Policy Analysis

During a campaign speech at the University of Uroomiyeh in northwestern Iran a few months before the June presidential election there, Mir Hossein Moussavi, the main reformist presidential candidate and now opposition leader, was interrupted by angry groups of basiji, the regime's paramilitary enforcers, carrying pictures of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Critics of Turkey's ruling party fear that its conservatism is going too far, leading, among other things, to exclusion of women in the workforce. Soner Cagaptay and Rueya Perincek assess the implications, both domestically and with regard to the country's accession to the European Union. © IHS (Global) Limited, Jane's

Five years ago this month, Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus to protest the Assad regime's presumed role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. For the State Department, which instinctively believes in the power of diplomacy, yanking its top diplomat was equivalent to the nuclear option

The appointment of Robert Ford as US Ambassador to Syria is part of the Obama administration's general policy of engagement with America's foes. Its timing to coincide with Under Secretary of State William Burns' visit to Damascus, however, has a wider purpose. The move is part of a massive diplomatic

Whenever the United States pushes for elections in the Middle East and Muslim countries, Islamist parties often perform well -- better than liberal, nationalist, and secular parties -- a phenomenon that has occurred even in secular Turkey. Are U.S. efforts to promote democracy in Muslim countries as well as block

Why are Turks turning anti-Western and why do they view themselves in conflict the West? Examining the development of Turkish policies toward Israel and Hamas since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 can provide many lessons.

This week, President Obama named Robert S. Ford as his ambassador to Syria -- meaning that he still intends to engage America's foes. (Ford would be the first U.S. ambassador there since the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.) And while the president's record so far against Venezuela

In his February 2 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair highlighted the growing danger posed by Pakistani militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Calling the group a "special case," he asserted that it is "becoming more of a direct threat and is placing Western targets in

The very concept of public opinion in highly secretive Saudi Arabia is almost an oxymoron. Hard data are difficult to come by, and even rarer is information about controversial and strategically critical current issues: views about military action against Iran, corruption and the state of civil liberties within the kingdom

A few hours after the official demonstration marking the February 11 anniversary of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated, "Was the presence of tens of millions of motivated and aware people in the festival of the thirty-first anniversary of revolution enough to awaken [to their mistakes] the

European secularism, or laicite, practiced in France and other European countries, is distinct from American secularism. While the United States is secular, providing for freedom of religion in education and politics, European societies are laique, providing for freedom from religion in education and politics. Secularism, however, is not a standardized

On February 5, 2010, David Cvach, Ali Alfoneh, and Mehdi Khalaji addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute to discuss developments in Iran that may indicate either lost ground for reform-minded activists or cracks in the very foundation of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Cvach is political counselor

February 11, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is the most important official holiday in Iran. The public faces of the opposition Green Movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, have called for street demonstrations to mark the occasion. Meanwhile, government officials at every level have warned against such

The recent arrest of an organized cell in the northern West Bank inspired by al-Qaida's ideology is a stark reminder of the expanding nature of the threat facing Israel. Today, threats come not only from the enemies it has long known, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad which target Israel

In the months since Iran's contested June 2009 presidential election, the Basij Resistance Force has emerged as one of the regime's main pillars of support against the democracy movement. In the long term, however, it is uncertain whether the militia is capable of prevailing in a prolonged fight against a

What if Iran's hardline leadership emerges from the current confrontations at home strengthened and emboldened? If so, the nuclear issue will be back with a vengeance. And three recent war games focused on the Iranian nuclear weapons issue suggest that the prospects for halting the regime's progress toward nuclear weapons

View the maps originally published with this article. "Over our dead bodies!" Najib Khatib shouted in Arabic as I stepped out of our car in Ghajar, a picturesque village cut in two by the boundary between the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Lebanon. "Nobody tells us anything!" he said, his arms

On February 3, 2010, Institute senior fellow Mehdi Khalaji and Keston Family fellow J. Scott Carpenter, director of the Institute's Project Fikra, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on ways the United States can best support the movement for political

When I served on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, one of our primary tasks was to assemble the story of how al Qaeda's plot developed. One of the aspects of the plot on which we focused our attention was, therefore, the movements, activities, and associations of the 19 hijackers

As the United States continues to fight militarily to disrupt the efforts of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the U.S. government has slowly come to the realisation that military force alone cannot defeat violent extremism. There has been increased recognition that capturing and killing all terrorists is not a realistic strategy