The Arabist

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:45:14 +0200

Ian’s Is Still The Best Site For Tying Your Shoelaces | Aftermath

This is what tears me apart about AI - with here Chris Person writing about a fantastic example, Ian’s Shoelace Site, which is both a wonderful relic of an earlier type of website (with late 1990s vibes) and an actually super-useful compendium of very specific, very nerdy information.

Ian, more than many writers and publishers on the internet, sees with cold clarity the catastrophic effect of AI on the continued survival of an independent web. “Today, my website is constantly being harvested by AI bots,” he said. “That content is then reused, typically without giving credit, in what amounts to little more than wholesale computerised plagiarism.The search engines, which we previously tolerated showing snippets of our content because they brought people to our websites, are now showing AI generated versions ahead of those snippets. These can be sufficient for visitors to remain on the search website and never end up visiting. Generative AI already allows folks to ask for something – such as a diagram on how to lace shoes with stars – and again, never find my website filled with diagrams on which that AI diagram was based.”

For Ian, the cumulative effect of all of these factors is a deep sadness, a sinking feeling of exhaustion and futility. What is the point of adding value to the internet if it is only going to rob you? Why do research, make diagrams, and develop new knots? “Why keep feeding the hungry beast that the internet has become?” Ian asked.

[Via Kottke]

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:09:48 +0200

Israel Set to Rapidly Expand West Bank Settlement

Before elections later this year. Plus ça change….

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:58:18 +0200

China and the Mediterranean | China Books Review

Liuyu Ivy Chen reviews two books, one historical and another contemporary.

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:51:54 +0200

En Tunisie, les autorités coupent Internet pour éviter la triche au baccalauréat | Le Monde

The Tunisian government has widely jammed or crippled the internet in the country to prevent cheating in high school exams. More staggering incompetence from Kaïs Saïd.

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:39:34 +0200

A New Tone and Better Cards in Kyiv | International Crisis Group

How Ukraine is emerging a winner out of the Iran war, at least in terms of establishing itself as an exporter of security to the Gulf:

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine relied at first on Türkiye for drones – just as it depended on other foreign partners to deliver other armaments, from artillery shells and missiles to tanks and fighter planes. But since then, Ukraine’s domestic industry has re-emerged and reformed, driven by need and entrepreneurship, to produce millions of drones per year. Ukraine’s drone arms race with Russia, as each country rushes to stay one step ahead of the other, has proven a boon for a new category of defence-industrial production, one that requires speed, adaptation and cost-effectiveness, even as Ukraine’s traditional defence industry also continues to develop both new and older types of weaponry.
To raise capital to manufacture even more drones, Ukraine originally sought partnerships with foreign countries, primarily in Europe and North America. But when the United States attacked Iran in February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the conflict as an opportunity to portray Ukraine as a potential exporter of security – and not just a consumer of it. Zelenskyy toured the Middle East, signing agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for cooperation in using and building drones, though the details of the deals are murky. Moreover, even though Trump publicly questioned whether Ukraine’s drone expertise was useful, the U.S. has reportedly deployed Ukrainian anti-drone technology at an air base in Saudi Arabia.

Also telling that in a five-point list about what is giving Ukraine greater confidence, points 1 thru 3 are about its drones.

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:38:23 +0200

Saudi Economic Contraction: How MBS Debt-Led Growth Is Creating a Strategic Financial and Geopolitical Trap for Saudi | MENA Unleashed

The International Monetary Fund concluded its 2026 Article IV mission to Riyadh this week with a verdict dressed in the careful language of approval. The Saudi economy, it said, is proving resilient in the face of the war, supported by strong fundamentals and diversified infrastructure. Growth this year will come in notably lower but holding up at around 2%, down from 4.5% in 2025, contingent on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz normalising in the coming months. Inflation is projected to rise to 2.3%. Higher oil prices, the Fund noted, would offset volume losses and ease the fiscal and current account deficits. It was a statement designed to reassure, and the markets read it that way.
The word resilience is doing an extraordinary amount of work here. Strip it away and look at the arithmetic, and a very different economy comes into view. A 2% expansion of a roughly 1.3 trillion dollar economy is about 26 billion dollars of additional output. In the same year, the Saudi state alone plans to borrow 58 billion dollars. That figure covers a 44 billion dollar budget deficit and 14 billion dollars in maturing principal. The sovereign is borrowing more than twice the entire increment of growth the IMF is celebrating. And the sovereign is only the first and smallest layer of the structure.

A lot more details there about how the Saudi parastatal institutions (sovereign wealth funds, banks, state companies) are all borrowing, sometimes from themselves, creating dependence on a range of overwhelmingly Western lenders.

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:59:53 +0200

Congress Is Trying to Permanently Integrate U.S. and Israeli Defense Tech | The Intercept

Critical reporting by Austin Campbell:

Lawmakers and military experts told The Intercept that Section 224, named “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is highly irregular — and closely resembles a bipartisan bill backed by the pro-Israel lobby that died in Congress earlier this year.
“I can’t think of another example of Congress formalizing integration of critical national security technologies with a foreign power,” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore.

