Iraq’s humanitarian need is so vast, ‘it’s shocking,’ says speaker - Catholic News Service

Monday, May 16, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

A rising tide of intolerance in the Middle East threatens minority faith communities with cultural extinction, said speakers at a May 10 lecture in New York. Religious minorities are the most seriously impacted among the millions who have fled their homes to escape violence and the percentage of Christians in the region has dropped to an all-time low, panelists said.

The Extremist Influence, Muslim Women & The Hijab, Sex Talk - To The Contrary

Friday, May 13, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

Extremism: social media is adding to the increas of women's participation in terrorist acts. Muslim Women & the Hijab: Is the choice to wear or not wear the hijab becoming a feminist movement? Sex Talk: Mona Elthawy's "Sex Talk for Muslim Women" brings to light the need to discuss the once taboo subject openly.

The Demise of Hezbollah’s Untraceable Ghost - The New Yorker

Friday, May 13, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

Mustafa Badreddine, a cocky Lebanese bomb maker and one of the architects of Islamic terrorism, was buried Friday. He was Hezbollah’s top military commander, and, along with his brother-in-law Imad Mughniyah, who died in 2008, masterminded one of the longest-running sprees of violence—bombings, hostage-takings, assassinations, and airplane hijackings—in the Middle East.

What the Pope Saw at Hiroshima - The New Yorker

Thursday, May 12, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

For all the wrenching emotion that Hiroshima evoked during my trip with John Paul, I believe the horror that occurred there has never haunted the world enough, and there seems to be little that either a Pope or a President can do or say to change that.

A century later, many still blame this agreement for turmoil in the Middle East - Marketplace Radio

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

Almost 100 years ago, two European men were tasked with drawing up a new border map for the Middle East. Their names were Sir Mark Sykes and Francois George-Picot and their map was arbitrary and largely ignored the intricate politics of the area. To this day, power brokers in the region still blame what became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement for fostering unrest in places like Iraq and Syria.

Iran’s Grim News from Syria - The New Yorker

Monday, May 9, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

Iran is taking increasingly heavy casualties in Syria. A statement from the Revolutionary Guards announced on Saturday that thirteen of the corps’ élite forces were “martyred” in the escalating battle near Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, which has become the front line in the five-year civil war. Another twenty-one Iranians were wounded. It is, for Iran, the largest single casualty toll since the country intervened to rescue the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

How the Curse of Sykes-Picot Still Haunts the Middle East - The New Yorker

Saturday, April 30, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

“We don’t know the fate of the people in this region,” Salih, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told me this week. “But, for sure, this time—unlike a hundred years ago, when Mr. Sykes and M. Picot drew the lines in the sand—the people of the region will have much to do with shaping the new order.” The problem, for them and the outside world, is that they only know what they don’t want. They have yet to figure out which political systems—and which borders—will work.

Who Will Rule Mosul? - Foreign Policy (blog)

Friday, April 29, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

The operation to recapture the Iraqi city from the Islamic State has turned into a high-stakes political contest for power. And the shooting hasn’t even started.

Iran’s Javad Zarif on the Fraying Nuclear Deal, U.S. Relations, and Holocaust Cartoons - The New Yorker

Monday, April 25, 2016

News Type: USIP in the News

Three months after Iran dismantled large parts of its nuclear program, in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the international nuclear deal—the country’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, declared last week in New York that the United States is falling seriously short of its commitments. Iran’s Central Bank chief, Valiollah Seif, delivered a similar message during his first meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, on April 14th, and he told the Council on Foreign Re...