By Sarah Stern | October 8, 2021

There is a disturbing trend in Washington, manifested most dramatically by the devastating retreat from Afghanistan, to simply turn away from the pressing problems of the Middle East, and to pour all of our energies into the Asia-Pacific theater. The United States is now regarded as a paper tiger within the Middle East. This is dramatically illustrated by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s talk during the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations, last week, when he stated, “Sanctions are the United States’ new way of war with the nations of the world.” 

While railing against American sanctions as “crimes against humanity”, the implicit message is that Iran believes there no longer is a credible threat of military force from the United States. This is extremely dangerous and is shaking up the emerging pattern of friendships between the Sunni Gulf states and Israel that had occurred under the Trump administration, because of the Abraham Accords. 

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Tony Badran is a research fellow at FDD, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant. Born and raised in Lebanon, Tony has testified to the House of Representatives on several occasions regarding U.S. policy toward Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. His research currently focuses on the relationship between Iran’s Hezbollah model and regional states, as well as the history of and future scenarios for Israel-Hezbollah wars. His writings have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal,  The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The Weekly Standard. He is a columnist and Levant analyst for Tablet magazine.

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at FDD, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars. He is also on the leadership team of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, a project on the use of financial and economic power as a tool of statecraft.

Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. He has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum.

Jonathan has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East, along with more than a dozen monographs and chapters for edited volumes. His three books have made unique contributions to the field. State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) argues the main roadblock to Palestinian statehood is the Palestinian Authority’s political dysfunction and mismanagement. Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) is still the only book on the market that analyzes the ongoing Palestinian civil war. Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2004) was the first to explore the al-Qaeda franchises of the Middle East. 

Jonathan testifies often before Congress and publishes widely in the American and international media. He has appeared on American television channels such as Fox News and CNN, and Arabic language television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera.