Iran’s Retaliation Could Cause A Middle East Oil Shock. By Gregory R. Copley

Iran’s clerical leadership, under “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali HoseiniKhamene‘i, is expected to make rapid, significant, and symbolic responses to the targeted killing in Baghdad on January 3, 2019, of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qasem Soleimani. It seems unlikely that the Iranian response would initially be to launch a military assault

Read More

A Brief Biography of the Founder of Wahabismn. By Yasin T. al-Jibouri

Wahhabism is named after its founder, Muhammed ibn (son of) Abdul-Wahhab. Since the Wahhabis have proven to be the most fanatical of all so-called Islamic extremists (Islam never advocates extremism), it is not out of place here to introduce the reader to the founder of Wahhabism while narrating the mischief he and his ignorant Bedouin zealots committed against the shrine of

Read More

Tribe and State in the Middle East. By Courtney Freer

This is the introduction to a series of memos presented as part of a workshop organised by the LSE Middle East Centre on 13 June 2018, looking at Tribe and State in the Middle East.  Members of the Qashqai tribal confederation in Iran. Source: Globetrotters On 13 June 2018, the LSE Middle East Centre organised a workshop entitled ‘Tribe and State in the Middle East’ gatheri

Read More

Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East. By Leheb Wahab *

  Introduction: With the focus of the international community confined to a great degree to Iran’s nuclear capability, a trend has emerged in the MENA region with more and more countries vying for nuclear technology albeit for peaceful purposes, primarily as a mean to produce electricity preserving its hydrocarbon industry, i.e., the oil gas sector and maximizing its retu

Read More