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The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is one of a handful of influential U.S. policy institutions—sometimes referred to as the “Israel Lobby”—whose central aim is to push an Israel-centric Middle East agenda. Many of WINEP’s current and former scholars have been closely associated with neoconservatism, and the organization has been supportive of many of the same “war on terror” policies pushed by groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, a former research director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), WINEP was conceived as a think tank focused primarily on influencing the executive branch while AIPAC remained focused on lobbying congress. According to WINEP’s mission statement, it was established “to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East. … Drawing on the research of its scholars and the experience of policy practitioners, the Institute promotes an American engagement in the Middle East committed to strengthening alliances, nurturing friendships, and promoting security, peace, prosperity, and democracy for the people of the region.” [1]

In their controversial 2006 paper about the influence of the “Israel Lobby” on U.S. foreign policy, the scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote that part of the "Lobby's" success stems from its efforts to extend its reach beyond Beltway politics and into the domain of policy institutes. "The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk [who would later become an influential Mideast adviser to President Bill Clinton] helped to found the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a 'balanced and realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda." They continue: "The Lobby's influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of U.S. support for Israel." [2]

Despite having bipartisan credentials—WINEP's "Mission” page has featured prominent quotes from both Al Gore and neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer—the institute has served as an important venue for policies advocated by leading Bush administration hawks and their supporters outside government. Its activities include annual conferences, a Presidential Study Group composed of a "bipartisan blue-ribbon commission charged with drafting a blueprint for the next administration's Middle East policy," closed-door policy forums, and various publications and research programs. One of these activities, the annual Weinberg Founders Conference, served as a platform for Vice President Dick Cheney in late October 2007 to push for stronger action against Iran. Described by Inter Press Service reporter Jim Lobe as "the harshest speech against Iran given by a top George W. Bush administration official to date," [3] Cheney warned Tehran that there would be "serious consequences" if it did not freeze its nuclear program. He then accused Iran of "direct involvement in the killings of Americans," saying, "our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." He also used the occasion to defend the "surge" strategy in Iraq, arguing that the "greatest strategic threat that Iraq's Shiites face today in consolidating their rightful role in Iraq's new democracy is the subversive activities of the Iranian regime.” [4]

Like JINSA and other rightist, Israel-centric policy institutes covering Mideast issues, WINEP aims to cultivate close ties among senior military officials in the United States, Israel, Turkey and Jordan. The main mechanism for this outreach is WINEP’s Military Fellows Program, which "brings together senior officers from the armed forces of the United States and key Middle Eastern allies."

Through their overlapping staffs, WINEP is closely associated with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. The longtime director of the Jaffee Center was the late Maj. Gen. Aharon Yariv, former Israeli government minister and director of intelligence. Funds for the Jaffee Center were "provided mainly by members of Jewish communities of the United States who have proved aware of and sensitive to the need for such an institution in Israel." According to Jaffee's website, the center conducts research on Israeli national security and aims "to contribute to the public debate and governmental deliberation of issues that are—or should be—at the top of Israel's national security agenda." [5]

Robert Satloff is WINEP's executive director; Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research. WINEP adjunct scholars include Joshua Muravchik, Daniel Pipes, Harvey Sicherman (of the Foreign Policy Research Institute), and Raymond Tanter.

WINEP's Board of Advisers includes: Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Max M. Kampelman, Samuel W. Lewis, Edward Luttwak, Michael Mandelbaum, Robert McFarlane, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, James Roche, George P. Shultz, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Mortimer Zuckerman. Wolfowitz and Roche resigned from the board when they entered the Bush administration in 2001, although WINEP still proudly lists them.

WINEP boasts an extensive presence in the media, an achievement aided in part by the presence of major media figures on its advisory board, including Zuckerman of U.S. News & World Report and Peretz of the New Republic. Among WINEP's in-house publications are PolicyWatch and PeaceWatch. Both publications and the institute have been strong defenders of the massive, fortified fence that Israel is building along its borders and into the occupied territories. For example, in April 2004 WINEP published Policy Focus #47, The West Bank Fence: A Vital Component in Israel's Strategy of Defense, written by Maj. Gen. Doron Almog of the Israel Defense Forces.

Around the time of the 2006 Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, WINEP's publications were largely uncritical of Israel's actions, weighing in with a number of analyses regarding the sort of multinational force necessary to produce an end to the conflict, whether Syria can be brought on board in negotiations, and "the opportunities" a ground invasion might bring to Israel's negotiating position.

