With close to 90% of the votes tallied in Iraq's parliamentary elections, the coalition headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken a slim lead over the bloc led by his main challenger, Iyad Allawi. A day ago, it was the latter.

Since March 7, Iraqis have been glued to their television screens looking for clues for the direction their seven-year-war ravaged country might be heading in the next few years. Similarly, residents in neighboring countries have been closely monitoring the Iraqi elections through the many satellite television networks operating in the region. After all, elections are not a daily happening in the Arab world, and a number of those countries, such as Jordan and Syria, permitted Iraqi refugees to cast votes in their territories.

Meanwhile, one does not have to spend a lot of time watching Iran's Arabic-speaking Al Alam TV or the Saudi-financed Al Arabia TV in order to figure out who are the regional stake holders in the Iraqi elections. At times the Iraqi elections seem to take the shape of a battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as both countries have been overtly and covertly supporting the two heavyweight contenders. Iran supports Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, while Saudi Arabia has been rooting for former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Both al-Maliki and Allawi are Shiites, so why does Saudi Arabia want Allawi to win?

Al-Maliki's "cozying up" to Iran has been alarming many Arab countries. The Iraqi Prime Minister, whose Dawa Party is backed by Iran, has been flashing the sectarian card during his election campaign. With more than 500 candidates accused of links with the Ba'ath Party banned from running in the March elections, Al-Maliki's government has been accused of using the hated former regime to intimidate Sunnis in particular and opposition in general.

Iyad Allawi, although a Shiite, leads the al-Iraqiyya list, which proposes a secular agenda for the country. Many of its leading members are Sunnis or Arab nationalists who share the goal of bringing Iraq back to its Arab roots. Allawi's campaign ads have been airing on several Arab television stations, some say courtesy of Saudi Arabia.

But does this really matter to the average Iraqi citizen?

Not according to Kazem al-Dari, an Iraqi social scientist.

"What we need is stability," he says. "We've had elections before, we've tried Allawi before and now al-Maliki. Neither one brought stability and security to Iraq."

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. In 2003, the architects of the war envisioned that the toppling of Saddam Hussein would lead to the birth of a democratic Iraq. They told us that elections in Iraq would help spread democracy and liberalism across the Middle East, but this could not have been further from the truth.

The Middle East is more chaotic than ever, and the vast majority of its citizens are leaning politically towards Islamic theocracy and not liberal democracy. Iraqis are still searching for stability.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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Last June, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed a "landslide" victory election triggering months of upheaval. Tehran and other cities have seen the largest street protests and rioting since the 1979 Iranian Revolution by supporters of reform candidates alleging voter fraud. For the past several weeks, Iranian opposition groups and various media outlets have been predicting a repeat of this past summer's events during the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. The anniversary is the most important day in Iran's political calendar.

Instead, the opposition turnout was dwarfed by huge crowds at the state-run celebrations in the center of Tehran waving Iranian flags and carrying placards declaring the "US and Britain the brothers of the devil", and "Down with Israel."

A triumphant Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was now a "nuclear state" and would soon triple its output of 20% enriched uranium.

"By God's grace, it was reported that the first consignment of 20 per cent-enriched uranium was produced and put at the disposal of the scientists," he addressed the cheering crowd who had gathered in Tehran Azadi square to mark the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

But as Iranian state-controlled television beamed images of rallies supporting the regime in different cities, several Western and Arab television networks were reporting clashes between protesters and security forces in Tehran, Mashhad, Esfahan, Ahvaz, Shiraz and Tabriz. Opposition news websites alleged that security forces opened fire on anti-government demonstrators north of Revolution Square in Tehran, killing at least one person. A video posted on YouTube showing an Iranian security official pummeling an unarmed demonstrator was rebroadcast on several media outlets without confirming whether the video was shot recently or during the June events.

News quickly spread on Twitter that "opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi was attacked by security forces as he neared the main route of the march in Tehran." This was tweeted and retweeted hundreds of times. "His youngest son, Ali, was arrested," another tweet followed.

