Middle East & North Africa Archive

For several years, Iranian officials have sought to strengthen their ties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran became a formal observer nation at the July 2005 SCO summit, but the country’s leaders have continued to pursue full membership. In April 2007, the Iranian Foreign Ministry submitted an official application to this effect. Even before the seventh annual SCO summit convened in Bishkek on Aug. 16, however, the existing SCO full members announced that they would indefinitely postpone accepting new members. In the case of the SCO, a primary Iranian objective has been to keep other Eurasian countries from aligning […]

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad paid his first official visit to northern neighbor Azerbaijan last week (Aug.21-22), aiming to counter growing U.S. influence in the oil-rich country and forestall further advances on a move to allow American use of the Russian-operated Gabala Radar Station in Azerbaijan. Ahmedinajad and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev emphasized the ethnic, religious and economic ties between the two nations on the Caspian Sea, but security and defense issues were the focus of the talks. During the visit, during which five bilateral agreements were signed, both sides attempted to highlight the positive aspects of their […]

WASHINGTON — Recent changes in the leadership of two of the closest allies of the United States are altering the dynamic of the trans-Atlantic relationship in ways that would have seemed highly improbable a year ago. The election in early May of the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy as president of the French Republic has rekindled relations between Paris and Washington, previously soured by differences over Iraq. At the same time, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair in late June, used a U.S. trip to put new distance between his government and the Bush administration. The traditional close ties between […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. SCHOLAR FREED ON BAIL; FUTURE UNCERTAIN — Iranian authorities released Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari Aug. 21 after securing more than $300,000 in bail, ending her 100 days in solitary confinement. Esfandiari, who is one of four dual citizens currently facing legal difficulties in Iran, will face legal proceedings at some point based on authorities’ charge that she endangered Iran’s national security by encouraging a “velvet revolution” to topple the current government, though Iranian authorities have […]

Just when life looked like it could not get any worse for the people of Gaza, the lights went out. With temperatures soaring into the mid-90s earlier this week, the power company supplying electricity to as many as half of the strip’s 1.4 million people ran out of fuel for several days. As with just about everything that happens in the Middle East, the problem boiled down to politics. Surprisingly, however, the decision leading to the cutoff of fuel shipments came from the European Union, shining a broiling hot spotlight on one of the dilemmas confronting the international community as […]

Caribou Coffee, the second-largest U.S. java seller, seems at first blush like a fairly ordinary American company. The chain was founded in 1992 in the small town of Edina, Minn., the brainchild of idealistic newlyweds, and has since expanded to over 400 coffeehouses in 18 states. Caribou’s menu is muffins and lattes — not an Arabic coffee in sight. It may come as a surprise, then, to know that Caribou Coffee is “Shariah compliant,” one of the largest American businesses to run its operations in accordance with Islamic law. Caribou isn’t alone. After decades on the economic backburner, flush oil […]

The plans of an Islamic association to build an imposing “Central Mosque” in Cologne are the subject of ongoing controversy in Germany. The mosque design features a giant 35 meter high dome flanked by two 55 meter high minarets. Much of the initial public opposition to the mosque project was organized by “Pro Cologne”: a political movement that local authorities have classified as “right-wing extremist” — a common euphemism in Germany for neo-Nazi groups. Last May, however, the controversy over the Cologne mosque project took on a new dimension when the renowned German journalist and historian of the Third Reich, […]

According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, the dismal decline of America’s public image is not a sufficient reason for the State Department to take public diplomacy as seriously as it deserves. Well, to be precise, the report, titled “U.S. Public Diplomacy: Actions Needed to Improve Strategic Use and Coordination of Research” (pdf file), doesn’t use exactly those words. But here’s what it does say: The State Department’s “commitment to the development of a defined approach to thematic communications, centered on program-specific research, has been absent.” This is GAO-speak for the plain assessment that the U.S. government […]

Three months ago, the city of Ramadi was dark. The city of 400,000 in western Iraq was completely severed from the country’s delicate electrical grid; those who had power got it strictly from generators that hummed all day and night. But then came the much-heralded “Anbar awakening” — a banding-together of Sunni sheiks and their militias into a loose alliance that fought alongside U.S. and federal Iraqi forces to all but eradicate terrorist cells in Ramadi and other large western towns. As security improved in Anbar province, U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) — some military-led, some commanded by State Department […]

The Turkish nation delivered its verdict last week, even taking Erdogan and his supporters by surprise. Turkey’s parliamentary elections on July 22 resulted in a decisive victory for Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, of the Islamic-rooted party AKP. The AKP’s 47 percent of the vote has reaffirmed the party’s place as one of the most powerful political parties in the history of Turkish elections, claiming an even larger share of the vote than was realized in 2002. “Democracy has passed a very important test,” Erdogan said in his victory speech, amidst bursting firecrackers and showering balloons at his Ankara party headquarters. […]