All Policy Analysis by Patrick Clawson

Fifty years of rapid population growth in the Middle East is coming to an end. The Middle East is experiencing the same "demographic transition" to slow population growth that other areas have gone through. The immediate reason for the slower population growth is a fall in the number of children

High on the agenda of the November 27-28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors (BOG) will be the November 19 report from Director General Mohammed ElBaradei about Syria. How the IAEA responds to the Syrian challenge may determine whether future urgent proliferation concerns are taken

On November 6, Robert Satloff, Patrick Clawson, and David Makovsky addressed a Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. Dr. Satloff is executive director of The Washington Institute, Dr. Clawson is the Institute's deputy director for research, and Mr. Makovsky is the director of the Institute's Project on the Middle

On June 20, 2008, Michael Eisenstadt and Patrick Clawson addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Eisenstadt is a senior fellow and director of the Institute's Military and Security Studies Program, and Dr. Clawson is deputy director of research at the Institute. The two recently coauthored The Last

Accepted wisdom suggests that preventive military action against Iran's nuclear program would entail significant risks and uncertain prospects of success. Much of the public debate surrounding these risks and uncertainties has focused on strictly military-technical considerations. Although important, these issues do not address the key political and contextual questions underlying

Although the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list has a set of criteria for designating groups, there is little clarity in practice about the process for revocation. Even after organizations have renounced terrorism for many years, their designations persist without a clear explanation, and are based on the assumption that historical violence

On January 26, Hussein Shariatmadari -- the publisher of Iran's most influential newspaper and a close confidant of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- stated that attacks on "Zionists, Americans, and European countries that support Israel," as well as on compliant regional rulers, were both morally permissible and easily carried out

On Monday, January 7, Patrick Clawson and Robert Satloff addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute and discussed the upcoming visit of President Bush to the Middle East. Dr. Clawson is deputy director of research at The Washington Institute and author, most recently, of Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in