Politics

Middle East Friendship Chart

peteware

Slate has a great interactive chart showing friend/ambivalent/enemy status between middle eastern countries. In the interactive version you can click on each cell and see the explanation.

Examples such as:

Graphical version

Ranking friendliness

Taking a -1, 0, +1 to rank the entities it seems Iraq is the only country with a surplus of friends and the US isn’t looking as bad as you’d think:

  • Al-Qaida: -10 (friends with no one)
  • Egypt: -6
  • Hamas: -3
  • Hezbollah: -2
  • Iran: -2
  • Iraq: +1
  • ISIS: -12 (everybody’s enemy)
  • Israel: -6
  • Palestinian Authority: 0
  • Saudi Arabia: -3
  • Syria: -5
  • Turkey: -4
  • US: -1

Making it friendlier?

If we ignore Al-Qaida (no one’s friend) and ISIS (everyone’s enemy) the results become a little more positive but still not an outpouring of friendship:
– Egypt: -4
– Hamas: -2
– Hezbollah: 0
– Iran: -1
– Iraq: +3
– Israel: -4
– Palestinian Authority: 2
– Saudi Arabia: -1
– Syria: -3
– Turkey: -2
– US: +1

Published by peteware