The Cairo Review – A Reading on the Future of Hamas

There will come a time in Gaza when the guns fall silent, when the people left alive attempt to pick up the pieces, and when, most likely, some incarnation of Hamas will reach an agreement with the government of Israel about the immediate future of the strip, the people in it, and the adversarial organizations that have dominated life in Gaza for decades. Omar Shaban, CIP’s inaugural Leahy Fellow for Human Rights and Security, published a thoughtful meditation on the future of Hamas at Cairo Review, starting from the recent death of Yahya Sinwar, and the growing role of Hamas’ five-person council directing the organization from outside of Gaza.

Writes Shaban:

For the civilian population in Gaza, the first and foremost issue is immediately ending the genocidal war against them by the Israeli military. When it comes to post-war governance and administration of the Strip, Palestinians in Gaza will support whichever entity actively contributes to stopping the war and working toward reconstruction and rehabilitation in all respects—societal, economic, psychological, and political. Given the above, Hamas’ ability to provide for the needs of the Palestinians is in question.

But does this mean removing Hamas entirely from the political map in Palestine and the region? The most pragmatic answer is, no. Hamas is a resistance movement with an Islamic ideology that is deeply woven into the Palestinian popular fabric and has become an ideological mainstay in the Palestinian lexicon.

Shaban further outlines an argument that Hamas as an entity will still exist, or at least in enough of a form to make a major decision about the shape and structure of the group after the present war. The three options are, in summary: lay down arms in exchange for becoming a purely civilian government of Gaza, reconcile with other Palestinian parties and play a diminished role in a national consensus government, or step aside from direct government of Gaza and instead let a technocratic entity rule while maintaining Hamas independence as an organization.

To understand the possible shape of a coming peace, read Omar Shaban in The Cairo Review.

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The Danger of Viewing Iran as Enemy Number One

Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy

In a recent “60 Minutes Overtime” interview, Vice President Kamala Harris called Iran the United States’ “greatest adversary.” Her comments, no doubt influenced by the toxic political climate and the ongoing conflict between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah, were likely shaped by the recent Iranian missile attack on Israel. While Harris may have been responding to the immediate crisis, her statement invites a deeper examination of U.S. policy toward Iran. It underscores the urgent need for a more forward-thinking approach—one that draws on lessons from past mistakes and focuses on resolving the real, yet peacefully addressable, challenges Iran presents in the Middle East while safeguarding U.S. interests.

In approaching Iran and the broader Middle East tinderbox, Harris has the advantage of relying on her experienced national security advisor, Phil Gordon. Gordon has long focused on the region and helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This agreement successfully blocked Iran’s pathways to developing a nuclear bomb through diplomacy, offering a rare example of de-escalation since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the ensuing U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Unfortunately, the diplomatic success of the JCPOA was short-lived. The agreement was implemented in January 2016, but that same year, Donald Trump was elected President after campaigning on a promise to dismantle it. True to his word, he withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. As a result, Iran never saw meaningful economic benefits from the JCPOA, and tensions began to escalate rapidly.

No Great Powers, No Great Satans

Since Trump set the U.S. on this confrontational path, we’ve seen a dangerous cycle of escalations between Iran, the U.S., and Israel, with each action met by a counteraction, driving the region deeper into instability. This tit-for-tat dynamic has steadily intensified tensions, leading to the precarious situation we now face, where the threat of all-out war looms larger than ever.

As Gordon warned in a 2018 article criticizing Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, “It starts with exiting the nuclear deal without a plan, and it could end with a messy, violent, and unnecessary conflict.” He echoed this concern in a May 2019 piece, noting, “Predictably, Iran has responded not by caving to U.S. demands (let alone collapsing) but with a pressure campaign of its own.” Gordon also explored the dangers of U.S. interventions in his 2020 book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, which highlights the self-defeating nature of America’s regime change interventions abroad.

Gordon’s work underscores that while Iran does present challenges to U.S. interests, framing it as America’s greatest adversary ignores broader strategic realities and risks exacerbating the very tensions a Harris administration would aim to reduce. Reflexive hostility toward Iran has often blinded Washington to the high costs of such an approach. The notion of Iran being the U.S.’s “greatest adversary”—ahead of powers like China, Russia, or existential threats like climate change—threatens to perpetuate this cycle, driving the U.S. further down a path of conflict that undermines both its national security and stability in the Middle East and beyond.

