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Don’t Panic. Yet
Analysis | Dec 2, 2011
The official results of the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections come out tonight, but a cursory look at initial results presented by parties and reported by the media paint a fairly clear picture: Islamists will be a majority in the next parliament, led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and Salafists have exceeded expectations to be, perhaps, the second party in Egypt.

This news has profoundly depressed most educated, middle class Cairenes

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The Islamists vs. The Markets: Egypt’s Election Analyzed
Analysis | Dec 2, 2011
In Hugh Roberts’ excellent essay in last week’s�London Review of Books, he makes a common enough point: “Religion had little to do with the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt.” But to anyone paying attention to the Arab Spring, that might seem an absurd conclusion. After all, it is religious parties that seem to be doing very well for themselves.

Discussion With Tunisia’s Rachid Ghannouchi
Original Commentary | Dec 2, 2011
Last January, shortly after the collapse of the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Rachid Ghannouchi returned home to Tunisia after over twenty years in exile. One of the founders and intellectual leader of Tunisia’s non-violent Islamist Ennahda (”Rennaissance”) party, which claimed victory in Tunisia’s recent elections, Ghannouchi spent much of the 1980’s in Tunisian prisons for his political activities. He left Tunisia for Europe in 1987, and spent the intervening

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Debating Military Action Against Iran
Original Commentary | Dec 2, 2011
I’ve contributed a piece to U.S. News and World Report’s Debate Club, on the question of whether the U.S. should consider military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program. My answer:

U.S. strikes could unite the Iranian people around the regime at a time when it is facing considerable popular discontent over its mismanagement of the economy and human rights abuses. According to an Iranian woman recently interviewed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, military action “will

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Terms Of Disengagement
Original Commentary | Dec 2, 2011
Our guest author is John Paul Schnapper-Casteras an attorney in Washington, D.C. and fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Schnapper-Casteras conducted research in Iraq as part of a fellowship with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

President Obama’s recent announcement that he would withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq has been met with fierce criticism from some

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What the Libya Intervention Achieved
Analysis | Oct 31, 2011
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, leader of Libya’s interim National Transitional Council, declared the end of the war and the liberation of Libya on Sunday following the controversial death of Moammar Qaddafi. Judging by the tenor of discussion in the United States, you would think that this was an unmitigated disaster — a humiliating end to an illegal war which prevented the UN from acting in Syria, massacred civilians, and opened the door to state failure, warlord violence, reprisals, and radical

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The Arab Intellectuals Who Didn’t Roar
Analysis | Oct 31, 2011
In mid-June, the Syrian poet known as Adonis, one of the Arab world’s most renowned literary figures, addressed an open letter to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. The stage was set for one of those moments, familiar from revolutions past, in which an intellectual hero confronts an oppressive ruler and eloquently voices the grievances of a nation.

Instead, Adonis — who lives in exile in France — bitterly disappointed many Syrians. His letter offered some criticisms,

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Are the Islamists Ready to Govern?
Analysis | Oct 31, 2011
The Arab Spring is not only an opportunity for Islamists but also a test case. How the Ennahda movement of Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt respond to the challenges will determine the future of both the Arab Spring and the Islamists.

Islamist political movements in Tunisia and Egypt are poised to come to power through the electoral process. This is a new challenge for democracy expected to emerge from the Arab Spring. The question is whether Islamists, once in

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Riyadh’s Options
Original Commentary | Oct 21, 2011
Our guest author is Matthew M. Reed, a Middle East specialist at Foreign Reports, Inc., a consulting firm in Washington, DC. More of his commentary can be found at Al Ajnabee, where he writes about the new Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own.

If the accusations are true, the Saudi-Iranian cold war could have exploded at the Saudi Embassy in Foggy Bottom. The authenticity of the plot matters little at the moment

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