We’ve previously seen how everyone from Arab governments to lower-level Hamas officials have been signaling Israel that they’d have no problem if something “happened” to Iran’s nuclear program. Now Hamas’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has told the international media explicitly that the group will stay out of any Iranian conflict with Israel. Reports Reuters: The […]

Yesterday’s massive bombings in Damascus portend a new stage of the Syrian crisis. The apparent involvement of al-Qaeda in Iraq in these bombings, and other evidence of the increased jihadi radicalization of the opposition movement, puts an end most likely to any prospect of an organized external military intervention in Syria.That intervention was unlikely anyway, […]

Angela Merkel has promised to meet with her new French counterpart François Hollande following his inauguration next week to discuss the EU rescue plans. Yet although this meeting is still a week away, Merkel is already taking steps to prepare for Hollande’s visit. In a break with her previous statements on the matter, Merkel, along […]

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has been relatively quiet as waves of unrest and civil conflict reshape the Arab world. Could that be about to change? According to a Washington Post report, Jordan’s King Abdullah is facing growing discontent among his traditional supporters: That one of the most overt challenges yet to the authority of Jordan’s king […]

Is it payback time in Asia?China has been remarkably patient as the US raised its profile in Asia, supported China’s neighbors over the South China Sea issue, pulled Myanmar out of its tight orbit around China and stepped up its military presence in the region. But a combination of Philippine and Chinese assertiveness in the […]

Some good news for a change from the Indian subcontinent: Pakistan is unpicking official barriers to trade, after last year offering most-favoured nation trading status to India (reciprocating India’s 1996 offer). Restrictions on traded goods, notably by road, are going, with potentially huge effects. Road transport is only one-third the cost of shipping goods to […]

The White House is all about social issues these days, and a new AP-GfK poll explains why: Americans think the economy is getting worse. As recently as February, 20 percent of Americans thought the economy was in “good” shape; currently only 10 percent share that opinion. Two thirds think the economy is in “poor” shape, […]

This blog is entitled “The Middle East and Beyond” for a fairly obvious practical reason: It enables me to discuss subjects far and wide, since the word “beyond” can mean practically anything I want it to. I intend to limit myself geographically, however, to the Middle East, North Africa and the geopolitical peripheries of both. […]

When Iraq issued an arrest warrant for former Vice President Tariq Hashimi last year, and Hashimi subsequently fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, most outsiders assumed Prime Minister Maliki was pursuing one of his enemies on trumped up political charges (like “running death squads”). After all, numerous other Iraqi high politicians might be guilty of the same […]

In what will widely and accurately be seen as a snub to President Obama, the newly reminted Russian President Vladimir Putin has regretfully announced that he will not be attending the G-8 Summit at Camp David. Despite reports that the summit was moved to the location to accommodate his wishes, a statement from the White […]