The June Revolution - Reuel Marc Gerecht
No matter what happens, the Islamic Republic as we have known it is probably over. All regimes need some sense of legitimacy to survive, and the Islamic Republic has rested on two pillars. One is the belief that the people of Iran continue to back the Islamic revolution and the essentials of the political system that has developed since. Cynics may say that the regime has never really believed this, that dictatorships always only pretend that they are popular but really know they are unloved. Although cynicism isn’t uncommon among Iranians, the illusion of representative government backing the Islamic Revolution has been inextricable from Iran’s identity since 1979. The ruling elite, in their domestic and foreign propaganda, have prided themselves on the image of a country that is both more religious and more populist than any other Muslim country in the Middle East. Khamenei’s speeches, unlike Khomeini’s, often focus on the God-fearing, virtuous Iranian people ...read more
Recent Updates
US-Israeli disagreements on settlement "natural growth"
The US and Israel continue to publicly disagree about whether Israel should freeze all "natural growth" in West Bank settlements, with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak yesterday meeting US Middle East envoy George Mitchell to discuss this issue and others. Accordi...read more
Exiting Iraq's Cities/ Sharansky on Iran
Today marks a major milestone in the Iraq conflict, with US troops turning over patrolling and security in all Iraq's cities to Iraqi forces. This Update looks at the implications and possible pitfalls of this development....read more
Was there a "Natural Growth" settlements deal?/ History and Iran's internal struggle
This Update leads with an important entry into the debate about the US demand that Israel halt the "natural growth" of West Bank settlements. Elliot Abrams, the head of Middle East affairs at the US National Security Council during the Bush Administration, writes that i...read more
The prospects of the Iranian protesters/ Demilitarising a future Palestinian State?
This Update offers some more discussion of the Iranian protest movement, concentrating especially on the question of what it would require to fundamentally change the Iranian regime. It also contains an additional backgrounder on Israeli PM Netanyahu's call for a future Palestini...read more
Opinion
Piecemeal road to Middle East peace - Colin Rubenstein
The lesson to be learned is clear: peace does not depend only on Israel or on whether the Israeli Government says the words "two-state solution", as the previous three prime ministers did repeatedly. Olmert offered virtually everything the Palestinians could reasonably ...read more
Hope of peace in Gaza remains - Colin Rubenstein
Is the new Netanyahu Government likely to be headed for a major confrontation with the Obama Administration? The argument often made is that while Barack Obama will push hard for Israeli-Palestinian progress, the supposedly ''hard-line'' Netanyahu Government does not even support...read more
From the ridiculous to the outrageous - Bren Carlill
At the lecture, of which I have a recording, Halper claimed that Israelis don't use the word 'Palestinian,' but rather just 'Arab.' This allegation is both blatantly wrong and an attempt to paint Israelis as racists, intent on denying Palestinians their identity. Likewise, accord...read more
Khatami is just as rigid as the rest - Colin Rubenstein
What credibility can Khatami maintain in calling for a dialogue of civilisations when he excludes Israel and Israelis? Or when he argues there is no anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, when under his presidency Iran became a sanctuary for Holocaust revisionists? His record shows t...read more
Background
Netanyahu's new narrative - Amotz Asa El
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There was a strange sense of déjà vu following Binyamin Netanyahu’s much-hyped speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14. It was not the first time, in fact it was the fourth, in which a hawkish prime minister had veered left after having built a whole career o...read more
Reacting badly - Khaled Abu Toameh
The Palestinian Authority leadership’s hysterical, hasty and clearly miscalculated response to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14 is likely to boomerang because it makes the Palestinians appear as “peace rejectionists&rd...read more
Fanning the Flames - Ilan Grapel
What readers may not know is that Green Left Weekly is openly trying to promote extremism among Arabic speakers in Australia through a monthly Arabic-language insert called the Flame. And this support is not limited to Green Left Weekly’s own far-left agenda. Green Left Wee...read more
The Last Word: Cairo Dreaming - Jeremy Jones
If US President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4 proves to be an historic event, I will be able to say without doubt where I was when he spoke. It was my privilege to be invited to a gathering of representatives of many of Sydney’s Muslim and Arab commu...read more
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