Revolution and turmoil continue throughout the Middle East, with Moammar Qaddafi’s brutal suppression of the uprising in Libya earning the majority of headlines. But in tiny Bahrain, events are unfolding that may have tremendous consequences for the entire region. On March 14, the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, deployed more than 3,000...
Read more »

As the political earthquake continues to rock the Middle East, one standard complaint has been notably absent. We have heard nothing from the people on the Middle East and North Africa streets about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, the Palestinians themselves have been relatively quiet throughout this period. The words, “Israel,” “Zionism” and “Palestinian”...
Read more »

Sitting in their palaces, the Saudi princes have watched with a growing sense of dread the seismic shifts taking place in the Middle East. Unlike so many pundits in the West, the Saudis have had no illusions about the likely results. As President Obama called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down, the...
Read more »

By: Sarah Stern and Kyle Shideler “The depiction of Khomeini as a fanatical reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false. What is encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.” — Richard Falk, The New York Times, February 16, 1979 The Middle...
Read more »

Now this is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. — Sir Winston Churchill This has been a dramatic month. It is difficult to catch one’s breath over the sweeping changes that have rocked the Middle East. Over the past...
Read more »

By Sarah N. Stern and Kyle Shideler We are in the midst of an earthquake, and all of us wish for clarity and simple solutions.  After years of observing the highly repressive and autocratic regimes in the Middle East, we can’t help but identify with the dissidents in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The government’s shutting...
Read more »

As I write these words, the Egyptian uprising is in its sixth day, going full blast and with no end in sight. The pressure cooker, under the iron fist of 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s repressive rule, had been simmering for some time. Last week, the pot boiled over. What started this wave...
Read more »

In the light of recent events in Tunisia, I find myself concerned with a sad but demonstrable fact. In struggles for power during periods of revolutionary upheaval, the most totalitarian ideology tends to win out. This is the case even when the democratic will of the people initially launched the process of revolution against...
Read more »

Iran , once again, snubbed its nose directly at the face of the United States this week, again flexing its muscles and showing that they are pulling the strings, not only in the Middle East, but in the capital of the free Western world. Just as Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon, was meeting...
Read more »

With gratitude toward that person of dubious repute, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, many of us  now know with  one hundred  per cent certitude what our instincts have been telling us for years:  The Sunni Arab world, and in particular Saudi Arabia, despises and fears Iran, and their concerns for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is exceedingly...
Read more »