A Moment for Military Realism

It’s important to recognize that Iran is far weaker in terms of conventional military strength than the U.S. and its key regional allies, Israel and the Arab Gulf states. Iran’s military spending and capabilities are dwarfed by these powers. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies outspend Iran on defense by more than 50 to 1. Iran’s military is largely made up of outdated equipment, and its air force and navy are no match for the advanced capabilities of Israel or the U.S. Furthermore, with a population only a quarter the size of the U.S. and an economy just 2% of America’s, Iran simply lacks the resources to be a meaningful strategic competitor to the United States.

Yet Washington’s fixation on Iran has led to exaggerated threat assessments. Trump’s hyperfocus on Iran was especially driven by “political incentives and intensified lobbying by Israel and Saudi Arabia,” according to Daniel Benjamin, former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, and Steven Simon, who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Benjamin and Simon emphasized that this hostility comes at a high cost for the U.S., increasing the risk of armed conflict, alienating allies, and undermining regional stability. According to them, the U.S. has a compelling interest in finding a “modus vivendi” with Iran, much like it did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, by creating incentives for Iranian cooperation. Writing in 2019, they urged the “next administration to, at long last, give sustained engagement a try.”

Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s early signals to Tehran only deepened mistrust. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with other officials like Avril Haines and Jen Psaki, insisted that Iran fully comply with the JCPOA before the U.S. would return to its sanctions relief obligations under the deal, while also demanding additional concessions on regional issues and Iran’s missile program. This approach reinforced Tehran’s perception that the U.S. remained an unreliable partner, further undermining the chances for renewed diplomacy.

Unreliable Partners Make Bad Negotiators

For decades, Iran has experienced disappointment in negotiations with the U.S., with former President Hassan Rouhani’s JCPOA arguably the most egregious example of a moderate Iranian leader undermined by U.S. backtracking. The subsequent years would bear out that the Biden administration’s early belief that Trump’s “maximum pressure” provided leverage was a major miscalculation, missing the opportunity to revive the JCPOA under Rouhani’s government and instead pushing for unrealistic concessions.

By the time nuclear talks resumed in April 2021, Israel sabotaged negotiations with an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, prompting Tehran to increase uranium enrichment to 60%. Iran, wary of U.S. intentions, demanded guarantees of sanctions relief before agreeing to scale back its nuclear program. By June 2021, with the hardline government taking power in Iran, trust further eroded, leading to 15 months of stalled negotiations, with Tehran’s skepticism of U.S. commitment at the heart of the impasse.

However, the situation has since shifted dramatically again, offering a new opening for diplomacy. Kamala Harris, if elected, will have a significant opportunity to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. The death of conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last April triggered a major shift in Iranian politics, culminating in the election of Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and former parliamentarian, as Iran’s first reformist president since 2005. Pezeshkian ran on a platform emphasizing diplomacy emphasizing diplomacy to resolve Iran’s foreign tensions and has consistently advocated for the revival of a nuclear agreement to lift sanctions. In a notable move, he reinstated much of Iran’s original nuclear negotiating team, including former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif as Vice President for Strategic Affairs.

Pezeshkian’s outreach faced an immediate test when, on the day of his inauguration, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. Despite expectations of swift retaliation, Iran showed restraint for two months, allowing Pezeshkian to attend the UN General Assembly, where he emphasized Iran’s desire for de-escalation and called for the U.S. to seize the opportunity for broader diplomacy. However, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the lack of progress on a Israel-Hamas ceasefire led Iran to launch a large missile attack on Israel.

Re-Engaging With Iran During The Lame Duck

If Kamala Harris wins the presidency, the lame-duck period and her remaining tenure as vice president will be crucial for setting the stage for broader diplomatic de-escalation with Iran. During this transition, Harris should work with the Biden team to prioritize immediately reducing tensions. A key step would be restoring the informal de-escalatory informal de-escalatory agreement reached in August 2023, which saw Iran freeze its nuclear program’s expansion, release dual-national American prisoners, and restrain its regional allies from attacking U.S. interests in exchange for access to frozen Iranian funds in South Korean banks, which were transferred to Qatar for humanitarian purchases.

This agreement was pivotal because it sought to cap Iran’s nuclear progress, particularly its accumulation of 60% enriched uranium, while also connecting nuclear restrictions to regional security concerns for the first time. Although the deal unraveled after the October 7 Hamas attack, it provides a blueprint for Harris and the Biden team to revive. By offering Iran access to the funds still frozen in Qatar, in exchange for halting its nuclear expansion and committing to regional de-escalation, Harris can lay the foundation for broader diplomacy. Crucially, this should be linked to securing a Gaza ceasefire, which would help reduce tensions in Lebanon and Yemen as well.

