A Most Dangerous Year

By MICHAEL COLLINS DUNN

For the Middle East, 1998 was a complex, difficult year, one in which U.S. policy was frustrated at several turns and seemingly ill-defined or unfocused in others, in which Saddam Hussein's defiance of U.N. inspections continued to a point at which U.S. armed retaliation seemed all but inevitable. Saddam backed down, once again, in mid-November--but one month later Operation Desert Fox started and the already confused situation became much more so.

Certainly there are lessons to be learned from the security challenges faced by the United States in the region in 1998: the difficulty of even the "world's sole remaining superpower" controlling events if it cannot hold its former coalition partners together; the problems raised by threats not carried out, and/or by posturing that has to be abandoned; and the problem of dealing with regional issues on an ad hoc reactive basis rather than seeing the connections that link them together.

When the year began there was wide-spread expectation of a major U.S. military strike against Iraq. But until the middle of December and the Desert Fox strikes the only military action that the United States had actually carried out in the region during the year was the Tomahawk missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan on 20 August. The large U.S. buildup in the Gulf at the beginning of the year--two carriers and, during some transition periods, three--had been much reduced. Only one carrier--the Abraham Lincoln, succeeded by the Dwight D. Eisenhower and, in November, by the Enterprise--remained in the region. U.S. attention, focused so intently on Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the year, had shifted to Kosovo and other issues, while the once-vaunted U.N. inspection program was in disarray, blocked by the Iraqis and the subject of a public feud between former inspector Scott Ritter and his onetime boss, United Nations Special Commission chief Richard Butler.

Then suddenly in November, in a case of deja vu, the United States was in confrontation with Saddam once again, and had dispatched additional forces to the region. On the weekend of 14-15 November a U.S. strike against Iraq, reportedly already in the air, was recalled after an Iraqi backdown. Many of the additional forces en route for the Gulf also were recalled. When the Enterprise battle group arrived in late November there was no intention of maintaining the Dwight D. Eisenhower in the region as well.

Ironically, at least one defense-related development of 1998 was almost entirely overlooked: the decision to add, as of 1 October 1999, the five Central Asian states of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan to the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility (AOR). CENTCOM's move into Central Asia follows a number of joint maneuvers between U.S. and Central Asian forces, and recognizes the growing interrelationships between the new states of Central Asia and the "old" Middle East. (Of course, these new additions to CENTCOM's AOR will have little impact on U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) based in Bahrain, since the Central Asian states are landlocked or border only the Caspian Sea, itself landlocked.)

The addition of five new countries to CENTCOM's AOR also reflects the shifting realities of the post-Cold War, post-Soviet world, and the increasing obsolescence of the older regional divisions. The growing importance of the states around the Caspian Sea is an example: conventionally, Turkey is classed as part of Europe, the three countries of the Caucasus and the new states of Central Asia as part of the former Soviet Union, and Iran as part of the Middle East. But all of these Caspian states have to work together to get the new oil and gas discovered in the region to market. The CENTCOM shift in part reflects the need for new ways of thinking about the region (even though the Caucasus states were shifted to the European Command's AOR rather than to CENTCOM).

From Kosovo to Kashmir: A New Arc of Crisis

It probably is worth noting that conventional boundaries of "The Middle East" are shifting in all directions. In the late 1970s and early 1980s it was fashionable to speak of an "arc of crisis" running from the Middle East through Iran and Afghanistan. Today there is a new arc of crisis, running from Kosovo to Kashmir. There is no common factor--not Islam, not weapons of mass destruction, not even the emergence of a single regional power--in the various disputes but most individual problems have links with countries and quarrels nearby, and, while each may be defused separately, the possibility of a chain reaction of unforeseen events (perhaps as explosive as those of August 1914) is not completely out of the question.

A quick tour d'horizon of this trans-regional instability before one looks at the "Middle East" proper may be in order. Turkey is today more actively involved in the Middle East than it has been in decades, building a strong defense alliance with Israel, and openly confronting and challenging Syria (with which it not only has disputes over Kurdish rebel support but also a major water dispute and a latent boundary problem). But Turkey also is a major player in the crisis in the Balkans--and in the growing debate over the Caspian oil pipeline routes.

