Iran’s religious leadership criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday after pictures released Sunday showed a tearful Ahmadinejad hugging Hugo Chavez’s mother during the deceased Venezuelan leader’s funeral. The incident marked the second time in less than a week that the ayatollahs, Iran’s religious leaders, criticized Ahmadinejad for un-Islamic behavior. The religious leaders also took More »

The assassination of prominent Tunisian secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid highlights the growing threat of militancy in the country. This threat has the potential to deepen the divide between the secular and Islamist factions within Tunisia and delay the transition to a permanent government. Meanwhile, the Islamist-led interim government in Tunis is attempting to More »

The past week marked the second anniversary of the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, an event that in many ways turned unrest in Tunisia from a purely national affair to what the media dubbed the Arab Spring. That Arab Spring was seen as a broad rising of the Arab masses against aging More »

Russia and the United States are engaged in seemingly urgent negotiations over Syria. The Syrian chemical weapons threat that the United States has been publicly emphasizing may provide an opportunity for Russia to regain leverage in Syria after the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign More »

The death of a senior Lebanese intelligence official in the October 19 bombing in central Beirut appears now to have been a targeted assassination. The official, Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, was directly involved in providing logistical and supply-line support in Lebanon for the rebel Free Syrian Army, which is More »