The MERIP Podcast The MERIP Podcast Episode Three: Habib Battah This week on the MERIP Podcast we're featuring an interview with the Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, author of "Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy" which was published in Middle East Report Online in April 2024. Battah has recently returned to Lebanon for the first James Ryan • 1 min read
MER Article Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijani Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge, 1992). Moyara de Moraes Ruehsen • 3 min read
MER Article Halliday, From Kabul to Managua Fred Halliday, From Kabul to Managua: Soviet-American Relations in the 1980s (Pantheon, 1989). To give an account, in a mere 163 pages, of Soviet-American competition in the Third World is no mean feat. After all, this rivalry has lasted nearly half a century and its form has varied considerably. M Rajan Menon • 2 min read
Consequences of Perestroika Arab progressives tend to view the changes initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika as harmful to the cause of Arab national liberation. One leading pan-Arab statesman privately described the rapprochement between East and West as portending the disintegration of the Communist bloc and the total Mohamed Sid-Ahmed • 6 min read
MER Article Containment, Counterrevolution and Credibility Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). Gabriel Kolko has been a master guide of modern US history for countless students seeking to go beyond official versions and conformist interpretations. From The Triumph of Conserva irene gendzier • 7 min read
MER Article Turkey and US Strategy in the Age of Glasnost On May 20, 1989, a top-of-the-line Soviet MiG-29 fighter evaded pursuing Soviet interceptors and landed at Trabzon airport in northern Turkey. An apparent intelligence bonanza had literally landed in NATO’s lap. Though a regular exhibit at Western air shows and sold to India, Iraq, Yugoslavia and ot Ömer Karasapan • 22 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1989) As President-elect George Bush sits down to lunch with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in early December 1988 to discuss the modalities of Detente II, we wonder what the prospects are for any similar sort of US rapprochement with the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It took 16 years, from The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Nuclear Summits and the Middle East To what extent can agreements on nuclear disarmament between the superpowers contribute to the reduction of tensions in regional conflicts, particularly in the Middle East? Mohamed Sid-Ahmed • 3 min read
MER Article Reagan's Iran Despite its reputation for having inflexible ideological positions on all foreign policy issues, the Reagan administration actually came to office in January 1981 without a coherent policy for dealing with Iran. At first the new administration was content to let Iran fade from the spotlight of natio Eric Hooglund • 8 min read
MER Article Soviet Perceptions of Iraq From the Soviet point of view, Iraq under the Baath Party has been a troubling enigma, in terms of its place in the Third World generally and its political position in Middle East diplomacy. In the first respect, Iraq during the 1970s did not manage to consolidate itself as one of the USSR’s dependa Roderic Pitty • 19 min read
MER Article Moscow's Crisis Management In January 1986, a major crisis broke out within the leadership of the Yemeni Socialist Party, the ruling party in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. In two weeks of fighting many thousands of people lost their lives, and afterward between 30,000 and 70,000 fled to neighboring North Yemen. Fred Halliday • 16 min read
MER Article The Middle East and Soviet Military Strategy The Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean are of particular strategic concern to Moscow because of their proximity to the Soviet Union. In addition, the Soviets view the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century as akin to the Balkans at the turn of the century: they c Michael McGwire • 22 min read
