The Challenges of the Middle East
Understand the Arab Spring and how, together with its aftermath, it has changed American priorities and strategies.
Nothing in American foreign policy is more controversial than President Obama’s efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program. In April 2015, after a marathon negotiating session in Lausanne, Switzerland, the debate entered a new phase when the United States and its negotiating partners (the so-called P5+1) and Iran announced a breakthrough. The Obama administration and its supporters claim that the agreement will severely restrict the Iranian nuclear program for at least a decade. In their more optimistic moments, they go even further, arguing that the deal will lead to an historic reconciliation between the United States and the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, the framework’s detractors depict it as an abject capitulation that has weakened the United States and its regional allies.
Whether you side with the Obama administration or its critics, the deal is colored by your understanding of the Iranian threat. One school of thought argues that the Islamic Republic is essentially a defensive power whose days are numbered. In these, its twilight years, it can easily be contained. If the United States and its ally, Israel, will simply avoid rash military action, so the thinking goes, then they will certainly prevail over Iran in the long run. Alternatively, a second school of thought sees Iran as an offensive power. Harboring hegemonic regional ambitions hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon, Iran poses a serious danger to regional order, not to mention American primacy. Countries threatened by the Iranian nuclear program, so this school claims, will inevitably acquire their own arsenals. The Persian Gulf, which contains two-thirds of global oil reserves, will become the focal point of a multi-sided nuclear standoff.
After a brief survey of the historical background, this seminar will investigate the Iran debate in depth and will conclude, on the last day and a half, with a war game.
Images courtesy U.S. Department of State | Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs
Mike Doran on the Nuclear Deal with Iran
Faculty
Michael Doran
Michael Doran, an expert in U.S. policy toward the Middle East, radical Islam, and the Arab- Israeli conflict, is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He has also held a number of senior U.S. government posts related to Middle East policy and strategic communication.
Michael Doran
Michael Doran is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He specializes in Middle East security issues.
In the administration of President George W. Bush, Doran served in the White House as a senior director in the National Security Council, where he was responsible for helping to devise and coordinate United States strategies on a variety of Middle East issues, including Arab-Israeli relations and U.S. efforts to contain Iran and Syria. He also served in the Bush administration as a senior advisor in the State Department and a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon.
Before coming to Hudson, Doran was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has also held teaching positions at NYU, Princeton, and the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Pan-Arabism before Nasser, which analyzes the first Arab-Israeli war as an inter-Arab conflict, and Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East, about President Eisenhower and the Middle East. He appears frequently on television, and has published extensively in Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, Commentary, Mosaic Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Born in Kokomo, Indiana, Doran went to elementary school in Carmel, outside of Indianapolis, before his family moved to Fullerton, California, where he graduated from Sunny Hills High School. He received a B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton.
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Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
The 1953 Coup: An Historical Analogy
Readings:
- Michael Axworthy, A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind, Chs. 7-9, Epilogue
- James Risen, “Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran,” New York Times, April 16, 2000
- Daniel Yergin, The Prize, Ch. 23
Discussion Questions:
- Was the United States wise to topple Prime Minister Mosaddeq?
- What was the alternative?
- What is the proper role of the United States in the Persian Gulf?
- Discuss: “Toppling Mosaddeq caused more problems than it solved.”
The Dilemma Defined
Readings
- Eric S. Edelman, Andrew F. Krepinevich, and Evan Braden Montgomery, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2011
- Leslie H. Gelb, “Bomb Scare,” review of Unthinkable by Kenneth M. Pollack, The New York Times, September 5, 2013
- George Will, “Containing Iran is the Least Awful Choice,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2013
Discussion Questions:
- How would you distinguish the nature of the Iranian nuclear threat?
- What distinguishes a national interest from a vital national interest?
- Is Iran an implacable enemy of the United States?
- Evaluate: “There is no need for the United States to be inordinately concerned about the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Nuclear Deal and Regional Implications
Readings
- Fred Wehrey, et al, “An Altered Strategic Landscape: The Shifting Regional Balance of Power,” The Iraq Effect: The Middle East After the Iraq War, Ch. 2
- Michael Doran, “Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy,” Mosaic Magazine, February 2, 2015
- Max Boot and Michael Doran, “Remember the Carter Doctrine,” The Weekly Standard, April 9, 2015
- Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016
Discussion Questions:
- What is the purpose of Iran’s nuclear program?
- What was the best deal that the United States could have realistically expected to get from Iran?
- Discuss: “A bad deal is better than no deal.”
- Does Iran seek “regional hegemony”?
- Discuss: “Iran may not a perfect partner of the United States, but it is the least worst one.”
The ISIS Dilemma
Readings
- Charles Lister, “Profiling the Islamic State,” Brookings Institution, November 2014
- William McCants, “How ISIL Out-Terrorized Bin Laden,” Politico, August 19, 2015
- William McCants, “Inside the ISIS Blueprint for Winning,” The Daily Beast, September 29, 2015
- William McCants, “How the Islamic State Declared War on the World,” Foreign Policy, November 16, 2015
- Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure, Ch. 5
Discussion Questions:
- Describe ISIS’s strategy and goals.
- How is ISIS pursuing its goals, and how does that differ from the terrorism strategy employed by al-Qaeda?
- What role is Iran playing in the conflict with ISIS? Describe its strategy and goals.
- How does Iranian involvement in Iraq complicate the US response to the ISIS threat?
- How compatible are Iranian and American interests in the Middle East?
War Game
During the last hour of class on Thursday you will be presented with a scenario depicting the United States in a nuclear crisis with Iran. The class will divide into two groups—hawks and doves. Both groups will be called upon to defend their positions before the President in a model National Security Council meeting on Friday.
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