Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Mark N. Katz
After months of seemingly fruitless effort, the Obama administration suddenly appears to have made progress both on improving Russian-American relations and on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. After the Obama administration announced that it would not implement the Bush administration’s plan to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic [...]

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From MESH Admin
The New York Times has produced this interactive graphic about the no-longer-secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom in Iran. Click here if you cannot see it below.

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From Raymond Tanter
As the Obama administration prepares for October 1 negotiations with Iran, Tehran steals a page from Pyongyang’s playbook: escalate confrontation in advance of engagement. Why not? Escalation to win concessions and backtracking on promises have worked for North Korea.
On September 27, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps conducted war games that included test launches [...]

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From Alan Dowty
In some respects, Ari Shavit’s widely-noted interview of Israel’s national security adviser, Uzi Arad, contained no great surprises. Arad’s insistence on “deep” acceptance of Israel (not just de facto acknowledgement of Israel’s existence) by Palestinians; leaving the door open, just by a crack, to a Palestinian state, while dismissing the possibility of any [...]

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From Mark N. Katz
There has been an ongoing debate here at MESH and elsewhere about whether Israel can, will, or should launch an attack against Iran to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. One possible method by which such an attack might be degraded or even deterred is if Russia sells the advanced version of [...]

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From Stephen Peter Rosen
The prospect of being hanged, we are told, wonderfully concentrates the mind, but on what? The prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon now concentrates our attention on the possibility of Israeli preventive military action or on American sanctions, both of which might prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. These are important policy [...]

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From Alan Dowty
Israeli public discourse over Iran’s nuclear weapons program is dominated by two analogies: the Holocaust and the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.
The prominence of the Holocaust—the most horrific genocide in human history—should be no surprise. Jewish history seen through the Zionist lens is a chronicle of powerlessness and [...]

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