"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

"Jeffrey Karam is to be commended for writing such a richly researched and cogently reasoned article, one that invites invigorating reexamination, by historians and political scientists alike, of a pivotal moment in modern Middle Eastern history."

International Security Program Postdoctoral Fellow Jeffrey G. Karam reviewed America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State by Osamah F. Khalil.

Jeffrey G. Karam, a postdoctoral research fellow with the International Security Program, is the winner of the Christopher Andrew–Michael Handel Prize for the best article published in the journal Intelligence and National Security during 2017.

"Competition within confessional groups often explains why different leaders in Lebanon are willing to temporarily forego their differences and form alliances with political rivals. Hariri's recent resignation resembles a move in October 2004 by his slain father, Rafiq Hariri. Only months before his assassination, Rafiq Hariri resigned to distance himself from pro-Syrian candidates and signal his intent to form a broad and cross-sectarian alliance that would implement U.N. Resolution 1559, which among other things called for Syria to withdraw its armed forces from Lebanon."

Why were American officials caught by surprise with the military coup and later revolution in Iraq on 14 July 1958? Drawing on American intelligence and diplomatic records as well as multilingual sources, this article argues that the US intelligence failure is the product of two factors: the collection of information from too few and too similar human sources of intelligence in Iraq's ruling regime, and the unreceptivity of US officials to assessing new information and their unwillingness to update assessments of local Iraqi developments. It revisits America's intelligence failure in Iraq and suggests important lessons for the study of intelligence.