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The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a story much like the Odyssey but set in the Persian, Central Asia Islamic world. It was born as far back as the 9th century. It has a South Asian version since the epic is retold in different settings and has a oral tradition of being recited by dastangos who used to recite these myths and legends . Amir Hamza is supposedly the uncle of the prophet Mohammed. Its South Asian version is in the Hamzanama that was commisssioned with painted manuscripts by the Mughal emperor Akbar. It has 1400 illustrations and formed the basis of Mughal art which was a fusion of the artistic worlds of Hindu India and Islamic Persia and Central Asia. In those times the Persian speaking world extended from Tabriz to Hyderabad in south of India and the Hamza Adventures were told around campfires and in the outdoors. The Hamzanama paintings commissioned by Akbar were shown at the Sackler Gallery around the time of the Iraq invasion in the summer of 2002 and show a world long forgotten. The Saudi type of Wahhabi Islam and religious zealotry is a far cry from this more open world of art and legend and life in central, south and western Asia, of commerce, trade and ways of life intermingled and flow of people across a large region in Asia. What it may suggest is that the current wave of religious zealotry is a kind of phase that like a passing wind comes and then is dispersed, maybe its a reaction to western interventions, maybe a failed response of tradition with modernization, maybe something else, a clinging to old outmoded patterns in areas that are most left behind by change, with ethnic and other strife mixed in with it. No single or simple response to it makes sense and a lot of patience is needed. Conflict of civilizations talk and the like may simply be overdone and way oversimplified things....

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Ben Van Heuvelen documents in the Washington Post what Ali Nabhan and Bradley pointed out in the WSJ in May 2009, that the officers in the Iraqi army lacked the training and discipline to act as an effective fighting force. These early indications proved correct and were ignored by the Iraqi government and the Obama administration till it was too late with the fall of Mosul and the ensuing chaos in Iraq.

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The WSJ's Laurence Norman talks to Yukiya Amano, head of the UN agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has the responsibility of verification and inspection of Iran's nuclear development and facilities. Amano describes the issues raised by a 2011 report which outlined 12 sets of concerns to which Iran has to explain, a condition included in the final nuclear agreement. Iran has to respond by mid-August, IAEA then responds, and does work in Sept and Oct, and submits its report by Dec. 2015. Yamano says he has to fill in all the missing pieces in this jigsaw puzzle to get a full picture of Iran's nuclear development. Iran has denied access to military sites and Mr. Amano couldn't say if he has access to the Parchin military site. A concession that was made in the agreement is the long interval of three weeks before access to a particular site that arouses suspicions-the agreement gives Iran the right to appeal an IAEA request to visit such a site to a special commission. The U.S. and its European allies have a majority on the commission yet three weeks are allowed in which Iran could move material to some other location. For critics the question will be why such a concession was needed if Iran truly has decided not to develop nuclear weapons technologies. The U.S. president's response at a news conference on July 15, 2015, was that with the laws of physics the U.S. monitoring tools would detect nuclear activity at that site. The agreement also gives Iran an earlier than planned lifting of a ban on sales of arms and missiles and missile parts if the IAEA says Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful. Iran could conceivably wait till the ban is lifted and its economy in a much stronger position to withstand any future limited sanctions to pursue nuclear weapons development. This would have delayed development for a few years during which time the hope is that Iran has changed into a more peaceful nation pursuing economic development in its region, yet even if this is the case as as happened with India and Pakistan it could still pursue nuclear weapons development. The alternative is a status quo till a better agreement is reached with the leverage of tight economic sanctions and continuing dialogue during which time Iran continues to get closer to a nuclear weapon, or the use of force to prevent this. Iran added the arms embargo issue during the last weeks of the negotiation in June, a controversial move on Iran's part, as this may have complicated the picture with ballistic missiles technology exports to Iran approved after 8 years in the final agreement, compared to the agreement reached in April 2015 which made no mention of the lifting of the arms embargo. Iran played on the notion that if Zarif returned to Iran without an agreement hardliners including Khamanei would veto any agreement, yet this could just be the Iranian negotiating strategy. U.S. president Obama stated at the July 15, 2015 news conference that it would be hard to hold sanctions for longer. Critics might argue that China was already benefitting from the small easing of sanctions by increasing Iranian oil imports by 30% in 2014, and would have less incentive to withdraw from sanctions, as it is dependent on the U.S. and the EU, major markets for its exports and access to technologies. A WSJ/NBC poll in July shows almost half of the people polled in the U.S. saying they do not know enough to express an opinion, a steady 36% support an agreement, showing that the public has not been educated and taken along during the different steps in the largely secret negotiations....

