US Foreign Policy

• Foreign Policy: Will the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up? (James Traub, September 28)
• "The other day, Mitt Romney gave a speech about foreign policy that he seemed to actually believe. In a quite revealing address to the Clinton Global Initiative on the subject of foreign aid, Romney offered a distinctive explanation of the Arab Spring as a mass movement for economic, rather than political, rights."
  

Islamists

• Financial Times: Radical Islamists unite under fresh name (Roula Khalaf, September 27)
• "Some are al-Qaeda operatives who saw fit to rebrand in the wake of last year’s Arab uprisings. Others are radical Islamists whose goal is to impose strict religious rule on a region in political transition. All are calling themselves Ansar al-Sharia — Partisans of Islamic Law. The name has been adopted by new groups from Yemen to North Africa and appears to be the latest manifestation of radical Islam in a changing Middle Eastern order."
  

Egypt/Hamas

• The Economist: A honeymoon that wasn’t (September 29)
• "So the new Egyptian authorities are putting national interests ahead of Islamist ones, noted a chirpy Israeli official. "Mubarak with a beard,"snapped an angry Hamas man, referring to the Egyptian president ousted last year who co-operated with Israel to keep Hamas and his own Muslim Brothers down. Some of Egypt’s Muslim Brothers are unhappy about Mr Morsi’s cold-shouldering of Hamas."
  

Israel

• Foreign Policy: The Entebbe Option: How the U.S. military thinks Israel might strike Iran (Mark Perry, September 27)

• "According to several high-level U.S. military and civilian intelligence sources, U.S. Central Command and Pentagon war planners have concluded that there are at least three possible Israeli attack options, including a daring and extremely risky special operations raid on Iran's nuclear facility at Fordow -- an "Iranian Entebbe" they call it, after Israel's 1976 commando rescue of Israeli hostages held in Uganda. In that scenario, Israeli commandos would storm the complex, which houses many of Iran's centrifuges; remove as much enriched uranium as they found or could carry; and plant explosives to destroy the facility on their way out."
  
• Foreign Policy: Stop blaming Bibi (Aaron David Miller, September 25)
• "But what are the current chances of reaching a conflict-ending agreement under those guys, or for that matter any Israeli prime minister? As the late Yitzhak Rabin, himself a two-time Israeli prime minister, used to say when faced with a scenario he thought unrealistic, "You can forget about it." The peace process is temporarily closed for the season, and not just because of Netanyahu. What follows isn't a brief for Bibi -- it's a brief for reality."
  
• Reuters: Insight - Azerbaijan eyes aiding Israel against Iran (Thomas Grove, September 30)
• "Yet despite official denials by Azerbaijan and Israel, two Azeri former military officers with links to serving personnel and two Russian intelligence sources all told Reuters that Azerbaijan and Israel have been looking at how Azeri bases and intelligence could serve in a possible strike on Iran."
  

Syria

• The Guardian: Syria civil war: "We expend the one thing we have, men. Men are dying" (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 25 September)
• "Abu Mohamed described where the weapons had come from. Different donors in Saudi Arabia were channelling money to a powerful Lebanese politician in Istanbul, he said. He in turn co-ordinated with the Turks – "everything happens in co-ordination with Turkish intelligence" – to arrange delivery through the military council of Aleppo, a group composed mostly of defected officers and secular and moderate civilians."
  
• Financial Times: Middle East: A second winter of war (Michael Peel, September 27)
• "While the regime continues its 18-month mantra of imminent victory – even sending out mass text messages on Friday telling the rebels it is “game over” – the conflict worsens by the week. The attack on the military command centre was a reminder of the capabilities of a rebellion that now controls large areas in the north of the country and has launched a fresh push to take the biggest city, Aleppo."
  
• The New York Times: In Syria’s Largest City, Fire Ravages Ancient Market (Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, September 29)
• "Our hearts and minds have been burned in his fire," said a doctor in Aleppo who gave her name only as Dima. "It’s not just a souk and shops, but it’s our soul, too." She said she supported peaceful resistance against Mr. Assad, and pronounced herself "annoyed, annoyed, annoyed" with fighters from the rebel Tawhid Brigade, which announced the offensive on Thursday. The fighters said they were seeking to "liberate" neighborhoods that had remained largely pro-government and were being used as posts from which to attack the opposition."
  
• The New York Times: Kurds Prepare to Pursue More Autonomy in a Fallen Syria (Tim Arango, September 28)
• "Against the backdrop of the raging civil war, Syrian Kurds have already etched out a measure of autonomy in their territories — not because they have taken up arms against the government, but because the government has relinquished Kurdish communities to local control, allowing the Kurds to gain a head start on self-rule. "