When one thinks of conflict in the Middle East, religious factors are probably among the first that come to mind. But, nowadays, competing strategic interests and imperial ambitions play a much larger role than religious …
Articles by: "Schlomo"
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was not his first departure from a key international agreement. From the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the Paris climate accord, tearing …
US President Donald Trump lauded the missile strikes by the United States, France and the United Kingdom on Syrian military installations—carried out in retaliation for a chemical-weapon attack allegedly perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad’s regime—as a …
Four days before the United Kingdom’s 1924 election, the Daily Mail published a letter purportedly written by Comintern Chairman Grigori Zinoviev calling on British Communists to mobilise ‘sympathetic forces’ in the Labour Party to support an …
When, on a visit to Warsaw in 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt suddenly dropped to his knees before the Monument to the Ghetto Uprising, Władysław Gomułka, Poland’s communist leader, whispered, ‘wrong monument’. Gomułka would have …
Israeli and Arab leaders have spent years warning of the rise of an Iranian-led Shia empire covering much of the Middle East. With Iran now linked to the Mediterranean through a land corridor that extends …
A series of stunning political developments, originating in Saudi Arabia, has been roiling an already volatile Middle East. Is a major new war in the offing? Saudi Arabia’s ambitious 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman …
In the confusing aftermath of Catalonia’s messy independence referendum, the Catalan regional government’s president, Carles Puigdemont, has wanted to have his cake and eat it. His long-awaited speech to the regional parliament, in which he …
The idea that ‘Spain is different’ drove generations of romantic travelers across the Pyrenees to see for themselves, their imaginations stirred by visions of vibrant women and charming bandits. But Spain is no longer just …
It has been more than six years since the start of the Arab Spring, and life for most Arabs is worse than it was in 2011. Unemployment is rife in the Middle East and North …
The Kurds—who occupy a mountainous region that includes portions of Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey—are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state to call their own. It is time to change …
With the battles of Mosul and Raqqa dislodging the Islamic State (ISIS) from its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, and the Syrian civil war becoming a war of attrition, the Middle East’s most acute conflicts …