Policy Analysis

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon dropped a political bombshell by leaving the party that he helped to form in 1973, shattering the political status quo in Israel. Mr. Sharon made the move because he wants his legacy to be that he shaped the borders of Israel in any two-state agreement

On November 18, 2005, Michael Eisenstadt, Patrick Clawson, and Henry Sokolski discussed policy options regarding Iran's nuclear program in light of the November 24 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the publication of Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran (U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute)

Read Part I of this two-part series. Amir Peretz's decision to pull the Labor Party he leads out of its national unity government with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set Israel's new political calendar and precipitated Sharon's decision to bolt the Likud Party and consent to elections in March 2006. Peretz

On November 17, 2005, Khairi Abaza and Michele Dunne discussed the electoral process in Egypt, the state of political reform, and the prospects for change following the legislative elections now underway. Khairi Abaza is a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute, and previously served as secretary of the Cultural Committee

Read Part II of this two-part series. On Monday, November 21, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon announced that he is bolting the Likud Party and forming a new National Responsibility Party. The Knesset took a preliminary vote to dissolve itself. While wrangling may continue, a final date will soon be

After a period of some tolerance under former president Mohammad Khatami, Iran is now experiencing a cultural clampdown. President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad is implementing the hardest of hardline ideological tendencies in the cultural arena, consistent with his belief that his administration should prepare the country for the reappearance of the hidden

The November 9 hotel bombings in Amman occurred while King Abdullah II was out of the country, just as was the case when al-Qaeda operatives in Aqaba fired missiles at USS Ashland in August. As he rushed back to Amman, it was clear that he alone was in charge and

On November 14, 2005, Lt. Gen. Ethem Erdagi, commander of the International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan (ISAF) from February to August 2005, discussed the roles of ISAF and Turkey in Afghanistan at a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. General Erdagi currently serves as commander of NATO's Rapid

On November 8, the State Department released the International Religious Freedom Report, its annual survey of religious freedom across the world ( read the report online). Several of the designated "countries of particular concern" (CPCs) are in the Middle East: Iran, Sudan, and embarrassingly, in light of longstanding close diplomatic

On November 8, 2005, Robert Pape and Martin Kramer debated the origins of suicide terrorism and the proper responses to it at The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. Dr. Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of

In recent years, high oil prices, instability in the Persian Gulf, and political tensions between Washington and key oil-producing countries have underscored the cost of heavy reliance on oil from tumultuous regions. The United States and the wider global economy are particularly vulnerable to energy shocks emanating from the Middle

On November 8, 2005, Robert Pape and Martin Kramer debated the origins of suicide terrorism and the proper responses to it at The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. Following is the full text of Dr. Kramer’s prepared remarks. Read a rapporteur’s summary of the entire debate. I am delighted to

On November 2, Iraq's Defense Ministry appealed to junior officers from Saddam Hussein's disbanded army to return to service. The decision to include these soldiers is part of an ongoing strategy to minimize support for terrorism by reintegrating Sunnis into the political fabric of the new Iraq. This latest effort

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

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 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

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