7 March 2012 Reasons to Attack Iran By Gwynne Dyer The last time US President Barack Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, it was obvious that the two men distrusted and despised each other. This time (5 March), their mutual dislike was better hidden, but the gulf between them was still as big, especially …
20 May 2011 Obama’s Fine Words By Gwynne Dyer Barack Obama’s speech on the Middle East lasted for forty minutes, but did it say anything new? Not exactly, although it did reinstate an old rule that had been abandoned. Two years after the American president’s much-ballyhooed speech in Cairo promised a new relationship with the …
18 February 2011 Why Now? By Gwynne Dyer Why now? Why revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt this year, rather than last year, or ten years ago, or never? The protestors now taking to the street daily in Jordan, Yemen, Bahrein, Libya and Algeria are obviously inspired by the success of those revolutions, but what got …
26 October 2010 The Importance of the Middle East By Gwynne Dyer The media in the Middle East carry a lot of Middle Eastern stories, of course, but why do most of the other media in the world do the same? Asian media strike a better balance, but Western media, and any other media that …
27 January 2010 Obama’s Middle Eastern Adventure By Gwynne Dyer Barack Obama had worse failures to address in his State of the Union message on Wednesday (January 27), but a few days before he owned up to the most foolish miscalculation that his administration had made in its first year in power. In an interview …
27 December 2008 A Christmas Message from Ahmadinejad (And other Middle Eastern curiosities) By Gwynne Dyer There’s something about the Middle East that brings out the hypocrisy in people, and never more than at Christmas. Take, for example, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Britain’s Channel Four, in its never-ending quest for cheap controversy, has …
16 February 2008 Imad Mughniyeh’s Killing: Wheels within Wheels By Gwynne Dyer Imad Mughniyeh didn’t have long to be surprised, for the bomb that exploded in the car parked next to his undoubtedly killed him in less than a second. He wouldn’t have been surprised anyway: as the special operations chief of Hezbollah’s secretive military …
8 January 2008 George W Bush and the Middle East By Gwynne Dyer “Let’s not raise our expectations too high. We are talking about weak leaders on both sides, leaders who can barely stand on their own two feet….It seems fair to say that no great miracle will happen here.” So wrote Israeli journalist Yoel …
17 September 2007 It’s All About Oil By Gwynne Dyer Australia’s defence minister, Brendan Nelson, is not the sharpest tool in the box, so people were not really surprised in July when he blurted out that the real motive for invading Iraq was oil: “Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire …
1 July 2007 Perspectives on Terrorism By Gwynne Dyer As terrorists go, this was “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” One of the would-be London bombers on 29 June drove erratically down Haymarket — presumably affected by the fumes from the gas cylinders and petrol (gasoline) containers that were the heart of his makeshift car-bomb …