Latest news with #ArabCenterforResearchandPolicyStudies
National News
27-04-2025
- Politics
- National News
Mitri visits Emir of Qatar
NNA - Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri visited the Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who affirmed his country's support for Lebanon and readiness to assist in all areas, emphasizing the importance of maintaining stability in Lebanon and continuing the government's reform process. Mitri also met with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, where they discussed the general situation and diplomatic efforts to achieve Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon and its commitment to the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement. Mitri's meetings with Qatari officials took place on the sidelines of his participation in the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies forum held in Doha and his participation as a speaker at the Orientalism Conference organized by Her Excellency Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatari Minister of Education.
Jordan Times
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Jordan Times
Release of book 'Cyberspace and Shifts of Power in International Relations'
DOHA — The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has published a new book titled Cyberspace and Shifts of Power in International Relations, authored by Dr. Khaled Walid Mahmoud. The book offers an in-depth analysis of one of the most modern and significant topics in the literature of international relations and social sciences. It explores the uses of cyberspace, the nature of its influence, and how it interacts with international contexts and transformations. The book consists of 376 pages, including a bibliography and a general index. The study begins by tracing the emergence and development of cyberspace, which has become a central arena in global politics due to the tools of technology, information, and communications that have redefined power in its various forms. The book examines the strategic depth of cyberspace and its accelerating influence in shaping the roles of international actors, how these actors employ this space to expand their influence, develop tools of impact, and innovate competitive and strategic advantages in a rapidly changing global scene. Cyberspace: Forms of Power and the Nature of Actors The author seeks to answer the research question: To what extent has cyberspace contributed to constructing a new form of power in international relations? He does so by demonstrating the growing significance of cyberspace as a domain that increasingly influences the distribution and spread of power, as a field of international interactions, and as a theater of competition and conflict. The book is based on the hypothesis that cyberspace has altered traditional components of power and opened the door for new actors—non-state entities—to participate in shaping international interactions. The study highlights how cyberspace has transformed into a new domain added to the traditional environments (land, sea, air, and space), leading to the emergence of the concept of 'cyber power.' This new power relies on technological knowledge, innovation, and creativity, allowing smaller states and non-governmental actors to play influential roles alongside traditional great powers. The research identifies two levels of power transformation caused by cyberspace: the first relates to the components and forms of power—such as cyberattacks, viruses, hacking, piracy, algorithms, encryption, phishing, cyber deception, and disruption. The second concerns the actors who possess power amid its diffusion among non-state actors: individuals, multinational corporations, terrorist groups, hackers, and resistance movements. These actors now play roles in international interactions, creating new challenges to state sovereignty. This transformation has compelled states to reprioritize their strategic agendas to keep pace with the growing uses of cyberspace, which has become a primary arena for international conflicts and rivalries. Today, states increasingly rely on cyberspace to manage their military, financial, governmental, and commercial infrastructures, making it a central factor in achieving national security and economic growth. However, this growing reliance on cyberspace has been accompanied by major challenges, most notably the rise of cyberattacks as effective tools for achieving political and military objectives. These attacks can cause severe damage to the infrastructure of targeted states, making them powerful instruments in managing international conflicts. Yet, the deeper impact of cyberspace lies in reshaping the very concept of power. It has become a decisive factor in international relations—not only through traditional resource possession but also through ownership of digital knowledge and advanced technologies. Cyberspace as a Field of International Conflict The challenges and transformations brought about by cyberspace provide a key motivation to deepen the understanding of its various impacts on international relations and the concept of power. From this perspective, the book highlights cyberspace as a new focal point for reshaping international dynamics. The topics are divided into two main parts, comprising four interlinked chapters. The first part explores cyberspace as a new phenomenon in international relations. Chapter One presents the conceptual framework for the emergence of cyberspace, focusing on its definition, characteristics, and its growing role in shaping international relations. Chapter Two delves into the concept of power and its historical transformations, analyzing how cyberspace has contributed to the redefinition of this concept, leading to the decline of traditional power in the face of rising cyber power. The second part discusses cyberspace as a domain of international conflict. Chapter Three addresses cyber conflict as a manifestation of current geopolitical shifts, showing