Policy Analysis

From countering Iran and its proxies to working directly with Israel, Egyptian survey respondents seem remarkably willing to follow Washington's lead on multiple regional issues.

October 12, 2017 As President Trump unveils his revised U.S. strategy to contain Iran, surveys reveal that key Arab publics in the region share his antipathy toward Tehran. Previously reported polls from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Qatar, sometimes depicted as pro-Iranian, demonstrated solid majorities in each country with unfavorable

Given the IAEA's legal uncertainty about Parchin and the Security Council's discord about further inspections, the Trump administration needs to decide how hard to press for more answers on weaponization issues.

In practical terms, scrapping and replacing the JCPOA is a nonstarter, so the administration should instead focus on countering Iran as its top regional priority -- and decide how it will respond when Tehran pushes back.

Given its recent military movements and high-level contacts with Turkey and Baghdad, Iran may be looking to exact an intolerable cost on the KRG.

Had Walt and Mearsheimer not been so committed to indicting pro-Israel groups with responsibility for the failures of U.S. policy in the Middle East, they could have raised legitimate issues worth debating.

Regional leaders believe the administration mishandled Iran and the Arab Spring, and this belief had the unintended effect of aligning their interests with Netanyahu's.

Even if Erdogan strikes a deal to keep the crisis from boiling over, Washington has shown him that there are limits to U.S. tolerance of his authoritarian balancing act.

Putin's recent summit with the Saudi leader is another diplomatic coup for the Kremlin, but it does not mark a fundamental shift in Russia's calculus on Iran or other regional issues.

In a radical rethinking of the origins of U.S. Middle East policy, Robert Satloff suggests that two key ideas guiding Washington's actions in the region for the past three-quarters of a century were born in the bargain U.S. leaders made with Vichy French officers after Allied troops landed in North Africa during World War II.

Factors such as corruption, socioeconomic inequity, and ignorance among Russian officials regarding Islam could end up fueling radicalism rather than deterring it.

The threat of decertifying the nuclear deal gives the administration an opening with those who wish to preserve it, so the president should use this leverage wisely rather than taking an all-or-nothing approach.

European leaders surely do not want the U.S. to walk away from the JCPOA. But their room to maneuver is politically limited, given Mr. Trump's unpopularity in their countries. Responding to the White House on Iran will prove difficult for them unless Mr. Trump changes his tone and emphasizes that

Myanmar's growing humanitarian crisis is fueling calls for jihad by global extremist groups and threatening to draw Middle East and Asian fighters into a new front.

Any U.S. pushback against the nuclear deal with Iran will carry consequences, along with potential side benefits, but some courses of action could be more self-defeating than others.

October 05, 2017 As the birthplace of the Arab Spring, Tunisia has proven to be an oddity. While other Arab Spring countries have experienced varying levels of war, mayhem, and authoritarian crack-downs, Tunisia has remained on a path of peaceful change. The absence of violence, however, should not be mistaken

If Iraqi Shia reject Tehran's call for a unified bloc in next year's elections, it could have welcome implications for the future of Iranian influence in Baghdad -- and Beirut.

October 05, 2017 There is not a war in the world that does not bring misfortune. Even if Hezbollah wins the Syrian war, sharp divisions among the Lebanese Shia will remain. The war has exacerbated the phenomenon of sectarianism in a variety of ways. Day after day, the region’s poor

A discussion on how the relationship has evolved to the point where Israel was the only regional government encouraging rather than decrying the KRG referendum.

Beirut's tilt toward Tehran has dangerous implications when it comes to countering Sunni radicalization.