Middle Eastern Affairs

The popular uprising that erupted in Syria in March 2011 was largely limited to the Sunni Arab majority and was eventually led by Islamist activists. It confronted the country’s religious and ethnic minorities with existential challenges. Caught between the anvil of anarchy and the hammer of Islamism, they feared for Syria’s future as a secular […]

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has a colossal problem. Syria’s infrastructure, including housing and commerce, was significantly destroyed during more than a decade of civil war. The new Syrian government will have great difficulty rebuilding Syria after more than a decade of civil war unless US and other sanctions are lifted. Syria has been under comprehensive […]

When President Donald Trump arrived in the Gulf, it was not just another diplomatic appearance. It was a signal. A bold assertion that the shape of a new Middle East is being drafted—not in smoke-filled backrooms, but in the ambitious visions of capitals determined to move beyond war and resentment. Trump’s visit was transactional on […]

Israel launches extensive retaliatory airstrikes against the Houthi economic heartland in northern Yemen, while the US pivots to announce a ceasefire with the Houthis. This divergence in approach between the superpower and a regional ally raises questions over whether momentum for an anti-Houthi ground offensive has been lost. An intensified American-led air campaign, “Operation Rough […]

As the Trump administration considers its Middle East peace strategy, one target should be a deeper relationship between the Arab world’s most populous nation and the Jewish state, one that advances beyond diplomatic formalities to include greater economic cooperation and cultural exchanges. Since the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Cairo and Jerusalem have […]

President Trump will be traveling to the Middle East at a time of great progress, given the terrible defeat Iran has suffered over the past eighteen months at the hands of exactly the regional alliance Trump is seeking now to further strengthen. Nevertheless, more work is needed on the three most pressing remaining Iran-related issues, […]

Once upon a time, the Middle Eastern media environment was predictable and staid, dominated by a few prominent outlets that in Arab countries were often owned and operated by the governments’ information ministries.  No longer. Over the past three decades, the region has witnessed an explosion in information and connectivity. In the 1990s and 2000s, […]

In October 2023, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels began attacking civilian and military shipping in the Red Sea between the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The impact on global trade has cost consumers world-wide billions of dollars, as ships avoid the Red Sea and transit instead around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In […]

Israel-Egypt peace was carefully constructed in the 1979 treaty and has weathered numerous regional storms: the 1982 Lebanon War, two Palestinian intifadas, the upheaval of the 2011 Arab Spring, and even sixteen months of conflict in Gaza. Throughout, Israel and Egypt have sustained generally productive military and economic cooperation (despite persistent anti-Israeli sentiment in the […]

The Islamist terrorist armies – Hamas, Hizbullah, Ansarallah (the Houthis) – and their backers are not able to win wars against the US allies in the Middle East. But they are able to win information campaigns. In so doing, they can influence and prepare Middle Eastern publics for future rounds of conflict. The Arabic media […]

The Middle East that awaits a second Trump administration offers unusual opportunity. The US can double down on two major successes – Israel’s war against Iran’s proxy armies and the Abraham Accords peace deal – to expand its regional alliance. At the end of the first Trump administration, the Abraham Accords expanded the alliance at […]

The fall of the Assad regime is the greatest event of the war over the past year, although the Syrian army itself did not take part in the fighting. The ring of fire that Iran had planned to establish around Israel has been dismantled with the loss of the single most important link in the […]

BACKGROUND The second Trump administration will face immediate foreign policy dilemmas in all three Eurasian fronts. This paper concentrates on the Middle East, but the competing demands of Europe and East Asia, and the links among all of them, influence decisions everywhere. The dramatic events of the past year open the door to a regional […]

The landslide election of Donald Trump’s holds out real promise of encouraging peace in the Middle East. Unlike President Biden, who demanded caution from Israel in exchange for providing arms, Trump seems to be sending a message that he will support Israel’s policy of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that requires military […]

On September 26, 2021, Israel’s then Prime Minister Naftali Bennet took the podium at the UN General Assembly and laid out a grand vision for the Middle East. It was a modernist, advanced, technological future (as befitted Bennet, a former high-tech entrepreneur) in which Israel would play a major role – focused upon a world […]

In one of his last interviews on German television, before passing at the age of 100, Henry Kissinger opined that the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on October 7 could end up bringing the rest of the Arab world into the fighting. Based on recent events, his remarks were prophetic. Unless cooler heads prevail, we […]

The difficulty in comparing America’s and China’s influence in the Middle East is that the two operate on entirely different planes. [Note: The Chinese use the term Western Asia, rather than the Middle East, to refer to a region that includes the Levant, Iraq, the Gulf, Turkey and Iran.] Despite China’s impressive naval construction program, China […]

I once asked a Vietnamese friend what an impending leadership change in Hanoi meant for his country’s relations with China. “Every Vietnamese leader,” he replied, “must get along with China; every Vietnamese leader must stand up to China; and if you cannot do both at the same time, you don’t deserve to be the leader.” […]

Egypt’s army specializes in executing set-piece operations. In 1973, the army had the idea of using water cannons to dissolve parts of Israel’s defensive line on the Suez Canal, huge sand berms erected to prevent an Egyptian assault into Sinai. The Egyptian army did in a few short hours what Israeli planners thought would take […]

China’s evolving role in the Middle East is analyzed by US Ambassador Peter Pham.

The State of Israel is not required by law to adopt a national security strategy. But the need for such a document has been often raised, and several efforts have been made to write one. In October 1953, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion presented a long disquisition on Israel’s security needs to the Cabinet, which he […]

Although it was not the Biden administration that fathered the Abraham Accords, it proved willing to adopt them—hoping, with this endorsement, to assuage the dismay felt by many in the region with other aspects of its policy. Still, the president has done little, so far, to promote the Accords and their expansion. Moreover, the weakening […]

The summit of foreign ministers came together on relatively short notice. It was unstructured, informal, with little of the staff work or pre-negotiation that normally precedes such gatherings. The agenda was slim and general, and the outcome rather modest. But viewed through a historical scope, the results were transformational. I am not referring to the […]

As we approach the two-year anniversary of a phone call that changed the Middle East, it is important to understand the impact and potential of the Abraham Accords.

Since the rise of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power, the Egyptian government has invested in strengthening its ties with the Egyptian diaspora around the world, as an important pillar of Egypt’s “soft power” strategy.

Israel’s New Connectivity

A Letter From the Publisher

Israel’s defense doctrine should be reassessed, if deterrence is irrelevant to anti-guerilla and anti-terror warfare

The Crisis that Wasn’t

Biden administration’s first foreign policy crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean merely conformed to the pattern of gradual American disengagement from a region that was once vital to US interests.

The US was never much interested in Syria. What pulled America in, and who has benefitted from the Syrian tragedy?

Is the world actually becoming more peaceful? And if so, why?

Israel is far less of a bipartisan issue than it used to be. But there's something deeper going on in the US

Erdoğan knows he has no choice. The Bennett-Lapid government should not offer him a diplomatic lifeline

A letter from the publisher: Biden must consider the plight of the Iranian people in negotiations with the regime

Does the growing importance of the psychological dimension in modern conflicts put the US and its allies at a disadvantage?

Israel’s Lebanon Syndrome, the US’ Afghanistan Syndrome: Different military stories, similar conclusions

This man had dedicated his life to Israel’s extermination. What remains of his legacy of violence?

Five lessons to be learned from decades of ineffectual policies, and a cornered cat

Force as a policy choice, necessary for liberal political leaders as it is for more conservative ones

Will the roller coaster ride that is the US–Pakistan relationship become more “normal” now?

America’s chaotic exit was merely the culmination of a series of major errors, going back to 2001

Why “knowing the enemy” and “knowing thyself” is not enough

How the Sunni–Shiite divide became a revolutionary mission, affecting the entire Middle East

The Biden administration seems to be on the wrong track. Here's what needs to change

A closer look at a critically important, but little known, example of US engagement in the Middle East

Two personal perspectives on Middle East peace, offering insights into the dynamics of building bridges

A personal perspective on Middle East peace, offering an insight into the dynamics of dialogues that can build bridges

A personal perspective on Middle East peace, offering an insight into the dynamics of dialogues that can build bridges

America has returned to its role as a major energy producer and exporter, affecting much more than the global market

Erdoğan’s new Turkey confuses everyone. Here are six rules for dealing with it

Literature review: The Obama memoir, like his presidency, over-promises and under-delivers

The lessons learned from the poorly managed US withdrawal, and its ramifications for foreign policy

Biden is the last of his generation of Democrats. What does it say for the present—and future—of US–Israel ties?

JST Debate: Action is needed to break the ongoing impasse in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process

JST Debate: A breakthrough in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process is unlikely

JST Debate: Voices from both sides of some of the most heated discussions of our time

Iran’s primary strategic objective is to drive the US from the region

The IDF should draw some conclusions from recent conflicts on how to revise its information campaigns

The time has come to restore realist balance-of-power thinking to the center of international relations theory

A practitioner’s perspective: Only a militarily strong Israel can sustain its regional position

For some, the higher the cost, the stronger the claim to be the true representatives of values worth dying for

America’s adversaries are not the only ones to respond to Washington’s changing regional priorities

It may strike some of you as curious that of all people, a Moroccan Arab Muslim would move to create a journal about the US–Israel relationship