What Happens When Arab Autocrats Left to Fend for Themselves?
It is a difficult task to explain everything about the Middle East in a short article. So what I am going to do is to present an important, yet sometimes provocative series of headlines…
The Growing Breach in Muslim Unity: Causes & Effects (Part Two)
Winds of Regional Schism In mapping the Sunni-Shiite conflict we should differentiate between the Sunni-Shiite intra-state and inter-state conflicts. The first is focused in the Fertile Crescent even though it…
The Growing Breach in Muslim Unity: Causes & Effects (Part One)
Needless to say, the global Muslim community and its Weltanschauung stand at the Abyss, in which Muslims are steadily approaching threshold of unimaginable chaos. This poses a mammoth challenge of…
Women: A Benchmark of Saudi and Iranian Reform
In a slick document, entitled Vision 2030 that was drafted by Western consultants, Saudi Arabia identifies sports “as a mainstay of a healthy and balanced lifestyle and promises “to encourage…
Reformists Set to Make Gains in Iranian Election
Preliminary results show candidates from Iran’s powerful hard-line camp have lost ground in parliament, while moderates poised to win top spot on powerful clerical body. Partial election results in Iran…
This Is How Iranian Women Dressed in the 1970s
Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was quite a different country from the one we see today. It was secular, Western-oriented and allowed a certain amount of cultural freedom.…
Battle of Hegemony Saudi Arabia Cannot Win
Western government officials, former intelligence officers and pundits have long predicted the fall of the House of Saud. I am one of those. “This cannot last,” was my conclusion after…
Rivalry Between Saudi Arabia and Iran Is Not About the Victim but the Aggressor
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been increasing recently. Although the narrative developed to describe the execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric, Nimr Al-Nimr, as a sectarian dimension of…
The US and Russia in Syria and Iraq – Foes or Allies?
Battlefields are chaotic. In the turmoil created by forces in conflict, it is often difficult to discern a clear pattern until the smoke of battle has cleared. The battlefields that…
What Future for Syria?
In March 2011 a few teenagers in a southern Syrian city – fired up no doubt by the revolutionary fervour sweeping the Middle East at the time – daubed some…