During a visit to Cairo in late July, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised the relationship between newly elected President Mohamed Morsi and Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the longtime Defense Minister who had ruled Egypt after Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power. Ten days ago, Morsi radically changed that relationship, announcing the retirement of Tantawi […]

The United Nations Security Council acted just in time to forestall a bloodbath in Libya, if it indeed enforces its own resolution. Troops loyal to Muammar Qaddafi have seized almost irreversible momentum in their battle against anti-government rebels, and absent Western action the fall of the rebel capital Benghazi is imminent. After a period of […]

The shock waves of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation have just started to roll across the Middle East, but in Egypt the upheaval has barely begun. The country now embarks on what the protesters in Tahrir square hope will be a transition to a true, civilian-led democracy. In the meantime, Egypt is headed for a period of […]

As the Tunisian government fell, Egypt erupted, Jordan’s cabinet was ousted, Algeria and Yemen protested, and Syria braced for a wave of demonstrations—what was happening in Iraq? Nothing much. Mainly business as usual: The country resumed oil exports from the Kurdistan region for the first time since 2009 in the wake of a breakthrough agreement […]

The end is now at hand for the government of Hosni Mubarak, ruler of Egypt for the last thirty years. Two outstanding questions face us now: What will the army do? And how should the United States react? Called into the streets by President Mubarak in an eleventh-hour attempt to secure his rule, the army […]

Radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq from three years of exile in Iran last week to a rapturous welcome, riding a wave of popularity and adulation attributable not only to his storied family history and his closeness to the poor urban Shi‘a masses but also to his role as kingmaker in Iraq’s new […]

Iraq, the newest democracy in the Middle East, has turned down an invitation to attend today’s investiture ceremony for the Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. It thus keeps company with a litany of repressive governments that have declined invitations to the ceremony, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Saudi […]

The Iraqi political class has finally struck a deal on government formation—but what does the deal mean? To begin with, it means the Iranian project of entrenching in power incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Shiite religious parties that support him for another five years has succeeded—a project that has been in the works […]

The government formation stalemate in Iraq—well into its seventh month and counting—may at last be nearing an end. The next few weeks could seal a deal between rival electoral blocs that will produce the next national government. Two scenarios with very different outcomes appear to be jockeying for rail position in the race to produce […]