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A shift in Israeli opinion towards greater use of sanctions after antigovernment protests in Iran with deteriorating economic conditions and a 40% decline in the value of the rial. Merchants and ordinary citizens from the middle class are now joining the students and young people who led the protests in 2011.

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A leader of the Syrian moderate democratic opposition to the Assad regime calls for help from the Obama administration for the moderates and Free Syrian Army. The request for Manpads to counteract Assad's air attacks and the deteriorating situation around the city of Aleppo and in Northern Syrian areas controlled by the Free Syrian Army. The collaboration between the Hezbollah, Assad's forces, and the ISIS as each attempt to increase the areas under their control pushing out the Free Syrian Army and moderate forces fighting the Assad regime. Hillary Clinton comes out against the Obama administration's policies in August 2014, saying "don't do stupid stuff" basis of Obama policies is not the basis for a sound foreign policy. Obama comes out with a $500 million aid plan for the Free Syrian Army but the approach is vacillating and slow, leading to a rapidly deteriorating situation, and a complete breakdown of what was a period of hope called the Arab Spring.

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To correct misgivings in many quarters about Syrian refugees not finding a haven in Gulf states, this letter from the Cato Institute points out that the population of Syrian refugees living in the Gulf states including Saudi Arabia has gone up by 1.1 million by 2013 from the beginning of the civil war. He cites World Bank data showing 241,000 Syrians living in the Gulf states before the civil war. By 2013 that number is 1.4 million. For Saudi Arabia the figures are up from 111,000 to 1 million.

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This editorial in the WSJ reminds readers of China's warning about North Korea's nuclear weapons in April 2015, and says the nuclear agreements with North Korea never worked. It sees a similiar situation with the nuclear agreement the Obama administration is working out with Iran.

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Exxon, BP, Eni, Shell, are actively working in Iraq to increase oil production, along with Lukoil, Gazprom, China National Petroleum, China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Foreign companies are attracted to Iraq because of the potential for growing oil production. Iraq produces 3 million barrels a day in 2012. An additional 400,000 barrels a day is planned for 2013. Shell's Iraq country chairman, Hans Nijkamp,says Iraq could eventally produce 6 to 10 million barrels a day by the early part of the next decade. Iraqi government officials have set a target of 10 million barrels a day by 2017, which is overly ambitious because of the many problems that need to be tackled, including building port and pipeline infrastructure, huge water projects to pump saline water into old oil fields, and passing a national oil law. Passing a national oil law means negotiating a deal acceptable to the Kurdish and other regions about sharing oil profits.

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Scholars and experts on the Middle East have offered their assessment and understanding of the Middle East seen through its long history. This includes Bernard Lewis at Princeton, Ramadan at Oxford, and Efraim Karsh of King's College, London. Karsh's new book "The Tail Wags the Dog," describes the story of British, Russian and American involvement in the Middle East in the 20th century and into the 21st century. Karsh offers a corrective assessment to many myths about the Middle East in 2015 with sectarian and religious conflicts, and historical volaltility- that the events in these countries are dependent on the foreign powers and influences. Karsh shows how the people in the Middle East have influenced their own narrative thorugh passions, conflicts and failure to bring together different opinions and strains of thought for peaceful progress. He sees the surge of Islamist politics in the midst of the Arab Spring as stemming from the way large parts of the population remained unaffected by the changes of twentieth century technological developments and modernization. The religious conflicts of the seventeenth century in Europe that took place just as Europe began to open up to new ideas and influences and the modern period, show how religious conflict can take place for long periods covering a continental region, before it recedes into the background. Ultimately it is the actors in these countries that have to find a way forward without engaging in continuous strife and violence, sectarian conflicts, and pulling together for a consensus around pushing economic development and progress. ...