Journal of International Studies

Left with a tattered economy after nearly three years of war, an effective economic recovery plan should be a cornerstone of Syria’s reconciliation. The Syrian conflict is destroying the economy and creating a long term economic crisis for Syria that will make a lasting peace in the future even more difficult. With the ongoing fighting, the economy’s downward trend persists and experts expect Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to decrease by a further 13.9 percent by year-end (it is already  down 14.4 percent in 2012 ). Furthermore, de-industrialization, debt, and geographic division worsen the outlook of Syria’s economy beyond the current conflict. Addressing the country’s economic crisis and presenting viable measures for an economic recovery should go hand in hand with the political reconciliation process. The country’s main economic drivers were hit particularly hard. Among those, Syria’s oil sector is at a standstill. The energy infrastructure has been severely damaged, wel...

Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism, striking Israel, U.S. Arab allies, and at times Americans. The twin blasts on Tuesday that destroyed the Iranian embassy in Lebanon and killed at least twenty people, however, should remind us that Iran faces a serious terrorism problem of its own. It is tempting to enjoy Iran getting a taste of its own medicine, but the growing violence risks further destabilizing the Middle East and harming U.S. interests there. A History of Violence Since the 1979 Islamic revolution,  Iran has backed an array of terrorist groups . These groups have fostered unrest in Iraq and the oil-rich Gulf Kingdoms, killed Iran’s enemies in Europe, and struck at enemies like Israel and the United States. Most infamously for Americans, Iran has backed the Lebanese Hizballah, providing it with hundreds of millions of dollars, sophisticated arms, and advanced training. Among its many operations, Hizballah in 1983 bombed the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks hos...

Sanctions, centrifuges and personalities aren’t the only forces pushing Iran and the U.S. toward a détente.

Moscow seeks to combine pragmatism with maximum leverage, at least until Iran achieves a détente with the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani at the SCO Summit this year. Image Credit: REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin To the surprise of many observers, it was France rather than Russia that played the lead role in opposing last weekend’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran. There should have been no surprise, at least in the case of Moscow. A close study of Russian policy shows that Moscow’s role in the Iranian drama is more complex and subtle than simply fanning tensions between Iran and the West. Russian officials have to balance a complex set of goals in their relations with Tehran: supporting nonproliferation, averting war or regime change, maintaining regional security, minimizing sanctions, enhancing Moscow’s diplomatic leverage, limiting U.S. influence in Eurasia, and advancing energy and economic cooperation....

The recent intensive negotiations in Geneva between Iran and P5+1—the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany—over Iran’s nuclear program did not result in an interim agreement. The negotiations are to be resumed in Geneva on November 20. One of the thorniest issues is Iran’s claim that, as a signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has, under Article IV of NPT, a fundamental right to accessing all aspects of nuclear technology for peaceful uses, including uranium enrichment on its soil. So far the United States has refused to explicitly recognize Iran’s right to uranium enrichment. In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 3, Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who leads the U.S. delegation in the Geneva negotiations, made the following  statement : it has always been the U.S. position that that article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment ...

Does Congress have the ability to scuttle a potential nuclear deal with Iran? White House Spokesman Jay Carney thinks so. During Tuesday’s press briefing, he declared  that, if Congress acts in such a way that a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue is “disallowed or ruled out”, it could create “a march to war.” Many Iran hawks have   taken issue  with Carney’s remarks, with John Bolton   saying that "Neville Chamberlain would be proud.” However, a common feature of these critiques is that they mischaracterize Carney’s argument, by asserting that Carney believes that the imposition of  any  new sanctions on Iran would derail negotiations and prompt a march to war. Elliot Abrams, for example,   wrote  that Carney “called any effort to adopt additional sanctions against Iran ‘a march to war.’” Carney did no such thing. Carney was not necessarily arguing against the imposition of any new sanctions; rather, he was taking issue with...

"The balances of power according to a bipolar system has ended,"  said Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs H. E. Ahmet Davutoğlu  at a Brookings event on Monday, "but still we are looking for new axes and new balances" which need to be "adjusted, especially in the UN system." In this statesman's forum address, hosted by the  Center on the United States and Europe , Foreign Minister Davutoğlu focused on how Turkey's foreign policy is evolving to meet challenges in the region and globally. He began with the UN and the humanitarian crisis in Syria: The international system, unfortunately, in charge of—the UN especially—in charge of keeping peace and stability in international order, is not providing quick answers to the questions and crisis which are the threats to the international system. He detailed the crisis: 130,000 people killed, 7 million displaced, 2 million refugees (700,000 of them in Turkey), chemical weapons used, and millions...