International Relations and Security

There is a common saying amongst Israeli Jews in reference to Israel’s historical dependence on foreign fossil fuels: Moses took a wrong turn while traveling to the Holy Land. Yet this aphorism continues to be challenged, much to Israel’s benefit. What started out with the discoveries of natural gas fields equaling 22 trillion cubic feet […]

Despite their prominence in America’s daily news cycle, the leaders of the Islamic State remain misunderstood.  Many pundits and analysts seem to fail in differentiating their brand of Salafi Islam from the practices and beliefs of the vast majority of Muslims, while others overcorrect and artificially separate the Islamic State’s actions entirely from religion. In […]

Chapter 1: Why are Russian troops in Syria? Putin has always been in Syria’s civil war. Long before Bashar al-Assad’s troops fired the first shots that set off the Syrian rebellion, Russia was stocking the armories that assured the Assad family’s minority Alawite sect’s grip on power. When Syrian blood flowed through the streets of […]

The Fletcher School’s Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies had the pleasure of hosting Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Representative to the United States, this past week. Her father, Sami Abdul Rahman, was a former deputy prime minister of the KRG and a leader in the Kurdish struggle against Saddam Hussein. Ms. […]

On October 21st, 2015, the first round of the first parliamentary elections held in Egypt since 2011 came to a close. A majority of available seats were won by loyalists to President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, in an election in which approximately one-fifth of the electorate voted. The election has been hailed by Al-Sisi as the […]

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has operated in Yemen since 2006, when it was called al-Qaeda in Yemen (AQY). While al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been dubbed “al-Qaeda’s greatest direct threat to the United States” and is responsible for numerous attempted attacks on the U.S., the al-Qaeda branch has only expanded in the […]

Ashes of Hama by Raphael Lefevre provides a chronological description of the progression of the Syrian Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood). The book discusses the establishment of the Brotherhood and its evolution in Syrian politics. Lefevre does a fascinating job analyzing the Muslim Brotherhood institutionally and organizationally, provoking the reader to move beyond stereotypes about the Syrian […]

  On the morning of October 9th 2015, I woke up to the news that the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize. In a time when terrorism, political bickering and popular discontent were threatening the legacy of the Tunisian revolution, the Quartet stepped in and engineered a nationwide dialogue. It worked. Tunisia […]

In mid-September, 2015, JMEPP Co-Editor-in-Chief Kristin Wagner interviewed Mahmoud Jibril, Former Prime Minister of Libya and president of the National Forces Alliance (تحالف القوى الوطنية) political party. Watch the discussion of Libya’s post-Gaddafi transition, reflections on leadership, and the role of external actors and foreign assistance in Libya during and since the revolution, below:

BY DAVID PAYNE Within 50 years, human beings will go on one-way journeys to permanent settlements on Mars. That claim is audacious but is being increasingly echoed by the likes of Elon Musk and supported by the plans of various companies, governments, and non-profit organizations. With the premiere of The Martian this week and as […]

Introduction The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) is a product of Iraq’s and Syria’s sectarian polarization, political dysfunction, and the alienation of the local Sunni population from the Iraqi and Syrian regimes. The US-led anti-ISIS coalition was triggered by the jihadists’ capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June 2014.[i] While dramatic, […]

President Obama’s Middle East policy record in his first six years in office was mixed and lacked significant achievements. Overall, Obama’s approach was cautious, as the United States reacted to fast-moving events. U.S. strategy predominantly focused on degrading terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP) to prevent a major attack on […]