Analysis
- Iran and the New Egypt: Better Relations, Greater Competition
- Analysis | Apr 26, 2011
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The fall of Hosni Mubarak was good news for the government of Iran, for a number of reasons. Most important is the expected change in Egypt’s diplomatic posture toward the Islamic Republic. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can look forward to bilateral relations being upgraded to embassy level.
Despite the expected rapprochement, there are a number of areas where post-revolution Egypt will compete with Iran, the most notable being Hamas.
Compared to the situation under Mubarak,
- Why Syria is descending into civil war
- Analysis | Apr 26, 2011
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In his speech to parliament on April 16, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad drew a line in the sand. He said ‘I’ve given you all these concessions’ and he enumerated them - a new government, lifting emergency rules and the end of the security courts – ‘so there should now be no more demonstrations.’ But the movement didn’t stop. In fact, it transcended the demand for reform and became a call for regime change.
So Assad
- How the Arab Spring Remade Obama’s Foreign Policy
- Analysis | Apr 25, 2011
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Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he
- Egypt in the Middle of Arab Cold War
- Analysis | Apr 22, 2011
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Revolutions have consequences, but not always where you might expect. For now, Egypt is not a democracy. The country is governed not by revolutionaries but by a military that was the backbone of the old regime. The most significant changes are to be found elsewhere—in Egypt’s surprisingly sharp shifts on foreign affairs. Just ten weeks after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Egypt’s new leaders have made a number of bold moves. Taken together,
- Statehood Threat Looming, Talks Called For
- Analysis | Apr 22, 2011
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When we checked in a week ago on the poker hand that the Mideast peace process has evolved into, the Palestinian Authority’s pledge to take their case for statehood to the U.N. General Assembly in September was most plausibly seen less as its actual Plan A and more as a threat—and, perhaps, a bluff—designed to prod concessions from the Americans and the Israelis. A week later, this blockbuster report from the
- Iran and the Arab Spring
- Analysis | Apr 22, 2011
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As anti-government protests are sweeping the Arab world, it’s easy to forget that less than two years ago Arabs looked on in amazement as the people of Iran took to the streets to demand their rights.
Following an obviously rigged election in the summer of 2009, the Iranian “Green Movement” – which united conservatives, and even Islamists, disenchanted with the regime with opposition groups of various kinds – formed as a nonviolent civil rights movement. Many Arab commentators, myself included, wrote
- Netanyahu’s Moves Spark Debate on Intentions
- Analysis | Oct 13, 2010
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An offer on Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … to freeze West Bank Jewish settlements in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state—instantly rejected by the Palestinians— was the latest complex maneuver engendering debate about his intentions. The offer … was aimed either at keeping talks with the Palestinians alive and his right-wing coalition partners in check, or at seeking to shift the burden of failure to the Palestinians and escape blame should the talks wither
- Palestinian Dream City Hits Snag From Israel
- Analysis | Oct 13, 2010
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It is billed as a symbol of the future Palestine: a modern, middle-class city of orderly streets, parks and shopping plazas rising in the hills of the West Bank, ready for independence, affluence and peace. But the $800-million project has hit a snag: Palestinians say construction of the city of Rawabi depends on getting an access road, which can’t go ahead without Israeli permission. …
The Palestinian Authority asked Israel last year for jurisdiction over the strip of land needed, and
- No to a Third Intifada
- Analysis | Oct 13, 2010
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The prospect of a breakdown again raises the specter of another intifada, since many Palestinians may conclude that the occupation is either permanent or that diplomacy is simply an ineffective tool in resolving it and that a new uprising is the only remaining way to pressure Israel. … [I]t is essential that Palestinians do not turn to, or allow themselves to be sucked into, another round of violence. … [T]he consequences of the second intifada were disastrous for the Palestinian
- The President’s Awkward Friend
- Analysis | Oct 5, 2010
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In the summer of 2009 Iran’s divided conservatives came together to save the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after his disputed re-election provoked huge street protests by the reformist Green Movement. …
All the same, many conservatives are far from enamoured of Iran’s president. Challenging him, however, is turning out to be a different matter. Barely a year into his second and constitutionally final term, his future is again the object of dark speculation, only this time by people who once professed