FAST THINKING: The geopolitics of Iran’s kidnapping plot Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council
GET UP TO SPEED
It sounds like a Hollywood script. The United States has indicted four Iranians and accused them of a scheme to abduct the Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad from her New York home. The Iranian regime-backed group had planned to take Alinejad out to sea by speedboat and eventually to Iran’s ally, Venezuela, according to the FBI. How should the United States respond to a kidnapping plot on American soil? And what do the revelations mean for sensitive nuclear negotiations with Tehran? Our Iran experts are on the case.
FAST THINKING: Leaving Afghanistan, twenty years later Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council
JUST IN
Twenty years. America’s longest war is set to finally come to an end, with President Joe Biden expected to announce on Wednesday that all American troops will withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks. After the deaths of more than 2,400 American service members and at least 100,000 Afghans, what’s the state of the nation that the US military will leave behind? Will we see a repeat of the brutal Taliban rule of the 1990s? And after so many withdrawal timelines issued by so many US administrations, will this one even hold? Our experts weigh in.