Arab & Islamic Politics

On March 13, 2009, Andrew Tabler, Magnus Norell, and John Hannah addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss the Washington-Beirut-Damascus triangle. Mr. Tabler, the cofounder and former editor-in-chief of Syria Today, is a Soref fellow at The Washington Institute. Dr. Norell is a Fulbright scholar

The decision of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami not to seek the presidency again has revealed how muddled Iranian presidential politics now is. In trying to sort out this muddle, the most important thing to keep in mind is not so much who will be elected, but what that choice

This Saturday, Lebanon's pro-West March 14 coalition officially kicks off its election campaign in Beirut. Two weeks ago, the Hizballah-led opposition -- backed by Syria and Iran -- started campaigning in its stronghold in the Beqa Valley. With less than three months until Lebanon's parliamentary election, the contest, which pits

Reports from Damascus say Syria's leading dissident is on his deathbed. Riad Seif, 62 and suffering from prostate cancer, has spent the last year in Adra prison as punishment for attending a meeting of pro-democracy groups in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad has prohibited him from seeking treatment abroad, a

Read the final report of the Task Force on Confronting the Ideology of Radical Extremism, a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission of diplomats, legislators, strategists, scholars, and experts.

With his flamboyant fashion sense and Amazonian female bodyguards, it is sometimes difficult to take Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seriously on the world stage. Yet the Libyan strongman's recent selection as chairman of the African Union, which caps a lengthy diplomatic push on the continent, demonstrates that his country's international rehabilitation

When Turkey's justice and development party (AKP) first took power in 2002, it tried to reassure moderates fearful it might chip away at the country's secular, democratic and pro-Western values. The AKP renounced its Islamist heritage and began working instead to secure European Union membership and to turn Turkey into

On January 29, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked out of a panel that included Israeli president Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, further suggesting to skeptics that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is turning its back on the West. Erdogan also chided

On February 5, Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) released preliminary results from last Saturday's provincial elections. With 90 percent of the votes tallied, Iraq's new political landscape and key trends are slowly emerging -- with some surprising results. By far the loudest message from Iraqi voters was that the