by:Mohamad Kawas
Scenes from municipal elections demonstrate absurdity of Lebanon’s electoral stagnation.
Lebanon’s municipal elections represent a unique opportunity to glean a practical reading of the country’s political situation at a time when Lebanon remains without a president and parliamentary elections are on hold. Read More »
By ALBERT AJI AND NASSER KARIMI,
More than a dozen members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were killed this week during an attack by militants in northern Syria in what shows Tehran’s deep involvement in the Syrian civil war. Read More »
UNITED NATIONS — The 120-nation Nonaligned Movement headed by Iran accused the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday of violating international law by ruling that nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets can be paid to victims of attacks linked to the country. Read More »
By: Roger Cohen
Perhaps nothing is more important to President Obama’s foreign policy legacy than the success of the Iran nuclear deal. It bears his personal imprimatur and will stand or fall on whether it prevents Iran from producing a bomb over the 15-year term of the agreement and beyond. Read More »
by:Akbar Ganji
Khamenei thinks America is up to no good, yet has a naively positive view of Putin’s Russia.
Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stated that the United States is Iran’s enemy that cannot be trusted, and that wishes to topple the Islamic Republic and dominate Iran again. Since last year’s nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany), Khamenei has repeatedly claimed that Iran has carried out its obligations under the agreement, whereas the U.S. has done so only “on paper.” Read More »
Chairman of the Executive body of the Lebanese Forces party Samir Geagea (R) with Michel Aoun, head of the Change and Reform bloc in the Lebanese parliament.
by:Mohamed Kawas
Theoretically, all presidential candidates today belong to March 8 alliance. So why did Geagea choose Aoun?
Beirut – Atectonic shift has taken place within Lebanese politics, and particularly within its Christian house, following the announcement of the agreement between Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces party and Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. Read More »
Iranian botanist Hossein Akhani wants to save this ecological treasure before it vanishes entirely
By Ramin Skibba
Many of Iran’s once flourishing wetlands have dried dramatically in recent years. Lake Urmia in particular, the sixth largest salt lake in the world and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, is dangerously receding and threatens to vanish entirelly. Spanning an area larger than the Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake combined, the dwindling lake lies tucked in the Zagros Mountain range in northwest Iran near the Turkish border. Read More »
THE NEW YORKER
Mohammad Javad Zarif, pictured here at a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry last week, has served as the Iranian Foreign Minister under President Hassan Rouhani since 2013.
BY ROBIN WRIGHT
Three months after Iran dismantled large parts of its nuclear program, in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the international nuclear deal—the country’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, declared last week in New York that the United States is falling seriously short of its commitments. Iran’s Central Bank chief, Valiollah Seif, delivered a similar message during his first meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, on April 14th, and he told the Council on Foreign Relations, “Nothing has happened.” Read More »
By Barbara Slavin
Chances for a more constructive U.S.-Iran relationship in the aftermath of a landmark nuclear deal are eroding with new disputes over missiles, Iran’s access to its assets in foreign banks and now a Supreme Court judgment allowing distribution of $2 billion in Iranian government money to relatives of U.S. victims of alleged Iran-backed terrorism. Read More »
The Arab Weekly
by:Mohamed Kawas
While many Christians were initially optimistic about changes wrought by \’Arab spring,\’ that optimism has turned to dismay.
Iraqi Christians, who fled the violence in the northern city of Mosul after Islamic State (ISIS) group militants took control of the area, attend a Good Friday mass at the Ashti camp in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, last March.
Beirut – Christians find themselves in a difficult position in the Middle East. They have a long history in the region and, as such, must be an integral part of its future. Despite this, war and persecution have led to an alarming exodus of Christians from Iraq and Syria and Christian communities elsewhere increasingly fear marginalisation and mistreatment. Read More »
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