer from the United States to join a global alliance preparing to combat Islamic State militants, according to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei said Monday that the US offered to discuss a coordinated effort with Iran against Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL), a common foe in the region, in the midst of an escalating campaign of violence [...]

The heads of Iran and Russia’s state-run nuclear agencies discussed the construction of new nuclear plants in Iran during a meeting held on Friday around the same time that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, also sat down for a chat about Tehran’s ongoing nuclear negotiations with the West, according to regional reports. [...]

An investigative history of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes reveals the story his trial never will. In February 1991, the Shia of southern Iraq rose against Saddam Hussein. Barry M. Lando, a former investigative producer for 60 Minutes, argues compellingly that this ill-fated uprising represents one instance among many of Western complicity in Saddam Hussein's crimes against humani [...]