BLOG APPROACHING THE MENA REGION: BOOK REVIEWS, ANALYSIS AND MORE
By Sandra Bandemer On March 23 2021, Israelis will again be heading to the polls – for the fourth time within two years. That Israel’s democracy finds itself in a severe political crisis seems to be beyond question. How long this crisis will persist is, however, rather uncertain. According to the Israeli Democracy Institute’s Continue Reading
“Some changes are for good/ And this I know for sure”. At least, this is what Dionne Warwick used to sing back in the 1970s. We don’t know if Brian Hook thought the change was for good when in March 2018 US President Donald Trump decided to dismiss Rex Tillerson, who had been the US Continue Reading
After the publication of the final results of the Israeli parliamentary elections, Benjamin Netanyahu, the incumbent, emerges as the winner of the April 9 polls. The Prime Minister, who is going to be indicted for different corruption charges by the Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, put himself at the center of the electoral campaign. The Continue Reading
On March 31 local elections were celebrated in Turkey. We try to analyse the results of the elections by looking at three key aspects that marked the electoral contest. The discrepancy between overall vote and the results in Turkey’s largest cities It is impossible to find a single indicator for a comprehensive assessment of the Continue Reading
A failure… There is a certain consensus that the international summit organized in Warsaw by the United States last week, on February 13-14, was a failure. The pompous name given to the meeting (Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East) could not hide the main motivation behind the organization of the Continue Reading
The United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo published an article in the November/December issue of the influential journal Foreign Affairs. In his piece (which can be consulted here, in the website of the US Department of State), Pompeo deals with the US policy vis-a-vis Iran. The US top diplomat does not introduce any major argument in his limited Continue Reading
Presidential cycles in Iran and the US do not perfectly overlap. Nonetheless, Iranian and US Presidents share a period of around three years in power. While the last Presidential elections in the US took place in 2016, 2012, 2008 and successively (always in November), in the Iranian case these were celebrated in 2017, 2013, 2009 Continue Reading
The Yemen War has been receiving more attention than usual during October 2018. The assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul has much to do with this. Somehow, many of those who had been quiet for years are starting to realize how the Desert Kingdom infringes human rights Continue Reading
Late September is the time of the year in which world leaders converge in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. It is customary that political leaders use their time on the podium to deal with a range of topics marking the international agenda. However, that is not the case of Benjamin Netanyahu, Continue Reading
Iran’s former justice minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, was quoted in late October 2016 as saying; “These last years, the quantity of executions has not been effective. As a result, there must be a revision of the death penalty law”. It was not the first time an important member of the Iranian bureaucracy expressed this same opinion. However, a senior Continue Reading