The last few days of April feel like Shakespeare’s ides of March for geopolitical star gazers in the MENA region. It’s often written that weak elites in the region are watching Algeria and Libya very carefully to see how much of a people’s revolution can permeate into other countries. But in reality all leaders of…
Political transition in the Middle East and North Africa operates so far on the principle of ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’ Libya’s battle for Tripoli alongside ongoing mass anti-government demonstrations that toppled autocratic leaders of Algeria and Sudan demonstrate that both popular Arab protests that in 2011 forced four presidents out of…
A little more than a decade ago, I was asked to address a London dinner-table of about twenty Gulf ‘figures’ – a mix of Ambassadors and those with ‘ties to power’. All represented the cosmopolitan, rich élite of the Gulf. Then, towards the evening’s end, talk turned to Hizbullah: the gathering simply erupted into flames….
A recent Beverly Hills, California political campaign fundraiser for Donald Trump, co-sponsored by Republican National Committee deputy national finance chairman Elliott Broidy – whose Los Angeles office was raided in March of this year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation – is raising eyebrows in Middle Eastern capitals. Broidy, a major figure in the Republican…
The stakes in the Middle East couldn’t be higher. Suspicion that the United States’ intent is to change the regime in Tehran rather than its officially stated goal of forcing Iran to curb its ballistic missile program and support for militias in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen was heightened with this week’s decision to designate the…
The Mainstream Media’s deliberate misportrayal of Libyan National Army General Haftar as “Russian-backed” is meant to turn him into a bogeyman for the purpose of discrediting his military gains after he turned on his American patron. Haftar “Goes Rogue” Much of the Mainstream Media’s reporting about the latest events in Libya usually always includes at…
