The United States appears to be in a hurry to bring about a regime change in Iran but its biggest problem is that it does not know how to go about it. In recent weeks, the US has increased its Iran-bashing tempo and intensified diplomatic efforts aimed at forcing Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment programme. US Secretary of …

On the relatively rare occasions when the media turns its attention to U.S. weapons sales abroad and shines its not-so-bright spotlight on the latest set of facts and figures, it invariably speaks of “the global arms trade.” Let’s consider that label for a moment, word by word: *It is global, since there are few places on the planet that lie …

CAIRO, Egypt — Father Metyas Mankarios ministers to garbage men and runs a newspaper for Coptic Christians from an office crammed with brittle archives above vegetable sellers and fishmongers barking out prices along the muddy roads of a Cairo neighborhood. Few have it easy here. From dawn until deep into the night, there is the clatter of making a living, …

© Islamic Finance Today The recent outing of two of the backbones of the recent Islamic Finance phenomena in the Mid East (organised Tawarruq and some types of Sukuk) as possibly Haraam has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons. Now, all of sudden – well meaning Islamic bankers and their customers are finding themselves stuck in the middle. Are they …

In 1987, US President Ronald Reagan pointing at the Berlin Wall during a visit to West Germany, bluntly said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Two years after this famous Reagan remark, the wall that divided Germany for 28 years collapsed, leading to the reunification of Germany. In 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev helplessly watched the Soviet Union disintegrate into 15 independent …

DOHA: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will join Qatar’s Prime Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani to address the seventh edition of US-Islamic World Forum opening here today. The three-day event, being jointly hosted by the US think- tank Brookings Institution and Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, …