By Matthias Küntzel · Friday, May 24, 2019 Matthias Küntzel’s Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold, published by Telos Press Publishing, presents an extensive and detailed historical account of German–Iranian relations from the early twentieth century to the present. Save 20% on your purchase of Küntzel’s Germany and Iran in our online store by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during checkout. The following essay has been translated from the German by Matthew J. Cooper.
As late as May 7, 2019, France sent a message to Iran’s rulers: “We do not want Tehran to announce tomorrow actions that would violate the nuclear agreement, because in this case we Europeans would be obliged to reimpose sanctions as per the terms of the agreement.”
 The admonition was futile. On the following day, exactly one year since the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani made two things public: He announced that effective immediately the regime no longer felt bound by the central provisions of the nuclear agreement. For example, by section 7, which requires the regime to limit its inventory of low-enriched uranium to 300 kg. Also affected is section 10, according to which Iran may not manufacture or store more than 130 tons of heavy water for fifteen years. Iran will not adhere to this provision either, according to Rouhani. Heavy water is used for reactors that are specially adapted for the production of weapons-grade plutonium. These quantitative restrictions on materials needed for nuclear weapons belong to the core of the agreement that Tehran is now avowedly violating.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, May 22, 2019 Writing at the American Interest, Matthias Küntzel analyzes the divide between the United States and Germany regarding Donald Trump’s decision last year to withdraw the U.S. from the nuclear deal with Iran. In his book Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold, published by Telos Press Publishing, Küntzel presents an extensive and detailed historical account of German-Iranian relations from the early twentieth century to the present, which provides essential context for understanding this split. Save 20% on your purchase of Küntzel’s Germany and Iran in our online store by using the coupon code BOOKS20 during checkout.
An excerpt from Küntzel’s recent essay:
Trump’s decision is not without risk. Given the nature of the Iranian regime, irrational responses and war scenarios can’t be ruled out. Exactly one year after the United States left the deal, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced a partial withdrawal, saying Iran would keep excess enriched uranium and heavy water instead of selling it. Continuing the policy of nuclear blackmail, he threatens to resume higher uranium enrichment after 60 days. However, at least for the time being, Tehran seems not to be interested in a massive escalation.
Trump’s alternative approach—to put sufficient economic and political pressure on the Iranian leadership to compel it to sign a new agreement that would address not only Iran’s nuclear ambitions but also its missile program and regional warmongering—may be a long shot, but it is worth trying. Effective sanctions, however, require the cooperation of Iran’s most important trade partners, Germany and the European Union. And that is where the problem starts.
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By Arno Tausch · Friday, May 17, 2019 The summer of 2015 may prove to have been a decisive moment in European and global history. The dramatic arrival of hundreds of thousands of people during a relatively short period of time, traveling via the Balkans and Hungary and toward Austria, Germany, Sweden, and other high-income European countries, will be forever remembered by those who witnessed these events as they unfolded. The swift arrival of 1.3 million asylum seekers, predominantly young men from the hotspots of global conflicts, like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, took the political systems of several European countries, and the European Union itself, by surprise.
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By Arno Tausch · Tuesday, May 14, 2019 The following think-piece by an active participant in the European public discussion on immigration policy, written well before the European parliamentary elections of May 29, 2019, is understood as a contribution to the European and international political debate and not (so much) as a “pure” scholarly article. It begins with a stark prognosis: the earthquake-like outcome of these elections will strengthen the far-right political parties all over Europe, dramatically weakening the European center and left, and breaking down the “welcome culture” initiated by German chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous statement of late summer 2015—”We can do this” (“Wir schaffen das”)—which signaled a temporary and short-lived “air superiority” for multiculturalism, cultural pluralism, and the welcoming of masses of refugees from the Middle East and North. One of the main reasons for the predictable decline of the Left on the European continent is, in my opinion, its inability to find credible solutions to the problems of immigration and integration.
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By Erik Olin Wright · Thursday, May 9, 2019 Erik Olin Wright’s “Martin Sklar’s Theory of Capitalism and Socialism” appears in Telos 186 (Spring 2019). Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are available in both print and online formats.
 This essay explores how Martin Sklar’s typology of the patterns of thought that have animated social and political struggles in capitalist societies since the mid-nineteenth century can, with some modification, be incorporated into a more general analytical framework for thinking about alternatives to capitalism. Sklar frames his analysis primarily in terms of two contrasts—between what he calls “utopian” and “realist” modes of thoughts, and between capitalism and socialism as ways of organizing political-economy institutions. He supports a realist mode of thought that examines the ways in which socialist elements emerge within capitalism, creating various kinds of hybrids through what he calls the “capitalism/socialism interplay.” The prospects for progressive social change come out of that interplay. This essay proposes modifying Sklar’s framework in two respects: First, rather than rejecting the utopian mode of thought, utopian models can be useful as a way of clarifying the normative foundations of struggles for human emancipation and the logical connections between different elements of proposed alternatives to existing institutions and social structures. Second, while Sklar is correct that real economic systems contain hybrids of capitalist and noncapitalist elements, it is a mistake to lump all relevant noncapitalist elements under the rubric “socialist.” Specifically, it is useful to distinguish statism from socialism. This creates a more nuanced conceptual map of possibilities and points more clearly to the problem of democratizing state and democratizing the economy as the central task of progressive politics.
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By Kim R. Holmes · Wednesday, May 1, 2019 Kim R. Holmes’s “A Man between Two Worlds: Assessing Martin Sklar’s Philosophy of Liberalism” appears in Telos 186 (Spring 2019), as part of a symposium on Martin J. Sklar. Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are available in both print and online formats.
Martin Sklar is an underappreciated thinker. The fact that he was a leading intellectual of the New Left in the 1960s and remained a self-identified leftist gave him a unique historical perspective. It enabled him to cut through many misunderstandings and clichés about the history of American liberalism, and gives us an opportunity to understand the left’s theory of community in a different light. One of Sklar’s central theses is his contention that the American system during the Progressive Era became a “mix” of capitalism and socialism. Looking at this background, one of Sklar’s more prescient theses is his distinction between the “broad left” and the “sectarian left.” This also informs his insightful idea of the “transvestiture of left and right”—that the left and right have largely changed historical places on ideas. The postmodern left is very different from, and indeed has largely broken off ideologically from, classic as well as mainstream liberalism as it has been understood in the past. One very important component missing from Sklar’s approach is religion. It must be recognized that the post-revolutionary construct in America helped ensure that the freedom of civil society as a liberal project could not fully flourish without the support of religion. Sklar’s work illuminates the great intellectual divide between classic liberalism and socialism, and between the moderate and radical Enlightenment legacies, which rest on two different views of human nature. However, if a choice had to be made between liberty and the dictates of community, Sklar always chose liberty.
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