While my (and much of the world’s) attention focused on the Middle East in recent weeks, the rest of the world has not stood around idly. In Pakistan, as everyone knows of course, Osama bin Laden was killed sixty kilometers north of Islamabad, where he lived in a fairly luxurious mansion, protected by thirteen-foot-high concrete […]
Two of Iran’s opposition leaders, Mohammed Khatami and Mehdi Karroubi, have apparently dropped their demand for a new presidential election, saying that while they still believe the vote in June was fraudulent, they accept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the head of state. Mehdi Karroubi is a former presidential candidate, who has been very vocal in his […]
Overview This past year was another interesting one for Venezuela, and it is a country where one never knows what will happen next. Overall, Chávez continued to advance his “Bolivarian revolution”. This effort included a number of laws passed by the National Assembly, a body that typically rubber stamps initiatives proposed by the Venezuelan president. […]
At a party last year, an acquaintance asked me why Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, was so anti-Israel. How were Israel and Jews a threat to him? Since Chavez has been president, anti-Semitic behavior in Venezuela (not known as a hotbed of anti-Semitism) has increased noticeably with attacks on synagogues and against the tiny […]
It feels like the last couple of days, each morning bought a new story about the Iranian nuclear program. Is Iran cooperating or not? How did their meeting with the IAEA go? What are the Iranian leaders saying about the ElBradei deal? How is the United States responding to Iran’s equivocation? Here is a quick […]
Looks like this year Qaddafi will be the center of attention at the UN. While Ahmadinejad’s speech had some classic “blame West” moments, it just did not match the diatribes found in Qaddafi’s speech (For more on Qaddafi’s speech, check out the Foreign Policy Association’s Human Rights Blog). Ahmadinejad’s speech was more subdued, but that […]
Last week, Iranian President Ahmadinejad once again outraged the world by calling the Holocaust a “myth”. To be honest, it is embarrassing to me as a Muslim when I see a Muslim leader espouse such vitriol. This summer I went to the Dachau concentration camp and it was one of the most heart wrenching experience. […]
Since Iran is such a vibrant country and is constantly in the news, there are plenty of news and analyses that I read while researching my blog but am unable to write about. So here is my first installment of stories about Iran that “slip through the cracks” (yes- I am quoting Lewis Black from […]
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President Hugo Chávez is on a weeklong trip overseas, to strengthen alliances in “the fight against imperialism”. His itinerary includes stops in Libya, Syria, Iran, Algeria, Belarus, and Russia. Freedom House, a US-based non-profit (and declaredly non-partisan) publishes “Freedom in the World, the annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties”. It ranked each […]
For the first time in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian cabinet will have a female minister. Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi won the approval from the Parliament to become the health minister. She was one of 18 nominations for President Ahmadinejad’s new cabinet to be approved. Two other women were among three rejected […]
Iranian political system is characterized by its duality of power: In the executive branch we have the dual offices of the President and the Supreme Leader, in the legislative branch we have the Parliament and the Council of Guardians, and in the military we have the regular forces and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). […]
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