Policy Analysis

Rouhani has taken a remarkably austere fiscal approach ahead of the looming parliamentary election, but the country’s economic situation is still not sustainable over the long run.

Polling results from five Gulf countries show where citizens and their leaders converge and diverge on Iran, U.S. relations, and other crucial foreign policy matters.

Among the Shia in Lebanon, two major shifts are taking place within the collective perception of the community. One, Lebanese Shia identity is moving from a sectarian identity to a national one, caused by the costs endured by the Shia community over the past decade. And two, there is a

Since a maximum pressure policy requires maximum deterrence, the president should avoid tweets and actions that undercut U.S. credibility regarding the use of force, while authorizing the requisite rules of engagement.

Iranian regime forces and affiliated militias have been taking advantage of the world’s diverted attention to carry out a campaign of slaughter and mass arrests against the country’s Ahwazi Arabs. These killings are occurring in the Ma`shour (also known as the Bandar-e Ma`shour) area of the Arab Ahwaz region of

The vote’s outcome will not have much legitimacy in the eyes of the people, so Washington should focus on urging all parties to lay the groundwork for longer-term reforms aimed at breaking the political deadlock.

In 2012, during a moment of national and regional consensus, the reserved, nonthreatening Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi was chosen as temporary president of Yemen. But Hadi, now seventy-four years old, has held onto power ever since, despite lacking a large base of domestic loyalists. Most important for the Yemeni people, the war needs to end with either a transitional council or elections so that a future leader enjoys the popular legitimacy Hadi lacks.

Given the potential for sideline progress toward healing the rift and refocusing on Iran, this year’s diplomatic theater will be more closely watched than usual.

Britain, France, and Germany are taking a more proactive role by publicly emphasizing known concerns about the regime’s R&D efforts, but practical mechanisms for ensuring transparency are still needed.

Directly investing in nongovernmental enterprise and giving international approval to private competition can change the dynamic in individual countries, promote liberal economies, and give citizens greater agency.

Some of the worst perpetrators of the murderous crackdown against Iraqi protestors have finally been sanctioned, but follow-on actions need to be taken more quickly in coordination with Britain and other allies.

Given the group’s operational silence and loss of foreign help, it may not be able to launch the type of insurgency seen in Syria, but that could change if U.S. attention wanes militarily or diplomatically.

Terrorism knows no borders—and the struggle against it calls for neighboring countries to cooperate for the sake of regional and global security. Regions including Europe have come to recognize this reality, with dozens of governments forging unprecedented partnerships in policing, intelligence, and counterterrorism over the past decade. In the Middle

After considerable consternation in U.S. congress against Turkey’s incursion into Syria, and a subsequent successful visit by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House in mid-November, much attention in the United States has been focused on Turkey’s foreign policy agenda. However, Turkey’s foreign policy in Syria is deeply

A reliable new Lebanese public opinion poll, conducted in November, shows that a large majority of the country’s Shiites retain positive views of both Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons—even as major anti-government protests include many Shiite participants for the first time. This surprising finding casts doubt on speculation that Hezbollah

Since the beginning of the year, Algerians have repeatedly come to the streets to challenge their political system. Some have used these ongoing protests, also known as Smile Revolution or Hirak, to celebrate their current victories while others have used the occasion to call for a complete change in the

Angry over Iranian militia abuses and Baghdad’s sundry failures, a number of powerful tribes are setting aside their traditional sectarian loyalties and pushing to safeguard their basic needs, sometimes violently.

Amid Saudi stock sell-offs, Russian production limits, U.S. tariff showdowns, and a flurry of other factors, the potential impact of the cartel’s Vienna meetings is difficult to predict.

Israel’s ‘Begin Doctrine,’ a commitment to prevent rival regional powers from acquiring nuclear weapons, risks becoming unenforceable, but it’s not clear what comes next.

On November 23, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Iraq for an unannounced trip that included a visit to meet with the President of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Nechirvan Barzani. In the published White House remarks of the meeting, one sentence asserted a sense of confidence in the