11/05/2025 | 12:00pm

The Middle East Policy Forum, in collaboration with the Elliott School Book Launch Series, is proud to host Professor Marc Lynch as he speaks about his forthcoming book, America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region.

After Hamas’ shocking 2023 attack on Israel, the United States stood firmly behind Israel’s near-genocidal war on Gaza, despite widespread moral outrage and significant damage to Washington’s global agenda. But Gaza is only the latest paradox in thirty-five years of Middle East policy. How did this pattern develop, why can’t policymakers learn from repeated Middle Eastern calamities, and what does Gaza’s destruction mean for America’s place in the world?

Professor Marc Lynch charts the United States’ disastrously failed approach to the post–Cold War Middle East, where aspirations for U.S. leadership and a calm region have only produced war, instability, and humanitarian catastrophe. Professor Lynch exposes the failure of each president’s efforts to transform the Middle East in America’s image, or pivot away from the region; Washington’s refusal to take seriously the views of Middle Easterners; and its fantasy of forging a regional order ‘without’ the Palestinian issue.

Moving between American politics and Middle Eastern realities, this incisive account explains why U.S. policy has not changed despite its horrifying human costs, from Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to Iran, Yemen and Libya.

You can participate in the conversation with Professor Marc Lynch in-person or virtually. The event is open to the public and the media.