Unlike traditional foreign military aid programs, Section 224 would establish a framework for integrating Israeli-developed technologies directly into U.S. research, procurement, manufacturing, and acquisition processes — which military experts warned would be complicated, if not impossible, to unwind. It would apply across areas including AI, autonomous systems, cyberwarfare, biotechnology, missile defense, and defense industrial production.

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:48:49 +0200

Le Maroc élimine un haut responsable du Front Polisario | Le Monde

Morocco carries out drone killing of Polisario leader near Western Sahara berm.

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:58:54 +0200

Brussels Institute for Geopolitics – The ideological roots of MAGA’s anti-European offensive

On three luminaries behind the national-conservatives' view of Europe. Interesting to see the Israeli link and the whiffs of “Eurabia”.

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:37:42 +0200

The State of the Strait: The Role of Hormuz in the Middle East War So Far | International Crisis Group

Comprehensive explainer with quite useful graphics.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:17:40 +0200

Trump’s Defense Department Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel - The New York Times

Tel Aviv upping spying on Witkoff and other top officials negotiating Iran talks.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:36:07 +0200

The Birds of Palestine (Arabic) – Shop Palestine

Lovely poster available for sale to raise funds for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (via Kottke)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:34:00 +0200

The Last Traces of a Family the Assad Regime Marked for Destruction - New Lines Magazine

Morgan Laffer, reporting on the long struggle to discover the fate of six children kidnapped by Assad’s security force.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:33:00 +0200

Iran’s Care for Orphans Has Been Transformed by War - New Lines Magazine

Fateme Karimkhan, writing on how the war has changed fostering and other practices for Iranian orphans.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:28:07 +0200

Unmaking the Middle East | Andrew Arsan | The New York Review of Books

Review of Fawaz Gerges' two most recent books, What Really Went Wrong and The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:15:32 +0200

The World Misunderstands the India–UAE Relationship - Gulf International Forum

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:12:26 +0200

The U.S. Needs Its Mideast Bases - WSJ

It’s astonishing to see this kind of piece, by pro-war longtime neocons Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, as if the US disbanding its Gulf bases is now in question:

Whatever credibility Washington still has in the Middle East depends on its willingness to maintain bases in the Gulf and in Iraq—and that places U.S. forces in harm’s way. Given our failure so far to fight the Battle of Hormuz and our inability to defend our allies adequately, this lever has lost some of the deterrence that once scared the Islamic Republic’s rulers. But it’s all we have now in an otherwise deteriorating situation.
If the Trump administration is unwilling to try to win this war militarily—which could entail losing destroyers, placing ground troops on Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf, and running convoys under fire for an indefinite period—then it needs to think about how to minimize America’s losses, to keep the failure at Hormuz from turning into a regional, if not global, rout.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:07:29 +0200

If I Were Chuck Schumer | The New York Review of Books

Joseph O’Neill, interviewed by Daniel Drake:

If I were Senator Schumer, I would take stock of the polls, which reveal an amazingly unpopular Democratic Party that is despised by its own base. I would take stock of the collapse of DNC and DSCC fundraising. I would ask myself if I was responsible for this disastrous state of affairs. I would answer this question in the affirmative. Because I, Chuck Schumer, and my network of politicians, consultants, and donors, have for decades controlled the Democratic Party—its policy platform, its brand management, its finances, its political strategy. I’d reflect that that I am indeed unequipped—temperamentally, ideologically, and (at seventy-five) physically—to engage in the politics that this moment calls for. And I’d finally accept that my loyalty to the interests of the Democratic Party conflicts with my loyalty to Israeli interests and, by extension, to the interests of Likud’s sister party in the US, the Republican Party. Then I’d resign as Senate minority leader.

This is precisely what will not happen.

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:01:34 +0200

What Visual Evidence Tells Us About Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus in Lebanon - The New York Times

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:55:03 +0200

Lessons from RightsCon Cancellation for Democracy Promotion

Andrew Friedman and Tara L. Thwing, write here for Just Security on the recent cancellation of RightsCon, a major civil society and human rights gathering, by the government of Zambia. The cancellation, most likely due to Chinese pressure on Zambia because of the presence of Taiwanese civil society activists at the event, was a major shock for this staple of the global rights community and a clear sign that one of the way the world is changing is that you can’t take for granted even nominally friendly governments not bucking under external pressure in this age of great power rivalry and, for African countries in particular, extreme dependency on borrowing from China. Read the full article for the local context, including the policies of Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema (a darling of the Biden administration and host of its “Summit for Democracy”).

I attended last years’s RightsCon in Taipei, which proved an excellent showcase for Taiwanese NGOs and the plight their country faces in its complex, fraught but also at times ambiguous, relationship with the People’s Republic of China. It cemented to me why it’s important to provide a space for Taiwanese to tell their story – the country is also a major hub for Hong Kong activists who are no longer able to live at home. It is similar in some respects to the way Palestinian activists get de-platformed in the West despite extensive solidarity networks there.

