The real test of President Barack H. Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will emerge in his success to persuade those countries to support the U.S. in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations.  Obama has reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached Russia in the recent [...]

Professor Khaled Hroub’s review of Olivier Roy’s three books—The Failure of Political Islam; Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah; and The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East—published in your Journal, New Global Studies (Vol. 3, Issue 1, 2009, Article 6), is interesting but leaves the reader wanting more analysis.

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The Financial Times, a right of center but highly respected newspaper, could not resist about coming up with a sensational headline: “Hizbollah confirms broad aid for Hamas.”  The Hizbollah-Hamas connection is not exactly an unknown variable, only its specifics are.  Even after the admission of Hezbollah’s deputy leader that his organization is providing military assistance [...]

The continuing public spat between Hezbollah and Arab states is a mixture of old and new styles of power play.  The “old” part implicitly involves Iran–the chief supporter of Hezbollah–while the new aspect of this power play is between the antiquated monarchies and the nexus between Iran and Hezbollah.  Iran is the “rising power” of [...]

A London Times

dispatch reads:  “Tony Blair makes his first trip to the Gaza Strip.”  In the growing global economic meltdown, the world has forgotten the suffering of the Palestinians who became victims of Israel’s “war” against Hamas.  How can there be a war between the most well equipped military of the Middle East [...]

Looking at the tepid global reaction to the massacre of the civilians in Gaza, one wonders whether the conscience of the international community is half asleep or is suffering from something called sympathy fatigue.  Hundreds of civilian casualties, incessantly escalating human misery, and with no end in the Israeli military action in sight, even God [...]

The United States never understood one feral rule of the Arab Middle East and Muslim South Asia: there is little hope left that the conventional politics will resolve the Muslim misery or problems of liberty either from domestic tyrants or from the tyranny of occupiers.  That leaves only those who despise the U.S. and all [...]

Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated on February 12, 2008.  He was the alleged mastermind of the massive attacks on the U.S. and French Marines in Lebanon in 1983.  His cohorts were allegedly involved in bombing Jewish targets in Argentina and for terrorist attacks in France in the early 1990s, resulting in more than 100 deaths.  Borzou [...]