Why Iranians Support Reza Pahlavi
This month’s mass protests in Iran demonstrated the growing homegrown appeal for the return of the country’s long-exiled crown prince.
Political science
The Most Powerful Man in Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei’s Ideological Tenets, Scope of Power, and Confrontations with the West
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Husseini Khamenei inherited and amassed incredible power across decades at the helm of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He holds dominion over Iran’s three branches of government and commands the armed forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which serves as Iran’s primary means for exporting the revolution. The Iranian economy is also largely governed by the state, with the Ayatollah and the IRGC controlling oil revenue and the country’s charitable foundations which account for billions of dollars in assets. No high-level decision making in Iran is done outside of his purview. ...
Op-eds
Turkey Marginalized? How Trump’s Middle East Strategy is Rewriting Alliances
Nearly a month into Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President, we are beginning to see the contours of his foreign policy in the Middle East. Having campaigned on a promise to prioritize American...
Op-eds
Turkey Is Preparing to Invade Syria, Then Israel?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making no effort to disguise his ambitions. In a bold declaration following the first meeting of Turkey’s cabinet, Erdogan made it clear that he intends to...
Op-eds
Donald Trump Must Hold Turkey Accountable for Its Actions
Turkey’s authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan was premature in his optimism at the re-election of Donald Trump. Erdogan is convinced that his existing relationship with Trump, will...
Op-eds
FDD Launches Center on Economic and Financial Power, Names Former Treasury Advisor Eric B. Lorber as Senior Director
(Washington, D.C., January 9, 2019) – The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) today unveiled its...
Press Releases
Germany harbors 300 Hamas, 950 Hezbollah members and activists
Some 300 Hamas members and supporters – as well as 950 Hezbollah activists and members – are operating in Germany, the country’s domestic intelligence agency said in its annual...
Op-eds
Economic Sanctions and Terror Finance Expert Joins FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance
Washington, DC -- Eric B. Lorber, an expert on anti-money laundering policy and terror finance issues, has been named senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on...
Press Releases
Japan’s Political Science Lesson for Zakaria
More evidence is emerging of Fareed Zakaria’s political science astuteness (see my earlier post...
Op-eds
Sudan’s Elections: What Now?
With all but the cynically duplicitous, willfully blind, or invincibly ignorant acknowledging that the elections in Sudan last week were more of a farce than a demonstration of the Sudanese peopl...
Op-eds
The Battle for Libya: Implications for Africa
As battle lines crisscross between the rebels marching west to overthrow him and loyal military units taking the offensive against rebel-held towns in the eastern Libya, Colonel Muammar al-Qadhaf...
Op-eds
Somali Piracy Hits America: Some Questions in Need of Answers
The murder earlier this week by their captors of four United States citizens aboard the SV Quest, a yacht hijacked last Friday off the coast of Oman, brought home to America the increasing toll o...
Op-eds
Moroccan Exceptionalism?
I recently spent nearly two weeks in North Africa, arriving just before popular demonstrations drove Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power and leaving just after the protesters occupi...
Op-eds
Somalia in Need of New Approach Two Decades after State Collapse
Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of the night when Mohamed Siyad Barre, president of the last entity that could plausibly be described as the government of Somalia, fled Mogadishu in hi...
Op-eds
Côte d’Ivoire Crisis: Some Lessons to Be Learned
In my review last week of Africa's likely top flash points for 2011, I expressed my concern that The year that was supposed to be Côte d'Ivoire's "ann...
Op-eds
Abyei: The Abscess Threatening the Sudan
If all goes as planned, exactly one month from today, on January 9, 2011, voters in the ten states of southern Sudan as well as southerners living in the northern part of the country and abroad w...
Op-eds
Behind Iran’s Foiled Gambian Gambit
His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh, President of the Republic of The Gambia, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Chief Custodian of the Sacre...
Op-eds
Somalia’s New Prime Minister: Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered
Just when it seems things can get no worse for Somalia's dubiously legitimate, utterly ineffective, and wholly self-serving "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), the embattled clique pull...
Op-eds
A Subtle, But Significant, Shift in U.S. Somali Policy Opens the Door to Realism
Last Friday, speaking in New York to reporters one day after attending a major meeting on Somalia chaired by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the margins of the 65th session the Un...
Op-eds
When Crime Does Pay
In my annual survey of African "hot spots" back in January, I noted that "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seems to be stirring again as well as getting more involved in illicit trafficking...