how this domain has become a key tool of competition among major and emerging powers. Chapter Four focuses on the race to develop cyber capabilities and its impact on global power balances, highlighting how states are increasingly investing in enhancing their cyber capacities to achieve strategic superiority. The book concludes with a comprehensive review of the key findings and offers practical recommendations for developing effective strategies to confront cyber challenges. Among the key takeaways is that cyber power has become one of the fundamental factors enhancing the influence of both state and non-state actors. It enables them to exercise influence, achieve superiority, and maintain relevance in the international system. Cyber power complements traditional power; it supports strategic goals without replacing conventional military force. It is characterized by its intangible influence across different spheres. Moreover, the effects of cyberattacks correlate directly with technological advancement—meaning highly digitized nations are more vulnerable to these attacks. This gives rise to 'asymmetric warfare,' where disparities in digital capabilities among rival parties make cyberspace an inherently unequal battlefield. One of the most significant recommendations in the book is the need to establish an Arab model for measuring cyber capabilities and to emphasize the academic dimension in studying cyber politics as a contemporary discipline for understanding transformations in international relations. It also highlights the importance of promoting cyber awareness and culture through the development of Arabic knowledge content suited to the growing challenges in this field, alongside the need to direct research agendas toward core issues raised by cyberspace. About the Author Khaled Waleed Mahmoud holds a PhD in political science. He currently serves as the Senior manager of the Media and Communication Department at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. His research interests focus on cyber politics, an emerging field that examines the impact of cyberspace on international relations and the reshaping of global power. He has published several books, sixteen peer-reviewed studies, and dozens of journalistic articles on topics related to his specialization.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
Sadegh Zibakalam is in trouble again. The retired 76-year-old professor of political science was already serving an 18-month sentence for criticizing the Iranian regime. He came out on medical furlough—only for Tehran's prosecutor to start investigating him again. Now Zibakalam, one of Iran's best-known public intellectuals, whose combined followers on Instagram, Facebook, and X total almost 2 million, is worried he may be sent back to prison. The new charges stem from a speech he made at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar in January. Expressing one's opinion can make a person a criminal in Iran. But Zibakalam had voiced not even his own view so much as a sociological observation: that Iranians no longer support the Palestinian cause, and many even cheer for Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. 'You'll be surprised, since October 7 last year, [to see] the number of Iranians who hate the Palestinian' groups, Zibakalam said. 'But I saw it with my own eyes during the past 15 months … For [so many] of the younger generation of Iranians … their hero was Netanyahu … Everyone was talking about the U.S. elections … hoping and praying that Donald Trump would win.' Zibakalam is himself a harsh critic of Trump and in the same speech decried the American president as 'anti-women, anti-Arab, anti-immigration, and anti-Black.' He has also accused Netanyahu's government of war crimes and called attention to the 'millions of Israelis' who oppose it. Zibakalam thus was not condoning the views he described, but rather lamenting the turn of a population that once backed Palestinian leaders, such as Yasser Arafat. Iranians, he explained, have come to hate anybody associated with their own regime, whose policies oppress them. 'I can tell you why they hate Hassan Nasrallah,' he said of the Hezbollah leader slain by Israel last year, and 'why they hate Hamas.' The reason, he said, is 'simply because the Islamic Republic supports them.' Zibakalam is what Iranians call a liberal reformist, meaning that even while he recognizes the fundamental unfairness of the political system, he advocates for participation in the hope of staving off the worst or producing incremental change for the better. Last year, many Iranians boycotted the country's presidential elections, but Zibakalam dutifully voted for Masud Pezeshkian, a reformist who wields little power in a government dominated by the hard-line Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And yet, even among critics of the leadership, Zibakalam is notably outspoken. He has brushed aside regime taboos to argue repeatedly that Iran's anti-American and anti-Israeli obsessions do not advance its national interest. [Read: Iranian dissidents don't want war with Israel—but they can't stop it] Like many Iranian reformists, Zibakalam was a revolutionary in the 1970s. He was born into a religious family in Tehran in 1948 and fell in with Iranian activist circles while studying abroad, first in Austria and then in the United Kingdom, where he was pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Bradford. Having initially flirted with Marxism, he ended up advocating for a left-leaning Islamism, and he headed the Islamic Student Association at Bradford from from 1972 to 1974. The Iranian student organizations he worked with were tightly allied with Palestinian militants. On a return visit to Iran in 1974, he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released early, in 1976, and barred from going back to his Ph.D. program in Britain but allowed to teach at the University of Tehran. Iran's political space opened slightly in 1978, and Zibakalam