The Gulf states are often overlooked as indirect beneficiaries of the Russia-Europe energy war. In what ways and to what extent have they leveraged it? Are these benefits sustainable?
The challenge of developing export strategies for the offshore natural gas resources concentrated in the Eastern Mediterranean predates the Russo-Ukrainian war. Yet over the course of 2022, Europe’s intensifying energy crisis created a new and more immediate incentive to solve those export challenges, despite a great deal of work still to be done.
For the past ten years, Italy and Morocco have been two of the most economically dynamic countries in the Mediterranean basin. Morocco’s rise as a manufacturing and distribution hub for companies seeking to nearshore operations close to mature European end-markets, as well as emerging African end-markets, has created new potential synergies for a deeper Italy-Morocco commercial partnership.
While cryptocurrency may offer Iran the opportunity to bypass sanctions and boost trade, it is by no means a panacea for such outcomes and comes with a host of obstacles, such as price volatility, economic uncertainty, energy consumption, and evolving regulation.
Listening to students and young professionals is instrumental in understanding the Ukrainian perspective. A series of interviews, conducted in summer 2022, centered around their identity as Ukrainians, how the war is impacting their lives, and how they viewed Russia and the West before and after Feb. 24, 2022. The participants in these interviews have only known an independent Ukraine, and their negative feelings toward Russia will not improve anytime soon.
A series of damaging Iranian hacks of Albania’s critical digital infrastructure over the summer pushed Tirana to break off bilateral diplomatic relations. Iran has regularly responded to sanctions or perceived provocations through cyberattack campaigns, as was visible in the case of Albania, guilty in the Iranian authorities’ eyes for the accommodations it has given to the anti-regime group MEK .
Cost estimates for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction already exceed many hundreds of billions of dollars. Given the Western world’s slowing economic prospects, Ukrainian elites admit that China looks increasingly likely to have a role in helping finance and rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure. But Chinese involvement comes with economic and security risks.
The latest U.N. IPCC report details the alarming changes that Mediterranean countries will experience in the coming decades due to climate change, highlighting three critical areas — warming and droughts, declining ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic and public health risks.
Ten of the most important or far-reaching events and trends that dominated the MENA region in 2022.
Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the notorious Wagner Group PMC, is taking power away from the traditional Russian military establishment and fostering President Putin’s dependence on his resources and advice. This trend will undoubtedly propel the escalation of the war in Ukraine and possibly inflict irrevocable damage to the future utility of the Russian Armed Forces.
Competition for jobs was high in Georgia even prior to the influx of Russians. So the arrival of tens of thousands of working-age, often high-skilled individuals from an antagonistic country could, if it has not already, lead to further frustration among Georgians.
Georgia’s major seaports form a vital link in the transit of commerce via the Black Sea, but they are threatened by local and transnational involvement in illicit seaborne trade motivated by high income inequality, poverty, and population displacement. Enhancing maritime security in this geostrategic South Caucasus transit state aligns with the strategic interests of the U.S. and NATO.
اقرأ تقرير MEI الأسبوعي الذي يتضمن تحليلات الخبراء للتطورات الإقليمية الرئيسية للأسبوع المقبل.
The December 2020 Moroccan-Israeli normalization deal has evolved from a vehicle enabling Morocco to gain long-sought U.S. recognition of its claims on Western Sahara to a broader strategic partnership with Israel. But the relationship further strains relations with neighboring rival Algeria.
اقرأ تقرير MEI الأسبوعي الذي يتضمن تحليلات الخبراء للتطورات الإقليمية الرئيسية للأسبوع المقبل.