Understanding the latest tensions in the Middle East from a military perspective

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The U.S. drone strike that killed Major General Qassim Suleimani has heightened tensions between the U.S. and the Middle East. This week, Iraq’s Parliament voted to remove 5,000 U.S. forces from the country, and Iran fired more than 20 ballistic missiles at two U.S. military bases in Iraq. Joseph Westphal, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Inaugural Chang Sun Term Professor at Penn’s Lauder Institute, discusses his perspective on the process that occurred leading up to last week’s strike against Iran, the state of U.S. relations with the Middle East over the last two years, and what to expect moving forward from both a military and economic perspective.

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