Policy Analysis

In a speech in Washington, DC in August 2008, Ted Gistaro, then the United States national intelligence officer for transnational threats, painted a picture of a resurgent Al-Qaeda core, with an increasingly secure safe-haven in Pakistan's tribal areas. Al-Qaeda had, in Gistaro's view, "maintained or strengthened key elements of its

Late on December 11, Crown Prince Sultan arrived home to Saudi Arabia after a year's absence that included medical treatment in the United States and a nine-month convalescence at his palace in Morocco. Although described as "enjoying full health" and looking animated, Sultan is believed to still be unwell. In

A different version of this column originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. What is an Islamist foreign policy, exactly? Is it identifying with Muslims and their suffering, or is it identifying with anti-Western regimes even at the cost of Muslims' best interests? Turkey's foreign policy under the Justice and

FEATURING Dan Meridor, Ataollah Mohajerani, Aharon Farkash, Jackson Diehl, Michael Mandelbaum, Hossein Bastani, Khalil Shikaki, Mortimer Zuckerman, Ronald Neumann, Charles Wald, and many other distinguished speakers The Proceedings In June 2009, President Barack Obama traveled to Cairo to deliver a speech outlining what he hoped would mark a "new beginning"

On December 14, Lebanese president Michel Sulaiman is scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House. It is widely anticipated that during his visit, Sulaiman will request administration support for an increase in U.S. military assistance. Despite concerns that U.S. materiel will leak to Hizballah, Washington will

On December 8, the United Nations Security Council will host its first-ever thematic debate on drug trafficking as a threat to international security. This focus is notable. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned with the evolving threat of drug trafficking, especially as terrorist organizations stake a bigger claim in this illegal

During the 1960s, Egypt and Saudi Arabia fought an eight-year proxy war in Yemen so fierce that Egypt repeatedly deployed chemical weapons against its Saudi-backed adversaries, the Yemeni royalists. Fifty years on, the revolutionary ideology of Egypt's former president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, is a distant memory, and while Cairo and

What is an Islamist foreign policy, exactly? Is it identifying with Muslims and their suffering, or is it identifying with anti-Western regimes even at the cost of Muslims' best interests? Turkey's foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government demonstrates that far from protecting Muslims and their

On December 7, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with US President Barack Obama in Washington. The meeting follows Obama's April visit to Turkey when he reached out to the Turks to realign Ankara with the US after the tumultuous years of the Bush administration. Despite Obama's efforts

On December 3, 2009, Dana Moss and Ronald Bruce St. John addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to assess whether Tripoli's economic and political resurgence has been matched by domestic and foreign policy transformation. Dana Moss, Next Generation fellow at The Washington Institute, is the author

This PolicyWatch revisits some key points in the author's 2007 Washington Institute Policy Focus, Secularism and Foreign Policy in Turkey: New Elections, Troubling Trends. For more on this topic, please visit our Turkish Research Program page. On December 7, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Washington to meet

Islamophobia is rising in the West because so many of us confuse Islam with Islamism. This confusion also inadvertently helps organizations like al-Qaeda. Not a day goes by that yet another publication or pundit uses the terms Islamic and Islamist interchangeably, not realizing that Islam is a religion and Islamism

Al Qaeda in Iraq may be down, but it is not out. Last month, jihadists likely linked to the group posing as Iraqi Army soldiers executed 13 members of a U.S.-allied Sunni tribe near Abu Ghraib. In August and October, al Qaeda suicide bombers targeted government buildings in Baghdad, killing

The announcement of a moratorium on building in the settlements ends the first chapter of U.S.-Israel relations during the Obama era. There are lessons for all. The move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is clearly a bid to improve U.S.-Israel relations as much as it is an effort to restart

In October 2009, Turkey cancelled Israeli participation in longstanding trilateral military exercises and announced instead that it would conduct military training with Syria. To many, Ankara's decision came as a shock. Not only was Turkey (in 1949) the first Muslim majority country to recognize the Jewish state, Israel and Turkey

Late on November 25, just before the start of the Islamic Eid festival and, coincidentally, Thanksgiving in the United States, Dubai's flagship investment company Dubai World announced that it would be requesting a six-month delay on paying its debts. Within hours, Dubai's reputation was being rewritten, and its ambition to

On November 24, 2009, Martin Kramer and Mark Clark addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss how government can engage academe in the service of U.S. Middle East policy. Martin Kramer is The Washington Institute's Wexler-Fromer senior fellow and president-designate of Shalem College in Jerusalem

The rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party rooted in Turkey's Islamist opposition, to government in 2002 introduced new social, political, and foreign policy winds across the Turkish society. After seven years of AKP rule, the Anatolian Turks are bending over to the power of the AKP

What will U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discuss when they meet in the White House on Dec. 7? There is going to be some give and take on a variety of issues, including Iran. But both leaders will agree on Iraq. Ever since coming

Throughout the 20th Century, the countries of Iran and Egypt have had a very complex relationship with one another. Among other things, Iran, a leading majority Shiite country that is also ruled by Shiites, and Egypt, the cultural and theological center of Sunni Islam, are home to two of the