Arab & Islamic Politics

Repeated incidents demonstrate that Iran's clerical establishment has been unwilling to defend reform-minded clerics against the regime's attacks. Mehdi Khalaji posits that the Shiite clergy's silence does not stem from indifference but, instead, points to a fundamental tension between Iran's clerical establishment and its theocratic government whose roots date back

U.S. President Barack Obama last week partly blamed the European Union for supposedly driving Turkey away from the West by stalling the country's EU accession. Mr. Obama is confusing cause and effect. The real problem is that the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) doesn't share the dream of

For Washington, the death this week of Lebanon's most prominent and respected Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, was a bittersweet moment. In 1983, Fadlallah, a vocal proponent of suicide bombings, reportedly blessed the bombers of the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut that killed over 240

What will be the image that frames the news reporting of June 29's White House meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? Surely not another bow toward the desert monarch, as caught on video at the London G-20 meeting in April 2009. Or what hypercritics

The latest Pew poll on Middle Eastern political behavior illustrates the media's post-9/11 tendency to report on America's standing on the Arab street -- without analyzing whether attitudes toward the U.S. have any significant effect on actual Arab behavior. To remedy this striking diagnostic gap, The Washington Institute presents a

Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas conducted an unprecedented sequence of three public events during his visit to Washington last week, during which he articulated his positions on a range of issues. The events included an on-the-record dinner hosted by philanthropist Daniel Abraham, a television appearance with PBS host Charlie

This is an eventful week for Iran. On June 9, the country was hit with a fourth sanctions resolution by the U.N. Security Council. June 12 will mark the first anniversary of a disputed presidential election that plunged Iran into turmoil and galvanized the opposition "Green Movement." But the event

Ever since the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed power in 2002, Turkish foreign policy has made a 180-degree turn. The country's once-strong ties with the United States and Israel have been weakened, and entry talks with the European Union have stalled while Ankara has come to the defense

Visiting the White House six months ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara aspires to build a "model partnership" with Washington. Really? Erodgan has been leading the chorus to condemn Israel in the wake of Monday's botched interdiction of the flotilla bound for Gaza described the killings of