Persian Gulf Initiative

The Persian Gulf Initiative seeks to explore the shifting dynamics in this critical region in the vernacular of the region-providing a platform for understanding emerging issues and their policy implications from the perspective of the region itself, and how they relate to the United States and to the broader international community. In effect, this is an effort to shift the focus from U.S.-centric to region-centric, and to include issues that evolve from and affect the domestic and regional political and security environment.

The Initiative is organized around workshops at which leading scholars and practitioners from the region, Europe, and the United States examine issues of common concern and interest. From these workshops, occasional papers, reports, published articles, and public forums, we provide both the context and the means to create new knowledge useful to scholars, policy practitioners, journalists, and NGOs. Our goal is to constructively contribute to public debate in the United States, the Gulf and beyond, on this region of central geography, venerable history, great cultures, and contemporary significance.

In its initial offerings in 2005, the Initiative hosted a series of workshops on "The Crisis in Governance" in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. In 2006, two workshops were convened, one in April on transnational violence and the second in November on the regional implications of the war in Iraq. Future workshops are planned on topics relevant to India and the Gulf, energy security, Iranian civil society, and the governance challenge.

The Iraq mortality study was commissioned from this program and published in The Lancet, stirring important new debates on the human cost of the war. Several public forums have been mounted in New York, Washington, D.C., and the MIT campus. Among the notable events was a talk by former Iranian president Mohammed Khatemi, who visited in September 2006, addressing faculty, students, alumni, and guests.