Policy Analysis

This week, the State Department's top Middle East diplomat is slated to meet with Syrian ambassador to the United States Imad Mustapha in what will be the Obama administration's first talks with a senior Syrian official and Mustapha's highest-level U.S. contact in years. The meeting comes amid a flurry of

On February 18, 2009, Soner Cagaptay, Mark Parris, and Ian Lesser addressed a Policy Forum luncheon hosted by The Washington Institute's Turkish Research Program to review Dr. Cagaptay's recent four-month sabbatical in Turkey and to discuss the Obama administration's policy toward Turkey. Dr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director

With his flamboyant fashion sense and Amazonian female bodyguards, it is sometimes difficult to take Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seriously on the world stage. Yet the Libyan strongman's recent selection as chairman of the African Union, which caps a lengthy diplomatic push on the continent, demonstrates that his country's international rehabilitation

On February 14, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced a range of new ministerial, legal, and bureaucratic appointments. Surprising in scope and timing, the changes include the appointment of the kingdom's first woman as a deputy minister and were made, according to Labor Minister Ghazi al-Ghusaibi, "to speed up implementation

When Turkey's justice and development party (AKP) first took power in 2002, it tried to reassure moderates fearful it might chip away at the country's secular, democratic and pro-Western values. The AKP renounced its Islamist heritage and began working instead to secure European Union membership and to turn Turkey into

Israel's new prime minister has a challenge: The Turkish-Israeli relationship -- the country's only public and normal relationship with a Muslim-majority country -- is dangerously strained. The deterioration of the public face of the relationship, exemplified by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's harsh anti-Israeli rhetoric, attacks against Israeli athletes in

On February 11, 2008, Michael Oren and David Makovsky addressed a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Dr. Oren, a renowned scholar of Middle Eastern military and diplomatic history, is a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the

An expert look at the changing face of the global jihadist threat.

On February 12, 2009, Washington Institute senior fellow and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence Matthew Levitt addressed a roundtable discussion hosted by Counterterrorism Blog and the Potomac Institute. The following is a transcript of his remarks. I don't claim to be an expert on the issue

David Makovsky, director of The Washington Institute's Project on the Middle East Peace Process, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and Asia about the possibilities of strengthening peacemaking efforts after the Gaza conflict and Israeli elections. The following is Mr. Makovsky's prepared statement

During a February trip to Iran, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal praised Iranian leaders for their support during the conflict in the Gaza Strip, a further indication of the strengthening ties between the Sunni Islamist group, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization, and the Shiite regime in

On January 29, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked out of a panel that included Israeli president Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, further suggesting to skeptics that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is turning its back on the West. Erdogan also chided

As the Obama administration begins formulating its national security strategy, the incoming team will assess the terrorist threat and counterterrorism environment they have inherited. To that end, The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence has compiled and analyzed six new lectures in an ongoing Institute series featuring senior

Speaking at a January 28 "Gaza Victory" rally in Qatar, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashal announced the start of a new campaign -- not against Israel but against the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Declaring Hamas's intention to replace the PLO with a new body that would serve the

On January 15, outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a nuclear cooperation accord with her United Arab Emirates (UAE) counterpart Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The treaty, which to become law needs to be presented to the U.S. Congress, would help the Persian Gulf state become the first Arab

On February 5, Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) released preliminary results from last Saturday's provincial elections. With 90 percent of the votes tallied, Iraq's new political landscape and key trends are slowly emerging -- with some surprising results. By far the loudest message from Iraqi voters was that the

On February 3, 2009, James Lindsay and Andrew Whitley addressed a Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute marking the publication of Mr. Lindsay's new study Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees. Mr. Lindsay, an Aufzien fellow at The Washington Institute, served with UNRWA

In the wake of the Gaza war, few tasks are more critical than providing much-needed humanitarian support to the residents of Gaza without inadvertently empowering Hamas. Unfortunately, one of the primary vehicles the U.S. government intends to use to provide newly pledged aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or

Iraq's Jan. 31 provincial elections, the first since 2005, may seem to have gone rather smoothly and been accompanied only by limited violence, but it's still too early to breathe a sigh of relief. Every election has losers, and losers don't always accept defeat graciously. In mature Western democracies, losers

On February 10, Israelis will go to the polls to choose a new government, and the election campaigning -- curtailed by Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip -- has resumed in earnest. The abbreviated campaign may explain why an estimated 30 percent of Israelis are undecided, a very high