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IISS Voices
17 May 2013.
By Kiran Hassan, Research assistant, South Asia Programme
Can a third-time prime minister rescue a nation in trouble? This is a question being asked about Nawaz Sharif since his party won the most number of votes in historic elections in Pakistan last weekend.
The poll – in which one elected Pakistani government succeeded another for the first time since independence in 1947 – leaves Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League–N (PML–N) in charge...
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IISS Voices
17 May 2013.
By Mona Moussavi, Editorial assistant
This year’s Iranian presidential election race got a lot more interesting last Saturday when former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani registered his candidacy just minutes before the deadline.
The move transforms the race to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who cannot stand in June’s poll after serving two full terms. Rafsanjani has a turbulent relationship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. And despite being a conservative, he is attractive to...
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IISS Voices
15 May 2013.
By Wafa Alsayed, Research Analyst, IISS-Middle East
In February of last year, Ahmed al-Saadoun, Kuwait’s speaker of the parliament at the time dismissed the idea of a Gulf Union. In an interview with Al-Arabiya, he stated that Kuwait, with its open political system, could not withstand a union with the more authoritarian Gulf states. However, since then Kuwait has undergone yet another chapter of political turmoil accompanied with harsh government reaction to public...
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IISS Voices
15 May 2013.
Sanjaya Baru’s most recent column in the Indian Express focuses on Brazil’s Roberto Carvalho de Azevedo, who has just been announced as the next director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Azevedo will be the first Latin American in the job when he takes over from Pascal Lamy on 1 September.
Baru, the IISS director for geo-economics, says that the media stereotyped the Brazilian Azevedo as the voice of protectionism and of the...
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IISS Voices
08 May 2013.
By Pierre Noel, Hassanal Bolkiah Senior Fellow in Economic and Energy Security
In the Baltic states, energy security remains perceived as a truly serious issue. It’s seen as a question of survival rather than, as it is in much of the world, merely an exciting topic for after-dinner speeches. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania depend entirely on Russia for their gas supply and have complicated political relationships with Moscow. Recent numerical indicators of gas-supply security...
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IISS Voices
07 May 2013.
By Emile Hokayem, Senior Fellow for Regional Security, IISS-Middle East
Israel’s recent air strikes on Syria were intended as a warning to both Syria and Iran, and to stop weapons falling into Hizbullah’s hands – but they have increased the likelihood of a regional conflict.
Last week, the Israeli air force struck two targets inside Syrian territory. The first seems to have been a shipment of surface-to-surface missiles destined for the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah...
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IISS Voices
02 May 2013.
By Jenny Nielsen, Research Analyst, Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme
Egypt has walked out of talks on the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) this week, over the slow progress on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East (MEWMDFZ).
The unprecedented move presents a serious headache for the non-proliferation regime. Announcing his delegation’s withdrawal from the Preparatory Committee to the 2015 NPT Review Conference (2013 NPT PrepCom) on...
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IISS Voices
29 April 2013.
By Wafa Alsayed, Research Analyst, IISS-Middle East
The trial of outspoken political activist Musallam al-Barrak seems to be galvanising Kuwait’s fragmented opposition – at least for the time being. Thousands of Kuwaitis took to the streets in protest on 15 April, after Barrak was sentenced by a lower court to a five-year jail term on charges of ‘offending the emir’. The Court of Appeal’s decision to release him on bail last Monday defused some...
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IISS Voices
26 April 2013.
By Mark Fitzpatrick, Director, Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme
Yesterday US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said it was likely that chemical weapons (CW) had been used on a ‘small scale’ in Syria. President Obama claimed in August that the use of CW in Syria would change his calculus on US intervention, but the intelligence must be examined carefully to assess whether his ‘red line’ on CW has actually been crossed.
On Thursday, the White House said that although...
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IISS Voices
24 April 2013.
By Virginia Comolli, Research Associate for Transnational Threats
What strikes me the most on my arrival in the city of Kano, in northern Nigeria, is the number of boys roaming the streets. Here in the heartland of the Islamist insurgency that has afflicted Nigeria for the past few years, children as young as four or five spend their days weaving among the chaotic traffic and begging for food. Sent to religious boarding...