Policy Analysis

Iran--Syria's closest ally since the fall of the Soviet Union--has perhaps the most to fear from the prospect of Syria-Israel peace. Indeed, Tehran seems to have been caught off guard by Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad's decision to reenter negotiations, and Tehran is accordingly viewing with great concern Syria's apparent readiness

In the past ten days, Libyan leader Mu‘ammar Qadhafi has made progress in his efforts to achieve international respectability. After fifteen years, a British ambassador, Richard Dalton, arrived in Tripoli pledging to help Libya return to the “mainstream of the international community.” And Colonel Qadhafi’s status as mediator of thorny

When Syrians, Americans, and Israelis sat down in Washington this week, they may as well have kept an empty chair for a fourth key player in this equation--Turkey. Turkish water, in particular, will likely be needed to facilitate a Syrian-Israeli deal, but history suggests that Ankara will not provide that

On December 8, 1999, Wilfried Buchta—author of the forthcoming book Who Rules Iran?, to be published by The Washington Institute in conjunction with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation—addressed the Institute’s Special Policy Forum. The following is a rapporteur’s summary of his remarks. The Iranian revolution has endured years of internal turmoil

As Syria and Israel begin negotiations in Washington today, conflict and violence again flared in southern Lebanon, where large-scale raids by Hizballah against twenty Israeli and South Lebanon Army (SLA) posts prompted Israeli retaliatory air strikes. Given that one of Israel’s chief goals in the peace talks is the pacification

The European Unions (EU) naming of Turkey as a full-fledged candidate for membership is of historic significance. The first-ever Muslim-majority candidate, Turkey differs significantly from current EU member-states not only in religion, but also in culture, history, and the wide range of regional security threats it faces. U.S. diplomacy was

U.S. president Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak will lead their respective national delegations at this week’s historic set of Syria-Israel peace talks, but Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad is sending his foreign minister in his stead. By keeping himself at one remove from the talks, Asad retains certain

THOMAS FRIEDMAN International Context: Syria's position must be viewed within the system of globalization that has replaced the previous Cold War order. The rules of the globalization system are qualitatively different from those of the Cold War and will influence the politics and economics of all states. Whereas the Cold

In the next few days, the United Nations (UN) Security Council will have to decide whether to approve a new inspections regime for Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD). For six months, the Council members have been debating this matter in closed meetings. The impetus to act now comes from

Spurned two years ago, a wary Turkey again hopes to be designated a candidate for membership in the European Union (EU) when the EU summit meets in Helsinki December 10-11. That this prospect is on the brink of realization is a tribute to many factors, but perhaps most of all

On December 2, 1999, Antony Blinken, special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council, delivered The Washington Institute's Third Annual Turgut Ozal Memorial Lecture. The following are excerpts from his presentation. Read a full transcript. "What seems an obvious point today was

Reliance on air power has become the defining characteristic of the "American Way of War" in the post-Cold War world of the 1990s. Prior to the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, U.S. Air Force weapons and tactics were optimized for an air war in Central Europe, taking into

On December 1, Mu'awyeh Al-Masri, a Palestinian legislator from Nablus, was shot in the leg by a group of masked men in broad daylight. This mafia-style "kneecapping" was the culmination of several days of arrests and protests in the Palestinian Authority (PA) which followed the distribution of a leaflet accusing

Examines the consequences of the lack of an effective system for monitoring and tracking students, exchange visitors, and scholars from terrorism-supporting countries, and evaluates U.S. government efforts to address this problem. Updates Hillary Mann's 1997 Policy Focus, Open Admissions: U.S. Policy toward Students from Terrorism-Supporting Countries in the Middle East.

The November 18 signing of a pipeline accord in the Turkish port city of Istanbul, in the presence of President Clinton, gives further momentum to the oil export link project between Baku, the capital of the Caspian littoral state of Azerbaijan, and Ceyhan, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Another piece of

Barak, Rabin, and Peace Strategy: Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, like the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, believes that Israel's peace strategy should be based on strategic, "old Middle East" assumptions, rather than those of the idealized "new Middle East" propounded by Shimon Peres. As foreign minister and then prime

ROBERT SATLOFF General Observations Meetings with the four leaders--Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Yasir Arafat--underscore the vitality of regional leadership. All seemed healthy, engaged, self-assured, and in command. Barak is clearly a man with a mission, convinced

President Clinton's trip to Turkey for the November 18-19 OSCE summit will be historic for U.S.-Turkish relations. The November 15-17 bilateral portion of the trip (perhaps now in doubt following another shocking earthquake in Turkey today) will mark only the third visit by a U.S. president to Turkey and the

Turkey and Israel inhabit a region troubled by security concerns that include religious fundamentalism, terrorism, illicit trafficking of arms and drugs, transfer of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation of nuclear weapons, and mass movements of refugees. These two states thus have overlapping security interests as well as political and economic

On October 24, 1999, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s minister of public security, delivered the closing keynote address at The Washington Institute’s Inaugural Weinberg Founders Conference. The following is a rapporteur’s summary of his remarks. Read a full transcript. A conceptual gap exists between the foreign policies of former Israeli prime minister