Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Michele Dunne During the recent Israeli military operation and subsequent efforts to reach a durable ceasefire, Egypt demonstrated that it has two principal interests related to Gaza: first, avoiding taking on responsibility for the one and a half million Palestinians living there; and second, transferring control of Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority led […]

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From Walter Reich What’s the meaning of the offer last week by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees to plead guilty to the charge that they coordinated the attacks of 9/11 that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans? That meaning is revealed by the fact that they withdrew their offer as soon as they learned […]

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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. Assaf Moghadam is a research fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, and a member of MESH. His new book is The […]

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From Michael Rubin The Islamic Republic has been pursuing a nuclear program for the better part of two decades. Concerns over Iranian intentions were among the reasons cited by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, for example, when he inaugurated Germany’s “critical dialogue” in 1992. Subsequent years have been littered with failed diplomatic initiatives, most notably: Reagan’s […]

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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. Gilles Kepel is Professor and Chair of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. His new book is Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future […]

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From Daniel Byman Terrorism watchers repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda might strike in the days leading up to election day yet, thankfully, we have reached November 4 without incident. Al Qaeda’s logic for striking seems straightforward. An attack would dominate media coverage at a time when world (not just U.S.) attention is focused on the […]

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From David Schenker Earlier this week, U.S. helicopters killed a high-value Al Qaeda target in Syria. While the attack shocked some observers, the presence of Al Qaeda operatives on Syrian soil has surprised few. According to CENTCOM, since 2003 Syria has been the leading point of entry of insurgents—Al Qaeda and others—into Iraq. Damascus allowed […]

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