After a period defined as " revolutionary " in the years 1950-1960, whose epilogue was the first years of the Lebanese civil war, the Arab East experienced a wave of confrontations with Islamist movements in the wake of the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979. Since then, Arab political regimes have sought to perpetuate their existence through a quest for stability, marked by the strengthening of security instruments to control populations and a certain economic openness to outside investment. This stability is also linked to American hegemony in the region, particularly after the Gulf War. Until then, the Palestine question had been the first field of external involvement, but from 1991 onwards, the Iraq question emerged as a new area of intervention for foreign powers. In this configuration, the Syrian-Iranian axis, despite its rhetoric of resistance, struggled to thwart American hegemony.
From autumn 2000, the outbreak of the second Intifada and Saddam Hussein's Iraqi policy towards the international community made it increasingly difficult to ensure regional stability. Against this backdrop, the 11/09 attacks were seen as an additional, contingent event, drawing the Americans into a series of military interventions in which they ended up getting bogged down. These interventions are also in line with the vision of the George W. Bush administration and the American neoconservatives, who advocate the establishment of " democracies " in the region, which by their very nature are supposed to serve their interests. In so doing, they overlook a multitude of political dynamics and characteristics specific to Arab populations and their regimes, and in particular the importance of different forms of nationalism.
The sequence from the attacks of September 11 2001 to the invasion of Iraq on March 20 2003 triggered a whole series of regional crises at an accelerated pace, culminating in the " unexpected " revolutions of 2011.
The aim of this meeting, organized around several thematic roundtables, is to review the events of this period in order to examine both the reasons for their emergence and their concrete consequences.