Middle East

Yemen Needs Friends

By Danya Greenfield

While most attention at the U.N. General Assembly this week is focused on Iran and Syria, the Friends of Yemen group will hold its sixth ministerial meeting on the sidelines. It will be an opportunity for the government of Yemen to hold donors accountable for pledged money and for donors to hold the Yemenis accountable […]

NATO Expects Turkey to Exercise Greater Restraint on Syria

By Lale Kemal, Today's Zaman

Some NATO officials talking to Today’s Zaman recalled that it was not first time that Syrian helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles have violated Turkish air space during their missions to attack the opposition targets.

Syria: The President Speaks

By Frederic Hof

Using the forum of the United Nations General Assembly, President Barack Obama tried to present a coherent picture of the US approach to a region whose challenges will dominate the balance of his presidency whether he likes it or not.

NATO Chief Backs US Threat of Force Against Syria

By Scott Stearns, Voice of America

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the United States should keep up its threat of military action against Syria so as to push forward a deal to end Syria’s chemical weapons program.

Rouhani Charts Cautious Course in UN Debut

By Barbara Slavin

Midway through Hassan Rouhani’s debut on the international stage, his American reviews are mixed. The Iranian president bypassed a chance to shake hands and chat with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly despite anticipation in both Iran and the United States that such an encounter would happen. “Too complicated” for the […]

Strategic Vision, Not Pessimism, Needed to Support the Arab Transitions

By Danya Greenfield

President Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday was perhaps his most honest—though somewhat disappointing to those wanting the United States to play a vigorous democracy promotion role—account of US policy priorities in the Middle East.

US and EU: Lack of strategic vision, frustrated efforts toward the Arab transitions

By Danya Greenfield and Amy Hawthorne

A new Atlantic Council report, US and EU: Lack of Strategic Vision, Frustrated Efforts Toward the Arab Transitions, argues the United States and its European allies lack strategic vision in supporting the Arab countries that embarked in 2011 on a democratic path—Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen—and have not lived up to their stated commitments for […]

What Obama Said About Egypt in his UNGA Speech

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, President Barack Obama touched upon several key issues relating to the Middle East: Syria, Iran, the Israel-Palestine peace process, as well as dedicating several minutes to speaking about Egypt.

A Path Leading to Failure

By Mohamed Elgohari

The two consecutive regimes that ran Egypt from the January 2011 revolution up until July 3, 2013, have a key issue in common: neither seemed to grasp the social, economic, and political essence of the revolution. Whether the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) or the Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, neither sought to […]