MIDDLE EAST STUDIES

Ehud Eilam
(Ph.D., analyst of Israel’s national security, is a former civilian researcher for the Israeli military. He resides in the United States)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 13 May 2017

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS).

On April 27 Israel bombed a military site inside Syria, near Damascus. It was a strike similar to those Israel carried out since 2013.
Israel and Syria have been enemies since 1948. They confronted each other in several high intensity wars and in numerous smaller clashes. The Israeli air strikes inside Syria in recent years are a war within a war, one of the many that have been going on in Syria. There is the major fight between those who support Assad and those who oppose him together with smaller confrontations such as between the Kurds and ISIS and Israel and Hezbollah. Read more

Seymour M. Hersh
(Investigative journalist and political writer based in Washington D.C. USA. He is a long time contributor to The New Yorker magazine on national security matters and has also written for the London Review of Books since 2013)

Copyright: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

Note: RIEAS received permission from the Author, Mr. Seymour M. Hersh and the London Review of Books to post the article.

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad. Read more

Gregg Roman
(Director of the Middle East Forum, a research center headquartered in Philadelphia, USA)

Copyright: http://www.meforum.org/6636/syria-trump-doctrine

When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched the 21stcentury's second deadliest chemical weapons attack on Tuesday, President Trump .. Read more

Nizar Visram
(Ottawa-based free-lance writer from Zanzibar, Tanzania. Recently retired Senior lecturer on Development studies, he extensively publishes in over 50 countries on 4 continents)

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) – Publication on 26 March 2017

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS).

ADDISA ABEBA: At the 28th Summit meeting of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 January 2017, Morocco’s readmission to the continental body generated heated discussion. At the end of the day the Kingdom of Morocco managed to win over sufficient member states on its side and it was allowed to join the fold unconditionally.....Read more

Elodie Pichon
(Research Fellow of the IFIMES Institute, DeSSA Department. This native Parisian is a Master in Geopolitics, Territory and Security from the King’s College, London, UK).

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 12 March 2017

Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS).

This year, 2017 will be a challenging year for Saudi Arabia, who is losing its leadership in the Middle East and faces looming economic challenges stemming from low oil prices.

Saudi Arabia has been humiliated in Syria, and embroiled itself in an endless and costly conflict in Yemen. According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia is spending $175 million per month for bombings in Yemen and an additional $500 million for ground incursions. These low oil prices and military expenses have unprecedented impact on Saudi foreign reserves, which depleted from $732 billion to $623 billion in 2015. However the main cost of these military failures is not a financial one, they also dealt a fatal blow to the Saudi monarchy that used military nationalism to foster support, and implement a cult of the personality to King Salman....Read more

Dr. Shaul shay (Col Res)
(Director of research of the Institute for Policy and Strategy and a senior research fellow of the International Policy Institute for counter Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzeliya (IDC), Israel. Dr. Shay was the deputy head of the National Security Council (NSC) of Israel.).

Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) -Publication date: 28 January 2017

Illegal immigration via Egyptian Mediterranean Sea shores rose over the past few years in attempts to reach Europe and flee civil wars and difficult economic conditions...Read more