Providence co-editor Robert Nicholson sat down with Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, president of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). Throughout an extensive conversation, Nicholson posed five questions to Fernandez on topics ranging from Syria to the prospect of democracy in the greater Middle East.

Earlier this month, large parts of southern Iraq rose in tumult and turmoil as hot, thirsty, and angry citizens complained about unemployment, lack of services, corruption, lack of water, and lack of electricity in a country with the world’s fifth largest proven oil reserves.

Fidel Castro has died. But in the end neither the Cuban story, nor the human one, will be about him.

Much has been made of Obama’s foreign policy mistakes, but one criticism not often made, at least not fully, is that the Obama Administration was caught flat-footed by the changing information environment revolutionized by the rise of social media.