Establishing this groundwork would position Harris to engage in serious negotiations with Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, early in her presidency. A new nuclear deal, built on the JCPOA framework, could eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear weaponization and stand as a major foreign policy achievement for her administration.

Now, the U.S. and Iran stand at a critical crossroads. The stakes have never been higher, with the specter of total war in the Middle East—along with its far-reaching ramifications, particularly for the global economy—looming large. In this moment, Harris must send the right signals to steer the situation back from the brink. If elected, she must learn from past U.S. failures with Iran, revitalize a diplomatic approach grounded in mutual compromise, and focus on securing core U.S. security interests in dealing with a middling power like Iran.

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Q&A: Will New Taxes & Restrictions Stifle Cuban Businesses?

This week, as Cuba implements new laws and regulations that impose new taxes, restrictions and requirements on the private sector, CIP senior non-resident fellow María José Espinosa Carillo offers her analysis of their implications on businesses in Cuba and for the country’s economy. In a Q&A with Latin America Advisor (a daily publication of The Dialogue), she explains:

“The stated aim of the new regulations is increased order over the private sector in Cuba, but they risk undermining private-sector growth—a necessary component of the country’s economic future. The mixed nature of the reforms—some offering protection for workers while others curtail entrepreneurial freedom—signals the Cuban government’s ongoing reluctance to fully embrace private enterprise as a driver of the country’s growth. Shifting regulations create uncertainty and distrust among entrepreneurs and potential investors, hindering investment and economic progress. The Cuban people are suffering an unprecedented multidimensional crisis. Over a million people have migrated since 2022, creating a massive brain drain–the effects of which we will see for decades to come.

Meanwhile, civil society organizations, entrepreneurs and community leaders are at the forefront of promoting community initiatives that generate employment and create social benefits such as social services for elderly and vulnerable populations. With an entrepreneurial solidarity spirit, they are building partnerships among themselves, as well as with state institutions, when possible.

We hope to see a more coherent regulatory framework that balances inequality stopgaps with the need for non-state sector growth and innovation. Increasing transparency, reducing barriers and fostering partnerships between state and non-state actors would help build confidence and stimulate investment, which the country so desperately needs. Further, the state must recognize the non-state sector and other civil society groups as legitimate actors. The government should send a clear message of support and encouragement to young entrepreneurs, who are currently looking anywhere but the island to build their futures. Lobbing confusing laws and repeatedly shifting regulations is no way to empower them.”

Read the original article here.

Politics, Primacy, and the Crisis of US Foreign Policy

Editor’s Note: On September 17, Van Jackson participated in a talk organized by the New Zealand Fabian Society to discuss how the US presidential campaign pitting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz against Donald Trump and JD Vance represents competing claims to America’s political character that have clear implications for how America relates to the world. These are his remarks, which can also be viewed here.

Everybody wonders how changes in American politics might impact the prospect of World War III, America’s role in the world, the changing logic of trade, financial flows, and industrial policy. Basically, what’s the connection between American politics and the emerging world order such as it is? 

In answer of that question, I want make three points, which I’ll then situate in the context of the US presidential election.

The first point is that America’s current approach to Asia is closer to a primacist grand strategy than to any alternative strategy—and that’s a big deal because the requirements of primacy and the requirements of sustaining peace in this region are incompatible.   

The second point is that it’s not useful and is in fact dangerous to think of great-power competition as a struggle for hegemony or domination—that’s not what’s happening. 

And three, what’s actually happening is an ethnonationalist competition within capitalism. 

And these three points about how we should understand the world situation owe something to American politics. 

Kamala Harris, for her part, has not proposed a different way of seeing China or relating to the world—she’s a bit of a blank slate on foreign policy but she’s also (as far as we’ve seen) a primacist and American exceptionalist. Trump and the MAGA movement are effectively far-right accelerationists on China and are still primacists on foreign policy generally, but they talk about it more nakedly and have different priorities for how to exercise primacy. 

Primacy or Peace

So on the first point—the ongoing American bid to sustain regional primacy is at odds with regional stability. Primacy is a strategy that seeks security in a predatory way—it tries to preserve and prolong an extreme imbalance of power, and it’s single-minded about the threat from so-called great powers.  

And this is a source of regional instability because of how it encourages others—like China—to react. One of the closest things we have to an iron law in international relations (we have no iron laws, for what it’s worth) is the observation that states tend to balance against the strongest power in the system. US strategy tries to defy that historical observation.  

