Showing 1 - 10 of 56
Are the Iranians pretending to have nukes?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/02/2026
» The Iranian regime is brutal, fanatical and corrupt. It has just committed the mass murder of its own citizens in the city streets and in their own homes. But the story we are told about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is very misleading.
What would happen if Khamenei falls?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/01/2026
» The demonstrations began again in Iran last week, only two years after the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement convulsed the country for months. However, the current protests are potentially much broader than that episode because they are driven by the collapse in Iran's currency, the rial (now 1,420,000 to the US dollar), and the explosive rise in the cost of living.
Iran: Drought, incompetence, revolution?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/11/2025
» Twenty years of strict sanctions on Iran by both the United States and the United Nations did not bring down the regime of the ayatollahs. Half a dozen major waves of non-violent protest involving several thousand deaths have not brought it down either. Even last June's massive bombing campaign by Israel and the US did not bring it to heel.
Arab fraternity weakens and hegemons rule
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/11/2025
» 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," wrote T S Eliot in 1925, probably responding to the profoundly unsatisfactory aftermath of World War I (although with a poet, you never really know). At any rate, it's happening again, this time in the Middle East.
Too long in power a bad idea for leaders
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/07/2025
» Leading an entire country for a few years is a steep learning curve, but it's useful experience. Being in power for a dozen years makes most leaders arrogant and careless, but some remain more or less functional. Being in power for more than 30 years just makes you stupid. Consider Cambodia's Hun Sen and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
We've all seen this war game play out before
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/06/2025
» I've seen this movie already. I don't want to see it again."They lied," said Donald Trump in 2016, running for the Republican presidential nomination against the neo-cons in his own party who had started the "forever wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq. "They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none."
South Asian nuclear war would hit globe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/05/2025
» India and Pakistan have had several shooting matches since they carried out a total of nine underground nuclear weapons tests in 1998. However, they don't make Putin-style thinly veiled threats to use their nukes (around 170 nuclear warheads each at the moment), and they do understand that escalation from smaller, "conventional" wars is the real danger.
A long fuse has been lit for war with Iran
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/03/2025
» Maybe it was the fact that we were coming up on the tenth anniversary of the treaty Donald Trump destroyed that prompted him to start issuing threats to Iran again.
Lets hope Trump takes sensible Greenland path
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/02/2025
» The Strait of Malacca is strategically important. It's the shortest shipping route between the Far East and the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. It handles a quarter of all internationally traded goods, and if anybody tried to block it there would be a war.
Gaza ceasefire under pressure from all sides
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/01/2025
» In the 80 hours between Wednesday, Jan 15, when the Gaza ceasefire agreement was announced, and Sunday, Jan 19, when it went into effect, Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed 123 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) said it had tried to avoid civilian casualties, but it had to kill the "terrorists" of Hamas wherever they were.