March 06, 2010

Malley & Harling on M.E. regional dynamics

Further to what I blogged here (and here) yesterday about the ever-shifting dynamics within the Middle East, Rob Malley and Peter Harling have an elegant op-ed in the WaPo today...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:29 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 27, 2009

Iran sanctions and-- Jerusalem

As the Obama administration prepares for next Thursday's important P5+1 meeting with Iran, the prospects for mounting a successful sanctions campaign against Iran are being seriously undermined by the actions...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 PM | Fulltext link (42 comments)

September 13, 2009

Ramadan t.v. offerings, 2009

Another Ramadan, another set of soap operas in the Arab world (along with new seasons of old-established favorites like "Bab al-Hara.") From Beirut, the "Land and People" blog's Zayd gives...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:33 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 18, 2009

IPS post on Nabucco project and the Middle East

My piece on this is here. Also archived here. This piece was a quick out-take, if you like, from some of the research I dd for my presentation at the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:09 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

July 12, 2009

IPS analysis on Arab succession challenges

... is here, also archived here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:27 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

June 03, 2009

Big days ahead for the Middle East...

Tomorrow, Pres. Obama will give his much-awaited address "to the Muslim world" in Cairo. On Sunday, Lebanon holds parliamentary elections-- and Iran holds its elections June 12. I'm in Damascus...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:02 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

May 29, 2009

IPS piece on linkage between Iran and Israel-Palestine

... is here, also here. What I didn't have room to explore there was the whole idea of positive linkage: that is, the idea that if the US can regularize...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:36 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

May 22, 2009

Transit systems, Turkey

I'm writing-- and also, crucially, posting-- this while traveling on a Nilufer long-distance bus from Istanbul to Bursa. We were promised wireless on the bus; and yes, here it is....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:01 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 30, 2009

Big political moves in the Mideast this week

Netanyahu is expected to name his new cabinet tomorrow. That announcement should include the publishing of the ruling coalition's formal policy platform. Netanyahu possibly previewed the foreign-policy aspects of it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:48 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

March 13, 2009

Latest IPS analysis on Middle East dynamics

... is here, also here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:42 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 08, 2009

"National Security Mom" - Gina Bennett

For too long, Americans have been intimidated by TV "experts" who tell them why being "tough" is the only way to defeat terrorism. Gina M. Bennett begs to differ in...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:10 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

December 14, 2008

Obama and Arab-Israeli diplomacy

There has been a lot of speculation in Washington these past weeks about the content of the Arab-Israeli stance we might expect to see from the Obama administration. I have...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:51 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

December 08, 2008

Jimmy and ME

from Forward.com Former president Jimmy Carter is back with new advice for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The former president is scheduled to publish a new book on the issue —...
Posted by Don Bacon at 01:17 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

December 04, 2008

Khomeini of Palestine

In this BBC report, I saw some quotes used from a former member of the Al-Aqsa brigades whose given name was "Khomeini." Not surprisingly the young man's age was given...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:18 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

December 01, 2008

Obama's foreign affairs team and Arab-Israel diplomacy

His foreign affairs team comes, now, as no surprise. But what was welcome in his speech in Chicago today was the prominent mention he made of the need to find...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:40 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

November 10, 2008

Let's see the audacity in Obama's Mideast policy, too!

I loved Paul Krugman's column in the NYT today. He was arguing that Barack Obama could learn a lot from studying the record of the "New Deal" policies enacted by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:32 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 21, 2008

Middle East: US losing 'Control'?

Two fascinating-- and hopeful-- items of Middle East news this morning. First, Syria, Israel, and Turkey have all confirmed that senior officials of Israel and Syria have been holding "proximity...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:13 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

May 10, 2008

Combustive Mideast mix: Political crisis, meet economic crisis

I want to underline something very significant about the multiple crises now simmering in the Contested (once 'Fertile') Crescent that stretches from Egypt through Israel/Palestine, to a lesser extent Syria,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:02 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 08, 2008

M.E. peace mission for Annan, Carter, & Robinson

The group of visionary retired world leaders called The Elders has announced that three of their number-- Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, and former Irish President Mary Robinson-- will be undertaking...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:11 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

