Middle East Strategy at Harvard

Earlier this month, Israel sent more than 100 warplanes on military maneuvers across the Eastern Mediterranean. An unnamed U.S. official described the exercise as practice toward honing the skills for a long-range strike. The assumption is that the maneuvers signal an Israeli willingness and capability to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, if all other measures to […]

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From Martin Kramer Last September, when I arrived in Cambridge for my fall stay at Harvard, I opened the Boston Globe and saw this headline over an editorial: “The Other Middle East Conflict.” I immediately said to myself: well, I know what the Middle East conflict is—that’s the Israelis and the Palestinians. So what is […]

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From Stephen Peter Rosen and Martin Kramer From the inception of this public website, we imagined that it would have a companion forum for the exchange of ideas among persons with a professional interest in U.S. strategy and foreign policy. We call that companion MESHNet. MESHNet is a members-only message board, ideal for hosting open […]

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From Hillel Fradkin According to Philip Bennett, managing editor of the Washington Post, Americans lack a proper understanding of Islam. Contemporary media practice is to blame, and it is the job of the same media to fix it. His immediate proposals: hiring more Muslim journalists, better translations of Arabic words or terms and greater descriptive […]

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In November 2002, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a number of scholars this question: “What will the world be like five years after a war with Iraq?” To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, MESH asked all of the respondents to revisit their predictions. This week, MESH is posting the responses it […]

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From Matthew Levitt Fifteen years from now, when classified documents produced today begin to be declassified, we will surely look back with some discomfort and see just how far off some of our judgments were when written in 2008. Such is the nature of intelligence assessments. What would be worse, however, would be for us […]

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From Martin Kramer As Hezbollah’s official funeral of Imad Mughniyah unfolded today—Hezbollah’s leader eulogizied him over a coffin decked in Hezbollah’s flag—it is useful to recall the party’s denial of his very existence over all these many years. Mention of his name to Hezbollah officials would draw a blank stare or blanket denial. “Hezbollah professes […]

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