Two and a half years after the Arab uprisings erupted, we are starting to witness the first small signs of the regional implications of the birth of Arab citizens and a public political sphere defined by populist legitimacy, notes Rami G. Khouri.

Because of all the disputes between Iraq’s central government and the authorities in the semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan on, amongst other topics, how the oil industry is managed, the central government has been playing politics with its fuel coupons, writes Shwan Zulal.

Unlike other acts of boycott, sometimes dismissed by Israeli officials as insignificant, this one was manifestly shocking for Israel, stresses Ramzy Baroud.

I fear there may be a time when we aren’t there to be a sounding board for our kids. As my son takes in every word, I quietly hope I’m not scaring him, writes Naazish YarKhan.

Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria, notes Immanuel Wallerstein.

Pakistan is not so different from other majority-Muslim states, which all share a history of authoritarian, top-down forced adoption to western modernity, characterized by accepting an imposed economic system of capitalism and a political system composed of ‘sovereign’ ethnically distinct nation states, says Eric Walberg.

As citizen, state, society, territoriality, and the instruments of violence all break free from their former authoritarian moorings and seek new configurations on the basis of the will of citizenries, the very concept of sovereignty is slowly being redefined across many Arab countries, argues Rami G. Khouri.

Official Washington’s ideology of “tough-guy-ism” has prevented a potential breakthrough in nuclear talks with Iran. Afraid of being called weak, President Obama has balked at accepting Iran’s right to enrich uranium even at low levels and under international supervision, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett say.

The recent commando raid on a prison by Indonesian Special Forces provoked renewed debate about the need to further reform the military and subject it to civilian justice - 15 years after the end of autocratic rule in Jakarta. This illustrates the difficult road post-revolt nations in the Middle East and North Africa have to travel, notes James M. Dorsey.

After World War II, US prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals deemed aggressive war the “supreme international crime” because it unpacked all the other evils of war. But Official Washington now treats US invasions of “enemy” states as a topic for casual political discourse, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.

The Syria of old is forever gone; a democracy will not easily emerge from the breakdown of the old order; and a terrible price will be paid by Syria's minorities in fulfilling the dreams of religious extremists, says James Zogby.

Seeing the new rulers as dedicated Muslims who would never oppress Egyptians or loot the country's huge resources and natural wealth, people believed the Brotherhood’s promises. However, Egyptians have promptly realized that they were daydreaming, writes Mohammed Aly Ibrahim.

Official Washington is obsessing over the Benghazi “scandal,” proof that the Republicans and their right-wing media can make the smallest things big and the biggest things small. It is a disparity that has distorted how Americans understand their recent history, writes Robert Parry.

The pro-Israel lobby has been so effective dominating US policy toward the Middle East that the success, paradoxically, has made Washington increasingly irrelevant to the peace process. That has created a vacuum that China and other nations may try to fill, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

Nick Turse explores what a series of nuclear strikes in Iran would mean and what -- if the Iranians ever actually developed a nuclear weapon -- an Iranian attack on Israel would be like: another devastating set of figures.

Egypt’s reconciliation process has been lauded as restoring confidence to outside investors. But others say it amounts to impunity for the rich, points out Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

International polls are some of the best help the Arab World can get, today, as its peoples embark on true apprenticeship of democracy. International pollsters, however, have to accept the notion that respondents in any region of the world have the right, more than ever before, to question the questions and not just to answer them, argues Oussama Romdhani.

Chinese diplomacy is the exact opposite of Israeli state behavior -- it is discreet, unaggressive, and, well, that’s about all we know about Chinese diplomacy in the Middle East for now, notes Rami G. Khouri.