In recent days a coalition of Mexican advocacy groups has been protesting in front of Televisa, the country’s largest TV network, to contest the legitimacy of President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto’s July 1 victory.

The latest Iran sanctions came into full effect this week, adding to a byzantine array of unilateral and multilateral measures that prohibit Iranian oil imports, other trade and financial transactions, and freeze Iranian assets by countries concerned that Tehran's nuclear program is intended for military purposes, not civilian ones.

Egypt’s decision last month to stop selling natural gas to Israel could be a harbinger of increasingly confrontational Egyptian-Israeli relations, an indication of a worsening Egyptian economy, or both.

The 23rd Arab League Summit is now under way in Baghdad. Unlike the 22 non-emergency summits that preceded it, this one will be worth watching, and for two reasons.

First, to the surprise of many, the Arab League has become an organization of consequence. In the wake of revolutions across the region, the league has commanded something of a leadership role. In Libya, it was instrumental in ushering in and legitimizing foreign intervention against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. And on Syria, through its proposals for monitors and peacekeeping forces, the league has been the most active international organization seeking to end the violence Bashar al-Assad has unleashed on his citizens.

The other reason for paying special attention to this summit has to do with its host, Iraq. The last Arab League Summit held in Baghdad was in 1990, just months before Saddam Husseininvaded Kuwait. Since then, Iraq has effectively been out of the Arab fold -- on account of war, sanctions, occupation and sectarian strife. This week’s event marks a major milestone for Iraq and is the most tangible sign of its potential re- emergence as a regional player.

On Feb. 24, the U.S., European nations, members of the Arab League and other sympathetic countries making up the newly established “Friends of Syria” group will gather in Tunisia for an emergency meeting on how to stem the bloodshed in Syria. Their deliberations are almost certain to involve calls for more crippling sanctions to bring about regime change and debates over providing military support to the fractured opposition groups inside the country.

While Americans have been welcoming the “end” of the war in Iraq over the past few days, a political crisis of serious proportions has been unfolding in Baghdad.

In April 2008, Ryan Crocker, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Congress, "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came." Given President Barack Obama's announcement last Friday that all U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year, it is more important than ever to answer Crocker's implicit question about what, exactly, Washington will be leaving in its wake.

"As America looks back on this 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Iraq looms large — and usually not in a good way," writes Meghan O'Sullivan. "At best, it’s regarded as a distraction, a needless conflict that took America’s focus away from Afghanistan and al-Qaeda. At worst, the Iraq war is decried as a fiasco, the United States’ 'greatest strategic disaster,' as retired Gen. William Odom, the former National Security Agency director, once put it."

Iraq could be poised for a dramatic transformation in which it finally escapes the political and technical constraints that have kept it producing less than 4 percent of the world’s oil, writes Meghan L. O'Sullivan. Should Iraq meet its ambitions to bring nearly 10 million more barrels of oil on line by 2017, it would constitute the largest ever capacity increase in the history of the oil industry. Even half this much would represent a massive achievement.

In making his case this past week for the use of force in Libya, President Obama sought to assure the American people that this intervention is prudent and wise, and that it bears no resemblance to the controversial and costly war in Iraq... Given the most obvious differences between Iraq and Libya — no ground troops in Libya and no U.N. resolution in Iraq — few will take issue with Obama's protestation. Yet, Obama's road in Libya may prove more similar to President George W. Bush's than it now appears.