Qifa Nabki
Israel
Wikileaks Shocker: Lebanese Defense Minister Reveals Plan to Stay out of Israel’s Way in Next War
If you haven’t yet seen them, be sure to check out the latest Wikileaks cables released to al-Akhbar, at least one of which is tremendously damning and could have major implications for the Lebanese political scene. (See here for the Lebanon-specific ones). In the cable mentioned, the Lebanese Minister of Defense Elias al-Murr discusses with … Continue reading
Master and Pupil
At some point in 2006, I recall asking a friend of mine what he thought of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had recently been elected President of Iran. This friend (known to readers of this blog as “Abbas“) is a Lebanese Shiite living in Beirut, and a devoted partisan of Hizbullah. The conversation went something like this: … Continue reading
An Interview with Thanassis Cambanis
A friend of mine, Thanassis Cambanis, has a new book out about Hizbullah. Between 2000 and 2007, Thanassis worked as a reporter for the Boston Globe, and served as the paper’s Iraq bureau chief from 2003-05 and Middle East bureau chief from 2005-07. He’s also worked for The New York Times and various other media … Continue reading
Israel and the Hariri Assassination: An Equal-Opportunity Scapegoat?
Tha’ir Ghandour has an interesting exclusive interview in today’s Al-Akhbar newspaper with an unnamed “security source close to Saad al-Hariri”. (There’s an English summary of the story here.) The gist of the source’s testimony is the following: In 2006, the Lebanese intelligence services uncovered evidence of the involvement of certain Hizbullah members in the Hariri … Continue reading
Hariri’s Next Move
Saad al-Hariri has yet to issue a statement about last night’s press conference, since he is apparently out of the country (where he always seems to be whenever Nasrallah issues one of his earth-shaking statements about the tribunal.) Until he returns and provides some indication as to how his government is going to respond to … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…