Pomeps Conversations

On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Ora Szekely, an assistant professor of political science at Clark University. Szekely's recent book, The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East, compares the performances of four key non-state actors in the Arab-Israeli conflict ecosystem: the PLO, Hamas, Hizbullah, and Amal. "Why is it that you can have two militant groups— fighting against the same adversaries, same territory— and yet you get these really different outcomes?" said Szekely. "The answer to that—or at least the answer we see embedded in a lot of reporting on the Middle East or on non-state actors in general is...this sort of implicit assumption that how well these guys do is basically a function of how much material resources they have. But when you look a little bit more closely, it turns out that even groups that have pretty similar amounts of equipment can have really different outcomes. What I found is that it's not so much the stuff— it's how you got it in the first pl

Lihi Ben Shitrit speaks about her new book, Righteous Transgressions: Women's Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right. Shitrit is an assistant professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens. "The book is a comparative study of women's activism in the Israeli and Palestinian right, but specifically four groups: the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, the Islamist movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas," said Shitrit. "What motivated me to do this was the fact that you can still pick up a book on any of these movements and not find any women mentioned— not by name, not even by subject, not even the category of women. As if women are not important to the politics of these movements. And for me that was a glaring gap because we know women support these movements." "One thing that I found was that women in these movements think that they're not recognized enough in terms of the general public— the media and academi

"The IRGC's powers are often exaggerated.... but on the flipside of that, I think it's also often dismissed— where particularly from the U.S. perspective, they see the IRGC as a convenient foil. How do we how do we make the case against Iran? We use the IRGC and all of its nefarious activities as an excuse," Afshon Ostovar said. "You see this in Yemen in particular, where there's countless articles that come out that say the IRGC is not important in Yemen... This sort of thing I think is also missing the point" "It's hard to get them right, but it's easier to sort of exaggerate or minimize their influence." Ostovar is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His recent book, Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards examines the rise of Iran’s most powerful armed force—the IRGC—and its role in power politics, regional conflicts, and political violence. "I see the IRGC as being much not just devoted to [Ali] Khamenei, but being

"I think the most important change [in Syria] was a stepping back by the United States," said Phillips. "You get a desire by all passing opportunities being seen by other emerging regional powers: notably, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in opposition to the rise of Iran. They all want to take advantage, or to push their own agendas more. as the U.S. seems to step back. Because they have a particular interest in Syria, Syria ends up pretty early on a battle ground for these regional rivalries. One thing that really struck me doing this research was going right back to the summer of 2011, after the Arab Spring begins to settle down a little bit— and Syria continues to escalate into conflict. Most of these regional actors are looking at Syria, not with Islam, but as an opportunity. And I would argue that they are on their own way pouring fuel onto the fire of the conflict, rather than to sort of try to deescalate. I think that's a major reason why you see a rush to arms answer." On this week's podcast, Marc Ly

Colin Kahl speaks with Marc Lynch about U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration. Kahl is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. On Iran, Kahl spoke about the strategy behind the JCPOA. "I can't think of an actual bonafide Iran expert on on planet Earth that believed that you were going to resolve this problem without giving the regime some face-saving way out on enrichment. And that was, I think, an inflection point in the decision of the Obama administration, which was ultimately not to drive the program to zero— not because we wouldn't prefer a world in which every nut and bolt of Natanz and Fordow enrichment facility was dismantled— but because that's a perfect world that perfect scenario was impossible to achieve. No matter how much pressure you were going to you were going to put

Drafting a Constitution: A Conversation with Asli Ü. Bâli (S. 5, Ep. 26) by Marc Lynch

On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Michael Farquhar about the history of the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, where more than 11,000 young men have studied religion in Saudi Arabia. "There were obviously suggestions and not always ill-founded suggestions that this had fed into the rise of a very morally conservative Salafi understanding of Islam in lots of context around the world, and that that in turn kind of fed into dynamics of sectarianism and intolerance and communal conflict, and perhaps even violence in some contexts," said Farquhar. "My feeling was that there was room for a lot more attention to some more theoretical questions. So, questions about what it really means in practice to kind of export a particular cultural framework like Wahhabism. To kind of pick it up and move it to another location, and what that really looks like in practice. And questions about how ideas -- religious ideas -- can perhaps transform as they cross borders, and can perhaps be put to new uses a

