As Iraqi forces took control of towns and cities across the country on June 30, a car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk exploded, killing at least 33 people and injuring more than 100, serving as a grim reminder of the security challenges that Iraqis face following US troop...

Ever since the Iranian revolution stunned the world in 1979, the Arab world, or at least the Arab regimes and their allies in the West, have been obsessing over Iran's "exporting of the revolution" and the implications it would have on the Arab world. Eventually, this obsession manifested itself into...

The Supreme Leader has spoken using no ifs, ands or buts in his words. I've stayed up all night listening to the Ayatollah deliver his Friday sermon in Farsi on IRINN TV, simultaneously translated into English on Press TV and Arabic on Al Alam.

It is a contradiction to mention Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) and elections in the same sentence; however, no country in the Middle East, as of late, has been more invested in this democratic process than Saudi Arabia. For the record, election is part of the democratic process; Saudi Arabia...

There is no country in the Middle East as fragmented and full of contradictions as Lebanon, yet it is perhaps the most pluralistic society in the Arab world. With a few days left before the parliamentary election due to be held on June 7th, Lebanese emotions have been running high....

The competition in the Iranian presidential election is heating up, or so it seemed until recently on Iranian government-sponsored television. Unlike the previous election, the challengers to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are well-known heavyweights who include former Prime Minister Mir-Mossein Moussavi, former Majlis (Parliament) speaker Mehdi Karroubi, and Secretary of the...

Pope Benedict XVI has completed his eight-day pilgrimage of the Holy Land, preaching peaceful coexistence between the peoples of the region. He urged both Israelis and Palestinians to put aside their grievances and divisions.

"Just and peaceful coexistence among the peoples of the Middle East can only be achieved through...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are heading to Washington for talks on the future of the peace process.

Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington on May 17, and Abbas is heading to the US on May 28 for talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, whom...

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt calls swine flu "more serious than a hydrogen bomb" during a symposium on the health scare. Egypt's parliament votes to "cull pigs immediately and one parliamentarian proposes criminalizing hog farming.

The United Arab Emirates bans the import of pork products as...

Speaking at the National Assembly, Pakistan's Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said that the military could stop the Taliban and that the country's nuclear weapons were safe.

"Does this parliament not have moral courage to stop them?" he asked.

Pakistan is on a precipice. The Swat Valley, once...

It hasn't taken Benjamin Netanyahu long to show his true colors by creating new hoops for the Palestinians to jump through in order to resume peace negotiations with Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister has reportedly told U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, that the Palestinians must recognize...

A war of words between the Egyptian government and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has escalated after Egypt's public prosecutor recently ordered 49 people held for plotting attacks on behalf of Hezbollah be kept in custody for an additional 15 days.

The 49 suspects include Egyptians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. They...

I never thought that watching summits could be nauseating but it was, thanks to the U.S. and British media which focused on the "Obamarama" and frenzied over Michelle touching the Queen of England. Then, there were the tedious analyses about the President sneezing during a press conference, the Queen flirting...

You may have missed it amid the AIG-bonus furor--even President Obama did not mention it during his recent press conference-- but last week marked six years since the start of the Iraq War.

After six years and more than 4,000 U.S. casualties, the Iraq War seems to have disappeared...

Almost a thousand days have passed since the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli tank gunner, by three Palestinian militant groups. At the time Shalit was 19. He would have been at home in Mitzpe Hila this week had the negotiations between Israel and Hamas not faltered. His parents...

In a televised interview last week, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen said that the U.S. believes Iran has obtained enough nuclear material to make a bomb. Hours later, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Iran was in fact not close to having...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- the court's first against a sitting head of state. The court's decision grimly spelled out the suffering of the people of Sudan's western...

President Barack Obama has announced his plan to withdraw most US troops from Iraq by August 2010. The move will reduce troop levels from the current 142,000 to some 35,000 to 50,000 by that time. During his campaign for the White House, then candidate Obama had said he would...

It's been more than a month since Israel's devastating war on Gaza left many dead and thousands injured. The war has ended, but life in Gaza has not returned to normal. Thousands of people remain homeless, and many still remain hungry. Their stories have all but disappeared from US media...

This week, crude oil prices fell on the news of sinking petroleum consumption, with oil futures at the New York Mercantile Exchange down more than 5 percent to below $38 a barrel. While this news sounds like music to the average driver worldwide, it has been a nightmare for oil...