Now, Washington policy elites prefer not to talk openly about primacy—they say “liberal hegemony,” “favorable balance of power,” or “rules-based order.” But I was once a strategist in the Obama administration.  

By definition, in America’s own declassified strategy documents under Trump, under Biden, and actually going back to George HW Bush—and these are all publicly available now—the US seeks preeminence in military, economic, and political life. That comes closer to a grand strategy that scholars call primacy than it does any other kind of strategy.  

And because primacy is structural domination as an end and means of policy, it’s the most perverse way imaginable of trying to uphold peace or stability.  

Peace requires regional cohesion, a level of interdependence and mutuality, and above all it requires military restraint. A child would understand that.  

And yet primacy right now requires the opposite of all that—regional fracture and bloc politics, techno-containment and economic decoupling, it requires military superiority, which in turn requires arms-racing.  This is context within which AUKUS becomes a thing.

Primacy is a zero-sum way of relating to the world that requires keeping others down.  And in our current fallen world, primacy necessarily comes at the expense of peace.  

And for those of us who take our image of America from the long unipolar moment—the late ‘80s through maybe the Obama years—this is hard to come to terms with because we’ve taken for granted that American primacy is always in the background and not especially onerous or dangerous.  

There’s a way in which it’s all we’ve ever known—we have naturalized living with an extreme imbalance of power that history tells us cannot last forever.  

And so we should start by acknowledging that whether a strategy is good depends on context.  What primacy causes the US to do depends on the circumstances.  

At the end of the Cold War, the circumstances were that we inherited this extremely lopsided imbalance of power.  Primacy was the default that said “We’ll just preserve what we inherited and build a world order around it.” In that context, primacy was not especially costly for the US, and it was not especially risky at the level of global stability because America didn’t have anyone who was capable of challenging it.  

But times change. Technology changes. Distributions of power shift. Political economy has shifted (I’ll talk about that in a minute). And Asia has radically changed since the ‘80s—so much so that now Washington doesn’t even want to call it Asia anymore! They want to call it Indo-Pacific!

What I’m saying is that it was easy to believe that primacy was a global public good when Uncle Sugar had all the power and there were not even imagined alternatives. But that’s not the world we live in now. 

With the exception of Australia and a few right-wing governments, every smaller power in Asia and the Pacific is actively trying to avoid a new Cold War, avoid this thing we call “great-power competition” as much as possible. They’re resisting rivalry and bloc politics in different ways and we can talk about that in Q&A.

But the point is just that a power imbalance favoring America matters because there’s a way in which America’s insistence on primacy is now everybody’s problem—not only because it worsens the many problems that we see when we look at China. But also because it narrows the space of possibility for smaller nations to look after their own interests. 

Rivalry Doesn’t Mean Struggle for Hegemony

So America’s doing primacy, primacy is antithetical to peace.

The second point I wanted to make is that it’s wrong to think of Sino-US rivalry as a struggle for hegemony or domination. But the US is approaching rivalry precisely that way—it’s approaching rivalry as if it’s a struggle for domination. But it shouldn’t be, it’s far from clear that China is seeking the kind of domination that we fear, and China lacks the power to dominate even if it did want to.   

The reason policymakers in Washington think the primacy toolkit (of containment and arms-racing and tariffs) is so essential is because they have this view that America writes rules or China writes the rules. Obama used to say that all the time and we just read it innocently in that moment, but it hits differently now. And this is why policy needs an analysis underneath it, not just vibes. 

China’s material power comes from the privileged position it occupies within the capitalist world-system. China cannot airbrush out the United States without undercutting its own power because the Core of our world system is the US. And even in relative decline, the US still has unique advantages. It’s the first among unequals in a more multipolar world.

So imagining that China could take over the world or displace the US is to imagine China defying the realities of how power is structured.  

But think about it. China’s ability to economically coerce others, its ability to pour resources into the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), its ability to finance infrastructure development in other countries—all of this is dependent on it occupying a particular position in Asian political economy and global production networks. To some extent it even depends on continuing access to the US market.

So because the world-system is structured in this highly networked way, there’s a way in which China’s fate is Asia’s fate, and Asia’s fate is America’s fate. Pretending otherwise is dangerous but it’s also kind of wooly-headed.

So I’m not saying that America doesn’t have conflicts of interest with China—it does. But primacy makes those conflicts worse. It only makes sense if you assume world order has to be run by a single great power and it’s either us or them. And that’s just not true. That’s actually what neofascists like Steve Bannon have been trying to make a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

So if we’re clear-eyed, we should see that China is a problem that holds up a mirror to the problems in our own nations. But it’s also a problem within a world-system that favors America—China’s not some free-floating bad guy who stands outside of world order threatening civilization as we know it.  

