Yemen

Review of Alexandra Stark, “The Yemen Model: Why U.S. Policy Has Failed in the Middle East” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024). Munich, Germany (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– Yemen goes through a civil war that does not end, frequent cholera outbreaks, and acute malnutrition among children. These days, however, the southern […]

Food Insecurity

Yemen: Israeli Port Attack Possible War Crime: Retaliatory July Strike on Hodeidah Threatens Food, Aid, Electricity Supply

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – The Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah port on the evening of July 20, 2024, were an apparently unlawful indiscriminate or disproportionate attack on civilians that could have a long-term impact on millions of Yemenis who rely on the port for food and humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said today. The […]

Houthi

Israel’s Eilat Port has been Bankrupted by the Houthis supporting Palestinians of Gaza

Middle East Monitor

By Mustafa Abdulsalam | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The Israeli port of Eilat officially declared its bankruptcy, after eight months of complete paralysis of commercial activity and its cessation of receiving ships and containers, especially coming from the Asian countries’ markets, carrying with them the needs of the economy and its industrial […]

Featured

Turning the Red Sea Redder: Will America’s backing for Israel’s War in Gaza Torch the Red Sea Region Too?

Juan Cole

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In mid-June, the Associated Press announced that the U.S. Navy had been engaged in the most intense naval combat since the end of World War II, which surely would come as a surprise to most Americans. This time, the fighting isn’t taking place in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans but in […]

Houthi

Iran-US secret Backchannel Talks Suggest that for Both Sides Pragmatism beats Ideology

The Conversation

By Shabnam Holliday, University of Plymouth | – (The Conversation) – Recent revelations that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the US have held secret talks as a way of resolving months of attacks by Tehran-backed Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea have raised eyebrows. Surely the two countries have been implacable foes […]

Algeria

The Middle East Ranks at the Bottom of Gallup’s Happiness Index, except for Rich Oil States; is the US to Blame?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The annual Gallup report on happiness by country came out this week. It is based on a three-year average of polling. What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in […]

Featured

Tempest in a Teapot: British Illusions and American Hegemony from Iraq to Yemen

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Tom Stevenson, Someone Else’s Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony.. London: Verso, 2023. Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Everything is going well in the “Special Relationship” between the US and the UK. After an American chemist dared to suggest that adding salt to the quintessential British cup of tea could represent an […]

Afghanistan

The October 7th America has Forgotten: and the War Deaths we no Longer Protest (or Even Think About)

Andrea Mazzarino

(Tomdispatch.com ) – We Americans have been at war now since October 7th, 2001. That was when our military first launched air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan in response to al-Qaeda’s September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. That’s 22 years and counting. The “war on terror” that began then would […]

Egypt

Red Sea attacks in Sympathy with Gaza Escalate as Yemeni Houthis’ Resilience Surprises Biden

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Helpers of God (Ansar Allah) or Houthis in Yemen are proving a bigger challenge for the Biden Administration’s attempt to run interference for the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than Washington had expected. Just Monday morning the Yemeni forces fired a ballistic missile at the US-owned and -operated M/V Torm […]