Today there is a much broader arc: from the Balkans--the continuing problem of Bosnia and the growing one of Kosovo--through Cyprus (where the arrival of Russian surface-to-air missiles in the Greek Republic of Cyprus threatened to provoke Turkish military action late in 1998)--and on through the Syrian-Turkish confrontation, and Turkey's deepening strategic alliance with Israel, already alluded to. Syria clearly sees itself as the target of that alliance, and it is most likely right. Turkey also continues to periodically invade northern Iraq to chase Kurdish rebels, and this--plus the fact that Turkey provides the bases for the northern no-fly zone patrols over Iraq (the operation is now called Northern Watch)--makes it a player there as well. The whole Caspian oil embroglio links it both with the disturbed Caucasus and with Iran.

In the Caucasus itself the year saw a new hard-line president in Armenia, another assassination attempt against the president of Georgia, Verdana, Arial, and a highly controversial reelection of the onetime KGB chief and Soviet Politburo member, Heydar Aliyev, who is president of Azerbaijan and at the moment the darling of the Western oil companies.

Eastward the ferment inside Iran continues, and Iran came close to a possible intervention in Afghanistan, but was perhaps dissuaded by lessons learned by British, Russian, and (a bit farther back) earlier Iranian experiences. The tensions remained very high, though, as the year was drawing to a close. The Taleban in Afghanistan, once supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and tolerated by the United States, had alienated both the Saudis and the Americans, but continuing Pakistani support led to increased tensions between Iran and Pakistan. Iran also found itself supplying arms to the same side in the Afghan civil war as Russia, and cheering on the American attacks on Usama bin Ladin's camps in Afghanistan. Geopolitics is making strange bedfellows indeed.

Pakistan and India usually are considered outside the Middle East (India always, Pakistan sometimes), but the detonation of nuclear devices by both clearly had repercussions in the region, and certainly will spur nuclear ambitions in such neighboring countries as Iran, and perhaps others. Some of the camps bombed in Afghanistan housed Kashmiri rebels, and India and Pakistan first fought a few border skirmishes in Kashmir and then began talks, but questions remain about Pakistan's internal stability--thus, with challenges on the Iran-Afghan border as well as in Kashmir, and the stark fact of Pakistan's new nuclear capabilities, the future is unclear.

Then, too, of course, there were the bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania--countries never considered part of the Middle East (although Kenya is included in CENTCOM's AOR). The bombings led to retaliatory strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, which are now counted in the Middle East.

Conventional regional boundaries are thus bending and expanding: The "Middle East" is now interlinked with the Balkans, South Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and at times even the Indian Ocean basin. These links are particularly evident in the proliferation field: India wants a nuclear-weapons capability in order to deter China; Pakistan developed its nuclear capabilities to deter India; Iran is now quarreling with Pakistan, and may well be more determined to pursue its own nuclear-weapons program; and Iraq, never exactly reticent about the idea anyway, will certainly want to match Iran.

The Middle East "Proper"

Shrinking the horizon a bit permits one to look more closely at the region that most people still consider to be the Middle East: from Morocco to Afghanistan, perhaps, or at least Iran. Before looking more closely at some of the problems encountered by U.S. policy in 1998--and some of the problems encountered in defining U.S. policy in 1998--a more detailed tour d'horizon of the region than that already given of the broader arc of crisis area may be in order.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks made virtually no progress all year until the apparent breakthrough at the Wye Plantation Summit in Maryland in October--which was followed in short order by new terrorist incidents in Israel. In any event, the progress achieved in Wye will merely move the process a small step forward, and President Clinton's historic visit to Palestine in early December also may help--but the regional repercussions of the Desert Fox strikes were not clear as of 20 December [press deadline for the 1999 Almanac]. In any event, next May is the deadline originally set by the 1993 Oslo accords for completion of the "final status" talks, which have not yet even started. And those talks deal with the most intractable issues: Jerusalem, Jewish settlements, the final borders, and Palestinian independence. If the Palestinian Authority declares independence in May, as it has threatened to do if no progress is made by then, events could spin out of control quickly.

