Latest Articles about Middle East
Egypt and Gaza’s Islamic Jihad: A Steady Deterioration in Relations
Egypt's relations with the Palestinian factions have become remarkably cold recently, with Egyptian efforts to end the Palestinian divide hitting a dead end. Cairo no longer has direct contacts with Hamas and contacts with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement have retreated recently. According to several... MORE
Turkey Prioritizes Independent Regional Policies in the Middle East and the South Caucasus
Turkey continued its regional diplomacy, following the historic visit by Russian President Medvedev to Ankara (EDM, May 20). Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan paid back-to-back trips to Greece, Iran and Azerbaijan, which underscored Turkey’s rising activism in its neighborhood, as well as highlighting divergence with the... MORE
The Hizbullah Trial in Egypt: A War of Words in the New Middle East Cold War
The latest exchange of blows in the ongoing feud between Egypt and Lebanon’s Hizbullah came on April 28, as the Egyptian State Security Court convicted and sentenced 26 individuals who Cairo accuses of being part of an active Hizbullah cell in Egypt. Authorities claim the... MORE
Georgia Develops Functional Relations With Iran
On May 20-24, a delegation of Tehran journalists, led by the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast (with deputy minister’s rank), visited Georgia. The group included journalists from Iranian radio and television channels, news agencies, and print media, both state-owned and private. Mehmanparast and... MORE
The Iranian Trap for Medvedev’s Opportunistic Foreign Policy
The draft resolution on new sanctions against Iran introduced by the US at the UN Security Council last Tuesday has caught Moscow in a trap set primarily by its own unprincipled diplomatic maneuvering. On previous occasions, Moscow tried to reconcile the pragmatic bargaining with the... MORE
Muqtada al-Sadr Calls for a New Role for the Jaysh al-Mahdi Militia in Iraq
Recent calls by the radical Iraqi Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to his Jaysh al-Mahdi (JaM) militia to become involved in protecting local Shi’a mosques have ignited fear of a new sectarian confrontation in Iraq. Al-Sadr has suggested that his followers join the national security forces... MORE
Shifting Sands in the Gulf: The Iran Calculus in China-Saudi Arabia Relations
The fourth joint meeting on economy and trade convened by China and Saudi Arabia in January 2010 in the Saudi capital of Riyadh came and went without much fanfare. Yet the meeting between China, the world’s second largest and fastest growing oil consumer, and Saudi... MORE
Breaking Yemen Apart: Al-Qaeda Exploits Social Divisions to Further its Agenda
Since its emergence in January 2009, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has become much more ambitious in carrying out international terrorist operations. The group’s ambition quickly grew beyond its stated desire to overthrow the Yemeni regime, reaching first into Saudi Arabia and then into... MORE
The Succession Question: The Islamic State of Iraq Searches for New Leaders
The killing of the two top leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI - al-Qaeda’s umbrella group in Iraq), Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri (a.k.a Abu Hamza al-Muhajir), came at a crucial time for the organization. The need for symbolic figures in... MORE
AQAP’s Man in the South: Nasir al-Wuhayshi
Nasir al-Wuhayshi (a.k.a Abu Basir) appeared in a video in January 2009 to announce the merger between al-Qaeda branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen under his command. The new organization was given the name Qaedat al-Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,... MORE