In 2006 and 2007, WINEP shifted more of its focus toward Iran. It created a new series, "Agenda: Iran," in which the institute intends to address "the most difficult but vital questions for U.S. policymakers confronting the Iranian nuclear challenge." Its first publication was the 46-page "Deterring the Ayatollahs: Complications in Applying Cold War Strategy to Iran," edited by Clawson and Eisenstadt. Though WINEP's Agenda: Iran series has so far produced only "Deterring the Ayatollahs," it lists several forthcoming titles, including "Salvation by Aggression? Apocalyptic Visions and Iran's Security Policy," by Mehdi Khalaji; "The Last Resort: Potential Iranian Responses to Preventive Military Action," by Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt; and "Speaking about the Unspeakable: U.S.-Israeli Dialogue on Iran's Nuclear Program," by Chuck Freilich. [6]

WINEP scholars have pushed for pressuring Iran economically, not militarily, through international partnerships. In July 2007 congressional testimony, Dennis Ross, then WINEP's Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, asked the Committee on House Foreign Affairs: "[I]f if the Bush administration offered to join negotiations now with Iran on the nuclear issue in return for these countries [Europe, Japan, India, and the Arab Gulf states] cutting the economic lifeline, might not they agree to do so?" [7] In November 2007, Clawson and Michael Jacobson, a WINEP senior fellow, opined in a Wall Street Journal piece that, "While the U.K. wields particularly powerful tools, there may also be other European countries now willing and ready to ramp up financial and economic pressure against Iran. ... A combined initiative by the United States and individual European countries to press Iran may strengthen the hand of those in Tehran arguing for accommodation. It would also be a good way to show China, Russia, and laggard European governments that with or without them, action will be taken against Iran. If they are dissatisfied with this approach, they should first spell out a realistic alternative that could bring Iran to suspend its enrichment program." [8]

During the Bush Senior and Clinton administrations, WINEP was the most influential think tank on Mideast policy. Its 1998 report, Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East, helped shape the George H. W. Bush administration policy toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The report advocated that the incoming administration "resist pressures for a procedural breakthrough until conditions have ripened." Writing for the Middle East Report, Stanford University professor Joel Beinin stated: "Six members of the study group responsible for the report joined the first Bush administration, which adopted this stalemate recipe not to change until change was unavoidable. Hence the United States acceded to Israel's refusal to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization despite the PLO's recognition of Israel at the November 1988 session of the Palestine National Council.” [9]

WINEP followed up its 1988 policy blueprint in 1992 with its Enduring Partnership report, which recommended a policy of dual containment to isolate Iran and Iraq. Eleven signatories of the 1992 report joined the Clinton administration, which adopted the dual containment framework. Indyk joined the administration as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

At the onset of the George W. Bush administration, WINEP's influence dimmed as neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and Project for the New American Century successfully pushed for a complete break from previous policy frameworks toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East. With several leading neoconservatives on its advisory board, including Perle and Wolfowitz, WINEP has over the past several years moved even further right toward the hardline positions of the Likud Party militarists, a move that has been buttressed by the addition of several other neoconservatives to its ranks, including Rubin, Kramer, Pipes, and Muravchik.

In Spring 2002, WINEP sponsored a 52-member group of experts and congressional members who declared that "circumstances were not ripe for high-level efforts to restart the peace negotiations, and that the most urgent task was to prevent a regional war while fighting terrorism and weapons proliferation," as Beinin phrased it. Such a policy, observed Beinin, "allows Israel to assert its overwhelming military advantage and to continue to create facts on the ground, especially settlements, which will make peace all the more difficult to achieve in the future." WINEP later rejected the Bush administration's "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Echoing those opposed to any negotiations with the Palestinians, WINEP Executive Director Satloff dismissed the proposal as a "sham" since it was based on an "indecent parallelism between Israeli and Palestinian behavior." [10]

According to research by MediaTransparency.org, the WINEP received grants totaling $663,509 from two rightwing foundations in the 1991 to 2005 period: Smith Richardson Foundation and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. [11] However, this is far from the sum total of all funding for WINEP. Other WINEP funders include the Adler Family Foundation, the CMS Foundation, the Lafer Family Foundation, the James and Merryl Tisch Foundation, the Harold and Anna S. Ullian Foundation, and the Etzioni Charitable Foundation. [12]  According to Charity Navigator, WINEP's "total functional expenses" for fiscal 2005 were $5.5 million, and its net assets were $22 million. [13]