The Black Iris recently won an honorable mention as the best middle east blog for the seventh annual Brass Crescent award! After the past two years of this particular award being rather good to me, I am glad to simply be in the company of some great nominees in the same category this year, including [...]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past 24 hours, the biggest Wikileak dubbed “cablegate” has revealed thousands of US embassy cables. The results have been obviously quite embarrassing for the US government, which has spent the better part of the past week preparing for a visit to the diplomatic emergency room, which began [...]

It happened quickly. On a lazy Thursday afternoon, somewhere in Amman’s Tla Al Ali district, Hamas leader Khalid Mishal saw nothing more than a blur of movement as he emerged from his car only to be faced with two unknown assailants. The sound of an explosion nearby, a tussle of activity as Mishal’s driver, Abu [...]

And so it was, after nearly two weeks following a parliamentary election, the Rifai cabinet submitted its resignation and HM King Abdullah has asked the prime minister to form yet another government. In a broader context, having formed in December, replacing an entire government, and the reshuffling in July, yet another reshuffle is taking place, [...]

Hope everyone enjoys their holiday! Couldn’t resist posting this latest Hajjaj caricature.

I have no intention of writing anything about the actual results as it would likely take me the better part of a week to write it up. Much of the political theater that unfolded throughout the campaign process will now shift to an even more prominent stage, with a pro-government, fairly tribal, loyalist legislative body [...]

I wanted to begin this post on an apolitical issue. Unfortunately, of all days, the Jordanian government decided that November 9th, the fifth anniversary of the Amman bombings should be dedicated to holding elections. With that in mind, I wanted to pause for a moment – perhaps even offer a digital moment of silence to [...]

via: 3ardotalab Thanks to @Bambam for pointing my attention to this contest by Zain that I’ve seen on a few billboards recently but never really paid attention to what it really was – until I was compelled to read it. I suppose it speaks for itself, but from what one can gather is, you vote [...]