Current Analysis

Argo and the Roots of US-Iranian Tensions

The box-office hit Argo brings back long-faded memories of the Iran hostage crisis for many Americans. News in November 1979 that US diplomats had been taken hostage in Tehran shocked the United States. Students stormed the US embassy, blindfolding 52 Americans and threatening them at gunpoint. The

Narges Bajoghli • 3 min read

Current Analysis

A New Green Zone in Sanaa

Welcome to the Sanaa Sheraton! It’s now officially part of an expanded US Embassy estate that some are calling Yemen’s “Green Zone,” the plush, heavily guarded civilian headquarters for revised twenty-first-century “rules of engagement” in the Yemeni “theater.” It’s a risky place to stay.

• 8 min read

Current Analysis

Sudanese Echoes

In Egypt’s constitutional crisis today, there are echoes of the rise of the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Sudan.

Khalid Mustafa Medani • 4 min read

Current Analysis

International Law and the Iran Impasse

On any given day, provided her paper of choice still features international coverage, the average American newspaper reader can expect to be treated to one or two articles on attempts to halt advances in Iran’s nuclear program. These articles might cover efforts to levy fresh sanctions against the I

Aslı Bâli • 10 min read

Current Analysis

Khaled el-Masri and Empire's Oblivion

Two of today’s headlines together provide a good example of the work of imperial forgetting. On the front page of the New York Times, a story [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/zero-dark-thirty-torture-scenes-reopen-debate.html?hpw&pagewanted=all&_r=1&] about the depiction of torture in the forth

Darryl Li • 6 min read

Current Analysis

Why the Anti-Mursi Protesters Are Right

Perusing US media coverage and analysis of the crisis in Egypt over the last two weeks has been quite disappointing. As the protests against the elected president Muhammad Mursi escalate, the main players in the struggle and the stakes involved are often mischaracterized. Some might ask: Why does th

Ahmad Shokr • 5 min read

Current Analysis

Israel's "Operation Mow the Lawn"

One can only imagine the nods of self-satisfaction when an Israel Defense Forces planner came up with “Pillar of Cloud” to name Israel’s subsequent eight-day aerial assault on Gaza. By lifting this metaphor from several well-known passages [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_of_a_cloud] in the Tora

Steve Niva • 6 min read

Current Analysis

Liberalism vs. Democracy in Egypt

President Muhammad Mursi’s Thursday night address did not mollify protesters, but it clarified the stakes in any dialogue between his supporters and the National Salvation Front led by Mohamed ElBaradei, Hamdin Sabbahi and Amr Moussa.

Jason Brownlee • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Five Notes on Egypt's Crisis

Hani Shukrallah, the distinguished former editor of al-Ahram Weekly, laments [http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/4/0/59933/Opinion//The-decline-and-fall-of-the-Muslim-Brotherhood.aspx] the “decline and fall” of the Society of Muslim Brothers from a partner in a diverse Egyptian nation to a narr

Joshua Stacher • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Four More Years

The 2012 US presidential election elicited less interest among Palestinians than any such contest in living memory. While most Israelis, and their government in particular, expressed a clear preference for a Republican victory, Palestinians seemed resigned to continuity in US foreign policy irrespec

Mouin Rabbani, Chris Toensing • 11 min read

Current Analysis

Condi-ist Manifesto

In one of the most nonsensical sentences published in the Washington Post since the US invasion of Iraq, and perhaps ever, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes in a November 23 op-ed [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/condoleezza-rice-syria-is-central-to-holding-together-the-middle

Sheila Carapico • 2 min read

Current Analysis

Blisters and Sanctions

It was February 1987, at the front lines near Khorramshahr, in the south of Iran along the Iraqi border. We had been engaged in heavy battles for over a week. Our troops had penetrated fortified Iraqi positions, and the Iraqis were making us pay: Artillery and mortar shells rained down on us with a

Shahriar Khateri, Narges Bajoghli • 6 min read