Middle East Articles

Critics and audiences agree: Ben Affleck has done it again. With its numerous award nominations and victories, including last night's Best Picture, Argo will surely join Gone Baby Gone and The Town as an Affleck-directed box-office success, and rightfully so. In Argo (based on Joshuah Bearman’s 2007 article in Wired, which itself is about the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis), classic movie elements are strung together to weave a story that leaves the viewer hostage to the film’s suspense. 

Few people would argue that self-sufficiency is a “bad” thing. After all, there is security in only being dependent on oneself. It is not surprising then that the creation of an energy independent United States, where the nation rids itself of all foreign sources of energy, is a fairly popular political position. The possibility of stable gas prices that are immune to international supply fluctuations, as well as the tapping of the clean-burning natural gas reserves, is indeed attractive. In political rhetoric, the idea is often thrown around: President Obama has stated that “America's dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats that our nation has faced" and that it "bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation, and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism.” On closer inspection, however, becoming an energy independent nation may create more problems than it solves.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said that the only thing the Jews have against Moses is that he “brought us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!” Israel has always been the barren state, but recent excavations of natural gas and the presence of large shale oil deposits promise to change Israeli energy policy. The consequences of an energy independent Israel are profound, but may not be entirely good for the Middle East. 

On May 23, 1997, Iranian democracy worked. In a surprise to both the electorate and the international community, a little-known cleric named Mohammad Khatami resoundingly defeated the heavily-favored conservative candidate for the presidency of the Islamic Republic, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri. For the moment, the votes of the people had trumped the will of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who had supported Nateq-Nouri. With 70 percent of the votes in an election with 80 percent turnout, Khatami won a powerful popular mandate for his platform of restoring civil rule, easing social restrictions, liberalizing the economy, and improving Iran’s relations with the outside world. To begin his pursuit of this last priority, President Khatami appeared on CNN and called upon the people of the United States to reject cultural conflict and join the people of Iran in a “dialogue of civilizations.” Soon, many in the Clinton Administration—including President Clinton himself—came to recognize that Khatami represented the most credible partner for peace with the United States since the Islamic Revolution had ruptured relations.