Congress shifts its focus to one of the Middle East’s few bright spots next week, even as it seeks to ensure that nuclear talks with Iran don’t further add to the regional chaos.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee's MENA panel holds a hearing July 14 with a panel of outside experts on “Tunisia’s fragile democratic transition.” The hearing comes as the White House on July 10 completed the process to designate the country as America’s 16th major non-NATO ally, a symbolic move that also comes with “tangible privileges including eligibility for training, loans of equipment for cooperative research and development, and Foreign Military Financing for commercial leasing of certain defense articles,” according to the State Department.
“Tunisia’s future is still far from certain, but it remains in the national security interests of the US to see the North African country complete its transition toward democracy and to adequately address the threat it faces from violent and radical extremists, like [Islamic State] and other terror groups,” panel Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said in a statement announcing the hearing. “This hearing is an important opportunity to assess Tunisia’s current state of affairs and to identify areas in which the United States can help secure Tunisia’s democratic future.”
US lawmakers have vowed to help the tiny North African country complete its transition to democracy while helping it combat the Islamist terrorism that threatens to unravel its progress since the Arab Spring revolution that ousted Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. However, President Beji Caid Essebsi’s May visit highlighted the dearth of diplomatic tools available to help Middle East success stories.
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