When Prince Turki al-Faisal suggested last year that the House of Saud would join in the U.S.-led sanctions against Iranian oil, by seeking to displace Tehran’s oil exports from the global economy, he was not referring to a novel idea. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has led two prior oil wars against Iran. Read Here – The National Interest
Two new books lament the outsized role of the military in Israeli national security decisionmaking, blaming the generals for favoring force over diplomacy. But the military has sometimes been a force for peace and moderation, and in truth the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the result of far more than just Israel’s bureaucratic politics. […]
It is a shift as momentous as the U.S. eclipse of Britain’s Royal Navy or the American economy’s surpassing of the British economy in the late 19th century. According to preliminary figures reported this week, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest net oil importer. Nearly 6 million barrels per day flowed into the United […]
China could overtake the United States as the world’s largest oil importer earlier than expected, while US net oil imports continue to drop due to its booming domestic supply — a remarkable shift between the world’s two largest energy consumers. Read Here – China Daily
President Obama‘s visit to the Middle East next month is widely billed as an earnest attempt to double down on diplomacy and revive the moribund peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against the president. Doves on both sides quietly cede that it would take a miracle to get the two sides back […]
For the first time, United States and Iran appear to have begun real negotiations. Though no agreement has been reached yet, the meeting in Kazakhstan this week was a relative success. Previous rounds of talks resembled stare-offs before boxing matches. They centered on coercion: the main motivator for concessions was the threat of new sanctions […]
The Malian version of Islam has been practiced since the 11th century. It has only recently been targeted by foreign elements who seek to impose their own stricter and often violent interpretation onto the country’s population. Specifically, Wahhabism, which espouses a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran and condemns anything considered to be an innovation, has […]
As Kuwait gears up to celebrate its National and Liberation days today and tomorrow respectively, a festering political crisis casts its shadow over the festive atmosphere. Faced with a popular opposition movement demanding democratic reform and an end to corruption, the Kuwaiti government has responded with repressive measures that threaten to undermine the relative openness […]
As the world looks on (or away), the country jammed between Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Israel is disintegrating. Perhaps the regime of Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, will collapse in chaos; for some time it could well fight on from a fortified enclave, the biggest militia in a land of militias. Either way, Syria looks […]
Major powers plan to offer to ease sanctions barring trade in gold and other precious metals with Iran in return for Iranian steps to shut down the nation’s newly expanded Fordow uranium enrichment plant, Western officials said on Friday. The officials said the offer is to be presented to Iran at February 26 talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, […]
looking beyond borders 