MER Article Turkey's Armaments Industries Turkish government officials project spending some $15 billion over the next 12 years to bring Turkey’s military forces up to NATO standards. This would make Turkey’s arms industry one of the major growth sectors over the next decade. Military industries now employ over 40,000 people directly. Once Ömer Karasapan • 16 min read
MER Article US Corporate Ownership of Israeli Military Industries US Corporation: AEL Industries, Inc. Israeli Corporation: Elisra Electronic Systems (formerly AEL Israel) Financial Relationship: AEL owns 58 percent of Elisra. Military Products: Electronic warfare systems; telephone switching equipment. In 1984 approximately 50 percent of sales were for export. Aw Sheila Ryan • 3 min read
MER Article US Military Contractors in Israel Over the past two decades, a combination of factors has significantly reoriented the Israeli economy toward military production -- weapons for Israel’s military and for export to juntas, minority regimes and dictators around the world. Israeli officials justify this development of military industri Sheila Ryan • 14 min read
MER Article Arms Industries of the Middle East Forty years ago, arms production in the Middle East was limited to a few small factories producing rifles and ammunition. Today, arms production has become a very big business in the region, with annual output worth more than $4 billion and rising. Of the 23 Third World countries with extensive mili Joe Stork • 12 min read
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
