POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Protest, Democracy, & Violence in the New Middle East: Conversation with Steven Cook (S. 5, Ep. 37) by Marc Lynch

Iran holds presidential elections later this week, and Marc Lynch talks with M. Ali Kadivar about what to expect. Kadivar is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute. "Ahmadinejad's era was significant for several reasons, but one reason was that the process started to replace the old guard of the Islamic Republic with a new set of elites," said Kadivar. "I think Rouhani represents the different strands: one is the old guard again, being back and exerting control. The other is the social support that Rouhani has. A lot of the reformist people who ruled for democratic change now see Rouhani as the most viable candidate that can push forward their agenda." "An interesting thing about the conservative candidates is that you see the conservative discourse is very weak in their electoral platforms. They don't talk about Islamic values or the Western invasion the culture of Iran. Most of what they're talking is the economic promises," said Kadivar. "In a way, I can see this election as kind of a defeat for conservative discourse. I think they have realized that to win a presidential election they cannot talk about those things." The conservative candidates will "criticize Rouhani for not being able to translate the nuclear agreement to economic gains for peace," said Kadivar. "So they say, 'We gave up on our rights. But people are not seeing that in their daily life. They don't have jobs." "On the other hand, Rouhani is saying, 'I'm the person who has delivered on promises. I promised to do this. I delivered this. We have been able to sell our oil, a barrier for banking has been removed,' and then he's promising to deliver more." "Many people believe that this presidential election is not just about presidents. So Iran's supreme leader is elderly and, I think, he wants to publicly recognize that he may not live longer so people are thinking and talking about his next successor. Ebrahim Raisi is being talked about as the hardliners' candidate for Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini... many people believe that he ran for president to set the stage for being Iran's next supreme leader."

On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch talks with Peter Krause, an assistant professor at Boston College. Krause's new book, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win, focuses on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it. "The book itself answers several questions to people who study national movements, nationalism, or political violence. The first question is why some nations get states and others don't," said Krause. "These groups simultaneously have, what I call, organizational goals— which is, they want to have power. They want to have power and notoriety. They want to survive. They want to increase their membership. At the same time they have these strategic goals of statehood or independence. From the work I've done, it's clear to me that groups and individuals in them care about both of these objectives," said Krause. "My argument is simply that: most of the time you never go broke betting on the fact that groups care more about their organizational goals. They always want to make sure that they're maximizing their power. The argument is simply: when maximizing their power means that they should pursue and achieve strategic goals, that's when it happens. That's the idea that if you're the hegemon, the best way to become stronger is actually to win to achieve victory to achieve a new state. Because now you get the office, the wealth, and the status that comes along with it. However, if you are a weaker organization and you're not in line to inherit the throne, then you actually have an incentive to 'spoil a deal.' Not necessarily trying to prevent independence forever, but hold it off for now." "If you look at studies of national movements and insurgencies, it's pretty close to consensus that foreign support matters," said Krause. "What I argue, however, is what nature of that support takes and how effective it is depends a great deal on the internal balance of power inside the movement."

Nadia Marzouki explores how the topic of Islam has become so contentious in America. Marzouki says her research showed her that controversies around Muslims living in America don't just express Islamophobia. "They betray and express a deeper discomfort and unease with an understanding of law, an understanding of rights, and an understanding of equal democracy. This is really what's at stake in the conversations among the disputes around mosques, Sharia law, and also— in a more minor way— the headscarf... or various forms of religious rituals related to the Islamic communities." As an observer from Europe, Marzouki says, "It was really surprising to see how similar all the rhetorical tropes animating anti-Muslim movements were similar in Europe and the United States. This was all the more surprising because all the sociologies of Islam in Europe and United States. You don't have the same Muslim communities. They don't come from the same ethnic backgrounds. They don't have the same socio-economic level. They don't have the same level of education. In general, they're much more educated and have a better social economic level in the U.S. Before 2001, and even more so before 2008, Islam was never such a big problem in domestic politics in the United States." "What's really completely absurd and problematic in the current situation both in Europe and in the U.S. is that we are deciding policies based on stereotypical discourse— and without any account for the empirics and the lived realities of Muslim communities." Marzouki is an Andrew Carnegie Centennial Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and a research fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative.

