With Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont stepping back from the brink in the midst of rising tensions in Spain over the region’s bid for independence, signing a declaration of independence but deciding to suspend its implementation, millions will have breathed a collective sigh of relief given the prospect of a severe response from Madrid. Though tensions…
Donald Trump’s move to scale back the Iran deal is not only a ploy to pressurize the Iranians to accept a new deal, moving both sides toward a war scenario. It’s also about letting him walk away from the North Korean crisis without looking weak and foolish. It’s not fake news. It’s really happening. An…
I recall high-school days as most of us girls do – tolerating the wayward glances of boys who were taught by our culture that a woman’s worth, along with his own, was measured simply by the amount of sex he could procure for himself. Then later, as I “blossomed,” I was the subject of rude…
In May, 2017 the Prime Minister of India refused to participate in the founding meeting in Beijing of the ambitious Belt-Road Initiative (BRI), the network of high-speed rail and deep water port linkages across the Eurasia land mass. The official reason given was that China had gone ahead with her neighbor state and long-term ally,…
American and Indian intelligence agencies failed in their frail attempt to convince the world that the Taliban had all of a sudden decided to ally with Daesh, but this fake news story might be the beginning of a new tendency to equate any unfriendly armed group to the “caliphate” or falsely accuse friendly ones of…
The geopolitical reality in the Middle East is changing dramatically. The impact of the Arab Spring, the retraction of the U.S. military, and diminishing economic influence on the Arab world—as displayed during the Obama Administration—are facts. The emergence of a Russian-Iranian-Turkish triangle is the new reality. The Western hegemony in the MENA region has ended,…
