My computer is on the fritz—by which I mean, it's dying. It's six-plus years old now, so it doesn't exactly come as a surprise, but I wanted to offer some sort of explanation for this shorter-than-usual post. Not to worry, though. I'll be able to get my hands on a new laptop in no time now that I've transitioned from my internship at the American Enterprise Institute to a job (that's right!) as a technical writer for a small federal contracting firm that specializes in defense-related issues. So that's the update portion of the post. Onto the underwear.

I like debates. And (respectful) disagreements. So when articles and essays serve as the inspiration for a post of mine here on the Mideast Note, I’m almost always offering a critique. (See, for instance, here and here and here.) This time, however, I’ll offer an endorsement. Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist who was physically and sexually assaulted by the Egyptian police last November, has written an excellent piece for Foreign Policy on the plight of women from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. In “Why Do They Hate Us,” Eltahawy provides a bevy of cringe-worthy anecdotes and statistics to back up her contention that the revolutions convulsing the Arab world have not truly begun until they include completely new “revolutions of thought—social, sexual, and cultural revolutions that topple the Mubaraks in our minds as well as our bedrooms.”

In the March/April issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie penned a piece entitled " How to Beat Obama, "  which argues that Barack Obama is much more vulnerable on foreign policy issues than is commonly thought.

My boss at AEI, Danielle Pletka, recently wrote a blog post commenting on a Washington Post piece that reports on the gains the US intelligence community has allegedly made on Iran’s nuclear program since 2006. (Before I go on, I should note that, while it’s probably not advisable to unnecessarily challenge your superiors, in the spirit of promoting intellectual freedom and debate, I’ll do so anyway.)

“I wouldn’t trust Iran with sharp objects, let alone a nuclear program.” This was by and large the tone and sentiment of a talk that John Bolton, former U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, gave on the Hill a couple of weeks ago at an AEI-hosted event I attended. (Full disclosure: I’m currently interning at AEI.) The event was entitled “Iran vs. the West: Is War Inevitable in 2012? A Conversation with John Bolton.” Ambassador Bolton wishes he could answer the question posed in the title of the talk with a resounding “Yes!” (“The ideal military intervention took place 4 years ago,” he bemoaned) but, alas, he doesn’t know if the Israelis will go it alone in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and he is quite certain the U.S. won’t attack Iran while Barack Obama is Commander in Chief.

While browsing Twitter recently, I happened upon an interesting tweet by Reem Abdellatif, a self-described “Egyptian-American journalist based in Cairo”: #McDonald's has set up trash bins in #Cairo, mainly in #Zamalek, in efforts to "keep Egypt clean," as the red bins say in #Arabic. — Reem Abdellatif ريم (@Reem_Abdellatif) March 27, 2012

The New York Times ran a story last week on a classified, two-week long war simulation held earlier this month by the United States Central Command, or CENTCOM. The purpose of the war game was to analyze the potential consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities — not, American officials speaking to the Times assured, a dress rehearsal for an American attack.

An "Islamic awakening" has swept the region, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said last month, and "is just like the yell that the Iranian nation let out against America and against global arrogance and tyranny" in 1979. Speaking at Friday prayers at Tehran University, Khamenei gave some unsolicited advice to Egyptians: The enemy is trying to create despair, to make you believe you can’t achieve your aims. However, the promise of God says that we want to help those who were oppressed in the land…to achieve their aims, so be sure, be totally confident, in the promise of God.

In last week’s column, I postulated what an Iranian counterattack against Israel might look like in terms of its ballistic missile capabilities. I concluded that although Iran possesses a considerable arsenal of ballistic missiles, because of their inaccuracy and relative impotence, they would not serve as a sufficient deterrent to a preemptive Israeli strike. But as I noted, ballistic missiles are just one arrow in Iran’s quiver. Among other things, Israel must also take into account attacks by Iranian proxy groups, most notably Hezbollah. So, would Hezbollah launch a reprisal of some sort against Israel in the event of an Israeli strike on its main benefactor’s nuclear facilities? I’ll be the first to tell you that I just don’t know. Without the benefit of sitting among Hezbollah’s leadership in its Advisory Council or being privy to classified intelligence on its current decision making, the best I can do is provide an informed assessment based on past behavior and present context.

Tensions between Iran and Israel over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program may soon erupt into armed conflict. That is if we are to believe key officials in both the American and Israeli governments who have recently made statements to the effect that a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, if it is to happen, will come sooner rather than later. In a much-discussed op-ed by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is reported to believe that, “There is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May, or June” of this year. When asked to comment on the piece, Panetta declined, but then added, “What I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else.”

A couple of Fridays ago, while making the dreaded trek down I-95 after work (for readers who don't happen to live on the East Coast, this is pretty much what rush hour on the Beltway is like), NPR's Science Friday came on the radio, kicking off with a segment on Martian meteorites. So what does that have to do with the Middle East? Well, the Martian meteorites being discussed on the show were those that fell in Morocco last July --a once-every-fifty-years event; and upon doing a little research, it turns out that meteorites of all origins --not just Martian-- are not uncommon finds throughout the Sahara Desert in North Africa, though they’re rare enough to fetch a pretty penny.

"How is that place nowadays?" That's the question a friend asked me when I mentioned that I had stayed in Cairo for six weeks in the summer of 2010. My answer? "Not so great." That's putting it mildly, really. In fact, the situation in Egypt under Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), of which he is the head, is worse in many respects than life under ousted president Hosni Mubarak. And what better time to reflect on the less-than-favorable circumstances in which Egyptians find themselves than on the one year anniversary of their revolution this week. The difficulty with writing a piece on Egypt's faltering revolution is trying to decide where to begin. A year ago, protesters appealed to the military to protect them from the contemptible police force, which killed some 800 demonstrators during the 18 days it took to overthrow the Mubarak regime. Now "crackdown" is the word one most often hears in conjunction with Egypt's ruling military junta.