David Schenker is a Middle East policy analyst who contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard, writing about Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and broader Arab world affairs. He served as a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and later as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the Trump administration. His articles for the magazine frequently focused on the Assad regime, Hezbollah, and U.S. policy challenges in the region.
Last week, a senior Yemeni Houthi official was buried in Beirut. Mohammed Abdel Malik al-Shami, the spiritual leader of the Houthis, had been critically wounded in the March 20 Islamic State suicide bombing of Al Hashahush mosque in Sanaa. He was airlifted to Tehran for medical treatment, but…
In a grim interview last month with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s online magazine Dabiq, Moath al Kasasbah—the Jordanian pilot shot down and captured during a recent bombing run over Syria—was asked if he knew what ISIS would do to him. “Yes,” he said, “they will kill me.”
Tuesday, during the State of the Union Address, President Obama boasted that “American diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, is why Syria’s chemical weapons are being eliminated.” The assertion was premature. In early January, Syria’s Bashar Assad regime indeed started the process of…
Back in 2006, during a particularly low point in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group issued a report in which the central contentious proposition was that “all key issues in the region are inextricably linked.” Accordingly, to stem the deterioration in Iraq…
Earlier this week, seven Egyptian security officers were released after being held hostage for a week by Bedouin tribesmen in the Sinai. The abductions are the latest in a series of now commonplace hostage events and armed attacks in the Sinai that highlight the deterioration of security in this…
To many Lebanese, the massive car bomb attack in Beirut on Friday that killed the Sunni Muslim head of internal security Wissam al Hassan and seven others evoked the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Members of the Shiite militia Hezbollah were indicted for the 2005 crime,…
Earlier this month, 48 Iranian Shiite “pilgrims” were abducted in Damascus. The Free Syrian Army claims they were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who have been dispatched to Syria to protect one of Tehran’s vital interests, Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It’s not the first time that…
From failing European economies to staggering murder rates in Central America, there’s no shortage of crises on the agenda as the International Monetary Fund holds its annual spring meeting in Washington this week. Of all the problems within the IMF’s purview, however, the ongoing economic…
During the decades of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, successive U.S. administrations yearned for regime change. The hope was that longstanding frustration with international isolation and relative deprivation would inspire some unspecified Baathist general to assassinate…
Two years ago in Cairo, Nobel laureate and former International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei was the talk of the town. Newly retired from the IAEA, ElBaradei returned to Egypt in February 2010 after living abroad for decades. He began criticizing the Mubarak regime, hinting that he…
News from Egypt is not good. Six months after the revolution, demonstrators in Tahrir Square are no longer protesting the Mubarak regime, but the military’s own undemocratic governing practices. Meanwhile, the economy is deteriorating and the security situation—in the Sinai and the Nile…
There’s no blast wall around the Syrian embassy in Washington. Nor is the wrought iron gate crowned with barbed wire. During a handful of peaceful protests outside the embassy in the Kalorama neighborhood in recent months, no one threw tomatoes or attempted to scale the fence. The embassy and its…
It’s been five months since the revolution that ended the 30-year tenure of Hosni Mubarak, but the upheaval in Egypt is far from over. Large protests have become routine if not habitual in Egypt. In late June, 1,000 civilians criticizing the slow pace of reform were injured in clashes with riot…
On November 9, Jordan conducted its first-ever parliamentary elections monitored by domestic and international observers. I was one of the observers and was impressed by the transparency of the process. Indeed, notwithstanding some isolated incidents of violence, the elections themselves set a…
This week, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak brought his son Gamal to Washington to attend the kick-off of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Back in Cairo, the unprecedented family visit will no doubt reinforce the widespread belief that Mubarak is planning a hereditary succession in the Arab…
The Ghosts
Nearly 50 years ago, Yemen fought a civil war pitting the Egyptian-backed government in Sana against insurgents supported by Saudi Arabia and its cadre of European mercenaries. The six-year war was bloody: At one low point in the campaign, Cairo resorted to mustard gas and nerve agents in an effort…
On Saturday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri traveled to Damascus for a meeting with Syrian president Bashar Asad, the man widely believed to have ordered the assassination of his father, former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. The 2005 murder sparked the Cedar Revolution, a mass protest movement…
On June 7, Lebanon's pro-West March 14 coalition surprised the world by defeating the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance in parliamentary elections. Although March 14 was the incumbent, the coalition was widely seen as the underdog vis-à-vis its Iranian- and Syrian-backed opponents. The victory not…
Anyone who has watched an Arab summit knows that the Middle East is racked with divisions. The highlight reel from the March 2009 Doha summit leads with a lengthy ad hominem attack by Libya's leader Muammar Qaddafi against Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, so severe that the Qatari hosts cut the audio…
When it comes to al Qaeda, Syria gets it coming and going. This past Sunday, U.S. helicopters targeted an al Qaeda operative on Syrian territory who shuttled terrorists into Iraq. Syria condemned the strike as a violation of its sovereignty and a "serious aggression." Earlier in October, a massive…
SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice's visit to Libya last week represents the final step in a decades-long U.S. effort to reform and rehabilitate the rogue state. A charter member of the U.S. Department of State's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, after its nuclear program was disclosed in 2003,…
Much ado has been made of the Israeli security fence isolating the West Bank. When it is completed in 2010, the barrier--which runs roughly along the 1967 border between Israel and Palestinian territory--will span nearly 500 miles. Israelis say the purpose of the structure is to curtail terrorist…
LAST MONTH, Syria's leading dissident went to jail again. Riad Seif's arrest didn't come as much of a surprise; the former member of parliament and longtime human rights advocate had devoted much of the past two decades to criticizing the authoritarian Assad regime. He was released only two years…
ON SEPTEMBER 6, Israeli planes bombed a presumed North Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear weapons facility. The incident highlights an ongoing theme in regional politics in recent years: Syrian President Bashar Asad's profoundly poor judgment.
THIS MONTH, Syria has been in the headlines in Washington. First, there was the ill-fated early April visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Damascus. Then last week, American-Syrian businessman Abe Soleiman traveled to Jerusalem pitching an unauthorized plan--according to Damascus--for renewed…
It's been two years since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri caused the United States to withdraw its ambassador from Syria. But even as the U.S. embassy in Damascus continues to function without its senior diplomat, Syria maintains not one but two ambassadors to…
HEZBOLLAH ROCKETS stopped raining on Israel nearly two months ago, but the Shiite organization's onslaught continues. Today, instead of directly attacking Israel, the Party of God is targeting Lebanese intellectuals and politicians who have the temerity to question Hezbollah's hegemony over local…
HEZBOLLAH LEADER Hassan Nas rallah made headlines last week when he claimed during a rally that Hezbollah still possessed 20,000 rockets and missiles after this past summer's war with Israel. The rally and the announcement were audacious: Some 350,000 supporters gathered in South Beirut to see…
LAST WEEK, even before the carnage in Qana, a parade of pundits, lawmakers, and former policymakers started calling for Washington to reengage in a dialogue with Damascus. President Carter, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, among others, argued that the…
WHEN HAFEZ AL-ASSAD was president-for-life of Syria, Washington overlooked the misdeeds of his Baathist dictatorship because it always seemed the brass ring of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace deal was just around the corner. Now that Assad is dead and his son Bashar nears the six-year mark of…