Although the popular uprisings that have swept across the Middle East since early 2011 have dominated the regional agenda and captured the media spotlight, the Iranian nuclear crisis has not disappeared from the scene. In fact, the problems that the international community currently faces in its efforts to stop Iran in the nuclear realm are a continuation of an almost decade-long process rife with false starts and setbacks. As such, the minimal movement in recent months in confronting Iran’s nuclear activities is best...
Important changes in Iran’s regional status in recent years have in many ways expandedIran’s influence in the Middle East and accelerated its drive to confirm its status as a regional power with a leading role in the Muslim world. This ambition rests on Iran’ss being a key country in the region, positioned at an important geo-strategic junction and boasting an ancient culture and imperial past. Iran’s territory and its population are among the largest in the Middle East. It has great economic potential and the...
In recent years, Russia has in practice served as the gatekeeper of international pressures on Iran and Syria. These nations, along with Hizbollah and Hamas, constitute the Middle East’s anti-Western (and of course anti-Israel) “axis of evil,” dedicated to a global struggle to promote its members’ radical agenda. However, it is necessary to distinguish between two current issues: international pressure on Syria in the wake of its brutal suppression of the popular uprising, and developments stemming from the publication of...
The long awaited and much overdue Annex of the November 2011 IAEA report was presented to the IAEA Board of Governors and the UN Security Council on November 8, 2011. Although the Annex contains much interesting and fresh information, its basic message that Iran is actively engaged in the development of nuclear weapons should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the developments reported in the IAEA periodic reports.
The attempt on the life of the Saudi ambassador to Washington has brought Iranian-US relations to an all-time low. However, this event did not occur in a vacuum: Iranian provocations directed at the United States have increased recently, raising the possibility of a confrontation, even if limited, between the two nations. Over the past few months, Shiite militias supported by Iran have killed a large number of American soldiers in Iraq, as if to suggest that US troops will be withdrawing from Iraq in the coming months under fire....
The recommendation for a conference in 2012 on a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East, included in last year’s NPT Review Conference Final Document, has thus far not produced tangible progress at official levels. A facilitator has yet to be named, and more important, there is no indication of substantive progress on forging a common understanding in the region and beyond on the immediate goal of this meeting, its format, and its subject matter. The political turmoil in the Middle East over the past...
In May 1981 the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Oman approved the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) charter with the objective of increased “coordination, integration and interconnection between member states in all fields.” Although security was a key factor in the alliance’s formation, the GCC has so far been unable to present a united stance on this central issue, which has affected its ability to deal with the growing threats from Iran.
Israel’s military engagement with Hizbollah in the summer of 2006 has been called by many different names and monikers, including, of course, the Second Lebanon War, which was adopted by Israel as the official name of the war. Some commentators on Arab television stations called it the sixth Arab-Israeli round. In truth, however, most of the Arab world, at least its leaders and important segments of its ruling elites, supported Israel, and more precisely, stood aside with the expectation, which ultimately was not met, that...
The all-important matter of Iran’s timetable for achieving a military nuclear capability surfaces periodically. The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which was never formally modified, the pronouncements of various US officials and, more recently, Israel’s deputy prime minister Yaalon and the retiring Mossad chief Dagan have all pointed to mid-decade as an approximate target date. On January 24, 2011, the new head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, said, that it was the Iranian leader’s decisions that...
In his April 5, 2009 Prague speech, newly-inaugurated President Barack Obama set forth his vision for moving towards a world without nuclear weapons. With this speech, Obama intended to underscore his seriousness of purpose as far as turning a disarmament agenda that was gaining ground at unofficial levels – sparked and inspired by the op-eds written by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn in January 2007 and again in January 2008 – into official US policy. This speech set in motion the series of arms...
The book includes seventeen analytical essays written by INSS and outside researchers. Focus is on Israel’s potential, at times at variance with US administration efforts, to navigate current and prospective national security challenges. The ongoing challenges represented by the Palestinian issue and Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions are well documented, as are implications of internal Israeli politics, Arabs in Israel, international terrorism, trends in Egypt and Lebanon, and other regional developments.
The Iranian nuclear project is fast approaching a critical watershed. Iran has continued to develop a range of nuclear capabilities that under optimal technical circumstances will allow it to build its first nuclear device as early as the beginning of 2011. In the coming months, Iran will have to decide whether, for now, to stop at the nuclear weapons capability threshold or to break out and build these weapons. The United States and Western governments have labored to stop Iran before it achieves nuclear weapons by enticing it with...
