Noteworthy
The legacy of the ousted president still casts a long shadow over Egypt, writes Steven A. Cook in Foreign Policy.
The Egypt that Mubarak officially inherited from Anwar Sadat on Oct. 14, 1981, was very different from the country that slipped from his grasp on Feb. 11, 2011. On the eve of the uprising, many of Egypt’s critical macroeconomic indicators were pointing in the right direction: GDP growth was healthy, the debt-to-GDP ratio was manageable, foreign reserves were up, and foreign direct investment was flowing. To be sure, not all Egyptians were benefiting from this state of affairs. However, if one surveys the daunting economic, social, and political problems they confront now, it seems that millions of Egyptians are thinking the unthinkable—that someone who represents the Mubarak period is the appropriate person to lead the country into what would most likely be a not-so-new era.
Clinton and Peres discuss the Middle East
At an event hosted by the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, the Israeli President and American Secretary of State talk about a wide range of issues, including Syria, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Arab Spring.
I can’t, sitting here today, tell you what the Iranians will or won’t do, but I am quite certain that they are under tremendous pressure from the Russians and the Chinese to come to Moscow prepared to respond. Now, whether that response is adequate or not, we will have to judge. They, for about the last 10 days, have been pushing to get a so-called experts meeting, pushing to try to even postpone Moscow in the absence of such meeting. And there was not a single blink by any of the negotiators. And then, as you saw in the news, there was a statement that yes, the Iranians would show up. My counterpart from Russia, Sergey Lavrov, is either there or on his way there.
Media Digest
- Times of Israel: Israeli wants to renounce citizenship to become Palestinian
- Haaretz: Peres: Peace in the Middle East is just a matter of time (Subscription site)
- The Jerusalem Post: ‘Son of Hamas’ arrives in Israel
- Ynet: MK Michaeli: Most gays were sexually abused
- New York Times: Syria Crisis and Putin’s Return Chill U.S. Ties With Russia
- Washington Post: David Ignatius: Lebanon sitting on the edge
- Wall Street Journal: U.S. Bolsters Ties to Fighters in Syria