In the past two months, cyberattacks in the Middle East have broadened in scope and complexity. Reportedly done in revenge over politics, regional hackers infiltrated computer systems in the Arabian oil and gas industry, and then allegedly attacked major U.S. financial institutions. Among the newest victims were two major companies in the regional oil industry […]
If you want to know what Russia, China or Iran will do next, don’t read their newspapers or ask what our spies have dug up—consult a map. Geography can reveal as much about a government’s aims as its secret councils. More than ideology or domestic politics, what fundamentally defines a state is its place on […]
There is more to be said for President Obama’s Middle East policy than Shadi Hamid allows. While Hamid focuses on the gap between unrealistic expectations and real policy outcomes, the fact remains that in the space of two and a half years, between the president’s Cairo speech and the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces in […]
Korean pop culture may not (yet) turn heads in Los Angeles or London, but its impact — economic as well as cultural — across the developing world is startling. First taking off in China and Southeast Asia in the late 1990s, but really spiking after 2002, Korean TV dramas and pop music have since moved […]
At a time when nearly one third of the world’s population has accessed the Internet, governments have in recent years devised various methods to obstruct the openness of online communications. The report’s findings indicate that such restrictions on Internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow since January 2011. Even more problematic, governments’ methods […]
They say a good news story is like an onion. The more one peels it, the newer and fresher are the layers that surface. If depth and longevity are the gold standards for a news story, then the assassinations of four Iranian opposition members at the Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin in September 1992 surpasses that […]
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas returns to the United Nations today with the intention to seek, once again, a declaration that Palestine is a “state”. But unlike last year, there will be no street parties in occupied Palestine, no dramatic speeches and no two-storey blue chairs stationed in the centre of Palestinian city squares. Though this […]
MINUTES after last week’s violent attacks on America’s missions in the Middle East, the country’s embassy in Cairo was already on Twitter. It tweeted an emergency number for American citizens. It criticised Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood for supporting the protests on their Arabic feed. And it thanked fellow tweeters for their condolences on the murder of […]
Rage is all the rage. As we all know, radical Muslims are enraged about blasphemous videos and cartoons—so much so that an American ambassador to a country liberated by the United States was murdered by a howling mob in Libya. I worry about that. I worry even more about this administration’s lame response to it. But […]
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes his final appearance at the United Nations this week as a leader vilified abroad and with dwindling popularity at home. With nine months left before his final term expires, Ahmadinejad, 55, presides over an economy hobbled by European and U.S.-led sanctions and a currency collapse that’s firing inflation. As Israel repeatedly warns that it may bomb Iran […]
looking beyond borders 