Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh doesn’t act like a man with his back to the wall. Despite an eight-month-long popular uprising, major military defections, international pressure to step down and an assassination attempt that nearly took his life in June, he has made it clear that he will relinquish power only on his own terms. His …
arab uprisings
Turkish P.M. Erdogan: We Cannot Deny Our Ottoman Past
Our interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published earlier this week on Global Spin, dwelled mostly on the growing shadow cast by the charismatic premier across the face of Mideast geo-politics. One question edited out of the earlier transcript raised the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, whose dominion once …
From Wall Street to Tahrir Square, a New Distrust of Leaders’ Promises
Outrage at a status quo that serves powerful elites at the expense of the majority has, over the past year, drawn millions of (mostly) young people onto the streets of Madrid, Athens, Santiago, New Delhi, Tripoli, Cairo and now even New York City. But their anger is not confined to the status quo; it is also directed at the …
After a U.N. Moment of Truth, Obama Will Struggle to Restore a Broken Mideast Peace Process
Perhaps nobody told President Barack Obama that last week’s United Nations showdown over Palestinian statehood was the proverbial “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for his Mideast peace effort. U.S. officials are, this week, once again trying to herd the Palestinians back into the same unconditional talks that President Mahmoud Abbas …
Exclusive: TIME Meets Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the international statesman of the moment. Greeted as a rock star in Egypt and other countries transformed by the Arab Spring, the Turkish Premier looms like a colossus over the Middle East. In recent weeks, he has been one of the most vocal world leaders to back the Palestinian …
Saudi Women Get the Vote, but Real Power Is Elusive
On Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in the next set of municipal elections, scheduled for 2015. That’s good news. But not as good as you might think.
Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most sex-segregated place on earth, a country where women can do little without a male chaperon and are not …
Watching Abbas in Ramallah: A People Tired of Waiting
At one end of Ramallah, Israeli riot police line up behind barricades, stubby tear gas rifles leveled at shoulder height toward the few dozen young Palestinian men who reliably emerge from the Qalandia refugee camp when Israeli soldiers emerge from the checkpoint of the same name two blocks away. Camera crews set up between them, …
Israel and Turkey: It’s Hard to Fight with Your Hands in Each Other’s Pockets
One of the pleasures of covering Florida politics in Washington used to be Sam Gibbons, D-Tampa, the only Democrat reliably elected to the House from the Gulf Coast, and a dedicated teller of war stories. Gibbons parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne and what followed would inspire certain quality entertainments from …
Will the Palestinians Settle for a Rain-Check at the United Nations?
Move along, there’s nothing to see here.
The much vaunted September fireworks between Israel, the U.S. and the Palestinians at the United Nations is turning out to be a rather soggy squib. As things stand, by virtue of the choices made by President Mahmoud Abbas in the face of considerable pressure from his longtime sponsors in …
Why Obama’s U.N. Speech Won’t Raise U.S. Credibility in the Middle East
In a U.N. General Assembly address to which the world looked for a meaningful response on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, President Barack Obama delivered a pretty good domestic reelection campaign speech. Pro-Israel voters and donors in the U.S. will have been reassured by the President’s passionate assertion of …
Ahmadinejad’s Words Aren’t Taken Seriously at the U.N. But Are Obama’s?
NBC may have been seduced into doing a credulous exclusive “Day in the Life of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” special — as if the embattled Iranian president was sufficiently relevant to world events as to warrant interest in his workout routine — but no decision-makers will set much store by what he says when he turns up for his annual …
Can a Palestinian Authority Rooted in an Untenable Status Quo Survive the U.N. Clash?
Quiz question: Who is applying to the United Nations for membership of a Palestinian state not-yet-born? Is it
a) the Palestinian Authority, or
b) the Palestine Liberation Organization?
Much of the media reporting treats the two as if they were interchangeable labels for the same thing — hardly surprising, perhaps, given …
How Did Other Countries “Lose” in Libya?
In TIME’s international editions, Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican Foreign Minister, rates the “winners and losers” of the Libyan imbroglio, praising Western leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British P.M. David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama for pressing for intervention. Countries that abstained from action …