via Lobe Log
by Charles Naas
Not even a month in office, Secretary of State John Kerry took his first official trip to the troubled Middle East and immediately felt first-hand the pressures and metamorphosing power relationships in the region. He began his visit with a meeting in Rome with countries that provide assistance to [...]
via Lobe Log
Lobe Log contributor Emile Nakhleh, an expert on political Islam and Middle Eastern society, recently provided a fascinating primer on Bahrain to the Bahrain Mirror (Arabic version), an e-newspaper run by Bahraini dissidents. As discussed in the Mirror’s introduction, prior to becoming the CIA’s former chief regional analyst, Dr. [...]
via Lobe Log
By Erich C. Ferrari and Samuel Cutler
Contained in the Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2013, and signed into law by President Obama on January 2, are sweeping new sanctions targeting Iran over its disputed nuclear program. The new measures target foreign entities engaging in a wide array of transactions with [...]
via Lobe Log
As former top State Department intelligence specialist Wayne White points out for Lobe Log, in the absence of a tenable ceasefire agreement, the quagmire that is the Syrian civil war will likely intensify, thereby only worsening post-Assad scenarios.
“The bottom line is that a sort of Catch-22 situation is [...]
via Lobe Log
Justice is a fiction in much of the Persian Gulf. Nowhere is this truer than in Bahrain, a place where torture and state terror have become the norm. The country’s political elites talk frequently about freedom and the need for legal and political order. The reality, however, is that Bahrain’s judicial [...]
via Lobe Log
The bad news about Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s expanding constitutional powers in Egypt is the threat of another dictatorship in Egypt. The good news is that normal politics is returning to Egypt after decades of brutal authoritarian regimes.
Recent mass demonstrations in support of and opposition to Morsi’s new draft constitution [...]
via Lobe Log
The Western members of the P5+1 are showing signs of serious intent, if re-election of President Barack Obama allows nuclear-related talks with Iran to resume in the next few months.
This ought to be cheering news for all who believe that this dispute can be resolved according to the provisions of [...]
via Lobe Log
Laura Rozen has an exclusive on alleged Iranian attempts to establish back-channel contacts with non-official Americans ahead of the (hopefully) resumed nuclear negotiations:
Mostafa Dolatyar, a career Iranian diplomat who heads the Iranian think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), which has close ties to Iran’s [...]
via Lobe Log
Amidst reports that Great Britain has denied the US military use of important British bases for an assault against Iran, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters on Friday that whenever the DOD considers military action “we do it within the legal confines…of this country.” The US [...]
via Lobe Log
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima examines the question of what constitutes war if the trigger point originates in cyberspace:
Deciding what amounts to an act of war is more a political judgment than a military or legal one. International law avoids the phrase in favor of “armed attack” and “use of force.” [...]
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