No Breaks for Israel

Shoshana Bryen

Israel is far from “regionally isolated.” In fact, Iran’s greatest concern at the moment is the burgeoning rapprochement between Israel and the Sunni Gulf States — especially Saudi Arabia.

Planning to Win

Shoshana Bryen

Some things are just too unpleasant to contemplate, too far in the future, or too complicated to demand attention. Or too scary. Or conflict with other things we know – or think we know.

Iraqi Kurdistan Four Months After the Referendum

Jonathan_Spyer

Four months on from the referendum which they had hoped would be a foundation stone for the building of statehood, Iraq’s Kurds are demoralized and facing an increasingly uncertain future.

Turkey, the Arab World is Just Not That into You

Burak Bekdil

He runs around in a fake fire extinguisher’s outfit, holding a silly hose in his hands and knocking on neighbors’ doors to put out the fire in their homes. “Go away,” his neighbors keep telling him.

Wanted: A Counter-Iran Strategy

Jonathan_Spyer

A common but mistaken reading of the current strategic situation in the Middle East presents the region as approaching the end of a period of instability. The “return of the Arab state” is one of the more arresting refrains that this perspective has produced.

Iran: An Interim Assessment

Jonathan_Spyer

The protests in Iran appear, for now at least, to be subsiding. The key moment was the decision to task the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with security in the three provinces that formed the center of the unrest – Hamadan, Isfahan and Lorestan.