Briefing Archive

Ahead of parliamentary elections later this month, there is widespread disillusionment among Iranian voters. The nuclear deal that Tehran concluded with world powers in 2015 is hanging by a thread, and the economy is being throttled by unprecedented American sanctions. Across the country, security forces have clashed with protesters disgruntled at economic and political conditions. And while Iran and the United States have pulled back from the brink of war, tensions remain high. All of this has fueled the more hard-line factions in Tehran who blame President Hassan Rouhani, a centrist politician first elected in 2013 promoting an agenda of […]

Malaysia’s veteran 94-year-old prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, returned to power in May 2018 after promising voters that his archfoe-turned-ally, Anwar Ibrahim, would succeed him partway through his five-year term. Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan coalition agreed on the succession plan ahead of its upset victory over Najib Razak’s scandal-plagued government in the 2018 elections. Mahathir himself said shortly after being sworn in that he would lead for an “initial stage, lasting one or two years,” before stepping down. Yet as the two-year mark approaches, no date has been set for that handover and calls for a transition are growing louder. Mahathir’s proposed […]

Over the past year, Moldova has seen perhaps its most unexpected series of political developments since it first emerged as an independent state from the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It has been a case study in how post-communist countries mired in kleptocratic corruption can break free from the grip of politically influential oligarchs and help reorient their countries on a path of transparent government and reform. First, over the summer, the most surprising governing coalition in the country’s history took root. After a months-long political stalemate following inconclusive parliamentary elections last February, the pro-Western ACUM […]

For the first time in Syria’s nine-year war, the Turkish military this week launched direct attacks on the Syrian army. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that he ordered howitzers and F-16 fighter jets to hit President Bashar al-Assad’s forces near the Turkish border in response to the killing of eight Turkish soldiers in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. “We are determined to continue our operations to ensure the safety of our country, our nation and our brothers in Idlib,” Erdogan warned. Turkey’s defense minister, Gen. Hulusi Akar, later claimed 76 Syrian soldiers were “neutralized” in attacks on more than […]

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s left-leaning president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, took office in December 2018 vowing to demilitarize his country’s war on drugs and tackle its wave of violent crime with a policy of “hugs, not bullets.” Yet his first full year in office saw 35,588 homicides committed nationwide, breaking the previous record for the third year in a row. In one of the more high-profile atrocities, nine members of a prominent Mexican-American Mormon family were massacred in November, including six children. The spiraling violence, along with AMLO’s failed promises to address it, has rekindled a long-running debate in Mexico over how […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland—The two main political parties in Northern Ireland announced a deal last month to restore the region’s power-sharing government, which had ceased to function three years ago. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the deal on Jan. 10, which was brokered by the British and Irish governments, Northern Ireland’s institutions of devolved government were back up and running. Yet while many in Belfast are breathing a sigh of relief, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent Brexit deal has created a host of new problems for the region that the reopened Northern Ireland Assembly will need to confront. […]

LIMA, Peru—When Martin Vizcarra stepped up from the vice presidency to replace the disgraced Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as president of Peru in March 2018, the odds appeared stacked against him. An austere, accidental leader whose tiny political party, Peruvians for Change, controlled a fast-disintegrating congressional bloc, Vizcarra immediately came under heavy fire from the hard-right Popular Force party, led by Keiko Fujimori, which had seized on a bribery scandal to force Kuczynski to resign. After three months of attempting to appease the Fujimoristas—and seeing his approval ratings plummet—Vizcarra launched a make-or-break campaign against Peru’s rampant corruption, and by implication Popular […]