It was strongly suggested by close top officials in the Syrian government that I spoke with more than a decade ago that when Syria’s President, Bashar Assad, first assumed power he was determined to introduce some significant political reforms. Why then has he failed to implement at least some of what he had intended to do and failed to meet the public’s expectations for change following his father’s 30 year reign? The reason is that Mr. Assad inherited from his father more than merely the office of the Presidency. He inherited a system of governing: an entrenched ruling apparatus consisting of the Baath party leadership, the high military brass, a massive Intelligence (Mukhabarat) community, internal security and top business elites; all dominated by Bashar’s own Alawite minority group which had heavily-vested interests in maintaining the system at all costs. Mr. Assad was able to assert his rule based only on the tacit condition that he would preserve the status-quo, which in the end turned out to be his albatross.

Many observers and analysts of the Arab Spring have tended to draw quick conclusions about the successes or failures of the revolutionary upheavals that have swept the Middle East and North Africa based on what has thus far transpired on the ground. This is a common mistake. Every Arab country that has gone through the revolution remains immersed within the very early stages of the revolutionary process. To determine the real prospects for political and economic reforms in any of these countries, we have to look into the nature of the grass-root movement that precipitated the revolution, the core issues that the newly-emerging governments face and the choices they are likely to make. Looking at Egypt from this perspective reveals that, notwithstanding, the continuing political squabbles and the combined margins of victory of the Islamic parties in the new parliament, the country is on a path of real political recovery, however long this process may take.

While the representatives of Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Quartette (the US, EU, Russia and the UN) were recently hosted in Amman, Jordan, in an effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan met in Ankara with Hamas’ Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, who openly remains committed to Israel’s destruction and opposes any peace negotiations with Israel. This does not suggest that Mr. Erdogan’s support of Hamas’ position is against Israeli-Palestinian peace, but this raises the question as to whether or not Mr. Erdogan is willing to play a constructive role in mitigating the Israel-Hamas discord or whether he will continue to shore up Hamas’ obstructionist position to the detriment of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

For more than two decades I have been involved as a researcher, writer and as a back-channel interlocutor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question that has puzzled me as well as the multitude of observers, researchers and even those directly involved in the peace negotiations is why, after 64 years of blood and toil, successive Israeli governments and Palestinian authorities have failed to find a solution when, in fact, peaceful co-existence based on a two-state solution is the only sane choice.

The attack of hard-line Jewish settlers on an Israeli military base in the West Bank must not be seen as a passing incident that can simply be eradicated by punishing the perpetrators, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said in the Israeli Parliament. This dangerous and most deplorable incident is a byproduct of the continuing settlement policies that Netanyahu and his hard-core coalition partners have zealously been pursuing for the past three years. Netanyahu condemns the attacks on individual settlers while such policies continue to focus on the rapid expansion of the settlements, further strengthening the settlers’ movement, which, for all intents and purposes, has acquired a de-facto veto power over policies affecting the future disposition of the West Bank.

The United States and its allies and Israel in particular are in a dire race against time as Iran moves closer and closer to acquiring nuclear weapons. While many peaceful and punitive measures to extinguish Tehran's nuclear ambitions have been taken by the international community, they have fallen far short of stemming Iran's nuclear weapons program. The only way that Iran can be deterred from acquiring nuclear weapons is if it faces the most crippling sanctions and should that fail, Iran must be fully convinced that the US and/or Israel will attack its nuclear facilities. That is, after exhausting all other options, if the United States wants to avoid a military attack on Iran – with all of its unintended consequences – it must visibly and unambiguously be preparing for such an attack.

Unfortunately, Iran and much of the world remain unconvinced that the United States is able or even willing to institute those sanctions necessary to end Iran's burgeoning nuclear program and do not believe at this point that a strike against Iran by the US is a credible possibility. What can then be done to stop Iran's nuclear program and avoid the military option (which is the most desirable outcome)? There are six options already taken but which have not yet proven to be effective, yet each can be substantially improved upon. To that end, the United States and the international community must establish the following: a) a time-frame during which non-military options are exhausted but will not give Iran sufficient time to reach "the point of no return"; and b) by exercising all options simultaneously with fortitude atypical to the machinations of foreign policy to convince Iran of the potential of a credible attack by the United States and/or Israel.

Due to a host of common denominators in the Arab world including the lack of traditional liberalism, the tribes' power, the elites' control of business, the hold on power by ethnic minorities, the military that cling to power, and the religious divide and Islamic extremism, the Arab Spring could sadly turn into a long and cruel winter. These factors are making the transformation into a more reformist governance, slow, filled with hurdles and punctuated with intense bloodshed. At the same time, each Arab country differs characteristically from one another on other dimensions including: history and culture, demographic composition, the role of the military, resources, and geostrategic situations. This combination of commonality and uniqueness has had, and will continue to have, significant impacts on how the uprising in each Arab country evolves and what kind of political order might eventually emerge.

In the wake of the Arab Spring and Prime Minister Erdogan's championing of political reforms throughout the Arab world, it has now become more urgent than ever before to find an equitable solution to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Short of finding an immediate resolution to this debilitating struggle will not only severely compromise Turkey's suggested model of successfully combining Islam and democracy, but it will additionally bankrupt its moral standing as it willfully continues to discriminate against 15 million Kurds who represent one-fifth of its population.

The latest cycle of violence between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Turkish military in October meant the failure of a historical attempt to put an end to this three decade-long conflict. It began when the PKK took up arms against the Turkish government in 1984 demanding the secession of Turkey's southeast region. Turkey's successive governments chose throughout much of this period to ignore the existence of the Kurds as a separate ethnicity, banned their language and culture, and inadvertently degraded their standard of living, making them one of the country's poorest populations.

The Arab Spring is changing the political and strategic map of the Middle East as we know it in ways that will persist for decades to come. Notwithstanding the domestic developments in each country, the Arab Spring is uprooting long-standing authoritarian regimes, antagonists and protagonists to the West alike, and is creating a vacuum that regional powers will quickly attempt to fill. Each of the regional powers in the Middle East – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Israel – are poised to exploit the uprising to their advantage. New regional alliances could emerge, as could a new "cold war" and the potential of violence between the competing powers. What is certain now, however, is that the Syrian upheaval thrusts Turkey and Iran into a collision course because they have opposing geostrategic interests that neither of them can afford to ignore.