Middle East Matters

This episode of Middle East Matters is the seventh installment of a series titled, “USA 2020: The View from the Arab World.” Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Mohammed Alyahya, Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya English. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

This episode of Middle East Matters is the sixth installment of a series titled, “USA 2020: The View from the Arab World.” Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Raghida Dergham, award-winning journalist and Founder and Executive Chairman of the Beirut Institute. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election. 

Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Mina al-Oraibi, Editor-in-Chief of the United Arab Emirates’ premier English language newspaper, The National. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Ayad Allawi, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Iraq. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, an award-winning Kuwaiti-Palestinian-American reporter and broadcaster. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a renowned political scientist and public intellectual from Dubai. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

Throughout this series, Tarek Masoud, MEI Faculty Director and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, and Ambassador Karim Haggag, professor of practice at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo, will speak with distinguished Arab thought-leaders to get their perspective on American politics. Masoud and Haggag are joined in this episode by Nabil Fahmy, former Foreign Minister of Egypt and Dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo. This conversation occurred before the 2020 US presidential election.

A week before recording this episode, the U.S. Congress released a report directly naming Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the party responsible for the October 2018 murder of the Saudi columnist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The Biden administration has imposed a ban on several leading Saudi officials who were also implicated in that crime, but it has conspicuously avoided slapping sanctions on the crown prince himself, setting off a debate in this country about the proper U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and with Saudi Arabia's leaders. MEI Faculty Director Tarek Masoud sat down with Professor Bernard Haykel of Princeton University to discuss Saudi Arabia, its leader, and the future of U.S.-Saudi Relations.

Episode Contributors:GuestMina Al-OraibiEditor-in-Chief, The NationalYale World FellowHostsTarek MasoudSultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations, Harvard Kennedy SchoolFaculty Director, Middle East InitiativeKarim HaggagVisiting Fellow, Middle East Initiative (2020-2021)Professor of Practice, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, The American University in Cairo (AUC)