Research & Commentary Results

The recent spate of bombings in Beirut underline the degree to which Lebanon has become entangled in the wider regional conflict being fought in and around Syria, but the paralysis of Lebanon’s political institutions indicate an equally deep domestic dysfunction. There is no doubt that part of Lebanon’s problems derive from its difficult geostrategic environment and require external developments and changes, and part of them come from the weaknesses of its domestic political and socioeconomic system and require internal reform.

On January 2, only days after a car bomb in Beirut took the life of former Finance Minister Mohamad Chatah and several bystanders on December 27, another bomb struck the capital’s southern suburbs.  With initial reports of four dead and 40 wounded, this latest, and possibly retaliatory, attack fits into an ominous pattern as Syria’s conflict spills into Lebanon. 

On Wednesday, December 4, Hassan Laqees, a Lebanese Hezbollah leader who was reportedly involved in the group’s weapons procurement and development, was assassinated south of Beirut. On Sunday, another Hezbollah military commander was killed in Syria, bringing the number of Hezbollah dead in the Syrian conflict into the hundreds.

Earlier today, double explosions near the Iranian embassy in Beirut killed at least 23, including an Iranian diplomat. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an Islamist group with links to al-Qa`ida, took responsibility for the attack. MEI sat down with its Vice President for Policy and Research, Paul Salem, to discuss the significance of the bombings in Lebanon as well as their regional and global implications.

Tell us about the bombing and the group that claimed responsibility for it.  

Whether Saudi Arabia takes a seat on the United Nations Security Council or not, the initial snub is aimed primarily at the United States. In particular, U.S.-Saudi relations are in for an exceptionally difficult period—perhaps a return to the policies of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz. It appears that Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf now share the view of Sir Charles Johnston, a British diplomat in the 1960s, who offered the following assessment of U.S.

Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, and Randa Slim, director of MEI’s program on Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues, join host Paul Salem to discuss the Helsinki Summit and takeaways from the latest meeting of the US-Russia Middle East Dialogue in Berlin, where participants outlined challenges and opportunities for US-Russian cooperation in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

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Last week, MEI scholars Allen Keiswetter, a retired Foreign Service officer, David Newton, former ambassador to Yemen, and Roby Barrett, author of Yemen: A Different Political Paradigm in Context (2011), gathered for an informal discussion about Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which began in March.

The openly difficult relationship between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region has become a salient feature of Middle East politics since the advent of the “Arab Spring.” This mutual mistrust has increased in the wake of the Kingdom’s recent support for the military takeover in Cairo and the generals’ subsequent repression of the Brotherhood there. But how is the Islamist organization affected by this dynamic in Syria, where the Muslim Brothers and the Saudis both battle against Bashar al-Assad?

This article first appeared on Lobe Log.

Whenever a Saudi Arabian king or senior prince publicly criticizes U.S. policy, they inevitably touch off speculation about how the Saudis may be rethinking their security alliance with the United States.

Like pieces fitting together in a jigsaw puzzle, Arab governments – presumably from the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council – offered to finance a U.S. military strike on Syria, according to comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry during testimony September 4 with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an exchange with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the potential cost of U.S. military action in Syria, Kerry said,

When King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, issued unequivocal pledges of support for Egypt’s military government and its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, their move was widely depicted in the news media as a logical extension of the kingdom’s opposition to revolutionary movements in the Arab world. This simplistic view overlooks the fact that Saudi Arabia has responded differently to different uprisings—it supports the rebels in Syria, helped to crush them in Bahrain—and that aligning itself with Egypt’s new rulers could be a risky strategy.

Since the 1970s oil boom, the Gulf region has been one of the principal destinations for workers from South Asia, with the result that today Indians constitute a large percentage of the non-nationals living in the region. Indeed, at five million out of an estimated 15 million people, the Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in each of the Gulf countries. Most Indian immigrants are from the south Indian state of Kerala, while many of the rest originate from Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

When the young Shaykh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani became ruler of Qatar last month after his father stepped aside in a seamless transition, one of his first official acts was to seal the generational shift by appointing a new prime minister.

The sun is beating down and it isn’t even midday. Clutching the all-important paperwork that will get them coveted UN food vouchers, Syrian refugees look harried. The women pull at their children to hurry through the litter-filled yard of the sports club in the town of Bar Elias that serves as a distribution center for the UN’s hard-pressed World Food Program (WFP). Unlike their men, who head for the shade to smoke and exchange news, the women don’t dally, making for the snaking lines into a crowded hall where they will be called in groups by registration numbers.