Self-proclaimed Middle East “experts” have long bemoaned the instability of the region. They didn’t know the first thing about real instability.

As everyone knows, the evening of December 31 is New Year’s Eve. But why is December 31 New Year’s Eve? And why is the next year the number 2014?

As we teeter on the cusp of 2014, a whirlwind and partial summary, not so much on what’s been happening lately across the Middle East, but on what it all really means.

Stanley Fischer is set to become Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Watch out, here come the anti-Semites!

A recently-negotiated project will bring water from the Red Sea via a pipeline to the Dead Sea, and in the process generate electricity from the falling liquid to be used to desalinate some of the water for agricultural and drinking purposes. The agreement exists only in principle thus far. But it could be promising.

The Syria and Iran deals were evidently not what they seemed, unless you’d already become inured to this Administration’s amateur-hour grasp of policy process. In which case they were.

Saturday’s Washington Post ran an interesting article on its front page, above the fold left, called “Virginia stays out of gaming as stakes rise.”  As the author, with the very improbable name of J. Freedom du Lac, explains, Virginia is one of only ten states (plus the District of Columbia) to have successfully resisted the […]

A lot has happened since I last wrote, on November 13, about the P5+1-Iran nuclear negotiations. The main development, of course, is that there is now a signed “interim” agreement and, as was not the case on November 12, there is a text to be perused. It’s not entirely obvious how or why we got […]

Everyone keeps telling me that short posts sprayed out more frequently are vastly better in the blogosphere than long-form, more deeply considered analysis less often offered.  But they never say better for what, or for whom. Well, never mind that for now. I’m so busy  with other, higher priorities, that I’m in a rare mood […]

 Some six weeks have passed since I wrote in this space on Middle Eastern matters. Forgive me, for I have not sinned. I have instead occupied myself with writing elsewhere, traveling both domestically and abroad, editing the January/February issue of The American Interest (which you will not want to miss), collecting native American persimmons and […]