CAIRO – When it seemed that all was going smoothly on the Cairo-Tehran diplomatic front and full relations were not far off after a near 30-year hiatus, out comes a movie in Iran praising the assassins of late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that throws both governments into a bitter row.
AMMAN -- The detention of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafis youngest son in Geneva on charges of abusing his staff has triggered Libyan anger and a decision to halt oil supplies to Switzerland, raising not only oil prices, but also eyebrows over the politicization of alleged personal misbehavior.
EDITORIAL
U.S. Senator Barack Obama and the Middle East escaped very nearly but not quite unscathed as his presidential campaign paraded through the region this week.
OPINION
High-level international talks over Tehrans disputed nuclear program ended inconclusively on July 19. Those talks in Geneva focused on an updated package of incentives offered by the six world powers to Tehran in order to breathe life into the deadlocked talks. Iran now faces the following alternative: It must cooperate with advanced nuclear powers offering such cooperation; or it will inevitably face all-out political isolation.
DAMASCUS -- When you leave the Middle East and arrive in any Western capital, you feel that you have ridden yourself of that political climate and reached a planet where politics is not the food and drink of the inhabitants there. That is because on this planet people are pursuing the rudiments of a better way of life and they do not even want to know of the sufferings of the people they left behind in the turbulent Middle East.
