Yes, I'm writing this so I don't have to pay attention to the Republican debate. Sue me. This is a few weeks old, but I've been meaning to flag Dexter Filkins's January 22 New Yorker piece on the Pakistani Taliban (the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP), perpetrators of many terrorist attacks including the December 2014 … Continue reading Pakistani Taliban, Pakistani problem

I just posted a primer for tomorrow's Iranian elections at Medium: The parliamentary elections are important  — a less hardline parliament means more space for Rouhani to implement his domestic agenda (although even an outright reformist parliament would be subject to being overriden by the Guardians’ Council and the Supreme Leader), and a more hardline parliament … Continue reading My Iran election primer, at Medium

The Syrian opposition finally agreed to the ceasefire that's supposed to start in the next couple of days, albeit on a temporary basis: Syria's opposition indicated on Wednesday it was ready for a two-week truce in Syria, saying it was a chance to test the seriousness of the other side's commitment to a U.S.-Russian plan … Continue reading Breaking the ceasefire before it even starts

Unless you're a regular eBay shopper, here's something you may have missed: That's Egyptian president/dictator/pharaoh Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and yes, somebody was trying to sell him yesterday, at least for a few hours before eBay took the listing down. Shockingly there was at least one person somewhere in the world who was willing to pay … Continue reading One way to get rid of a dictator

The 2016 campaign just keeps getting more absurd: Mitt Romney on Wednesday raised questions about Donald Trump's taxes that strikingly resembled attacks used against the former GOP presidential nominee four years ago. "Frankly, I think we have a good reason to believe that there's a bombshell in Donald Trump's taxes," Romney said in an interview … Continue reading Well, if anybody should know…

We talked about the case of Iranian-American, and current Iranian prisoner, Siamak Namazi a couple of days ago. Well, now this has happened: Iranian authorities this week arrested the elderly father of an American jailed in Iran since October, the man's family said on Wednesday. Siamak Namazi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was detained by Iran's … Continue reading Now Iran has arrested Siamak Namazi’s father

The Gulf Cooperation Council is getting pretty good at orchestrating diplomatic scrums targeting countries it (and by "it" I mean "Saudi Arabia") deems problematic. They refined their technique on one of their own, Qatar, back in 2014 before rolling it out in earnest on Iran last month. Now Lebanon appears to be getting the same … Continue reading Lebanon is the focus of the latest Gulf pile-on

Yesterday I laid out what I think was a pretty pessimistic analysis of the Syrian ceasefire. I think it's doomed to fail and think that it could fail in spectacular fashion, by giving Bashar al-Assad the equivalent of an international seal of approval to continue his campaign to end the Syrian civil war by killing … Continue reading Still better than nothing