Word: regionalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Arabia have long been on opposite sides of a deep rift in the Arab world, pitting those countries that are allied with the U.S. - including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt - against those countries and militant groups such as Syria, Hamas and Hizballah, which have opposed American power in the region and are at war with Israel. That rivalry deepened after the assassination of Hariri, who was Riyadh's main ally in Beirut, and got personal during the 2006 war in Lebanon, when Assad implied that the King and other Arab leaders who had criticized the Hizballah raid on Israel that...
...Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut. In the past year, however, the Syrian leader has hosted a growing number of heads of state and world leaders, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who have sought Syria's cooperation in settling many of the region's seemingly intractable disputes. (See pictures of President Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia...
...their part, Saudi Arabia's leaders have grown increasingly worried about the rising power of Iran. The Persian and Shi'ite dominated Islamic Republic is both a religious and racial challenge to Arab and Sunni Saudi Arabia's dominance of the region, and Iran has deftly exploited the divisions in the Arab world by allying itself with radical anti-Israeli movements, in concert with Syria. With Iran's ongoing nuclear-development program - which many Arab countries suspect is a cover for producing weapons - raising those concerns to a fever pitch, Saudi Arabia has decided it can no longer afford open...
Indeed, rather than distance themselves from Iran, the Syrians recently gave the greenlight for Iran to expand its embassy in Damascus, already Iran's largest in the region. And the close ties between Iran and Syria were visible last month at a Quds Day celebration at the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus in September. The holiday has its origins in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran, when Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to be a day to protest the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem. The keynote speaker...
Experts say it could take Venezuela's less-than-stellar science infrastructure more than a decade to develop a nuclear-power industry, let alone a nuclear bomb. (Only Brazil, Argentina and Mexico produce nuclear power in the region.) What's more, Venezuela is a signatory to the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which prohibits the development of nuclear weapons in Latin America. Even so, says Mendelson, "the U.S. is worried that Venezuela has become a platform for the entrance of Iranian mischief in the hemisphere." If Iran is building a bomb, she adds, the U.S. may well assume that Tehran is interested...