China is embedded in global order with us and there’s very good research showing that its ruling regime is satisfied with most aspects of the world as it’s currently structured. 

And I don’t want blow anyone’s mind here, but there are growing signs that both China and the US are in relative decline—and we don’t have a convenient narrative for that alternative future, but it sure as hell isn’t “American hegemony or Chinese hegemony.” 

And even if Sino-US rivalry was about who rules or who dominates, the only sane response to that would be to denaturalize it—take it apart, challenge the premise.  Because a story about great powers battling for domination is a story that won’t end well for most of us.  

Ethnonationalist Competition Within Capitalism

So primacy is antithetical to peace, and China can’t take over the world.  

The third point I wanted to make is that rivalry between the US and China should be understood as an ethnonationalist competition within capitalism.  

So up until the 1970s, advanced economies used to be producerist, manufacturing economies. That became less profitable as manufacturing became more competitive. And as profits fell, investment capital in advanced economies looked for profits through services more than production.  

The era we now call neoliberal globalization has been an era of financialization and de-industrialization in the West. And during my lifetime, manufacturing was never a sign of an advanced economy—because manufacturing was an activity that had shifted from rich countries to the global South in the search for new markets and cheaper labor. And China was a major beneficiary of that process, which is how it became the world’s factory.  

I think most people know that much.  But less obvious is that what we’ve seen over the past half century is that financialization of the economy—neoliberal globalization itself—has had diminishing returns and is unacceptably volatile…especially since 2008.  

We keep ending up in these cycles where investment capital floods into a sector, creates a speculative bubble, and then too much capital chasing too little profit leads to overproduction. Overproduction drops prices, drops profits, and that creates a fiscal crisis.  

So neoliberal globalization is now facing its own crisis of capital accumulation—and we see evidence of that crisis in economic stagnation. Global growth has slowed, and in many places it’s stopped altogether. So the previous economic order isn’t delivering the goods like it used to, but recurring crises also call the order into question politically.  

And you might be wondering, what the hell does all that have to do with foreign policy or World War III. Well, the US, China, and rich nations that can afford it have decided that the answer to an era of low growth is zero-sum economic nationalism. The tide doesn’t lift all boats if the tide isn’t rising.  

So now the US and China have turned to using the power of the state to secure a competitive advantage in strategic sectors of the economy. In fact, China was doing this first and the US decided to emulate China.  

One long-term problem with this is that we’re already overproducing relative to demand in the so-called strategic sectors of the world economy. And looking out five to ten years, we’re actively building toward yet another fiscal crisis, but this time in these strategic sectors—semiconductors, AI, green tech, and military hardware.

But that’s long-term. The more immediate problem is that in order to do state-driven political economy, you end up having to exploit nationalism—use state power to build national power, strengthen yourself and weaken your competitors. But nationalism is a dangerous force. It’s prone to a politics of reaction—it’s inherently exclusionary, it often assumes scarcity, and it becomes a justification for violence. And in the US and China in particular, it’s ethnically charged—it’s ethnonationalism.

In both countries, nationalism has an exceptionalist quality—they both talk and act as if they’re special…as if their behavior is exempt from the rules that everyone else plays by. And when powerful nations do that, it leaves the rest of us in a world where the great powers are competing for a greater share of global growth while that same growth is declining in relative terms. And that relative decline of growth intensifies what starts to look like an inter-imperial competition.   

So great-power exceptionalism is not new but it could co-exist in a high-growth world—it wasn’t a source of WWIII in a high-growth world. We’re not in that world anymore. So what we’re left with is militarism and economic nationalism. And who benefits from that? Not lovers of peace. Not lovers of democracy. And definitely not workers, ironically, given the promises attached to slogans of a foreign policy “for the middle class.”

And a lot of America’s insistence on primacy is a fear that it’ll be excluded from Asia, recognizing that Asia is the future of the global economy. And American elites are convinced that primacy is the only way to ensure their access to Asia.  

This is wrongheaded. Policymakers are thinking about China and America’s role in the world in a fundamentally incorrect way that’s super dangerous but that also justifies some pretty evil behavior. To take just one of many examples, American primacy in the Pacific is built on the back of not just a US sphere of influence there but also sustaining actual formal colonies in the year of our lord 2024. 