Iran's slow, contested, winding struggle towards liberalization has continued, but with every move challenged by the hard-liners opposed to President Mohammad Khatami's tentative overtures to the West, and even to the United States. The visit by Khatami and his foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, to the United Nations in the fall of 1998 marked another step in this new opening. But newspapers allied with Khatami were under attack at home, and his efforts to end the fatwa against Salman Rushdie have been challenged by groups that have offered to raise the reward for Rushdie's execution. Iran clearly is on better terms with the West, and even with the United States, than at any time since the Revolution. In short, despite the setbacks, progress has been made--but it usually has been two steps forward followed by one and a half steps back. The U.S. waiver of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act in the case of the French-Russian-Malaysian natural gas plan for Iran was a gesture aimed at defusing a problem with Europe as well as an overture to Iran; that deal has suffered, though, from the economic collapse of both Russia and Malaysia.

Ironically, the United States and Iran also find themselves on the same side, in a manner of speaking, in the confrontation in Afghanistan between Iran and the Taleban, who once seemed to offer a possible end to Afghan civil wars and a pipeline route to the Indian Ocean that avoided both Russia and Iran. But Afghanistan now seems more mired in instability than ever before, remains hostile to the West, and has been the host of Usama bin Ladin. Perhaps one reason Iran seems more tractable is not just the mellowing of the 20-year-old revolution and the victory of Khatami (with a 70 percent share of the vote) over the establishment candidate, but the comparison with the Taleban. Although women serve in the Cabinet in Iran and read the news on television, in Afghanistan the Taleban have barred women from school and have banned television altogether. Iran is a constitutional republic; in contrast, the Taleban proclaimed an "emirate" with no visible constitutional structure and a very hazy leadership.

An Aging Arab Leadership

There were no revolutionary changes in the Arab world in the past year, but the evolutionary changes that appear imminent may be profound. King Hussein of Jordan has served since the late Truman Administration; although only in his 60s, the relapse of his cancer and the long but reportedly successful treatment at the Mayo Clinic (which took him from his kingdom for several months) are a reminder that an era is ending. Hafiz al-Assad of Syria has served since 1970, and is both aging and ailing; Saddam Hussein has been a major player since the late 1960s; Egypt's Husni Mubarak has been in power for 17 years, serving longer as president than either Gamal Abdel Nasser or Anwar Sadat. Yasser Arafat has led the PLO since the 1960s, and is suffering from some sort of degenerative problem (rumored to be Parkinson's). King Fahd of Saudi Arabia had several surgeries in 1998, and his stroke a few years ago left him impaired; the around-the-world tour of Crown Prince Abdullah in late 1998 was widely seen as a get-acquainted tour for the next king. Abdullah is (at most) only a year younger than Fahd, but is in far better health. Still, those in the next generation of princes are chafing, and the future of Saudi Arabia in the near term could be a succession of elderly kings who serve at most for a few years. King Hassan II of Morocco will be 70 next July, and has been in power since a month after John F. Kennedy's inauguration; even the region's onetime enfant terrible, Col. Muammar Qadhafi of Libya, has been in power since 1969: 30 years this year.

Clearly, change is in the offing: Age and the laws of entropy guarantee that. Ironically, at least the monarchies have clearcut heirs apparent: Despite Hussein's long tenure, there is little doubt that his younger brother Crown Prince Hassan, in his early 50s, will succeed him. The debate in Jordan is about who will succeed Hassan, a subject of much speculation among the sons of Hussein and the one son of Hassan. Abdullah will succeed Fahd in Saudi Arabia. Hassan II, Morocco's Crown Prince, had a playboy reputation--but so, once, did his father. In any event, Hassan II is now being given a higher profile. Other monarchs in the region also are aging: Sheikh Zayid of Abu Dhabi is the oldest, but his succession is rather clear and undisputed.

The republics are much chancier. President Assad of Syria clearly has groomed his son Bashshar to be his successor, and has been clearing other candidates out of the way, but what will happen once the elder Assad is gone is hard to predict. Saddam Hussein also has groomed his sons to succeed. Who Qadhafi's successor will be has long been a subject for speculation, and Egypt's Mubarak has never named a vice president. Finally, although there are many talented Palestinian officials, none has the reputation or sheer political clout enjoyed by Arafat.

Of course, the exact timetable for any of these changes is unknown, but it would seem likely that, within a decade or less, many of the oldest and most familiar faces in the Arab world will have changed. Those changes could have significant policy impact: The peace process with Israel certainly will be different if Arafat, Assad, Mubarak, and Hussein have all left the scene. If their successors are less stable, less secure, or less entrenched in power, their negotiating room may also be considerably less.

The Problems for U.S. Policy

There has really been no change in fundamental U.S. interests in the Middle East in the last several years. The United States wants to see: (a) the continued flow of oil from the region; (b) security and stability in the oil-producing countries; (c) security for Israel (within the context of peace with its neighbors); and (d) a limitation on terrorism--and on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (and the means of delivering them).

There are few who would argue with those basic policies, but once implementation gets beyond the level of "peace good, terrorism bad," policy definition naturally becomes more complex. The past year has shown several areas in which U.S. policy seemed, at times, adrift or at any rate unfocused. The major problems seem to have centered around three areas: coordination with allies and other friends in the region; recognizing that those allies see links between U.S. policies on differing issues in the Gulf; and avoiding a loss of credibility when threatening the use of force.

The Iraqi Confrontations

All three of these problems were in play during the confrontation with Iraq in the winter of 1997­1998, and the subsequent challenges of late summer and mid-November. The United States built up a crescendo of threats of action in an attempt to force Saddam Hussein to accede to United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspection of sites he had kept closed. As the U.S. military buildup in the Gulf and adjacent waters intensified, there were widespread indications given, in each instance, that military action was imminent. But military options were limited in the earlier confrontations by the refusal of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to allow bases in those countries to be used for strikes against Iraq. That limited U.S. ground-based air operations to Kuwait and possibly Bahrain--and, of course, the U.S. Navy's carrier force in the Gulf. But Saddam had proven himself able to absorb considerable punishment--and none of the targets reportedly under consideration would have directly affected the inspections situation. Moreover, military action would almost certainly have led to the immediate expulsion of UNSCOM. The targets hit in the first two days of Desert Fox seem to have been well-selected, and Pentagon officials provided a credible rationale for the strikes, but the politics of the situation created controversies that may affect U.S. influence in the region for a long time to come.

In effect, the United States found itself painted into a corner, with few options, and it had done most of the painting itself. In the end the compromise worked out last summer by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was probably as face-saving a way as any to stand down from the threats. But the Annan compromise, as many predicted, did not resolve the inspections issue.

When, on 3 August, Iraq blocked UNSCOM inspections of additional new sites, the United States did not respond with the same military threats it had enunciated previously. Saddam appeared to have won, therefore, or at least to have sharply limited what UNSCOM could inspect. But Saddam later overplayed his hand and the end result, all politics aside, was Desert Fox.

With the forces it had assembled in early 1998, the United States certainly could have applied military force earlier. But, as noted earlier, such action might simply have ended all UNSCOM inspections, angered the Arab world, and accomplished little except destroy some Iraqi military assets that were unrelated (or only tangentially related) to the inspections issue. (Obviously, known weapons of mass destruction plants have long since been dismantled; the whole point of the inspection regime is to find the hidden ones--until they are located, they cannot be bombed.)

A key element in the earlier confrontations was the lack of support from the former coalition partners, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but also including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. Only Kuwait was openly supportive, and Bahrain--home port of the U.S. Fifth Fleet--issued conflicting statements. Because a major rationale behind the U.S. presence in the Gulf is to defend Saudi Arabia and its smaller neighbors, their lack of support not only limited operational options from land bases, but also was politically embarrassing.

Some U.S. commentators have blamed the Saudis, the Turks, and others for their alleged timidity, but this criticism overlooks the fact that popular opinion in the region has shifted dramatically in recent years. The Arab "street"--i.e., the average citizen--was never enthusiastic about Desert Storm, either, but the Arab elites were supportive of the United States. Today, the elites tend to agree in most respects with the "street" that the United States is pursuing a double standard: insisting that Iraq adhere to the letter of every U.N. resolution, but making no similar demand of Israel. The rulers of the Arab world are not democrats, but they do have a constituency of sorts to answer to--not so much the general public, but the powerful forces of the political elite. In the Gulf this generally means the wealthy businessmen and big merchant families. During the period of U.S. threats against Iraq in early 1998, the public image of the United States in the Arab world, not just in the street but among the elites, was lower than it had been at any time since the 1950s or 1960s.

This touches upon another of the problems that U.S. policy has encountered: Virtually everyone in the region (including, incidentally, the Israelis, from their separate perspective) sees a close linkage between the Gulf security and Iraqi issues and the Arab-Israeli peace process. In the Arab world, that linkage takes the form of charging the United States with a double standard--i.e., not holding Israel to U.N. Resolutions but insisting on precise Iraqi compliance. In Israel, the linkage consists of an insistence that support for Israeli security must be a major component of the overall Gulf security equation. In the wake of the Gulf War, President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker recognized this linkage by pressuring Israel and the Arab states to attend the Madrid Peace Conference. Today, though, the United States seems to deny that there is a real linkage. Among many statements fortifying that impression is the following, made by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the now somewhat notorious February 1998 "town meeting" at Ohio State University:

Secretary Albright (answering a question about the impact on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks of possible U.S. military action against Iraq):

I have spent quite a lot of time on this issue in the last months--1997 was not a great year for the peace talks, but we are determined to continue. These are two very separate issues that need to be resolved. [Source: Town meeting at Ohio State University, 18 February 1998; U.S. Department of State transcript.]

But such comments fail to reflect the perception in the region, and have much to do with why the United States and its best friends in the Arab world (even Egypt) did not see eye to eye on Iraqi policy in 1998. Few in the region really care for Saddam, and most fear him, but they are concerned about the suffering caused to ordinary Iraqis by the embargo. That Saddam is largely responsible both for its continuation and for the hardships inflicted is true, of course, but regional perceptions helped all year to undermine the U.S. approach.

Needless to say, the earlier threats and military buildups, and then the lack of follow-through, followed by apparent acquiescence when Saddam again turned defiant in both August and November, had already undermined U.S. credibility before the Desert Fox attack started on 16 December. Elsewhere in the region, the long delays before taking action in Bosnia, and later the threats and posturing in Kosovo, added to a growing perception that the United States is much more willing to threaten military force than it is to actually use it. Moreover, when it does use force, it uses Tomahawks and hits targets whose actual relevance to the crisis at hand is not always clear. In short, it has seemed at times that the United States has adopted a policy of "speak loudly, but carry a small stick."

The Attacks Against Sudan/Afghanistan Targets

Some of these same policy problems were evident again in the 20 August raids against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, and training camps along the Afghan-Pakistani border operated by Usama bin Ladin. Retaliating against the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the United States struck, in both cases, with Tomahawks that reportedly were launched from Navy ships in the area. According to several published accounts, the United States notified Pakistan at the very moment of launch, for at least two reasons: (1) the missiles to Afghanistan had to overfly Pakistan; and (2) Pakistan had already, according to the Pakistani press, detected U.S. naval vessels operating close to the Pakistani coast.

The attack against the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan may have been launched from ships in the Red Sea, which would not require overflying any third country. In any event, no U.S. friends in the region were notified in advance of the plan except for the Pakistanis, at the last moment. The lack of advance notification led to considerable concern in general, and resulted in much Pakistani anger.

The Sudanese pharmaceutical factory may have been poorly chosen as a target. Its links with Usama bin Ladin are tenuous at best; after several explanations the United States sought to link the factory with Iraq instead. An initial U.S. claim that the factory did not produce medicines at all was clearly unfounded (as dozens of Westerners who had visited the plant soon testified); it may have been a dual-use facility, of course, but the United States has produced no direct evidence that it was--and, although U.S. officials continue to defend the attack, rumors persist that a different facility actually is involved in the Iraqi chemical weapons research program, not the one hit.

The attacks on the Afghan camps were less controversial, except for the embarrassment caused in Pakistan. But such primitive training camps are easily rebuilt, and it is not entirely clear that these particular camps had any direct link to the embassy bombings. The Tomahawk was not designed in any case to be a counterterrorist weapon, and striking at a network like bin Ladin's is more difficult than had been the case with groups clearly supported by sovereign states. Bin Ladin's network is self-financed from his own millions, is a loose alliance of separate national underground movements with only a small international nexus coordinating them, and is not clearly linked to any state. It is, in other words, the sort of movement usually targeted by covert operations, not by cruise missiles.

With these lingering doubts about the choice of targets and the appropriateness of the weapons, it is hard to determine exactly what the United States accomplished. That new retaliatory attacks will take place again seems quite likely, but the question remains: Did the United States win anything of consequence? It did not decapitate the bin Ladin network; it apparently has, though, further substantiated the U.S. image as a bully in the region. A clearcut, decisive, massive military operation against targets clearly linked to the bombing would have possessed more inherent credibility than the attacks actually inflicted.

But U.S. military operations anywhere in the world are increasingly constrained by political and budgetary concerns. Unlike the early buildup against Saddam, in which two carriers and a third on the way were used, only one carrier was kept routinely on station in the Gulf, and ground-based air strikes were usually ruled out by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Moreover, U.S. forces in the Mediterranean are preoccupied with Bosnia and Kosovo. The overall drawdown in U.S. forces limits options even further. All of this has combined to produce a pattern of threats by the United States that either are not carried out--or are carried out late and/or halfheartedly, with questionable military results.

The Peace Process

In the midst of all this, the United States also is still laboring to reach the next step in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Israel's Yitzhak Rabin was alive and the prime minister of Israel, negotiations were slow and painful. But both sides were willing to overlook minor flaws in the other's behavior because they trusted each other to move toward a common goal. Binyamin Netanyahu's government has been openly hostile to the Oslo accords themselves, however, and this has made Yasser Arafat even less able to make certain concessions. The appointment of hardliner Ariel Sharon as foreign minister on the eve of the Wye Plantation Summit certainly did not make the negotiating there any easier. And even if a breakthrough were to take place, and to be implemented in full, the thorny issue of the final-status talks remains ahead, when the really difficult negotiations begin. Meanwhile, the Palestinian threat to declare independence next May hangs over the whole process like a Sword of Damocles, threatening widespread Arab recognition and a reversion to the old days of broader Arab alliances against Israel.

Proliferation of WMDs

The worst may not happen, but from Kosovo to Kashmir the number of dangerous crisis situations has proliferated. So, too, have the weapons, including weapons of mass destruction and the ability to deliver them. India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers. Medium-range missiles have been tested by Pakistan and India, and longer-range missiles are in development. Iran also is extending the range of its missiles. Israel already possessed longer-range missiles--and nuclear weapons as well.

Chemical and biological weapons programs are not limited to the well-publicized cases of Iran and Libya, either; Israel, Egypt, and Syria all have chemical and biological weapons capabilities, perhaps more advanced than Iran's.

In short, Pandora's box is open; missile and WMD proliferation will not go away. As Iraq has demonstrated, even with an intrusive inspections regime it is not hard to hide such weapons capabilities. Deploring, sanctioning, and embargoing may have some impact, but in the long run the only way to check the use of such weapons is through deterrence. The clear message that the use of such weapons will be met with an unacceptably punishing response--and perhaps comparable weapons--is, in the end, the only way to restrain their use.

Deterrence does work. But in a world without the polarized superpowers of the Cold War, the danger of a rogue state actually resorting to the use of such weapons is greater--especially with the "sole remaining superpower" not acting like one. To maintain peace, therefore, deterrence needs to be not just credible, but virtually certain.

As U.S. naval and military leaders insist, today's world is in many respects more dangerous than the Cold War world of the previous half century, and the Middle East remains one of the most dangerous regions. The broader region in particular, from Kosovo to Kashmir, was far more dangerous in late 1998 than it was just one year earlier.

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Dr. MICHAEL COLLINS DUNN is editor of The Middle East Journal, quarterly journal of The Middle East Institute, and has also for 10 years been editor and publisher of The Estimate, a biweekly intelligence newsletter on the Islamic world.