How long will it take the United Nations Security Council to answer the Palestinian application for membership in the global organization? “Technical procedures require about a month,” Mahmoud Abbas replies when the question comes up in Strasbourg, where the president of the Palestinian Authority has come to make the most of the time …
Middle East
Mogadishu Bombing Delivers a Slap to Turkey
The truck bomb attack that killed more than 100 people in Mogadishu on Tuesday was a not entirely unfamiliar horror for the residents of a city locked in a permanent state of fratricidal warfare for two decades, but it highlighted the scale of a foreign policy challenge recently accepted by the government of Turkey.
Prime Minister …
Does Qatar Share the West’s Agenda in Libya?
When Qatar took a lead in the military campaign to oust Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, Western officials gushed with praise for the tiny Gulf State punching way above its weight. The nation of just 2 million sent six Mirage fighter jets to lend an all-important Arab presence in the air campaign; it cajoled the Arab League into supporting …
Syria Escapes U.N. Sanctions, But Not Turkey’s
Nobody ought to be surprised by the Russian and Chinese vetoes of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Syria’s brutal crackdown on its citizenry and hinting that sanctions could be invoked if repression continues. That sanctions threat had been watered down in the hope of winning Russian and Chinese consent, but to no avail …
Is Israel Again Weighing an Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities?
“I think the most effective way to deal with Iran is not on a unilateral basis,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters in Israel on Tuesday, stressing that the Israeli government needed to act in concert and consensus with the international community. Israeli reporters noted his repeated use of the word together when it came …
Should the U.S. Deem Pakistan a State Sponsor of Terrorism?
It seems not a week goes by without more accusations heaped upon Pakistan’s controversial military intelligence agency, the ISI. The shadowy agency, seen by many as an enabler and tacit ally of militant extremists and terrorist groups in South Asia, had just been in headlines following a Taliban assault on the U.S. embassy and …
Why the Pentagon’s Panetta is On a Hiding to Nothing in Israel
Israel is becoming increasingly isolated, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned on Sunday, on the eve of his arrival there for talks with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The — perhaps unconscious — subtext of that warning, of course, is that Israel’s isolation in the Middle East accelerates the decline of …
Ratings Already in the Toilet, al-Qaeda Loses its Star Televangelist
The prominence of Anwar al-Awlaki in al-Qaeda had been a symptom of the organization’s degradation under the relentless attack of U.S. and allied intelligence services over the past decade. For the U.S.-born Yemeni Youtube preacher was not exactly your battle-hardened field commander who’d made his name as a leader of men in battle; …
Al-Qaeda Slaps Ahmadinejad as Things Get Testy in the Dustbin of History
U.S. and other Western diplomats quietly gathered up their papers and walked out of the U.N. General Assembly chamber when Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated his claim that the 9/11 terror attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. itself. But if the diplomats were irked, the remnants of al-Qaeda — at least the chapter in …
TIME Meets Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh
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 …
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 …