helped found the Islamic Association of Academics at that time. A year later, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the Shah, and he enthusiastically tried to serve the new regime. He was appointed to the prime minister's office and sent to Iranian Kurdistan as part of a delegation tasked with negotiating with Kurdish rebels. The talks didn't go anywhere, and Iranian forces went on to brutally suppress the Kurds. Back in the University of Tehran, Zibakalam advocated for the rupture that became known as the Cultural Revolution. Named after Mao Zedong's disastrous campaign in the 1960s and '70s, the Iranian version led to the closure of all universities, the Islamization of their curricula, and the purging of much of their faculty—including female faculty and staff who refused to wear the hijab as well as anyone deemed disloyal to the new regime. Zibakalam has denied playing any role specifically in purging faculty, but in 1998, he publicly apologized for participating in the Cultural Revolution and asked for forgiveness from those affected. Having served the regime for a few years in academic-management roles, he went back to Bradford in 1984, this time for a Ph.D. in peace studies. He sought to better understand the political upheaval he had helped bring about, and so he wrote his thesis on the Iranian Revolution. He returned to teach at the University of Tehran in 1990 and five years later shot to fame with his first book, How Did We Become What We Are? Seeking the Roots of Backwardness in Iran. This book was the start of an intellectual journey that has never ceased—an attempt to figure out how Iran could catch up with the developed West. Conspiracy theories and simplistic sloganeering popular at the time tended to blame Iran's ills solely on colonialism or capitalism. Departing from this austere nativism, Zibakalam offered instead a deep, comparative study of European and Iranian history, dating back to medieval times. The book doesn't find a clear answer to its titular question but breaks a taboo by searching for one in choices made by Iranians themselves and not just ills done to them by outsiders. It was an immediate best seller and immensely influential inside Iran. [Read: The fire that fueled the Iran protests] In the years that followed, Zibakalam became a prominent defender of liberal values and critic of Iran's foreign policy. The latter is a particular red line for the regime, which does not brook much discussion, let alone criticism, of its posture abroad. As a result of his outspokenness, Zibakalam was hounded out of his teaching position and, starting in 2014, repeatedly prosecuted. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, he'd defended the region's various movements for democracy and contested the Iranian regime's narrative that the uprisings were actually an 'Islamic Awakening.' In Syria, then-President Bashar al-Assad put down a civil uprising with the help of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Zibakalam spoke out against this; years later, a reporter asked him his opinion of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general assassinated by the United States in 2020, and he said that the Syrian people should be the judge of him—an extraordinary expression of solidarity with Syrians from inside Iran. Predictably, out of all his vocal expressions of dissent, Zibakalam has paid the highest price for his stance on Israel. Back in the early 2000s, during the Second Intifada, he criticized the Iranian position on Israel as 'more Palestinian than Palestinians' and called for moderation. In 2014, during a public debate with a conservative, he shocked many by declaring, 'I recognize Israel as a country because the United Nations recognizes it.' And in 2016, when he was invited to speak at a university in Mashhad, he refused to join in the tradition of trampling an American and an Israeli flag, theatrically hoisting himself onto a banister to avoid stepping on them as he climbed the stairs. 'It is wrong to stomp on the flag of any country, because it is a point of identity and a national symbol,' he said after the video of his gesture went viral. He was explicitly told that he'd lost his teaching position on account of his recognition of Israel. Even so, in 2016, he published a chronicle of the Jewish people from 2000 B.C.E. to 1948, titled Birth of Israel: A History of 4000 Years of Judaism. The book, part of a determined effort to teach his fellow Iranians more about a people their regime wants them to hate, was banned in Iran but widely disseminated via Zibakalam's Telegram channel and as an audiobook that he read himself. Since October 7, 2023, he has taken part in public debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a televised program in which he called for a historical understanding that showed sensitivity to Jewish concerns. Zibakalam has been charged and sentenced to a total of five years in prison since 2014, but he managed to stay out of jail until last year; his sentences were repeatedly suspended or turned into fines during the appeals process. His latest book pokes fun at this history with the title How Come They Won't Arrest You?