Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Fred Halliday

Fred Halliday (1946-2010) was a long-time contributing editor of this magazine and a professor at the London School of Economics.

MER Article

The USSR and the Gulf War

In the seven years since the Iran-Iraq war began, Soviet policy toward the conflict has been quite constant. Moscow regards the war as “senseless” and has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire and return to the status quo ante, as outlined in the 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq.

Fred Halliday • 5 min read

MER Article

Al-Ghosaibi, Arabian Essays

Ghazi al-Ghosaibi, Arabian Essays (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982). If Dr. al-Ghosaibi was as competent a minister of industry as he is a judicious essayist, then Saudi Arabia may be somewhat more fortunate in its rulers than might otherwise appear. A poet and observer of international

Fred Halliday • 1 min read

MER Article

1967 and the Consequences of Catastrophe

The June 1967 war was immediately seen in the Arab world as an event of catastrophic proportions. It destroyed the credibility of radical Arab nationalism, strengthened the position of Israel in the region, and left Israel in control of large areas of Arab territory -- Sinai, the Golan Heights, Gaza

Fred Halliday • 4 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

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

Vercellin, Crime de Silence

Giorgio Vercellin, Crime de Silence et Crime de Tapage: Panorama des lectures sur l'Afghanistan contemporain (Naples: Institute Universitario Orientale, 1985). Giorgio Vercellin, of the University of Venice, has undertaken the unusual and difficult task of reviewing the mass of recent published

Fred Halliday • 1 min read

MER Article

Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985).

Fred Halliday • 1 min read

MER Article

Iran and the Reagan Doctrine

Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985). Warren Christopher et al, American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

Fred Halliday • 10 min read

MER Article

Catastrophe in South Yemen

How can social tensions be managed and policy differences resolved by ruling socialist parties in poverty-stricken Third World states? On January 13, 1986, this question defeated the Yemeni Socialist Party in a devastating spasm of civil war. Parallels can be drawn between the South Yemeni trauma an

Fred Halliday • 11 min read

MER Article

Baku's Shaikh-ul-Islam

Shaikh-ul-Islam Pashazada Allahshukur Hummatoglu is chairman of the Board of Management of Caucasian Muslims. Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux interviewed him in Baku in July 1984. How are Soviet Muslims organized? There are four separate Islamic religious bodies in the Soviet Union. Three of the

Maxine Molyneux, Fred Halliday • 3 min read

MER Article

Letter from Baku

Baku, the capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, lying on the west coast of the Caspian, embodies many suggestive contrasts with other areas of the Soviet Union and with the neighboring countries of Iran and Turkey. On the esplanade running along the seashore, restaurants sell kebabs, local pancakes (kutab)

Maxine Molyneux, Fred Halliday • 7 min read

MER Article

North Yemen Today

The streets of Sanaa, the North Yemeni capital, appear to condense some of the most divergent elements of Third World economic change and political upheaval. Perhaps nowhere else in the Middle East, or indeed elsewhere in the Third World, do the antinomies of combined and uneven development come so

Fred Halliday • 18 min read