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Ambassador William J. Burns helped lead the back-channel talks with Iran that led to an interim nuclear agreement in November 2013 and set the stage for the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the P5+1. Ambassador Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 33-year diplomatic career. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, Career Ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become Deputy Secretary of State. Ambassador Burns served from 2008 to 2011 as Under Secretary for Political Affairs. He was Ambassador to Russia…

As a result of the 70-year conflict between Israel and Palestine, the United States should reconsider its support for a two-state solution and instead pivot to a one-state solution. Policymakers have assumed that deep hatreds can only be settled through separation. However, this policy has caused a stalemate and does not take into account fluctuating developments in the region. A more adaptive strategy is necessary. Using theories of ripeness and conflict mediation, this bold flip in policy can pave the path towards lasting peace. Exercising the instability created from Syria’s civil war, the…

Several factors contribute to or inhibit the “contagiousness” of regional conflict and irregular warfare, whether conducted at the interstate, extrastate, or intrastate level. Five broad drivers of the diffusion of regional conflict are (1) weak states, (2) anticipated power shifts, regional and domestic, (3) unstable and poorly controlled border regions, (4) large refugee flows, and (5) the religiously-based non-state militant campaign against the state as an organizing principle of world politics. These factors are both endogenous and exogenous to particular states and societies, and must…

This paper examines the origins of political violence in Iraq. It argues that, in the wake of the democratic transition process in from 2004 to 2005, Iraqi exiles, who were chiefly Shiite Muslims and Kurds appointed by Paul Bremer, Iraq’s U.S. civilian administrator, moved to write a constitution and set up a political system that deliberately marginalized minorities. Since then, the Sunni minority began and continues to engage in or support violence against the state. It suggests that violence and instability in Iraq are to be understood in terms of local contexts of meaning, notably the nature…

As the Middle East goes through one of its most historic, yet painful episodes, the fate of the region’s Kurds have drawn substantial interest. Transnational Kurdish awakening—both political and armed—has attracted unprecedented global interest as individual Kurdish minorities across four countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, have begun to shake their respective political status quo in various ways. It is in Syria that the Kurds have made perhaps their largest impact, largely owing to the intensification of the civil war and the breakdown of state authority along Kurdish-dominated northern…

Indiscriminate killing, chemical warfare, the rise of extremists, and the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II make it easy to overlook important details of the Syrian conflict. The destabilization of Syria has created an environment uniquely suited for cultivating illicit economies, particularly the production and transportation of illegal drugs such as Captagon.  Little known outside of the Middle East until 2014, Captagon production in Syria adds a new dimension to a conflict that already has numerous competing forces. Hezbollah, a known supporter of the Assad regime and ally of…

Until recently, Iran has been economically isolated by way of sanctions, preempting investment opportunities with states allied with the United States. However, the Obama administration’s recent effort towards economic normalization with Iran affords it with unprecedented commercial possibilities, and per the focus of this article, legalized commercial enterprising within Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States—across sectarian tensions and fault lines. From both a legal and practical prism, this article investigates the recent lifting of sanctions,…