—a question he says he is often asked. But the day he was supposed to launch that book with a speech at Tehran's book festival last May, he was finally arrested and sent to Tehran's Evin prison. Four months later, he was diagnosed with cancer and released on medical furlough. On coming out of Evin, Zibakalam knew that his continued freedom depended on him keeping his mouth shut, particularly on hot-button issues such as Israel. Nevertheless, in the past few weeks, he has shared several controversial positions with his large audiences online. He compared the open debate in the Israeli press over the cease-fire agreement with Hamas with Iran's censorship and lack of discussion around an agreement it signed with Russia at around the same time. And when a commercial flight collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River, in Washington, D.C., in January, Zibakalam called on Pezeshkian to send a condolence message to Trump as a means of opening a dialogue with the United States. He has also posted plenty of criticism of the U.S. administration, denouncing its treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and comparing Elon Musk's destruction of the administrative state to the work of Iranian zealots in 1979. [Read: Iran's return to pragmatism] Foreign-based media outlets pipe radical views into Iran every day from activists in the diaspora. By comparison, Zibakalam's positions are relatively moderate. To the irritation of some opponents of the regime, he has refused to endorse its revolutionary overthrow. But the Iranian authorities perceive him as dangerous precisely because he couches his far-reaching demands in sensible, pragmatic language. He dares to ask simple questions plainly—for example, 'What business does Iran have in seeking to destroy Israel?' And sometimes, he just dares to state the facts that everybody can see but that the regime denies. That's what was once known as speaking truth to power. It's what he did in Doha, and it's why he's once again in trouble with a regime that thrives on silence and fear. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
Sadegh Zibakalam is in trouble again. The retired 76-year-old professor of political science was already serving an 18-month sentence for criticizing the Iranian regime. He came out on medical furlough—only for Tehran's prosecutor to start investigating him again. Now Zibakalam, one of Iran's best-known public intellectuals, whose combined followers on Instagram, Facebook, and X total almost 2 million, is worried he may be sent back to prison. The new charges stem from a speech he made at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar in January. Expressing one's opinion can make a person a criminal in Iran. But Zibakalam had voiced not even his own view so much as a sociological observation: that Iranians no longer support the Palestinian cause, and many even cheer for Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. 'You'll be surprised, since October 7 last year, [to see] the number of Iranians who hate the Palestinian' groups, Zibakalam said. 'But I saw it with my own eyes during the past 15 months … For [so many] of the younger generation of Iranians … their hero was Netanyahu … Everyone was talking about the U.S. elections … hoping and praying that Donald Trump would win.' Zibakalam is himself a harsh critic of Trump and in the same speech decried the American president as 'anti-women, anti-Arab, anti-immigration, and anti-Black.' He has also accused Netanyahu's government of war crimes and called attention to the 'millions of Israelis' who oppose it. Zibakalam thus was not condoning the views he described, but rather lamenting the turn of a population that once backed Palestinian leaders, such as Yasser Arafat. Iranians, he explained, have come to hate anybody associated with their own regime, whose policies oppress them. 'I can tell you why they hate Hassan Nasrallah,' he said of the Hezbollah leader slain by Israel last year, and 'why they hate Hamas.' The reason, he said, is 'simply because the Islamic Republic supports them.' Zibakalam is what Iranians call a liberal reformist, meaning that even while he recognizes the fundamental unfairness of the political system, he advocates for participation in the hope of staving off the worst or producing incremental change for the better. Last year, many Iranians boycotted the country's presidential elections, but Zibakalam dutifully voted for Masud Pezeshkian, a reformist who wields little power in a government dominated by the hard-line Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And yet, even among critics of the leadership, Zibakalam is notably outspoken. He has brushed aside regime taboos to argue repeatedly that Iran's anti-American and anti-Israeli obsessions do not advance its national interest. Like many Iranian reformists, Zibakalam was a revolutionary in the 1970s. He was born into a religious family in Tehran in 1948 and fell in with Iranian activist circles while studying abroad, first in Austria and then in the United Kingdom, where he was pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Bradford. Having initially flirted with Marxism, he ended up advocating for a left-leaning Islamism, and he headed the Islamic Student Association at Bradford from from 1972 to 1974. The Iranian student organizations he worked with were tightly allied with Palestinian militants. On a return visit to Iran in 1974, he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released early, in 1976, and barred from going back to his Ph.D. program in Britain but allowed to teach at the University of Tehran. Iran's political space opened slightly in 1978, and Zibakalam helped found the Islamic Association of Academics at that time. A year later, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the Shah, and he enthusiastically tried to serve the new regime. He was appointed to the prime minister's office and sent to Iranian Kurdistan as part of a delegation tasked with negotiating with Kurdish rebels. The talks didn't go anywhere, and Iranian forces went on to brutally suppress the Kurds. Back in the University of Tehran, Zibakalam advocated for the rupture that became known as the Cultural Revolution. Named after Mao Zedong's disastrous campaign in the 1960s and '70s, the Iranian version led to the closure of all universities, the Islamization of their curricula, and the purging of much of their faculty—including female faculty and staff who refused to wear the hijab as well as anyone deemed disloyal to the new regime. Zibakalam has denied playing any role specifically in purging faculty, but in 1998, he publicly apologized for participating in the Cultural Revolution and asked for forgiveness from those affected. Having served the regime for a few years in academic-management roles, he went back to