Research & Commentary Results

In this special briefing, MEI experts Bilal Y. Saab, Alex Vatanka, Randa Slim, Ahmad Majidyar, Gerald Feierstein, Gonul Tol, and Marvin G. Weinbaum discuss President Trump’s announcement that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and its ramifications for the region.

Iran’s Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2016-21) identifies the energy sector as a key source of revenue and driver of economic growth.[1] The plan envisages increasing oil output by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 4.8 million bpd.[2] Achieving this ambitious target will require substantial foreign investment, technology, and expertise.

Mediation diplomacy has emerged as one of the central pillars of China’s foreign policy objectives and practice, with Beijing deliberately positioning itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East conflicts and crises in the region (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process). This article examines whether China’s mediation diplomacy in the Middle East is a precursor of change in China’s interpretation and application of the principle of non-intervention.

In recent weeks, mass demonstrations in Gaza, near the Israel-Gaza fence, have resulted in large numbers of casualties, reportedly 44 dead and several thousand wounded.

Read the full article on Foreign Policy.

In Sunday’s elections in Lebanon, Hezbollah and its allies gained more than half the seats in Parliament. After a result like that, an old canard in Washington is likely to resurface with full force: the idea that U.S. policy in Lebanon is a disaster. Don’t buy it. In fact, of all the investments the United States has made in the Middle East over the past decade, Lebanon has generated the greatest returns.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Alex Vatanka, Randa Slim, and Randa Slim provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including President Trump’s decision on whether to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, what this weekend’s election results in Lebanon indicate about Hezbollah’s standing in the country, and expectations for the outcome of Iraq’s elections on May 12.

In contrast to bellicose statements from Tehran in recent days, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said today that Tehran would remain in the 2015 nuclear accord, even if the Trump administration abandoned it. But he said Tehran would stick to the deal only if other signatories of the deal assure Tehran that the Islamic Republic will continue to benefit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The commander of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Base, the main engineering arm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has said that the conglomerate will complete 40 mega-projects in the current Iranian year, which began on March 21.

What impact will the Trump administration’s new arms sales policy, named “Buy American,” have on the Middle East, historically one of the major destinations for U.S.-made weapons? Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research for the Foreign Policy program at Brookings, and Bilal Saab, director of MEI’s Defense and Security program, join host Paul Salem to discuss.

Read the full article on The American Interest

With Lebanon’s parliamentary elections just around the corner, Washington will be watching closely how its Lebanese nemesis, the powerful Shi‘a party Hezbollah, sets itself up for the future. 

Nabil Musa learned how to swim and fish in the Tanjero River in the city of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. The Tanjero eventually joins the Tigris River, which, together with the Euphrates River, gave life to Mesopotamia.

On an official visit to Damascus this week, the chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy committee said that the Islamic Republic would retaliate against Israel for last month’s strikes on an air Syrian military base that killed several Iranian nationals. “We will respond to any aggression on Iran at the appropriate time and place,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi said at a news conference in the Syrian capital on Tuesday. The senior Iranian lawmaker made the remarks after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad and top Syrian officials and parliamentarians.

With Iraq’s May 12 parliamentary elections nearing, the coalition of Iranian-supported militia groups called Fateh Alliance is confident that it can translate its military gains into a political victory by either winning the premiership or playing kingmaker in the post-election government formation process, according to Tasnim News Agency, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The Moroccan government announced yesterday that it has severed its diplomatic relations with Iran over Tehran’s support for the Polisario Front, a separatist movement in Western Sahara,