Opinion

There’s nothing like free and fair elections for finding out what people really think, and the big surprise of the Egyptian elections, the first since the overthrow of President Hosni …

It is perhaps a cliché to say history repeats itself, yet this saying seems to have held true over the past year in the Middle East, particularly in Bahrain. Uprisings …

The historical parallels are dismal. Iran’s display of a captured United States Sentinel drone sparked painful memories, both of the shooting down of Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane over the …

The past 12 months have been devastating for Syria’s economy. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has contracted by several percentage points (possibly by as much as 20 percent), the foreign currency …

The year 2011 began with a great deal of uncertainty — perhaps even promise — for the Palestinians. Much of that had to do with the revolutionary fervor that had taken …

The tumultuous start to 2011 with the collapse of the Saad Hariri government in Lebanon and the establishment, after several months of hard bargaining, of a new administration headed by …

Iran’s rulers, since Pahlavi times, have been attracted by the ‘Big Plan’, and in modern days this is as true as ever. The Islamic Republic’s five-year plans guide its governments, …

In ancient times, what is now Yemen was given the name Arabia Felix — or “Happy Arabia” — by the Romans. But in modern times, it has enjoyed such a …

In theory, not to mention in several hundred acres of newsprint, 2011 was the year Turkey’s foreign policy fell apart. The tabloid version of the ‘zero problems with the neighbors’ …

Jordan likes to promote itself as an island of stability in a region in turmoil, and in 2011 the country largely lived up to that reputation. While elsewhere the winds …