Richard Curtiss has died at the age of 85, having enjoyed a life of great accomplishment. He was the founding editor and principal writer of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and, just before that, in 1981, the cofounder of this organization. He had turned to creating a space for the frank discussion of the role of Israel in ...
Continue ReadingTHOMAS R. MATTAIR, executive director, Middle East Policy Council
In order to formulate a grand strategy, one should have clarity about national interests and policy objectives, and plans ...
Continue ReadingIn recent months, several developments have heightened regional and global concerns over the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East. First, the on-going confrontation ...
Continue ReadingOn August 9, 2012, the Information Branch of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (al-Maloumat) arrested former parliamentarian and cabinet minister Michel Samaha. According to newspaper reports, officers burst ...
Continue ReadingThe popular discourse on the Syrian conflict has largely taken for granted that Bashar al-Assad and his regime are unpopular in Syria, the revolution is widely supported domestically, ...
Continue ReadingCompetition over natural resources between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which controls the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, has been a central component in the complicated ...
Continue ReadingThe unpredictable momentum for change that unraveled in the Middle East in January 2011 in hindsight rested on two objectives: economic distribution and political representation.1 A number of ...
Continue ReadingPrior to 2010, the role of the European Union in sanctions on Iran was largely limited to enforcing targeted sanctions imposed by the United Nations from 2006 onwards. ...
Continue ReadingThe commercial disagreement between Iran and the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) was the motive behind the 1951 Anglo-Iranian Abadan Crisis.1 The Abadan plant and its facilities were ...
Continue ReadingIn today's world there are serious problems in the regional and global systems. The end of the Cold War did not help much in regard to developing mechanisms ...
Continue ReadingObservers of Turkish foreign policy agree that it has entered a new era of activism over the last decade. In line with its new perception of its role ...
Continue ReadingOne of the most significant developments in the Middle East in the 1990s was the inception of strategic relations between Turkey and Israel. Going back to Israeli Prime ...
Continue ReadingOctober 13, 2009, was a historic day in the history of Turkish-Syrian relations. The foreign ministers, Ahmet Davutoğlu and Walid Muallem, came together to sign an agreement for ...
Continue ReadingFortress Israel: The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country — and Why They Can't Make Peace, by Patrick Tyler. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. ... Continue Reading
Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon, by Reinoud Leenders. Cornell University Press, 2012. 312 pages. $45.00, hardcover.
The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the ... Continue Reading
The title of Greg Muttitt's Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq is a pun. His dual theme is that the United States enflamed a ...
Continue ReadingThis slender volume is packed with many insights. A collection of short chapters, some not much longer than op-eds, reveals author Mark Katz's wisdom and prudence when it ...
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