Salam Kawakibi

Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked New York and Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people. The terrorist attacks and their aftermath transformed U.S. policy, giving rise to the war on terror and the military intervention in Afghanistan. On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, scholars and Advisory Council members of MEI’s Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program offer their reflections. 

With Iran, American policymakers have often chased phantoms in search of solu­tions to problems they did not understand. This futile shadow-chase continues when “experts” argue that the U.S. should somehow encourage the break-up of Iran on ethnic or linguistic lines. This idea is simply wrong.

إن انسحاب العسكريين والدبلوماسيين الأمريكيين من أفغانستان خلال الأسابيع الماضية، مصحوبًا بنزوح جماعي مستميت للأفغان المرتعبين، إنما يُعجِّل بلحظة المراجعة على المستوى الوطني. إذ تمتلئ المنشورات الجديدة والتعليقات الصحفية ووسائل التواصل الاجتماعي بإشارات تعيد قراءة وتحليل الماضي – كالقصص الشخصية وكذا التحليلات السياسية – والتي تسعى إلى شرح السياق الممتد لمدة 20 عامًا مرت منذ اللحظة التي ضربت فيها الطائرات المخطوفة أبراج مركز التجارة العالمي والبنتاغون حتى اليوم. والكثير منها يسعى إلى وضع سجل للأداء يحدد مدى المكاسب والخسائر.

Vision 2030 promises a transformation of Saudi Arabia’s economy, and the financial sector will be crucial to achieving this. The sector will facilitate private investment focusing on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing, fund mega-projects, and be a driver for diversifying away from oil. As a result, banks’ role must go from being distributive and largely passive to developmental and active. This article will highlight how the role of the Saudi banking sector has been transformed in the last five years and how its composition is changing to cope.

Unanticipated swiftness of victory can be potentially befuddling, even for the victor. After the Taliban’s dramatic and largely bloodless capture of power, their leadership has struggled to finalize the structure of a government that will rule the country. The group, however, has attempted to use the interregnum period to indulge in a rebranding exercise. Statements issued by its spokespersons in Kabul as well as in Doha indicate that the group does not wish to take revenge on the “collaborators” of the fallen government. Instead, it wishes to form an “inclusive” government, which although it will be governed by sharia, may still have role for former government servants and women. However, this could only be a feeble attempt at building a narrative, which the group will find hard to sustain, even in the short term.  

On July 24, Beirut and Baghdad signed a governmental framework agreement under which Iraq pledged 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil to Lebanon over a full year.

Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.

These developments come against the backdrop of multiple U.S. hints that Washington is potentially willing to circumvent sanctioning the participating parties under the Caesar Act.

For over a decade, Russia’s immediate neighborhood has been subject to the vagaries of the Kremlin’s cyber operations. Russia has effectively used cyberspace to advance its adversarial goals, be it through combining cyberattacks with military action during its war with Georgia, or targeting essential power grids in Ukraine. Advancing its cyber capabilities has enabled Russia to reassert its status as a superpower and hit targets anywhere in the world. In recent years, as the use of social media grew, the information war in cyberspace became the Kremlin’s primary tool for discrediting its perceived archenemy: “The West.” The Middle East, with its increasing dependence on social media for news, has also fallen prey to Moscow’s disinformation campaigns. Russia’s main disinformation narratives in the region stem from its Soviet-inherited superpower complex and its broader strategic imperatives on the international stage. 

Elisabeth Kendall and Nadwa al-Dawsari join Charles Lister to discuss Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its place in Yemen’s persistent internal conflict.

On Aug. 25, Iran’s parliament voted on the cabinet of its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, approving 18 out of the 19 ministers put forward. Raisi’s government is full of revolutionaries likely to adopt a hardline approach to domestic and international affairs, leading to heightened geopolitical risk and potentially prolonging the country’s economic crisis.

In an automotive first for North Africa, German automaker Opel will soon begin producing electric cars in Morocco. Opel’s electric car manufacturing in Kénitra leapfrogs China’s plan to build electric cars in Egypt, giving Morocco’s automotive industry an important first-mover advantage. The move also represents a strategic gain for European automotive manufacturing over China. As a gateway to West Africa, Morocco provides Opel and its parent company Stellantis a nearby production base for the eventual cost-effective export of electric vehicles to rapidly expanding markets in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Under President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is poised to exert greater control over Iran’s national security agenda and economy. Several of his ministers and advisors were members of the IRGC or have connections to it.