But the rest of us don’t have to accept that—we should be able to see clearly that what’s happening is an elite-driven ethnonationalist competition within capitalism. Primacy makes it worse. No great power is gonna save us. And to get at the root of the problem will not involve bombs and bullets—it will involve 1) changing how the great powers relate to each other, and 2) fixing some of the pathologies of our global economic order.  

China and the US Election

But the reason all this matters in the context of the 2024 presidential election is both that US politics has fueled this monster of a situation, but it’s also constrained by it in ways that are not good.  

So Kamala Harris doesn’t bring much foreign policy experience to the table. In 2020, she ran as a progressive, but that was a very popular thing to do in 2020, and she ran as a very mainstream progressive that was trying to look tough on security and appeal to Wall Street’s interests.  

Take that as you will, but she’s not known for taking big risks, doesn’t have a record of challenging the prevailing conventional wisdom. And so personnel is always policy, as they say, but this is likely to be especially the case in a Harris presidency; to a large extent, we should expect that she’ll take her cues from her personnel and the Democratic Party.  

It matters, then, that 99% of the foreign policy staff surrounding her are all from the Biden administration—and they’re a cadre who explicitly believes in American exceptionalism and a strategy of primacy.  

So even though Kamala hasn’t carved out explicit positions on most issues, she’s hawk-leaning/hawk-adjacent on everything so far. She talks about Gaza better than Biden, but she has explicitly said she’s going to keep flowing arms to Israel. She’s explicitly endorsed military superiority, so the trillion-dollar defense budget is going to continue. She supports Bidenomics, which is economic nationalism as part of a strategy to rebuild the middle class on the back of rivalry with China—which, we can talk about this, but that won’t succeed because it’s full of contradictions.   

In her entire foreign policy world, which is dozens of people, there’s only two to three people that you could consider remotely progressive. Tim Walz, on the other hand, her VP, is pretty progressive and does have a more relational view of China—he has a track record opposing this whole Cold War situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.  

So the best hopes for stability in a Kamala presidency depends a bit on whether she makes unconventional staff picks, and to some extent on her Vice President. And that’s unpromising, because vice presidents tend to be pretty ceremonial.  

And yet, as much as Democratic Party thinking about foreign policy is in flux and unpromising, the right-wing, Trumpist version of all of this is not a slow-burn crisis; it’s an urgent crisis.  

MAGA and Trump have laid out all kinds of markers indicating they’re going to be much more confrontational with China even though the Biden admin itself has been more hawkish on China than even the previous Trump administration had been. MAGA has promised to outspend Biden on defense. They have pretty insane and vocal views about nuclear arms-racing.  Republicans see Palestinians the same way Zionists do in Israel—which is mostly as a threat.

There’s a meme out there that MAGA and Trump are isolationists…And that could not be farther from the truth. They’re unilateralists, they’re militarists, they take a ‘clash of civilizations’ view of the world—which is pretty explicitly racialized.  But they’re not isolationist.

And so you could almost understand the Democrat-Republican divide on foreign policy being basically about Democrats wanting to preserve and expand an empire that has cosmopolitan qualities but is an empire all the same…versus Republicans wanting the benefits of a global empire without any of the obligations of maintenance that come with it.  

And so the MAGA movement is looking at war with Iran; war with Mexico; extortion of allies; economic nationalism on steroids; and a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine that makes the entire Western Hemisphere a formalized American sphere of influence again.  And its real alliances would be white, culturally Christian, right-wing countries like Russia and Hungary. So if MAGA gets its way, they’re going to reimpose something like a global color line.  

And Trump himself makes all of this a little less predictable, and we can talk about that, but his unpredictability is located within these preferences. So presumably Republicans wouldn’t go to war with Mexico and Iran at the same time, but both options are on the table. Trump is happy to stoke Sino-US rivalry and position America to end up in a war with China, but chances are he isn’t going to directly, proactively launch such a war.  

So the commonality here is that America’s policy elites are committed to primacy. They’re fairly locked in to relating to the world in a highly predatory, militarized way. And regardless whether it’s a Democrat or Republican presidency, they’re committed to cannibalizing the existing economic order as part of doing economic nationalism. But one party is a much more immediate threat than the other, and one party offers a more favorable terrain to struggle for peace than the other.

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Fact checking Trump’s claims about Iran in the debate

In Tuesday’s debate, Donald Trump again claimed that that Iran was “broke” under him and made $300 billion under Biden. In an interview with National Public Radio’s (NPR) Jackie Northam, CIP senior non-resident fellow Sina Toossi debunked these false claims.

