Iran also has an overwhelming manpower advantage, with a population of an estimated 77 million, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 28 million. And while its army is far less well equipped than its rival’s, it is much larger….This has left the Saudis feeling abandoned and vulnerable.
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Who’s Winning the Middle East’s Cold War?
Posted June 22nd, 2016 at 3:29 pm (UTC-5)
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How America Stopped Thinking Strategically About the Middle East
Posted June 3rd, 2016 at 11:52 am (UTC-5)
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The absolutely simplest strategic objective might run something like this: Protect American interests. By such a standard, the last 15 years of war have been a massive failure. Imposing a new political order at bayonet-point has failed, squandering trillions of dollars and thousands of lives — while spawning even more violent successors to al Qaeda.
Why Iran Should Focus on Turkey, not Russia, for Syria Cooperation
Posted May 19th, 2016 at 9:02 am (UTC-5)
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Iran and Turkey are most interested in the preservation of Syria’s territorial integrity…. Moreover, Turkey and Iran’s other interests in Syria — preserving a level of influence, maintaining stability in their neighboring regions and containing Kurdish centrifugal tendencies in the wider region — can only be served by preserving its unity and territorial integrity.
Business Values are Democratic Values
Posted May 17th, 2016 at 9:17 am (UTC-5)
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This battle for democratic values is also a battle for business values. The concepts that underpin a free society are fundamental to free markets, too: values like transparency, open competition, and the rule of law.
Why America Needs Iran in Iraq
Posted May 3rd, 2016 at 10:22 am (UTC-5)
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Both Washington and Tehran should be interested in an immediate resolution to the political crisis in Baghdad and they will have to work in parallel for a quick compromise between the political parties and the prime minister
An Awkward Silence in Riyadh
Posted April 20th, 2016 at 4:23 pm (UTC-5)
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How did the U.S.-Saudi relationship go so badly astray? It wasn’t that great to begin with. There has always been something incongruous about an alliance between a liberal democracy and a traditional monarchy relying on austere Islam and petrodollars to sustain itself.
Will Israel Reach Age 100
Posted April 12th, 2016 at 4:18 pm (UTC-5)
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The region in which Israel lives is melting down at a rate no one would have anticipated….if there are any state disappearing acts, these may be on the Arab side….even with all of their problems, the region’s three non-Arab states –Israel, Turkey, and Iran — are probably the most highly functioning polities in the region.
To the Future President of the United States
Posted April 8th, 2016 at 4:24 pm (UTC-5)
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We understand that perspective is hard to come by at this stage of the race, and you are obsessively watching the polls and attempting to shape your image to a media ready to pounce on every slip. But the world is watching at a time of great uncertainty
Oil Is Still heading to $10 a Barrel
[T]he world continues to be awash in crude, and American frackers have replaced the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as the world’s swing producers. The once-feared oil cartel is, to my mind, pretty much finished as an effective price enforcer.