If one followed the "hashtag" (#IranElection) on Twitter on Thursday, he or she would have had the impression that the "Velvet Revolution" was rekindled. Although this was the wishful thinking of many, it was far from the truth. What went wrong?

Despite weeks of calls to action, the opposition movement failed to derail the holiday's agenda set by supporters of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian government had spent weeks co-opting the opposition plans. Dozens of activists and journalists were arrested, along with individuals suspected of using social networking websites to encourage protests against the regime.

Following in the footsteps of China, Google and other internet service providers had been blocked in Iran. SMS messages were interrupted, and internet communication was brought to a halt. Three major international broadcasters operating in the region, the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Voice of America, have recently accused the Iranian regime of "deliberate electronic interference" in their broadcasts.

It seems that the balance in the Iranian uprising is shifting in the regime's favor. This time Ahmadinejad was prepared... he succeeded in "unplugging" the opposition.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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2009 started out with a bang. Unfortunately, the bang was the sound of explosions in Gaza as the Israeli air force and artillery relentlessly bombarded several sites in the Gaza strip in order to stop the launching of Hamas Qassam rockets. On January 3rd, Israel launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip catapulting the Gaza War into its second week.

On the other side of the globe, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th and first African American President of the United States. His inauguration speech was viewed by billions across the globe; including those who live in the Arab & Muslim worlds. In an effort to reach out to those in the region, the newly elected president opted to grant his first official interview to an Arab television network: Al Arabiya TV. He also addressed 1.5 billion Muslims from the podium of Cairo University.

Meanwhile,  another election brought turmoil to the Middle East.

On June 12, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected as the president of Iran. During the following weeks, supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi protested the results. The resultant violence is said to be the worst seen in Iran since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The death of Neda Agha-Soltan, an Iranian student shot during a protest, was captured on what quickly became a viral video, turning Neda into an international symbol of the civil unrest following the presidential election.

The year 2009… From the war in Gaza to the election in Iran, how did Arab, Israeli and Iranian media cover the news?

Join me in this Mosaic 2009 Special: Connecting the Dots in the Middle East.

It's been four months since I described Yemen as a powder keg ready to explode. At the time the entire world was riveted to the television, watching the unfolding events of the "Velvet Revolution" in Iran. The Yemeni keg has since exploded. It is currently on the verge of causing a regional conflict.

For more than a week now, Saudi Arabia has been carrying out military operations on its remote southern border to punish Houthi rebels from neighboring Yemen who crossed over and attacked one of its patrols. Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of arming the rebels.

Accusations and counter accusations have been flying between the two rival regional powers. On Tuesday, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned that, "those who pour oil on the fire must know that they will not be spared from the smoke that billows".

This is not the first time Saudis and Iranians have faced off in the region. The rivalry between the two countries has been playing its course for years, extending from the Persian Gulf (where the name alone is a point of contention, Saudis refer to it as the Arabian Gulf) into Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. Like the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been supporting their factions in all these countries, either militarily, financially or both.

Both Tehran and Riyadh used Lebanon as their own battlefront to settle scores to the point of almost tipping the country into another civil war less than two years ago. Iran has been accused of pumping millions of dollars into Gaza and supplying Hamas with arms, while Saudi Arabia has been supporting the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Many Iraqi Shiites have accused Saudi Arabia with aiding the Sunni insurgency in the country.

Nowadays, even Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) is not spared from being a subject of contention between the two rivals. The Saudi government has recently issued a warning against pilgrims staging demonstrations during this year's Hajj, which runs from November 25-29. Although Iran was not specifically mentioned in the Saudi statement, Tehran replied it would take "appropriate measures" if Iranian pilgrims were interfered with in any way. The Islamic Republic of Iran has long complained about mistreatment and harassment of its pilgrims to Mecca by Saudi authorities during the Hajj season.

