Policy Analysis

After a month of negotiations and much previous speculation, Washington and Ankara have agreed on a 75-mile buffer zone between Tall Abyad and Ras al-Ain, with the two armies establishing a joint operations center in Ankara. At the end of last week, U.S. and Turkish forces conducted their first joint

With no clear front-runner emerging and public disillusionment mounting, the struggling Arab democracy is transitioning from a period of consensus to uncertainty.

Detention facilities for individuals affiliated with jihadist groups in the Middle East have a history of transforming into incubators for the creation and rise of new jihadist organizations, which have proved more dangerous and robust—both in terms of economic strength and manpower—than before. These organizations, which were founded from the

On July 18, 2019 Javaid Rehman, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, reported that “Arab Ahwazis have continued to be subjected to violations of their rights…. [as] Iranian authorities have reportedly applied broad national security laws to target human

Recently, Turkish municipal politics have become another lens into the complicated relationship between the Turkish government and the country’s Kurdish voters. On August 19, Turkish authorities removed the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) mayors of the majority Kurdish cities of Diyarbakir, Martin, and Van on unspecified charges of terrorism. These mayors

Baghdad is under pressure to show it can protect its airspace, but procuring Russian or Iranian equipment might complicate U.S.-Iraq relations without addressing the triggers for Israeli strikes.

Abbas will likely use it to rally the Arab League and UN against the Trump administration’s peace plan, and his success will depend on Washington’s own reaction going forward.

Publicizing IDF operations, threatening to annex the West Bank, and making alarmist statements about polling stations and the press may help him eke out a victory, but at what cost to Israel’s security and standing?

The country is fast becoming a regional leader in meeting global CT norms, developing the necessary toolkits, and integrating its efforts with those of foreign governments.

The current holder of the highest clerical rank in Shia Islam is eighty-nine-year-old Ali al-Sistani, who is based in Najaf, Iraq. Sistani has played an important role in Iraq’s post-Saddam era, supporting political reconciliation and a constitution-based society. While the transnational reach of marjaiya will likely diminish after Sistani leaves the scene, the specific contours of this shift and Tehran's efforts to intervene remain an open question.

Riyadh’s hopes of raising money through a partial sell-off of Saudi Aramco depend on the price of oil, which failed to rise sufficiently under the previous minister.

Two Washington Institute fellows join the children of former Israeli prime ministers to discuss how their legacy of leadership informs the country’s biggest looming challenge: maintaining the possibility of separation from the Palestinians.

Without a concerted international effort to ground UAVs and halt the flow of weapons, the UN will have minimal leverage to restart the country's long-stalled political transition.

Whenever nuclear weapons technology appears in the hands of Israel’s enemies, Pyongyang is usually involved.

Early Islamic traditions—compiled in the centuries following Islam’s formative phase through the literary corpus of Sirah (Biography of the Prophet) and Hadith (Acts and sayings of the Prophet)—openly drew on accounts from Jewish converts to Islam ( Isra‘iliyyat). While classical Islamic scholars have generally discounted the value of these accounts

In the course of the past century, a troubling development has asserted itself in Islamic thought. Whether in scholarly religious texts or in popular presentations, a new Islamic “theology of the Jews” has coalesced into a thorough demonization of both historical and contemporary ‘Jews.’ In this evolving and radicalizing theological

A recent survey suggests an immediate opening for Washington to promote certain reforms, but real reconciliation still looks like a distant dream.

As tensions continue to escalate between the United States and Iran, Iraq finds itself struggling to maintain a balancing act. In an attempt to curb Iranian influence and respond to U.S. pressure, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has moved to integrate the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), or Hash al Shaabi, into

Amidst all the turmoil of Israel’s unprecedented second national election within six months, due on September 17, one key yet often overlooked factor stands out: the decisively right-wing role of the small religious parties. Despite the high birth rate of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox groups, they still get only about

The architects of a landmark shift in IDF doctrine explain why the change was necessary, and how it has helped delay full-scale war even while forcefully confronting Tehran’s hegemonic ambitions.