تحليل إقليمي متخصص من قبل باحثي ومساهمي معهد الشرق الأوسط.
Houthi rhetoric focusing on Palestine underscores the militia’s strategic alliance with Tehran as part of the “Axis of Resistance.” This relationship, central to understanding the Houthi movement’s actions and narratives, frames its position within the larger geopolitical contest in the Middle East.
The Biden administration has largely relied on airstrikes to prevent the Houthis from causing further harm to international maritime trade in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. But as we have seen already, this approach is unlikely to work against an armed group that has survived years of such one-off attacks from above. To effectively degrade the military capacity of the Houthis, a comprehensive and fully-resourced interdiction regime at sea is needed to target their supply lines and deny them the use of various forms of Iranian assistance.
On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 3, local time, US warplanes bombed facilities used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for the death of 3 US service members in a Jan. 28 drone attack on Tower 22, a US military base in northeastern Jordan on the Syrian border. The airstrikes primarily targeted locations in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
The MENA region is both a climate change hotspot and one of the world’s most gender unequal regions. As a result of gender inequality, women face disproportionate risks from climate change, but there are ways to transform these threats and turn them into opportunities.
A Memorandum from MEI’s Defense and Security Program with Recommendations for President Biden
Forty-five years after Iran’s February 1979 revolution, American officials continue to struggle to understand this nation of almost 90 million. Rather than trying to solve a crisis that threatens to draw the US into direct conflict with Iran, the Biden administration appears more intent to manage it.
(Washington, D.C.) – The Middle East Institute (MEI) is proud to announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rabdan Academy, a UAE-based higher education institution specializing in a range of defense and security issues. The MoU outlines plans for the two organizations to explore avenues of cooperation and collaboration on research & analysis, training, and events.
Nine nations, including terrorist groups that are de facto governments, have attacked other countries in the region over the course of about two weeks. Numerous commentators have drawn the conclusion that a regional war is already underway or soon will be.
Last Thursday, military forces from the United States and the United Kingdom struck nearly thirty different locations across Western Yemen to degrade Houthi military capabilities and dissuade the rebel group from further attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. It will take a bit more time to assess the actual damage caused to Houthi radars, missiles, drone launch bases, and command and control facilities and even longer to determine a change in behavior by the Houthis.
When the United States and the United Kingdom decided to strike Houthi targets inside Yemen to stop the group from launching attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, most European allies did not want to get involved in the operation. The sole exception was the Netherlands, which grabbed the opportunity to step forward and show its willingness to provide not only political but also military support, albeit largely symbolic.
Observations and thoughts on COP28 from MEI’s Climate and Water program director, who attendee of the conference.
By striking Houthi rebel targets in Yemen with Britain on Thursday, Washington sent a searing message to both the Houthis and its Iranian backers that the United States has ended its longstanding defense-only posture in the Red Sea and is determined to stop the group’s attacks against commercial ships in regional waters.
تحليل إقليمي متخصص من قبل باحثي ومساهمي معهد الشرق الأوسط.
In navigating the thickening fog of war, ongoing US-led mediation must actively take two critical steps to pull Lebanon and Israel back from the brink and avoid a direct US-Iran confrontation: secure credible guarantees on compliance and endorse local efforts to elect an independent president.