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Tag: Middle East

Helena Cobban

Any peace will depend on a sober assessment of Hamas.

Deborah Chasman, Noura Erakat

A conversation with Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat on the need for a political solution.

Rajan Menon

Amid ongoing reporting and ethical outrage, we need context for the fight between Hamas and Israel—and how it shapes possibilities for peace.

Omar Dajani, Aslı U. Bâli

In Palestine and Kurdistan, promising experiments in self-determination draw on the region’s pluralist history.

Nojang Khatami

From street demonstrations to song, dance, film, and poetry, women are advancing a long legacy of struggle against authoritarianism in Iran.

David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky on lies, crimes, and savage capitalism.

Faisal Devji

Far from a metaphysical battle between fanaticism and tolerance, the Rushdie affair exemplifies the marketization of hurt sentiments.

Helena Cobban

Accounts still get the history of Palestinian diplomacy wrong.

Nargol Aran
On Ashura, Shi’a Muslims grieve the Prophet’s grandson. But with Iran crippled by COVID-19 and U.S. sanctions, it was also an occasion this year to mourn the country’s deaths from disease and despair.
Helena Cobban
The explosion was only the latest tragedy in the city’s long decline.
Joelle M. Abi-Rached
In the wake of the devastating explosion, civil society has shown the way forward—filling the void of a nonexistent and incapacitated state.
Aziz Rana, Aslı U. Bâli

In a world imperiled by global pandemic, it is long past time to put an end to sanctions—including new ones against Iran—and to reconstruct U.S. foreign policy around international solidarity.

Bonnie Honig
In linking the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Trump invokes a fantasy of poetic justice—positioning himself as Rambo, the avenger of American humiliation abroad.
Masoud Movahed
Donald Trump's “maximum pressure” strategy is doomed to fail, especially as tensions rise between Iran and the United States.
Emmaia Gelman

Under the guise of fighting hate speech, the ADL has a long history of wielding its moral authority to attack Arabs, blacks, and queers.

Jeremy Pressman

For a two-state solution to succeed, Israeli Jews must first forswear their righteous narrative of moral superiority.

Aziz Rana, Aslı U. Bâli
With Assad preparing a major offensive on the last rebel stronghold, the United States must offer a path forward. 
M. Hakan Yavuz

In a bid to consolidate power, Erdoğan is reshaping Turkish politics in the image of the Ottoman past.

Aziz Rana, Aslı U. Bâli
As the Trump–Putin summit made clear, U.S. policy in Syria has always been about grand strategy—never about what would actually help the people on the ground.
Boston Review
Arab American poetry and the work of liberation.
Umar Farooq

Kurds—the largest stateless ethnic group in the world—can be found on all sides of an increasingly complex conflict that stretches across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

Democratic forces persist amid brutal regime violence and sectarian conflict.

Stephen Kinzer, Andrew J. Bacevich

The United States will lose the war for control of the Middle East.

Stephen Zunes

Negotiations may ease the humanitarian crisis—while strengthening Assad.

Paul Linden-Retek

Europe must accept that post-nationalism, by nature, is porous at its borders.

Umar Farooq

Fears of terrorism, and President Erdoğan’s rivalry with an exiled theologian, have become excuses for censorship and repression.

Alisa Reznick

For anti-Assad rebels, a southern spring has become a kind of suicide bomb.

Aziz Z. Huq

It is time for the United States to take responsibility for the war it encouraged in Syria.

Alex de Waal
It creates more violent terrorists and leaves no one who can talk peace.
Assaf Sharon
The conflict doesn't need more architects.
Danny Postel
A video of our conversation.
Mohammad Fadel

The promise of democracy lies in its potential to cultivate political virtue over time. But Egypt's liberals, unnerved by the policies of the legitimate Muslim Brotherhood government, refused to wait.

Mohammad Fadel
The notion that elimination of the Muslim Brotherhood would produce a liberal democratic order was wishful thinking.
Lisa Blaydes

Movements need new members, and new members mean reform.

Akbar Ganji

Including translations of Khamenei's speeches from 1990 to the present.

Haroon Moghul

The kinds of sacred spaces we worked for are not just possible; they exist. On the other side of the planet. Under occupation.

Nasser Hussain

“The drones were terrifying. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death."

Elizabeth Whitman

Jordanian mothers with non-Jordanian husbands cannot pass along citizenship to their children. The results are devastating, but a growing campaign is committed to change.

Akbar Ganji

What will it take to revive U.S.-Iran relations?

Jeanne Guillemin

The chemical weapons ban should have been made universal years ago.

Michael Ignatieff

When state order collapses, every confessional or ethnic group asks one question: Who will protect us now?

Akbar Ganji

Hassan Rouhani’s presidential election creates an opportunity for negotiations with Iran. President Obama should seize it.

Haroon Moghul, Wajahat Ali

The streets of Istanbul are alive with democratic politics—not dramatic upheaval.

Ahmed Moor

Today, Muslims all over the world are bringing to a close their celebrations of Ramadan, which occurs annually in the ninth month of the lunar calendar.

Amitai Etzioni

A golden opportunity in Egypt's "constitutional moment."

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