Crafting a new policy toward Iran is a complicated, uncertain, and perilous challenge. Since it is an extremely complex society, with an opaque political system, it is no wonder that the United States has not yet figured out the puzzle that is Iran. With the clock ticking on Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities, solving this puzzle is more urgent than ever.

"In Which Path to Persia?" a group of experts with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings lays out the courses of action available to the United States. What are the benefits and drawbacks of airstrikes? Can engagement be successful? Is regime change possible? In answering such questions, the authors do not argue for one approach over another. Instead, they present the details of the policies so that readers can understand the complexity of the challenge and decide for themselves which course the United States should take.

Iraq is rapidly descending into all-out civil war. Unfortunately, the United States probably will not be able to just walk away from the chaos. Even setting aside the humanitarian nightmare that will ensue, a full-scale civil war would likely consume more than Iraq: historically, such massive conflicts have often had highly deleterious effects on neighboring countries and other outside states. Spillover from an Iraq civil war could be disastrous. Thus begins this sobering analysis of what the near future of Iraq could look like, and what America can do to reduce the threat of wider conflict. Preventing spillover of the Iraqi conflict into neighboring states must be a top priority. In explaining how that can be accomplished, Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack draw on their own considerable expertise as well as relevant precedents. The authors scrutinize several recent civil wars, including Lebanon, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. After synthesizing those experiences into lessons on how civil wars affect other nations, Byman and Pollack draw from them to produce recommendations for U.S. policy. Even while the Bush Administration attempts to prevent further deterioration of the situation in Iraq, it needs to be planning how to deal with a full-scale civil war if one develops.

Praise for
The Five Front War

"Daniel Byman writes with the access and intimacy of an insider and the critical, dispassionate eye of an outsider. At a time when the sky does, indeed, appear to be falling, he offers us hopeful, realistic solutions for defeating terrorism. The Five Front War should be required reading for scholars, soldiers, and citizens searching for the way ahead."
--Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize-winning national security correspondent, the Washington Post

"An impressively comprehensive analysis of one of the most formidable security challenges of our time. Its authoritative policy recommendations are as timely as they are compelling."
--Bruce Hoffman, Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; and Senior Fellow, Combating Terrorism Center, U.S. Military Academy

"Daniel Byman lays out a series of cogent, well-argued strategies to prevail in the struggle against violent jihadists in The Five Front War that will be of considerable interest to policymakers, journalists, and the interested public alike. An important and well-written addition to the field."
--Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know

The security environment in the Middle East has become increasingly complicated during the past decade. While fears of interstate aggression certainly remain important, they are manifesting themselves in new ways. The Arab-Israeli conflict has taken on new dimensions, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are an increasing concern, and international sanctions have become a controversial tool. Terrorists recruited and trained in the Middle East have carried out devastating attacks far beyond their own borders. Many of these security issues are profoundly affected by the many domestic changes occurring in the Middle East. This report seeks to identify the trends that are likely to shape regional security in the Middle East, and to identify their implications for the United States. Each chapter addresses a different substantive area, ranging from political and economic trends to energy policy and weapons proliferation, in an effort to assess their long-term impact on regional security. The authors identify potential problems on the horizon, opportunities available to the United States and its allies, and the implications of these trends for the United States.

Outside supporters, including state and non-state sponsors, of insurgent movements offer various forms of assistance to insurgents based on a wide range of motivations. The most useful forms of outside support for an insurgent movement include safe havens, financial support, political backing, and direct military assistance. Because states are able to provide all of these types of assistance, their support has had a profound impact on the effectiveness of many rebel movements since the end of the Cold War. However, state support is no longer the only, or indeed necessarily the most important, game in town. Diasporas have played a particularly important role in sustaining several strong insurgencies. More rarely, refugees, guerrilla groups, or other types of non-state supporters play a significant role in creating or sustaining an insurgency, offering fighters, training, or other forms of assistance. This report assesses post-Cold War trends in external support for insurgent movements. It describes the frequency that states, diasporas, refugees, and other non-state actors back guerrilla movements. It also assesses the motivations of these actors and which types of support matter most. This book concludes by assessing the implications for analysts of insurgent movements.

Religion, nationalism, ethnicity, economics, and geopolitics all are important in explaining Iran's goals and tactics in its relation-ship with the outside world, as are the agendas of key security institutions and the ambitions of their leaders.

This report explores how the US military might improve co-ordination with relief agencies and with European allies in such operations. It examines the dynamics of complex contingency operations, provides an overview of the relief community, and delineates barriers to better co-operation.

One-liner: A framework for intelligence analysts to use to think systematically about the potential for the rise of a peer competitor to the United States. The potential emergence of a peer competitor is probably the most important long-term planning challenge for the Department of Defense. This report addresses the issue by developing a conceptual framework of how a proto-peer (meaning a state that is not yet a peer but has the potential to become one) might interact with the hegemon (the dominant global power). The central aspect of the framework is an interaction between the main strategies for power aggregation available to the proto-peer and the main strategies for countering the rise of a peer available to the hegemon. Then, using exploratory modeling techniques, the pathways of the various proto-peer and hegemon interactions are modeled to identify the specific patterns and combinations of actions that might lead to rivalries. The dominant power has an array of options available to limit the growth of its rivals or to change their ultimate intentions. Too confrontational a strategy, however, risks making a potential neutral power into a foe, while too conciliatory a stance may speed the growth of a competitor. Exploratory modeling suggests which attributes of the countries are most important and the sensitivity of the dominant power to perception errors.