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Across the Mediterranean and Pacific worlds, Iran is striving to strengthen and extend its influence. From Libya to Sri Lanka and beyond, the regime is building networks of trade, power, and control. Collisions with other world powers have generated political friction and strategic setbacks. However, the nation remains committed to expanding its regional significance. Iran's ambitions are serious.
The political participation of the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq is critical to the security and stability of the state. At present, they are functionally excluded from government. Without effective political representation, the Sunni in Iraq are left with few alternatives to address their grievances against the Maliki government.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has conducted an extensive, expensive, and integrated effort to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power as long as possible.
Today, political and military power in Iraq is highly centralized in Prime Minister Maliki’s personal office. This will have important implications for the future of Iraq and the trajectory and durability of its democratic transition.
The opposition movement in Syria has been fragmented from its inception, a direct reflection of Syria’s social complexity and the decentralized grassroots origin of the uprising. This condition has plagued Syria’s armed opposition since peaceful protestors took up arms and began forming rebel groups under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the summer of 2011.
The conflict in Syria transitioned from an insurgency to a civil war during the summer of 2012. This report seeks to explain how the Assad regime lost its counterinsurgency campaign, but remains well situated to fight a protracted civil war against Syria’s opposition.
This report examines the political, religious, and military resurgence of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) in Iraq since the withdrawal of U.S. Forces, identifying the group’s key actors, their present disposition and strategy, and their regional expansion.
This report examines the presence of jihadist groups in Syria, explains where Syrian rebel groups and foreign elements fall along the spectrum of religious ideology, and considers their effect on the Islamification of the Syrian opposition.
On June 27, 2012, the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute for the Study of War, and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution jointly conducted a one day crisis simulation that focused on the impact of spillover from the deepening civil war in Syria.
This monograph provides a framework for understanding operational art in counterinsurgency campaigns. In addition to the framework, the monograph describes how one set of strategic civil-military leaders achieved sufficient alignment in order to produce unity of effort and coherency of action throughout the civil-military organization.