Roundtable on the U.S. and Middle East

Director: Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies
February 1, 2007 - Present

The United States is faced with an array of serious challenges in the Middle East, perhaps unprecedented in the past fifty years. An attempt to provoke a revolutionary change in the Middle East has collapsed with a large U.S. land army lodged in the heart of the region. The United States now confronts a Middle East that features an imploding Iraqi state, an aggressive Islamic Republic about to cross the nuclear threshold and a Palestinian state broken into two failed entities.

The Roundtable on the U.S. and Middle East will seek to develop strategies for the next administration. Should the United States attempt to recoup its position by pressing forward, albeit more prudently and with international cooperation, or should the United States go "back to the future," and place "stability over freedom," to use President Bush's phrase? Is it time to create an alliance with Sunnis to stave off the immediate threat of Iranian encroachment? What should the United States' grand strategy be in the Middle East? These and other questions will be the focus of monthly discussions.

Meetings

Roundtable Meeting

Nuclear Program and U.S. Policy

Speaker: Gary Samore, National Security Council
Presider: Ray Takeyh, Council on Foreign Relations
March 15, 2011
Roundtable Meeting

U.S.-Russia Cooperation in the Middle East after Georgia

Speaker: Nikolas Gvosdev, Professor, United States Naval College
Presider: Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
September 26, 2008
Roundtable Meeting

Confronting Global Terrorism

Presider: Steven Simon, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Speaker: Tom J. Farer, Dean, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
July 15, 2008

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