Middle East

As Egyptians overwhelmingly chose Islamist candidates last week in the first parliamentary ballot since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak—after nine months of disorder and mayhem—a popular caricature published at the opening of his trial last August came to...

German poet Heinrich Heine famously warned, “Where they have burned books, they will end by burning people.” But the December 17 burning of Cairo’s Institut d’Egypte on the first anniversary of the self-immolation of the Tunisian vegetable vendor, Mohamed...

A story is illustrative of many of the dynamics I am going to address. It is the story of Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, an Eritrean-born biochemist, a member of the upper class in his country, who came to the United...

Foreign Policy Compared to recent dramatic events — Qaddafi’s demise in Libya, Tunisia’s groundbreaking elections, the Coptic killings in Egypt — Jordan’s latest cabinet shuffle barely registered as a news blip. Indeed, King Abdullah’s dismissal of wildly unpopular Prime...

While the Middle East undergoes fast-paced, dramatic social and political change, Hezbollah has been trying its best to shield itself from the process that has been redefining the balance of power and reshuffling the political cards in the region—focusing...

In recent weeks, a contentious debate has arisen in Jordan over what should be done about the country’s troublesome northern neighbor, Syria. Though the Jordanians, like many others in the region, were mostly preoccupied with their own internal troubles...

When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is...

The major national security controversies over the last decade have revolved around intelligence. Critics blamed the intelligence community for failing to alert policymakers before the September 11 attacks, but others argued that the White House ignored intelligence that warned...

As the most populous and influential Arab state, Egypt had always taken the initiative in wars, many against Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973. A historic diplomatic breakthrough occurred in 1979, however, when Egypt agreed to terminate its state...

The Washington Times Some 150 countries appear ready to vote in the United Nations General Assembly to recognize Palestine as an “observer state” and would be ready to recognize it as a “member state” if the United States did...