MER Article Israel's Private Arms Network Arms and military goods have become Israel’s main export item, to the tune of well over $2 billion per year. [1] Israel has exported arms to more than 60 countries and an undetermined number of armed groups worldwide. A peculiar feature of Israel’s arms business is that up to one third of sales are Bishara Bahbah • 8 min read
MER Article Iran's New Grand Strategy The controversy over US-Iranian relations has implications as drastic for the government in Tehran as for that in Washington. The disputed character of the opening to Washington forced Majlis Speaker Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to go public about the talks in early November. Even Ayatollah Khomeini him Fred Halliday • 5 min read
MER Article The Search for Iran's "Moderates" Revelations about secret talks and arms deals between the United States and Iran have focused attention on the internal politics of the Islamic Republic. The Reagan administration justifies its policy as an 18-month effort to reach out to “moderate elements” in the Iranian government. Eric Hooglund • 7 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1987) The scheme began to unravel last October 7. In Managua, the sole survivor of a downed American C-123 cargo plane full of weapons for the contras told a crowded press conference, “My name is Eugene Hasenfus.” In Washington, businessman Roy Furmark called on his old friend William Casey at CIA directo The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (London: Al Saqi Books, 1984). Maalouf’s reconstruction of the Crusades (“Frankish invasions”) as seen by Arab historians and chroniclers is a fascinating and instructive narrative of that bitter conflict. He concludes his account with a reflective epilo Shiraz Dossa • 1 min read
MER Article Marr, The Modern History of Iraq Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985). Phebe Marr’s The Modern History of Iraq spans the period from the inception of the modern nation-state in 1920 to 1984. Marr has consulted, among others, the authoritative works in Arabic of the Iraqi chronicler ‘Abd al Abdul-Salaam Yousif • 2 min read
MER Article Said, A Bridge Through Time Laila Said, A Bridge Through Time: A Memoir (New York: Summit, 1985). Evelyne Accad • 2 min read
MER Article Images of Iran Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Learning and Power in Modern Iran (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985). Donne Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985). Haleh Afshar, editor, Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil (Albany, NY: SUNY Pres Fred Halliday • 10 min read
MER Article Political Violence Against Arab-Americans Abdeen Jabara, a lawyer, is a long-time Arab-American activist from Detroit. He recently became president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and is now working at their national office in Washington DC. Joe Stork interviewed him in September 1986 in Washington. Joe Stork • 8 min read
MER Article Libya's Revolution Revisited When the United States sent its warplanes to bomb Libya last spring, a first and then a second invasion of Western journalists descended upon the country. With the media in box seats, the scenario conjured up visions of the 1830 French invasion of Algiers, when well-heeled citizens of the Republic h Dirk Vandewalle • 19 min read
