MENASource

Negotiate With Assad?

By Frederic C. Hof

Over the weekend in Egypt, CBS News asked Secretary of State John Kerry in an interview if he would be willing to negotiate with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. “Well,” said Kerry, “we have to negotiate in the end. We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process.” In fact, the “Geneva […]

Syria at Four Years

By Frederic C. Hof

In March 2011 Bashar al-Assad elected to respond to peaceful protests against police brutality with lethal violence. Was this a choice he made freely and consciously? Or was he obliged by his security chieftains to beat, shoot, incarcerate, and torture protesters?

Q&A: Egypt Launches the First Day of its Economic Conference

Egypt launched its three day economic conference in Sharm al-Sheikh on Friday, with thirty heads of state in attendance. In the first day, over $13 billion in aid was pledged to Egypt, the bulk of which has come from the Gulf countries of UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Find out more about the first day […]

US Policy in Yemen: Creating Leverage

By Nabeel Khoury

In case there were still any doubts about Iran’s growing influence in Yemen, Tehran put that issue to rest with a hostage rescue operation last week, a pledge to provide the Houthis with a year’s worth of oil and electricity, and newly established daily commercial flights between Tehran and Sana’a.

Top News: Iran Promises Houthis Two Years’ Worth of Oil

By MENASource

Iran will provide Yemen with oil and electricity, a Houthi delegation returning from a two-week visit to Tehran announced on Thursday, although it remains unclear if the supply would reach areas outside the control of Houthi militia.

EconSource: Egypt’s president passes series of laws on eve of economic conference

By EconSource

Egypt’s president approved a package of amendments to investment laws on Thursday, aimed at enticing foreign investors on the eve of the Economic Development Conference. The amendments package trims corporate taxes to 22.5 percent, from as high as 30 percent previously, and facilitates settling disputes with investors. Sales taxes were dropped to 5 percent from […]

The New Face of Egypt’s Interior Ministry

By Khaled Dawoud

As attacks against security forces show no signs of abating, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi recently replaced Egypt’s Interior Minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, with Magdy Abdel Ghaffar. However, Sisi was keen to make it clear this was not in response to opposition demands, and even provided Ibrahim with an honorary title of National Security Adviser to the Prime […]

Political Legitimacy: Practicing that which is Preached

By Frederic C. Hof

A recent MENASource article addressed the issue of chronic political illegitimacy—the absence of consensus, derived from consent of the governed, on the rules of the political game—that plagues most of the states of the Arab world. Now that forty-seven Senate Republicans have affixed their signatures to an “open letter” purporting to instruct the Islamic Republic […]