It is highly unlikely that Muslim Brotherhood rule will outlast President Morsi’s four-year term; the real question is the manner of their exit from power
The ruling (in a manner of speaking) Muslim Brotherhood faces a strategic, even fateful decision: granting that they’ll be removed from power within 4 years at the outside, they need to make up their minds whether they’d rather bow out gracefully or be thrown out, exit via the ballot box, or revolution.
At least 50 Saudi judges have resigned in protest at the pressure exerted on them by the Riyadh regime to sentence political activists, Press TV reports.
At a time when the United States-Russia “reset” lies in limbo, it should come as no surprise that President Vladimir Putin has made one of the most important statements of his four-month-old presidency, drawing attention to the commonality of interests between the two major world powers and indeed between Russia and the West on one of the hottest issues of current world politics – the Middle Eastern question.
The thesis that the politics of the Middle East is all about the “rivalry” between Saudi Arabia and Iran falls apart in the quicksands of Egypt’s politics. Egypt is a Sunni country which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Iran. And it has been traditionally a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been vassal states of the United States for the past few decades.
Demonstrators have spilled on to the streets of the eastern Saudi city of Qatif, angered by the death of a man during the latest bout of protests in the country.
A Bahraini court has ordered an 11-year-old boy be monitored for a year after being tried on charges of disturbing security by taking part in popular demonstrations against the country’s monarch.
The Bahraini regime has rejected the request to transfer prominent human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to Denmark, as he enters the 60th day of his hunger strike in prison.