Middle East
Though the Iraq War altered the dynamics of the Middle East, some fixtures of the political landscape remain: progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains elusive, and the international community’s efforts to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Iran’s nuclear ambitions have so far been unsuccessful. Carnegie experts in Beirut and Washington provide policy analysis informed by voices from the region, with a focus on political reform and democratization, the Arab-Israeli peace process, and Iran’s nuclear program.
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Armenia and Turkey: The Truce in Need of a Rescue
Armenia and Turkey have a chance to make peace over their troubled past and move forward, to the benefit of the entire region. If the truce agreements fail, however, it will leave both countries, and the region, worse off than before.
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De-Baathification Decision Postponed Until After Election Results
While an ad hoc committee has lifted the ban barring candidates suspected of ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from participating in the Iraqi elections, it did not dismiss the charges against those candidates and is widely seen as the result of internal and external political pressures.
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Music and Politics Color Greek Pilgrimage to Trebizond
The Turkish government’s new foreign policy of building bridges with old enemies, including the Armenians and the Greeks, is working to slowly bring about a new spirit of tolerance in modern Turkey.
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Uncovering Syria's Covert Reactor
The current stalemate of the IAEA's investigation of undeclared nuclear activities in Syria is the responsibility of the Syrian government, which buried the remains of its covert nuclear reactor in 2008 and now seeks to bury the IAEA investigation.
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Middle East Democracy Promotion Is Not a One-way Street
The Obama administration must engage in a new type of dialogue with the Middle East, one modeled after the process used to improve relations with the Soviet bloc, if it wants to have any chance of impacting political reform in the region.
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Restoring the NPT: Essential Steps for 2010
The upcoming 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is an opportunity to strengthen the struggling nonproliferation regime, but achieving even modest success will require the political cooperation of nuclear and non-nuclear-weapon states.
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Yemen Faces Grave and Growing Domestic Challenges
While growing Islamic extremism in Yemen is alarming, in the longer term it is the country’s domestic challenges that threaten to bring Yemen to its knees, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the region.
Featured Event
Food Security in the Arabian Peninsula
Food security is fast becoming a critical issue for Persian Gulf countries as they face three converging factors: tighter global food markets with strained export surpluses, a decline in domestic production, and continuous population growth.
Experts
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Lahcen Achy
Lahcen Achy is an economist with expertise in development and institutional economics, as well as trade and labor, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. -
Henri Barkey
Barkey served as a member of the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, working primarily on issues related to the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and intelligence from 1998 to 2000. He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, the State University of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. -
Sven Behrendt
Behrendt is an expert in global issues, international negotiations, conflict resolution, and corporate strategy. He previously served at the World Economic Forum in various management positions. -
Amel Boubekeur
Boubekeur is an associate scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. Her research focuses on Maghreb country politics, Euro–Arab relations, and Islam in Europe. -
Christopher Boucek
Boucek was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and lecturer in politics at the Woodrow Wilson School. He was also a media analyst at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. -
Nathan Brown
Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He has recently been a member of the international advisory committee on drafting the Palestinian constitution and consultant to the UNDP's program on governance in the Arab world. -
Thomas Carothers
Thomas Carothers is a leading authority on democracy promotion and democratization worldwide as well as an expert on U.S. foreign policy generally. Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. -
Deepti Choubey
Choubey was previously the director of the Peace and Security Initiative for the Ploughshares Fund. She also worked for Ambassador Nancy Soderberg in the New York office of the International Crisis Group. -
Shahram Chubin
Based in Geneva, Chubin’s research focuses on nonproliferation, terrorism, and Middle East security issues. He was director of studies at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Switzerland, from 1996 to 2009. -
James Collins
Ambassador Collins was the U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 1997 to 2001 and is an expert on the former Soviet Union, its successor states, and on the Middle East. -
Gilles Dorronsoro
Dorronsoro's research focuses on security and political development in Afghanistan. He was a professor of political science at the Sorbonne, Paris and the Institute of Political Studies of Rennes. -
Michele Dunne
Formerly a specialist at the State Department and White House on Middle East affairs, Dunne has also been a visiting assistant professor of Arabic language at Georgetown University. -
Amr Hamzawy
Hamzawy previously taught at Cairo University and the Free University of Berlin. He writes a bi-monthly op-ed for the leading Arab daily al-Hayat. -
Ariel (Eli) Levite
Levite was the Principal Deputy Director General for Policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission from 2002 to 2007. -
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was appointed president of the Endowment in 1997. Her career includes posts in the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism. -
Marina Ottaway
Before joining the Endowment, Ottaway carried out research in Africa and in the Middle East for many years and taught at the University of Addis Ababa, the University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. -
George Perkovich
George Perkovich's research focuses on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation, with a focus on South Asia and Iran, and on the problem of justice in the international political economy. -
Karim Sadjadpour
A leading researcher on Iran, Sadjadpour has conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials, and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others. -
Paul Salem
Prior to joining Carnegie in 2006, Salem was the general director of the Fares Foundation and he founded and directed the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Recently, Salem was a member of the Lebanese National Commission for Electoral Law Reform, a blue ribbon commission tasked with revising Lebanon's electoral laws and proposing a new system.
