Our guest blogger is Elizabeth Marcus, an intern with the National Security team at the Center for American Progress.

The Middle East is undergoing dramatic political transformation. Despite the prominent role women have played in organizing these popular movements, the treatment of women in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, raises serious concern about the future of democracy and human rights in the region. A central issue is the use of rape by both government and non-state forces as an attempt to silence opposition forces. In the context of patriarchal religious societies, rape and sexual violence holds unique potential as a horrific tool of political repression, and its use has been widespread as an attempt to stunt the growth of the Arab Spring.

Women agitating for political change in these countries face the ever-present threat of sexual abuse and the societal stigma that results from sexual violence in highly patriarchal societies. Unlike physical violence, rape and other forms of sexual violence can permanently damage a woman’s reputation and status within her community. Not only is she considered unfit for marriage but rape causes profound humiliation to the male members of her family and, potentially, her community.

Rape was used excessively during Moammar Qaddafi’s attempt to remain in power in Libya. Towards the end of his struggle, his regime ordered soldiers to go into villages and rape the female adults and children, some as young as 8 years old, in front of family members. Condoms and Viagra were found in pockets of dead Qaddafi soldiers. Benghazi journalists reported seeing the ground littered with Viagra after troops had been through.

Rhetoric related to women and sexual violence always comes back to ideas of honor, which is held in the highest regard within Islamic societies. Raping a woman strips the woman, her family, and her community of “honor.” Qaddafi understood this dynamic and used it as a tool to prevent women from organizing opposition to his regime.

Despite Egypt’s notorious reputation for sexual harassment and violence against women, female activists have been at the forefront of efforts to change Egypt’s political system from the very beginning. Perhaps predictably, Egyptian women have also faced sexual violence as they seek to effect political change.

On March 9, 2011, just under a month after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, protesters returned to Tahrir Square to express frustration with the slow pace of reforms. The Egyptian military broke up the demonstration and arrested demonstrators, including at least 18 women. These women were beaten, charged with prostitution, and forced to submit to “virginity checks.” When confronted, a senior general said, “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine… these were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square.” In a patriarchal religious society in which female sexuality is heavily policed, accusations of promiscuity serve to damage the reputations of female protesters.
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Speaking to a Fox News audience this weekend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney dodged a question about whether, knowing what we know now about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in the early 2000s, the U.S. would have invaded in 2003, setting off a costly war that just drew to a close. “At that time, we didn’t have the knowledge that we have now,” said the former Massachusetts governor. “And in the light of that — that belief [that Iraq's programs were active], we took action which was appropriate at the time.”

Today on MSNBC, the presidential hopeful ditched the dodge. Asked by Chuck Todd, he answered that “of course” the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq had intelligence reports indicated that, as we later learned, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:

ROMNEY: Well, if we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction — if somehow we had been given that information, why, obviously we would not have gone in.

TODD: You don’t think we would have gone in?

ROMNEY: Well, of course not. The president went in based upon intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction. Had he known that that was not the case, the U.N. would not have put forward resolutions authorizing this type of action. The president would not have been pursuing that course.

But we did not know that. … [K]nowing what we know now, they did not have weapons of mass destruction; there would have been no effort on the part of our president or others to take military action.

Watch the video:

Compared with his dodge this weekend, Romney here presents a fair accounting of what his position would have been if there were no WMDs in Iraq. (Romney, as ThinkProgress noted on Sunday, supported the push for war at the time.) While some Iraq war supporters — including some in the Bush administration — have made apologia for the botched (or cooked, depending on how you look at it) intelligence in the run up to the war, others have been more honest in their assessments. Take Paul Wolfowitz, a top Bush Defense Department official and Iraq hawk, who said this year: “We did not go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan to promote democracy, but rather to remove regimes that were dangerous to us and to the world.” Romney’s assessment rightfully recognizes the dynamic that was at work during the run-up to the war.

The funding behind Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future, an independent political committee, offers an intriguing clue into the financial deep pockets backing Gingrich’s candidacy. This week, McClatchy revealed that American Solutions footed the $8 million bill for private jet charters while Gingrich weighed whether to enter the 2008 and 2012 presidential races. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was the biggest funder of American Solutions, contributing $7.65 million and rumored to have committed $20 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, a report denied by an Adelson spokesperson. Whether the report is true or not, the facts increasingly show that the billionaire casino magnate is a central figure in Newt Gingrich’s political career.

Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

Gingrich, who characterized Palestinians as “terrorists” during a December 10th GOP debate and told the Jewish Channel that Palestians are an “invented” people, would seem to be mirroring the hardline positions taken by his early, and cash flush, benefactor.

“Sheldon has always loved Newt. He stuck with him through all of this,” Fred Zeidman, an Adelson friend and major player in the American Jewish community who is backing Mitt Romney told The Daily Beast’s Aram Roston. “He stuck with him when he stumbled. Newt, I think, is very reflective of Sheldon’s mindset. Particularly with Israel.”

While Adelson and Gingrich appear to share the same right-wing agenda on the Middle East, the casino magnate’s business dealings in China have proven a political liability for him at home. Adelson allegedly helped crush a congressional measure by House Republicans opposing Beijing’s Olympic bid. “The bill will never see the light day, Mr. Mayor. Don’t worry about it,” he reportedly told Beijing’s mayor in 2001 after phoning then House Majority Whip Tom Delay. The Sands Corporation went on to receive a lucrative casino license from the Chinese government, permitting them to begin a massive development in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR).

Responding to Adelson’s close dealings with the Chinese government, the Christian Coalition of Alabama’s president, Dr. Randy Brinson denounced Adelson for “not sharing our values.” “Where Sheldon Adelson has placed his treasure makes it quite clear where his heart is: in gambling and backing the regime in China that persecutes Christians,” he said.

Gingrich will face his own difficulties in persuading Christian evangelicals troubled by his multiple marriages and extramarital affairs to support his candidacy. But Sheldon Adelson’s noticeable presence in the Gingrich camp may prove another obstacle in winning over the all-important Christian-right.

The U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice expressed strongly-worded concern about recent developments in Iran’s nuclear program during remarks at a U.N. Security Council briefing on the issue. She cited a November IAEA report and a recent statement from an Iranian military official that the Islamic Republic plans on moving some of its enrichment activities to “safer places” — presumably underground facilities constructed near the holy city of Qom. Rice called the news “yet another alarming development.”

In her remarks, Rice raised the two issues as a call to international action:

The start of enrichment at Qom will serve as yet another illustration of Iran’s flagrant disregard for the Council’s very clear position on Iran’s enrichment activities. Iran’s behavior plainly belies the purported peaceful nature of its nuclear program.

…The Council therefore must redouble its efforts to implement the sanctions already imposed. Full implementation of these measures will show Iran there is a price to be paid for its deception. Full implementation can also slow down Iran’s nuclear progress, buying us more time to resolve this crisis through diplomatic means.

In her demand that the “international community must speak with one voice,” Rice is doubling down on one of the few measures taken against Iran’s nuclear program that have actually been effective in slowing its progress: Security Council sanctions on the nuclear program barring weapons and nuclear-related business with the Islamic Republic. In a May report, a U.N. experts panel concluded that those international sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.”

While international diplomacy and the resulting sanctions have worked to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, the former head of Israel’s vaunted Mossad spy agency Meir Dagan said this week that the threats of military attack on Iran “may lead the Iranians into a reality in which they are (pushed over the edge) and try to obtain nuclear capabilities as quickly as possible instead of treading rather carefully while taking the international community’s demands into consideration.” According to reports, the current classified U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program concludes that Iran has not yet taken a decision to construct a nuclear weapon.