Middle East

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?

Defending Italy from the Islamic State

By James Stavridis, Washington Post

Following the decapitation of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by radical Islamists professing an allegiance to the Islamic State, the Italian government has begun ramping up efforts to defend its territory from attack. How realistic is this threat? And what should Italy do?

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.

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 […]

Germany’s Foreign Minister: The Transatlantic Order is Under Challenge

By Frank-Walter Steinmeier, New York Times

Today, the trans-Atlantic bond is being tested again. Crises are erupting ever closer to the European Union’s borders:

Why Was Ahmed Douma Given a Life Sentence?

By Sonia Farid

In the midst of a series of court rulings targeting young Egyptian activists on charges related to the controversial protest law, the life sentence handed to Ahmed Douma has been the most shocking. Charged with illegal assembly, assaulting security forces, and vandalism, Douma was also fined 17 million Egyptian Pounds for the alleged damage he […]