MER Article Rogue Libya's Long Road On May 15, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States would soon open an embassy in Libya, long classified by Washington as an inveterate “rogue state.” This move came, she said, “in recognition of...the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States... (Author not identified) • 16 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2006) Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin. The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Geneaology (London: Routledge, 2006). Ansari, Ali M. Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2006). Golan-Agnon, Daphna. Next Y (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article International Law at the Vanishing Point In the summer of 2006, two border incidents were invoked by Israel, with strong US diplomatic support and material assistance, to justify a prolonged military offensive in Gaza and a crushing “shock and awe” assault on Lebanon. The main international response, effectively orchestrated by Washington, Richard Falk, Aslı Bâli • 23 min read
MER Article Worker Protest in the Age of Ahmadinejad In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after an intense campaign in which he exerted great effort to present himself as the defender of the poor and the working class. These classes, badly hurt by neo-liberal economic policies in the period Mohammad Maljoo • 12 min read
MER Article Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire In evaluating women’s position in the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, it is important to look at the social, as opposed to the legal, aspects of citizenship. In the decades following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iranian society has become resolutely more modern, despite the public face of Norma Claire Moruzzi, Fatemeh Sadeghi • 12 min read
MER Article The US and the Iranian Nuclear Impasse The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) underwent its most recent five-year review in May 2005. There were numerous proposals on the table for strengthening the global non-proliferation regime. None were adopted. Perhaps even more puzzlingly, in an age when the White House repeatedly invokes the Aslı Bâli • 31 min read
MER Article In the Heart of Iran The first round of the 2005 Iranian presidential election was rich in lessons regarding the country’s political life, in general, and regarding the political comportment of diverse sectors of the population, in particular. Contrary to what is often said, electoral fraud alone does not explain -- or Bernard Hourcade • 3 min read
MER Article Iran: The Populist Threat to Democracy The August 31 UN Security Council deadline for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program passed with the Islamic Republic, not unexpectedly, refusing to acquiesce. In the summer of 2005, the newly inaugurated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reversed his predecessor Mohammad Khatami’s voluntary su Kaveh Ehsani • 15 min read
MER Article Ramadan in Wounded Baghdad In Ramadans past, teams of men drawn from neighborhoods across Baghdad faced off in nighttime matches of mihaibis (the ring game), an amusing pastime dating back to the Ottoman Empire. A ring, small enough to conceal in the palm of the hand, and unlike any other on the men’s fingers, was given to on Huda Ahmed • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 2006) “Two words,” said a Virginia man asked by the Washington Post to explain his vote for the Democrat in the 2006 Senate race. “‘Neuter Bush.’” On the morrow of the November 7 Congressional elections, there was a palpable sense of a mission accomplished in the blue-tinted precincts of the United The Editors • 3 min read
