Allyson Beach As a requisite resource, water and its infrastructure are decisive targets in the self-declared Islamic State’s (IS) strategy for regional expansion in the Middle East. Although IS has not demonstrated the capacity to operate technologically intensive water infrastructure, it continues to pursue control of dams and …

Why did Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates provide a pulpit for a firebrand cleric who calls for the destrcution of Shiites, Alawites, Christians, and Jews? Oren Adaki, David Weinberg  Foreign Policy As Saudi Arabia expands its involvement in wars across the Middle East, the kingdom has …

By Vasudevan Sridharan The Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council is set to hold major talks in the presence of French President Francois Hollande over the handling of the Yemen crisis. The Sunni-dominated Council of Gulf monarchs is expected to call for a partial humanitarian truce in Yemen, at least …

Shlomo Brom Shimon Stein When President Barack Obama told Prime Minister Netanyahu in his first telephone call after the Israeli elections that Washington would “reassess” its positions on U.S.-Israeli relations and Middle East diplomacy after the Israeli prime minister took a position against Palestinian statehood during his reelection …

Jeremy Friedman At its core, the proposed nuclear deal with Iran is a bet on the future direction of the Iranian regime. Two former Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, argued in a recent critical piece in the Wall Street Journal that the central claim of …

James Holmes Methinks the U.S. Navy has contracted some weird allergy to fleet experimentation. Why else would service potentates retire a promising experimental aircraft like the X-47B unmanned combat air system demonstrator, or UCAS-D, in its infancy? Experimentation, of course, is the process of testing some tactic, concept, …

By Khalid AL Jaber The GCC summit to be held in Riyadh this week comes at a critical time for our region. The Yemen crisis is still going on, airstrikes have not stopped even after the end of Decisive Storm Operation, and the news of an Iran nuclear …

By Ishaan Tharoor West African nation would be sending a detachment of 2,100 troops to Saudi Arabia as part of an international coalition cobbled together by the kingdom in its war effort in neighboring Yemen. In late March, Saudi Arabia commenced airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who had …

By James R. Holmes As weaponeers, budgeteers, and lawmakers wage their annual death match over the defense budget, here’s some input from the margins of Fight Club. And yes, I know the first and second rules of Fight Club. But no one obeys them inside the Beltway, and …