Bradford in 1984, this time for a Ph.D. in peace studies. He sought to better understand the political upheaval he had helped bring about, and so he wrote his thesis on the Iranian Revolution. He returned to teach at the University of Tehran in 1990 and five years later shot to fame with his first book, How Did We Become What We Are? Seeking the Roots of Backwardness in Iran. This book was the start of an intellectual journey that has never ceased—an attempt to figure out how Iran could catch up with the developed West. Conspiracy theories and simplistic sloganeering popular at the time tended to blame Iran's ills solely on colonialism or capitalism. Departing from this austere nativism, Zibakalam offered instead a deep, comparative study of European and Iranian history, dating back to medieval times. The book doesn't find a clear answer to its titular question but breaks a taboo by searching for one in choices made by Iranians themselves and not just ills done to them by outsiders. It was an immediate best seller and immensely influential inside Iran. In the years that followed, Zibakalam became a prominent defender of liberal values and critic of Iran's foreign policy. The latter is a particular red line for the regime, which does not brook much discussion, let alone criticism, of its posture abroad. As a result of his outspokenness, Zibakalam was hounded out of his teaching position and, starting in 2014, repeatedly prosecuted. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, he'd defended the region's various movements for democracy and contested the Iranian regime's narrative that the uprisings were actually an 'Islamic Awakening.' In Syria, then-President Bashar al-Assad put down a civil uprising with the help of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Zibakalam spoke out against this; years later, a reporter asked him his opinion of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general assassinated by the United States in 2020, and he said that the Syrian people should be the judge of him—an extraordinary expression of solidarity with Syrians from inside Iran. Predictably, out of all his vocal expressions of dissent, Zibakalam has paid the highest price for his stance on Israel. Back in the early 2000s, during the Second Intifada, he criticized the Iranian position on Israel as 'more Palestinian than Palestinians' and called for moderation. In 2014, during a public debate with a conservative, he shocked many by declaring, 'I recognize Israel as a country because the United Nations recognizes it.' And in 2016, when he was invited to speak at a university in Mashhad, he refused to join in the tradition of trampling an American and an Israeli flag, theatrically hoisting himself onto a banister to avoid stepping on them as he climbed the stairs. 'It is wrong to stomp on the flag of any country, because it is a point of identity and a national symbol,' he said after the video of his gesture went viral. He was explicitly told that he'd lost his teaching position on account of his recognition of Israel. Even so, in 2016, he published a chronicle of the Jewish people from 2000 B.C.E. to 1948, titled Birth of Israel: A History of 4000 Years of Judaism. The book, part of a determined effort to teach his fellow Iranians more about a people their regime wants them to hate, was banned in Iran but widely disseminated via Zibakalam's Telegram channel and as an audiobook that he read himself. Since October 7, 2023, he has taken part in public debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a televised program in which he called for a historical understanding that showed sensitivity to Jewish concerns. Zibakalam has been charged and sentenced to a total of five years in prison since 2014, but he managed to stay out of jail until last year; his sentences were repeatedly suspended or turned into fines during the appeals process. His latest book pokes fun at this history with the title How Come They Won't Arrest You? —a question he says he is often asked. But the day he was supposed to launch that book with a speech at Tehran's book festival last May, he was finally arrested and sent to Tehran's Evin prison. Four months later, he was diagnosed with cancer and released on medical furlough. On coming out of Evin, Zibakalam knew that his continued freedom depended on him keeping his mouth shut, particularly on hot-button issues such as Israel. Nevertheless, in the past few weeks, he has shared several controversial positions with his large audiences online. He compared the open debate in the Israeli press over the cease-fire agreement with Hamas with Iran's censorship and lack of discussion around an agreement it signed with Russia at around the same time. And when a commercial flight collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River, in Washington, D.C., in January, Zibakalam called on Pezeshkian to send a condolence message to Trump as a means of opening a dialogue with the United States. He has also posted plenty of criticism of the U.S. administration, denouncing its treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and comparing Elon Musk's destruction of the administrative state to the work of Iranian zealots in 1979. Foreign-based media outlets pipe radical views into Iran every day from activists in the diaspora. By comparison, Zibakalam's positions are relatively moderate. To the irritation of some opponents of the regime, he has refused to endorse its revolutionary overthrow. But the Iranian authorities perceive him as dangerous precisely because he couches his far-reaching demands in sensible, pragmatic language. He dares to ask simple questions plainly—for example, 'What business does Iran have in seeking to destroy Israel?' And sometimes, he just dares to state the facts that everybody can see but that the regime denies. That's what was once known as speaking truth to power. It's what he did in Doha, and it's why he's once again in trouble with a regime that thrives on silence and fear.
