MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2010) Allin, Dana H. and Steven Simon. The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumors of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Alterman, Jon and Michael Dziuban. Clear Gold: Water as a Strategic Resource in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 20 The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Rosen, Aftermath Nir Rosen, Aftermath (Nation Books, 2010). In addition to numberless tales of human misery, the post-September 11 US wars in the greater Middle East have produced a veritable library of war reporter’s books. Most of them are formulaic and eminently forgettable, but a few are valuable chronicles tha Chris Toensing • 6 min read
MER Article Visser, A Responsible End? Reidar Visser, A Responsible End? The United States and the Iraqi Transition, 2005-2010 (Just World Books, 2010). There are few keener students of contemporary Iraqi affairs than Reidar Visser. Since the spring of 2006, when he released a lengthy paper on the politics of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Viss Chris Toensing • 4 min read
MER Article Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse Hanan Kholoussy, For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis That Made Modern Egypt (Stanford, 2010). Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 4 min read
MER Article Why India and Israel Were Not Friends, 1948-1991 P. R. Kumaraswamy, India’s Israel Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Vijay Prashad • 4 min read
MER Article Guilty Bystanders The Iran-Iraq war was fought entirely within the boundaries of the two combatant nations, but it was nonetheless a regional war. The war machine of Saddam Hussein’s regime was lubricated with billions of dollars in loans from the Arab oil monarchies, which were anxious to see the revolutionary state Pete Moore • 15 min read
MER Article Bending History A watchword of the Baathist regime during Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran was the “spirit of victory.” Preserving this “spirit” (ruh al-nasr) was a major task of the regime’s efficient propaganda machine throughout the fighting. As soon as war broke out in September 1980, the cultural sphere was Sinan Antoon • 8 min read
MER Article The Imam's Blue Boxes A fashionable description of the Islamic Republic of Iran is “garrison state,” a concept that originated in the West in the early 1940s. In a garrison state, the ruling elite is mainly composed of “specialists in violence,” and military bureaucrats dominate the social and civil spheres. In Iran’s ca Kevan Harris • 4 min read
MER Article A War on Multiple Fronts Lasting from 1980 to 1988, the war between Iran and Iraq was the longest inter-state war of the twentieth century. Yet standard narratives of the war, or of Iranian and Iraqi political history, for that matter, barely discuss the war’s legacy for the structure of the two states in question or the wa Arang Keshavarzian, Nida Alahmad • 29 min read
MER Article Deep Traumas, Fresh Ambitions The seeds of future war are sown even as parties fight and, depleted or on the verge of defeat, sue for peace. The outcome is rarely stable and may be barely tolerable to one side or the other. This rule holds true for the two belligerents no less than for their respective sponsors, keen to protect Joost Hiltermann • 19 min read
MER Article Western Sahara's 48 Hours of Rage The first videos posted to YouTube showed a sea of makeshift tents at a desert locale called Gdim Izik, surrounded by scores of men in full riot gear silhouetted in the early morning light. Then came footage of chaos and screams of panic: cars honking, tents on fire, people running, Jacob Mundy • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Winter 2010) Is it happenstance or harmonic convergence that the first reports on the Wikileaks cache of State Department cables hit the newsstands alongside stories about the fresh political salience of “American exceptionalism”? Something about the content of the diplomatic missives and, more to the point, the The Editors • 13 min read
