When the US and Israel launched military action against Iran on February 28, 2026, it set in motion a chain of events that saw violence spread across the Middle East. Yet as the region found itself engulfed in conflict, Syria has experienced its most peaceful months in 15 years, and the government in Damascus appears determined to stay its course toward recovery.
Unlocking the Levant: Why the United States and Syria Must Pursue a Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement
Apart from the brief honeymoon period between 1961 and 1963 under President John F. Kennedy and President Nazim al-Qudsi, US-Syria relations have never held such optimistic potential as they do today. Today, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad regime and the rise of a new government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the end of 2024, a new geopolitical window has opened.
Though it has fallen out of the headlines because of the Iran war, Syria has had a dramatically consequential summer. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj are joined by MEI Senior Fellow Charles Lister to take stock of recent developments: the dissolution of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Israeli strikes and the friction with Turkey they have exposed, the standoff in Sweida, as well as Damascus’s bid to turn Syria into a trade corridor between the Mediterranean and the Gulf. Is the transition consolidating or fragmenting nearly two years after the fall of the Assad regime?
MEI’s Syria Initiative seeks to provide insightful and grounded research and analysis on all things Syria in order to better inform a wide range of audiences and to help sustain and shape a more meaningful policy-oriented discussion.
The Middle East Institute, The Atlantic Council, and European Institute of Peace collaborate with subject matter experts and policymakers in the US, Europe, and the Middle East to develop a holistic strategy to sustainably forge a pathway to resolving Syria’s crisis.
Five Arab Elections in Search of a Democratic Transition
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika casts his ballot on April 17.
In the current two months between mid-April and early June, five Arab countries—Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and even war-torn Syria—are holding key elections, with little sign that any is moving in the direction of meaningful democratic transition.
The Middle East Dialogue is a regional Track II forum that meets twice a year and brings together current and former officials and senior experts from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU to discuss emerging political & security trends in the region. What follows is a report from the latest meeting of the Dialogue in Erbil, Iraq, on March 30-31, 2014, led by MEI’s Director of Track II Dialogues Randa Slim and VP for Policy and Research Paul Salem.
The Impact of the Syria Conflict on Salafis and Jihadis in Lebanon
This MEI Policy Focus seeks to address the Syrian war’s effects on Lebanon against the backdrop of exacerbated sectarian tensions and political-religious instability. The study first provides a brief background on the state of Salafism in Lebanon, followed by an assessment of the situation of the Sunni street at large. It then examines the wider implications that the Syrian war has had on Lebanon, namely the call for jihad launched in 2013 by Sunni sheiks around the country and the resulting burgeoning of relations between Salafis and Syrian military and radical organizations.
Comments by KRG President Massoud Barzani at Middle East Dialogue in Erbil
The Middle East Dialogue is a Track II forum focusing on emerging political and security trends in the region that meets twice a year, bringing together current and former officials and senior experts from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU. Members of the delegation, led by The Middle East Institute’s president, Wendy Chamberlin, met March 31 with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The political crisis in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia have sent reverberations throughout the Middle East, where Western and Russian influences continue to weave a complex geopolitical web. MEI interviewed four of its scholars to produce this detailed account of the challenges the conflict poses to the region’s political, security, and economic conditions.
Testimony by MEI’s Paul Salem before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, delivered February 25, 2014. Find more information here about the hearing, including full video (Salem’s testimony begins at 1:22:40).
Turkey and the Kurds: From Predicament to Opportunity
This report was co-authored by Ömer Taşpınar and was published by the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution on Jan. 22, 2014. Click here to download the full report as a PDF.
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his ghost was in Riyadh the other day, hovering over Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as he issued a decree making it a crime for any Saudi citizen to take part in a war outside the kingdom.
The obvious motivator was the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of young Saudis have been spotted in the ranks of the most radical jihadi groups battling both the government and other less extreme rebels. But the roots of the king’s action, and the problem it was designed to address, can be traced to the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
In most wars combatants wield aid as a weapon, circumscribing humanitarian access and impeding assistance to civilians in enemy-held territory, hoping that hunger will starve resistance into submission or undermine the morale of foes. In no war is this truer than in Syria, where the horror of a prolonged vicious conflict has been compounded by aid being held hostage to politics and combat. The lack of adequate medical care, food, and shelter has added to the death toll and misery that has made Syria the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe this century.
MEI’s Syria Initiative seeks to provide insightful and grounded research and analysis on all things Syria in order to better inform a wide range of audiences and to help sustain and shape a more meaningful policy-oriented discussion. Drawing on the expertise of over a dozen renowned scholars, the Syria Program covers all aspects of Syria and its ongoing crises – from political, economic, legal, social, ethnic and religious dynamics, to conflict, insurgency and terrorism and the country’s history and possible futures.
