International Politics of the Middle East

Increasingly analysts are arguing that Maliki is failing in his gambit to blame Syria for his security failures in order to stanch the bleeding of his Shiite support in the run up to elections.

David Ignatius writing in the Washington post, calls for an “international support group,” as was recommended in the Baker-Hamilton Report, that can draw together the neighboring countries to keep Iraq from blowing apart. He writes that “This is where America still has the leverage to help, by drawing together all the volatile powers on Iraq’s borders — Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Iran. A regional security framework will aid Baghdad, but it can also reduce tensions in an area that resembles a ticking time bomb.”

President Obama’s speech in Cairo this summer gave the Arab and Muslim worlds heightened expectations. His insistence on a freeze on settlement activity was a welcome development. However, all Israeli governments have expanded settlements, even those that committed not to do so. No country in the region wants more bloodshed. But while Israel’s neighbors want peace, they cannot be expected to tolerate what amounts to theft, and certainly should not be pressured into rewarding Israel for the return of land that does not belong to it. Until Israel heeds President Obama’s call for the removal of all settlements, the world must be under no illusion that Saudi Arabia will offer what the Israelis most desire — regional recognition. We are willing to embrace the hands of any partner in peace, but only after they have released their grip on Arab lands.

What does a security crackdown resembling Saudi-style morality policing have to do with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization? A lot, given that a serious contender for that UNESCO job is Farouk Hosni, Egypt's culture minister for the past 22 years. During his lengthy tenure, Hosni has alienated many Egyptians by suffocating cultural and intellectual freedom while giving a leg up to religious zealotry.

Hosni's supporters say that it's time for an Arab U.N. cultural chief. It may be. But with his record, Farouk Hosni doesn't deserve to head UNESCO. Those of us proud of our Arab heritage, full of artists who challenge and enlighten rather than restrict in efforts to "protect" our morals, know that Farouk Hosni is not the man to represent us.

the ramifications of an American defeat in Afghanistan would not only be a devastating setback for our nation in what is now the central front in the global war on terror, but would inevitably further destabilize neighboring, nuclear Pakistan.

our problems result from what was, for years, a mismanaged and underresourced war.

We have an exceptional new commander on the ground, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has begun a top-to-bottom overhaul of all aspects of our war policy and put forward a dramatically new civil-military strategy that clearly identifies failed policies and prioritizes the proven principles of counterinsurgency

Mr Mitchell, who arrived in Israel on Saturday, has been trying to secure a deal involving a halt to settlement building and Arab nations taking steps towards recognising Israel.

The US hopes that the renewed impetus will lead to a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York later this month.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insists he will not meet his Israeli counterparts until there is a freeze on new settlements in the West Bank. The settlement of occupied territory is illegal under international law but Israel last week said it had given permission for 455 new homes to be built. The move prompted Mr Abbas to say that there was no point attending a summit with Mr Netanyahu.

The US says it is willing to accept an offer from Iran for talks on a wide range of issues.

While stressing the offer "does not address our nuclear concerns" the US said it is was ready to "test Iran's willingness to engage".

On Friday, Russia warned against taking any military action against Iran.

Yemen’s army can claim unwonted accuracy in its latest offensive, Operation Scorched Earth

The clashes pit regular government troops, backed by lighter-armed tribal allies, against tribesmen loyal to the Houthi family, a powerful northern clan

would suggest a link to global jihadists. But most of their adherents belong to the Zaydi sect, a normally quietist branch of Shia Islam that is unique to Yemen and which most Sunnis regard as quaintly schismatic.

For more than a year, prosecutors have been cracking down on the corruption and kickbacks that thrived during the boom years in this Persian Gulf city-state

But alongside the con artists and crooks, a rising number of businesspeople have been sent to jail for going into debt. Bouncing a check is a criminal offense here. That fact has begun raising questions about the fairness of Dubai’s laws, especially among the foreigners who make up about 90 percent of the population.

he criminalization of debt has put a formidable weapon in the hands of landlords, banks and other creditors, who can send someone to jail with a single document showing a check has been returned for insufficient funds. It has also complicated Dubai’s efforts to recover from the financial crisis by sending many legitimate but struggling businesspeople to jail, where they find it even harder to repay their debts.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his second address to the nation since the turmoil over the June presidential election, set a tough tone for where the country is heading: No compromises with opponents outside or inside Iran

The comments set the stage for the possible arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The document, and a public Russian rebuff of the idea of new sanctions against Iran, left President Barack Obama with few options before a deadline he set this month for diplomatic progress.

