Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From MESH Admin

This map of Lebanon, prepared by Lebanon-Support, seeks to identify areas of “vulnerability” within Lebanon—what might best be described as potential flash points—as of June 2008. The map’s authors describe the map’s layers in these terms:

• Political layer, displaying the electoral weight of the opposition and “loyalists” in each of the electoral districts of the 2005 general elections.
• Confessional layer, displaying a rough presentation of the geographic distribution of Lebanese confessions.
• Security layer, displaying the areas that have witnessed tensions and conflicts in the May 2008 events, as well as current conflicts in the North, Sidon, and the Bekaa.
• Deprivation layer, displaying areas with a high percentage of “deprived households” on the district level, as well as areas with a high concentration of “deprived households” as a percentage of the total population in Lebanon.

Click on the thumbnail to download the map (pdf).

Earlier this month, Israel sent more than 100 warplanes on military maneuvers across the Eastern Mediterranean. An unnamed U.S. official described the exercise as practice toward honing the skills for a long-range strike. The assumption is that the maneuvers signal an Israeli willingness and capability to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, if all other measures to stop Iran’s program fail.

MESH has invited a number of responses to this question: Assuming the United States decides than Iran must be stopped, and that only military action can stop it, should the United States delegate Israel to conduct the necessary military operations? Or should the United States undertake the operations itself, and insist that Israel stay on the sidelines (as it did during the two Iraq wars)?

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Marwan Muasher has held many high-level positions within the government of Jordan, including deputy prime minister, foreign minister, ambassador to the United States, and first Jordanian ambassador to Israel. His new book is The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation.

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Marc J. O’Reilly is assistant professor of political science at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. His new book is Unexceptional: America’s Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007.

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From Stephen Peter Rosen and Martin Kramer

We are pleased to announce a new paper, the second in our Middle East Papers series. Philip Carl Salzman, professor of anthropology at McGill University and a member of MESH, offers an interpretation of what he calls “Islamic intensification” among the Baluch of southeastern Iran. Often it is assumed that ethnic and tribal loyalties compete with Islam. Salzman suggests that Islamic assertion complements Baluchi identity in Iran: for the Baluch, their adherence to Sunni Islam is the one area in which they can claim superiority over the dominant Persian (Shiite) center. The more they adhere, the more superior they feel.

There is much more fascinating information in this paper about the social structure of the Baluch in Iran, the role of segmentary opposition, and the relationship of periphery to center. Download here (pdf).

MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Sir Lawrence Freedman is professor of war studies at King’s College, London. His new book is A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East.

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From Gal Luft

What’s behind the sudden burst of willingness on the part of the Saudis, who announced that they will increase oil output by 500,000 barrels per day in the coming months? After all, for many months they were quite unfazed by the economic havoc caused throughout the world by the rise in oil prices. Even two visits by President Bush, loaded with offers of sophisticated weapons, nuclear technology collaboration and other goodies, didn’t convince them to open the spigot. So what changed? And why are the Iranians so opposed to the Saudi newfound goodwill? “If Saudi Arabia takes a measure to unilaterally increase [oil] output, it is a wrong move,” complained Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran’s new representative to OPEC, repeating the mantra that “the oil market is saturated.”

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