Research & Commentary

Egypt is not out of the dark, but there is reason to be hopeful. The nation’s energy market reforms and consistent debt repayments have won the attention and approval of international energy companies and investors in the form of significant investment in the Egyptian energy sector. New upstream (exploration and production) oil and gas contracts, a recent increase in renewable energy ventures, and dozens of additional preliminary agreements in both the hydrocarbon and utility sectors are proof of the improved investment climate.

This article draws on a recent special report prepared for Dentons, an international law firm.

Robert Baer’s See No Evil presents a firsthand account of the life of a CIA case officer in the war on terror. From recruiting agents in the volatile Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to wiretapping Abu Nidal students in France, Baer provides a fascinating description of his CIA service.

Read full article at The National Interest.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, was on his way back to Tehran from Lausanne as accolades began to pile up. At the airport, he received a rapturous reception, as if the Team Melli, Iran’s national soccer team, had beat Germany.

As the United States and other world powers pursued nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past 18 months, the Middle East descended into one of the worst periods of chaos and proxy conflict in its modern history, with Iran engaged aggressively in many of the region’s hotspots. Most leaders in the region fear that a nuclear deal with Iran will abet its aggressive interventionism and lead to further geopolitical and sectarian confrontation. But could the agreement—if it is completed—also create conditions for rebuilding stability?

The great trading routes connecting medieval Eurasia by land and sea brought Islam, like Buddhism centuries earlier, to China. Somewhere between 20 and 40 million Muslims—reliable data remains elusive—now live in China. They acknowledge a variety of official and unofficial ethnic identities due to the diverse origins of Islam in China as well as the complexities of modern Chinese ethnic policies. The architecture of China’s mosques, both historic and modern, reflects this diversity. This essay examines the development of mosque architecture in southern China, in the old central capitals, and in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region from earliest times up to the present. In the twenty-first century, modern construction techniques allow patrons to choose from a variety of styles and materials as they design mosques to reflect a particular version of Islamic identity.

Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen is a risky move motivated by various Saudi objectives in Yemen and in the region. The immediate objective is to save President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi from Ansar Allah’s advance on Aden and reinstall him as head of state by forcing Ansar Allah to make major political concessions. But the operation also marks the increasing willingness of the Saudis to use their own military rather than rely on the United States.

The Middle East Dialogue is a regional Track 1.5 forum that meets twice a year under Chatham House rules. It brings together current and former officials as well as senior experts from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU to discuss emerging political & security trends in the region.  What follows is a report from the latest meeting of the Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, December 5-7, 2014.

The recent public row between Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc and Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek marked the latest fallout from a widening rift between the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his handpicked prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. If the crack continues to widen, it will not only deal a blow to Erdogan’s presidential dream but also to the future of the ruling party.

At face value, the targets of the Bardo Museum attack on March 18 in Tunis were Tunisia and the West, the former as the sole survivor of the “Arab Spring,” a country that has been successful in bridging the transition toward a democratic order, and the latter as the foe that radical Islamism seeks to defeat and supplant. A more extreme secular reading of the event may even see in it a punishment for Tunisia for having denied Islamist parties the coveted electoral victory and a reminder that, even from the margins, Islamism will dictate the course of the nation.

The Obama administration has lost all patience with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiant challenges to two basic U.S. goals: a two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace and a nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu’s hostility and the emergence after the March 15 elections of a new, more right-wing coalition, have triggered a major crisis in relations and an apparent decision by Obama to “reevaluate” U.S. policy.

Following the Bandung Conference in 1955, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) espoused―in an unusual contrast with other major powers of the “socialist” and “nonaligned” camps―a pro-Palestinian stance in its foreign policy toward the Middle East. This did not entail, however, any direct contact with the Palestinians, a development that did not appear until the mid-1960s emergence of a more autonomous and coherent Palestinian national movement embodied in the PLO. Contact prior to the establishment of formal channels of communication took place through a number of unofficial and semi-official conduits, ranging from the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), the Chinese embassies in Egypt and South Yemen after 1967, and the “underground” Communist networks (mainly Iraqi, Sudanese, and Yemeni) to such bodies as the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. These contacts enabled the PRC to eventually extend formal diplomatic recognition of the PLO in 1964, making it the first non-Arab country to do so.

With its bold and public intervention in Yemen’s civil war, Saudi Arabia has cast off a half-century of caution and restraint in regional security affairs.

Read the full article at Foreign Affairs.

March 26, 2015 – Paul Salem discusses the new challenge the unfolding crisis in Yemen poses to the region, and how the Arab League and the United States are responding as the fight against ISIS continues.