... feel victims of new austerity policies, mainly engineered by the IMF. Millions in the region deserve better political regimes than toxic combinations of neoliberalism and autocracy.
All in all, a crucial way to stabilise the region and oil prices, win terrorism, and lift people out of economic woes, has to do with some democratisation in the key players, Saudi Arabia and Iran above all. Cosmetics or economic reforms alone won’t work much. Democracy and participation can and should be interpreted differently in different regions; this is true for the Middle East as well; however, some form of inclusion is increasingly ...
... the first shots had been fired. That was almost a given when considering the strategic position of Yemen at the border with Saudi Arabia and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a crucial passage for the maritime oil trade through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.... ... continue to the more interesting angles, many other players are involved. For instance, there are recurrent allegations against Iran for providing weapons and training to the Houthis, in an attempt to use Yemen for a proxy war against the countries of the ...
... distance itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support ... ... into being an apartheid-like political pariah within the Western world.
4.) There’s a good chance for a thaw/deal with Iran in the near future.
More than any president since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Obama has shown an energy and a willingness ...