Walter Russell Mead, Wall St. Journal
Zvi Mazel, Jerusalem Post
Royal United Services Institute
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
Michael Oren, Wall St. Journal

Global oil markets and global commerce mean that American presidents will simply not be able to set this region off to the side....(full article)

Qatar is more and more assuming the role vacated by Egypt in trying to settle local and international disputes....(full article)

In spring 2011, Western military operations, backed by the Arab League, began against the regime of Muammar Qadhafi. Libyan rebels, after being penned in by the regime, began to ta...(full article)

The authoritarian urge to cross-dress in democratic clothes is an implied compliment to the democratic nations. That matters, because western democracies are going through a cris...(full article)

Just as Jews were once expelled from Arab lands, Christians are now being forced from countries they have long inhabited....(full article)
The Central Intelligence Agency is the elephant in the room, big and clumsy and bumping into everything, even though everyone tries to avoid mentioning it. The CIA misjudged the se...
Iran, with its nearly 76 million people, is the second-most populous country in the Middle East after Egypt, while its level of education and bureaucratic institutionalization is h...
The question of what to do about former elites haunts countries that have undergone a radical political transformation. Retain them in office, and dissidents will complain their ...
People may recall that in Barack Obama’s June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, the president promised a “new beginning” based on “mutual respect” with the Arab and Islamic worl...
In 2006, I watched middle-aged members of the Muslim Brotherhood kneel and pray in the street outside Cairo’s High Court in front of rows of officers from the riot police. It w...
The Obama administration's political and legal authority to wage war against al-Qaeda has steadily eroded. Both liberal and conservative members of Congress have challenged the adm...
Comparisons have been made, especially by conservatives, that the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last September was another Watergate. In fact, the Pueblo I...
The events surrounding the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, look dramatically different depending on y...
Cement, cigarettes, and sugar are just a few of the goods transported through the many underground tunnels connecting Egypt and the blockaded Gaza Strip, which have ...
What's a poor Islamist to do? All they ever wanted was to take over Arab states and impose their reactionary ideology on everybody else. For decades, they assumed that the only thi...
Mr. Morsi's spokesmen have asserted that he does not favor the political prosecutions and that the government is preparing a new version of the civil society law. But the president...
So the Washington Institute for Near East Policy invited senior Muslim Brotherhood official Helmy el-Gazzar to its annual conference in the US, booked him on a business class fli...
Saudi authorities had consistently declined to meet the opposition, despite repeated requests. This was partly because the kingdom has opposed Muslim Brotherhood dominance in the...
The deeper question is why the United States and its NATO allies believed that international responsibilities to Libya would end with military action, and that Libya would somehow ...
The exclusive inside story of a dissident blogger's getaway from the repressive island kingdom, how events overcame rescue plans, and what's next for him....
Obama did not want his theme of "Osama is dead, al-Qaida is on the run" to be undercut by an Islamist terrorist attack on our ambassador. Clinton did not want her department's den...
Uncovering the truth should be a bipartisan mission: A decade go, the 9/11 Commission showed how an investigation devoted not to blame but to preventing future debacles can help Am...
The rocket strikes that a militant Islamist group recently fired from the Egyptian Sinai into the Israeli city of Eilat served as yet another reminder of how delicate bilateral rel...
Soccer, alongside minority Shiite Muslims and relatives of imprisoned government critics, is emerging as a focal point of dissent in Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich kingdom that despite ...
Surely there has never been a bigger bunch of liars than the crew currently occupying the White House and the now-departed secretary of state. The steady drip, drip, drip of the B...
Syria is 85 percent desert or semi-arid country. But it has several significant waterways. The Euphrates runs in a south-easterly direction through the center of the country to Ira...
There were two worrying pieces of news from Egypt this week. One was the reshuffling of Prime Minister Hisham Kandil’s cabinet based on partisan calculations, rather than com...
You may have seen the news about H7N9, a new strain of avian flu claiming victims in Shanghai and other Chinese locales. Influenzas always draw notice, and always deserve it, becau...
On Wednesday, Representative Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee convened the ninth round of hearings on the lethal September 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. mission in Be...
Before Wednesday’s hearing on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, Republicans in Congress promised explosive new details about the administration’s mishandling of the episod...
Many Americans -- and many Egyptians -- are souring on the Muslim Brotherhood. Some are rather smugly saying, "I told you so." From the American and Arab liberal perspectives, the ...
