Ibrahim Fraihat, Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center and an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “Managing the Saudi-Iranian Rivalry” on October 27, 2015. With a background in conflict resolution, Fraihat offered an analysis of how to reduce tensions in the Middle East region using two different approaches. The first approach offered by Fraihat isolates individual conflicts as an exclusive case requiring specific solutions targeted at particular nations. The second approach takes a more regional stance, and perceives of Middle East conflicts as somewhat interrelated. This approach posits that many of the current conflicts, including those in Yemen and Syria, are the result of proxy wars, and are linked, in one way or another, to larger regional rivalries. Fraihat argued that the second approach was more useful in its holistic view of regional conflicts being the result of spillover tensions generated elsewhere.
Ibrahim Fraihat (also known as Ibrahim Sharqieh) previously taught international conflict resolution at George Washington University and George Mason University. His research focuses on conflict resolution in the Arab world, with a particular emphasis on conflict management and mediation, transitions, national reconciliation, national dialogue, institutional reform, and post-conflict reconstruction. He has published extensively on Middle East politics, with articles appearing in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Al-Hayat, and the Christian Science Monitor, on the CNN and Al Jazeera websites, and elsewhere. He is the author of the book Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (Yale University Press), and the co-author of Libya’s Displacement Crisis: Uprooted by Revolution and Civil War (Georgetown University Press). Professor Fraihat received a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University in 2006. He is the recipient of George Mason University’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2014) for his achievements in the field of conflict resolution.
This material is presented as the original analysis of analysts at S-CAR and is distributed without profit and for educational purposes. Attribution to the copyright holder is provided whenever available as is a link to the original source. Reproduction of copyrighted material is subject to the requirements of the copyright owner. Visit the original source of this material to determine restrictions before reproducing it. To request the alteration or removal of this material please email [email protected].