LyrArc Article Gist
Morsi's authoritarian personal style, decrees and failure to give adequate weight to liberal opinion alienates liberals supporting El Baradei. The Salafi Nour Party is alienated by Morsi's improvement of relations with Iran. This weakens his administration with street protests in June 2013.

LyrArc Article Gist
Out of the rubble of failed policies, lack of far sighted leadership, and the failure of Middle Eastern elites and leaders, must arise the right way forward.

LyrArc Article Gist
A complete breakdown in negotiations between the U.S. and Russia happens after Russia continues its bombing campaign in Aleppo. About 275,000 people and 100,000 children are in the war torn area in northern Syria. The U.S. had called on Russia to stop the bombing campaign, but Secretary of State Kerry failed to persuade Russia to commit to a ceasefire. The result has been international criticism of the Russian role in the war, and speculation on what president Putin sees Russia gaining from this intervention in DW.com and other sites. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Helene Cooper and Worth point to the vacillating response to the Arab Spring and movement for democracy and freedom in the Middle East of the Obama administration and President Obama. The dangerous overtones of this lack of U.S. leadership in the region as the U.S. completes a withdrawal from Iraq without an agreement for a residual presence, sees diplomacy reaching an impasse with Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and the Syrian civil war drawing in Turkey with its long border with Syria, and drawing in Saudi Arabia as a defendor of Sunnis in Syria. The stakes for Russia in Syria were minimal compared to that of people in the Middle East and the U.S., yet it had an outsized influence with its early military assistance to the Assad regime and the lack of U.S. leadership to resolve the situation in Syria in favor of the democracy movement.

LyrArc Article Gist
This exceptional report by Chulov in the Guardian shows the changes in the war in Iraq and Syria in 2015-2016 since the downing of a Russian jet by Turkey in late 2015. It says that the Syrian government's future was uncertain in late 2015 with Turkish support for rebel forces in the north. During this period Russia curtailed trade and tourism relations with Turkey, and improved relations with the Kurds. Russia intervened in northern Syria directly to prevent a collapse of Syrian government forces in the north. Kurdish forces were already controlling large parts of the Syrian territory adjoining Turkey, and Turkey was concerned about the support to Kurds within Turkey from Kurds in Syria and a historical movement for  Kurdish independence. In April 2016 Russia made a move to win Turkish support by saying it would support the territorial integrity of Syria, so that no support would be given to the Kurds. As the U.S. consistently supported the Kurds in the fight against ISIS, Turkey under prime minister Erdogan changed its policy of support for rebel forces in Syria to focus on what it perceived as the threat fom Kudish control of the region at its Syrian borders. Rebel forces were told to focus not on the Syrian government forces but on ISIS, leading to withdrawal of support in Aleppo. What remains now of the war in Syria and Iraq is Iranian influence in Iraq, the Russian influence from support of the Syrian government in Damascus, and for the first time U.S. ground forces in the north with 900 troops supported by artillery on the side of the Kurds. The next stage in the war to take ISIS controlled Raqqa is being negotiated between Russia, Turkey and the U.S., according to this report.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Karl Rove points to major distortions in the Obama election ads on the Romney tax plan raising taxes on the middle class and increasing the deficit, issues which are shown to be important to independent or undecided voters. Romney left an opening to Democrats by not announcing more details on his tax plans, something he started to correct on the campaign trail in Ohio on Sept. 25, when he provided more details and said his plan would reduce taxes on the middle class. He said his tax cuts would not be large and would be designed around the objective of keeping the deficit under control. Earlier Democrats had seized on the vagueness of his tax plan to state that the Republicans would make a huge increase in the deficit with their tax cuts. Rove urges Romney to correct distortions in ads in the presidential debates.

LyrArc Article Gist
U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and Turkey's foreign minister Davutoglu met in early August 2012 and agreed to set up intensive operational planning and coordination of the two countries efforts on Syria to end the Assad regime. The two foreign ministers said a unified task force with intelligence, military and political leaders would be set up immediately and will look at all options including direct assistance to the democracy movement and forces fighting the Assad regime.

