Middle East

Amir Taheri

Project Director

Since its inception in 1974, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy has developed a major program focused on the Middle East.  Three overlapping objectives can be discerned in corresponding phases of development:

(1) Between 1974 and the late 1980s, the National Committee’s emphasis was on strengthening likeminded Israel in the context of the Cold War and the U.S. struggle against the Soviet Union’s endeavors to strengthen its presence in the region and support radical clients in the oil-rich Middle East.

(2) The second phase, which lasted until 2006, focused on understanding the challenges that the U.S. foreign policy establishment faced from the rulers of the Muslim world in general and the wider Arab-Muslim Middle East in particular, who possessed a radically different mindset from peoples living in liberal democracies.

(3) As a result of Iran’s endeavors to become the region’s hegemon, combined with the possibility of its developing nuclear weapons and growing into a nuclear proliferator, the NCAFP is now considering “Iran’s Nuclear Threat and Beyond” and the power-political implications of the region’s search for a new balance of power.

Through its plethora of publications, conferences, policy briefings, and interviews, the NCAFP continues to influence policy in a material way by contributing to foreign policy debates on the issues described above.