Lebanon's Arab Spring

Lebanon’s Arab Spring

Posted: November 6th, 2019

By Emile Nakhleh

Dr. Emile Nakhleh is a retired Senior Intelligence Service Officer, a founding director of the CIA's Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and the Global and the National Security Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. Since retiring from the government, Nakhleh has consulted on national security issues, particularly Islamic radicalization, terrorism, and the Arab states of the Middle East. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Cipher Brief’s Expert Take column highlights the thinking of our experts based on their areas of expertise. Emile Nakhleh is a former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service.

Lebanon’s largely peaceful “Arab Spring” is a model in civic activism for the greater Middle East. Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s offer to resign in response to the country’s popular uprising, which has been devoid of bloodshed and mayhem, is starkly different from the response of regimes to the first Arab spring in 2011. It’s also different from the Iraqi government’s bloody response to protests in Baghdad even though following the killing of hundreds of demonstrators, the Iraqi prime minister has also offered to resign.

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