For 18 nights in 1976, Iran was transported by the miniseries version of “My Uncle Napoleon,” a virtuosic comic novel about a Tehran household dominated by a conspiracy-minded paterfamilias who believes everything bad that happens to him is being arranged by the British.
On Tuesday, a mob overran the red brick compound on Ferdowzi …
Every dictator worth his epaulets knows that the best way to nip a revolution in the bud is to have his opponents “disappear.” No body to mourn, no martyrs raised, and of course the ever-useful plausible deniability. But in Bahrain, with its tightly packed population of 230,000 citizens more than 1,200,000 living on a small sandy …
Things keep blowing up in Iran. On Monday the big bang was in Isfahan, and the black smoke billowed from the direction of the nuclear plant on the edge of the city. More than 24 hours later, Iran’s official news sites had taken down an initial report and photograph and were offering an array of conflicting accounts instead. But if …
The message of the historic Egyptian election, which began Monday with huge crowds turning out to vote in the protest-scarred cities of Cairo and Alexandra, is a simple one: Egypt’s immediate political future will not be written in Tahrir Square, or by the revolutionaries who last week lost 40 of their comrades to violence by the …
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India’s Parliament is in the middle of a big political brawl over the issue of fully opening up its vast retail sector to foreign investors. It started last week, when the Cabinet approved a plan to open “multibrand retail” (i.e., supermarkets and stores that sell a variety of branded products) to 51% ownership, a move that has …
The leaders of the two biggest Palestinian parties met in Cairo on Thanksgiving, and just going by the headlines afterward, you’d have thought nothing had happened. “Palestinians talk unity, no sign of progress,” said Reuters. AP: “Palestinian rivals talk, but fail to resolve rifts.” But read the stories, and it becomes clear that a …
China’s economic planners face several headaches: bursting credit bubbles, slumping housing sales and poor outlooks in exports markets such as the U.S. and Europe. To that list add another concern, the return of labor unrest in manufacturing regions in south China. Factory workers have launched a series of strikes in recent weeks. …
This is a guest post from Asia Editor Zoher Abdoolcarim.
(Updated: Jan. 5, 2012 at 5:20 a.m. EST)
TIME’s Zoher Abdoolcarim and Natalie Tso spoke recently in Taipei with Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and his chief challenger, Tsai Ing-wen, about the Jan. 14 election and the triangle that is China, Taiwan and the U.S. Here are …
Can the truth heal? That’s what the people of Bahrain are about to find out as they embark on an ambitious, and unprecedented, attempt to move beyond the ravages of an aborted revolution that has sundered the social fabric of this cosmopolitan island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. Five months ago Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa …
Observers weren’t expecting much from the mini-summit Thursday in Strasbourg, France, where French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Italian leader Mario Monti met to discuss Europe’s dire debt crisis. Such lowered expectations proved well-founded. Because even as the situation threatening the …
The reason the Obama Administration has been so reluctant to criticize Egypt’s military junta for its violent handling of the latest round of democracy protests is that the generals have, all along, been Washington’s preferred stewards of post-Mubarak political change. The State Department on Tuesday finally condemned the “excessive …
As all surely expected from a field of candidates with little genuine foreign policy experience, a lot of silly things were said during last night’s GOP national security debate. Rick Santorum called Africa a “country.” Michelle Bachmann, who, as a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee should know better, claimed …
