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On February 11, Iran will mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution with a resilient opposition movement, its population divided, and the threat of international sanctions.
The saga of the banning and unbanning of alleged Baathists has cast a pall on the elections even before the campaign starts in earnest. Whatever the final decision on the banning issue, it is bound to be highly controversial.
Armenia and Turkey have a chance to move forward from their troubled past by ratifying the historic protocols signed in October 2009. While the governments in both Yerevan and Ankara face strong opposition to the protocols, a failure to ratify the agreement could have disastrous consequences for the entire region.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s testimony in front of the Chilcot Commission demonstrated the reluctance of the British government and public alike to reopen the Iraq war debates, even as Britain and the United States face a situation in Yemen which could lead to a new military intervention.
While an ad hoc committee has lifted the ban barring candidates suspected of ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from participating in the Iraqi elections, it did not dismiss the charges against those candidates and is widely seen as the result of internal and external political pressures.
While growing Islamic extremism in Yemen is alarming, in the longer term it is the country’s domestic challenges that threaten to bring Yemen to its knees, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the region.
U.S. rhetoric has become more closely aligned with European positions on the Arab-Israeli peace process and democracy and human rights promotion in the Middle East, but there has not been a significant increase in transatlantic cooperation on these issues.
President Obama has the opportunity to make the world a dramatically safer place by helping the Iranian people achieve a new form of government. A regime change in Tehran would be the best nonproliferation policy.
The Obama administration’s deadline for Iran to enter discussions on the nuclear issue has passed. In spite of claims from Washington that “all options are on the table,” the economic crisis makes a military response to Iran infeasible.
The recent decision to bar nine political parties and 458 individuals from running in the Iraq’s March parliamentary elections has damaged sectarian reconciliation efforts and affected the integrity of the election process.