Near East Policycast

Less than a month into the new U.S. administration, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be the fourth foreign leader to confer with President Trump in Washington. How will the bilateral relationship change in the Trump administration? What is on the Israeli premier’s agenda on this first visit to the Trump White House? And how does the alliance with Israel serve America’s broader interests in the Middle East? Join us as two veteran observers preview the Trump-Netanyahu visit and the near-term agenda for bilateral relations.

A veteran American diplomatic and strategic advisor to presidents of both parties, Ambassador James Jeffrey discusses the vital U.S. interest in the Middle East and how the Trump administration can protect and advance them.

If the Trump administration follows through on campaign commitments to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, how should it proceed? How will America's Arab partners respond? And could an embassy relocation play a positive role in reinvigorated American engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Join us for a conversation with the scholars David Makovsky and Ghaith al-Omari about a potential American embassy in Jerusalem.

After a surprising presidential election, Americans and foreign leaders have closely watched the executive transition for clues to American priorities and policy under the Trump administration. What does Donald J. Trump’s victory tell us about American politics – and how will our allies and adversaries respond?

Where does the Middle East fit into America's global strategy, and is the rise of Russian and Chinese great-power competition in the region a permanent new reality or an anomaly that the next president can reverse? We talk with Michael Singh, the National Security Council's former senior director for Middle East affairs, about regional challenges to America's interests, the policy choices necessary to overcome them, and the personnel and management decisions that can help the next president avoid the foreign policy blunders common to most new administrations.

Is Russia's recent military foray into the Middle East a permanent move, and what if anything can the 45th president of the United States do to limit Moscow's mischief in the region without risking open confrontation and war between the world's leading nuclear powers? Russia expert Anna Borshchevskaya shares a studied look into Vladimir Putin's motives and objectives and offers concrete advice for how the next American administration can disrupt Russia's disruptive Middle East adventurism.

From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, the global terrorist threat has evolved rapidly in recent years, and will likely change further still in the next president’s term. Counterterrorism expert Matthew Levitt looks ahead to the next administration and the choices the 45th president will have to face to keep Americans safe from this adaptive global menace.

"Syria is going to hit the next president very hard," warns Ambassador Dennis Ross. A veteran of five administrations, under presidents of both parties, Ross shares his insights into the decisions that will face the next commander in chief as well as the planning that must take place before Inauguration Day to create an orderly process for making choices.

Politics has become a life-or-death struggle for several of America's important partners in the Middle East, says Eric Trager, and their leaders increasingly perceive even mild U.S. encouragement on human rights issues as support for domestic enemies. The next president will face a decision about how to prioritize America's strategic and security interests against our commitment to liberal and democratic values in countries such as Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq. Eric Trager is the Esther K. Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Egyptian politics and the Muslim Brotherhood. His new book is titled, "Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days," on bookshelves now.

How the next president deals with the conflict in Syria will shape American foreign policy in the Middle East for years to come, says Andrew Tabler, and American decisions in Syria will determine the course of American relations with our regional allies, with Iran, and even with Russia. Join us for the latest in our Middle East 2017 series with Syria expert Tabler's insights into why Syria in the late 2010s will likely resemble Iraq in the 1990s, with Libya right behind it.

When the forty-fifth president of the United States gets down to work on January 21, 2017, the new commander in chief will face life-or-death decisions that will shape America’s role in the Middle East for years to come. In this podcast series, Washington Institute scholars explore those historic challenges. As former high-level officials in Democratic and Republican administrations, our experts know the issues, the stakes, the leaders and the players on the ground. Ambassador James Jeffrey is Solondz Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute and former United States ambassador to Iraq and Turkey. His most recent publication, coauthored with Michael Eisenstadt, is "U.S. Military Engagement in the Broader Middle East," a comprehensive study of American involvement in the region since World War II.

A leading humanitarian criminal justice advocate and a journalist who's helped uncover the Assad regime's atrocities in Syria explain why bringing war criminals to justice matters, and what must be done now to make later prosecutions possible.

A former State Department counterterrorism official outlines the gaps in European efforts to fight violent extremisms: Why they exist, what needs to change, and how they make it harder for U.S. officials to do their job of defending the American homeland.

Days before the deadly bombings in Brussels, Belgian authorities carried out raids that killed or captured several of Europe’s most-wanted terrorists. At the same time, Institute Fromer-Wexler fellow Matthew Levitt was in Brussels, meeting with Belgian counter-terrorism officials from neighborhood cops to national intelligence leaders. What he found was a city where a terrorist safe-haven has arisen side-by-side with the gleaming capital of modern Europe. On one picturesque square in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, Matt saw on one corner, the mayor’s ornate office, and on the opposite corner, the family home of accused Paris conspirator Salah Abdeslam.

On February 8, 2013, Daniel Benjamin, Karen Betts, and Matthew Levitt addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Benjamin is the State Department's former ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism. Ms. Betts is a political counselor and representative for the Joint Intelligence Committee at the British embassy in Washington.