Lisel Hintz speaks about what lead to and the significance of this weekend's constitutional referendum in Turkey. "The question: is how long will [Erdogan] stay in power? Right now, this could leave him in power up until 2029— possibly even longer, depending on some certain circumstances. We suspect that he's probably grooming you know his son-in-law, who's currently a minister, to to take his place. Will he be willing to give up those reins? We've seen successive purges of his own party from those who don't agree with him. It is important to go back and understand the AKP's trajectory, which was that not everyone agreed with Erdogan," said Hintz. "It's going to be fascinating to see— both from institutional and from a personal perspective— how Erdogan plans to continue this, particularly given that Turkey— from an economic standpoint— is in a very fragile state." "From an identity politics perspective— and also just sort of an institutional party politics perspective as well— not a whole lot has changed." said Hintz. "I'm not really optimistic about a really strongly united opposition that can come forward and challenge the AKP." "[Erdogan] doesn't have the coalition that he would like to enact some of the reforms he would like in the future. He has been courting the Nationalist Action Party, but only some of them supported the referendum. There was actually quite a big split." "What we know is that the AKP is probably going to do is push for the death penalty to be reinstated because that's something that polls at about 65-70 percent across Turkey— and would really be able to rally up a lot of support for him. So I think he has channels to further consolidate the regime." Hintz is a visiting assistant professor in the Political Science Department at Barnard College, Columbia University. Next fall, she will be an

"One of the most interesting puzzles to emerge out of contentious Islamist movements is the fact that these movements are not united," says Mohammed M. Hafez on this week's POMEPS Conversations podcast. "The common finding today is that— in civil wars, insurgencies, and civil conflicts in general— these movements are fragmented, they're competitive, and sometimes they're fratricidal. Hafez talks about these fratricidal movements globally and throughout the Middle East region. Hafez is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Hafez focuses on Islamic fundamentalism, radicalization and counter-radicalization.

On this week's POMEPS podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Ora Szekely, an assistant professor of political science at Clark University. Szekely's recent book, The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East, compares the performances of four key non-state actors in the Arab-Israeli conflict ecosystem: the PLO, Hamas, Hizbullah, and Amal. "Why is it that you can have two militant groups— fighting against the same adversaries, same territory— and yet you get these really different outcomes?" said Szekely. "The answer to that—or at least the answer we see embedded in a lot of reporting on the Middle East or on non-state actors in general is...this sort of implicit assumption that how well these guys do is basically a function of how much material resources they have. But when you look a little bit more closely, it turns out that even groups that have pretty similar amounts of equipment can have really different outcomes. What I found is that it's not so much the stuff— it's how you got it in the first place that really matters in shaping how you're going to do in the long run."

Lihi Ben Shitrit speaks about her new book, Righteous Transgressions: Women's Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right. Shitrit is an assistant professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens. "The book is a comparative study of women's activism in the Israeli and Palestinian right, but specifically four groups: the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, the Islamist movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas," said Shitrit. "What motivated me to do this was the fact that you can still pick up a book on any of these movements and not find any women mentioned— not by name, not even by subject, not even the category of women. As if women are not important to the politics of these movements. And for me that was a glaring gap because we know women support these movements." "One thing that I found was that women in these movements think that they're not recognized enough in terms of the general public— the media and academia don't cover them and don't recognize their contributions. Their own movements recognize their contributions, but the wider public doesn't," said Shitrit. "So they wanted also to convey their message. And at the end of the process, I had so much access and great support by women who really supported what I was doing." "The question that I'm asking is how do women in very conservative religious movements— with very clear ideas about women and men's different public and private roles— how are they able to participate in forms of activism that seems to seem to transgress or go beyond what the movement say that they should do?" Shitrit said. "And why do we see variation? Why do we see that in some movements, women's activism really adhere to the very conservative ideology of their movement— and in other movements women totally transgress and participate in much more expansive forms of activism." "I'm hoping what would come out from the book would be that the people I worked with actually read the book— and maybe find that they have so much in common with women in these movements. Maybe this could be a kind of fresh step towards seeing the others as someone who has something in common with you."

