There have been five central crises in America's post World War II encounter with the Middle East, and the Obama administration now faces a sixth. Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability, and the prospect of Israel launching air strikes to stop it, are ingredients for a conflict that could ruin any residual hopes for fostering peace in the region. The Sixth Crisis explores the fraught linkages between the Iranian nuclear challenge, the increasing likelihood of an Israeli preventive strike, the continuing Israel-Palestine tragedy, and President Barack Obama's efforts to recast America's relations with the world's Muslims. It is the first full account of the situation since Obama took office. The authors, a former senior official on President Clinton's National Security Council Staff and a leading authority on international politics, lay out in clear and accessible detail the technical and political dimensions of Iran's nuclear program, and the ongoing diplomacy to stop it. They show how Israel's panic about Iran's nuclear threat--combined with its policy toward the Palestinians--is undermining Jerusalem's alliance with America. Tehran, meanwhile, is exploiting tensions between Arab regimes fearful of a nuclear Iran and an Arab public that is both angry about the plight of the Palestinians and resentful of Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region. The Sixth Crisis brilliantly illuminates this fateful juncture. The status quo is on an incline to disaster, and the hopes that President Obama has inspired are threatened by the toxic mixture of Israeli-Palestinian stalemate and Iran's nuclear ambitions. The time bomb of Iran's defiance and Israel's panic has the potential to spark a firestorm that would imperil US interests in the Middle East and engulf Obama's presidency. With the outcome of this unfolding crisis far from certain, The Sixth Crisis is required reading not only for policymakers, but also for anyone interested in world politics.

The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

History

Simon, Steven

Allin, Dana

Middle East

Oxford University Press

A bold reexamination of U.S. influence in the Middle East during the Cold War.
The Arab Spring, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Iraq war, and the Syrian civil war―these contemporary conflicts have deep roots in the Middle East’s postwar emergence from colonialism.
In The Pragmatic Superpower, foreign policy experts Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon reframe the legacy of U.S. involvement in the Arab world from 1945 to 1991 and shed new light on the makings of the contemporary Middle East. Cutting against conventional wisdom, the authors argue that, when an inexperienced Washington entered the turbulent world of Middle Eastern politics, it succeeded through hardheaded pragmatism―and secured its place as a global superpower.
Eyes ever on its global conflict with the Soviet Union, America shrewdly navigated the rise of Arab nationalism, the founding of Israel, and seminal conflicts including the Suez War and the Iranian revolution. Takeyh and Simon reveal that America’s objectives in the region were often uncomplicated but hardly modest. Washington deployed adroit diplomacy to prevent Soviet infiltration of the region, preserve access to its considerable petroleum resources, and resolve the conflict between a Jewish homeland and the Arab states that opposed it.
The Pragmatic Superpower provides fascinating insight into Washington’s maneuvers in a contest for global power and offers a unique reassessment of America’s cold war policies in a critical region of the world. Amid the chaotic conditions of the twenty-first century, Takeyh and Simon argue that there is an urgent need to look back to a period when the United States got it right. Only then will we better understand the challenges we face today.

The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East

Takeyh, Ray

Americas

W.W.Norton&Company

A longtime American foreign policy insider's penetrating and definitive reckoning with this country's involvement in the Middle East--and its bitter end The culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon's tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when American perception of the Middle East shifted from a cluster of faraway and frequently skirmishing nations to a shining, urgent opportunity for America to (in Reagan's words) "serve the cause of world peace and the future of mankind." Reagan fired the starting gun on decades of deepening American involvement, but as the global economy grew, bringing an increasing reliance on oil, U.S. diplomatic and military energies were ever more fatefully absorbed by the Middle East until the Obama administration and its successors finally sought to disentangle America from the region. Grand Delusion explores the motivations, strategies, and shortcomings of each presidential administration from Reagan to today, exposing a web of intertwined events--from Lebanese civil conflict to shifting Iranian domestic politics, Cold War rivalries, and Saudi Arabia's quest for security to 9/11 and the war on terror--managed by a Washington policy process frequently ruled by wishful thinking and partisan politics. Simon's sharp sense of irony and incisive writing bring a complex history to life. He questions the motives behind America's commitment to Israel; explodes the popular narrative of Desert Storm as a "good war"; and calls out the devastating consequences of our mistakes, particularly for people of the region trapped by the onslaught of American military action and pitiless economic sanctions. Grand Delusion reveals that this story, while episodically impressive, was too often tragic and at times dishonorable. As we enter a new era in foreign policy, this is an essential book, a cautionary history that illuminates American's propensity for self-deception and misadventure at a moment when the nation is redefining its engagement with a world in crisis.

Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Penguin Press

The Age of Sacred Terror

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon began working on this book shortly after leaving the National Security Council, where, as director and senior director for counterterrorism, they watched the rise of al-Qaeda and helped coordinate America’s fight against Usama bin Laden and his organization. They warned in articles and interviews about the appearance of a new breed of terrorists who were determined to kill on the grand scale. More than a year before September 11, 2001, they began writing The Age of Sacred Terror to sound the alarm for a nation that had not recognized the gravest threat of our time. One of their book’s original goals has remained: to provide the insights to understand an enemy unlike any seen in living memory—one with an extraordinary ability to detect weakness and exploit it, one with a determination to inflict catastrophic damage, one that will not be deterred. But after September 11, a second, equally crucial goal was added: to understand how America let its defenses down, how warnings went unheeded, and how key parts of the government failed at vital tasks. The Age of Sacred Terror also describes the road ahead, where the terrorists will look to draw strength, and what the United States must do, at home and abroad, to stop them. For a year after the attacks that redefined terrorism and devastated the public’s sense of security, America has been searching for answers about those responsible for one of the darkest days in our history and explanations for the glaring gaps in our defenses. The Age of Sacred Terror provides both, with unique authority. It is the book that Americans must read to understand the foremost challenge we face.

Benjamin, Daniel

BOOKS ON TAPE]

The authors of the bestseller The Age of Sacred Terror show how the United States is losing the war on terror and what we need to do if we're serious about winning it. We are losing. Four years and two wars after September 11, 2001, the United States is no closer to victory in the "war on terror." In fact, we are unwittingly clearing the way for the next attack. In this provocative new book, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon show how the terrorist threat is evolving, with a broadening array of tactics, an army of new fighters and, most ominously, a widening base of support in the global Muslim community. The jihadist movement has been galvanized by the example of 9/11 and the missteps of the U.S. government, which has consistently failed to understand the nature of the new terror. Left on this trajectory, much worse faces us in the near future. It doesn't have to be this way. The Next Attack makes the case that America has the capacity to stem the tide of Islamic terrorism, but Benjamin and Simon caution that this will require a far-reaching and creative new strategy, one that recognizes that the struggle has been over-militarized and that a campaign for reform must be more than rhetoric and less than bayonets. And they point out how America's increasing tendency to frame the conflict in religious terms has undermined our ability to advance our interests. Is America is truly equipped to do what is necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, or are we too blinded by our own ideology? The answer to that question will determine how secure we will truly be, in the years and decades to come.

The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right

Times Books

"A persuasive and utterly frightening picture of the current state of America's war on terror."―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
We are losing. Five years after the September 11 attacks, America finds its strategic position deteriorating in the global war on terror. In The Next Attack, former White House counterterrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon show how the terrorist threat has evolved since 9/11 and how America has undermined its own goals, not only in the ill-considered invasion and occupation of Iraq but also through our failure to understand the jihadists' ideology. Our actions have confirmed Osama bin Laden's message in the eyes of disaffected Muslims in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere, and in doing so, we are clearing the way for the next attack. 
Benjamin and Simon argue that America needs a far-reaching and creative new strategy in combating Islamic radicalism, one that recognizes the costs of over-militarizing the battle against terror while setting realistic priorities for homeland security. And in a new afterword, they show how the ideological conflict is deepening and spreading across an increasingly radicalized Muslim world. We ignore this warning at our peril.

Holt Paperbacks

Winner of the 2004 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations From two of the world’s foremost experts on the new terrorism comes the deﬁnitive book on the rise of al-Qaeda and America’s efforts to combat the most innovative and dangerous terrorist group ever. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon trace the growth of radical Islam from its medieval origins and, drawing on their years of counter-terrorism work at the National Security Council, provide essential insights into the thinking of Usama bin Laden and his followers. With unique authority, they analyze why America was unable to defend itself against this revolutionary threat on September 11, 2001, why bin Laden’s apocalyptic creed is gaining ground in the Islamic world, and what the United States must do to stop the new terror.

The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America

Military

Random House Publishing Group

An Examination of options for strengthening infrastructure ina potential future independent Palestinian state.

The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State

Social Sciences

Rand Publishing

This report assesses likely demographic and economic trends in the Arab world through 2020, focusing on changes that are likely to affect U.S. defense planning and U.S. policy in the region.

Future Challenges for the Arab World: The Implications of Demographic and Economic Trends (Project Air Force Report)

Martini, Jeffrey

Crane, Keith

RAND Corporation

An examination of options for strengthening the housing and transportation infrastructure of a potential future independent Palestinian state in the context of a large and rapidly growing Palestinian population.The book includes initial cost estimates for improving and expanding infrastructure to facilitate successful development.

Robinson, Glenn

Anthony, Ross C.

Schoenbaum, Michael

Suisman, Doug

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simon, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Simon, Steven

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Simon, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War (International Institute for Strategic Studies)

The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East

Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East

The Age of Sacred Terror

The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right

The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right

The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America

The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State

Future Challenges for the Arab World: The Implications of Demographic and Economic Trends (Project Air Force Report)

The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State