“As it approaches year 40, the Islamic Republic of Iran is suffering from a deep crisis of legitimacy,” Nader Hashemi says on this week’s POMEPS Conversation podcast. “The biggest threat that I think the regime faces— from its own statements and policies— is really the threat that it fears, like other authoritarian regimes, from its own population and groups that want political change.” Hashemi is an associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

This semester, POMEPS hosted Merouan Mekouar to speak about his latest book, Protest and Mass Mobilization: Authoritarian Collapse and Political Change in North Africa. Mekouar is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. "Without respected actors willing to use their prestige to raise the attention of the rest of the population, their institutional networks to help spread social mobilization, and their international contacts to call the attention of foreign media, cases of isolated protests remain largely confined to where they were born," said Mekouar. This week's podcast is an edited version of Mekouar's talk at George Washington University.

"I felt paralyzed when the Arab uprising started unfolding. I saw the focus back then on on social media to be missing something and I did not know quite what I felt it was missing," said Marwan M. Kraidy. On this week's Middle East politics podcast, Marc Lynch has a conversation on creativity and the Arab Uprisings with Kraidy, the Anthony Shadid Chair at the University of Pennsylvania, . "So I did not write anything. I started thinking about it." Kraidy spent a year in Beirut, traveling the region and collecting items that showed people creatively expressing dissent, like leaflets, media, and taking photos of graffiti. From that research, he wrote his latest book, The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World, which looks at radical and gradual activism in the modern Middle East. "The main argument that I make in the book is that this kind of political creativity is nearly always collective," said Kraidy. With the tense situation in many Middle Eastern countries, Kraidy acknowledge

"I was in Egypt during the revolution," Armbrust said, "As probably everybody knows the first 18 days of the revolution when the Mubarak regime was overthrown was a period of great euphoria...this is this is exactly what you should expect but ritual is a name that we give for dealing with social transitions that we know will happen." This week, Marc Lynch talks with Walter Armbrust to talk about Egypt and the 2011 uprisings, and how his latest research project as he was living in Egypt in 2011, researching another project. "The initial period of euphoria then transforms into a state of everybody choosing sides and reckoning power, which is what happened in the revolution. And actually it explains many revolutions. Revolutions often end up with unintended consequences. That was certainly the case in the Egyptian revolution, but it's actually very common in revolutions," Armbrust said. Armbrust also spoke about his research into how Islamists are portrayed in Egyptian cinema and in Egyptian television dramas

Yesterday, POMEPS held a dynamic conversation with Nathan Brown about his latest book— out this week— Arguing Islam after the Revival of Arab Politics. Brown was joined by Jocelyne Cesari, a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and associate professor of the practice of religion, peace, and conflict resolution in Georgetown’s Department of Government, and Peter Mandaville, a senior advisor to the special representative for religion and global affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Brown spoke about the current state of Arab politics: "The polarization that has set in is partially a result of [mobilizing your followers]. There are few points at which, the vital public argumentation actually changes from abstract argumentation about what should be done to concrete political processes that produce political outcomes. And so people remain very strongly in their own camps. The polarization we see so deeply entrenched in the Arab world from that way is therefore may not be s

This week, Marc Lynch speaks A. Kadir Yildirim about his new book, "Muslim Democratic Parties in the Middle East: Economy and Politics of Islamist Moderation," which analyzes Islamist parties' moderation trajectories and the impact of economic liberalization processes on moderation in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. Yildirim is a research scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. "Typically when we see studies on Islamist parties, we see a focus on the parties themselves. But at distance, we see their links to the constituency and support base. These are political parties, so we need to look at the relationship between the two," says Yildirim. "I look at how changes in the constituencies of these parties actually pushes the parties into changing their positions." "In which ways can we try to entice Islamist parties to change themselves? One takeaway point is that this is a very long process. We have to recognize these are political parties, and they speak to certain constituencies. Unless w

Adria Lawrence speaks about about the recent elections in Morocco on this week's POMEPS podcast with Marc Lynch, "The outcome isn't really surprising, though very few people expected a big surprise. The PJD [Party of Justice and Development, a moderate Islamist-oriented party] took more seats than its rival." Adria Lawrence is Associate Professor of Political Science and a research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Her research reflects her expertise in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa. "It was probably quite expected for the PJD to continue its prior mandate for the last five years with a majority of seats in the parliament," Lawrence says. "Secularists were worried about what an Islamist party would do, but the PJD hasn't pushed for that much of an Islamist agenda." In fact, Lawrence says, the PJD has not accomplished a lot in the last five years. They "haven't managed to make major steps forward on their major platforms, like corruption. They've had some