"The IRGC's powers are often exaggerated.... but on the flipside of that, I think it's also often dismissed— where particularly from the U.S. perspective, they see the IRGC as a convenient foil. How do we how do we make the case against Iran? We use the IRGC and all of its nefarious activities as an excuse," Afshon Ostovar said. "You see this in Yemen in particular, where there's countless articles that come out that say the IRGC is not important in Yemen... This sort of thing I think is also missing the point" "It's hard to get them right, but it's easier to sort of exaggerate or minimize their influence." Ostovar is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. His recent book, Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards examines the rise of Iran’s most powerful armed force—the IRGC—and its role in power politics, regional conflicts, and political violence. "I see the IRGC as being much not just devoted to [Ali] Khamenei, but being devoted to the office of the supreme leader. The supreme leader itself is the centerpoint of the Islamic system of Iran...And I think that the symbolic importance of the supreme leader is something that that the IRGC doesn't want to doesn't want to do without," said Ostovar "A few years ago, particularly after 2009 when the IRGC was involved in the crackdown, and you had a lot of talk about their rise in power at that time. One of the discussions was, 'Well is is Iraq moving towards a dictatorship or are they just going to squeeze out the supreme leader?'" "One of the arguments that I make in my book is I don't think that they'll do that because I think I think the supreme leader is very much not just important to them symbolically, but he is tied into their identity. They are the servants of the supreme leader. They are literally the guardians of that Islamic system. They don't want to be the leaders of it. That doesn't mean that they don't want to have their way— they get their way more often than not— but they they survive when they don't get their way."

"I think the most important change [in Syria] was a stepping back by the United States," said Phillips. "You get a desire by all passing opportunities being seen by other emerging regional powers: notably, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in opposition to the rise of Iran. They all want to take advantage, or to push their own agendas more. as the U.S. seems to step back. Because they have a particular interest in Syria, Syria ends up pretty early on a battle ground for these regional rivalries. One thing that really struck me doing this research was going right back to the summer of 2011, after the Arab Spring begins to settle down a little bit— and Syria continues to escalate into conflict. Most of these regional actors are looking at Syria, not with Islam, but as an opportunity. And I would argue that they are on their own way pouring fuel onto the fire of the conflict, rather than to sort of try to deescalate. I think that's a major reason why you see a rush to arms answer." On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Chris Phillips about international politics in Syria. Phillips is a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London He is also an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. His most recent book is The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. "I don't think you'll see much change from the Saudis, rather than just trying to back the non-jihadist groups in a non-Muslim Brotherhood groups," said Phillips. "Turkey, on the other hand, you do see a full 180— and it's been quite recent. It's almost too late and sort of getting a little bit negligent on the threat posed by jihadists, even after ISIS capture Mosul. Turkey is very reluctant to join the United States coalition against ISIS— and only after it starts getting targeted at home by ISIS attacks does it begin to switch and turn on ISIS." "Now, most recently in 2016, it actually recognized that the threat coming from Syria— both jihadism and forms of Kurdish nationalism— as great and the threat to assets are only recently we've seen Turkey actively drop the policy of going after Assad. But that took five years, and arguably it was quite clear that this current policy wasn't working for about 2013 really." "The purely theoretical approach doesn't explain that you do need to look at those internal factors. I wouldn't sort of put my thoughts on looking at the system side of things," said Phillips. "I wouldn't lump myself so clearly in a sort of a 'hard systemic realist camp' because I think that actually the internal dynamics interact with those systems of system level."

