March 24, 2015: Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at The Middle East Institute, discusses the mood in Tehran as the deadline for negotiations approaches, the state of U.S.-Iranian relations, and what reaching a deal could mean to that relationship and the Arab world, in a brief interview.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has not been shy about the need to reform religious discourse and relations.[1] He is concerned about how the image of Islam has been marred by Muslims themselves, and how extremist thought has torn the fabric of Muslim-Christian unity. Visiting the Coptic Orthodox cathedral on Christmas Eve, he told the cheering audience, “We will build Egypt together.
This article was first published on Al-Monitor.
President Hassan Rouhani’s recent trip to Turkmenistan cannot be dismissed as a one-off. Since coming to office in August 2013, the Rouhani administration has prioritized relations with the Muslim states of the former Soviet Union. Given the potential for economic ties and trade, Tehran’s aspirations are fully understandable.
Ivan L. G. Pearson’s In the Name of Oil: Anglo-American Relations in the Middle East, 1950-1958 provides a comprehensive analysis of the extent to which British interests in the Middle East influenced or were furthered by the United States between 1950 and 1958.
Egypt’s Economic Development Conference will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh March 13-15, 2015. The conference aims to lay out the Egyptian government’s economic vision and plans for reform and position Egypt as a desirable destination for international investment. We spoke with Hoda Selim, an economist at Egypt’s Economic Research Forum, about the country’s current economic position and how the conference could help.
On March 13, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will inaugurate the Egypt Economic Development Conference in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. The main objective of the conference is to put Egypt back on the world investment map. Sisi’s government is aiming to achieve a target of $60 billion of foreign investment in the coming five years. This ambitious amount would close Egypt’s resource gap and would generate sufficient growth to absorb growing unemployment.
This article was first published on CNN.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the Congress this week was as eagerly anticipated in Tehran as it was in Washington.
The Iranian reaction to the speech has been a combination of indignation and indifference.
This article was first published on Foreign Affairs.
When the Houthis, a Shia rebel group in Yemen, forced the country’s pro-Western president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee the capital this past January, many in the region concluded that another Arab state had fallen into Tehran’s lap—a result, as one prominent commentator put it, of Iran’s “offensive state, the likes of which we have not seen in modern history.”
Read full article at Politico Magazine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to the United States, spoken his piece and returned home to Israel to finish campaigning for the March 17 elections. Netanyahu’s visit to Washington was neither the triumph he expected nor the disaster forecast by opponents of the visit. Indeed, the visit shed no new light on the supposedly central issue of the day: the state of play in the Iran negotiations.
As 2014 drew to a close, the Egyptian economy was making international headlines. The Financial Times called Egypt the world’s best destination for stock market investment.[1] Meanwhile, the Egyptian press documented a flurry of visits by delegations of businessmen from various economic superpowers.
This article was first published by The National Interest.
The Middle East is experiencing unprecedented upheaval, and by all indications the region is likely to remain in turmoil for the foreseeable future. From Yemen to Bahrain to Syria and Lebanon, the sectarian agendas and geopolitical maneuverings of the two regional heavyweights – Iran and Saudi Arabia – will likely remain the key drivers fueling the regional fire.
“Crises left to fester sometimes find their own way to the front burner.” Written on January 5, 2015, this sentence reflected my fear that starving Libya of high-profile international attention was increasingly risky. The beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya by Islamic State (ISIS) extremists this week appears to have placed the situation in Libya front and center.
This article was first published by the Atlantic.
The government of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had a vision for Cairo’s future. In 2007, it put forth a plan dubbed “Cairo 2050,” and among its objectives was to create wide avenues, green spaces, and new or revamped tourist sites, such as near the Pyramids.
On January 28, 2015, jihadis in Sinai launched multiple, simultaneous attacks against Egyptian security forces in the vicinity of El Arish and the nearby towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah. These attacks occurred only hours after President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi said that he would die defending the region from terror. “We will never leave Sinai,” Sisi said. “Sinai is ours.