In 2012 Iran was one of the key topics in American presidential debates. Its nuclear program and foreign policy subjected the country to harsh U.S.-led international sanctions that have wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy, so far impacting mostly the lives of ordinary Iranians without a change in Iran’s strategic calculus. In March, the country […]
The below is a paraphrased response to a friend who expressed his frustration with what he felt was the undue attention paid to “details” during the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas. In his view, the media placed too much emphasis on the precise nature of the damage Israel inflicted upon Gaza, instead of focusing […]
Someone once told me that they had recently been in Israel and that it had been a “crazy” time there. I told them that one of the first times I went, Ariel Sharon announced the disengagement from Gaza. The next time I went, Israel completed said disengagement. The time after that, Sharon fell into a […]
The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, long-term wars pitting factionalist fighters against government forces, renewed international interest in counter-insurgency. Washington D.C. sparked a cottage industry in what became known as COIN: think-tanks climbed aboard, new prophets emerged, blogs bloomed. Press accounts in 2009-2010 trumpeted COIN as the U.S. surged civilians and troops to Afghanistan, […]
At thirty-nine years old, Selahattin Demirtas is the Chairman of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Turkish parliament. He has held this position since January 2010 and was first elected to parliament in 2007 as the MP for the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir, after which he joined the now-defunct Democratic Society Party […]
The Set-Up Overflowing with distrust, deception, and ulterior motives, America and Iran’s tumultuous saga has the makings of a made-for-TV, B-rated movie. The twists, turns, and over-the-top drama are a guilty pleasure for movie viewers just as news junkies cannot get enough of the endless dramatics between the United States and Iran. The world wants […]
Going home. The resonance of that phrase is universal. The happy homecoming. The poignant or sad one. The unsure one. The second chance one. For His Royal Highness Prince Mahdi Al-Senussi that ultimate appellation of his “going home” remains to be determined. Forty-two years to the month that Prince Mahdi was forced to leave […]
The Iranian government has always been sensitive to Persian satellite TV programs beamed from various Western countries into Iran, in particular from the United States. While some Iranian TV programs by the diaspora advocate regime change in Iran, some offer merely entertaining programs including the latest TV series from Turkey, South America and the United […]
With the uneasy ceasefire in Gaza holding (for now), there is opportunity to reflect on the controversial and closely scrutinized Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) social media campaign which accompanied Operation Pillar of Defense. The IDF has used Twitter prolifically in the days since November 14th, when an Israeli airstrike killed senior Hamas military wing commander […]
Operation Pillar of Defense appears to be over, thanks to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt. There have been flareups in the few days since the ceasefire was agreed upon, but for now it seems to be holding. There were significantly less Israeli and Palestinian casualties from this conflict then there were in the last full […]
Israel’s attack on Hamas in the Gaza Strip has not elicited a strong response from the Arab world. It is as if the Arab Spring has not yet brought an intense focus on one of the core issues of Arab politics, as many assumed it would. While Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi and his Tunisian […]
Over the decades the opportunistic Turkey has dictated its Middle Eastern relations based on shifts in the regional balance of power. In the early 1990s up until around 2006, Turkey was finely enmeshed in Western sentiments and policies. But beginning in 2006 it recognized a leadership vacuum in the Middle East and began attempting to […]
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