Fouad Ajami analyzes the struggle for influence along the Fertile Crescent—the stretch of land that runs from Iran’s border with Iraq to the Mediterranean—among three of the regional powers that have stepped into the vacuum left by the West: Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. He explains that, of the three powers competing for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran are in it for the long haul. Each of those powers has a sense of mission and constituencies that enable it to stick it out and pay the price for a sphere of influence. Ajami details each country’s prospects for supremacy and asserts that Iran must ultimately be reckoned to be the strongest.
Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and cochair of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. His most recent book is The Syrian Rebellion (Hoover Institution Press, 2012).
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The Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent, by Fouad Ajami (preview) by Hoover Institution
Fouad Ajami was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He was also the Majid Khadurri Professor of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, the School of Advanced International Studies.
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The Struggle for Mastery in the Fertile Crescent
In This Arab Time
The Syrian Rebellion
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