A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East?

Gawdat Bahgat

In 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 ...

Lebanon: Hybrid Sovereignties and U.S. Foreign Policy

Najib B. Hourani

On 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 ...

Syria Contextualized: The Numbers Game

Musa al-Gharbi

The 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, ...

Kurdish Oil Politics in Iraq: Contested Sovereignty and Unilateralism

Yaniv Voller

Competition 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 ...

Transition in the Middle East: New Arab Realities and Iran

Mahmood Sariolghalam

The 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 ...

EU Sanctions on Iran: The European Political Context

Ruairi Patterson

Prior 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. ...

Twilight of Colonialism: Mossadegh And the Suez Crisis

Ofer Israeli

The 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 ...

A Work in Progress: The New Turkish Foreign Policy

Hakan Fidan

Observers 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 ...

Turkish-Israeli Relations: Their Rise and Fall

Umut Uzer

One 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 ...

Turkish-Syrian Relations: From Friend "Esad" to Enemy "Esed"

Birgül Demirtaş

October 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 ...

Review Essay — The Elusive Arab-Israeli Peace

Bruce van Voorst

Fortress 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

Review Essay— Lebanon: The Challenge of Moving Analysis beyond the State

Nora Stel and George Frerks

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