Policy Analysis

Today, President Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali of Tunisia stepped down after days of worsening riots and, coincidentally, one day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bluntly criticized Middle Eastern leaders during a speech in Qatar, where she accused them of tolerating "corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order." In Tunis

On January 10, 2011, Dan Glickman and Vin Weber addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. Mr. Glickman, a senior advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center, previously served as a Democratic congressman from Kansas and as secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration. Mr. Weber, a partner

Yesterday, January 12, as Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri prepared to meet with President Obama in the Oval Office, the Hizballah-led opposition withdrew its support from the Beirut government, forcing its collapse. In the next few days, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is widely expected to announce between two

As Turkey approaches elections in June 2011, a consolidation of political parties appears to be in the making, under the auspices of the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

During the past three months, world prices for oil have steadily increased, leading to predictions that the $100 per barrel level will soon be breached. Although, in part, the increases reflect recovering demand in the world economy, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) warned this week that prices are entering

On January 5, 2011, Peter Neumann, Maajid Nawaz, and Matthew Levitt addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. Dr. Neumann is director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London and a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security

Since Israel's August 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Hamas has evolved from a relatively small movement into a well-funded conglomerate. Instead of being crippled by sanctions and siege, the organization has found ways to surmount early difficulties -- such as frequent payroll delays -- and establish an effective system

The electoral threshold intended to keep Kurdish nationalists out of the Turkish parliament now excludes almost everyone else from the legislature.

Following a year in which homegrown terrorist activity increased sharply, the 2010 holiday season witnessed a spate of attacks, plots, warnings, and arrests around the world, from Sweden to India to Portland, Oregon. As a result, efforts to combat violent extremism are being hotly debated. In Britain, the "Prevent" counterradicalization

On December 29, 2010, Houston-based Noble Energy announced a "significant natural gas discovery" in the Leviathan offshore license area eighty miles off the northern Israeli port of Haifa. According to the company, recent measurements confirmed initial estimates for the field of 16 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, making it

In December 2010, violence increased significantly along Israel's border with Gaza, manifest by high-trajectory fire (rockets and mortars) on southern Israel, counterstrikes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and clashes along the border security fence. The Gaza situation since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in January 2009 has

The CHP has to reinvent itself as the party of secularism, to find a place where it can be at peace with religion but also promote socially liberal values.

President Obama assumed office in 2009 with an ambitious Middle East policy agenda. Atop the list of his campaign pledges, then Senator Obama vowed to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace and re-engage in diplomacy with Tehran and Damascus. Given these grand plans, perhaps not surprisingly the first two years of the Obama

On December 17, 2010, Andrew Natsios and Richard Williamson addressed a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute discussing the ramifications of the upcoming Sudanese referendum. Mr. Natsios, a former U.S. special envoy to Sudan, is currently on the faculty of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never been happy about the status of the Iranian presidency -- neither during his own tenure, from 1981-1989, nor during the terms of his three successors. Tension between the president and the Supreme Leader is built into the Islamic Republic's core. The Supreme

Recent WikiLeaks revelations about the discrepancy between the public and private views on Iran voiced by Gulf Arab leaders have been widely covered by the pan-Arab media without provoking policy shifts or internal tensions in Gulf Arab states. U.S. officials should therefore be encouraged in their policy of pressing for

Beijing's reaction to the November 2010 North Korean attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong is a case study of how China's continuing support of the North Korea-Iran axis is intimately linked with its fears of a U.S.-Taiwan alignment, among other possible scenarios. This paper explores how that axis

The recent announcement that the Obama administration has ended efforts to negotiate a ninety-day extension of Israel's moratorium on West Bank settlement construction is more opportunity than embarrassment. After twenty-two months of near-fruitless efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian negotiations conditioned on a total cessation of Israeli settlement activity, the administration can

Amid the latest setback in the peace process -- the ongoing failure to agree on a "peace talks for settlement freeze" deal -- Palestinian public opinion trends reveal unexpected flexibility on short-term tactics, but also troubling long-term intentions. Five public opinion polls of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians taken by

On November 30, 2010, Daniel Serwer and Mithal al-Alusi addressed a special Policy Forum luncheon at The Washington Institute. Mr. Serwer, a visiting scholar, senior fellow, and professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, previously led U.S. Institute of Peace teams working on rule of law