Colin Kahl speaks with Marc Lynch about U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration. Kahl is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. On Iran, Kahl spoke about the strategy behind the JCPOA. "I can't think of an actual bonafide Iran expert on on planet Earth that believed that you were going to resolve this problem without giving the regime some face-saving way out on enrichment. And that was, I think, an inflection point in the decision of the Obama administration, which was ultimately not to drive the program to zero— not because we wouldn't prefer a world in which every nut and bolt of Natanz and Fordow enrichment facility was dismantled— but because that's a perfect world that perfect scenario was impossible to achieve. No matter how much pressure you were going to you were going to put on the regime." "We found that in the case of countries— like Israel, Saudi Arabia or others— they want us to do two things, ultimately that the president was unwilling to do because of his overall theory of the role of military force in the region. One was they very much wanted us to engage in regime change— especially as it related to Iran. At the end of the day, the Israelis and the Saudis will never will never tolerate an Iran that's a strong actor in the region as long as this regime is in power. At the end of the day, they were more concerned about the regime and its had hegemonic ambitions than its nuclear program— even though the Israelis continually dialed up the existential language on the nuclear program. They did not believe that the threat from Iran— whether its nuclear or anything else— could be settled with anything short of regime change. And so, that was their preference: to basically leave the sanctions in place until the regime in Tehran went out of existence. And if they crossed some mythical red line, smash them like we smashed Saddam. The president wasn't going to go in for that." "The second issue is the president was extraordinarily clear about: defending our allies from external aggression. Which is why we did so much to bolster their own capabilities— unprecedented amounts of military assistance to Israel, unprecedented steps to maintain their qualitative military edge— even as we were providing unprecedented degrees of security assistance to our partners in the Gulf, to Jordan, and otherwise. But what we weren't going to do is give them a blank check to drag us into conflicts that we believed didn't serve their interests. And certainly didn't serve our interests," Kahl said. " I think it all goes back to Obama's fundamental humility about what military forces can and can't accomplish." Kahl also addressed criticism of foreign policy during the Obama administration. "Probably no area of the Obama administration's foreign policies came under more criticism than the approach to Syria. And yet every proposal— whether it was arming the opposition, putting in place a no fly zone or safe zones, or standoff strikes, or even you name it— whatever big idea was was out there in think tank land or in the academic world. They were deliberated over and over and over again. And so it doesn't mean that policy makers always make the right decision. They're human beings. They have incomplete information. They make wrong decisions all the time. But they're a lot smarter than you think." "The last point I will make just briefly is that I also think academics probably don't appreciate the degree to which things that seem relatively banal— like process, budgets and whether human beings are getting enough sleep— actually affect the outcome of certain things. And those are just constraints— bureaucratic and human."

Drafting a Constitution: A Conversation with Asli Ü. Bâli (S. 5, Ep. 26) by Marc Lynch

On this week's podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Michael Farquhar about the history of the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, where more than 11,000 young men have studied religion in Saudi Arabia. "There were obviously suggestions and not always ill-founded suggestions that this had fed into the rise of a very morally conservative Salafi understanding of Islam in lots of context around the world, and that that in turn kind of fed into dynamics of sectarianism and intolerance and communal conflict, and perhaps even violence in some contexts," said Farquhar. "My feeling was that there was room for a lot more attention to some more theoretical questions. So, questions about what it really means in practice to kind of export a particular cultural framework like Wahhabism. To kind of pick it up and move it to another location, and what that really looks like in practice. And questions about how ideas -- religious ideas -- can perhaps transform as they cross borders, and can perhaps be put to new uses and new contexts." Michael Farquhar is a lecturer in Middle East politics at King's College London. His new book is from Stanford University Press and called Circuits of Faith: Migration, Education and the Wahhabi Mission.

“As it approaches year 40, the Islamic Republic of Iran is suffering from a deep crisis of legitimacy,” Nader Hashemi says on this week’s POMEPS Conversation podcast. “The biggest threat that I think the regime faces— from its own statements and policies— is really the threat that it fears, like other authoritarian regimes, from its own population and groups that want political change.” Hashemi is an associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

This semester, POMEPS hosted Marwan M. Kraidy to speak about his latest book, The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World. Kraidy is the Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture, and Founding Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. He is also an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Kraidy previously creativity and the Arab Uprisings in POMEPS Conversation #90.