PHILADELPHIA – March 10, 2025 – The Spring 2025 issue of Middle East Quarterly arrives at a critical juncture, offering a series of incisive articles that illuminate some of the most urgent challenges unfolding across the region. From an experienced intelligence operative’s urgent call to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to a revealing analysis of Hamas’s propaganda tactics in the Gaza War, to a closer look at Egypt’s precarious economic footing and former President Biden’s shifting stance on Israel, this edition provides timely assessments of evolving Middle Eastern dynamics. Rounding out the issue are reviews of two important books, each dissecting the enduring influence of authoritarianism and jihadism on regional and global stability.
In “Time to Take the Iranian Nuclear Bull by the Horns,” Colin Winston argues that the moment has come for “decisive military action against Iran’s nuclear program, ideally through a coordinated and joint strike” involving U.S. and Israeli forces. Winston, a 30-year veteran of the CIA who subsequently served as head of research at AIPAC, contends that while Israel’s recent actions against Teheran have left the regime in an unprecedented, temporary situation of weakness, “Iran is on the verge of producing enough weapons-grade uranium to build several bombs—so close, in fact, that relying on a timely warning from U.S. or Israeli intelligence of Iran’s imminent ‘breakout’ may no longer be a reliable strategy.” This confluence of current regime vulnerability, combined with an apparent intensification of the pace of Iran’s nuclear activity, makes a military strike possible, necessary, and a matter of some urgency, in the author’s view.
In “Misinformation Strategy and Media Bias in the Gaza War,” Andrew Fox and Tania Glezer provide new statistics and evidence regarding Hamas’s very successful propaganda strategy in the Gaza War. They note that “these efforts emphasize civilian suffering while downplaying Hamas’s role as an active combatant, significantly influencing how the conflict is understood globally.” Fox, a former British Army officer, points out critical anomalies in Hamas’s reporting of casualties. He notes that “Israel has achieved one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in modern conflicts. Based on data from the IDF and Hamas, the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in Gaza stands at approximately 1.4-to-1. This is low compared to past conflicts. For instance, a 2009 study by Adam Roberts revealed that during the Bosnian War (1991–1995), the ratio was roughly 2-to-3, while in the Iraq War (beginning in 2003) estimates ranged from a 5-to-1 to a 3-to-1 ratio.”
In “The Gaza War and the ‘Egypt-Is-Too-Big-to-Fail-Argument,’” Egyptian economist Nael Shama contends that unless Egypt can extricate itself from its dependence on cash injections by its allies into its economy—and the belief that such injections will always come because of its vital strategic position— “Cairo will remain crisis-ridden, vulnerable to exogenous shocks, and heavily dependent on the purses of its Western and Gulf friends. Only by breaking the cycle of crisis, aid, deferred reform, entitlement, and more aid can Egypt become too big to fail (on its own) and big enough to rise and prosper.”
Finally, in “Biden’s Volte Face on Israel: How Decades of Support Turned into Criticism,” political analyst Daniel Samet looks into the trajectory of former President Joe Biden’s views on Israel. Samet notes that while Biden was associated with a clear pro-Israel position for most of his career, this began to change in later years. Samet attributes this to the changing climate of opinion on this issue in the Democratic Party. “Throughout his career, Biden adapted to the shifting political winds,” Samet suggests. The author attributes Biden’s position in the recent Gaza War, which combined material support for Israel with some sharp criticism and limitations, including the withholding of certain important weapons systems, to this tendency. Samet assesses that “Biden ultimately concluded that his own pro-Israel stance—perhaps as sincere as ever—had become a liability to his party’s political fortunes. Biden, like many older politicians before him, reckoned with changing times—and he changed with them.”
In book reviews, Eyal Zisser reviews journalist Con Coughlin’s Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny. Zisser finds that “Writing contemporary history presents a significant challenge: the writer may face plot twists that must fundamentally change his account. This is the fate that faced Coughlin and his 2023 book titled Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny.” Nonetheless, Zisser finds the book “well-written and fluent,” doing a “fine job of helping to understand the deeply incomprehensible story of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s iron-fisted ruler from 2000 until his overthrow in December 2024.”
Anna Stanley reviews The British Suicide: The U.K.'s Self-Inflicted Failure to Defeat Jihad for Two Decades. Stanley finds the book to be “a meticulously researched analysis of the U.K.'s ongoing battle against extremism and radical threats. The British Suicide reveals systemic failures in security, judicial, and social mechanisms that enabled radical ideologies to threaten British society.”
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