In the Cuban crisis, Kennedy gave up nuclear-tipped missiles close to the Russian border. The move didn't really reduce American nuclear deterrence. Could Obama likewise withdraw US naval forces from the oil-rich region or some other step that only intelligence agencies would know about? Would such compromises be enough to satisfy an Iran bent on Islamic revolution beyond its borders?

In the first public acknowledgment of the intelligence findings, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency declared on Wednesday that Iran now had what he called a “possible breakout capacity” if it decided to enrich its stockpile of uranium, converting it to bomb grade material.

Iran has maintained its continuing enrichment program is for peaceful purposes, that the uranium is solely for electric power

But in a 2007 announcement, the United States said that it had found evidence that Iran had worked on designs for making a warhead, though it determined the project was halted in late 2003.

Accurate intelligence about the progress of Iran’s weapons programs has been notoriously poor.

Both the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate and the recent updates for Mr. Obama, according to officials familiar with their contents, are filled with caveats that Iran could be conducting uranium enrichment or weapons design work at remote locations

By the last count of the international inspectors, Iran has installed more than 8,000 centrifuges — the machines that enrich uranium — at its main underground facility at Natanz, the primary target the Israelis had in their sights. At last inspection, Iran was using only a little more than half of them to enrich uranium.

One of the less discussed considerations of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been access to fresh water. Two of the three primary fresh-water aquifers in Israel and Palestine lie under the West Bank: the Eastern Basin and the Northeastern Basin. Israel also shares a coastal aquifer with the Gaza Strip. Israel cannot relinquish control over those aquifers without severely compromising its national security.

Among the many maladies plaguing Iraq, the absence of fresh water has assumed new importance given that some of the country’s other issues are in the process of being addressed. Iraq’s two main sources of fresh water, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, are drying up

Iraq remains at the mercy of Turkey and Syria for its fresh water resources. Part of Iraq’s problem is that there is no international law that obligates Turkey or Syria to share their water

Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials. In short: text is user interface. Here are five rules for writing better for the web.

Unless you have a clear picture of the end result, your writing won’t be as clear as it could be. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with each bit of text you write. Once you know the objective, you’ll be able to more clearly articulate what you need to get across to your customers in your copy, and you’ll be able to identify any superfluous text that you can throw out.

Any time your audience changes, you may need to make changes in your copy as well.

Hamid Karzai has won 54.1 per cent of the vote in the race for the Afghan presidency - above the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off poll, partial results indicate.

James Bays, reporting from Kabul, said: "If these results were to stand, that would mean this is all over - no second round and President Karzai is once again the president of Afghanistan.

Bays said: "We've had the election complaints commission come out, saying they have clear and convincing evidence of fraud in these elections.

Ehud Barak, authorized plans for 455 new housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank on Monday, in a move aimed at placating Israel’s pro-settlement camp ahead of an expected construction freeze demanded by the Arab world and the United States.

enraging not only the Palestinians, but also Israelis on the right and left. The White House denounced the approvals last week, when news of Israel’s intention to grant them emerged.

Still, in the strange and arduous choreography of Middle East peace-making, Monday’s announcement was not seen as likely to derail movements toward renewing stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks.

opposition leaders — much like their hard-line foes — are girding supporters for a long-term battle to be waged as much through ideas and quiet social organizing as through the public protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election on June 12. Both Mr. Khatami and members of the group he addressed, the Islamic Society of University Professors, expressed deep concerns about threats to academic freedom in the coming school year. On Saturday, after days of calls by conservatives to purge Iran’s universities of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” the government announced the start of a high-level investigation on how the humanities are taught.

a “soft war” against internal enemies. Anyone in the field of culture must now recognize important distinctions between “friends and enemies,” “attack and defense” and “explanation and propaganda,”

He warned that the West, with its sophisticated media outlets, is better equipped for soft war than Iran.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before. Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.

The United States was the leader not only in arms sales worldwide, but also in sales to nations in the developing world, signing $29.6 billion in weapons agreements with these nations, or 70.1 percent of all such deals.The study found that the larger arms deals concluded by the United States with developing nations last year included a $6.5 billion air defense system for the United Arab Emirates, a $2.1 billion jet fighter deal with Morocco and a $2 billion attack helicopter agreement with Taiwan. Other large weapons agreements were reached between the United States and India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea and Brazil.

The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals; Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements; and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases.

Abdullah is the main challenger to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a second term in office. Abdullah is Karzai's former foreign minister.

As of Sunday, 74.2 percent of the votes had been tallied, the IEC said. Karzai had 48.6 percent of the vote, with Abdullah at 31.7 percent. More than 153,000 votes had been declared invalid, but it was not known whether that number included votes from the 447 polling stations.