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The recent revolutionary movements in the Middle East and North Africa have presented a unique opportunity for women to exert their influence in shaping the future of women's rights. Specifically, the question arises as to whether social movements help women fight patriarchal structures in the Middle East. This paper has chosen the Green Movement in Iran as a focal point, using the rise of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia as a point of comparison. An extensive literature review was conducted to provide the historical context as well as an analysis of the rise of social movements. Using a transnational feminist lens, both cases were analyzed and it was found that neither the Arab Spring nor the Green Movement in Iran were able to facilitate the improvement of women's rights. This was mainly found to be due to the traditional and patriarchal structures, and it is argued that for women to gain freedom and empowerment, Islam must be detached from the legal system. While the fight for women's rights are seen as an uphill battle on an international level, Women and Revolutionary Turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa provides a relevant argument within the realm of international studies.Les mouvements révolutionnaires récents dans le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord ont présenté une opportunité unique pour les femmes d'exercer leur influence afin de construire l'avenir des droits des femmes. Une question spécifique se pose à savoir si les mouvements sociaux aident les femmes à se battre contre les structures patriarcales ou non. Le point focal de cet essai est le mouvement de politique vert en Iran tandis que l'avènement du Printemps arabe en Égypte et en Tunisie est utilisé comme point de comparaison. Les deux cas ont été analysés à travers une lentille féministe transnationale et il en ressort qu'aucun mouvement n'a pu faciliter l'amélioration des droits des femmes. Plusieurs raisons expliquent cet échec, notamment les structures traditionnelles et patriarcales de ces régions. Cet essai fait aussi valoir que pour que les femmes puissent atteindre la liberté et l'autonomie, l'Islam doit être détaché du système légal. La lutte pour les droits des femmes est souvent considérée comme une lutte ardue au niveau international, et cet essai fournit un argument pertinent au sein des études internationales.

This collection of articles by 14 Middle East historians is a pathbreaking work in the history of Middle Eastern women prior to the contemporary era. The collection seeks to begin the task of reconstructing the history of (Muslim) women's experience in the middle centuries of the Ottoman era, between the mid-seventeenth century and the early nineteenth, prior to hegemonic European involvement in the region and prior to the "modernizing reforms' inaugurated by the Ottoman regime

Never before has a country committed itself to so fundamental and dramatic a transformation of a major region of the world as the United States has in the Middle East since 2001… . It remains to be seen how well the rhetoric of promoting reform will weather the experience of promoting reform.

There can be little doubt that the conflict between the UN-authorized and US-led Multinational Coalition and Iraq at the start of 1991, as a result of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime's decision in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait, has produced profound changes in the political and diplomatic environment of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Mashriqi and Maghribi political attitudes. The new atmosphere of confidence amongst the governments and peoples of the Arab states of the Gulf is clear evidence of these changes, as is the dejection felt in capitals such as Amman, Sanaa and Tunis where government support for the Coalition was less than wholehearted.

According to the contemporary Russian strategic approach, the Middle East region witnessed a gradual return to the influential role of this country, as Russia achieved great rapprochement with the region and was able to restore its relations with some of its countries. It also tended to play political and military roles in pivotal issues. This return was accompanied by an increasing desire to penetrate several regions' countries. Such a penetration would help Russia in ensuring a better position in international interactions and open a new vital field to maximize its strategic interests.

This article challenges the common assumption that the external actors involved in the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) are driven either by neo-realist strategic competition or by the constraining power of domestic lobbies, or by a mixture of both. Such implicit assumptions are evident in the controversial argument of the power of the 'Israel lobby' as promoted by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. This article argues that approaches based on such assumptions fail to explain adequately the policies adopted not only by the United States, but also by other key external actors who have been historically engaged in the MEPP — the Soviet Union and the European Union. A better explanatory framework is provided by treating the MEPP as an institution and by applying a historical institutionalist approach to the development of the MEPP, using such concepts as critical junctures, path dependence and positive feedback to analyse how the main external actors involved in the MEPP came to adopt their distinctive national approaches to the peace process. In particular, it is the responses of these actors to certain critical junctures, most notably but not exclusively to the period of the 1967 and 1973 Arab–Israeli wars, that has had a particularly strong influence on policy formulation. For the US case, the creative policymaking of Henry Kissinger during the period after the 1973 war, which was subsequently incorporated into the US conceptualization of the MEPP, provides powerful and generally unrecognized insights into the initial puzzle identified by Walt and Mearsheimer — the consistent and almost unconditional support given to Israel by the United States despite the strategic problems this creates for broader US Middle East policy.