A $53 million U.S. arms sale, put on hold in November pending an investigation into Bahraini security forces human rights violations, is being pushed forward by the Obama Administration despite opposition by Congress and human rights observers.
With tensions between the United States and Iran rising over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, the prospect of an accidental or deliberate military provocation in the region has increased dramatically. Direct military conflict between the two sides is more likely now than at any point since diplomatic relations were severed in 1980.
What if Iran’s Republican Guard we’re conducting operations at the U.S. border with Mexico?
The Arab revolts that began in December 2010 have immediate, material causes. But their deeper wellspring has been the determination of Arab peoples to reclaim their historical agency from both the condescension of outsiders and the mind-numbing repression of Arab rulers.
When it comes to nuclear weapons and assassinations, Iran is judged by a different standard from the West.
The Republican National Committee unanimously adopted a resolution disavowing the party’s previous commitment to a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine and endorsing the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territories.
The Egyptian electoral results, as in similar elections in Tunisia, Palestine, Iraq, and Turkey, suggest that in any fair and transparent elections in the Islamic world, Islamist parties and their affiliates can easily win at least 40 percent of the votes. In fact, in the case of Egypt, Islamist parties together won over 77 percent of the seats. These results can be used as predictors of future elections in other Arab and Islamic countries in the area. The question, then, is no longer whether Islamists can win a majority in elections, but which strain of Islamism and by how much.
If Iran agrees, on paper, to end uranium enrichment, it will no longer be inspected and could then secretly recreate its program.
Relations between Iran and the West, fraught with tension and conflict for decades, have in the past few months reached a fever pitch. There is talk of war on a daily basis from both sides. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent both to fuel the Iranian missile and nuclear program and the counter-measures taken by the West to frustrate it. Leaders on both sides have worked themselves into paroxysms of rage regarding the alleged homicidal intensions of the other side.
What shape will the convergence of Egypt’s civilian and military management with the Muslim Brotherhood take?