Fears of violent crime abound in Egypt, a nation still mired in upheaval. The security crisis has been one of the revolution’s darkest legacies, with the country’s leaders—...
Matters have been made worse in and for Iraq by the fact that, like Syria, Iraq has become a major theater of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Turkey pushed by force...
Democrats arrived at the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on the Benghazi terror attack determined to defend the reputation of the person that most believe will be their presi...
The Pentagon is pushing back on claims that a Special Operations unit could have saved lives if sent to Benghazi....
Thanks to House Republicans, Americans finally got to hear from the State Department officials the Obama administration never wanted to testify. They are now called “whistleb...
The "whistleblowers" at today's House Oversight Committee hearing on what really happened in Benghazi, Libya last September were supposed to break the dam that would lead to Presid...
To Republicans, the deadly September 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was a huge, conscience-shocking security scandal, one that Democrats are shamelessl...
After a remarkable House hearing yesterday, we can say this with almost complete certainty: The Obama administration knew perfectly well that last year’s Sept. 11 attack on Ame...
Yemenis are engaged in a unique and peaceful national dialogue — very different from Syria and Egypt and with about a third of the input coming from women -- to produce a new lea...
I've just been watching the riveting live coverage of Congress's investigation into the Benghazi disaster in which US ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Al Qaeda affiliates w...
I've heard some say that Benghazi is an inside-the-Beltway story of little interest to the general public. But I think it may actually be the opposite. Beltway types-- particularly...
A bisected starfish isn't a dead starfish: It's now two starfish. (And a starfish cut into five pieces turns into five starfish!) In the world today, civilized societies are the f...
Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administrati...
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's decision not to attend this coming Sunday's Coptic Easter mass was entirely predictable. Morsi, after all, declined to attend Pope Tawadros II's ...
The Egyptian economy is unlikely to collapse suddenly. However, in the absence of a serious macroeconomic stabilization program it will continue to deteriorate gradually, with low ...
As Egypt lurches from one crisis to the next, it’s the country’s battered economy, analysts say, that may be President Mohamed Morsi’s greatest challenge yet....
Lately, I have been taking a lot of taxis. Naturally, that means hearing unsolicited political opinions, life lessons, and impromptu stories about women who match my exact physic...
This week I am one of many readers mourning the disappearance of Egypt Independent, a local English-language weekly that has provided sterling coverage of the Egyptian uprising i...
A Saudi court ordered Ali al-Khawahir, a 24-year-old Saudi citizen, to be surgically paralyzed as punishment for a crime he committed as a 14-year-old, that had left his victim par...
I used to joke that Egyptians have their own reality distortion field, which once entered can lead you to believe that their country is center of the universe and where black is ...
Diplomatic missions here in the Libyan capital are observing the strictest security procedures following suspicions that the bombers behind last Tuesday’s blast at the French E...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to visit Capitol Hill Tuesday after sitting down with President Obama Monday to talk about Iran.Monday's discussion was important for ...
Inside VOA | Contact VOA News ...
A pro-Qaddafi crowd stormed a news conference given by Libya's deputy foreign minister at a hotel in Tripoli early Friday. The United Nations Security Council voted Thursday to aut...
Libyan students attend a pro-Gadhafi rally organized in the parking lot of the Rixos hotel where the foreign press is staying in Tripoli, Libya, Monday March 14, 2011. Teachers ...
First day of major anti-government action:
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| Rank | Country |
|---|---|
| 48 |
Tunisia (full country profile)
|
| 49 |
Saudi Arabia (full country profile)
|
| 62 |
Morocco (full country profile)
|
| 79 |
Algeria (full country profile)
|
| 89 |
Egypt (full country profile)
|
| 105 |
Yemen (full country profile)
|
Saudi Arabia engages in all manner of dubious practices: restricting a woman's ability to drive, c...
As President Obama stumps for a resumption of the peace process, Gallup has published some polling...
Secretary of State John Kerry has a plan to stop Gulf state weapons from ending up in jihadist's h...
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) thinks it's a good idea to dump weapons into Syria. Engel evidently believ...
Perhaps the biggest potential danger of a nuclear-armed Iran is the prospect of other states in th...
JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli defense official says the head of the American CIA spy agency has made...
BASRA, Iraq (AP) — Hundreds of Iraqis in a southern city have attended the funeral of two Shiite f...
BEIRUT (AP) — Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in governmen...
JERUSALEM (AP) — An Egyptian Coptic cleric who was mistreated during Orthodox Easter services is t...
CAIRO (AP) — Suspected militants in Egypt's Sinai abducted seven security personnel as they h...