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The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East
The promise of democracy for Muslims offers something historically unparalleled. Where Islamist groups once dreamed of revolution, quietly developed paramilitary cells, and assassinated their secular opponents, mainstream Islamist groups today see elections as a means for society to maintain akhlaq; the mores that define good Muslims.
Learn MoreAnalysis & Commentary - Reuel Marc Gerecht
Did Obama Improve Our Position in Afghanistan?
I asked Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies his take on whether the Taliban was growing stronger. He answered via e-mail: “They have an ideology/theology they believe in. more...
Year After bin Laden’s Death: Al-Qaeda ‘Far From Defeated’
"He created an organization and developed it," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA official and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "I don't think his death fundamentally affects the future of jihadist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan,"... more...
Israel Can’t Afford the Happy Talk
Reuel Marc Gerecht posits that real success is almost certainly unattainable and would require that Iran “(1) Stop all uranium enrichment to 20 percent purity, which is near bomb-grade; (2) ship abroad the entire stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium... more...
Iran’s Trail of Terror
Not since the fall of the Soviet Union has any nation so aggressively pursued alliances with bad actors in so many places worldwide, acknowledged Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who focused primarily on Iran. more...
Iran’s Spymaster Counters US Moves in the Mideast
Last October, a former Central Intelligence Agency spy, Reuel Marc Gerecht, testified before Congress that if the Qods Force's role in last year's alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador is proven, the U.S. "should hold Qasem Soleimani responsible…. Go get him, either try to capture him or kill him." more...
Conservatives Lead From the Front, but Will Obama Follow?
In February, a distinguished list of conservative foreign policy experts including Liz Cheney, Cliff May and Max Boot wrote to Obama, warning: “Unless the United States takes the lead and acts, either individually or in concert with like-minded nations... more...
EU Pays Price for Oil Sanctions on Iran: John Kemp
In an influential report on the "Oil Market Impact of Sanctions Against the Central Bank of Iran", which has circulated widely in Washington and European capitals, sanctions advocates Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies... more...
Conservatives Call for Obama to Intervene in Syria
Fifty-six leading conservative foreign-policy experts wrote an open letter Friday to U.S. President Barack Obama calling on him to directly aid the Syrian opposition and protect the lives of Syrian civilians. more...
Regime Change: How Fear of Iran Nukes, and Campaign Politics, Revived the Call
Taking a cue from the Arab Spring and the toppling of Arab tyrants by popular movements, some regional experts say an Iranian population infuriated by increasingly dire economic conditions could do the same. more...
Can EU Oil Sanctions Create a Turning Point in Iran?
The strategy of inflicting laser-like oil sanctions on Iran without disrupting global energy markets, and thereby reducing Iran's oil profits, was first developed by Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and senior fellow at FDD. more...
Iran Says Scientist’s Murder Reveals Global Terror Campaign
That alone is difficult, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on Iran who is now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington foreign- policy research organization. more...
The Canny General: Quds Force Commander Ghasem Soleimani
Testifying to the same subcommittee on the same day, the neoconservative Marc Reuel Gerecht, a retired CIA agent who worked in the Middle East for years, made it clear who Keane had primarily in mind more...
Mysterious Blasts, Slayings Suggest Covert Efforts in Iran
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative who specialized on Iran, said he doesn't believe that the CIA could mount a sophisticated covert campaign of sabotage inside Iran, where the U.S. has not had an embassy since 1979. more...
Experts: Alleged Plot Shows Iran has No Fear of US
If the Justice Department account is accurate, the plot was launched with the approval of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and means Iran's leaders "did not fear a muscular American response," said former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht more...
Iran’s Nuclear Setbacks: More Than Just Bad Luck?
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank, said a faction within Iran's government might have ordered the assassinations. He said one researcher supported Iran's persecuted opposition, while the others may have been suspected of spying for the West. more...
Oh, Yeah, There is an Iran-al-Qaeda Connection
Iran expert and former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies was part of that debate. He e-mails me: more...
Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther, and the Muslim Brotherhood
Like Reihan and Alex Massie, I’ve been curious to know what Reuel Marc Gerecht — former CIA officer, Islam expert, and robust supporter of Arab democracy — thinks about the extraordinary events convulsing Egypt. Gerecht combines a staunch belief in the inevitability of Middle East democratization with a sober-minded realism about its probable consequences. Back in the heady “Arab Spring” days of 2005 — before Iraq became an abattoir of sectarian bloodletting, before an Islamist group captured roughly 20 percent of all seats in the Egyptian national assembly, and before the Palestinians elected Hamas — he rebuffed the notion that somehow the region could embrace genuine democratic pluralism while keeping religious fundamentalists on the sidelines. “The history of democratic Christendom,” Gerecht wrote in The Weekly Standard, suggests that “you don’t get to arrive at Thomas Jefferson unless you first pass through Martin Luther.” more...