Analysis

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, military and economic relations between Iran and Russia have improved, as their tensions with the West have intensified. One aspect of the relationship that has received little attention is their growing economic and trade cooperation involving the production, export, and import of halal meat and other products since 2015.

After a grueling 20-year campaign, America concluded its war in Afghanistan where it started: with the Taliban in charge. But this isn’t your father’s Taliban. In recognition of their need for a firmer ideological base and their desire to establish a purely Islamic system, the Taliban rulers are gradually putting together the framework for their new ideological state. They are enacting three closely intertwined ideological initiatives in order to solidify their rule: fleshing out a state religious ideology, burnishing their “originalist” religious credentials, and channeling Afghan nationalism into religious nationalism. These ongoing efforts, which revolve around the Taliban’s Islamism, provide a preview of how the new rulers intend to interact with temporal political realities by provoking religious reform in order to rule Afghanistan.

What these attacks and many others in the region have in common is Iran’s irrefutable involvement. They may have different local contexts and their perpetrators, all loyal to Iran, may have different motivations, but every single one of those attacks was possible only because Iran provided either the weapons or the know-how to assemble and use them.

Turkey, like all other countries, is facing the harsh reality of climate change. Last year, it experienced one of the hottest summers on record. Blistering heat waves led to widespread wildfires in the country’s southwest, affecting five times more land than normal during the summer. Though Turkey usually has large water surpluses, some areas experienced shortages due to extreme drought. Others suffered heavy flooding, leaving scores dead.

On Dec. 23, Jordanian Minister of Industry, Trade, and Supply Yousef Shamali and Russia’s Ambassador to Jordan Gleb Desyatnikov attended a ceremony to finalize a bilateral cooperation agreement on science, culture, and education. This agreement highlights Jordan’s delicate foreign policy balancing act. The government, led by King Abdullah II, will continue to work with a diverse group of countries, even those with tense relations with the West, to bolster its security and economic opportunities. Mitigating security threats and increasing business opportunities is key to political stability and the continuation of the king’s rule amid Jordan’s persistent socio-economic problems. However, the king will need to be careful not to undermine his closest allies by working with their adversaries.

On Jan. 6, 2022, a U.S. district court judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) brought by the family of Ari Fuld, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen murdered in 2018 by a Palestinian teenager outside of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. The ruling demonstrates the strictly political nature of the lawsuit, whereby powerful interests with deep pockets use litigation and lobbying to target the PA’s finances, including foreign aid, in order to hasten its collapse, as well as the limits of this type of “lawfare” against the PA. 

As Russia amasses more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, the Kremlin is holding the country at gunpoint while imposing outrageous demands on the West. NATO has never attacked Russia, while Moscow has waged wars against Georgia and Ukraine and still occupies their lands and militarizes the Black Sea.

On Jan. 13, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm that millions of Afghans are on the “verge of death” thanks to a lethal brew of “freezing temperatures and frozen assets.” This was no idle warning. Notwithstanding the decline in fighting following the Taliban’s victory in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy is in a deepening spiral of impoverishment and destitution.

Going into 2022, many of the main issues that dominated the EU’s relations with the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the ongoing talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, as well as the uncontrolled influx of migrants from the region and Turkey’s long-stalled membership bid, remain on the agenda. Is the new year likely to see a resolution of any of these issues or any other significant changes in relations between the EU and the countries of the region?

Three days have passed since the Houthi attack on the UAE, yet there’s still a lot we don’t know about what really happened. Here’s what we do know: The Houthis officially stated that they were the ones who struck Abu Dhabi, and unlike in September 2019 when they made the same claim, this time they might not be lying. Yet this is not enough to help us answer what in my opinion is the ultimate question: to what extent were the Iranians involved in this attack?

Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has presented his first draft budget bill for the upcoming Iranian year (1401), which starts on March 21, 2022. Rather than facilitating a much-needed economic recovery, the proposed budget is designed to strengthen the regime’s power base and impose austerity while keeping society under control.

Tunisian President Kais Saied’s campaign of arrests evolves from high-profile house arrests of leading figures to convictions of ordinary people on defamation charges.

While a negotiated agreement by the parties to deescalate militarily and return to the negotiating table would be the preferred outcome, there’s little or no reason to believe that the Houthis, who have responded to their losses in Shabwa by escalating their attacks, are yet interested in talking. Rather, by issuing pleas for de-escalation, the international community risks sending the Houthis yet another message that their intransigence, which is the root cause of the humanitarian crisis afflicting Yemenis, will be rewarded by new pressure on the Saudi-led coalition to limit its response to Houthi aggression. In this regard, the Biden administration, with its international partners, risks repeating the failed strategy of 2021.

In the past several months, Biden administration officials have been pushing back against an encroaching narrative that the United States has abandoned the Middle East. But deepening partnerships built on a shared threat are not enough to assuage the concerns of all valuable allies in the region given the increasing perceptions of U.S. unreliability. To address these concerns, the U.S. needs to identify positive nexuses across policy priorities as well. One ripe option in this frame is Lebanon, where the United States has a reliable and long-standing partner in the Lebanese Armed Forces.

On Jan. 10, the governor of Shabwa announced its liberation from the Iran-backed Houthis. This victory followed a seemingly successful Houthi military campaign over the past couple of years to expand their influence around the city of Marib, weaken the internationally-backed government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and solidify their grasp on strategic northern areas. However, while significant, the victory in Shabwa is unlikely to be replicated in the rest of the country, given the very specific political and regional dynamics that helped to bring it about. Moreover, the Houthis’ drone attack on Abu Dhabi on Jan. 17 presents a further challenge to the advance of pro-UAE forces into Marib.