Like the original Cold War, both countries have launched sophisticated disinformation campaigns against one another. A propaganda war has raged between Iranian and Saudi government controlled media. During the Iranian election, Saudi media and its proxies viciously attacked the Iranian regime, highlighting poll irregularities, and the brutality of the Iranian Basij security forces. The Iranian media has constantly questioned, and on many instances mocked, the House of Saud's role as the custodian of the Holy Islamic sites in the Kingdom.

Last week, without warning, two satellite companies, the Egyptian-owned Nilesat and the Saudi-managed Arabsat pulled the plug on Iran's Arabic-speaking news channel, al-Alam, or the World. Nilesat's executive director, Ahmed Anis, announced that the broadcasting was cut due to contract violations; however, media sources throughout the Middle East suggest that al-Alam's support for the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen have angered Saudi officials, who in turn used their influence to take it of the air.

So far, both countries have shied away from direct military contact. Iran and Saudi Arabia, like the US and the USSR of old, have been competing in a series of peripheral surrogate conflicts. Could their relations be strained enough to lead to direct confrontations? Everything seems to be possible these days in the Middle East.

Original article published on the Huffington Post.

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Iran has agreed to allow international nuclear inspectors to view its recently revealed uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom, and President Obama has called talks between U.S. diplomats and their Iranian counterparts about the country's nuclear program a "constructive beginning."

However, recent events and heated rhetoric concerning Iran's nuclear program are reminiscent of the final days that lead to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 when then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations Security Council on February 5th of that year with what he called "solid" evidence that showed Iraq had still not complied with resolutions calling for it to disarm and was maintaining a secret WMD program. It seems that history is repeating itself.

Unlike what happened to Iraq in 2003, an invasion of Iran is not on the horizon; however, the prospect of targeting its nuclear facilities is more real than ever. More so than during the Bush Administration. The reason is simple: no amount of pressure or sanctions will force Iran to ab

andon what it perceives as its "unalienable right" to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

In an article in June, I outlined the drive behind Iran's nuclear ambition, and this has not changed. But most importantly the Obama Administration, although pursuing diplomatic means, seems to be convinced that the Iranians are conducting a clandestine nuclear program parallel to the public one. The aim of this, though of course not admitted by the Iranians, is clearly the acquisition of nuclear weapons. This position is shared by Israel, which will most likely get the green light to attack Iran's nuclear facilities by spring of 2010 when all negotiations with Iran will have hit a dead end.

Since April of this year, the Israeli military has been preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities. The United States and Israel have recently conducted their most complex military exercise ever, jointly testing three ballistic missile defense systems. Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

The Israeli Air Force has recently been conducting training exercises involving F15 and F16 jets, helicopters and refueling tankers flying to distances of more than 870 miles: the distance between Israel and Iran. Among recent preparations by the air force was the Israeli attack of a weapons convoy in Sudan allegedly bound for militants in the Gaza Strip.

A recent article in the British Daily Express reported that Israeli fighter jets have been allowed to use Saudi airspace to launch go-it-alone air strikes on Iranian nuclear installations. The issue has been discussed in a closed-door meeting in London, where British Intelligence Chief Sir John Scarlett, his Israeli counterpart Meir Dagan, and a Saudi official were present. According to the report, Scarlett has been told that Saudi airspace would be at Israel's disposal should Tel Aviv decide to move forward with his military plans against Iran. The Saudis have denied such claims; however, for the past few weeks Saudi-sponsored media has been raising concern over the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. No mention of Israel's 200 plus nuclear warheads.

A survey just released by the American Jewish Committee reports that for the first time ever, a majority of American Jews support using military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Fifty-six percent of American Jews think U.S. should strike Iran, while sixty-six percent of Israeli Jews back such an attack.

How many Americans support an attack on Iran?

Fifty-seven percent of American voters say Israel would be justified in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, given that Iran has publicly threatened to annihilate Israel, according to a McLaughlin poll conducted on May 8-9.

I am not being an alarmist, but the writing is on the wall.

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Article first published in the Huffington Post.