People have been praising the strategy of Russian president Vladimir Putin toward eastern Ukraine and the successes that it has brought him there. Yet the more I think about it, the more I wonder how much strategy there is behind his actions and whether Putin is beginning to have second thoughts about those successes. Both […]
As Iran and the United States, a key member of the P5+1 world powers, inch toward deicing their 35-year-old frosty and at times traumatic relations, jockeying from all sides of political spectrum target the direction of this process and whether the icy relations should ever start to melt. Regional opponents of improved ties between Iran […]
Years ago I was able to tour through Seville and found an interesting museum dedicated to the three cultures of medieval Andalucía. These three communities have had major conflicts before and after the late 1400s, but The Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities of Seville lived in relative acceptance of one another until the Reconquista […]
In 2009, Benyamin Netanyahu regained the Israeli Prime Ministry, a position he had held previously from 1996–99. His party, Likud, took 27 seats out of the Knesset’s 120. Kadima, a centrist party started by Ariel Sharon, had won 28 seats, but Israeli President Shimon Peres determined that Likud stood the greatest chance to form a […]
Freedom House has recently noted that the Turkish press has entered into the not free category and that there has been a gradual decline in freedom of the press within the Turkish republic. Erdogan and his government are outraged, yet offer no counter proof. Hurriyet Daily News reported this week that Turkish Prime Minister Recep […]
The [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is comprised of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. According to the GCC’s Charter, what unites these countries are their “special relations, common characteristics and similar systems founded on the creed of Islam.” “Their […]
At a Washington Institute for Near East Policy conference on Thursday, May 8, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Martin Indyk delivered his most recent account of what derailed the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. “One problem that revealed itself in these past nine months is that the parties, although showing some flexibility in the negotiations, […]
While the world focuses on the calls for partition by pro-Russian citizens in the south and east of Ukraine, similar calls from a small African nation are drawing less attention — despite horrific human rights abuses occurring on its territory. In what the U.N. human rights body and Amnesty International have called “ethnic-religious cleansing” between the […]
As Israelis celebrate sixty-six years of independence, they recall that they still have not managed to make peace with the Muslim world. However, despite the difficult situation, they continue to seek peace with their Muslim neighbors. Israelis are celebrating sixty-six years of being an independent country. As a state, they have thrived economically, scientifically, educationally, […]
Developments in the Palestinian-Israeli arena over the past few weeks have moved dazzlingly fast. Almost every 24 hour period saw a different story in the headlines: Kerry’s apartheid (the “A-word”) comments, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal, Abbas’s public condemnation of the Holocaust, ‘price tag’ attacks against Israeli-Arabs inside Israel, and of course the breakdown of negotiations. […]
I was recently reading on the history of the Persian Empire and was drawn to the history before Alexander the Great, where the Persian Empire conquered ancient Babylon. The Persian Empire was likely the first multicultural empire that allowed different groups to preserve many of the cultures within its dominion. Part of the history discussed […]
Algeria just re-elected its longest-serving president for a fourth term, in what many describe as a fraught campaign punctuated by violence and citizen apathy. While the April 17 vote yielded no surprise, it unleashed a pertinent debate about the future of Algeria’s seemingly impermeable regime. In an awkwardly short ceremony, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was sworn in on […]
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