The Americans Are Gone. Will Iraq’s Militias Disarm?
On September 30, the US completed its military withdrawal from Iraq, ending a 12-year-long mission to combat ISIS that began in 2014. The date was also meant to be the deadline for disarming the largely Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has now pushed that cutoff back to June 30, 2027. MEI Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Ford joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to discuss what the US military withdrawal means for Iraqi security and the nature of the bilateral relationship going forward. They also speak about what it will take for Baghdad to bring the PMF militias to heel, and how Iraq may navigate the post-Iran war era.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
Proponents of the war with Iran have taken recent increases in crude-oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz as proof that the US strategy is finally working. President Trump is so confident in this that he recently rejected a seven-day plan, set forward by Iran’s foreign ministry, to end the war and open the strait. The United States is “winning tremendously,” Trump boasted.
For decades the Arab Gulf states and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — have seen their economic fortunes rise and fall with the demand for their chief export, oil. To shield themselves from the volatility of global oil markets, these states have sought to diversify their economies by investing in a host of non-oil industries, especially services, commerce, and manufacturing.
The six oil-producing monarchies of the Persian Gulf — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — are among the most important but also the most enigmatic societies to study.
Iran’s political system has not yet developed stable party structures. Most parties are still loose coalitions of individuals and interest groups that combine their own interpretation of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s legacy with their personal interests. As party affiliation remains relatively weak, members of one party often have run as candidates for another party or are on several electoral lists. Similarly, unregistered parties or electoral platforms also field candidates for both presidential and parliamentary elections on an ad hoc basis.
Ten years ago, in the summer of 1998, I arrived in Tehran after an absence of more than two decades. Three vignettes describe some of what I experienced and why I decided to stay.
In assessing the progress of the revolution in Iran, it might be useful to recall how other revolutions of the 20th century fared at the 30-year interval. Using their commencement rather than the actual seizure of power as the baseline, the 30th anniversaries of major 20th century revolutions were 1940 for Mexico, 1947 for the Soviet Union, 1964 for China (using the “Long March” as the year), 1975 for Vietnam, 1983 for Cuba (dating its beginning with the attack on the Moncada Barracks), 1984 for Algeria, and 2008 for Nicaragua.
Back to the Future: Bazaar Strikes, Three Decades after the Iranian Revolution
This essay series examines the roles that community-based organizations (CBOs) have played as active participants in the process of “governing” megacities—whether in service delivery, risk mitigation, or the creation of
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
