Policy Analysis

Conversations on the future of Syria have increasingly shifted to reconstruction and ‘the day after,’ with international calls for an end to the Syrian regime, significantly weakened as a result of years of war and suffering. During an October 2 seminar on conflict mediation in Sweden, UN Special Envoy for

Introduction It is sometimes hard to imagine in 2018 that a different vision existed for Gaza than the one that currently exists in the news, and that Gazans live daily. Yet, I was a member of a hopeful group of technocrats who developed a clear roadmap for Gaza after Israel

While propaganda plays a major role in forming local and international public opinion, it may also be deployed as a tool of “soft deterrence,” designed to tilt the calculations and military strategies of other countries in another country’s favor. Iran’s financial investment in its media presence, with dozens of satellite

Almost forty years after its inception, the project of the Islamic Republic has failed. Ayatollah Khamenei has in essence admitted that an Islamic state is not complete in Iran. Nor is Iranian society unequivocally Islamic in the manner that the revolution intended: rather the Iranian government merely follows and applies

Saudi Arabia and Iran are not often presented as being ‘in dialogue.’ Yet on January 29, 2018, two former Saudi and Iranian diplomats discussed a host of key issues at the Joint Special Operations University in Tampa, Florida. Prince Turki al-Faisal Al-Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Ambassador

The June 12 image of U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un signing an “agreement on denuclearization” in Singapore has provided Arab political discourse’s two competing narratives new tools to push their diametrically opposed characterizations of the future awaiting the Middle East. One view hails the meeting

Today, Jordan’s government is facing backlash after a long period of corruption labeled a “deep state” system. Citizens are organizing demonstrations rejecting federal decisions to increase taxes and impose further strict rules on the people that would negatively affect their livelihoods. Recently, some political figures have used the term "deep

Political conflict in the Islamic world began between two schools headed by the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. A bloody fight for power led to a conflict that still persists today in the form of the Sunni-Shia divide and the Turkish-Arab-Iranian conflict. Defining the current

Next week, President Rouhani of Iran will visit China for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the margins of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Two weeks ago, coincidentally, I spoke in Shanghai at a mid-sized meeting billed as “the first conference on Syria ever held in

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own numbers. After a bloody week earlier this month in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, emotions all around the world are running high, with recriminations flying on both sides of the argument regarding whether Israel used excessive

Russia is victorious in Syria. It has succeeded in rescuing the Damascus regime, its difficult yet valuable client, from what seemed to be an unavoidable demise. More importantly, it has leveraged the crisis management of the Syrian conflict to create a regional balance between seemingly incompatible powers — Israel, Turkey

Many debates raged on Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood when King Salman bin Abdulaziz first came to power. Some say that Salman’s ascension represented a revolt against the Brotherhood, while others claimed that some aspects of Brotherhood thought remained influential in the country. In early 2015, the late

In an ideal world, Israel, as a Jewish majority state holding on and developing the age-old Jewish civil and spiritual traditions, and home to a thriving Arab community, would sit next to a Palestinian state, home to its Arab majority and to an integrated Jewish community of citizens and residents

Political hypocrisy and multiple-, not just double-, standards are nothing new in the Middle East, against which Soz makes an impassioned case. Kurds of the region have been on the receiving end of this, exacerbated by lack of accountable governance, respect for human rights and lingering historical resentments. Comparing Israel’s

Faced with a stubborn common terrorist enemy, the United States should expand its military support for the Egyptian army’s capabilities, focusing more on training and equipping it to counter the Islamic State (IS) in Sinai. Without increased U.S. military aid, Egypt will be ill-equipped to counter the threat of IS

April 24th commemorates the anniversary of the 1915 onset of events calculated to solve the Armenian problem of the Ottoman Empire. It is hard to consider the sequence of actions in which Ottoman authorities deliberately engaged — mass deportations, executions, and forced marches in hostile environments — and avoid the

As nationwide parliamentary elections, scheduled for May 12, 2018, are drawing closer in Iraq, leaders of the country’s contending electoral alliances are promising to alter the nature of Iraq’s future political dynamics by pursuing non-sectarian policies and agendas that would serve the interests of all Iraqi citizens. The realities and

The battle for the suburbs of Damascus was nearing its end. The regime units — equipped, backed, and supplemented by Russian and Iranian forces — were on the verge of achieving total victory: the defeat of all rebel factions, the expulsion of a population that had demonstrated its lack of

Jordan’s King Abdullah II came to power in February 1999 in the aftermath of King Hussein. For the past nineteen years of his rule, he has kept the kingdom stable, despite the hardships and challenges that the whole Middle East region is undergoing, ranging from radicalism to terrorism. He has

While the version of history presented in the article “Who Holds the Key to Peace with Israel” may be debatable, the general thrust of the article is both positive and accurate: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is indeed presenting a fundamentally new rhetoric when it comes to Israel, regional