Policy Analysis

As Iran's March 14 parliamentary elections approach, the prospects for the reformist/technocratic coalition are predictably bleak. Yet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is expected to lose ground as well. Although his conservative critics are likely to pick up a significant number of seats, the big winner will be Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei

PKK enclaves in Northern Iraq, including access to border areas with Turkey and Iran not controlled by Iraqi border police. Copyright 2008 The Washington Institute

Yale University's journal of politics, The Politic, interviewed Institute counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow Dennis Ross for its February 17 issue. Avi Kupfer conducted the interview. From your experience of over twenty years as a diplomat, how would you characterize the approach each administration took regarding the threat of terrorism

The Politic is Yale University's journal of politics. The United States and its allies have made considerable progress in tackling terrorist financing since 9/11 -- one of the few areas of success in the global counterterrorism efforts. Serious challenges have emerged, however, which could threaten the record to date. As

After a six-week delay following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Pakistanis will go to the polls on February 18 to elect a new National Assembly. Pakistan and Afghanistan are "where many of our most important interests intersect," as Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell told the Senate

Yesterday's assassination of arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was welcome news in Washington, Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, and, albeit quietly, Beirut and Baghdad. For Hizballah and Damascus, however, the loss of Mughniyeh -- who was a brilliant military tactician, a key contact to Tehran, and a successful political leader -- is a

The UN has just added three financiers to its terrorism list for providing financial support to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. This would be heartening news but for the fact that it took the UN more than a year to do this, even though the US Treasury had designated the

The director of the National Counterterrorism Center shares a high-level briefing on U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

Last month, Syria's leading dissident went to jail again. Riad Seif's arrest didn't come as much of a surprise; the former member of parliament and longtime human rights advocate had devoted much of the past two decades to criticizing the authoritarian Assad regime. He was released only two years ago

On February 8, 2008, Martin Indyk and Harvey Sicherman addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Indyk, former ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs during the Clinton administration, currently directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Mr

On February 9, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) passed constitutional amendments to legalize a specific woman's headscarf, known as the turban, on college campuses. The Turkish turban -- not to be confused with the south Asian male turban -- emerged in the country in the 1980s. When Kemal

In the wake of Hamas blowing up the border fence between Egypt and Gaza the images of Palestinians from Gaza streaming across the border into Egypt were unsettling to the Israelis, Egyptians, Palestinian Authority, and Bush Administration. Only Hamas benefited from the images. In breaking down the wall sealing the

Between the Iraq war, Iranian nuclear ambitions, chaos in Gaza, the uncertain Annapolis peace process, stalemate in Lebanon, and the high price of oil, President Bush faces a weighty Middle Eastern agenda in his last year of office. With Americans mulling over candidates for 2009 and a Democratic Congress potentially

Since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, the absence of U.S. action toward the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) presence in northern Iraq has been driving a wedge between Turkey and the United States. Meanwhile, Turkey's ties with Iran and Syria, which analysts characterized as "cold if occasionally

On January 30, retired Israeli judge Eliyahu Winograd released his much-anticipated second report on government decisionmaking during the summer 2006 Lebanon war. It did not issue a deathblow to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, but instead described the breakdown in U.S.-Israeli strategic coordination as the principal rationale for Olmert's decision

Egypt has been scrambling to formulate a new policy toward the Gaza Strip this week after being challenged by Hamas, which opened more than eleven crossings along the Israeli-constructed wall that serves as the Egypt-Gaza border. Up to 750,000 Palestinians have flooded the northeastern corner of the Sinai Peninsula since

Though the White House press release read "President Bush to travel to Middle East to follow up on progress made at Annapolis," his January trip actually centered on Iran, a country he did not visit. America's friends -- the Persian Gulf monarchs as well as Israel -- fear that the

Over the past week, Beirut has been rocked by violence yet again. On January 25, a Lebanese Internal Security Forces officer working with the UN investigation into Rafiq Hariri's assassination was killed by a car bomb. And on January 27, seven Shiite antigovernment demonstrators were killed by the Lebanese army

Away from the headlines, Sunnis and Shiites are testing the waters of reconciliation in the Iraqi parliament with an agreement that may come at the expense of country's Kurdish population. The Kurdish political reaction to such an agreement could potentially exacerbate anti-Kurdish sentiment among many Arab parliamentarians, costing the Kurds

On January 26, Hussein Shariatmadari -- the publisher of Iran's most influential newspaper and a close confidant of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- stated that attacks on "Zionists, Americans, and European countries that support Israel," as well as on compliant regional rulers, were both morally permissible and easily carried out