التحليل

In the June 2021 elections, the Iranian presidency was handed to Ebrahim Raisi on a silver platter. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made sure the election process was engineered, down to the smallest detail, for a shoo-in Raisi victory. For Raisi, this is something of a double-edged sword. At a minimum, it means policy continuity in Tehran, including in the realm of hybrid military-economic affairs. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will not only continue to have a free hand to shape Iran’s military and regional agenda, but it will also return to center-stage as far as economic planning is concerned. The same thing happened during the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; he too gave the IRGC an free hand — a decision that he later came to regret. Raisi has no choice though. His political fortunes rest on continued support from Khamenei and the IRGC. Don’t expect him to unveil any trailblazing policies anytime soon.

The viability of Eastern Mediterranean natural gas resources has long been a source of debate for reasons including cost considerations, market demand, and regional geopolitical tensions. The past couple of years have further complicated the debate, introducing new questions about the role of these resources in supporting post-pandemic economic recovery or helping more advanced markets achieve net-zero policies by replacing coal and other fuel sources (a particularly relevant topic of debate given Europe and Asia are key export targets for East Med gas).

It took the Taliban just three and a half months to undermine a 20-year international effort to build a competent Afghan military. The Afghanistan National Army (ANA) collapsed once it was clear the U.S. was pulling out ground troops and ceasing air support operations after two decades of training and sustainment that cost the American taxpayer approximately $83 billion. When required to stand alone, against a Taliban force, the ANA failed unequivocally. Building the ANA as a mirror image of the U.S. military was strategically and operationally flawed. If they are designed to fight like the U.S. but cannot fight in the absence of U.S. forces, they are ineffective. What lessons should we learn from this and how could our approach be different in the future?

After 20 years of extensive involvement in Afghanistan by the U.S. and other NATO allies, now is the time to ask what China sees in the country and how it plans to approach relations with its new rulers, the Taliban.

Since the Taliban seized control of Kabul on Aug. 15, Russia has expanded its engagement with India and Pakistan on Afghanistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Aug. 24, which resulted in the creation of a permanent bilateral channel for consultations on Afghanistan. On Sept. 8, Modi’s national security advisor, Ajit Doval, met with his Russian counterpart, Nikolay Patrushev, and agreed to expand Russia-India cooperation against terrorism and drug trafficking. On Aug. 25, Putin spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan about the situation in Afghanistan, which resulted in Khan inviting Putin to visit Pakistan. Russia’s simultaneous engagement with India and Pakistan on Afghanistan is the latest iteration of its balancing strategy toward the two South Asian rivals.

Tunisia’s July 25 hirak was in the making since 2011, but perhaps we researchers were simply looking in the wrong place. This article presents a simplified account of the ideological roots of President Kais Saied’s July 25 power grab. Drawing on original and previously unused data as well as diverse sources, including a book recently withdrawn from stores, it offers a snapshot of the concept-map of ideas that have thus far remained hidden from the public domain.

As we mark 20 years since the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other protracted elements of the ill-fated and ill-conceived “war on terror,” it is easy to overlook other disastrous legacies of U.S. policy in the post-9/11 era. This is particularly true in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Washington’s response to 9/11 effectively marked the beginning of the long, tortured death of the Middle East Peace Process, and with it hopes for a two-state solution.

The selection of the interim Afghan government led by Mullah Hasan Akhund has the unmistakable stamp of Pakistan’s security establishment. Islamabad has always wanted the international community to believe that the Taliban are a nationalistic Pashtun force that has a legitimate claim to rule the country, but the manner in which the new government has been announced is a testament to the fact that the Taliban are also a proxy force for Pakistan

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.

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.

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. 

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.