Policy Analysis

Cairo has made progress on returning to its pre-revolution economic levels, but censorship, surveillance, and other humanitarian abuses continue to accelerate.

Looking back one year on, the September 25, 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum and the October 16, 2017 Iraqi overrun of Kirkuk were disastrous setbacks for U.S. national security interests. With Iraq and the Kurdistan Region—America’s key allies in the counter-Islamic State campaign—having fought each other on the battlefield, these partners

The resultant congressional furor could throw a wrench in arms sales and other important bilateral policy matters.

Far from being an intractable impediment, the security issue could help set the foundations of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Experts debate whether and how such support has shifted amid growing Israeli-Arab cooperation and several years' worth of major regional crises.

Netanyahu’s government has splintered following a new round of violence, raising questions about the utility of escalation versus reinstating the ceasefire with incremental infrastructure improvements in Gaza.

Recently, the mayor of Jerusalem commended the U.S. plan to cut UNRWA funding and claimed that the agency is teaching children terrorism in its schools. To illustrate his statement, he referred to the fact that Dalal al-Mughrabi—a PLO operative who conducted a terrorist attack in 1978 during which 35 Israeli

A veteran U.S. policymaker and two notable Iranian expatriates look back at forty years of fraught relations, discussing ways to advance American interests and reduce bilateral antagonism without letting human rights issues lapse.

In recent years, social media has provided a digital bridge across the short but physically uncrossable geographic distance separating Palestinian populations. Arab citizens of Israel consume a constant flow of social media content from the occupied territories; these connections strengthen the population’s Palestinian identity. Within an already-divided Israeli society, social

Watch the full conversation between Institute counselor Dennis Ross and 2018 Scholar-Statesman Award honorees Michael Hayden and George Tenet, former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Riyadh’s shifting, dubious storyline presents a dilemma for allies who want to reestablish good working relations with the world’s largest oil exporter.

On the early days of October, the Libyan National Army (LNA) raided a residential property in the city of Derna, successfully capturing fugitive Egyptian militant Hisham al-Ashmawy, who has operated as a tactical leader for both Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and its offshoot Al-Mourabitoun. Almost immediately after the news of the

The State Department's top counterterrorism official discusses the Trump administration's latest actions against those who facilitate Iranian terrorist activity.

With the choice of the economist Adil Abdul-Mahdi as the new Iraqi Prime Minister, he faces the daunting task of guiding the government through necessary economic reform, service quality improvement, and reconstruction. Economic issues represent one of the most major challenges in Iraq today, and in order to truly effect

Gen. Ali Mohsen could wind up as interim president despite his unpalatability to various parties, so Washington should prepare accordingly to avoid derailing peace talks.

Watch an in-depth conversation with Iraqi experts who share and assess surprising new polling results about Iraqi public opinion.

Two fresh public opinion polls taken in October paint a strikingly mixed picture of popular attitudes among the roughly 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The biggest surprise is that on many peace process issues, these Palestinians voice a harder political line than do their

Two experts discuss how Washington can balance its sometimes conflicting interests in Egyptian security and human rights.

Political observers are struggling to measure the full impacts of the internet on political change—an issue that initially came to the attention of the Arab world during the Arab Spring. The digital revolution has brought the dream of democracy and personal freedom to the Arab world, but it is also

The United States should keep training and advising Saudi forces if they meet certain conditions, but it should end refueling support to Saudi aircraft operating near Yemen.