Policy Analysis

On November 4, 2005, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, outgoing chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), addressed a special Washington Institute Policy Forum marking the anniversary of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. General Yaalon is a distinguished military fellow at the Institute. The following is a

During the nearly thirty-year rule of Hafiz al-Asad, Syria came to control Lebanon and used terrorist groups -- Hizballah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- to exert pressure (and at times reduce it) on others in the region. His son, Bashar, who has been the

On November 11, Bahrain will welcome government officials and civil society groups to the second meeting of the Forum for the Future. The forum was founded at the 2004 G-8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia, as the centerpiece of the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative to promote change

The United States has been lobbying the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution about reinforcing Lebanon's sovereignty, building on the October 25, 2005, report by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559. That resolution, adopted on September 2, 2004, called for the

November 9 marks the start of legislative elections in Egypt. These are the first elections to be contested after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak pledged to implement political reforms during his presidential campaign in September. The political opposition maintains that the legislative elections will not reflect the true will of the

The November 10 meeting at the White House between U.S. president George W. Bush and Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh will be the third time the two men have met since the September 11 terror attacks on the United States. Yemen is an oft-forgotten close U.S. ally, arguably as crucial

Mohsen Sazegara, recently a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and now at Yale University, posted on several Persian-language websites (including gooya.com) a long open letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hossein Khamenei. Below are translated extracts from that letter. Dear Mr. Khamenei: Let go of these strange thoughts

The Bush administration has many problems to keep it preoccupied in its remaining three years, including the challenges of post-Katrina reconstruction and a massive budget deficit. Plus the president and the Republicans in Congress have been weighed down by allegations of misconduct. So it is hardly surprising that some worry

Turkey opened accession talks with the European Union (EU) on October 3. In the aftermath of the March 2004 Madrid bombings, the November 2004 murder of film director Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, and the July 2005 London bombings, all committed by radical Islamists, some people in Europe wonder whether

Exploring continuities and changes, this book provides the historical backdrop crucial to understanding how Iranian pride and sense of victimization combine to make its politics contentious and potentially dangerous. From the struggle between the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini to the current tension between the reformers and traditionalists, a central issue

Now that negotiations toward full Turkish membership in the European Union (EU) have begun, what are the prospects for the Turkish economy? In particular, could Turkey attract significant global investment and take off economically as happened in Spain, Portugal, and Greece in the 1980s and Poland, Hungary, and the Czech

An increasingly accepted argument holds that terrorism has become a cheap enterprise. Louise Richardson, executive dean of the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, made just that case while testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in 2003. "The crucial point to bear in

In the leadup to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's October 20 visit to Washington, the Bush administration urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) to tighten rules enacted in 1995 and change the law governing upcoming Palestinian legislative elections to make it clear that candidates, even those backed by Hamas or other militant

On November 2, the UN General Assembly's Third Committee is due to consider a Canadian resolution condemning Iran for human rights violations. A similar resolution was approved by the General Assembly in 2004 by a vote of 71-54 with fifty-five abstentions. Iran's human rights violations have recently worsened, and the

In the third week of October, Egypt saw some of its most significant sectarian clashes in the last five years. Violence broke out as police forces protected a church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria against Muslims protesting a play that was staged inside the church and that they

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas returned to Ramallah from Washington last week having missed a key opportunity to spur President George W. Bush to reengage in the Roadmap. Instead, the October 20 joint press conference at the White House concluded with Bush acknowledging that his presidency may not witness the creation

The long-awaited report by the international commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was released on October 21. Overseen by UN chief investigator Detlev Mehlis, the report concluded, "Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem

During the last several months, the question of whether women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed to drive has become a lively topic of debate within the kingdom. Support for the issue has come from the newly enthroned King Abdullah; the most prominent opponent is the long-serving interior minister, Prince

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has a credibility problem that his visit with President Bush is unlikely to help: how to convince his people that violence against Israel will not lead to an independent Palestinian state. While Mr. Abbas must certainly show that he can deliver for his people, he

Mahmoud Abbas is a different kind of Palestinian president. Unlike his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who made a long-term strategy out of being a victim, Abbas has made it clear that he seeks to build a political culture of responsibility. He has repeatedly said (in both English and Arabic) that violence