The US Department of State has an in-house reputation of always being behind the curve on technology. So it doesn't surprise me that at ...

A somewhat wry story in the Washington Post notes that Washington has been warning for months about the fact that Iran is building a huge n...

There was a little drama in the upper ranks of the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend. According to the press, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. G...

And now for something completely different. Thanks to a link at Egyptian Chronicles , a video documentary with a lot of footage of Egyptian...

Not as obviously awkward as the Rabin-Arafat handshake, but not exactly old buddies either. I doubt if either is asking the other for fashio...

If the new readers are still around, perhaps I should explain that since I don't blog on weekends, I've taken to putting together a...

This is proving to be a very busy week for the blog, mostly apparently due to my post on Marwa al-Sherbini the other day. On Wednesday I h...

Jerusalem has been going through a particularly Israeli sort of poltical crisis for several weeks now, one that has received little attentio...

Israel is seeking the next-generation Lockheed-Martin F-35 J oint Strike Fighter . It will be very interesting if this becomes a point of le...

This seems to belong to the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" category, except that it's in no way funny: the Governor of Sue...

Today's news starts a little Egypt-heavy but the Egyptian government is claiming it has busted an Al-Qa‘ida plot to attack foreign ships...

I haven't got anything to add on today's Iran protests that isn't already well covered by the usual Iran-watching sites. The Nat...

Okay, let's start with this post at Israel Policy Forum, neither a sensational nor an ideological site generally (beyond the obvious al...

Speaking of Lebanon ... (weren't we?) ... As noted previously, the Gemayels did well in the Lebanese elections, sons of both Bashir and ...

We've mentioned the continuing reports of a Lebanese unraveling of an alleged Israeli spy ring in the south. Unless, like Claude Rains i...

Marc Lynch announced today that he is going to be a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in addition to hi...

... would seem to be the Egyptian equivalent of "More Catholic than the Pope," but it would appear that some Egyptian critics are ...

I'm not saving the roundups till Friday this week since there's a fair amount of interesting linkage to link to: I've already no...

Recently both Arabic Media Shack and The Arabist have noted a relatively new blog from Cairo, The Boursa Exchange . It seems a rather ecle...

Via The Arabist , from the original here , a small grocery in Aleppo:

Not to get into American politics too deeply, since I'll offend half my readers and that's not the subject of this blog, but the rec...

Have you heard of the Marwa al-Sherbini case? If not, it may be worth asking why not, since that's what Egyptians are asking. Some of my...

I won't even pretend to expertise on Mauritania. But with its rescheduled elections approaching, I will refer you to this update from K...

The death of Robert S. McNamara at the age of 93 has naturally brought on the expected reflections on his role in Vietnam — the role which h...

Speaking of Israel and Iran, the way this Haaretz story ( Jerusalem Post version here) was reported in the Israeli press is a bit mislead...

One of the main stories over the three-day holiday weekend was the interview with Vice President Biden which has been interpreted by some in...

One last pre-fourth note. I hadn't said anything yesterday about the much-reported detention at Cairo airport of blogger/dissident Wa’el...

Since the Fourth of July falls on Saturday this year, the Federal Government is taking Friday as the holiday, and MEI, like most Washington ...

A good piece in the Daily Star on the much-speculated-upon Syrian-Saudi rapprochement and forthcoming summit. I've noted previously t...

An awkward situation has been defused since Mahmud Ahmadinejad has cancelled his planned trip to the African Union summit in Libya. Qadhafi...