LyrArc Article Gist
Friedman visits the campaign office of Abdel Moneim Fotouh, a doctor running for president of Egypt. What he finds is a lively debate among Egyptians, new and many voices discussing the future of Egypt and a transition to democratic forms of government and economic progress. One newly elected member of parliament Hamzawy tells Friedman that Islamists from the Brotherhood have about two thirds of the seats, the liberals 20%. Moderates within the Islamists like Fotouh, who left the Brotherhood, form a separate faction inside the Brotherhood. There will be a need to transcend differences and work together. Egypt is still under the rule of the military, but many democratic voices are now present and a lively debate is on which will provide the impetus for real change and progress, if properly channelled.

LyrArc Article Gist
This editorial goes over the issue of budget cuts for embassy security that never happened in relation to the requests for help from the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

LyrArc Article Gist
Carrie Wickham of Emory University describes the struggle between the reformists and the old guard in the Muslim Brotherhood. The old guard, including Morsi, pushed out the reformists. These younger mid-career professionals had a better grasp for the need to broaden the coalition that would run post Mubarak Egypt. Instead sadly for Egypt the old guard botched the transition with a hasty referendum on the constitution, and failing to bring other views and secular parties in a broad coalition to manage post-Mubarak Egypt.

LyrArc Article Gist
Trofimov provides a much needed perspective to the situation in the Middle East in 2015. The title about redrawing borders on ethnic lines is misleading, as the essay's conclusions point to the need for various communities to find a way to live together without ethnic cleansing and intolerance in attitudes. With modernization different communities, Sunni and Shiite, already live together in the larger cities in the Middle East. Trofimov points out that the original intentions of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson were for diversity, and building modern institutions of government as the best way forward. This was not carried out by British and French rulers following struggles for independence against the colonial authorites. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Britain and France were the dominant powers, and the boundaries were drawn up for Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and other states, under the British-French Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. Britain and France increased the role of minority groups to maintain their control following independence struggles in Iraq and Syria, a situation which helped Alawites gain control in Syria and Sunnis in Iraq. Shiite rule in todays Iraq has not lessened tensions, and intolerance only creates tensions in the broader region. Which makes redrawing boundaries around ethnic lines in a defacto acceptance of the current situation, not the lasting road to peace in the Middle East. In Iran, Russia with Britain was involved in the partition of parts of Iran into three zones, a Russian zone including Isfahan in the north, a British zone in the south east and a neutral zone in the middle. This happened in 1907 soon after a independence movement helped write a constitution in the 1901-1907 period, showing that many foreign powers were involved in the region, not just Britain and France. The discovery of oil in 1908 by a British company created the question of how to distribute the profits, which led to 70 years of disagreement and tensions in Iran. The resulting tensions exacerbated the conflict between religious authorites and Mossadegh in the early fifties with the fear of Communism, and exacerbated the conflict between the religious authorites and the government under the Shah by 1979 with misuse of oil wealth, ending with his overthrow and the supreme authority of the Ayatollah. Oil has proved to be as divisive, and wasteful of development opportunities, in Iran as it has been in Nigeria and other oil dependent nations. Multiple issues exist in the Middle East, not just the artificial redrawing of boundaries by the French and British, which makes the defacto redrawing of boundaries along ethnic divisions, not the answer but another step with its own dangers, along the path towards peace and economic development in the region. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This editorial in the Journal provides reflections on U.S. foreign policy in the Obama years and advice for U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney before the third presidential debate on foreign policy on Oct. 22, 2012. It says the U.S. has always done better from a position of economic strength and defense preparedness in addressing foreign policy issues. It also points to the failure of president Obama to support the freedom struggle of the peoples of the Middle East, and a withdrawal from Iraq without securing an agreement that failed to consolidate the gains of the long conflict and resources spent in that region.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Washington Post is critical of the military's arrangements for the transition to democracy in Egypt. It calls on the Obama administration to make the military in Egypt accountable for a return to democratic government in Egypt, including suspension of aid. The military's role in ousting an elected government which would have been tested in coming legislative elections is seen as a serious mistake.