SINA TOOSSI: He imposed what he – his administration called the so-called maximum pressure campaign, very stringent economic sanctions.

NORTHAM: That’s Sina Toossi, an Iran specialist at the Center for International Policy. He says Trump’s economic sanctions had an impact.

TOOSSI: Trump’s economic sanctions on Iran hurt the Iranian economy and hurt various key economic indicators affecting Iran’s population and its overall health of the economy.

NORTHAM: Not quite broke as Trump claims, but foreign reserves plummeted, inflation went up, and the middle class shrank.

Q&A: How Would Harris Shape U.S.-Latin America Relations?

As Kamala Harris prepares to formally accept her party’s nomination at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, CIP senior non-resident fellow María José Espinosa Carillo discussed what a Harris presidency would mean for Latin America in a Q&A with Latin America Advisor (a daily publication of The Dialogue) explaining:

A Harris presidency could bring a renewed, forward-looking vision for U.S. relations with the Americas, focusing on contemporary issues critical to the region. Her track record as vice president, senator and California’s attorney general, particularly her commitment to justice and human rights, aligns closely with the challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean—a region deeply intertwined with U.S. interests.

In migration policy, the focus will likely be on promoting regional cooperation, as demonstrated by the Biden-Harris administration through the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. This framework has already facilitated regional collaboration on migration management. Given the strain on resources and infrastructure caused by unprecedented migration flows in the Americas, a Harris presidency will need to capitalize on and expand these efforts to strengthen stabilization and integration of migrants and asylum seekers across the continent.

Harris’ approach to U.S. leadership emphasizes close collaboration with allies and partners, actively listening to their needs and working together on solutions. This is evident in her unprecedented work with Caribbean nations, particularly on climate action. Her commitment to addressing the climate crisis aligns with the region’s pressing needs, where climate change threatens agriculture, infrastructure and coastal communities. Her leadership, including historic investments in climate initiatives, could drive collaboration on renewable energy, conservation and sustainable development, aligning U.S. policies with regional efforts.

As women’s rights become central to policy and female politicians break the mold in Latin America, a Harris presidency would continue to advocate for these rights, including access to abortion, health care, combating gender-based violence and promoting women’s economic empowerment.

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CIP Names Gazan Analyst Omar Shaban as Inaugural Leahy Fellow

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Center for International Policy (CIP) is honored to award renowned Palestinian analyst and scholar Omar Shaban as CIP’s inaugural Leahy Fellow for Human Rights and Security.

Shaban, founder of Gaza-based think tank PalThink, is the first recipient of CIP’s Leahy Fellowship, which was established in 2023 to carry the legacy of Senator Leahy’s work by supporting the research and professional development of foreign policy professionals working to enhance global security and human rights. Bringing his experience and knowledge of Middle East affairs to CIP’s work, Shaban will help advance CIP’s goals of accountability and transparency for U.S. security assistance, and consistent application of U.S. laws that preserve human rights such as the Leahy laws. 

 “CIP is thrilled to welcome Omar Shaban, whose decades of work to advance peace and democracy have helped illuminate the rich tapestry of the Palestinian experience, a hopefulness and quest for dignity, while offering sound analysis and real solutions,” said Nancy Okail, CIP’s President and CEO. “At this critical, defining moment for U.S. relations with the Middle East, Omar Shaban embodies the human-centered policy work that is needed to achieve true security. His dedication to accountability and human rights in foreign policy and to diplomacy over militarism is a tribute to Senator Leahy’s incredible legacy.”

During his fellowship, Shaban will work closely with CIP’s experts and contribute to the Center’s research initiatives, including policy analyses and policymaker and public education. His research will focus on promoting economic development, social justice, and peacebuilding in the Middle East.

“I am honored to join CIP as its first Leahy Fellow to ensure more constructive exchanges with U.S. institutions to elevate the experiences and voices of people in this region as a factor in U.S. policy making,” said Omar Shaban. “Like all human rights struggles, the Palestinian peoples’ struggle for dignity and self-determination can be a tide that lifts all boats.”

As Senator Leahy commented when it was announced the fellowship would be named after him, “defending human rights and promoting democratic values in US foreign policy is critically important at a time when those rights and values are under assault around the world.”

CIP has been a leading progressive voice on U.S. foreign affairs for nearly 50 years. The Center works to make a peaceful, just, and sustainable world the central pursuit of U.S. foreign policy by promoting greater cooperation, transparency, and governmental accountability. Critical to this mission is the inclusion of diverse perspectives and the integration of new voices into research and policymaking circles. 

