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Analysis: Holiday in the "Axis of Evil"

Stephen KinzerMay 25, 2010 06:30Updated May 30, 2010 13:35
YAZD, Iran —“You are American?” a surprised Iranian asked me as I sat down near him in a restaurant famous for eggplant and pomegranate stews. “How did you get a visa?”

Israel prepares for next threat — nuclear?

Matt Beynon Rees May 22, 2010 10:29Updated May 30, 2010 13:34
NABLUS, West Bank — During the Palestinian intifada, I sat on a dusty hilltop overlooking this most violent of West Bank towns with a dozen of the top Israeli officers in the area. The brigade commanders told their regional chiefs that all the police work and house-to-house fighting of the intifada had made their troops ill-prepared for a real war. “If we had to fight in Lebanon, my men wouldn’t know what they were doing,” shouted one.

Famous Iranian filmmaker on hunger strike

Iran GlobalPost CorrespondentMay 19, 2010 13:37
Famous Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was arrested in March, has started a hunger strike, according to opposition news website Jaras. Panahi openly supported the opposition movement after last summer’s disputed elections. In a letter published on the website, he said he began his strike on Sunday after “prison guards left me and some other prisoners naked in the cold for an hour and a half last Saturday.” He said he was accused of recording the conditions in his cell on video, an accusation he has denied.

Insurgents intended "spectacular" attack on Bagram airbase

May 19, 2010 09:33
The machine gun fire ripped through the silent night air just three hours after I had fallen asleep. Sleeping on the top bunk in a plywood hut at the media unit here at Bagram airbase, I was happy to get out of humid Dubai about nine hours before to fly to this base, which sits on a high altitude plain at 4,000 feet. The air was cool. Upon arrival, I went for a run, followed by a decent military dinner during which I watched part of a Simpson’s episode on the cafeteria’s TVs.

Making head scarves make history

May 23, 2010 09:43Updated May 30, 2010 13:34

Priced out of Cairo meat market

Jon JensenMay 24, 2010 07:13Updated May 30, 2010 13:34
CAIRO, Egypt — At El Rifai, tucked away in a narrow corner of one of Cairo’s poorest neighborhoods, the only thing on the menu is meat. For more than 40 years, this alleyway restaurant has been a carnivore’s dream, dishing up nightly over 200 pounds of fire-grilled kabob, seasoned lamb chops and tarb, a sausage-like stick of minced beef wrapped inside a layer of moist fat.

How to tie a keffiyeh ... and make history

May 23, 2010 09:49Updated May 30, 2010 13:34
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Yasser Arafat made it famous. Hipsters everywhere turned it into a fashion statement. Now, the Lebanese have helped set a record with the Palestinian keffiyeh — or rather with 6,500 of them. The keffiyeh — a woven check headdress traditionally worn by Arab men, and a symbol for Palestinians everywhere — recently helped its "rightful" wearers take home a Guinness World Record: for the largest chain of scarves.

Opinion: Push is on for UN sanctions on Iran

May 18, 2010 16:10Updated May 30, 2010 13:34
NEW YORK — The surprise Turkish-Brazilian diplomatic coup this week, which resulted in Iran agreeing to transfer a quantity of its uranium abroad for enrichment, may or may not help solve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program. But it does indicate that nations of increasing influence whose traditions and history place them far outside George W. Bush’s black-and-white world of “evil” don’t intend stand aside as another nuclear nonproliferation crisis slides toward armed conflict.

In Iraq, Americans have one foot out the door

Jane ArrafMay 16, 2010 09:22Updated May 30, 2010 13:33
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The hot dry wind kicks up the dust around the plywood table and broken chair that pass for a police checkpoint in east Baghdad. The lone policeman is unusually nervous. For once, the police are afraid of us rather than the other way around. After a series of shootings at checkpoints by gunmen with silencers, even a reporter and an Iraqi bodyguard getting out of the car could be potential assassins.

Analysis: "It's over" in Iran

Stephen Kinzer May 17, 2010 06:23Updated May 30, 2010 13:33
SHIRAZ, Iran — “It's over.” With that short answer, a young woman I met while strolling through a park in ancient Shiraz summed up what has happened to the protest movement that shook Iran and electrified the world after last year's disputed presidential election.
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