For the last three years the Gulf and the Middle East programme at the IISS has focused on three main areas of interest. Firstly the programme contributes to the Institute’s overall work on proliferation and non-proliferation by conducting research into regime motivation and regional security in the Middle East. Secondly the programme is carrying out extensive work on the run up to and aftermath of regime change in Iraq. This has looked at the key individuals and organisations active in post-Saddam Iraqi politics and the future of a country dominated by a profound security vacuum. Iraq has then been used as case study to look at the politics of international intervention and state building in wider perspective. A major conference on US foreign policy after Iraq will be held in the autumn of 2006. Finally the programme has organised a set of meetings in the region designed to stimulate debate about the evolution of political pluralism, the rule of law and democracy.
As of 1 May 2006, Dr Mamoun Fandy will be Senior Fellow for Gulf Security, responsible for organising the IISS Gulf and Middle East Programme, comprised of research and conference activities particularly focused on Gulf security, as well as issues affecting the Middle East as a whole.
Recently a Senior Fellow at the Baker Institute and at the United States Institute of Peace, Dr Fandy specialises in Middle East politics. He is a former professor of politics at Georgetown University and professor of Arab politics at the Near-East South Asia Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University.
His research focus is the politics of the Arab world, media and politics, terrorism and radical Islamic politics, and regional security issues in the Middle East. He is the author of Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999). This book is considered by both the academic and policy communities to be the ultimate authority on Islamic terrorism and violence inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
Dr Fandy also wrote America and the Arab World After September 11th (Arabic) (Cairo, Egypt: Masr al-Mahrousa, 2003); articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and more regularly in the Christian Science Monitor. He is a columnist for the two largest pan-Arab dailies: the Cairo-based Al-Ahram and the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat.
