Egypt

Writing history, and especially the history of the ancient world, is an uncertain business, in which the truth is as elusive as in metaphysics. Modern historians of the classical world necessarily rely heavily on the works of the ancients. And the supreme historians among the ancient Greeks had to…

The Delta Sigma Phi fraternity chapter at the University of Michigan had what it thought was a delightful theme—antiquity on the Nile—for a party kicking off the school year. They invited guests to come as a “mummy, Cleopatra, or King Tut, it doesn’t matter to us. Get your best ancient Egyptian…

The intra-Arab rift that has set Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt against Qatar is now in its second week. A feud that seemed to begin as a principled stand against Doha's support for terrorism—one flash point was Qatar's recent payment of nearly $1 billion to Iran and to…

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday called on four Arab states to end an economic blockade of the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. "We call on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt to ease the blockade against Qatar," Tillerson said Friday afternoon at the…

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

Top Democratic lawmakers are praising a controversial diplomat who served as a key Middle East figure in the Obama administration, after reports that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis asked her to fill a top policy slot at the Pentagon.

The United Nations Security Council passed on Friday a resolution calling for an end to further Israeli settlement—with the United States government and its U.N. ambassador Samantha Power abstaining from the vote. The United States is one of five permanent members of the Security Council with veto…

Donald Trump likes dictators and likes to be liked by them. After meeting Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last week, Trump called Sisi "a fantastic guy," gushing, "he took control of Egypt. And he really took control of it." Trump approves of the unprecedented repression that followed Sisi's…

Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor of political science at the University of Haifa and a former intelligence analyst in the Israel Defense Forces. His just published book, The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, is the remarkable story of how Cairo playboy Ashraf Marwan betrayed his father-in-law,…

An EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo crashed Thursday, with an Egyptian official saying that terror is a "stronger" possibility as a cause than technical error.

In a move that has sent shockwaves throughout Egypt, the Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, travelled to Jerusalem Thursday at the head of a distinguished delegation of bishops from the Coptic Church. The short flight from Cairo to Tel Aviv can be measured in minutes; the psychological distance stretches…

Back in the heady days when the Western world was still enthralled by what was then known as the Arab Spring, the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections represented a watershed – if albeit a mixed one, given the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi. The coming-to-power of Morsi…

Ian Talley of the Wall Street Journal writes that according to Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund:

Last week, Sinai-based extremists targeted the North Sinai security headquarters with a massive blast, causing damage, but no injuries. Thankfully it wasn’t a replay of the attack last month that killed 33 security personnel in some of Egypt’s worst violence since the overthrow of former president,…

With lawmakers ratcheting up pressure on Obama to take action in Syria, few in the administration have been paying close attention to Libya, apparently. As Fox News's Jennifer Griffin reported last night on Special Report with Bret Baier, the United States was baffled for days as to who conducted…

The WEEKLY STANDARD  podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on Hamas's attack tunnels, Operation Protective Edge, the Iranian factor, and what the media gets wrong about Israel's involvement in Gaza.

The reluctance of Hamas’s “military wing”—a misnomer for the more extreme elements of its extremist leadership—to accept the cease-fire designed by Egypt is, well, logical. Let’s admit it. They do not wish to accept defeat, and the Egyptian terms are a defeat for Hamas.

In spite of a string of worrisome human rights and freedom of expression violations, the Obama administration is holding out hope that Egypt's government lead by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is still headed for democracy.  State Department official Richard Stengel, under secretary of state for…

Maggie Flick of Reuters is reporting that:

Two years ago, Islamist political posters plastered Giza's impoverished Omraniya neighborhood. But two weeks ago, as Egyptians went to the polls for the seventh time since the 2011 uprising, a military man's banners monopolized the wall space. "Abdel Fatah al-Sisi knows how to fix the country,"…

If Israel believed that exposing an Iranian arms transfer to terrorists in Gaza was a public relations coup that might make the White House think twice about making a deal with the regime in Tehran over its nuclear weapons program, then Jerusalem has fundamentally misread the Obama administration.…

Earlier this morning Israeli commandos boarded an Iranian vessel in the Red Sea carrying an arms shipment destined for Gaza and the Sinai. According to Reuters, the Panamanian-flagged cargo vessel Klos C was boarded in international waters without resistance from its 17-strong crew, who may have…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with editor William Kristol on President Obama's influence with foreign leaders and Ted Cruz's role in the GOP.

A recent spate of newspaper articles suggests a concerted media campaign targeting Turkey’s foreign intelligence service, the MIT, its director, Hakan Fidan, and almost surely his boss as well, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a piece published by the Wall Street Journal and another by the…

The anti-Christian violence in Egypt is "a modern pogrom," David Brog, the executive director of Christians United for Israel, says in a statement.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is gung-ho for the Egyptian army’s bloody campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood. This, the Journal reports, “has pulled Israel into ever-closer alignment with those Gulf states.” Yes, concurs, the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith about ongoing crisis in Egypt.

The boss joined This Week on Sunday to discuss Egypt, law and order, and politics:

Earlier this week, Maurice Bonamigo had strong words for the White House on its Egypt policy. “The Obama administration failed to assess the situation in Egypt,” Bonamigo told Egypt’s flagship English-language media organ, the Egypt Independent. “It did not appreciate the power of the Egyptian…

This morning President Obama announced that he is cancelling this year’s joint military exercise with Egypt, Operation Bright Star. It’s a symbolic gesture intended to show that, should the army continue to pursue its present course, the White House may eventually decide to suspend military aid.…

President Obama delivered about an 8 minute statement on Egypt this morning, then went straight to the links. Via the pool report:

President Obama delivered a short audio-only statement on Egypt this morning, from his rented-vacation home on Martha's Vineyard:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest released this statement on the ongoing violence in Egypt:

For most of those who were so hopeful when the Great Arab Revolt downed the dictator Hosni Mubarak two years ago, the travails of Egypt’s fledgling democracy have been depressing. Many in the West expected the country’s hodgepodge of secularists—the young men and women who were the cutting edge of…

During his visit to Pakistan on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry gave several TV interviews including one to Hamid Mir of Geo TV.  Mir's first question for Kerry concerned Egypt. The Obama administration has resisted referring to the military action in Egypt as a coup, but in this interview,…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior editor Lee Smith on Secretary of State John Kerry's peace tour, Egypt, Syria, and Iran.

In assessing Egyptian defense minister Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi’s decision to remove President Mohamed Morsi from office July 3, there are two key points to keep in mind. The first concerns the army, and the second concerns what is now, given the escalation of violence over the last two weeks, its…

Since forcing Egypt’s first elected president from office two weeks ago, Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has become a folk hero. Popular songs praising the 58-year-old head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces fill the airwaves, while hagiographic portraits of the man who saved the…

The State Department announced today that it will be sending a deputy secretary to visit Egypt.

There's been a great debate over whether what happened in Egypt constitutes a "coup." The reason for the debate is clear: If it was in fact a "coup," then the U.S. must stop providing aid to that country -- because that's what U.S. law requires.

On Tuesday, Egypt’s interim government named a new prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi, an economist who served briefly as the interim military government’s finance minister after former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February 2011. Beblawi is a good choice, insofar as he seems to understand…

The spirited debate over suspension of aid to Egypt has given rise to a good argument over how to encourage progress in Egypt toward stable, responsible, and democratic government. We know what we would, as Americans, like ideally to see there: respect for civil liberties such as freedom of speech…

As we've learned over the last few days, there is a lot hanging on the meaning of the word "coup."  Or, more precisely, the answer to this question:  Was Egyptian President Morsi removed from office by a military coup?

The dismaying violence in the streets of Cairo leads ones thoughts to another city, where the mayhem is scheduled and traditional and sublimely pointless. As the AP reports:

Reuters columnist David Rohde said this morning on CBS that it was "terrible optics" for President Obama to go golfing and Secretary of State John Kerry to go yachting as the Egyptian leader was overthrown:

Secretary of State John Kerry has received some criticism for going yachting as the Egyptian leader was going overthrown. But the State Department, which first insisted that Kerry wasn't even on his boat, is now insisting that the secretary of state has been working hard -- and they've just now…

The White House just emailed to reporters this "Readout of the President’s Meeting with the National Security Council Regarding the Situation in Egypt":

The Associated Press reports:

Joe Biden's been at the beach all week. And, last night, the White House released his schedule -- announcing that he'd be there through the weekend.

Elliott Abrams, writing for National Review Online:

For the second time in two years, an Egyptian autocrat has been deposed. In Syria, another embattled tyrant – this one robustly supported by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia – looks like he might hang on. Across the Muslim world, the political future hangs in the balance.

The New York Times reports:

President Obama called President Morsi of Egypt today to say that " the United States is committed to the democratic process in Egypt and does not support any single party or group." Obama "stressed that democracy is about more than elections," according to a readout of the call provided by the…

The Egyptian interior ministry announced Saturday that an al Qaeda plot against a Western embassy and other targets had been disrupted. Two suspected terrorists are being held for questioning and a third is under house arrest.

Today Sen. Marco Rubio introduced the Egypt Accountability and Democracy Amendment, legislation blocking “economic support funds and new foreign military financing” “unless economic reforms and human rights safeguards are adopted, while also initiating a more thorough, longer term reevaluation of…

Since Samuel Tadros first reported for THE WEEKLY STANDARD on prospective International Woman of Courage Award winner Samira Ibrahim’s anti-Semitic, pro-9/11 tweets Wednesday afternoon, some observers have argued that the State Department, as Jeffrey Goldberg writes, “narrowly averted a moral and…

Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday the release of a quarter of a billion dollars in aid to Egypt. The Associated Press reports:

This week marks the second anniversary of the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Two years after the refrain “the people want to topple the regime” filled Tahrir Square, it is now Egypt itself that is toppling. Street violence has pitted various groups against each other—anarchists against…

A week after the ceasefire concluding Israel’s eight day campaign against Hamas, Operation Pillar of Defense, there is some debate as to who came out on top. The way one judges the outcome seems to depend on: one, what you make of the ceasefire agreement; two, what role you think that Egyptian…

If the truce announced in Cairo last Wednesday truly brings the Gaza war to a close, it is not too soon to assess who gained and who lost from this conflict.

Here's the text, via the Egyptian president, of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas:

In a phone call today between the two leaders, President Barack Obama thanked Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi for helping to assist with the ceasefire between Hamas in Gaza and Israel.

In a read-out of a phone call between President Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States pledged to "use the opportunity offered by a ceasefire to intensify efforts to help Israel address its security needs, especially the issue of the smuggling of weapons and…

Jerusalem

Two major Israeli newspapers are reporting that rockets fired from Egypt have hit Israel. 

There is one curious beneficiary of the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that cost four American lives: Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government. The attack in Libya and subsequent controversy has almost entirely obscured the siege that same day of the American embassy in…

On October 24, Egyptian officials raided an apartment in Nasr City, a neighborhood in Cairo, suspected of housing a terrorist cell with ties to the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. A firefight ensued and one of the suspected terrorists was killed. An Egyptian police official…

Rifai Ahmed Taha Musa, one of Egypt’s most notorious al Qaeda-linked terrorists, attended the U.S. embassy protest in Cairo on September 11. Musa was just one of several al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who was present at the rally, imploring followers to punish those who produced the anti-Islam film…

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S.…

This evening on CBS's 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama called the recent violence in the Middle East "bumps in the road."

Libyan president Mohammed el-Megarif is saying the attack Benghazi that killed the American ambassador was planned well beforehand. His statements on this topic firmly contradict the Obama administration's version of events. 

A large demonstration is planned for tomorrow, Friday, in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo but, as you can see on Al Jazeera’s live streaming video, protesters are gathered today, too. The police have established their position at some distance from the crowd, as well as the embassy, and are…

White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama was "correct" in saying that Egypt is not an ally of the United States.

Yesterday the Obama made a pointed critique of Mitt Romney suggesting that he was unprepared to handle foreign policy because he "shoots first, aims later." This Foreign Policy report of the President trying to walk back his strong statement on Egypt yesterday ought to give pause to anyone who took…

Former State Department official Liz Cheney says that "It has certainly been a terrible 48 hours. In Libya, violent extremists killed American diplomats. In Cairo, mobs breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy, ripped down the American flag and replaced it with the al Qaeda flag."

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

Mitt Romney is being accused of crass political opportunism for speaking up about the attacks on U.S. interests in Egypt and Libya on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. And not just by his political opponents. By Wednesday evening Reuters, in a straight news piece, reported that Romney’s comments…

The investigation into the exact circumstances that brought us the twin attacks on U.S. diplomats in Egypt and Libya remains ongoing. Much remains uncertain. But a few new press accounts provide clues that are worth noting. And those clues point to a possible motive for the anti-American rallies…

Seems Egypt is down on its luck and needs a little help. Not that much, really.  Five, maybe ten billion, "a senior EU official," said on Wednesday."

Elliott Abrams, writing at National Review Online: 

Yesterday, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an Egyptian mob stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, pulled down the American flag and burned it. In its place, they raised a black banner inscribed with the shehada ("There is no God but Allah, Mohamed is the messenger of Allah"), a pennant…

One can question the timing and tone of Mitt Romney’s statement last night. One can note he wasn't as fluent and clear as he might have been at his press conference this morning. Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered the following remarks on Libya and Egypt earlier today:

During the assault on the U.S. embassy in Egypt, demonstrators reportedly chanted “Obama! Obama! We are all Osama!” They yelled this obvious reference to Osama bin Laden as an al Qaeda-style flag was hoisted and the American flag brought down. At least one of the protesters at the anti-American…

According to a transcript of this morning's statement, President Barack Obama failed to mention the storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo yesterday. His statement focused on the loss of an American ambassador and other embassy workers yesterday in Benghazi, Libya.

Here's video of the U.S. embassy in Cairo being mobbed yesterday:

The White House just announced that President Obama will speak about the events in the Middle East at 10:35 a.m. Hillary Clinton will be by the president's side:

A WEEKLY STANDARD reader points out that in all the early commentary about the events in Libya and Egypt, no one seems to have noted the date. Could it be, as he puts it, that "someone had it marked on a calendar to whip up a murderous frenzy on, oh, Tuesday 9/11"?

The U.S. embassy in Cairo released the following statement: 

August is supposed to be the time for vacations, but Israelis can’t relax this summer. Their Mediterranean beaches may be as inviting as ever, but when they look north, south, and east their world appears increasingly dangerous.

Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s housecleaning over the last two weeks—dismissing several top army officers and an intelligence chief and abrogating constitutional amendments limiting presidential power—has left observers trying to figure out the grand design behind Morsi’s actions. Some think…

Here's video of Egyptian actors who are pranked, and led to believe they are on an Israeli television program:

While in Egypt over the last several, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Muslim Brotherhood. But not everyone would meet with Clinton: Coptic Christians and Evangelicals refused, because, they claim, "the US administration has demonstrated their support for Islamism over other…

In a rousing speech in Tahrir Square on Friday, Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, told the crowd that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a…

News channel France 24 hosted a panel Monday night to discuss Egypt’s first civilian president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. One of the guests on the panel, via satellite from Cairo, was Nader Amram, a member of the Freedom & Justice Party’s foreign relations committee. (The Freedom &…

Either the Iranian regime is lying or Egypt’s new president, Mohammed Morsi, gave an interview that will raise some eyebrows.

White House spokesman Jay Carney issued the following statement in response to the Egyptian presidential election:

Egyptian state television is reporting that authorities are delaying announcement of the results of last week's presidential election.

Very preliminary returns in the first round of Egypt's presidential election suggest that the official Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate, Mohamed Morsi, came in first, with Ahmed Shafik in second place. Shafik is a former Air Force general and was briefly prime minister as the old regime was…

An essay in the latest issue of Foreign Policy by Egyptian-born activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy, “Why Do They Hate Us? The real war on women is in the Middle East,” couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. Today Egypt’s new Islamist-dominated parliament drafted a law permitting men to…

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration is grappling with how to handle Islamists, radical adherents to Islam. Particularly, the issue has come to the fore in regards to Egypt, which, as Reuel Marc Gerecht notes, "is now certain" to elect "an Islamist" as its leaders the next time…

From failing European economies to staggering murder rates in Central America, there’s no shortage of crises on the agenda as the International Monetary Fund holds its annual spring meeting in Washington this week. Of all the problems within the IMF’s purview, however, the ongoing economic…

Last week, the Obama administration started releasing the $1.3 billion in U.S. military assistance to Egypt that’s been on hold since October. Over the objections of human rights advocates and democracy activists, Hillary Clinton signed a waiver allowing Washington to circumvent recent legislation…

Late last week Spanish authorities announced that they’re extraditing Egyptian businessman Hussein Salem, a close associate of former president Hosni Mubarak. Salem is a central figure in the post-Mubarak narrative of the regime’s rampant corruption. He has already been sentenced in absentia to…

This morning, there was a curious report originating with the Egyptian state press, and then repeated throughout the Western media, that Saif al Adel, a longtime al Qaeda bigwig, had flown from Pakistan to Egypt to turn himself in. The report didn't make much sense, mainly because it offered no…

Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times is sad that the transitional government in Egypt is putting 16 American citizens on trial for promoting democracy in Egypt. David Ignatius of the Washington Post is worried that the nascent Muslim Brotherhood might stick to its principles in governing Egypt…

The Hill: "Dick Armey: Gingrich campaign turned into 'first-rate vendetta' against Romney"

Two years ago in Cairo, Nobel laureate and former International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei was the talk of the town. Newly retired from the IAEA, ElBaradei returned to Egypt in February 2010 after living abroad for decades. He began criticizing the Mubarak regime, hinting that he…

On behalf of the Working Group on Egypt, Michele Dunne of the Atlantic Council and Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution have sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning disturbing activity in Egypt.

Another country has calculated that Christmas time is a good time to launch a crackdown on human rights. Following China’s harsh sentencing of two writers on subversion charges, Egyptian security forces today rolled up to several prominent democracy and human rights NGOs in Cairo and shut them…

Now that runoff results are in from the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, it’s clear that the Islamists are running the board. As Samuel Tadros writes in the National Review, that includes not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also one faction of the Salafist Alliance that the State…

Despite the violence from street protests that left some 38 people dead over the last two weeks, Egyptians went to the polls today for the first round of parliamentary elections. As the website for the semi-official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram notes, there will be three rounds of elections for the…

Yesterday, three American students were arrested in Cairo for participating in riots that have to date killed 38. A spokesman at the justice ministry claims that the three were throwing Molotov cocktails from the top of an American University in Cairo building near Tahrir Square. The three are…

Washington Post: "Bloomberg rebukes Obama over collapse of debt talks"

There was another attack on Coptic Christians today as they marched through the Cairo neighborhood of Shoubra. Until the late 1960s, it was predominantly a Coptic district (today, some estimate, it is 40 percent Copt), which is why the rally’s organizers felt reasonably safe to march. Instead,…

This past Sunday night, the Egyptian revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak took another wrong turn when the same army once believed to be “hand in hand” with the people killed 27 Coptic Christians in Cairo and wounded hundreds of others. The Copts were marching toward Egyptian state television in…

Fred Barnes, with Mort Kondracke and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Cairo

News from Egypt is not good. Six months after the revolution, demonstrators in Tahrir Square are no longer protesting the Mubarak regime, but the military’s own undemocratic governing practices. Meanwhile, the economy is deteriorating and the security situation—in the Sinai and the Nile…

With the former president of Egypt on his back in a courtroom cage pleading for his life, we may be starting to get a clearer idea of who Egyptians will choose to succeed Hosni Mubarak in the upcoming November elections. Friday, July 29, tens of thousands of Islamists filled Tahrir Square,…

Since the revolution in January, Egypt has been in a constant state of unrest. While the protests have been mostly peaceful, there are exceptions. The other week, dozens in one of Cairo’s slums—known as “Garbage City”—were throwing rocks at passing cars, demanding housing they had allegedly been…

In Egypt, it’s “Friday in Defense of Identity and Popular Will,” which has brought hundreds of thousands Islamist supporters to the streets, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Alexandria.

Consider these two quotations, both of which are provided by members of the Egyptian intelligentsia: “The Holocaust is a lie,” and “The victory of the Zionist ideal is also the victory of my ideal.”

Recently the Obama administration confirmed that it intends to resume official contact with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Middle East's first, and foremost, Islamist organization. A few days ago, Michael Totten sat down with Brotherhood official Esam El-Erian in Cairo for a long interview. Totten…

It’s been five months since the revolution that ended the 30-year tenure of Hosni Mubarak, but the upheaval in Egypt is far from over. Large protests have become routine if not habitual in Egypt. In late June, 1,000 civilians criticizing the slow pace of reform were injured in clashes with riot…

Cairo—By the time I arrived at Tahrir the morning of July 8, the iconic square was already flooded with tens of thousands of activists for what the Egyptian media dubbed “Persistence Friday.” For the first time since the 18 days of protests earlier this year that brought down Hosni Mubarak, nearly…

Half a year after the fall of Tunisia’s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, it’s time for a partial reckoning of the Arab Spring. Verdict: Uncertain. 

It can’t give many Americans much lasting pleasure that the Israeli prime minister humbled our commander in chief this week on his home turf. To be sure, a president who seems to relish provoking public confrontations with an ally may have had it coming, but in the end Netanyahu’s speech before…

President Obama’s speech on May 19 outlining the administration’s Middle East policy vindicates his predecessor’s freedom agenda, though the two men reached the same place by different paths. It was the 9/11 attacks that forced George W. Bush to conclude that promoting democracy and human rights in…

In his speech at the State Department on May 19, President Obama called Egypt essential to the future of democratic reform in the Middle East and North Africa. As the largest and most influential Arab country, Egypt could in large part determine the course of the regional uprisings and the prospect…

Perry contemplating throwing a 10 gallon hat in the ring?

Judging the likely trajectory of post-Mubarak Egypt requires assessing the depth of public support for Islamism, and usually this has meant assessing the strength and intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Brotherhood remains central, however, the country is also facing a frequently…

Three months after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the new Egypt is still sorting itself out—and perhaps will be for some time to come. Observers are concerned about both the country’s domestic problems—attacks on the Coptic Community, the rise of the long-repressed Salafi movement,…

We may never know whether the conjecture of the historian Fouad Ajami is correct: that President Barack Obama sought the approval of the Arab League for the air war against Muammar Qaddafi because he thought the league—an organization that has always shown greater sympathy for the region’s rulers…

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Former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has reportedly been placed under detention in his hospital room in Sharm el-Sheikh. Mubarak has been there since last night, when he is thought to have had a heart attack. The AP reports:

Not a parody: "NFL players need Obama's support"

Spring isn’t what it used to be. Here, for example, is Robert Browning in 1841:

The Washington Post reports that Egyptian military forces broke up protests early this morning in Cairo's Tahrir Square. At least two civilians were killed and another 15 were seriously wounded. The protests followed a day of peaceful demonstrations, which continued after the 2 a.m. curfew and into…

It’s not war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” The United States has been in the lead, but will be stepping back, ASAP, in favor of command (supposedly) by a squabbling coalition of the not-so-willing. The objective of the “kinetic military action”—which is going to last days,…

NATO agrees to oversee no-fly zone.

Where the political shockwave inspired by Tunisia's democratic rebellion will lead we don't yet know. We do know what set Tunisia's revolt in motion: the end of Arab fear. When an oppressed people snap fear's psychological bonds, they shatter the tyrant's most potent weapon.

Cairo -- Polling places are packed today as Egyptians are casting their votes to ratify six amendments to the country’s constitution in what may be Egypt’s freest and fairest election ever. Because the military is running the show, penalties are stiff for voter fraud, and very few seem tempted to…

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Hillary Clinton is a big booster of Internet. Indeed, she is making Internet the central – and as best one can tell, the only – thrust of the Obama administration’s democracy policy. But even she acknowledges that in the wrong hands, technology is “not an unmitigated blessing,” as Clinton said in…

It's hard to tell how many protesters are in the streets of the Syrian capital, but it's hardly surprising that, after Egypt and Libya, the regime in Damascus might be next in line. Bashar al-Assad and his security chiefs guessed as much, which is why the last few weeks they warned the foreign and…

After Hosni Mubarak’s fall in Egypt, there was a whorl of ambiguous media commentary that either tried to present the Muslim Brotherhood as a conciliatory Islamist movement posing no threat to Egypt, its neighbours (read: Israel) or the West, or tried to challenge the Brotherhood about its core…

The president has wistfully been thinking about how easy it would be to be the leader of the People's Republic of China, the New York Times reports. And one unnamed official told the Times's reporters that "No one is scrutinizing [Chinese leader] Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square."

