Middle East

AbstractTunisia’s Jasmine revolution and the Arab Spring are unfolding amidst the resurgence of five sets of debates over the proper role of the international community in democracy promotion efforts abroad, including in the Middle East and North Africa, which...

On July 11, 2012, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini, publicly warned the Iranian press against publishing pieces about the negative effects of Western sanctions on the Iranian economy. This was the first time Hosseini...

Amman, Jordan, October 19, 2012 — Jordan is a tiny, liberal monarchy in a tough neighborhood. To its West, is the West Bank and Israel and the longest running war of rocket attacks and bus bombings in the region....

In a crowded world employing precise means of measurement in order to define and represent boundaries, it is understandable that the past is scrutinized to provide historical credence for such frontiers. However, for most of human history, major empires,...

Foreign Policy  Jordan wants the United States to believe that Islamists, headlined by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) party, are the most dangerous opposition in the kingdom. Yet this is pure fiction, a ruse that exploits Western...

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is the most important international political organization in the Arabic-speaking world. It is the dominant party in Egypt’s parliament, having obtained about 47 percent of the vote there, and in the Tunisian government, having received...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: With American clout in the Middle East on the decline, the historic power struggle between Turkey and Iran has intensified, each attempting to fill the vacuum in the region by expanding its influence. Syria and Iraq have...

With the failure of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to broker a ceasefire in Syria, Western policymakers and pundits are increasingly coming to acknowledge that the country’s descent into civil war is all but inevitable. But this begs...

“Will Israel Attack Iran?” was the provocative headline of respected Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman’s January story published in The New York Times Magazine.  Bergman claimed that “yes,” Israel would attack Iran in 2012.  A few days later, Israeli scholar...