What are the implications for India if Iran is attacked? How effective has the response been by gulf nations to their own protests? Ambassador Talmiz Ahmad, India’s former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, discusses the dynamics of West Asia with Gateway House’s Alisha Pinto and Azadeh Pourzand.
The scope for any process on nuclear talks with Iran to founder on distrust, misunderstanding and political in-fighting in both Tehran and Washington remains formidable. Equally disturbing are the wider political realities. Can the upcoming talks in Istanbul launch a process that can, over time, lead to agreement?
Courtesy: freeedomania/Flickr
As the al-Assad regime faces increasing international pressure to step down from power, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attempted to make political reforms recently. However, Syria has strong relations within West Asia and the denouement will profoundly impact developments in this region.
Courtesy: notsogoodphotography/Flickr
Despite recent regime changes and agitation in the Middle East, the international community's attention has been diverted from the Indian Ocean - via Maldives. After President Nasheed's forced resignation, the country is now in political turmoil.
Courtesy: nazeah/Wikimediacommons - Ramesh Lalwani/Flickr
The year 2011 saw various events - the Arab Spring, anti- corruption protests, Europe's sovereign debt crisis - transform countries and reshape the world order. Gateway House takes a look at what these events mean for India, and presents India's top foreign policy cheers and jeers for the year.
Courtesy: White House photo/WikimediaCommons
The Wahhabis, who now merit NATO backing, continue on their global mission of converting the Muslim Ummah to its relatively harsh and antediluvian ways of thinking and living. For NATO, this is a geopolitical miscalculation that will have tragic security consequences for the alliance within a decade.
Courtesy: US Army/ Flickr
President Barack Obama is receiving pressure from domestic politics and Israel to maintain his stance on a nuclear free Iran. Will the United States go so far as to attack Iran, and if so, can it deal with the consequences?
Courtesy: PMO
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the UN General Assembly has put Indian perceptions on the record and clearly outlined India’s independent foreign policy. India came out unequivocally in support of the Palestinian struggle & reiterated its traditional stance of respecting countries’ sovereignty.
Courtesy: www.whitehouse.gov/WikimediaCommons
Repeated applause greeted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' speech to the UN General Assembly, asking for support for the “establishment of Palestine.” But with the U.S. backing Israel, under almost all circumstances, will Abbas' proposal be able to bring about any change?
Corruption has become a galling global phenomenon: structured, vertically-integrated networks, whose objective is the extraction of resources, are forming in countries around the globe. And strikingly, these structures are masquerading as democratically-elected, seemingly-open governments.