You know, for all the Soros money shoveled at Media Matters for America, it's really quite a monument to what a bunch of hapless ideologues run the place that they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

The brewing civil war in Libya is likely to drag in much of the region, Central Africa as well as North Africa and the Middle East. Already rumors suggest that this is coming true.

It is still striking, two months into the Great Arab Rebellion, how timorously many Westerners greet the region-wide uprising. Recognizing that democratic aspirations may be only a small factor in all the tumult, many would prefer to focus on the particulars of the revolts—the Shiite-Sunni split in…

In his opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, Senator John McCain expressed his support for the protesters across the Middle East. “[T]he historic changes now reshaping the broader Middle East are a direct repudiation of al-Qaeda and its terrorist allies,” McCain…

President Obama’s apparent frustration that he and his senior policymakers were taken by surprise with recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, reminds us of Yogi Berra’s famous line, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Some momentous event occurs on the world scene—whether it’s the Soviets putting…

Bill Kristol, writing in the Washington Post, urges President Obama to seize the moment – and to act:

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is more than a radical network, comparable to al Qaeda; more than an ideological phenomenon, like the followers of Khomeini in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and more than a political insurgency, similar to Pakistani jihadism. It is an…

An unrelentingly severe critic of the fallen Tunisian dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, my longtime Tunisian taxi driver Moussa, who has lived in Brussels for 20 years, sounded an optimistic note last week. “[The army] may not screw us. The officers know that Tunisia has fundamentally changed. I…

Why has the Obama administration been so tepid in its support for the biggest popular revolution in the modern Arab world? The short answer is Washington’s fear that a vacuum left by President Mubarak’s departure will be filled by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “Revolutions have overthrown…

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority claims that Iran has scrapped plans to send two warships through the Suez, but Tehran denies it and says those vessels are still on their way. Whether those ships make it to the Suez or not isn’t important right now, because it’s only a test, and not just for Egypt’s…

One frequent criticism of the war in Iraq has been that it is impossible to impose democracy from above. The revolution in Egypt represents an attempt to achieve democracy from below, as it were. The jury is out on both nations--and on both paths. However, as many have noted, revolutions that…

Last week, we saw the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Yesterday, there were protests in Tehran directed toward the regime in Iran. And today, in Bahrain, "More than 10,000 people streamed into the capital’s central Pearl Square on Tuesday in the largest political protest to hit this Persian Gulf…

Senator Joe Lieberman delivered a speech today at an AIPAC event, speaking primarily about Egypt. Here are key excerpts (full text below):

Following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, protesters in Iran seem to be getting a second-wind:

Unconfirmed reports are circulating that former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has fallen into a coma in Sharm al-Sheikh. The independent Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm's English-language website says that Mubarak fainted twice during his final speech Thursday night.  The report also seems to…

After observing the administrative practices in the realm of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman pasha of Egypt in the early 19th century, William Edward Lane, the great Arabic lexicographer, commented:

Our friend Charles Krauthammer began his column last week by asking, “Who doesn’t love a democratic revolution? Who is not moved by the renunciation of fear and the reclamation of dignity in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria?”

The controlled public rage against corruption, oppression, and marginalization at the hands of tyrannical Arab regimes that has unfolded in recent weeks is unprecedented and probably unstoppable, but it caught most Western observers by surprise. While they accept the Arab revolt for what it is—a…

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has Bob Kagan's response to the recent events in Egypt: 

Though Egyptian state TV has announced Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, it is unclear what the mass revolt rocking Egypt has in store for that ancient nation’s future. But what is clear is that the momentous events in Cairo--and, indeed, the massive tsunami of people-power engulfing the entire…

UPDATE: On Friday the Army made its decision. Mubarak was forced out. His Thursday speech was a disaster and it seems to have helped persuade the generals that they had, at last, to choose between Mubarak and the people. They made the right choice.

