With the new administration's Middle East policies differing greatly from those of the previous administration, both America and Israel will be facing ever-greater military and national security challenges. While Arab civil wars are nothing new, Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews saw 70 years of relatively peaceful co-existence shattered during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Although the Biden administration claims it wants to prevent the rearmament of Hamas, Iran and its proxies will likely continue providing billions of dollars for military aggression including missiles, drones, tunnels and offshore attacks.

Meanwhile, all U.S. forces will withdraw from Afghanistan on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and terrorist groups run rampant across Iraq, Syria and Yemen, plagued by Houthi rebels, who were recently removed from the United States' Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. The Abraham Accords are also increasingly unstable, given that Saudi Arabia appears to be strengthening ties with Iran, rather than becoming the fifth Arab nation to sign a normalization agreement with Israel as expected. China and Russia also have their hands in the Mideast, complicating matters and leaving everyone to wonder what the coming years will bring.

Shoshana Bryen and Clare Lopez are experts on the region and ever-changing military maneuvers. Join us to hear their expert analyses and insights on what to expect in the Middle East under the Biden administration.

About the speakers:

Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC, with a mission to alert and educate Americans on national security threats by everything from the Muslim Brotherhood to Marxists and communists in the US. In 2020, Lopez was named a Senior Analyst for Ravenna Associates, a strategic corporate communications firm based in Virginia. She also works with Bishop E.W. Jackson & his STAND Organization.

From 2014 to 2020, Lopez served as VP for Research & Analysis at the Center for Security Policy, during which time she was named to Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign national security advisory team. Before that, she was a career operations officer with the CIA, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence & Security Studies. In February 2012, Ms. Lopez was named a member of the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

Lopez received a B.A. in Communications & French from Notre Dame College of Ohio & an M.A. in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and completed Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly. A specialist in U.S. defense policy and Middle East affairs, she was previously Executive Director and Senior Director for Security Policy at JINSA. She has worked with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and lectured at the National Defense University in Washington, and the American service academies.

Mrs. Bryen coordinated programs for military professionals that allowed more than 450 American military officers to engage in discussion with counterparts in Israel and Jordan. She also created a program to take the cadets and midshipmen of America’s service academies to Israel, permitting hundreds of future officers to have a positive, in-depth experience in the Jewish State.

Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Sun and Defense News, Forbes.com, DailyWire and Gatestone Institute. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Aleethia Foundation providing opportunities for wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars, and is a Member of the Board of the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI).