العراق

The protest movement in Iraq is now entering its fourth month. The protests raging across most of the south of the country have remained non-sectarian in their tone and message, and the movement is steadfast in its rejection of the political order, and all members of the political elite.

By any objective standard, the Lebanese protest movement has failed. This is not necessarily an indictment against it. Rather, it’s a reality one cannot and should not ignore. The responsible thing to do now is to try to understand why it has fallen flat, despite more than 100 days of demonstrations in various regions of the country including the capital, Beirut. 

First, a word of solace. In the annals of history, the Lebanese are in good company as most uprisings and revolutions failed to attain their goals. And even when they did, success either didn’t last long or was completely reversed due to counterrevolutions and other spoilers, both foreign and domestic.

As an Iraqi American who lived through the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 U.S.-led invasion to bring about regime change, I have witnessed firsthand how U.S. wars in the region can break out when Baghdad and Washington fail to understand each other’s intentions and motives.

So far, disproportionate violence by security forces against the civilian protesters has led to the exact opposite of what they sought to achieve, causing protesters’ numbers to swell.

MEI experts Robert S. Ford, Fatima Abo Alasrar, and Emad Badi join host Alistair Taylor to survey what lies ahead for the Middle East in 2020, with particular attention to Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Algeria.

In the early hours of Jan. 3, 2020, a U.S. Military MQ-9 drone fired multiple air-to-ground missiles and killed the commander of the elite Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Quds Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani. The targeted killing of Soleimani was carried out as he left the Baghdad International Airport under overt military authorities. Given that the strike was carried out under this authority, it was publicized globally shortly after it was completed. There were other options available to target Soleimani, however.

While they’re there, the United States should refocus the partnership toward making the Iraqi Army more self-sufficient. Here’s how.

While yesterday’s vote in the Iraqi Council of Representatives on a decision to remove U.S. forces is not legally binding, it creates dynamics inside the U.S. and Iraq that make a U.S. decision to remove its forces all but inevitable.

For almost 40 years, American national security officials have looked down the barrel of the gun of war with Iran. I sat in rooms in the White House and Pentagon several times as small groups of senior officials considered what such a war would look like, how it would end, and whether we would be better off for having fought it.

The answer was always the same: It would be highly destructive in several nations, it would end in a stalemate with the Iranian regime in place, and nothing positive would have been accomplished.

Seven MEI experts weigh in with their views on what the killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani means for the region

Just when we thought we had a good understanding of President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy — which boils down to “get out of the region and avoid another endless war there” — he pulls off something dramatic like this.

After a career in the military with a lot of time spent in this region, I have learned that you must respect your adversaries and their ability to hurt us.

In the wake of the airstrike, there have been many calls inside Iraq for restraint among Iraqis and between the Americans and the Iranians, most notably from the Shi’a clerical establishment in Najaf. There is a wide consensus in Iraq that the country should not be at the center of an American-Iranian military fight.

The killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, was a major and unexpected blow to the Iranian leadership. It punctured the aura of invincibility and the hubris that have characterized Soleimani and his colleagues’ behavior.