Policy Analysis

With neighboring Iran one of the most severely affected areas of coronavirus, Iraqi authorities are also confirming rising infections and deaths despite closing the border between the two states.

One year ago, Algeria witnessed the beginning of the largest and most peaceful popular protests since its independence in 1962. Since then, Algerians have filled the streets every Tuesday and Friday to express their rejection of the state’s political system and demand radical change. In the past year, Algeria has

Iraq’s trifecta of unemployment, lack of public services, and corruption has been a prime motivating force fueling Iraq’s months of protests. And since the protests began, the young Iraqi protesters who took to the streets have discovered a fourth point of contention: the elite’s lack of accountability and willingness to

On the streets of Baghdad, protesters are still mulling over the U.S. air raid on Friday morning that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force near Baghdad international airport along with nine others, including Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis.

Among the Shia in Lebanon, two major shifts are taking place within the collective perception of the community. One, Lebanese Shia identity is moving from a sectarian identity to a national one, caused by the costs endured by the Shia community over the past decade. And two, there is a

Iranian regime forces and affiliated militias have been taking advantage of the world’s diverted attention to carry out a campaign of slaughter and mass arrests against the country’s Ahwazi Arabs. These killings are occurring in the Ma`shour (also known as the Bandar-e Ma`shour) area of the Arab Ahwaz region of

A reliable new Lebanese public opinion poll, conducted in November, shows that a large majority of the country’s Shiites retain positive views of both Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons—even as major anti-government protests include many Shiite participants for the first time. This surprising finding casts doubt on speculation that Hezbollah

The unprecedented protests in Iraq underline the reality that Iraq is slowly failing as a state. Though life inside the country has improved in some ways, there are still nearly a million new job-seekers each year left unemployed, militias continue to openly humiliate the government, and little is being done

Iraq is witnessing protests that are shaking its political system to its core. The nationwide protests, which started on October 1, 2019, have been startling in their scope, their size, and the violent response with which the largely non-violent protestors have been met. But perhaps the most surprising aspect is

Six months have passed since the beginning of the peaceful protest movement in Algeria, commonly known as the Hirak, which ousted longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The protest movement has also managed to dismantle the clan that surrounded him, as most of its controversial figures are now in jail. However, Algerians’

The surprising results of Tunisia's first round of presidential balloting signal that voters are generally disenchanted with the country's political establishment.

Due to external pressures and internal fissures, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) today is experiencing its worst days since its establishment in 1946. This decline follows the challenges of the broader Muslim Brotherhood organization, which is facing an “internal crisis” after losing much of their momentum after the Arab Spring

Following months of unrest and bloodshed in the Sudanese streets, a critical power-sharing agreement was signed on August 17 between the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the civilian opposition alliance–better known as the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC). The agreement has established a transitional council with 6 civilian and

Early Islamic traditions—compiled in the centuries following Islam’s formative phase through the literary corpus of Sirah (Biography of the Prophet) and Hadith (Acts and sayings of the Prophet)—openly drew on accounts from Jewish converts to Islam (Isra‘iliyyat). While classical Islamic scholars have generally discounted the value of these accounts, they

In the course of the past century, a troubling development has asserted itself in Islamic thought. Whether in scholarly religious texts or in popular presentations, a new Islamic “theology of the Jews” has coalesced into a thorough demonization of both historical and contemporary ‘Jews.’ In this evolving and radicalizing theological

For many decades, successive Iranian regimes have perpetrated injustices against non-Persian peoples who make up approximately half of the country’s population. Indeed, the Islamic Republic chose to follow in the footsteps of the Shah in terms of promoting Persian ethnic supremacism. Since its inception, the regime has enacted a number

Two days after the June 3 massacre where an estimated 118 people were killed, Sudan’s ruling military junta—widely seen as a continuation of Omar Al Bashir’s regime—subjected Sudan to a “near total (internet) blackout” on the pretext of ensuring the country’s national security and curtailing fake news. However, some political

Two signature Trump Administration initiatives dominate U.S. Mideast policy today: “maximum pressure” against Iran and pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace “deal of the century.” In recent weeks, Washington has upped the ante on both. It has tightened oil sanctions against Iran and designated the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as

Morocco was one of the few countries in the Arab World partially spared by the upheaval of the Arab Spring. However, recent regime changes in Algeria and Sudan, along with continued domestic discontent, suggest that Morocco should reexamine its prior response to its domestic version of the Arab Spring—the 20

A little-publicized fact about Iran is its ethnic diversity: though Turks and Persians are the largest ethnic groups within Iran, Iran’s eight major non-Persian ethnicities represent approximately half of the country’s total population. Each of these minority groups—Ahwazis, Kurds, Turks, Balochis, Turkmen, Qashqais, Caspeans, and the Lor tribes—collectively account for