الخليج وشبه الجزيرة العربية

The latest IPCC reports clearly indicate that cities — responsible for up to 72% of global emissions — need to be redesigned to stand a chance against the climate crisis. The urban communities of the Middle East and Black Sea regions face some of the most difficult climate change effects. To properly address their challenges, a comprehensive analysis of drivers and strategies to follow is needed.

Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s meandering efforts to explain his about-face on Saudi Arabia—visiting the country this week after having dubbed it a “pariah” on the campaign trail—there remains much apprehension about his trip on both ends of the political spectrum. Progressives and human rights advocates worry the president will sacrifice U.S. values for short-term Faustian bargains in an attempt to secure cheap oil and expand Arab-Israeli normalization. Republicans and realists, who favor an interest-driven approach to foreign policy, aren’t sure there is enough to be gained by Washington on these fronts to justify a presidential visit.

Industry analysts widely agree that OPEC+ production levels are currently well below the members’ authorized quotas and that any production increases will mainly be met by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The challenges facing the group are daunting, but if met, seven major OPEC countries could feasibly raise crude oil production while utilizing existing infrastructure, significantly narrowing the global demand-supply gap.

For many years, Iran’s educated elites have been leaving the country in growing numbers. They are emigrating, mostly to Western countries, for various reasons, but chief among them are poor economic conditions and a lack of political and social freedoms at home. Iran’s information technology sector is among the sectors hit hardest due to the burgeoning outflow of its experts in recent years.

For the past year, negotiations over the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have not been conclusive. It appears that Iran’s current JCPOA calculations are shaped by three key factors: the future transition of power, lessons learned from the Ukraine war, and changes in the emerging international order.

The Iranian authorities anticipate that President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East is aimed at one top priority: to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to its partners in the region. To achieve this goal, the expectation in Tehran is that Biden will make some concessions to America’s regional partners, but the Iranians are very hopeful that these will be limited and not capsize the already tenuous U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. 

Mid-term election success will tempt the American president to go for quick wins, but he must enter into talks with an eye on the global demand for energy

While there will continue to be a market for oil and associated petrochemical products for some time to come, the short- and medium-term opportunities in gas production will be transformational for some MENA states.

When gaming out the country’s likely political trajectory, most fellow Saudi watchers I know agree that the likelihood of the kingdom imploding is slight, but were that to come to pass, the consequences for the U.S. and the rest of the world would be enormous. Yet Saudi Arabia has managed to negotiate several turbulent events in its recent history with a rather remarkable lack of destabilization. And it’s most likely to continue along that trend, even in the face of what could be more storms to come.

Throughout the month of June, Qatar Energy, the state-owned energy company responsible for delivering the newly named North Field East Project, captivated the attention of global energy players. After more than six months of bid evaluation, the Qataris have selected the partners in the drive to expand their LNG capacity. While all partners have minor interests, the Qataris have publicly secured participation from representative Western energy players.

As the threat of a new Turkish military incursion into northern Syria looms, other international stakeholders in the Syrian crisis continue to voice their concerns over Ankara’s ambitions. At odds with Turkey since 2011 over its desire to overthrow the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its support for an array of armed opposition factions, Iran has been increasingly vocal of late in opposing a potential new Turkish military operation.

The departure of Hossein Taeb from his post as the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization triggered a wave of reshuffling in the command structure of the guardsmen. But the story is more than just a reaction to Iran’s unsuccessful terrorist targeting of Israelis in Turkey and counterintelligence lapses. There are internal power struggles and a natural maturation of the Islamic Republic’s security structure that also likely figured into the decision to remove Taeb.

Randa Slim is joined by Farhad Alaadin and Marsin Alshamary to discuss the latest political events in Iraqi Parliament, Muqtada al-Sadr, and what the future of Iraqi politics could look like moving forward.

After a three-month-long suspension of the nuclear talks in Vienna, the U.S. and Iran appear set to resume diplomatic negotiations on June 28 in Doha, Qatar. While it is too early to be optimistic about the outcome, the Iranians and the Americans both seem to believe the talks in Doha represent a sink-or-swim moment for U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations.