Iran’s Longstanding Cooperation with Armenia
Since the Soviet collapse, Iran has quietly backed Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan, serving as Yerevan’s main supply route during the first Karabakh war and continuing close energy and trade ties ever since. Brenda Shaffer argues this tilt was driven by Tehran’s fear of its own large ethnic-Azerbaijani population identifying with the newly independent […]
In the Era of U.S. Energy Abundance: The Role of the Caspian Region in U.S. Energy Policy
For decades, U.S. energy policy has treated allies’ energy security as a national security matter, and the Caspian region has drawn outsized bipartisan attention within that approach for over thirty years. Brenda Shaffer traces how Washington’s engagement with Caspian energy, from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline onward, has endured even as America’s own energy abundance has grown, […]
Is Psagot Drinking Alone? Application of the CJEU Psagot Judgement to Other Territories the EU Considers Under Occupation
Brenda Shaffer and Yael Shaffer examine a 2019 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Psagot case. The court held that goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights cannot be labeled Products of Israel when sold in the EU, since the EU does […]
Occupied Elsewhere: Selective Policies on Occupations
Svante E. Cornell and Brenda Shaffer examine how governments, companies, and NGOs set policy toward territories caught in protracted conflicts. Their examples range from Crimea and the West Bank to Nagorno-Karabakh and Western Sahara. They find that these policies are highly inconsistent. Goods from Jewish settlements in the West Bank must be specially labeled entering […]