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David Hirst
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2001
Pressure mounts for reform in Iran
TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's landslide victory in last week's presidential election is seen as a great boost for him and his reformist followers in the power struggle that pits them against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the hardline clerical establishment.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2001
Arafat remains unbowed as his 'long march' continues
Veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst was recently the first journalist to be granted an interview with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat since the intifada began.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2001
Mideast raids fuel fear of regional conflict
BEIRUT -- It has long been feared that the Palestinian intifada would widen into a regional confrontation, and that South Lebanon would be the flash point from which it does so. With Israel's first deliberate attack on a Syrian military target in Lebanon since its 1982 invasion of the country, that confrontation...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2001
Unequal treatment in the Middle East
Beirut -- The Israelis have just elected a prime minister who, brought before the bar of international justice, would surely be judged a war criminal in the class of, say, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander who is as firmly associated with the Srebrenica massacre as Gen. Ariel Sharon was with that...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2001
Bush inherits his father's legacy in Iraq
BEIRUT -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein rang in the new year with the largest military parade Baghdad had ever seen. Over 1,000 tanks rumbled through the capital. According to the opposition Iraqi National Congress, they were equipped with new engines and cooling systems, imported from Ukraine in defiance...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2000
Moderate Arab leaders under mounting pressure to take a tough line against Israel
CAIRO -- For Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, peace remains a "strategic option." At the latest Arab summit, he and other Arab rulers, rhetorically militant but deeply moderate in substance, did not give a passing thought to military coordination. They know that Arab armies are in no condition to match...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2000
Will Arab fury translate into action?
BEIRUT -- In his workshop in suburban Beirut, Reef Hammoudi has been painting Israeli and American flags at the rate of 50 a day, so high is the demand from people demonstrating in support of the new Palestinian "intifada." He does them on nonabsorbant cloth just an hour or so before they are due for...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2000
Can Arafat turn Mideast violence to good?
BEIRUT -- With a few exceptions, the Israelis contend that the bloody tumult in Israel and the occupied territory has been instigated and stage-managed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a means of strengthening his hand in the faltering peace process.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 4, 2000
Why the Arabs are rallying to Baghdad
DUBAI -- International civilian flights into Baghdad are turning into a stampede as one Arab country after another announces, or carries out, its intention of joining France and Russia in breaking the 10-year aerial blockade. This may not breach the essence of U.N. sanctions -- the restrictions on trade...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2000
A decade on, Hussein remains a force
Special to The Japan Times UMM QASR, southern Iraq -- The Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier officially ranks as one of the world's most dangerous flash points. But these days, the only threat to man or beast beneath a ferocious sun is the snakes and scorpions that inhabit these burning sandy wastes. "This is the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2000
Yasser Arafat draws the line
BEIRUT -- At one fraught moment during Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak reportedly warned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: "If we don't finish the job now, at the next meeting I will no longer be prime minister." To which the Palestinian leader retorted: "If I give in on Jerusalem, I will...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2000
Will Arafat follow Sadat?
BEIRUT -- It will be something less than a miracle if U.S. President Bill Clinton does achieve the high purpose he has set himself in summoning Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David: an end to conflict between Arab and Jew in Palestine. After all, it won't...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2000
Ripples from Assad's death will extend far
So the Lion of Damascus is, at last, no more. For some people, he has been an unconscionable time dying. I remember when, back in 1983, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his loyalist guerrillas were fighting a desperate rearguard action against the Syrian Army in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli....
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2000
Democracy hangs in the balance in Iran
BEIRUT -- "For God's sake, tell me, is Islam a religion of violence or not?" begged a reader recently in the question-and-answer column of Musharekat, mouthpiece of the reformist forces headed by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's brother Mohammad-Reza.
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2000
Dubai: the Mideast's global village
DUBAI -- Last month, Gen. Sheikh Muhammad bin Maktum, minister of defense of the United Arab Emirates, announced at a press conference that the Internet revolution and the "new economy" were coming to the government of Dubai. It was an incongruous spectacle, so traditional a figure, in distinctive black...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2000
Tiny Qatar brings freedom of the press to the Arab world
QATAR -- On a recent visit to Qatar, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wanted to satisfy his curiosity about something bothering him and most other Arab rulers. It was past midnight when he descended unannounced on the Jazeera TV station. His surprise was hardly less than that of staff still around at...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 13, 2000
Brinkmanship in the Mideast
BEIRUT -- When the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations resumed in December, it was widely recognized that perhaps the greatest hazard they faced was the war of attrition between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israelis in occupied South Lebanon. The United States joined Israel in entreating Syrian President Hafez...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.

Podcast

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By Kathryn Wortley

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