Middle East

By Anjuman Rahman | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Israel is infamous for bombing innocents in the Gaza Strip. During Israel’s latest three-day military offensive against the besieged enclave on 5 August, 49 people, including 17 children and four women were killed. Israeli air and artillery strikes also struck various targets across Gaza […]

Authoritarianism

Rumors Swirl Around Iranian Supreme Leader’s Successor: Will it be another Khomeini?

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/ RL ) – Iran’s Rasa news agency has rekindled rumors that Mojtaba Khamenei, the influential son of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being groomed as the successor to his elderly father, despite his lack of credentials. Affiliated with seminaries in the holy Shi’ite city of Qom, the agency used the title of […]

Featured

More Ukraine-Palestine Hypocrisy: US slams Russia for Deporting Residents from Occupied Territory, which Israel does all the Time

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield castigated Russia for having deported large numbers of Ukrainians from the parts of Ukraine that the Russian military had occupied, referring to these as “filtration operations.” She said, “Of course, I need not remind this Council that the forcible transfer […]

Iran

Did the U.S. Permanently Destabilize Iraq? Will There be an Intra-Shia Civil War?

Middle East Monitor

By Raed Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – There is usually a lot of competition between near-equal armed groups in Iraq. Resisting the 2003 US-led invasion provided a good opportunity for emerging groups from Sunni and Shia communities across the country to do just that. Such groups became the main protagonists in […]

Displaced and Refugees

A Syrian Academic at the Fringe: why I put on a Show to reclaim the Stories of Refugees like Me

The Conversation

By Lina Fadel, Heriot-Watt University | – This summer I performed my own one-woman show at the 75th Edinburgh Fringe – a sentence I never thought I would write in my 17 years of living in the UK. But there I was, a Syrian academic on stage in Edinburgh in front of a microphone, high […]

Saudi Arabia

Djinns and Glass Palaces: Is New Saudi Desert City Utopia or Horror Story?

Middle East Monitor

By Omar Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor) – Saudi Arabia’s The Line has been lauded as the world’s most futuristic city plan, and for good reason. The vertical, walled smart city will run entirely on renewable energy and aims to revolutionise urban planning, putting humans first. Catering for some nine million residents, the […]

Featured

Despite Israeli Whitewash, Its Killing of US Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was a War Crime

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli military issued a brazen whitewash of its killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and its shooting of her colleague Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi, on May 11 of this year. Using weasel words, the report admitted that it was “likely” that an Israeli sniper shot her dead. […]

Tunisia

President Saied Derides the Economic and Social Rights of Tunisian Women

Human Rights Watch

By Kenza Ben Azouz, Middle East and North Africa Division | – Published in: Nawaat ( Human Rights Watch) – President Kais Said marked National Women’s Day in Tunisia on August 13 by sending his wife to make a celebratory speech in which she sang her husband’s praises. That didn’t sit well with many Tunisians […]