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March 8, 2016 In a remarkable if little-noticed development last week, all six GCC states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain – formally designated the Lebanese movement Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. This week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called this step “important and even amazing,” but

Tehran has a history of showing hints of reform to hopeful citizens and Western observers only to snatch them away in the end.

The recent warning by the Financial Action Task Force to banks about dealings with Iran shows that the end of nuclear sanctions was only the start of a long process.

As in past votes, the candidates have been closely screened, the outcome is expected to uphold the legislature's largely conservative makeup, and the victors will remain largely dependent on military institutions.

Tehran and its proxies have increased their efforts to provide armor-piercing explosive devices to Shiite cells in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and this game-changing escalation could pose even greater challenges if Riyadh takes further action in Syria.

The lifting of international sanctions and the region's vastly changing geopolitical environment have opened a window of opportunity for Tehran to buy potent arms from Russia and modernize its arsenal.

Successive White House administrations have tried to weaken the Iranian mullahs’ grip on the country through war, sanctions, and diplomatic isolation. Each policy has failed eminently, and a considerable list of U.S. officials expects more of the same from President Obama’s new strategy of ‘veiled’ diplomacy, which attempts to foster

The situation in the Middle East is beginning to resemble the Balkans: either the Balkans in the early 1990s, before Washington woke up and played its role as security leader, or the Balkans before World War I, when no one woke up.