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Israel’s Damascus airstrike was a deliberate provocation

Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy

On April 1st, an Israeli airstrike in Damascus dramatically escalated already simmering tensions between Israel and Iran. The operation led to the deaths of seven Iranians, including a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The target, according to Iran, was an official consulate building. However, Israel disputes this claim, which would be a violation of international law. Despite this, many countries and the United Nations have condemned the attacks on grounds that diplomatic facilities were targeted. Notably, even U.S. allies in the region, such as the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, expressed their disapproval.

In response, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed retribution, declaring that those responsible “will be punished by our brave men,” and that they will “regret this crime.” Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, also indicated that Iran had sent an “important message” to the U.S. government, holding it accountable for supporting Israel’s actions. These developments suggest that Iran may be considering a substantial retaliation, which could include renewed actions against American forces in the region.

The Israeli airstrike occurs at a time when Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is grappling with a multitude of internal and external pressures. The war in Gaza has taken a severe toll on Israel’s societal fabric and economy. The military draft has drained the workforce, while the war’s ripple effects have contracted Israel’s GDP by an estimated 20 percent. Additionally, the government, already facing internal strife due to Netanyahu’s legal issues and public discontent, has been further strained by the fallout from failed hostage rescue operations and the loss of numerous hostages due to Israeli bombardments.

Adding to these internal challenges is Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation, exemplified by the UN Security Council’s demand for an immediate halt to military operations in Gaza. This call signifies a notable shift in the Biden administration’s approach, which is increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct.

Against this backdrop, Netanyahu’s decision to green-light the airstrike on Damascus seems to be a calculated act to amplify the hostilities. Such a move sharply contrasts with international appeals for restraint and indicates a deliberate escalation strategy.

Netanyahu seems to be aiming to provoke Iran and intensify the conflict to galvanize domestic and international political support and justify wider military actions, potentially in Rafah and against Hezbollah and Iran. This strategy risks drawing the United States deeper into the conflict, with potentially dire ramifications for regional stability.

The crucial issue now is Iran’s potential reaction.  A review of commentary from prominent Iranian analysts from across the Islamic Republic’s political spectrum reveals two prevailing narratives: one perceives Israel’s actions as a deliberate provocation of war that Iran should respond to with restraint, while the other suggests that Israel is capitalizing on Iran’s typically restrained responses and that failing to react proportionately will only invite further escalations. The latter perspective is gaining momentum, with increasing calls for a decisive response to deter future Israeli aggression.

Iran’s potential responses to the Israeli airstrike include a wide range of actions, such as targeting Israeli interests in third countries, reciprocal attacks within Israel’s own borders or the Golan Heights, or escalating cyber warfare attacks. The consequences of Iran’s decision could profoundly affect the Middle East and beyond.

The U.S. response to Netanyahu’s actions is also crucial. President Biden is at a critical juncture where he can exert significant coercive pressure on Netanyahu to prevent an escalation in regional tensions. Despite his hesitations so far, it is more vital than ever that he takes decisive action now. Failure to act could exacerbate the situation, potentially leading to a regional conflict with severe repercussions for U.S. interests and which would inadvertently benefit U.S. great power rivals like Russia and China.

Given the current developments, it is crucial for the U.S. and other global powers to intensify their efforts towards de-escalation. The initial step in this process should involve applying pressure on Netanyahu to cease further military actions. This could be achieved through various means, including halting arms shipments, imposing economic sanctions, or advocating for international legal action against Israel.

The foremost priority in this situation remains securing a ceasefire agreement. Achieving this would require Netanyahu to compromise on what he previously termed as “delusional” demands by Hamas for a hostage exchange and an end to the war. Another vital aspect is preventing escalation along the Lebanon border, especially considering statements from Israeli officials like Defense Minister Yoav Gallant about their intent to increase “firepower” against Hezbollah.

Up until now, Iran has been striving to manage the level of regional violence to avert a full-scale war. Iran and its regional allies have been calibrating their actions to pressure the U.S. and Israel to end the Gaza war. Iran has dissuaded its allied militias in Iraq from firing missiles at American forces in the region, understanding that these are tripwire forces and attacking them would allow for hawks in Washington to push for war.

Nevertheless, Iran holds escalatory dominance, capable of commanding its allies to renew attacks on U.S. forces. The question now is whether the U.S. and Iran can prevent this from escalating into a wider war, which neither side wants but Netanyahu seems bent on for his own political survival. The aftermath of the Damascus strikes will serve as a significant test.