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Bernard Haykel
For Bernard Haykel's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Palestinians watch as an Israeli strike hits near houses in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2023
War and chaos are what Hamas and Iran really want
Israel must be stopped from expelling the Palestinians from Gaza as that would radicalize and destabilize the entire region.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2022
Why the Saudis won’t pump more oil
Saudi and Emirati leaders have reportedly been declining U.S. President Joe Biden's calls to produce more oil in the wake of the U.S. ban on Russian imports.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 25, 2021
Biden’s U.S.-Saudi re-calibration
Biden, like every other U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, realizes that Saudi Arabia is vital to maintaining American strategic interests.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2016
Regional interests fuel Middle East's Cold War
The Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry could derail efforts to stabilize the Middle East and make a bad regional environment much worse.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2014
A caliph in his own mind
The recent declaration of a caliphate by the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is an unprecedented event in modern times, showing that violent jihadism is now an entrenched feature of the Arab political landscape.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2013
'Frenemies' in the Mideast
The recent interim nuclear agreement between Iran and the so-called P5-plus-1 countries, led by the U.S., has provoked unprecedented criticism of U.S. policy from two of its strongest Mideast allies: Israel and Saudi Arabia.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2011
Riyadh vs. the Arab Spring
Saudi Arabia is widely perceived as leading the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring uprisings. In reality, the kingdom's response is centered, as its foreign and domestic policy has long been, on "stability." The Saudis don't want anti-Saudi forces, including such enemies as Iran and al-Qaida, to increase their influence in the Middle East.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2011
Al-Qaida watches as Arab dramas unfold
PRINCETON, N.J. — The Arab world has entered the most dramatic period in its modern history. Oppressive regimes are being swept away, as Arab people finally take their fate into their own hands.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 23, 2008
Osama bin Laden: the Islamic bard of terror
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY — In Riyadh last March, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decorated U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney with the Kingdom's Order of Merit. This gesture elicited hundreds of Internet postings from Arabs condemning the award as treachery and lamenting the pitiful state of leadership in the Arab world.

Longform

High-end tourism is becoming more about the kinds of experiences that Japan's lesser-known places can provide.
Can Japan lure the jet-set class off the beaten path?