December 10, 2007

Annals of imperial contraction: Aden, 1967

I'm a few days late, but November 30 was the 40th anniversary of the final withdrawal of British forces and power from Aden, now part of a unified Yemeni Arab...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:23 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

September 25, 2007

Ramazani: "Bridging the Divides"

** Updates posted below ** As regular justworldnews readers will recognize, Helena and I have presented and commented on numerous essays here by R.K. - "Ruhi" - Ramazani. Here's one...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 07:59 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

August 21, 2007

Why Arms Sales to the Persian Gulf will Backfire

Recent Bush Administration plans to sell $20 billion in arms to the Gulf Arab states (while giving $30 billion plus to the Israelis) are being defended primarily within the logic...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 01:25 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

March 29, 2007

Riyadh: current center of Middle East diplomacy

We should note, first, who is at the current Arab summit meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Not merely the heads of state of just about all the Arab countries...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:57 AM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

February 12, 2007

Shadid and others on the "widening" Sunni-Shiite rift

I see my younger colleague Anthony Shadid has been in Cairo, and he has a Cairo-datelined piece in today's WaPo to which his editors gave this scaremongering headline: "Across Arab...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:44 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 08, 2007

Sunni Arab view of US-Iran Tensions

If jwn readers and our generous host will pardon me, I (Scott) wish to draw early attention to Helena Cobban's important column in today's Christian Science Monitor. Writing from Cairo,...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 12:01 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 04, 2007

Whither the Shiite-Sunni "split"

So here I am in Cairo. One of the big issues I plan to look here at is this much-reported-on polarization of attitudes between the Shiites and Sunnis of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:39 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 27, 2007

The Bushites' latest weapon: SADDAM

What to call the new, Middle East-wide coalition that the Bushites are seeking to build in the Middle East (as described by David Ignatius in this fairly fawning account of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:23 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

August 15, 2006

After the war, the battle for the broader peace

This latest Israeli war on Hizbullah and the whole of Lebanon may not be over. But whether it is or not, it's already time to discuss important questions about the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:36 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Ann Kerr and American values

My dear friend Ann Kerr, with whom Bill and I spent the past weekend in California, had a heart-rending op-ed in yesterday Christian Science Monitor that's appropriately titled The murder...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:55 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 29, 2006

Arab-Israeli peacemaking: comprehensive or not?

The International Crisis Group came out Tuesday with a report on the Israel-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine crises. It concluded with four recommendations, of which the first one is: First, the Gaza...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:31 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 05, 2006

Bring in the Security Council?

Suddenly, the Middle East is facing three very grave crises, each of which threatens international peace and security and all of which have the potential to reverberate very seriously against...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:50 PM | Fulltext link (31 comments)

November 11, 2005

Jordan and regional geopolitics

Jordan, location of Wednesday's very lethal bombings at three hotels, is in many ways a highly improbable country. It was created in the post-WW-1 carve-up of that part of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:40 AM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

November 10, 2005

Jordan (and again, Iraq)

Do I need to write anything here to note how grotesque the thinking was of the people who organized and undertook suicide bombings against the three hotels in Jordan yesterday....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:48 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

April 08, 2005

Israeli and Syrian prezes making nice

So there was Israel's figurehead president, Moshe Katsav, at the Pope's funeral in Rome, reaching out to shake hands not only with Iranian President Muhammad Khatemi but also with Syria's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:14 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 11, 2005

Arab attitudes on US, UK, France, terrorism

The Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan has recently come out with an intriguing report on the attitudes of people in five key Arab societies (Egypt, Jordan,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:09 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 07, 2005

Annals of "immmediate" withdrawals

The Bushies and the Israelis have been stepping up their calls for an "immediate" Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. They cite UN Security Council resolution 1559, passed last September. But remember,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:20 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

March 02, 2005

Radical change in Arab world

Nearly all Arab-world political systems have become completely ossified over recent decades. The last time there was a major, region-wide series of shifts was around 1970. That was the year,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:22 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

October 14, 2004

Middle Eastern powder keg

The post I put up here yesterday was not optimally organized. That's one problem of having to work over a very slow internet connection... Anyway, the latter half of it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)