دمکراسی و اصلاح

On March 11, 2010, David Pollock and Marc Lynch addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss Dr. Pollock's forthcoming study Actions, Not Just Attitudes: A New Paradigm for U.S.-Arab Relations. Dr. Pollock is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and a former senior advisor

Last week's arrests in Turkey of dozens of high-ranking military officers mark the country's latest step toward authoritarianism. Neither Europe nor the United States can afford to ignore Turkey's transformation. Since coming to power in 2002, the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ultra-conservative Fethullah Gulen Movement have

During a campaign speech at the University of Uroomiyeh in northwestern Iran a few months before the June presidential election there, Mir Hossein Moussavi, the main reformist presidential candidate and now opposition leader, was interrupted by angry groups of basiji, the regime's paramilitary enforcers, carrying pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The very concept of public opinion in highly secretive Saudi Arabia is almost an oxymoron. Hard data are difficult to come by, and even rarer is information about controversial and strategically critical current issues: views about military action against Iran, corruption and the state of civil liberties within the kingdom

A few hours after the official demonstration marking the February 11 anniversary of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated, "Was the presence of tens of millions of motivated and aware people in the festival of the thirty-first anniversary of revolution enough to awaken [to their mistakes] the

February 11, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is the most important official holiday in Iran. The public faces of the opposition Green Movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, have called for street demonstrations to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, government officials at every level have warned against such

On February 3, 2010, Institute senior fellow Mehdi Khalaji and Keston Family fellow J. Scott Carpenter, director of the Institute's Project Fikra, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on ways the United States can best support the movement for political

As the United States continues to fight militarily to disrupt the efforts of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the U.S. government has slowly come to the realisation that military force alone cannot defeat violent extremism. There has been increased recognition that capturing and killing all terrorists is not a realistic strategy

Iran's clerical regime governs by a simple formula: He who is the most frightening wins. "Victory by terrifying" is a trope that is present in many of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speeches. Indeed, it is a reliable guide to his political philosophy. This view was not invented by Khamenei