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:47:56 +0200

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu replay 1982 Beirut stand-off | FT

Mehul Srivastava and Abigail Hauslohner on the parallels with Reagan and Begin:

As it battled the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel had laid siege to Beirut for weeks and had been intensively shelling the city’s suburbs for nearly half a day, killing more civilians than PLO fighters. In Reagan’s own words, “I was angry.”

“I told him it had to stop immediately, or our entire future relationship was endangered,” wrote Reagan. “I used the word ‘Holocaust’ deliberately and said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a seven-month-old baby with its arms blown off.”

Israelis including Begin have contested how much Reagan’s anger influenced Begin’s decision-making. But within half an hour, the shelling had stopped.

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:12:11 +0200

L’artiste franco-iranienne Marjane Satrapi, autrice de la bande dessinée « Persepolis », est morte à l’âge de 56 ans | Le Monde

Satrapi, author of the blockbuster graphic novel Persepolis, about growing up in the early years of the Islamic Republic, has passed. Her family said that she “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of her husband, Mattias Ripa.”

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:17:53 +0200

Iran’s New Grand Strategy | Foreign Affairs

A fascinating essay by Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argues that the last year of Iran-Israel-US war has fundamentally changed the way Iran is governed, putting nationalist technocrats in charge instead of Islamist ideologues:

Before the U.S.-Israeli attack in June 2025, Iran’s rulers had assumed they could indefinitely sustain a no-war, no-peace standoff with the United States and Israel. They were proved wrong, and the reckoning with that complacency began the moment the 12-day war ended. The new IRGC leadership expected the June cease-fire to collapse and another war to follow, possibly with the United States involved from the start. Iran’s universities, research institutions, think tanks, and government bodies began hosting debates about lessons learned and changes required. More institutional change took place in those eight months than in the previous ten years combined. Many executive decisions on trade, agriculture, and management of economic and social services were decentralized from Tehran to provincial capitals. And the organizations overseeing propaganda, communication with domestic audiences, and information dissemination abroad underwent a generational overhaul. Institutional lethargy had long defined the Islamic Republic’s bureaucracy; now it gave way to the imperative of rapid adaptation. In the process, the technocratic decision-makers took charge.

. . .

Iran’s conduct of the subsequent war reflected the new generation’s technocratic approach. The Islamic Republic had long operated through a chaotic maze of competing power centers, which produced unending internal debate and sclerotic inertia. But between the two wars, that chaos gave way to organizational discipline and resilience. A new Supreme Defense Council—led by the IRGC generals Abdolrahim Mousavi, Mohammad Pakpour, and Ali Shamkhani—was created to expedite military changes. Ghalibaf, a former IRGC general who became speaker of parliament in 2020, and Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, performed parallel roles in the civilian and economic bureaucracy, working through government ministries and municipal authorities. Veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, these men had learned to manage against insurmountable odds on the frontlines. Facing Iran’s biggest challenge since the 1980s, the revolution’s founding generation moved swiftly to reorganize statecraft around war. These older leaders oversaw the transition to the new generation, which quickly reorganized the scattered nodes of power into a coherent decision-making structure that could survive the loss of any single leader.

. . .

This is not liberalization; in fact, the regime continues to crack down hard on political dissent. But the state now acknowledges that it needs a social base far larger than Islamic ideology alone can provide. Increasingly, the Islamic Republic looks less like a theocracy and more like a right-wing nationalist authoritarian state. Islamic ideology persists, but it is subordinated to the imperative of national cohesion. The test of political fealty is no longer “Are you Islamic enough?” but “Are you Iranian enough?”

Mon, 18 May 2026 17:13:53 +0200

“Strategic Balance” under Stress: Egypt and the U.S.-Israeli War with Iran | International Crisis Group

Since the U.S. and Israel set off their war with Iran, Egypt has been looking for an off-ramp. Cairo has used diplomatic and intelligence channels to help establish indirect communication between Washington and Tehran, which the parties have used to relay red lines, messages and de-escalation proposals. Its mediation attempts are part of efforts by a loosely coordinated bloc that includes Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in support of a durable ceasefire arrangement that is acceptable to both sides. Per Tehran’s request, Islamabad has emerged as the lead broker, hosting talks and proposing ceasefire frameworks, while Cairo and Ankara have provided political backing and shuttled between the sides.

Cairo has chosen to position itself as a mediator in an effort to advance three goals: containing the crisis; supporting its Gulf Arab allies; and strengthening intra-Arab cohesion that could counterbalance Israel. It particularly dreads the prospect of the Islamic Republic falling apart under fire, however unlikely that scenario seems right now, for fear that it would trigger years of Middle East instability, harm Egyptian national security and further encourage Israel to pursue what Cairo sees as expansionist aims.

Mon, 18 May 2026 17:08:08 +0200

Jordan’s New Security Dilemma – Arab Reform Initiative

Sean Yom:

Herein lies Jordan’s new security dilemma. Squeezed between Israeli expansionism and Iranian attacks, the Hashemite Kingdom faces unprecedented threats to its sovereignty. Those challenges persist not despite, but because of, American hegemony.