Bobby Ghosh

The deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the G5+1 world powers has come, and it will go, without any signature ceremonies or celebratory photo-ops. The negotiators gathered in Vienna’s Palais Coburg hotel will haggle on for a few more days—long enough, perhaps, for president Obama to be able to announce his third triumph in a row when Americans, done with their 4th of July distractions, are paying proper attention; but perhaps not long enough to allow the US Congress to throw a fresh wrench into the works, which it could after July 9.

As authorities in Tunisia, France, and Kuwait—as well as the Kurds in Kobani, on the Syrian-Turkish border—take stock after a series of attacks over the past 48 hours by the terrorist group known as ISIL, there is as yet little evidence of a coordinated master-plan. But it is clear that ISIL’s fighters, and their fellow-travelers around the world, have responded with fiendish enthusiasm to the group’s call for a spike in violence during Ramadan.

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has just held an impromptu summit of regional leaders, to devise a new military campaign against Boko Haram, following up on his inaugural pledge to take the fight to the terrorist group. Such a rethinking is long overdue, but the leaders who met at Abuja airport must also start articulating a post-war scenario that allows many Boko Haram fighters to be reintegrated into society.

When an Iraqi Sunni politician hints on an Arabic TV station that Barack Obama is a Shia Muslim, he’s not only saying, “He’s one of them,” but also, “He’s not one of us.” In the madness that accompanies the escalating Shia-Sunni conflict across the Middle East, perceptions of which side the American president is on have come full circle.

Watch the World Economic Forum event live at 10:45am SAST (8:45am GMT) on Friday, June 5.

Jacob Zuma has three tough days ahead of him as he tries to persuade Africa’s biggest gathering of investors that they should invest their money in his country. South Africa’s president may shake off scandals with ease—the latest involves the spending of public money on one of his homes—but it’s a lot harder to shrug off the parlous state of his country’s economy.

When the World Economic Forum’s Africa summit opens in Cape Town on Wednesday, the center of attention will not be Jacob Zuma, president of the host nation, or any of the politicians, philanthropists, or business leaders among the 1,250 delegates—from 75 countries—attending the continent’s biggest business and economics gathering of the great and the good. The man on everyone’s mind will not even be there: Muhammadu Buhari, the newly sworn-in president of Nigeria.

With breathtaking effrontery, Sepp Blatter is now portraying himself as a crusader against corruption within FIFA, soccer’s scandal-plagued ruling body, and his personal fiefdom for the past 17 years. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the federation’s annual congress in Zurich—a few miles from the hotel where police arrested several FIFA officials on May 27, as part of an investigation into systematic bribe-taking in the organization—Blatter sought to put the blame on “a minority of individuals,” and pledged he would ”not allow the actions of a few to destroy the actions of those who work so hard for football.”

It sounds like plain common sense: a joint Arab military force to intervene in regional crises. Alas, the plan, drawn up yesterday by the Arab world’s military chiefs, will go no farther than the Cairo conference room where it was concocted.

Since the May 4 attack by two gunmen in Garland, Texas, the top US spymasters have been taking turns to ring the alarm bells about ISIL’s growing internet threat. FBI director James Comey has warned that the terrorist organization has “thousands” of online followers in the US. Homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson has raised the specter of lone-wolf jihadists who can “strike at any moment.” And Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, has noted that the group’s ability to recruit online is “clearly increasing.”

As a rule, conspiracy theories are more elaborate than the truth, requiring subscribers to suspend their judgment. Someone called every Jewish person in the World Trade Center, and told them to stay home on the morning of 9/11, when the planes brought down the twin towers. The United Nations, along with the vast majority of the world’s scientists, concocted the myth of global warming. The CIA, or the KGB, or the World Health Organization—or perhaps all three of them—manufactured AIDS in a laboratory. In the minds of the theorist, the truth is too simple, too simplistic, to bear consideration.

The news that Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri has been killed is tantalizing to contemplate and—to anyone who closely followed the US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath—easily dismissed. As a journalist in Baghdad from 2003 to 2007, I lost count of the number of times Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man was said to have been killed or captured during that period.

As the ink dries on the Lausanne arrangement, there are celebrations on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. Most Iranians undoubtedly regard the bargain stuck with the P5+1 as a win for their country: They get to keep a nuclear program, however restricted, and will—contingent on keeping their own end of the deal—be freed from economic sanctions.

Oh, great: the world can now look forward to two petro-states run by religious extremists with international ambitions for their sectarian agendas—and unlimited resources with which to pursue them. The removal of economic sanctions on Iran, as part of the nuclear agreement announced today, would free the Islamic Republic to seek parity with its hated rival, Saudi Arabia.

For months now, those in favor of a nuclear deal with the regime in Tehran have been arguing that the alternative is, inexorably, war between the US—along with its Western allies—against Iran, to prevent it from getting nukes. This allows them to label those who oppose a deal as hawks and war-mongers.

Why are liberal Iranian-Americans, usually so critical of the regime in Tehran, now so passionately arguing that the world powers should, in effect, allow that same regime to do as it pleases—so long as it promises not to build a nuclear arsenal?

As his country is enveloped in political chaos and sectarian war, Yemen’s foreign minister has called on the Gulf Arab states for military help. Their armies and air forces, he says, are needed to halt the march of the Iran-backed Shia militias known as the Houthis. The plea coincides with reports that Tehran has supplied the Houthis with fresh arms.

According to the Associated Press, negotiators gathered in Lausanne, Switzerland, to make a deal on Iran’s nuclear program have finally reached a draft proposal. It requires the regime in Tehran to shut down some 40% of the 10,000 centrifuges it currently uses to enrich uranium, for 10 years. In return, Iran gets immediate relief from stifling economic sanctions.

The only reason to watch Binyamin Netanyahu speak to the US Congress today is for the mildly amusing spectacle of a room full of American politicians trying to avoid looking bored. It is unlikely that Israel’s prime minister will say anything he hasn’t said over and over and over again—most recently, at the AIPAC conference just yesterday.

The Iraqi government’s latest attempt to retake Tikrit is long overdue. Saddam Hussein’s hometown has been in the hands of ISIL—aka the Islamic State, or ISIS—since early last summer. It is a strategically important milestone on the way to ISIL’s northern stronghold of Mosul.

Many in the West will take heart from the news that Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is calling for a joint Arab military force to take on Islamist extremism in the region. Coming shortly after his air force carried out bombing runs in Libya against groups that have pledged fealty to ISIL, it is tempting to take Sisi’s proclamation as a call to arms against the monstrous terrorist organization that calls itself the Islamic State. It raises the prospect of Arab boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, taking on‚ with the help of Western planes and drones—ISIL.

On the same day that US president Barack Obama warned Congress not to push for more sanctions against Iran, the regime in Tehran demonstrated why its threat to the world is not limited to nuclear weapons.

A new narrative is emerging about the Jan 7 attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo—that it was spurred, at least in part, by a competition between two terrorist groups. The theory is that Al Qaeda instigated the attack, through its franchise in Yemen, in order to reclaim its position as terrorist top dog from the arrivistes known variously as ISIL, ISIS and the Islamic State.

It is the nature of terrorism that the people behind the hideous attack in Paris will soon identify their organization and their motivations—bragging rights are an important objective in this kind of operation. It may be only a matter of days, perhaps even hours, before a statement appears online, taking “credit” for the murder of 10 staff members of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo magazine and two policemen.