A third wave of geopolitics has been making its way into Middle East political geography since the end of the Cold War. The first wave began with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The second wave followed World War II, when the European colonial order crumbled.
Journalist Patrick Cockburn’s first-hand observations and reported conversations with fighters on the ground in Syria and Iraq lend much credibility to his coverage of events in those two countries. In The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, he provides…
On June 29, State Department spokesman John Kirby announced that the United States had lifted certain holds on security assistance to both the Bahrain Defense Force and Bahrain’s national guard, citing improvement in the area of human rights reform.
Sometime after the 1973 war, I remember seeing a cartoon that showed President Anwar el-Sadat lying flat on his back in a boxing ring. The Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, wearing boxing gloves, was standing over him, with Sadat saying to Meir something like…
To hear Saudi leaders tell it, the primary threat to the kingdom’s stability is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Worried over Washington and Tehran’s slowly improving relationship, Riyadh has projected an increasingly militarized and sectarian foreign policy aimed at countering Iran’s alleged hegemonic aims in the Middle East.
In the midst of keeping up with all the Daesh (ISIS) attacks, it’s easy to look over the positive patterns — for one, the states left untouched. A Twitter user uploaded this map that showed attacks made by in the Middle East, and some countries stand out from the rest.
The US House of Representatives is set to kick off its review of a final nuclear deal with Iran this week following a month of parallel activity in the Senate. vThe Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing July 9 with former George W. Bush…
The devil is not in the details. It’s in the entire conception of the Iran deal, animated by President Obama’s fantastical belief that he, uniquely, could achieve detente with a fanatical Islamist regime whose foundational purpose is to cleanse the Middle East of the poisonous corruption of American power and influence.
Bahrain’s justice and Islamic affairs minister has paid tribute to the “one-family” spirit that has once more characterised Bahrainis after Sunnis and Shiites held joint prayers on Friday in the wake of suicide bomb attacks that targeted Shiite mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia and in Kuwait.
As negotiators braced for yet another possible extension of nuclear talks, Iran demanded on Monday that any deal should include the end to a U.N. arms embargo as well — a condition backed by Russia but opposed by the United States as it seeks to limit Tehran’s Mideast influence.