Here’s a roundup of new and noteworthy articles and interviews about political developments in the Middle East. TV Debate on Qatar’s restoration of full diplomatic ties with Iran On August 29, TRT World, a TV channel controlled by the Turkish government, hosted a debate about Doha’s decision to return its ambassador to Tehran. Mahjub Zuwayri, a professor at Qatar University, with a PhD from Tehran University, explained the decision as follows: “It’s the right of a sovereign nation to decide on its own foreign policy. … Iran showed a willingness to help Qatar on the blockade imposed upon it by its own neighbors.” Hisham al-Ghannam, a fellow at Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, replied, “Qatar is not Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Qatar is under the U.S. security umbrella. This is a tactical move rather than a strategic one. The goal is to send a message to the boycotting countries that Qatar is … aligning with Iran. … I want to ask your Continue Reading…

I’m now in the midst of researching the American policy discussion about the future of Al-Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, home to the largest concentration of American military personnel in the Middle East. It hosts more than 11,000 U.S. forces, the forward headquarters of the U.S. Air Force Central Command, the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, and the 379th Air Expedition Wing. It is the also the “Combined Air and Space Operations Center” from which the U.S. has been coordinating its air strikes against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Amid the diplomatic crisis between Qatar on the one hand and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt on the other, a variety of voices have debated how a substantial U.S. army presence in Qatar may be affecting the crisis. The forthcoming paper is part of a series that has also included a publication about the new Chinese and Saudi bases in Djibouti. Among other aspects of the research, I’m gathering statements about the matter by current and former Continue Reading…

In this excerpt from his nonfiction narrative The Honored Dead (Random House: Spiegel & Grau), Joseph Braude describes the characters in a homicide case which he studied while embedded with the Moroccan police in Casablanca. Muhammad Bari eased out of his bedroom and opened the creaking front door just enough to make his way outside. His wife deserved her sleep; she had to get up for work in an hour. Usually Bari’s best friend would be waiting for him in the alleyway and they would walk together to a nearby mosque for the dawn prayer. This morning, the alleyway was empty. Bari didn’t worry: Sometimes his friend slept in until sunrise. It was December in Casablanca, Morocco’s sprawling economic capital on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. An ocean mist chilled the lingering darkness. Bari’s teeth chattered as he took off his shoes outside the mosque and placed them in an empty cubby hole. He performed his ritual ablutions in the washroom and proceeded barefoot into the sanctuary warm with body heat: several hundred Continue Reading…

Daniel L. Glaser’s remarkable career in the U.S. Treasury Department culminated in his appointment as Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence — a position he held from 2011 to January 2017. In the course of his work, he tracked the flow of funds between a range of rogue states, including Iran, and the gamut of terror organizations, including Hamas. In his interview with Majalla, Glaser spoke to the strong connection between Iran and Hamas and charges of corruption among Hamas leadership figures. He appraised the commitment by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to clamping down on Hamas, and noted new opportunities for broader regional cooperation to counter terrorist groups. What is the nature of Iranian support for Hamas? Iran supports terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran has long had a foreign policy and a regional policy based on trying to upend the regional order. It is a foreign policy based on trying to destabilize governments and project power throughout the Continue Reading…

by Mostafa El-Dessouki and Joseph Braude In 1997, 43-year-old British Labour Party leader Tony Blair became the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1812. He held the position for ten years — presiding over war, peacemaking, a transformation of his party, and the globalization of the British economy. He brought a new spirit of openness to the workings of government. He played a vital role in the brokering of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. On the world’s stage, he supported humanitarian interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and proved a staunch military ally to the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since retiring from government, Blair has been a leader in efforts to forge a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. He has promoted interfaith tolerance and understanding through the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. And by way of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, he has supported national development worldwide through good governance and cultural reform. In this exclusive interview, Prime Minister Blair called Continue Reading…

Algeria, an oil- and gas-rich military republic on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, is the largest country in the Arab world, the largest country on the African continent, and home to the largest military in the Maghreb. It endured the longest occupation by a Western power of any Arab land — by France, for 132 years — and freed itself in a war that claimed 300,000 lives. A lingering distrust of France, now Algeria’s largest trading  partner, pervades the halls of power. A visceral rejection of foreign interference of any kind renders attempts by outsiders to connect with the population difficult, even by regional standards. In the 1960s, the height of the republic’s power and prestige, one might have drawn a parallel to Saudi Arabia as the capital of Wahhabi Islamism and Algeria as a symbol and beacon of revolutionary third-world nationalism. In addition to its adoption of Nasserism as the ideological overlay for Algerian society, the government also portrayed itself as champion of the world’s downtrodden “South” in Continue Reading…

by Jasmin Muhanna It is frequently reported that Israel and Sunni Arab states coordinate privately to confront security challenges from Iran, its proxies, and Sunni jihadists. But beyond the narrow realm of government, the conceptual fault lines of Arab-Israeli conflict remain largely in place. In most Arab countries, entrenched sociopolitical forces opposed to better ties still dominate the discourse and cripple dissenting voices, drawing their mandate from Israeli settlement construction and their lifeblood from the pains of terrorism and occupation. Inside Israel, most of the population has grown indifferent to the surrounding region and lacks the language tools necessary to engage Arabs intimately even if they could. The impasse is especially tragic for those areas wracked by proxy war and mass killing, from Yemen to Syria and Iraq, which stand to benefit the most from the pooling of Arab and Israeli resources, civil technology, and expertise. As long as the discourse itself remains a battlefield, it is not feasible to build public consent for Arab-Israeli partnership in the areas where Continue Reading…

Most of my activity in Arab countries aims, in one way or another, to help build international partnerships with local actors supportive of liberal universalist principles. The many obstacles to such ventures include linguistic and cultural barriers, suspicion about foreign involvement in domestic affairs, and plain old ignorance on both sides of the divide. In trying to help bridge these gaps, I’ve begun to produce short bilingual online videos that expose viewers to specific opportunities for human engagement — and offer a means to establish direct, personal contact with a potential partner in one click. The productions are made possible by support from the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. For your viewing pleasure, here’s a sneak peek at the latest installment ahead of its formal launch. It’s called “Outside the Box.” It introduces the “culture of lawfulness movement” — civic actors in the US, Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere who fight organized crime by promoting the rule of law — and argues for their relevance to stabilization efforts in war-torn Arab lands. You can watch it by Continue Reading…

The following is a new edition of Pax Arabica, Joseph  Braude’s weekly newsletter. To subscribe, click here. I’d like to share two items with you this week, each providing a glimpse into how proponents of social reform in Saudi Arabia have been striving to advance their goals. – Last month at the Andrew W. Mellon auditorium in Washington, America Abroad Media honored Nasser Al-Qasabi, a leading Saudi comic actor whom I’m proud to call a friend. He climbed to stardom in Saudi Arabia with a bold weekly comedy show called Tash Matash (“You either get it or you don’t”), which spoofed the country’s religious police, male chauvinism, clerics’ domination of the educational sphere, and corruption in government. More recently, his pan-Arab hit show “Selfie” told the story of a middle aged man who ventures into ISIS-land to persuade his son to abandon jihadism and come home to Riyadh. Season 2 took on the Sunni-Shi’ite divide, through the story of two Saudi families, one from each sect, whose sons were mixed up at birth. Continue Reading…

My FPRI E-Note of October 20 provides an assessment of the results of a new poll of Saudi public opinion that focused on the country’s youthful majority. The purpose of this blog entry is to provide some links for researchers interested in learning more about a series of government-sponsored youth projects, mentioned in the piece, that have been launched under the umbrella of the “Misk Initiative.” Insight into prospects for the success of “Vision 2030” may potentially be gleaned by gauging the rollout of these initiatives and how the population responds to them. As I note in the piece, “Vision 2030 only works if young people adapt to a new ‘knowledge economy’ and help shore up a social safety net for those who lag behind.” Those are the goals that inform Misk. For the Foundation’s home page in Arabic, click here. For the English-language page, click here. Its Twitter feed in Arabic is @MiskKSA. For those interested in following domestic Saudi social media chatter about the group, here is the Arabic hashtag which the Foundation itself promotes, whereas this is Continue Reading…