On Tuesday, June 18, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled “Elections in Iran: The Regime Cementing its Control.” Mr. Alireza Nader, Senior International Policy Analyst at RAND Corporation, Dr. Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Mr. Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Associate at the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, testified. The subcommittee’s ...

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) co-hosted a conference titled "Dynamic Gulf: Forces of Change in a Strategic Region." The second panel, “A New Ruling Bargain? Reform and Gulf Elite Dynamics,” was moderated by Prof. Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, and featured panelists Andrew Hammond, former Reuters correspondent for Saudi Arabia, Ali Al Shihabi, ...

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's event "The Changing Dynamics of the Syria Crisis" featured several regional experts who discussed recent developments in the conflict in Syria and their potential ramifications. The panelists included Raphael LeFevre, Gates Scholar and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge; Paul Salem, Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut; Yezid Sayigh, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center; and Dmitri Trenin, ...

The Middle East Institute's event "Egypt's Draft NGO Law: Impact and Implications" was moderated by Kate Seelye, senior vice president of the Middle East Institute, and featured Sarah Morgan, deputy Washington Director of Human Rights Watch, and Nancy Okail, director of Freedom House' s Egypt program. The panelists outlined the potential threats Egypt's proposed NGO law poses to civil society, human rights, and democracy, and also discussed the impact the ...

At an event hosted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution on June 6, 2013 at 2:15pm, Senator John McCain gave his first public remarks on the conflict in Syria and his thoughts on wider Middle East policy for the first time since he visited Syria last month. Brookings Institution Vice President and Director for Foreign Police Martin Indyk provided introductory remarks and Senior  Foreign ...

On Tuesday, June 5, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled “Obama’s Failed Syria Policy.” Mr. Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ms. Danielle Pletka, Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Dr. Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified. The committee’s chairman, Rep. ...

An event by Freedom House, "The Role of Women and Islam in the New Tunisia," featured Tunisian activist and researcher Dr. Kedija Arfaoui. The event was held Question and Answer style and was moderated by Freedom House Egypt Program Director Nancy Okail, who began the discussion by commenting on Tunisia's role as a model for the emerging democracies in the region. She mentioned that positive developments in Tunisia are often ...

The Center for the Study of Democracy's event titled "Democratic Transitions in the Arab World" featured a keynote speech by Rached Ghannouchi, founder and President of the Nahda Movement in Tunisia. Ghannouchi began by emphasizing that the success of Tunisia's democratic transition was important not just for Tunisia, but for the region as a whole. Ghannouchi pointed to his party's willingness to form a broad coalition with support from across ...

The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy hosted a conference titled "Democratic Transitions in the Arab World."  The conference included a panel on "What the U.S. Can Do to Support Democratic Transitions in the Middle East" featured Radwan Ziadeh, founder and Director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria and cofounder and Executive Director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies; Peter Mandaville, ...

On Wednesday, May 15, the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom held a panel titled, “The Rise of Islamism: Its Impact on Religious Minorities” to discuss Islamist radicalization in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Panelists included former Pakistani parliamentarian Farahnaz Ispahi; Professor of Iranian, Central Eurasian, and Islamic Studies at Indiana University Jamsheed Choksy; and Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism Stephen Schwartz. Nina Shea, Hudson ...

The Atlantic Council hosted an event for the release of their new issue brief titled "Egypt's Litigious Transition." The event featured Mahmoud Hamad, author of the issue brief and Assistant Professor at Drake University, and Yussef Auf, a nonresident fellow at The Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The event was moderated by Dr. Michele Dunne, Director of The Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle ...