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Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Danielle Pletka and former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto |
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AEI has launched a major project to gauge the depth and breadth of Iran's economic ties with the outside world: "Global Business in Iran: Interactive," an online database charting major financial transactions with the Islamic Republic since 2000. Led by research associate Omeed Jafari, AEI researchers have documented more than 300 transactions amounting to more than $150 billion. The project was introduced at a May conference at which Mr. Jafari, Danielle Pletka, Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and A. William Samii of the Center for Naval Analyses spoke.
As awareness of Iran's financial and business ties to the developed world has spread, partly through AEI's Iran database, proposals for divestment have been floated by state legislatures and Congress. At an AEI briefing in July, Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) outlined pending legislation that would allow institutional investors to divest without fiduciary liability. Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) delivered a keynote speech on how tough sanctions and divestment would target Iran's economic weaknesses and the imperative of securing Russia and China's support in sanctions. Other speakers included Missouri treasurer Sarah Steelman, who prevents state investment in companies with financial ties to sponsors of terrorism like Iran, and Florida state senator Ted Deutch.
Benazir Bhutto, the first and only woman to serve as prime minister of Pakistan, spoke at a February meeting hosted by Ms. Pletka about the security and political situations in Ms. Bhutto's home country.
In September, Michael A. Ledeen's book The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction was published by St. Martin's Press. Mr. Ledeen, who wrote several articles for the Wall Street Journal about Iran, spoke at a book forum that month with Clifford D. May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Central Intelligence Agency director R. James Woolsey.
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Lebanese parliament member Walid Jumblatt |
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Walid Jumblatt, a member of the Lebanese parliament and leader of the 2006 Cedar Revolution, spoke at AEI in February on Syria's continued meddling in his country's affairs and the pernicious influence of Hezbollah in Lebanese politics.
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Ayat Abul-Futtouh of Egypt's Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies |
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Last November, AEI held the third installment of its Dissent and Reform in the Arab World conference series. The series has featured dissidents from across the Middle East. In December 2006, Michael Rubin wrote a Middle Eastern Outlook on whether U.S. support for Middle Eastern dissidents is the kiss of death. In April, research assistant Jeffrey Azarva contributed an Outlook about the rollback of democratic reforms in Egypt and Tunisia.
Writing in the Summer 2007 issue of the Middle East Quarterly, Mr. Rubin reviewed fourteen books about the war in Iraq. These were later published as part of AEI's On the Issues series (part 1, 2). Mr. Rubin also monitors Turkish politics. In advance of this year's major parliamentary and presidential elections in that country, he explored the growing appeal of Islamist politics in Ankara in a Middle Eastern Outlook. He also continues to watch developments in Iran. In December 2006, he moderated a panel discussion on elections for the Iranian Assembly of Experts, which appoints Iran's supreme leader.
Reuel Marc Gerecht has written extensively this year on the Shia-Sunni divide, radical clerics in Tehran, and the possibility of true democracy in Iraq. He wrote a New York Times op-ed denouncing Iran's imprisonment of American citizens, and he and Gary J. Schmitt wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times on how the West can avert a war with Iran. In March 2007, Mr. Gerecht held a conference in Amman with the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies to explore the future of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
In a lengthy essay for Commentary magazine in June, Joshua Muravchik, currently working on a book about Arab democrats, described his recent trip to Saudi Arabia and offered observations of local culture and politics.
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