A new report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, “Communication Breakdown: Unraveling the Islamic State’s Media Efforts,” describes in detail the impact of military action on ISIS’ capacity to wage ideological warfare. Promising the coming of the caliphate and portraying the Islamic State as utopian reality about to happen has become all but impossible.

Iraq has been a difficult place for U.S. public diplomacy for a very long time now, and yet one would think that a war that the U.S. is fighting on behalf of and in collaboration with the Iraqi government and numerous other international partners, a war that is truly an existential one for Iraqi Shia, would produce at least some dividends in terms of Iraqi goodwill toward the United States. 

The soccer soft power contrast between Qatar and Iceland speaks volumes. A comparison of the strategies of both countries demonstrates that it takes more than money to leverage soccer to create political, geopolitical and economic opportunity. Money and world soccer body FIFA’s desire to take one of the world’s foremost sporting events beyond Europe and the Americas helped Qatar win the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

What the EU and Iran need is a strategic and structured dialogue. Strategic here means that it must reach beyond the list of specific (usually contentious) issues, look at the larger picture and set more long term goals for what kind of relationship the two parties want to have. Structured, in that it is underpinned by regular interaction on civil servant and technical levels dealing with a variety of sectors...

entrepreneurial diplomacy also has the potential to counter global trends of rising xenophobia and isolationism by providing a powerful channel for young men and women to express themselves and connect through a shared passion for invention and creativity.

Young Iranians today have more access to American cultural products than ever before [...] In his new book, After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East, Brian Edwards writes how popular, cinema, literary, digital, and academic culture from the U.S. reaches North Africa and the Middle East, is stripped of its Americanness, and is recontextualized in a different light.