Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

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A handout picture released by the Iraqi prime minister’s media office shows Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki touring military posts in the outskirts of Baghdad on August 6, 2013. (AFP Photo/Ho/Iraqi Prime Ministers Office)

Controversy over criticism of Iraq’s Shi`ite authorities

by Asharq Al-Awsat | Aug 7, 2013 | Middle East

Baghdad, Asharq Al-Awsat—Over the space of a week, supreme Shi`ite authorities have drawn rare criticism from two members of parliament belonging to different blocs. It is the first such public disapproval since their growing role in Iraq’s political scene that...

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Iranian president-elect Hassan Rowhani salutes to the journalists after his press conference in Tehran on June 17, 2013. (AFP/Behrouz Mehri)

Iran: President-elect Rouhani courts Qom clerics

by Ali M. Pedram | Jul 5, 2013 | Middle East

London, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iran’s president-elect Hassan Rouhani met with a number of highly regarded Shi’ite clerics in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran on Thursday. During his visit Rouhani emphasized his determination to resolve the very complicated and...

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Ahmad Al-Asaad, head of the Lebanese Option party, addresses a press conference in Beirut (Asharq Al-Awsat)

In conversation with Ahmad Al-Asaad

by Hannah Lucinda Smith | Jul 2, 2013 | Interviews

Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat—A huge portrait dominates the meeting room. It is of a young man in his twenties, serious, large eyed, and studious looking—a college photo, the same picture that has been splashed across Lebanon’s newspapers for the past few weeks. The memory...

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Iraqi’s take part in a funeral for a man said to have been killed during fighting in Syria’s Sit Zeinab neighbourhood on the southern outskirts of Damascus, in Basra on May 6, 2013. AFP Photo/Razmi Al-Shaban

Baghdad acknowledges presence of Iraqi fighters in Syria

by Asharq Al-Awsat | Jun 12, 2013 | Middle East

London, Asharq Al-Awsat—The government of Iraq made its first implicit admission of the presence of Iraqi fighters in neighboring Syria on Tuesday. Ali Musawi, media advisor to Iraqi prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki, said: “The Iraqi government is committed to a policy...

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Syrian troops patrol the village of Haydariyah, some seven kilometers outside the rebel-held city of Qusayr, after taking control of it, on May 13, 2013. (AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH EID)

Opinion: The Syrian Chessboard

by Abdullah Al-Otaibi | Jun 11, 2013 | Opinion

The comparison of international struggles to a chessboard was first used by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, in his book The Grand Chessboard. The expression is a fitting description of politics’ conflicts, complexities,...