In this week's POMEPS conversation, Marc Lynch speaks with David Patel about the borders of the Middle East and the legacy of Sykes–Picot. "When Westerners talk about reimagining the borders of the Middle East, what they're thinking of is smaller states." But, says Patel, "we should be careful when we talk about 'reimagining the borders.'" Patel is a lecturer in the department of politics and senior research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Looking at the rhetoric of Sykes-Picot. "ISIS isn't a secessionist movement. It's not trying to break away from Iraq or Syria. ISIS talks about Sykes–Picot and the conspiracy of it." "People don't know what to call ISIS now. Calling it a 'state,' even if it dies and becomes a 'failed state,' is a political statement. But it's been there for three years, governing lives... you can travel from one end of the Islamic State to the other with a piece of paper that says, 'This person is allowed to transport agricultural goods. Those ar

The 1970s was a pivotal time for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In this week's POMEPS Conversations podcast, Salim Yaqub talks about how that decade was the most influential time for the emergence of the Arab world as a major player in international politics — a topic he explores in depth in his new book, Imperfect Strangers: Americans and Arabs in the 1970s. "As a historian, I'm often reluctant to opine too directly on what's going on today," Yaqub says. "If you want to understand the course that U.S.-Arab relations have taken— that curious state of affairs — you have to take a look at what happened in the 1970s. " "Geopolitical developments that generate ill will between the two societies [in the 1970s], also at the same time create possibilities for better relations and for more favorable perspectives. It plays itself out in the petrodollars story, but also in Arab-Israeli diplomacy," Yaqub says. Yaqub is a professor at UC Santa Barbara, and directs UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and Intern

Local Palestinian elections across the West Bank and Gaza were scheduled to take place next month, but they have been suspended. On this week's POMEPS podcast, scholar Diana Greenwald explains that, while elections are frequently canceled or postponed in the Palestinian territories, "This was set to be a significant one because both Fatah and Hamas were set to compete against each other for the first time since 2006." "It's largely being seen by observers as a means by Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank, to postpone— or even cancel— this vote to avoid an embarrassing loss at the polls." Greenwald is a doctoral student in comparative politics at the University of Michigan where she focuses on the politics of revenue mobilization in transitional settings, including new states, aspiring states, and conflict/post-conflict states. Greenwald was a 2012 recipient of our POMEPS Travel-Research-Engagement grant. "We can't look to local elections as a driver of change at a larger level in the conditions of t

Next week, Jordan is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections. Coming in the midst of intense economic challenges and security fears, the vote will be the first held under a new electoral law, and the first contested by multiple Islamist movements. On POMEPS Conversation #82, Marc Lynch speaks with Curtis Ryan, author of Jordan in Transition: From Hussein To Abdullah, to preview those elections and their potential significance.

"Sectarianism tends to internally fracture societies. It's extremely dangerous," says Raymond Hinnebusch. "Compare that to the way pan-Arabism was used to integrate the various Arabic speaking minorities who previously felt excluded, but if Arab identity was the common identity, it didn't matter if you were a Sunni or Shia, an Alawite or Druze, you were included in the community." Marc Lynch speaks with Hinnebusch about international relations in the Middle East and emerging sectarianism in the region. Hinnebusch is a professor of international relations at the University of St. Andrews. "People have many identities and sect may only be one of them. For quite a long time, people embraced Arab nationalism as an inclusive identity," says Ray Hinnebusch. But what went wrong in the Middle East to see the rise of sectarianism we see today? "If you got a similar situation to what we had in Iraq— namely, people in a failed state where people can't depend on the state for security so they fall back on their

"If you compare the Egyptian military and the Tunisian military, obviously these are two very different institutions from and organizational perspective, but also their understanding of their political role." Kevin Koehler says. "The Egyptian military sees itself as a political institution and has a history of this in their country, which is not true in the same extent for the Tunisian military." On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Kevin Koehler about the role of militaries in Middle East governments and how political scientists study Arab military. Koehler is an assistant professor at the department of political science at the American University in Cairo. Koehler also speaks about his research interviewing the Syrian army deserters. "One of the main conclusions which came out of this is that the level of control and supervision— even in the context of the ongoing civil war— is extraordinary, relative to other militaries and what common sense explanations would suggest about what drives deserti