Policy Analysis

On April 10, 2012, Jeffrey White and Andrew Exum addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. White, a defense fellow at the Institute, previously completed a thirty-four-year career with the Defense Intelligence Agency, serving in a wide variety of senior analytical and leadership positions. Mr. Exum, a senior

Cyber bullets are bullets nonetheless.

In pursuing a nuclear deal with Tehran, Obama is betting against the future. You wouldn't know it from following the news, but the nuclear impasse is not the only issue dividing Iran and the United States. In his latest message to the Iranian people on the occasion of their festival

This interview was conducted for Global Politics by Robert Tollast, a graduate of Royal Holloway University of London who has interviewed various diplomats for Small Wars Journal . In March, the Iraqi government imposed tight security restrictions on Baghdad to host the Arab League summit, the first to be held

Welcome to the new Middle East, which increasingly looks too small to accommodate both Turkey and Iran. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is visiting Riyadh on Friday. The Syrian crisis will dominate the agenda in Riyadh, and Iran will scrutinize every statement made by Erdogan and his Saudi hosts

If Iran gets nuclear weapons, will other Middle East states want them too? In a bloggingheads.tv conversation, Matt Duss and Michael Singh explore the issues.

The ethnic strife between majority Shiites and the ruling Sunni al-Khalifa family in Bahrain is worsening, with a growing risk that the U.S. naval base there could become contentious.

Several recent developments have put the possibility of military action in Syria on Turkey's agenda. On April 9, Syrian forces opened fire at a refugee camp on the Turkish side of the border, killing two Syrian refugees and wounding two Turks. The number of such refugees crossing into Turkey has

With talks between the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) and Iran set to resume in Istanbul on April 13, officials are discussing possible compromises that might persuade Tehran to give up any ambition of developing nuclear weapons. Apparently, one of the principal components of these

Bashar al-Assad's complete disregard for UN special envoy Kofi Annan's April 10 deadline for withdrawal of regime forces from population centers is only the latest sign that Damascus has no intention of implementing the envoy's six-point plan to deal with the Syria crisis. The fact that the regime's armed forces

Saudi Arabia's ruling clique is dying off, and it may be up to the new defense minister to guide the kingdom through a turbulent Middle East.

If Iran decides to seriously negotiate during upcoming nuclear talks -- currently scheduled to begin this weekend in Istanbul -- what might it expect to gain from the resultant deal? Probably not much, because even a comprehensive agreement on nuclear issues would not close the profound geostrategic split between Washington

If Washington does not maintain pressure on Iran, it will validate the regime's strategy of defiance, provocation, and delay.

On April 5, 2012, His Excellency Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. The following is a rapporteur's summary of his remarks. IRAQ'S INTERNAL POLITICAL CRISIS AND U.S. POLICY Despite a budding national political crisis originating from the consolidation of

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation in Washington last week to better understand how the Islamist group will govern Egypt. It was a noble attempt at promoting intercultural political dialogue -- an engagement for which many in the American policy community, as well as academia

A little-known Turkish exclave, Caber Kalesi (Qal'at Ja'bar in Arabic), is a sliver of sovereign Turkish territory that sits smack in the middle of Syria.

There can be little doubt that the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China would all prefer a diplomatic outcome to the impasse over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Collectively, they make up the P5+1 mechanism that will soon resume negotiations with Iranian representatives. Talks were discontinued last year because Tehran's

Among Syrian opposition groups, the belief is widespread that Damascus has been allowing the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- a group on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list -- to operate once again in Syria. Back in 1998, the Syrian regime curbed PKK activity on its soil and cut

On Saturday, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) announced the nomination of Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater for president, cementing a critical shift in its political strategy. Although the group initially tried to manage Egypt's post-Mubarak transition by cooperating with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and secularist parties

The current form of religious leadership over the Shi'ite community, marjayia, was founded in the 1830s when Mohammed Hassan Najafi became the first transnational Shi'ite religious authority (marja) in Najaf, Iraq. Najafi created a universal patronage network through which he received religious taxes and endowment incomes, and appointed religious representatives