Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
Iranians revel in political humor. Over the weekend, as election results began to show that long-entrenched hard-liners were losing, a new joke circulated in Tehran: Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had called Secretary of State John Kerry with an offer: “John, we have just succeeded in defeating our hard-liners. Let us know if you want advice on how to beat Mr. Trump.”
More than 30 million Iranians voted Friday in parliamentary elections. It is the first national ballot since the completion of a nuclear deal that led to the removal of most international sanctions. The elections are seen as pivotal – a referendum on president Rouhani’s reform agenda, support of the nuclear deal, and opening up more to the west. Preliminary results show reformists and moderates making significant gains.
For the first time since its blitz across Syria and Iraq, in 2014, the Islamic State is on the defensive in both countries. Its caliphate, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is shrinking. Its numbers are down. It hasn’t launched a new offensive since May, 2015.
Growing up, in Maplewood, New Jersey, where her father was a narcotics detective and her mother a special-education teacher, Ibtihaj Muhammad competed in softball, tennis, volleyball, and track. “In our family, you didn’t have a choice of whether to play sports,” she told me. “You only had a choice of what sports you played.”
Wearing a flowing green gown and a string of pearls that hung, flapper-style, below her waist, Narges Mousavi was married Friday, in Tehran. The bride, a painter, was born into the revolutionary élite. Her father, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was Iran’s Prime Minister for eight years.
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged on Friday that he and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter “both believe that there will be an increase to the U.S. forces in Iraq in the coming weeks.” Proposals include sending in hundreds of additional Americans forces, many for retraining and for advise-and-assist programs like the one at Makhmour. They probably won’t be the last.
Last month, the United Nations issued a warning about the long-term consequences—including the biological impact—of a generation mired in war. Worldwide, eighty-seven million children under the age of seven have lived their entire lives in conflict zones.
In a melancholy yet defiant open letter, from one revolutionary to another, Mehdi Karroubi pleaded over the weekend to be put on trial in Iran. His dissent could no longer be silenced, he wrote in his letter to President Hassan Rouhani, a former colleague, and he declared, “We must stand up against the idea of a regime with one single voice, made so through monopolizing an unaccountable power.”
For decades, U.S. presidents and Saudi Arabian kings have welcomed one another to their respective homes in Riyadh and Washington. The Saudis have provided the U.S. with a reliable and cheap flow of oil since the 1970s, and have supported U.S. policies in the Middle East for years — from the containment of Iran to support in Syria today.
Three months after Iran dismantled large parts of its nuclear program, in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the international nuclear deal—the country’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, declared last week in New York that the United States is falling seriously short of its commitments. Iran’s Central Bank chief, Valiollah Seif, delivered a similar message during his first meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, on April 14th, and he told the Council on Foreign Re...