The Caravan

Talk of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been heating up in recent weeks, with American officials visiting Riyadh to hammer out the terms of an agreement and Saudi and Israeli leaders sounding optimistic. But how close to such a deal are we really? Joshua Teitelbaum, a professor of Middle East history at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and an expert on Saudi Arabia, offers his insights on the prospects of normalization. What are the Saudis looking to get out of such an agreement? Why is the United States being asked to provide the inducements? What are the obstacles that stand in the way of normalization and might they be too great to overcome in the near term? 

After the Islamic State seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2013-14, the United States led a yearslong effort to roll back the group’s gains. Journalist and author Michael Gordon has written four books on the wars in Iraq, and in his latest, Degrade and Destroy, he takes us inside the war on the Islamic State, detailing the key White House deliberations and military struggles that finally resulted, in 2019, in the liberation of all the territories occupied by the group. Why did the United States fully withdraw from Iraq in 2011 only to return in 2014? What was the strategy for “degrading and destroying” the Islamic State adopted by the Obama administration, and how did it evolve over time? What did the advent of the Trump administration mean for the war effort? How successful, ultimately, was Operation Inherent Resolve, and why was it called this?

The special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011 yielded a massive trove of documents never intended for publication, but in 2017 the CIA declassified them in their entirety. Nelly Lahoud, a scholar at New America, has written the first history of al-Qaeda based on a systematic reading of these documents, which lay bare the secrets of the group and serve to correct some existing narratives. How strong an organization was al-Qaeda in the decade after 9/11, and what were its objectives? How should we understand the relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran, and between al-Qaeda and the Taliban? How predictable was the rise of the Islamic State? What was life like in the Abbottabad compound? Dr. Lahoud answers these questions and more in this episode.

Big things are shaping up in the Middle East as the Biden administration appears to be rethinking its get-tough policy on Saudi Arabia, even as it continues to hold out hope for a revived nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, Russia looks poised to shut down a key humanitarian aid corridor in Syria, while the West may have a new opportunity for maintaining pressure on the regime of Bashar al-Asad. Joining us to discuss these developments and more is Joel Rayburn, a retired army colonel visiting fellow at Hoover who served in senior positions at the National Security Council and the State Department during the Trump administration.

In September 2015, Russia intervened militarily in Syria to save the regime of dictator Bashar al-Asad. President Obama predicted a “quagmire,” but that is not what followed. What is the nexus between the Russian intervention in Syria and the more recent Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine? What can the West learn from its failures in Syria that might apply to the case of Ukraine? Will Ukraine turn out to be the quagmire for Russia that Obama predicted for Syria? Anna Borshchevskaya, an expert on Russian policy in the Middle East and author of a new book on Russia’s war in Syria, discusses all this and more on this episode of the Caravan Podcast.

On February 3, President Biden announced the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the leader of the Islamic State, in a U.S. special forces raid on his hideout in northern Syria. The leader, better known as Hajji ‘Abdallah, had been the Islamic State’s so-called caliph since October 2019, following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Who was Hajji ‘Abdallah and how did he end up in a small town on the border with Turkey? How impactful will his loss be to the terrorist organization he headed? How great of a threat does the Islamic State continue to pose to the region? Aymenn al-Tamimi, a British expert on Islamic militant groups in Iraq and Syria, shares his unique perspective on these questions and more in this episode.

Journalist and author Steve Coll examines the debates and decisions in Washington, Kabul, and Doha preceding the collapse of the Afghan government and the return to power of the Taliban. In a recent article in the New Yorker, Steve and coauthor Adam Entous document a “dispiriting record of misjudgment, hubris, and delusion” that characterized the diplomatic efforts to end the war in Afghanistan. What went wrong? Why? And who is to blame?

Ambassador Martin Indyk, a former diplomat and senior government official, discusses his new book Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy. The book explores Kissinger’s diplomacy in the Middle East, focused as it was on achieving order and equilibrium in the context of the Cold War. Indyk argues that Kissinger’s order-based diplomacy and gradualist approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict hold lessons for American policymakers today.

Tom Tugendhat was elected to Parliament in 2015, after military service in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In August he delivered a widely reported speech critical of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, insisting on the need for long-term patience of the sort America has displayed with great success in South Korea. In this podcast discussion, Tugendhat expands on how democracies can mobilize public support for foreign policies, their structural advantage over authoritarian states: given the choice, everyone would choose democracy.  He discusses the impact of the dearth of consultation with allies prior to the Afghanistan exit on foreign policy thinking in Europe and beyond, from the United Kingdom and France to Taiwan and Japan. He also describes the potential for the Abraham Accords, and he expresses doubts regarding the likelihood of a return to the JCPOA ("the Iran Deal"), given the primacy of hard-liners in Tehran and the fragile political situation of the Biden administration, in the forefront of the upcoming midterm elections.

Alain Bifani has had an insider's view of Lebanese politics for decades as Director General of the Ministry of Finance. In this discussion he explores the origins of the current crisis in Lebanon in the historical corruption of the banking sector.  Entrenched interests, called "the cartel," have grown enormously rich at the expense of the impoverishment of the nation at large, especially the middle class. The very wealthy have been able to shelter assets overseas, some of which has been exposed by the Pandora Papers revelations. Bifani argues that little  can change until there is a change in the national leadership. The international community, in particular the United States, should respond by sanctioning corrupt actors, insisting on transparency in finances and governances, and making sure that any aid programs benefit the Lebanese people as a whole, not only the elite of the "bankocracy."