The Iranian leadership and official media portray the Arab spring as a “great Islamic awakening” targeted at the west and Israel. The turmoil in Syria explodes this narrative, says Sadegh Zibakalam.
One of the first actions of the Libyan Transitional National Council has posed a challenge for European countries.
The major lesson that the Arab revolutions can draw from the new Iraq is the importance of a phased transition from dictatorship to democracy where national bodies govern by the rule of law and include a balanced representation of all factions and communities, argues Fatima Issawi.
The intellectual ground for an Arab democratic revolution was prepared in Syria a decade ago. But Syria’s leadership wasted the chances for a soft transition, says Carsten Wieland.
For all those who are afraid or suspicious, I invite them to go to the streets of Syria. One main defect with academic writing is that it avoids bombast. Hence, it doesn’t say that those young men and women who have been protesting in the streets of Syria for more than five months are heroes.
Can drawing attention to the regime's excesses force Spain and other countries to put pressure on the Syrian government?
Extremist Islamists may only be one small part of a wide cross-section of disenfranchised Libyans who could no longer bear the tyranny of Gadaffi, but they pose the question whether reactions to the Arab Revolutions are ever entirely innocent of double standards.
In today's security briefing, Jaffar Al-Rikabi argues that rival interventions by outside powers threaten to intensify violence in Syria. Meanwhile, a gas discovery in the Eastern Mediterranean may add to disputes in the region.
Syria is hard to categorize in relation to the Arab spring, because of its people’s multifaceted relationship to the Syrian state and current regime, their fear of a fundamentalist takeover, civil war, resistance to foreign-imposed regime change and to military intervention.
The inconsistent reaction of the UN Security Council to the ongoing Syria crisis reveals several major underlying tensions which will not be quickly resolved
Competing regional interests suggest that arriving at a coordinated response to restoring order to Syria and preventing instability in the region is highly improbable.
Oil is perhaps the most commonly cited factor in explaining the course of the various Arab revolutions in train since the Spring, but compared across countries its influence proves less decisive than generally suggested, argues Jaffar Al-Rikabi.
