The Georgian crisis will have specific repercussions on the Middle East. There is less of a chance that the United States and Russia will be cooperating to stop Iran’s nuclear program. There is a greater chance that Russia will wage a more ambitious and aggressive policy, including selling advanced weapons systems to Iran and Syria. [...]

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The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace [...]

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As China’s energy demands grow at a rate much faster than any other country in the world, so too have its relationships with the oil-producing nations in the Middle East. With half its oil imports from the region, China’s Middle East policy is on the verge of a “great leap forward.” Chinese strategy for securing [...]

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While no text of the agreement was published, the news apparently represents a major potential realignment of the Middle East’s geopolitical realities, made all the more extraordinary by the fact that, beginning 29 years ago and continuing through the entire Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia matched, dollar for dollar, the United States’ covert assistance [...]

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DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Israel has placed its military and air forces on its northern borders on high alert after Iran and Syria ignored Jerusalem’s warning, relayed to Washington, that the continued presence of Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah officers on the strategic Lebanese Sannine peak may spark a military clash.
Monday, July 14, two days [...]

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In the past few weeks, Hizballah at the behest of Iran and Syria has commandeered the 7,800-foot Mt. Sannine, a strategic asset capable of determining the outcome of the next war, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 356 revealed.
Radar-guided missile positions and an early warning station have since been deployed on its summit, which are capable of monitoring and [...]

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Nervous Arab states fear a war in the Gulf but a nuclear-armed Iran is an even greater concern.
Iranian retaliation against oilfields, refineries and desalination plants in the Gulf, especially in eastern Saudi Arabia, is an obvious worry. Tehran has gone on the record as threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, the choke point for [...]

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A leading Israeli analyst said Hamas has been preparing its forces for an expected Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, Middle East Newsline reported. Jonathan Spyer, a senior researcher at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, said Hamas was adopting Hizbullah’s strategy of asymmetrical warfare meant to significantly improve its combat abilities.
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China and Saudi Arabia have signed a declaration to strengthen strategic cooperation during a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and likely successor to President Hu Jintao.
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Chinese dragon in Mideast politics
Washington Times, DC - 4 hours ago
The relationship between China and Saudi Arabia, as well as with other Gulf countries, are based [...]

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A comprehensive and well detailed report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, released last week, sheds a pile of information on the state of nuclear proliferation in one of the world’s most volatile regions — the Middle East.
Indeed, as John Chipman, director general and chief executive of IISS, points out in a publication entitled [...]

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Life Behind the Blockade
Since Israel began its blockade, Gaza has rarely been out of the news. We take a look at life behind the blockade and the headlines and we see a people left suffering and angry.
‘Enough!’ shouts a gas-buyer in the market, ‘We are a people who have had enough!’ The mood in [...]

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An appearance of peace has returned to Lebanon; but as Hezbollah grows in power, political tensions are becoming palpable. Has the country finally entered a long-term settlement, or are we witnessing the preliminaries to a new conflict?
Thanks to massive financial and military backing from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has emerged as a powerhouse over [...]

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Dubai recently announced its partnership with China in the creation of a billion dollar investment fund. Saudi commitment to double oil exports to China by 2010. These two announcements exemplify China’s Middle East energy strategy: to entrench itself economically in the region, even at a loss, so as to obtain the political leverage required to [...]

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A sleepy stretch of sand visited mainly by the odd camel caravan over the centuries, Qatar is in the midst of a massive spending spree, financing museums, skyscrapers and rapid modernization - like much of the Gulf region. But unlike Dubai, which wants to dominate in tourism, Qatar has more modest targets for its seemingly [...]

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[A detail from a rendering of the King Abdullah Economic City, on the Red Sea. It is one of six new cities planned by Saudi Arabia as it works to diversify its economy beyond oil exports.]
RABIGH, Saudi Arabia — THE alarm bell sounded the end of the lunch break here one November afternoon, and suddenly [...]

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Grain production in Saudi Arabia is now down 42 percent from the peak of 4.9 million tons reached in 1994 and is now on track to decline rapidly in the coming years. Thanks to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute for compiling these figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
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Peak water in Saudi [...]

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Okay, I want to hear the White House response to this, but it looks like twice in twenty-four hours I’ll be agreeing with a Democratic congresscritter. This time it’s Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, no less, who is advancing the radical proposal that maybe George Bush shouldn’t be committing your tax dollars to developing [...]

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A new buzzword is arising from the network of Israeli think tanks and security-oriented academic departments bent on instigating a U.S. attack on Iran: “national suicide” The term describes a supposed Arab Muslim tradition of politically motivated suicide at the national, not just individual, level. Arab Muslim regimes have purportedly launched ruinous wars they could [...]

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Understanding why Hizbullah refused to take over Lebanon is key not only for understanding Hizbullah but also for understanding Hamas, Fatah and the insurgency in Iraq.
A compelling answer to this question is found in David Galula’s classic work, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Galula, who died in 1967, was a lieutenant colonel in the French [...]

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Editor’s Note: This week’s Terrorism Weekly is the second chapter of Fred Burton’s new book, GHOST: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent. Burton is vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security at Stratfor. He is the former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.
Chapter Two: Down the Rabbit Hole
“CT03.” [...]

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Is Islam a religion of peace? Daniel Pipes, a leading Islamic scholar, says yes and no. If Islam prevails, becoming the world’s pervasive religion, the answer is yes; and since it will require war for Islam to prevail, for the time being the answer is no. But to begin to understand Islam, Pipes says it [...]

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