Archives for 2009

On Friday, Iranians and the rest of the globe are eagerly awaiting an outcome in the presidential elections. Iranians started voting Friday morning. Rallies and electioneering were not allowed on Thursday, the day before the vote, leaving Tehran’s streets eerily ghost-like after days of raucus rallies every evening. Howard LaFranchi at CSM asks what the […]

The USG Open Source Center analyzes Iran’s political blogs and finds that the conservatives have redoubled their efforts on Ahmadinejad’s behalf. OSC Analysis: Iran — Conservative Bloggers Intensify Support of AhmadinezhadIran — OSC AnalysisThursday, June 11, 2009 Document Type: OSC Analysis In the second week (23-29 May) of analysis of 100 Iranian political bloggers President […]

The political head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,Yadollah Javani clearly had a scare thrown into him by Monday’s enormous demonstration in Tehran in favor of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hosain Mousavi. He issued a statement Wednesday warning that there would be no “velvet revolution” in Iran and that attempts to foment one would be nipped in […]

The USG Open Source Center summarizes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s television appearance in which he defended his performance in the debates and reaffirmed the truth of the economic statistics he cited (which implied widespread prosperity and low unemployment, which nobody in Iran believed). FYI — Iranian President Rejects Opponents’ AccusationsVision of the Islamic Republic of […]

My column is out in Salon.com: Obama wins an election in the Middle East: Lebanon’s voters gave the White House the victory it wanted — with a lot of help from Hezbollah. Excerpt: ‘ Whatever the size of Obama’s influence, the election has already had a direct impact of the future of Arab-Israeli negotiations and […]

A terrorist group stormed the parking lot of the Pearl Continental Hotel, killing or wounding guards and arranging to move a bomb-laden mini-truck in close to the hotel. A suicide bomber then detonated the truck and caused one wall of the hotel to collapse, creating a 15-foot deep crater. It was the most powerful bomb […]

The damnedest thing happened in Tehran on Monday. A massive rally estimated by Farnaz Fassihi of the WSJ at tens of thousands sprang up all along Vali Asr Street, the capital’s longest thoroughfare, stretching 12 miles across the city. The scene reminded Fassihi of the enormous crowds that came out to protest the shah in […]

President Obama’s hopes for progress on the Arab-Israeli peace process would have been sunk if Hezbollah had won the Lebanese elections. As it is, the March 14 Movement has won the Lebanese parliamentary elections, garnering 69 or 70 seats out of 128. Russia Today has video of the victory: Since the districting made it likely […]

Video of my appearance Sunday on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria and a panel of other guests discussing President Obama’s Cairo address to the Muslim world is embedded below. My colleagues include my teacher, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, as well as Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, Benny Morris from Israel, Hanan Ashrawi from Ramallah, Rami Khoury from […]