Haisam Hassanein was an Associate Fellow at The Washington Institute. Previously, he was the Institute's 2016-2017 Glazer Fellow, in which he focused on economic relations between Israel and Arab states. He has published in several media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs
Wesam Hassanein is a master's candidate at American University's School of International Service.
Articles & Testimony
When it comes to U.S. policy on the Gulf and Iran, Washington should abandon any wrong-headed notions about resurrecting the pre-1979 security architecture.
The Obama administration pursued a regional policy that sought to reintegrate Iran into the regional and international systems in the hope of stabilizing the Middle East. This unrealistic desire to set the clock back was the primary intention behind the 2015 nuclear deal. Proponents of this theory erroneously claim that before Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the United States equally supported the Shah’s regime and the Gulf States and acted as a stabilizer in the Gulf. Therefore, the Gulf countries must now reach an accommodation and share the spoils of the region with Iran for stability to take root and reduce the security burden on the United States. The primary reasons behind this flawed understanding of the Iranian regime is the tendency to overlook its theocratic and revolutionary nature while underestimating how significantly the Gulf States have changed since the 1970s...
