Middle East & North Africa

This report, based on three prolonged trips to the Kingdom over the past year, the most recent in January 2019, will take a deep look at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who dominates every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, to try to answer what lies behind his Mona Lisa smile. It will also examine the Kingdom’s social progress, its economic stagnation and its growing political repression. Readers will have to evaluate for themselves whether the social progress he has offered Saudis in general—and women in particular—offset his autocratic tactics at home and abroad.

Host Aroop Mukharji interviews Dr. Tarek Masoud, the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, about the shifting political dynamics of the Middle East, the region's potential for democratization, and a triple snack of doughnuts, coffee, and Turkish delight.

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian recounts his 544 days in an Iranian prison during a talk with R. Nicholas Burns of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Trump administration claims of progress in talks with the Taliban have sparked fears even among the president's allies that his impatience with the war in Afghanistan will lead him to withdraw troops too soon, leaving the country at risk of returning to the same volatile condition that prompted the invasion in the first place.

Two years ago this week, President Trump signed an executive order banning travelers from a number of Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The fallout has been dire.

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

Today, the Yemeni people are suffering from the actions of outsiders. Regional powers have turned the country into an arena for proxy conflicts that have little to do with the actual interests of the Yemeni nation. Large parts of the country have been devastated, including much of its vital infrastructure. Millions are threatened by starvation and disease. The fighting has left tens of thousands of others dead or wounded.

So much for American justice. In a statement both stunning and coldhearted, President Trump on Tuesday gave Saudi Arabia a pass on the grisly murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the name of U.S. national security. He blithely rejected a U.S. intelligence assessment as well as damning physical evidence provided by Turkey indicating that the kingdom’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, authorized the Saudi dissident’s execution, in Istanbul, on October 2nd. The President of the United States sounded more like a defense attorney—or lobbyist—for the oil-rich kingdom than a protector of American values.

I’ve recorded a Q&A with Rami Khouri. Mainly, we talk about Saudi Arabia, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi (whom he knew), and U.S.-Saudi relations. How important is Saudi Arabia to the United States? What is the role of oil? What is the nature of the Saudi government today?

Inside Washington, foreign-policy experts hoping for a reset swiftly downgraded their expectations. And as the Khashoggi affair has played out, disappointment has morphed to cynicism within the diplomatic community.