The United Nations and its individual members have adopted a series of increasingly severe economic and other sanctions aimed at impeding Tehran’s ability to acquire the technologies, equipment, and other materials needed for Iran’s nuclear program. Despite the sanctions, the Iranian government continues to make progress toward a nuclear weapons capability and remains securely in power despite internal discontent. Nonetheless, the sanctions will continue in the abse...
Yemen will hold a presidential election on 21 February. Yet opposition groups lack unity, sporadic fighting continues in the south, president Saleh’s son Ahmed Ali Saleh controls the military, and trust between the interim coalition government and mass social movements is in short supply. At the same time, the stakes could not be higher. While the humanitarian crisis grows, Yemen's increasing fragmentation into local fiefdoms is playing into the hands of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (...
Libyans consider themselves liberated, and are keen to express their newfound freedom. However, this freedom is gradually giving way to insecurity and disorder, in large part b...
Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, while championing Arab protestors in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Tunisia, is coming out in support of the embattled Assad. In a speech on Dec...
Andam Omar, like many young men in their twenties, enjoys the ever-developing face of Erbil, the de facto capital of Kurdish Iraq. At the new—and expansive—Tablo Mall he bo...
Less than a year ago, when the first tremulous shoots of the Arab Spring were pushing through North African clay, practically every political analyst and commentator agreed tha...
The rise of Islamist movements in the aftermath of the Arab Spring is representing both a challenge and an opportunity to the West as it looks to successful democratic transiti...
On Sunday Libya was finally announced as liberated and free from the shackles of dictatorship. Colonel Muammar Qadhafi and his tyrannical 42-year old reign are no more.
Gran...
Numbers are central to the stories we tell. They leverage sentiment and ignite emotion and can be downright dangerous. But if the weight of numbers can be crushing, w...
The strategic purpose of counter-insurgency campaigns is often difficult to market to the general public. A danger to the obvious national interest—a hallmark of convention...
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