It's one thing that news organizations misread the situation in Egypt today, issuing conflicting reports throughout the day. (Hosni Mubarak will resign, no he won't, yes he will -- that's how today's events were reported, until finally Mubarak made his announcement.) But it's a little disheartening…

Herzliya, Israel

Egyptian president-for-life Hosni Mubarak announced to the world that he was not going to relinquish his position. The Washington Post reports:

NBC reports:

The White House is accusing the Iranian regime of “hypocrisy” for placing a leading opposition figure under house arrest. Mehdi Karroubi, one of the leaders of Iran’s Green Movement after the rigged elections in June 2009, has been placed under house arrest in Tehran and is unable to meet with his…

On October 31, Islamist extremists took hostage the congregation of Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad and slaughtered 58 men, women and children, wounding 78 others. Most of the slain were worshipers, and two were priests. The tragedy generated a weak response from the Obama…

Here are two different, though not necessarily contradictory, perspectives on the uprisings in Egypt over the last two weeks: In Foreign Affairs, Egypt specialist Joshua Stacher argues the military never lost control of the ground, and over at Just Journalism, Michael Weiss interviews Shiraz Maher,…

Jackson Diehl, of the Washington Post, writes about the ahead-of-the-curve Working Group on Egypt:

The Working Group on Egypt, led by Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan, yesterday sent letters to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the administration “to press for an unmistakable and irreversible transition to democracy.”

With the eyes of the world transfixed at the sight of more than a million protestors rising up against Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the brutal New Year's Day massacre of Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, where 23 Christians were killed and 79 injured, seems like ancient history. But the…

Bob Kagan on Egypt in the Washington Post:

Fox News is reporting that an assassination attempt has been made on newly named Egyptian vice president Omar Suleiman. Two of the longtime intelligence chief’s bodyguards, Fox says, were killed in the attack. Egyptian security officials, reports Al Arabiya, are denying the reports.

The New York Times reports that foreign journalists are among the targets of gangs in Cairo, resulting in some serious injuries and even jail sentences:

Yesterday we noted that unconfirmed reports coming out of Cairo claim that Egypt's former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly has been detained. Presumably it was Adly, either on his own initiative or under orders from above, who last week released prisoners into the general population to add to the…

Here's a very graphic video of an Egyptian police truck running over anti-regime demonstrators. As the vehicle cruises past, without having stopped, you can hear demonstrators referring to the police as "infidels," "sons of bitches" and then starting a chant, "Hosni Mubarak is falling."

Over the last several years, our brother-in-blogging in Cairo, the Egyptian Sandmonkey, has made a name for himself as one of the Middle East’s most irreverent commentators. Anti-anti-Bush and anti-anti-Zionist, his free-wheeling blog, where he often responds to commenters—especially of the…

Violence escalates in Cairo: 

Thomas Carothers, writing at the New Republic, draws lessons from Indonesia to understand Egypt:

Over the last twenty-four hours, we’ve seen Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak promise not to seek another term, quickly followed by a peek at what the next eight months might look like if he continues to cling on to power. Today, armed pro-Mubarak thugs attacked peaceful anti-regime protesters,…

Just last night I had encouraged an Egyptian friend, Raouf, living in the United States, who wanted to go back home to witness his country’s historic events. “I need to see this,” he told me excitedly. Now with fighting in the streets today I’m not so sure.

Politico reports on the varied responses from the GOP presidential field to the protests in Egypt.

Scrambling for a simple standard to measure events in Egypt and across the Arab world, the blogosphere and the airwaves have been full of references to 1979. That point of reference is probably more apt than imagined, for much more happened that year than just the Iranian revolution. It was also…

The Wall Street Journal has a symposium containing brief analyses of the developing situation in Egypt. Amr Bagisi, reporting from Cairo, writes that he sees two possible outcomes of the protests there and elsewhere in the country--neither of them positive:

The Washington Post reports: